1230
(1 vote, average 5.00 out of 5)
Written by Jamakaya
Jul 28, 2010
Writing for Wisconsin Gazette has made me think about the news I’ve covered and the many changes I’ve witnessed since I first had stories published in the GPU News and Amazon, Milwaukee-based publications, in 1977.
The year I began writing for gay and lesbian presses, Anita Bryant was leading her crusade against a civil rights law covering sexual orientation in Florida. It was also the year that Harvey Milk emerged as a major figure in San Francisco politics. Hundreds of thousands of women marched on Washington in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.
The spirit of Anita Bryant is certainly still alive in the land, but civil rights provisions incorporating sexual orientation and gender identity have spread exponentially across the US in villages, cities, counties and states.
Harvey Milk was assassinated in 1978 by a bitter, woeful wreck of a man whose light sentence shocked the nation and who later committed suicide. Today, hundreds of openly LGBT individuals serve in public office and continue to seek office with hardly a raised eye from any quarter.
The ERA was defeated by a right-wing campaign of fear and misrepresentation promoted by the same players who worked to defeat gay rights laws. Yet, over the past three decades, a plethora of legislation has been passed eliminating inequities based on sex from civil and criminal statutes. Enforcement is another matter, of course, and there is still no excuse for not enshrining the principle of sexual equality in our constitution.
It’s a truism that history runs in waves of progress and reaction. Those dueling elements are especially prominent in the recent history of the LGBT movement. In covering local and statewide events as a reporter, I witnessed some major highs and lows.
The lows that stand out most to me are related to hatred and institutional negligence.
I am still haunted by cases I covered in the Milwaukee courts of vicious overkill-type murders of LGBT individuals, none of which were ever adjudicated as hate crimes. Dennis Owens, Ricky Roundtree, Juana Vega. The list goes on and on.
The racism, homophobia and incompetence of the Milwaukee Police Department in the Jeffrey Dahmer case was almost as shocking as the crimes. Officers’ inability to detect a pattern of young gay men of color disappearing, their failure to respond to the concerns of family members searching for sons, their delivery of Konerak Sinthasomphone into the hands of Dahmer who then murdered him, and their entrenched hostility to the queer community all contributed to the tragedy. Over the years that Dahmer stalked his victims, often in the bars, the MPD was routinely raiding strip shows at gay clubs and harassing and ticketing patrons outside those clubs.
The high points I recall are the legal victories and institution-building.
In February 1982, Republican Gov. Lee Dreyfus signed the state law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, employment and public accommodations. A combination of legislative calculation, alliances, timing and enlightened executive leadership helped Wisconsin claim the title as “First Gay Rights State.”
The Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court decision of 2003 overturned the Texas sodomy law and reversed a previous High Court ruling that states could criminalize private, consensual sexual behavior between adults. Historians often cite law, medicine and religion as the three pillars of homophobia, persecuting gays as criminal, sick and sinful. The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973 and Lawrence v. Texas obliterated criminal sanctions.
The LGBT Community Center and PrideFest are Milwaukee institutions to support and take pride in. Their continued existence amid financial pressures, personnel changes, homophobic attacks and sniping from the LGBT community itself, are minor miracles. They are points of unity in our diverse, sometimes fractious community. They represent service, education, advocacy, culture and positive public relations. Their vitality and influence are important measures of the progress we’ve made since the 1970s.
