The reaction was swift and angry. Within three weeks a group called Concerned Portland Citizens gathered 2,000 signatures-enough to put the issue to a November referendum. Organizers claim the ordinance will send the city of 61,500 down a slippery slope of gay promiscuity, AIDS and pedophilia. The Christian Civic League of Maine, another group fighting the law, called it “the most critically significant moral issue facing Maine people, probably in the history of our state.” O’Donnell is astonished. “It blows me away that people who profess to Christian values and family values take up shields and spears to defend discrimination.”
Portland’s lavender scare is no isolated case. Gay America’s struggle for acceptance has reached a new and uncertain phase. A series of modest gains over the last several years-in civil rights, national political clout, funding for AIDS research and visibility in popular culture-has provoked a powerful backlash. A well-coordinated counter offensive by the religious right is underway in city halls, school boards and state legislatures to stymie-and even roll back-what its leaders regard as an intolerable gay advance out of the closet and into the social mainstream. In November, Oregon voters will be asked to classify homosexuality as “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse,” and bar the state from passing law protecting citizens on the basis of sexual orientation. A similar measure is on the fall ballot in Colorado. This month California Gov. Pete Wilson, under pressure from the fundamentalist wing of the state Republican Party, is expected to veto an anti-gay-discrimination bill for the second time in a year. For many gays, a symbolic low point came during the Republican National Convention in Houston last month, where repeated attacks on “the homosexual lifestyle” evoked images of moral decay and unraveling family life. Conservative Doberman Pat Buchanan told delegates that gay rights have no place “in a nation we still call God’s country.”
The blatant rhetoric only turned off most Americans, and Republican campaign strategists quickly backed President George Bush and his surrogates away from overt gaybashing. But the public remains deeply ambivalent about gay and lesbian aspirations-torn between a basic impulse to be tolerant and a visceral discomfort with gay culture. A NEWSWEEK Poll found that an overwhelming 78 percent of the public believes gay men and women should enjoy the same access to job opportunities as heterosexuals. By better than a two-thirds majority, those surveyed approve of health insurance and inheritance rights for gay spouses. But on issues closer to the emotional core of family life, the public sentiment cools. Only 32 percent believe gays should be able to adopt children; just 35 percent approve of legally sanctioned gay marriages. Fifty-three percent still don’t consider homosexuality “acceptable” behavior. Asked whether gay rights was a threat to the American family and its values, 45 percent said yes. For many gays and lesbians, the threats are more than rhetorical: anti-gay harassment and violence increased 31 percent last year in five major U.S. cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Minneapolis-St. Paul), according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute. Gay advocates acknowledge that an increased sense of social approval has made victims more likely to report incidents. But they also say that the escalating numbers don’t describe the qualitative change in the violence. Drive-by slurs and egg-tossings have given way with more frequency to nail-studded baseball bats and switchblades. " You’ve got people who get picked up outside of a bar and tied up with duct tape and are beaten. They are sliced with razors," says Peg Yeates, leader of San Francisco’s Street Patrol, a Guardian Angels-style organization. The new attacks take a range of forms, from fundamentalist gay-bashing to ridicule in the workplace.
It’s possible to trace the right wing’s anti-gay campaign to a bullwhip. It was photographed hanging from the late Robert Mapplethorpe’s derriere and featured in his 1989 retrospective partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The bullwhip came at an opportune moment for the religious right. The Berlin wall and the contras had fallen; Reagan was a memory. Gaybashing was always a staple for right-wing fund raisers. But taxpayer-subsidized dirty art-homosexual art, no less kindled a new and lucrative source of outrage. Morris Chapman, president-elect of the 15 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, predicts that “in the 1990s homosexuality will be what the abortion issue has been in the 1980s.”
For fundamentalists, the anti-gay animus is rooted in Biblical injunctions against same-sex unions. Corinthians promises that homosexuals (along with fornicators, idolaters, adulterers and thieves) shall never inherit the kingdom of God. Other conservatives are opposed to creating a class of people legally protected on the basis of sexual behavior they regard as abhorrent. " We surely love their souls," Jerry Falwell wrote in a 1991 letter to followers, describing his “national battle plan” to fight gay rights. “But we must awaken to their wicked agenda for America!”
Other familiar faces on the right are mobilizing as well. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition-with 2.2 million names in its computer files-will convene a meeting of a thousand activists in Virginia Beach, Va., this fall to discuss “the homosexual-rights agenda and how to defeat it,” according to executive director Ralph Reed. The Rev. Lou Sheldon, a former Robertson protege whose Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition has affiliates in 15 states and a web of interrelated fund-raising arms, pushed for the 1989 repeal of gay-rights ordinances in Irvine and Concord, Calif. Last month he helped force California educators to withdraw proposed sex-education and health-curriculum guidelines that described “families headed by parents of the same sex” as “part of contemporary society.” He’s also coordinating an attempt to block congressional approval of a law that would allow unmarried District of Columbia employees (gay and straight) to register as partners and enroll in city-sponsored health-care plans. “We’re just protecting the heterosexual ethic,” he says.
The most bitter battleground is Oregon, where a movement heavily financed by Christian fundamentalists is attempting to all but codify gays and lesbians out of existence. A petition drive by the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) has produced Ballot Measure 9, which would void portions of the state’s hate-crimes law and invalidate the phrase “sexual orientation” in any statute where it now appears. It also requires educators to set curriculum standards equating homosexuality with pedophilia, sadism and masochism as behaviors “to be discouraged and avoided.” Despite new scientific evidence that homosexuality may have genetic origins, OCA members talk openly of “curing” gays.
Gays and lesbians, fearing they’ll be effectively stripped of their citizenship, are fighting desperately. " If we lose, we lose everything," says Donna Red Wing of Portland’s Lesbian Community Project. “Our children could be taken from us, our lives could be wiped out at the ballot box.” Despite big name opposition, from Rep. Les AuCoin to the Roman Catholic Church to Gov. Barbara Roberts state state political experts give the measure an even chance of passage.
The campaign has spawned a mean season in a state with a national image for tolerance and progressive politics. Opponents of the measure have documented an escalating volume of violence, burglaries and verbal intimidation. In the rural southern Oregon town of Wolf Creek, Dean Decent says violence against him and eight other gay men in the area has grown more brazen. Now that the homophobes have blown up the car and shot at the trailer, when they drive by and yell it doesn’t seem so bad," says Decent, a 32-year-old professional quilt maker. Unlikely alliances have formed. In an emotional meeting recently, gay activists and migrant farm workers in the Willamette Valley shared stories about racism and homophobia, pledging to support one another’s struggles. Fear has bolted some closet doors but opened others. The Rev. Gary Wilson, of Portland’s Metropolitan Community Church, says gay parishioners are “sitting down writing letters to everybody they know that they’ve never come out to saying, ‘I am a gay person, I am a lesbian person; if you support Measure 9, you’re destroying my life’.”
A new strain of gay-bashing has entered local races in other states. Six months ago Dick Mallory was a pro-choice Texas Republican courting gay votes in his campaign to unseat state Rep. Glen Maxey, the only openly gay member of the state legislature. Mallory recently ran radio ads in the Austin area asking voters if they want to be represented by “an avowed homosexual.” Mallory says he’s found Christ. Maxey argues that he’s found a Republican consultant. Perhaps the most virulent gay-baiting campaign is in Kansas. Supporters of Baptist minister Fred Phelps, who lost the August Democratic senatorial primary to state legislator Gloria O’Dell, continue to picket the Topeka streets with signs reading BULL DIKE (Sic) O’DELL and NO SPECIAL LAWS FOR FAGS. O’Dell, 46, says she’s heterosexual.
Some private employers have tried to minimize homophobia in the workplace, offering bias workshops and opportunities for gay employees to meet. A smaller handful have established spousal benefit programs for same-sex couples. But office culture still can be a bleak frontier. Gay workers tread warily, coming out to a trusted few, usually remaining closeted to higher-ups. Steven Greenberg and Mikael Hollinger, two gay administrative assistants at San Francisco’s Nestle Beverage Co., would take lunch-hour walks down the city’s Embarcadero to speak freely. Soon their strolls had mutated into a vicious office rumor-that they were having sex together in a company restroom.
Last March they were fired. Nestle denies any anti-gay bias and says they were terminated for poor performance, although Greenberg says he had been given a raise three weeks earlier. The two joined five other gay men last month in filing job discrimination lawsuits against several San Francisco area employers, including Ricoh Corp. and Transworld Systems, alleging that they were harassed, ridiculed and dismissed because they were gay.
Even in companies that take gay-bashing seriously, the atmosphere among coworkers can be oppressive. When Nancy Logan worked as an auditor for a major Cleveland bank three years ago, a colleague would shake in a repulsed manner as she passed her desk. “Any time I walked into the ladies’ room and she was there, she would walk out,” says Logan. She complained to management, which transferred the other employee. But Logan says she was told that the only reason the company supported her was that she was “low key,” in other words, not out. She quit shortly afterward and remains closeted in her new job.
Even in the chill of resurgent gay-hating, there’s a sense of victory at hand for many American gays and lesbians. The struggle against AIDS has matured into a broad political and social movement. Last July’s Democratic National Convention symbolized the sea change: 13 pro-gay speakers addressed a Madison Square Garden audience that included 108 openly gay delegates, alternates and party officials. Twenty-one states and 130 municipalities now offer gays and lesbians some form of legal protection against discrimination. An estimated 10,000 children are being raised by lesbians who conceived them through artificial insemination. Hollywood, which has lagged far behind television in realistic portrayals of gays, is changing its act. At least six major gay or AIDS-themed films are in development, including Gus Van Sant’s “The Mayor of Castro Street,” about martyred San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk.
For some activists, the signs of greater acceptance make the new vehemence even more shocking. “It’s reminded us of our precarious position in society, and just how deep homophobia runs,” says Cathy Siemens, a Portland, Ore., real estate agent. “Should we withdraw and protect ourselves or continue to march out of the closet?” Nearly all say no-that the backlash is affirmation of their new power and a last hurrah for the kind of blatant gay-bashing on display at the convention in Houston. “It’s the bellows of dying elephants,” says Peter Gomes, minister of Harvard University’s Memorial Church.
If there’s a consensus among gay political strategists, it’s that the best defense is a good offense. In some cases, that means renewed “outings” of closeted public officials who have promoted anti-gay policies. The Advocate, a gay magazine, recently exposed a congressman with an anti-gay voting record. Others say that press attention to Republican hypocrisy in its condemnation of gays will also help. Last week’s Washington Post Style section profiled Dee Mosbacher, the lesbian daughter of former Bush-Quayle campaign chairman Robert Mosbacher.
Others are pursuing a legislative agenda that will deliver basic civil liberties. “The right to have a job without losing it and the right to walk down the street without getting beaten up” would be a good start, says Gregory King of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a gay political-action committee. Topping the list is passage of the Civil Rights Amendments Act of 1991, a federal law that would offer sexual orientation the same protections as race, creed, color, national origin and disability. Another priority is increased funding for AIDS research. New victories will certainly bring new scape-goating. “As we become more visible we become targets,” says Houston lesbian activist Annise Parker. In time, though, Parker hopes that the Buchanans and the Robertsons will seem evermore shrill and marginal. In time, she believes, “the basic decency of the American people will take over.” NEWSWEEK POLL
Should homosexuals have equal rights in job opportunities? 78% Yes 17% No Is homosexuality an acceptable alternative lifestyle? 41% Yes 53% No Are gay rights a threat to the American family and its values? 45% Yes 51% No Which apply to you? 43% Have a friend or acquaintance who is gay 20% Work with someone you know who is gay 9% Have a gay person in your family Should homosexuals be hired in each of the following occupations (percent saying yes): 83% Salesperson 64% A member of the president’s cabinet 59% Armed forces 59% Doctors 54% High-school teachers 51% Elementary-school teachers 48% Clergy NEWSWEEK Poll, Aug. 27, 1992
NEWSWEEK POLL
How do you feel about each of the following homosexual rights? APPROVE DISAPPROVE Health insurance for gay spouses 67% 27% Inheritance rights for gay spouses 70% 25% Social Security for gay spouses 58% 35% Legally sanctioned gay marriages 58% 35% Adoption rights for gay spouses 32% 61% In general, how important is the issue of gay rights to your presidential vote? 40% Very, or somewhat important 57% Not too, or not at all important Do you think the candidate have: CLINTON BUSH Gone too far in supporting gay rights 16% 5% A position that is about right 44% 41% Gone too far in opposing gay rights 3% 27% For this NEWSEEK Poll, The Gallup Organization interviewed 547 registered voters by phone Aug. 27, 1992. Margin of error +/-5 percentage points. “Don’t know” and other responses not shown. The NEWSWEEK Poll copyright 1992 by NEWSWEEK, Inc.
