First published January 19, 2005, in the Chicago Free Press.
In a vulgar and half-crazed speech delivered at New York's Cooper Union shortly after last November's presidential election, playwright and drama queen Larry Kramer pronounced the gay-rights movement “Dead.” Dead. Deceased. Over. Finished.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral: The state of Illinois passed a gay nondiscrimination law. It was as if the corpse suddenly sat up and started waving a cheery hello to the mourners.
On January 10, the Illinois Senate passed the bill by a vote of 30-27. It was the bare minimum necessary for passage, but winning with the minimum votes is a lot better than coming up one vote short of the minimum. In politics, as Eisenhower pointed out, there are no moral victories. You either win or lose.
The next day the Illinois House passed the bill by a vote of 65 to 51, well over the minimum votes necessary, and Governor Blagojevich, as promised, signed it expeditiously on January 21.
One might notice a few things in passing that offer lessons for other states less far along. The law represents the culmination of some 30 years of effort by successive teams of activists starting in 1974 when the Illinois Gay Rights Task Force (then so-named) was formed to work for passage of a nondiscrimination law. The bill's first sponsor was state Rep. Susan Catania, a Republican.
Passage was more or less hopeless during the '70s and '80s. The gay movement was young, desperately underfunded and understaffed. It received little support from a timid and politically passive community. And public opinion was far from taking seriously the idea of equality for gays.
Passage took years of painstaking lobbying in the legislature, public advocacy in the mass media, and a vastly increased number of gay people coming out. Over the years gays were significantly aided by conscientious reporters and supportive columnists in the print media such as Jean Latz Griffin and Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune, and Tom Brune, Howard Wolinsky and Neil Steinberg at the Sun-Times — and unnamed editorial writers at both papers.
But even more, passage required a well-funded and fully staffed political organization created by Equality Illinois, able to help legislators win primaries and elections, able to create political obligations, able to generate multiple thousands of letters, calls and e-mails to legislators. Politics, we are reminded, has little to do with what is right and everything to do with political power.
In the end, the law was passed in the first legislative session in which Democrats controlled both chambers of the legislature and the governorship. Although earlier GOP governors, moderates all, had said they would sign the bill, conservative legislative leaders kept the measure bottled up.
And the bill was approved after the November election, not before, so legislators felt less vulnerable. Three GOP senators and 12 GOP House members joined the majority of Democrats in voting for the bill. Without mentioning any names, it actually helped to have a crazed loony or two on the other side.
But someone might object that one swallow does not make a summer. Well, I hate to sound like Little Mary Sunshine. Gloom and doom always seem so much more profound. And alarm always sells well to people whose egos depend on the feeling that they are significant because they are threatened. But here, more briefly, are other signs of gay progress in January alone.
This column honors the memory of Al Wardell, valued friend and long-time head of the Illinois Gay and Lesbian Rights Task Force.