Going local.

Gay activists turn their attention to state and municipal initiatives as prospects for legislative gains in Washington, D.C., dry up

As he was gearing up for a highstakes presidential campaign in 1999, Texas governor George W. Bush made sure the state's hate-crimes legislation never reached his desk. Just two years later, with Bush ensconced in the White House, the bill sailed through the state legislature and was signed into law May 11 by Gov. Rick Perry, a fellow Republican.

Welcome to gay and lesbian politics of the new millennium. With President Bush and the GOP-controlled House already signaling opposition to similar measures in Washington, D.C., prospects for federal gay rights and hate-crimes legislation look gloomy. Thus, from Maryland to Hawaii to Bush's home state of Texas, the gay rights battleground has shifted back to where it began--at the grass roots.

"The last time through we ran smack-dab into Bush's presidential campaign," says Dianne Hardy-Garcia, executive director of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas, which led the campaign on behalf of the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act. "This year we benefited front the growing wisdom that our movement is not directly connected to Washington, D.C. We must now become a state and local movement as well as a national one."

According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, more than 500 gayrights and AIDS-related bills have been introduced in state legislatures already this year, the most the group has ever recorded. By a ratio of nearly 2 to 1, NGLTF has classified the bills as "favorable" to gay rights. Advocates who once focused almost exclusively on Congress and the White House are now preaching the virtues of local efforts.

"People have given up on the federal government as a way of addressing concerns about discrimination for the near future," says Tim McFeeley, NGLTF political director. "There are a limited amount of resources available in terms of time and money, and they need to be carefully deployed to maximize our gains. It's a dynamic chess game, and we have to make all the right moves."

Kevin Ivers, communications director for Log Cabin Republicans, also a gay group, agrees. "Gay rights is not on the Bush administration's list of priorities," says Ivers, whose organization endorsed Bush. "The White House is taking a federalist approach to issues, figuring out what is the proper role of the government. It's not going to start leaping into state and local issues. It will leaving the screaming matches to the religious right and the radical gay activists."

The grassroots strategy does face some obstacles. In many states, especially those in the middle of the country, gay activists and their allies are seriously outgunned by the right wing in persuading GOP-controlled legislative chambers and Republican governors. Even in the comparatively liberal West Coast, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic, gains have come at a glacial pace.

When Maryland governor Parris Glendening signed a bill banning antigay discrimination into law May 15, his state became the 12th to pass antidiscrimination legislation that includes sexual orientation since 1982, when Wisconsin became the first. At that rate, it; would take roughly half a century to achieve antidiscrimination uniformity on a state-by-state basis.

States with large gay populations are pressing ahead anyway. "In general, what I call the `court-appointed president' is setting the wrong tone on important issues of fairness and social justice," Glendening, a Democrat, told The Advocate. "There is a growing sense of `OK, next time around we will be fully mobilized.' In the meantime, local organizing is more important than ever."

National public opinion polls show that, by comfortable margins, majorities back measures to ban antigay employment discrimination and enhance penalties for gay-related hate crimes. Yet this support has been slow to translate into concrete legislative victories except for New England, where every state but Maine has some form of gay-inclusive antidiscrimination law.

"The public is clearly on our side, even in terms of issues like marriage and adoption, which are trending in our direction," McFeeley says. "But the movement has lacked the political clout to go to legislators and say, `This is what your constituents want.' We have lacked power at the ballot box."

In Maryland, a gay rights group called Free State Justice put on a textbook campaign, focused on wary legislators from swing districts. "I've never seen anything quite like it," Glendening says. "It wasn't just a matter of phone calls and letters to the right legislators. Supporters of the bill were going directly up to their representatives and telling them how personally important it was to them that they vote for it." The bill also got a surprising boost from the Catholic Church, which for the first time did not campaign against it.

Glendening, whose gay brother, Bruce, died of AIDS complications, also made an extraordinary and forceful personal appeal, describing in wrenching detail how Bruce was forced to hide his sexual orientation and live in fear during two decades in the Air Force. "Everyone involved in the process knew it was personally important to me," Glendening says. With wavering legislators, the governor resorted to a less altruistic form of persuasion: "There were a number of people who were marginal in their support who ended up saying, `I'll do it for the governor.' Some legislators were worried about appearing antagonistic when we are in the midst of redistricting. I was able to use that to our advantage."

The state gains could eventually have a trickle-up effect, forcing Congress and Bush to pay more attention to local trends toward gay rights at a time when GOP leaders are focused on energy policy, tax cuts, and other fiscal matters. "When Bush opposed the bill in '99, it was heartbreaking because I think Bush knew that passing the bill was the right thing to do," Hardy-Garcia says. "I hear that Bush feels it was the one piece of legislation that he regrets not supporting. He got beat up for it on the campaign trail. The Republican Party is coming around on hate crimes because it can't ignore the fact that gays are being victimized."

Indeed, Perry, like Bush, had previously stated his opposition to the Texas bill because the measure could "create new classes of citizens," referring to the inclusion of sexual orientation protections. He changed his position after an intense lobbying campaign led by the families of hate-crimes victims. Among them were the tireless family of Ernest Saldana, a young Latino man who was robbed and murdered in Austin in 1994 by a group of thugs after the youths learned that Saldana was gay.

But Ivers says Bush is unlikely to be distracted from what the White House considers more pressing concerns. "I haven't seen anything come across my desk that would indicate gay people are angry that gay rights is a low priority in the White House," he says. "Gay people have a multiplicity of concerns. Most people don't even know what the Hate Crime Prevention Act is. They only care if it's served up to them by gay activists." (The federal bill has been renamed the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act.)

Yet Bush, who took office despite losing the popular vote, can't ignore local trends forever, especially as the nation nears another congressional election, in 2002. "Politicians are like baseball fanatics," McFeeley says. "They watch all the statistics closely. When Bush or one of his advisers picks up the paper reads about hate-crime legislation in Texas, I guarantee he will sit up and take notice. What happens in his old backyard will have more effect on him than anything we can do in his new backyard of Washington, D.C."

More grassroots activity across the country

Hawaii: At press time, Gov. Benjamin Cayetano had yet to decide if he would sign a hate-crimes law passed by both the state house and senate.

Arizona: Gov. Jane Hull, a Republican, resisted an aggressive lobbying campaign by the religious right before signing into law a bill that repeals a state ban on sodomy, oral sex, and cohabitation. "At the end of the day, I returned to one of my most basic beliefs about government: It does not belong in our private lives," Hull wrote in a May 8 statement explaining her decision, Opponents of the repeal are threatening to piece a measure on the ballot to overturn it.

Louisiana: At press time the legislature was considering a bill that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, An attempt to ban recognition of same-sex unions failed in the legislature in April.

Minnesota: The state legislature is standing in the way of Gov. Jesse Ventura's efforts to offer benefits to the same-sex partners of state employees.

Massachusetts: Legislators are debating a bill that would prohibit not only same-sex marriage but also domestic-partner benefits for gay and lesbian public employees.

Illinois: A bill prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation passed the state house of representatives but was shelved May 9 after failing to gain the same support in the state senate.

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