"Sterile" is the way she remembers the march down a long, dark corridor of the New York Municipal Building in July with her partner, Malea Rhodes, past a room where giddy brides and grooms dressed in finery and flowers waited to be married by justices of the peace. The two women kept walking, to a clerk sitting behind bulletproof glass, where they registered as domestic partners.
As a same-sex couple in New York, it was the closest they could come to marriage, which is why Fleming described herself as "ecstatic" over the Massachusetts Supreme Court's ruling this month that deemed it unconstitutional to deny gays and lesbians the right to wed. The court rejected "civil unions" as a form of second- class citizenship and set May 17 as the date for the state to begin giving marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Civil-rights issue
Even as state lawmakers seek to override the ruling, perhaps by amending Massachusetts' constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, Fleming said she and Rhodes will marry in hopes of making it more difficult to roll back their rights.
"What's most important is we don't give up now," said Fleming, who plans to move to this western Massachusetts town, where Rhodes lives, as soon as she sells her Manhattan apartment. "It's a real power struggle."
The couple, together two years, aren't alone. Since the court ruling, same-sex couples have been gearing up for weddings, setting the stage for lawsuits aimed at forcing other states to recognize such unions. A similar situation is unfolding in San Francisco, where city officials have issued more than 3,200 marriage licenses to same-sex couples since Feb. 12 to counter conservative groups' attempts to ban gay marriage.
"We want the state to recognize that we are full human beings and not second-class anything," said Angela Bauer, a theology professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. Her decision to marry her longtime partner, Irma Levesque, the director of development at New York's Union Theological Seminary, in Massachusetts was spurred in large part by the couple's desire to fight for equal rights.
The court case has opened the door to that, say Bauer and others who favor marriage for same-sex couples. "They know if we start getting married in droves, they're going to have a hard sell telling my neighbor to vote to unmarry us," said Mark Carmien, who runs a bookstore in Northampton and plans to wed his longtime partner this summer. He was referring to the requirement that any state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage would have to be approved by voters.
A political fight
Conservative lawmakers are scrambling to strengthen rules against same-sex marriage, while liberals - loath to lose votes by embracing the idea - cough up compromises that would provide gays the benefits of marriage, while denying them marriage licenses.
Massachusetts lawmakers meeting as a Constitutional Convention on Feb. 10 and 11 failed to agree on anything and will resume debate March 11. Perhaps the only sure outcome of the state Supreme Judicial Court's ruling is that it will unleash legal and political clashes for years to come, pitting activists of all persuasions against one another.
Already many influential black church leaders have sided with conservatives, angering blacks who see this as a civil rights issue. "It's a shame. They're forgetting their own history," said Gary Daffin, a black member of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian political caucus. "It's beyond comprehension that a people who were legislated into half-people would perpetuate the same sort of discrimination."
Legal ramifications
Even divorce lawyers are weighing in, warning that if the nation doesn't come up with a blanket definition of marriage, the inevitable break-up of some gay unions will lead to a big, ugly mess.
"These gay divorces are going to be the most litigious, difficult, emotional cases that exist," said Atlanta divorce lawyer John Mayoue, an expert on ugly splits. His clients have included Jane Fonda, Marianne Gingrich and Evander Holyfield's ex-wife, Janice.
Mayoue envisions gay couples trying to dissolve marriages in states that refuse to acknowledge their unions in the first place. That could force them to return to the state where they married to get divorced, or open the door for partners who don't want divorces to flee to states that don't recognize gay marriage.
"I think you're going to have people in same-sex relationships going into very hostile territory. Certainly it's a step," he said of the court ruling, "but it's a very small step."
You wouldn't know that from the response it provoked, from Boston's Statehouse to the White House, where President George W. Bush declared yesterday his support for amending the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
To supporters of such moves, they would ensure that same-sex partnerships, which they consider deviant, are not sanctioned by the state. Anything else, they say, would be comparable to sanctioning single parenthood or other practices at odds with their image of the ideal, nuclear family.
"What we want is the strongest possible protection of marriage, so the door is closed totally to any homosexual unions," said Tom White of the conservative America First Party. "The building block of any society is the family, and when you want to change the definition of family, I have to say no."
As he spoke outside Boston's Statehouse, scores of proponents of gay marriage lined the other side of the street chanting, "Hey ho, hey ho, homophobia must go!"
For them the idea of heterosexuals discussing the sanctity of an institution that has become fodder for reality TV shows like "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" and that ends in divorce half the time is preposterous.
More hypocritical, they say, is the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church, a powerful political force in the state. It is actively opposing same-sex marriage, even as it struggles to recover from the scandal involving the sexual abuse of children by its own priests.
"My pedophile priest supports 'traditional' marriage," read a sign held by one protester.
Benefits at stake
Acceptance of marriage has been a difficult road for gays, who once dismissed it as the sort of mainstream institution they shunned.
Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, traces the transformation to the 1996 passage of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined "spouse" as a person of the opposite sex for purposes of federal law. As 38 states went on to approve their own Defense of Marriage Acts, gays began seeing what was at stake, said Isaacson, comparing the 1,400 benefits that come with marriage to the 300 to 400 that she said "civil unions" such as those granted in Vermont generally provide.
"We all went through a steep learning curve that frankly knocked the socks off a lot of us," she said. "If this were just about semantics, I wouldn't be fighting so hard. But we're talking about inheritance rights, survivor benefits, health insurance, Social Security, pensions, on and on and on. These things are denied gay families only because we're denied marriage."
She recites a litany of examples: a lesbian couple murdered on vacation and buried separately, because the family of one woman opposed their 15-year relationship; a gay man from Texas barred from the funeral of his 13-year partner because the partner's family opposed their union; an elderly lesbian facing eviction from the home she has shared with her ailing partner of 30 years because she can't afford the inheritance taxes - taxes that would not apply to a spouse.
Isaacson, herself, was faced with a dilemma when she went into early labor with her daughter. She and her female partner confronted the bedeviling choice of heading straight for the emergency room or stopping en route to get a legal document giving the partner custody of the baby, should Isaacson die in labor.
They stopped at the lawyer's office.
"I should have been in the hospital, but I couldn't take the risk," said Isaacson.
Among gay men, Carmien said, the AIDS epidemic had heightened the desire for marriage. Men watched partners die in hospitals where they did not have automatic visitation rights and lost shared homes because of prohibitive inheritance taxes.
The epidemic "made us look twice at commitment, at maturity, at settling down and buying houses together," he said. "A big thing that's missing, though, is the marriage benefits."
That's not to say that he, or any gay activists, believe their battle is nearing an end. No matter what state lawmakers do, activists on both sides say they won't stop fighting.
Long battle ahead
Conservatives dismiss suggestions that it's petty to argue about same-sex marriage when the nation is at war and the economy is suffering. "Having this debate does not minimize those issues. At the end of the day, a child's family has a huge impact on that child, and that has a huge impact on the country's future," said Genevieve Wood of the conservative Family Research Council.
Gay activists say the fact that some conservatives now support civil unions, after once opposing all gay partnerships, is a sign things are shifting.
"It's going to be a very long battle," said Fleming, describing marriage as the last thing heterosexuals can keep from gays. "We have buying power; we can vote; we can adopt children. It's the last thing they say, 'You can't have,' and once we get this, we're done."
Outside, it was a different story yesterday as pro- and anti-gay activists rallied for a second day while legislators debated amending the state's constitution to ban gay marriages.
"I don't want to argue with you. You are probably in-arguable," a man barked at a woman, giving her a look of disdain as she stood inches from his chin demanding he explain his applause for an amendment that would limit marriage to a man and a woman.
In another close and ugly encounter, a supporter of gay marriage confronted a protester waving a sign that read: "I want to marry my dog."
"We're talking about citizens who are human beings. You can't marry a dog - you're mocking everything they're standing for," he told the sign-waving man, who identified himself as Paul Davidson and insisted the sign was aimed at highlighting the "stupidity" of gay demands.
"Everyone knows for thousands of years marriage has been between a man and a woman. This is just silly," said Davidson as a sea of signs proclaiming everything from "Hetero families for gay families" to "Children need a mommy and daddy" bobbed behind him atop Beacon Hill.
The state House and Senate, meeting as a Constitutional Convention, spent nearly seven hours discussing the matter Wednesday but failed to agree on how best to respond to last week's Supreme Court ruling giving gays and lesbians the right to marry. Yesterday they resumed debate at noon and, about midnight, they recessed until March 11 without making a decision.
The court ruling rejected "civil unions" as unacceptable, saying that amounted to lumping gays into a "separate but equal" category, and mandated that marriage licenses be given to same-sex couples starting May 17.
That left lawmakers struggling to find a means to counter the court's ruling via a constitutional change, without appearing too extreme.
Conservatives lost an early attempt to define marriage as heterosexual and to let lawmakers approve gay "civil unions" if they so chose. A more liberal proposal that would enshrine both heterosexual marriage and same-sex civil unions in the constitution also was defeated.
Those who opposed any change in the constitution lost their attempt yesterday to have the issue dropped altogether and the convention adjourned. Speeches in support of that motion produced some of the most impassioned moments of the debate and silenced the usually buzzing chamber.
Republican Rep. Shaun Kelly appealed to lawmakers to compare their relationships to those of their gay colleagues, such as Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Malia. "If you believe that the love Liz has for her partner is less than the love you have for your spouse, I think you're wrong," he said. "I think that's really what this is about - the judgment of love."
On the other side, proponents of an amendment banning gay marriage said they were not trying to exclude anyone but to simply give voters the right to decide. No amendment can take effect until a public vote, which would not take place until 2006. "This is the amendment that tells the people of Massachusetts what marriage is," said Democratic Rep. Philip Travis, pushing his proposal to define marriage as a heterosexual union "in the best interest of the children," with no provisions for gay unions.
The amendment was defeated 103 to 93 last night.
As the debate went on, lawmakers on the other side of the country took a different tack: heading off a conservative group's attempt to ban gay marriage, San Francisco city officials began granting marriage licenses to gay couples. First to wed were Phyllis Lyon, 79, and Del Martin, 83, a couple for 51 years.
In Boston, Mary McCarthy and her partner of 15 years, Bonnie Winokar, said they hoped to do the same this summer. The two were joined in a "civil union" ceremony in Vermont three years ago, but with the Supreme Court ruling, they want more.
"It's half a loaf," McCarthy said of the civil union idea. "I want the whole loaf."
Copyright 2001 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York)
September 10, 2001 Monday
Still Battling Hate;
In Wyoming, gays sense little change in climate
By Tina Susman; STAFF CORRESPONDENT
Laramie, Wyo. - In a place like Wyoming, where the biggest city has just 53,000 people and most towns claim fewer than 1,000, it's not easy being different.
Few people know that better than John Little, the director of United Gays and Lesbians of Wyoming Inc., who spends much of his time on the phone helping gay people tackle the problem of combining their lifestyle with their state's roughneck, cowboy culture.
One problem his callers don't have is finding his phone number. "We're the only gay organization listed in the phone book," notes Little, whose group was transformed from a mainly social group to a politically active one in October 1998, after the gay-bashing murder of University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in Laramie.
Three years after Shepard's slaying captured international attention and drew condemnation from a slew of personalities, ranging from Madonna to then-President Bill Clinton, those who were caught up in the case wonder what, if anything, has changed for gay people living in the nation's ninth largest state geographically - a land mass larger than New York, New Jersey and Maine combined - and its least populated, with just 490,000 people. It's a question more on their minds than usual given the slaying in June of another young gay man, 16-year-old Fred C. Martinez Jr., whose battered body was found in neighboring Colorado on June 21.
"I see Fred's death ... as a clear sign that there is much more to be done before we can live free from fear and hate," Shepard's mother, Judy Shepard, said last month during a week of vigils in memory of Fred.
The same gay activists and organizations that streamed into Laramie after Shepard's murder have also been in Cortez, Colo., keeping tabs on the case and pressuring police to declare it a hate crime. A former Cortez resident, Shaun Murphy, 18, was charged with the murder of Martinez, an openly gay member of the Navajo tribe who dressed as a girl frequently and called himself "two-spirit," the Native American term for gays, lesbians, cross-dressers and transsexuals.
Cortez is about 500 miles from Laramie, but the similarities to the Shepard crime are striking. Both occurred in remote, tranquil towns in ruggedly beautiful states that boast wide open spaces and claim to offer easygoing, "live-and-let-live" attitudes. Both victims were young, openly gay men beaten savagely, allegedly by young white men from the same area as their victims. Both were left to die in open fields no more than a half-mile from the nearest homes but too far to be seen or heard by anyone. Both were found long after the attacks: Shepard, 21, remained tied to a fence, covered in blood, for nearly 24 hours; Martinez was found five days after he disappeared.
Perhaps most significant to gay organizations, both killings occurred in states where legislators have resisted, against mounting pressure in the wake of the Shepard case, laws that would mandate stiffer penalties for hate crimes based on sexual orientation.
Such legislation died on a tie vote in the Wyoming Legislature just three months after Shepard's death, a move that would seem to defy expectations given the widespread revulsion to the crime but one that locals say was not surprising.
"Their answer to being accused of acting like hicks was to behave even more like hicks," said Little, blaming the legislation's failure on lawmakers' anger over what they saw as the unfair portrayal of Wyoming as a conservative backwater.
Rather than bend to critics and approve the law, they dug in their heels and refused to budge, said Little and Beth Loffreda, a professor and faculty adviser to the University of Wyoming's student Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Association. Her book, "Losing Matt Shepard," examines the effects of the murder on Laramie.
"To people in the legislature, this was a great opportunity to demonstrate they weren't going to bow down to outside pressure," said Loffreda, linking the attitude to Wyoming's main traits - its vastness, tiny population and pride in its Old West atmosphere. Wyoming's slogan is "The Cowboy State," and the image of a cowboy on a bucking bronco appears on car license plates. Bumper stickers popular with residents describe Wyoming as "What America Once Was." The biggest annual event in the sleepy capital, Cheyenne, is Frontier Days, a weeklong homage to cowboys and the Old West that packs a park that is largely deserted the rest of the year. "What do you do? You make a virtue of its backwardness," Loffreda said, explaining the repeated failures of hate-crimes laws in the years since Shepard was killed.
The live-and-let-live attitude that Wyoming residents boast about translates, in gay views, to a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude, Little said.
That's not to say nothing has changed. In the weeks after Shepard's death, for which two men were given life sentences, Little said there was a marked increase in phone calls from closeted gays in Wyoming asking the best way to come out in a state with virtually no bars, bookstores, cinemas or cafes catering to gays.
According to the national census, Wyoming had 30 same-sex couples in 1990. By 2000 it had 807, an increase of 2,590 percent and the biggest increase of all 50 states.
Still, Little said that after the failure of the hate-crimes legislation, the flurry of phone calls from gay people eager to come out died down. There was no startling jump in membership in gay groups, not even in the university's gay and lesbian student group.
"It's not as if a collective light went on in the collective head of Wyoming," said Loffreda, noting that the student gay organization has yet to achieve a high-profile presence on campus. A resource center that was set up last year ostensibly to help to gay students was relegated to a converted men's bathroom, with neither windows nor phones, she noted. It has since been moved but still lacks phones and staff.
And gay students still seem to want to remain closeted rather than risk coming out in this university town of 25,000. Only one or two dozen attend meetings of the gay student group, although dozens are on its mailing list.
"If you're different in any way here, you tend to be different by yourself. Whether you're different because you like Shakespeare or whether you're different because you're gay, it's not like you can go out on the street and find someone like you," said D. Claudia Thompson at the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center, who created a file for the center's archives from material she has collected on the Shepard case. "I'm a little bit disappointed in a way that ... more people didn't come out, because as long as they're afraid, then all of us are a little afraid."
One person who did come out in the post-Shepard days, and who is now one of the state's most prominent gay activists, is Debbie East, 47, from Lander in central Wyoming.
"When Matt was murdered, I just said, 'This is it.' I just put my foot to the closet door and kicked it all the way open," said East, who had lived in Lander for 20 years when Shepard was killed. Those years, she said, had been spent half in and half out of the closet, with no activism involved. In the past three years, she has formed the Wind River Country Initiative for Youth, which aims to end discrimination based on sexual orientation. Last month, the town's Chamber of Commerce gave her a public service award for her work.
"I don't know of another time when an open lesbian received recognition for bringing this type of work to a community in Wyoming," East said. "If you need a snapshot of a shift in attitudes, I think that serves as it."
In Lander, at least, same-sex commitment ceremonies have been held openly. While the City Council rejected a resolution after Shepard's murder that would have recognized the needs of various groups, including gays, for public protection, it was voted down 4-3 rather than earlier, similar resolutions that failed 7-0. Most striking, said East, was the interest in the vote, which drew the biggest public attendance since an issue several years earlier on whether to let snowmobiles drive through town in winter.
"That's Matt's legacy. Matt Shepard really put a face on anti-gay violence in a way that made people talk about it," said Cathy Renna, a spokeswoman for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in New York.
Little agreed. "There haven't been any hate-crimes laws passed - yet," he said. "But certainly there's a lot more talk about gay issues. Granted, we don't walk down the middle of the street during Frontier Days holding hands. There's a difference between being open and inviting someone to beat the crap out of you. But that's something to strive for - to be able to walk down the street holding hands during Frontier Days."
Copyright 1999 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York)
November 30, 1999, Tuesday
'IT'S LIKE THE PRISON DOOR OPENED' / IN A HOSTILE REGION, SOUTH AFRICA'S GAYS FINDING ACCEPTANCE
By Tina Susman. AFRICA CORRESPONDENT
Nelspruit, South Africa-The disco beat of "I Will Survive" pounded through the auditorium as a line of perfectly coiffed beauty contestants strutted on stage in clingy gowns, high heels and plasticized smiles. They posed in swimwear, gave well-rehearsed answers to judges' questions, and the crowd roared in approval when the winner-a statuesque brunette in a gold satin ball gown-was crowned three hours later.
As beauty pageants go, the one held Nov. 20 in this conservative backwater on the banks of the Crocodile River was like many others. To the contestants, though -five whites and two blacks, all in drag-and to gay men and lesbians across South Africa, it was a resounding victory in their fight to gain acceptance in a nation long known for intolerance.
There were no protests by townspeople, the City Council gave its blessing to the event, and judges ranged from a local newspaper editor to Princess Daisy, South Africa's most famous drag queen.
"Ten years ago if we had considered doing a pageant like this, even in a gay nightclub, it would have been hell," said one of the organizers, Markus Buitendach, who opened the pageant by lip-synching Queen's "We Are The Champions" while clad in high-heeled black boots, a micro miniskirt and a black curly wig that tumbled across his broad shoulders.
For all the light heartedness of the event, though, this year's Miss Gay South Africa Pageant -the second formal one after years sub rosa-had serious undertones, coming at a time when gay rights are under fire across southern Africa. Two weeks before the pageant, Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe -infamous anti gay campaigners-made well-publicized gay bashing comments at the annual summit of Commonwealth leaders being held in Durban, South Africa.
Last month, the chairman of the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe organization, Phangi Nyathi, committed suicide, an act gay activists blamed in part on the country's intolerance toward homosexuality. "Society shuns us and equates us with gangsters and perverts, and our relationships are criminalized. We get no rest from persecutors, and we see no chances for alleviation or escape," said a spokesman for the organization, Keith Goddard.
Homosexuality is also illegal in Zambia and in Kenya, whose leaders-like Mugabe and Museveni-deride it as an abnormal practice imported from the West and intended to corrupt traditional African values that encourage big families and, in many cases, multiple wives for men. Mugabe has called gays "lower than pigs and dogs," and at the Commonwealth summit he dismissed Britain-where gay activists have condemned his policies-as a nation run by "gay gangsters." Later, Museveni, hailed by the West as one of Africa's most democratic leaders, warned gays against coming out of the closet in Uganda, where homosexuality is punishable by sentences as harsh as life in prison. "They are upsetting society. We shall not allow these people to challenge society," Museveni said of gays. Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi last month denounced the "gay scourge" he said was afflicting Africa, and the leaders of Namibia and Zambia have similarly condemned homosexuality.
South Africa's gays, meanwhile, have become the first in the world to have their rights enshrined in their nation's constitution, which was rewritten in 1994 after the end of apartheid and prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation as well as race, sex and religion.
"It's like the prison door opened," said Storm Carrington, who represented the Wild Coast region of South Africa in the beauty pageant. "It's like suddenly being allowed to go shopping with your lover, to go on holiday together, to go to a restaurant together, to do all the things straight people can do without being persecuted for it." It wasn't always that way. Homosexuality was illegal in South Africa under apartheid, and a report on apartheid-era human-rights abuses said the military even tried "aversion therapy" on gay men to try to change them. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's October, 1998, report, which was based on three years of interviews, testimony and investigations, this involved giving electric shocks to gays while they viewed pictures of nude men.
Gay activists attribute the changes here to the determination of South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela, to protect those hurt by apartheid. By constitutionally guaranteeing gay rights, he made it possible for gays to go public without fear of persecution and forced other people to deal with them, they say. "People are coming into contact now with gay people and learning that they're normal," said Carrington.
So profound are the reforms that at least three gay people-a Ugandan man and a Pakistani couple-have requested political asylum in South Africa on grounds they face persecution at home for their sexual orientation. The Ugandan, a doctor who uses the alias Steve Kabiku to protect his family in Kampala, came to South Africa in September after gay wedding. "I have told the CID Criminal Investigation Department to look for those homosexuals and lock them up and charge them," Museveni said at the time.
Kabiku, 32, received a phone call from a cousin who knows he is gay and who had read Museveni's comments in the newspaper.
"The cousin said to me, 'Take off your earrings, cut off your hair,'" said Kabiku, fingering the small gold loops that adorn his right ear and touching his short, curly hair, which used to fall to his shoulders. "I was worried I could be arrested," he said, noting that he had told many people he was gay and feared word would get around.
After living virtually in hiding for two weeks in Kampala, Kabiku decided to come to South Africa, where he had worked as a doctor once before and where he could easily obtain a visitor's visa. Once here, he went to the Department of Home Affairs and requested asylum.
All three men are living in South Africa while their cases, which could take several months to decide, are pending. If recent decisions regarding gay rights are a barometer, they have a good chance of success.
In the past two years, a court has ruled that a health insurance plan for police must allow a lesbian officer to enroll her female partner; a gay man has been allowed to adopt a baby; and the nation's highest court has declared apartheid-era laws banning sodomy unconstitutional and said men convicted of them could sue for damages.
Still, comments such as those made by Mugabe and Museveni are worrying to gay leaders here. "I think the statements of Mugabe and Museveni are encouraging gay-bashing in a very serious way. They create an environment in which people with anti-gay tendencies will feel freer to come out and do their own gay-bashing," said Ronald Louw of South Africa's Gay and Lesbian Coalition.
For that reason, organizers of this year's Miss Gay South Africa beauty pageant say the event has taken on new importance. No longer just a drag queen contest, it now is a forum for choosing someone who will campaign on behalf of gays across southern Africa.
The winner, 26-year-old Bernalee Rabeira, said one of his first goals was to visit Zimbabwe and meet with Mugabe. "I'd like him to realize that gay people are normal, just like himself," he said as the rhinestones decorating his gown and adorning the winner's crown twinkled under the stage lights. "With the support of our government, we can really make a difference in places like Zimbabwe as well."
