Features
GLBT Expo: The Good, the Bad, & the Fab
An Ally in the Senate: Patrick Leahy
Heroes & Villains: R.U.1.2? Community Dinner
Heroes & Villains
R.U.1.2? Queer Community Dinner Raises Dough
NGLTF's Matt Foreman Warns of Anti-Gay Threats
by Euan Bear
The
good news was in the 250-plus diners at the Wyndham Hotel and the money
they spent on silent auction items ranging from a Burton snowboard to
a half-page ad in the Burlington Free Press, from hand knit or woven wearables
to massage and chiropractic sessions, from artwork to concert tickets
to overnights at B & Bs. R.U.1.2? Queer Community Center Board Chairwoman
Cathy Resmer said the Center realized nearly $10,000 from the auction,
the dinner, sales of table centerpieces, and pledges and donations for
the "furniture fund."
There was more good news in the celebration
of community volunteers. R.U.1.2? co-founder Don Eggert was awarded special
recognition for his five years of service to the Center - an unlooked-for
acknowledgment that clearly choked him up, until a sympathetic diner offered
up his full water glass. Center Executive Director Christopher Kaufman
called Eggert the one "without whom nothing."
And the Volunteer of the Year award went
to Dick Haas of the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont. Haas, whose dedication
and contributions were outlined by Project program director Glen Johnson,
has been volunteering five to six hours a week for 11 years in the unglamorous
job of maintaining donor databases with thousands of contacts. "I
went to a postal service bulk mailing training," Johnson said, "and
they all knew Dick's work because our database was so clean."
Haas thanked the person he said is his best
friend, who had stood behind him for 33 years: his partner Howard Graff.
The bad and worse news came from keynote
speaker Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian
Task Force, with Vermont a lone bright spot in a litany of oncoming trouble
for lgbt communities nationwide.
He was, he said, "honored and privileged
to be in the presence of so many people who fought and worked so hard
for so many years to lay the groundwork for legal recognition of our families,
who four years ago this month, achieved what was deemed impossible - civil
unions - full equality for our families under state law. Four years later,
no state legislature has come close to that breakthrough.
"In fact, to this day, you remain the
only lgbt community in the nation that has stood up to, fought against,
and defeated a pitched assault by the right to push back and overturn
a court decision declaring that failure to recognize our relationships
violates basic constitutional principles.
"For these reasons," he continued,
"I feel a little embarrassed to be talking about the threats our
national community is facing, the battles in which we are engaged, or
about the viciousness and tactics of our opponents. You know all of this,
you've lived through it, and every lgbt person in America owes an extraordinary
debt you, our Vermont heroes, for persevering against extraordinary odds."
The dinner speech marked Foreman's first
time in Burlington, he said in an interview before the evening's event.
What makes Vermont's experience special, he said, was that the community
"came out the other side intact." In other parts of the country,
he explained, where anti-gay ballot measures have been fought - including
state DOMA legislation - the community has emerged "bitterly divided
and hopelessly worn out. Here, the community seems intact and you're moving
forward," as shown by the growth of R.U.1.2?, among other indicators.
If even 25 percent of the struggles elsewhere do as well as Vermont, he
added, that would be a huge step forward.
In the interview and later in his speech,
Foreman pointed to the "lesson of Vermont" for other communities:
"There is no substitute for face-to-face community work." He
cited the years of Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force presence at county
fairs, and speakers taking heat from hostile gatherings at mainstream
church, club, and association meetings.
" The big challenge is the recognition
that all politics is local. The money in our community all flows toward
Washington DC," he said in the interview, "despite 30 years
of zero action." Foreman charged that the big lgbt organization donors
are "obsessed with 'glamour' and seeing big-name politicians at their
fund-raising dinners," citing "Hilary" and "Chuck"
(New York Senators Hilary Rodham Clinton and Charles Shumer) as examples.
In the meantime, neither Senator has expressed more than token opposition
to the federal marriage amendment that would, if ratified, embed discrimination
against same-sex couples in the U.S. Constitution. Foreman also put California
Senators Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein in the same category for failing
to say they would oppose any anti-gay marriage amendment. "If our
so-called friends can't stand with us..."
The marriage amendment, he added, is being
effectively used as a wedge to defeat state and local politicians who
are either moderate or pro-lgbt issues, especially in African American
churches. "All they have to do is wedge or depress 2 percent of the
African American vote and a Democrat can’t win. That's how closely
we're divided in this country."
But, Foreman said in the interview, the ploy
won't work, because in mainstream America, the top issues are healthcare,
jobs, war, and terrorism. "This [marriage amendment] tactic is evil
- it's Willie Horton all over again, only this time we're Willie Horton."
Foreman has been with partner Francisco
DeLeon for 14 years, and the two are "floating between New York,"
where Foreman was director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, "and
Washington," where many of his duties as director of the NGLTF take
him. His family "moved around a lot" but he went to college
in West Virginia. He won a scholarship to NYU for law school, but interrupted
his studies to go back to West Virginia to come out.
He has a long history of activism, "being
a professional homosexual" as he calls it. Foreman was involved with
Dignity and Heritage of Pride, and was the executive director of New York's
Gay and Lesbian Antiviolence Project, before moving on to direct ESPA.
Asked to gaze into the future, Foreman refused
to predict the outcome of the national elections this fall. But, he said,
at least three states would likely have constitutional amendments prohibiting
same-sex marriage. He indicated that some community members aren't taking
the state amendments seriously enough: there will be no avenue other than
a repeal amendment to challenge a state anti-gay marriage constitutional
amendment, unlike state DOMA laws, which can be challenged in court.
"Whoever's in the White House, we have
to advance a new agenda. Congress will be controlled by Republicans -
or rather by anti-gay forces," Foreman declared. He stressed the
importance of building alliances and relationships with other groups.
"Other issues are gay issues. Without allies we won't win on 'our'
issues." And there are "more progressive groups coming together
than ever before."
Following Foreman, Burlington Mayor and
gubernatorial candidate Peter Clavelle said a few words, having arrived
late from a campaign event in Bennington. "I'm glad to have gotten
here to hear Matt Foreman expose those bigots for what they are,"
he said, referring to Foreman's description of Focus on the Family, Traditional
Values Coalition, and Concerned Women for America.
Clavelle declared that he was proud to be
in a state that is "striving to get equal rights" for its citizens
and acknowledged that civil unions fall short of full equality, but did
not take the opportunity to announce his support for full gay marriage.
Lest he be considered a voice of doom and
gloom, two days after the dinner Foreman sent an email response to a question
about causes for hope: "There's incredible hope in the amount of
grassroots organizing and energy - we haven't seen anything like this
since the peak of the AIDS crisis in the late 80s and early 90s. Even
better, there's a genuine wellspring of support from non-LGBT people.
There's also a lot of hope behind the fact
that the right has launched anti-marriage legislative initiatives in 29
states this year, and 11 have gone nowhere - including Maine (we've lost
in four states and the balance are pending). I think it's clear that in
the next 2-3 years, we will have at least five states that recognize same
sex marriages, probably as a result of litigation brought by couples married
in Canada or Massachusetts.
"But more than anything is the fact
that right is on our side. Sooner or later, we will prevail. We all just
have to keep fighting with the [same] tenacity [as] our opponents."