ARTICLES

Until We Get Civil Unions We'll Never Get Marriage

Hillcrest Town Hall Meeting

By Sally Thomsin

Homosexual activists met with unwelcome opposition from conservatives at the San Diego Lesbian and Gay Men's Center in Hillcrest on Wednesday, August 1 during a town hall meeting about Assembly Bill 1338, the "civil unions" bill. Approximately 200 people listened as five panelists described plans to legalize same-sex civil unions in California next year.

Conservatives first learned of the meeting on July 27 after Allyson Smith intercepted a press release from a local homosexual e-mail group titled "Assemblymembers Kehoe, Koretz To Host Town Hall Meeting on Civil Unions." It said "Assemblymember Christine Kehoe (D-76th District), along with Assemblymember Paul Koretz (D-42nd District) will co-host a town hall meeting in San Diego to discuss Assembly Bill 1338 (Koretz). This measure, also known as the California Family Protection Act, supports civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. The public is encouraged to attend."

The press release quoted Kehoe as saying, "'I am excited to provide an opportunity for concerned San Diegans to give their input on this important issue. Our community must have all the information we need on this historic civil rights legislation. We must continue to educate the general public on the need to acknowledge gay and lesbian relationships in a fair and equitable manner.'

"Others scheduled to participate in the town hall meeting include Professor Barbara Cox of the California Western School of Law, and representatives from Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the California Alliance for Pride and Equality, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union."

The intercepted press release was forwarded to conservative activists throughout California including Sacramento-based Capitol Resource Institute. Capitol Resource's Karen Holgate sent it to her mailing list with a message urging people to attend the meeting. "This bill, which will be reintroduced in January 2002, seeks to bring 'civil unions' to California in open defiance of Prop. 22," she wrote.

Unknown to Holgate at the time, her mailing list included pro-homosexual Jerry Sloan of Project Tocsin in Sacramento, who intercepted her message and sent it to Doug Case, a co-coordinator of residential fraternity and sorority life at San Diego State University. Described by Los Angeles Independent Media Center as a "veteran Queer political activist and former San Diego Democratic Club president," Case moderates and participates in several Internet discussion groups devoted to advancing homosexual "rights."

On July 29, Case forwarded Holgate's message to the SDEquality (San Diego Equality) group on Yahoo.com with the heading "Anti-gay bigots want to take over Kehoe's civil unions meeting!" and a foreword from Sloan that said, "I hope that if you have friends in SD you will contact them and urge them to attend this meeting. Please don't let these homohaters pack the meeting."

Smith intercepted this message and notified her mailing list. "The homosexuals are now on high alert for us, and since the meeting is on their turf, I have many concerns" she wrote. "Although Christine Kehoe's press release states that members of the public are welcome at this meeting, it's obvious from the hysterical tone of Doug's message that they weren't expecting any opposition -- which indicates that they either advertised this meeting only within the local homosexual community or expected members of the public who [are] not be hard-core conservatives."

Holgate responded "I doubt that you will have any problems that night. I have attended meetings and they may taunt you but if you are calm and ignore them, it should be okay. You might however, want to call the SDPD and ask them to just drive by the event to make sure things stay calm."

Instead, Eletta Files of Lakeside phoned Kehoe's office the morning of the meeting. She told a staffer that Case had distorted Holgate's message to such an extent that she feared for her physical safety and asked if she needed to call the police. The staffer denied knowing anything about Case's message but told Files that "precautions" had already been taken.

A few homosexuals sent hate mail messages to Smith. One was from Zak Topor, the director of the Radio Reading Service for KPBS 89.5 FM which broadcasts from the campus of San Diego State University. Topor asked Smith "Don't you ever worry about your karma? Hate is evil!" Smith replied "You better watch out for your own karma now that you've sent this hateful, intolerant message to me." He retorted, "I don't have to be tolerant of folks like you, who hide your hate behind your 'religious beliefs.'"

Several San Diego police officers were present during the two-hour meeting which was attended by approximately 10 conservatives. It started at 6:00 p.m. with a welcome and introductions from Dolores Jacobs, interim executive director of the [Gay] Center, and Judy Scheim, a Pride board member and local family therapist, followed by panelists' remarks and a question and answer session.

AB 1338 author Paul Koretz, a married heterosexual first-term assemblymember and former West Hollywood city council member, spoke first: "The California Family Protection Act, as we've named it, would provide civil unions for same-sex couples similarly to what's done in Vermont. The concept is to provide legal protections that are similar in nature to marriage at all levels of the law, but without some of the traditional concepts of marriage, particularly the more conservative religious elements. It would affect everything that we can affect at the state level.

Koretz said that the reason he introduced AB 1338 is because "I feel strongly that everyone should have the same rights. I've seen so much discrimination, I've seen the pain that many of my good friends have experienced, and I don't see why a committed same-sex couple can't have the same rights that I do as part of a married couple."

After introducing AB 1338 in January, Koretz dropped it in order to free Democratic state assemblymembers to lobby for passage of AB 25, a bill that extends over a dozen marriage-equivalent rights to same-sex registered domestic partners. Another reason, he said, is that "[I] recognize [from] talking to my colleagues [and] discussions with people and the general public that there are a lot of steps that have to be taken first in terms of education."

Christine Kehoe spoke next. She acknowledged conservatives' presence saying, "I would like every person to be listened to with respect and decorum" and praised Koretz as "a real progressive." Referring to AB 1338 as "the California Family Protection Act," she said, "The bill proposes to set civil unions for Californians. It would allow gay and lesbian couples to have our relationships recognized.

"Many of you know that I am the first member of our community to be elected to public office in San Diego, and I'm also in a long-term 16-year relationship with my partner Julie. Civil unions would allow our relationship to be recognized and would give us at least a portion of the rights that any man and woman can get upon embarking on marriage.

Kehoe acknowledged representatives from several elected officials' offices, including lesbian Toni Atkins, a former aide who succeeded her to the District 3 city council seat, county supervisor Ron Roberts, and "congresswoman Susan Davis [who] is represented by Todd Gloria."

Gloria is a recent graduate University of San Diego where he was a member of the Delta Lambda Phi fraternity for Gay, Bisexual, and Progressive Men. He wrote several homosexual-advocacy articles for USD's student paper, the Vista, and lobbied for the inclusion of the term 'sexual orientation' in the school's non-discrimination policy. Supported by professors Steven Hartwell and Evelyn Kirkley, Gloria applied for and received a $10,000 grant from the Strauss Foundation to implement a "Rainbow Visibility program "to raise awareness to the fact that gays are a distinct culture, diminish homophobia, and enable effective and comfortable engagement between USD and gay communities."

Barbara Cox, an associate dean at California Western School of Law, spoke after Kehoe. "What we're trying to do in California now is have California also help lead the way in creating civil unions and giving same-sex couples some of the rights or most of the rights that opposite-sex couples have."

In Madison, Wisconsin in 1983, Cox belonged to a group that helped write one of the nation's first domestic partner ordinances. "We didn't know what to call it; we didn't know what it meant; we didn't even understand that it was possible that some day we might even be talking about marriage. We didn't know what rights should be included, and we had really small hopes.

Now, she said, "one of the things that's amazing when I [look back] 18 years later is that domestic partnerships have spread across this country and across the world. You can now marry in the Netherlands. You can be in registered partnerships in many countries in Europe. You can get a civil union in Vermont. There are hundreds of thousands of employers nationwide who provide domestic partnership benefits to their employees. Many cities and some states also provide some domestic partnership rights. And it's only been 18 years.

"Carole Migden's bill [AB 25] is very important because it's just, it's close, we're getting there, and there are some very important rights, including the ability to sue for wrongful death and the ability to inherit property intestate, that are really important, to make medical decisions without your partner without having to have durable power of attorney. And that's a great step just like all the other great steps we enjoy."

Cox then revealed the true goal of civil unions legislation: "But we need to also, I think, need to set our sights even higher than that and keep saying 'This is an important step and we need to fight to go here,' because until we get civil unions we'll never get marriage.'"

Following Cox was Jean Harris, executive director of the California Alliance for Pride and Equality, who boasted that her organization had grown from 700 supporters in March 2000 to "more than 700,000 donors, volunteers and supporters" with a goal of one million by the end of this year.

"Last session, for those of you who remember, our bills either got killed in committee or the governor vetoed them. We took every one of those bills that got held up in committee, that didn't get introduced, or that made it to the governor's desk, and we put everything in Carole Migden's bill, AB 25, and we did a little bit more." Hinting that Governor Davis had already decided to sign AB 25 into law, Harris said, "The governor is not going to try to amend this bill. We know that.

"We want to get civil unions passed while [Koretz is] still in the assembly. We think we can do it. This is cutting-edge stuff. If we can do this in California, it's going to sweep across this country, and that's why all the national organizations are looking to California to see how soon we can produce this, because it's going to move like wildfire."

The last panelist to speak was Larry Conway who obtained a civil union in Vermont last year with Arnold Delgado, his partner of 15 years. Conway compared the circumstances surrounding Vermont's legalization of civil unions unfavorably with California, saying that Vermont felt coerced into enacting the legislation. "Most of the people that we talked to [in Vermont] said that if the [state] legislature hadn't done something, the supreme court of Vermont would have done it for them."

The next segment of the meeting was a question-and-answer session that lasted approximately one hour. Life Source executive director Phil Magnan addressed the panel: "We understand from the Bible that God is the one who ordained marriage between a man and woman. By what authority will you set up civil unions?"

Three of the panelists, led by Kehoe, answered Magnan. "Their response was something like 'We don't consider this to be a religious issue because there's a separation between church and state,'" he recalled. "They answered that everyone is entitled to their own religious beliefs and that beliefs have no bearing on the legislation because it is a matter of civil rights, not religion." At one point, Kehoe said she is amazed that there are still people today who allow their religious beliefs to influence their politics.

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