IN 1974, amid the spirit of the civil rights revolution, the goals of the gay and lesbian liberation movement seemed boundless. U.S. Representatives Ed Koch and Bella Abzug of New York filed the Equality Act of 1974, which sought full civil rights protections for “gay men, lesbians, unmarried persons and women.” The bill called for what the black community had achieved a decade earlier with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Yet we were blind to the depths of American homophobia. Or perhaps we were the straw that broke the progressive camel’s back. Either way, when the bill failed to sail through, we quickly lowered our legislative demands along with our hopes, which were shattered further by the abusive public relations campaign led by Anita Bryant in the late 70’s, the reign of Ronald Reagan, and the onset of AIDS in the early 80’s.By the 1990’s, our strategy had dwindled to passing the Employment Nondiscrimination Act or ENDA, which seeks to protect us from employment discrimination, not under the Civil Rights Act that protects the rest of society in employment, but in a separate law of our own. It’s like a separate water fountain for “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SO&GI) discrimination while everyone else drinks safely from the Civil Rights Act. Generally misunderstood, ENDA is to civil rights what civil unions are to marriage. And yet, sixteen years later and counting, this self-imposed compromise languishes in Congress as our chief goal. But no longer.
With fresh hope born of independent spirit, we are now presented with a timely alternative: The American Equality Bill—one comprehensive law to amend all of America’s Civil Rights Laws at once to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” proudly and equally alongside the other protected human traits of “race, color, sex, national origin and religion.”
Dare we hope for a vision that expansive? Dare we amend the sacred writ that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has become? That icon of American virtue, introduced by President Kennedy and signed into law by President Johnson, is now a bipartisan badge of honor. A living tribute to Martin Luther King, the Act has come to symbolize the idea of human dignity itself.
It is precisely this idea that mandates our inclusion. The U.S. Declaration of Independence affirmed the primacy of human dignity in its defiant promise to secure our right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Much later, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, asserted as innately human the rights of “life, liberty and the security of the person,” and specified in Article 7 that “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.”
The U.S. Constitution ensconced these ideas in the Fourteenth Amendment, and it was pursuant to this power that Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, turning the page of history against legal and institutionalized discrimination, and fulfilling our civic duty to stop this type of insidious harm. Powered by truth, this law miraculously inspired a young Barack Obama to dream of becoming president and our children deserve nothing less.
Envisioned by Juan Ahonen-Jover, co-founder of eQualityGiving.org, and drafted by Karen Doering, former Senior Counsel of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the American Equality Bill will include SO&GI along with the other protected categories in all the laws that prevent societal discrimination in vast areas of daily life. These include: employment, housing, credit, government facilities (notably schools and bullying), public places (restaurants, bars, hotels), and all federally funded programs (extending to adoption programs, homeless youth, health programs).
For some, the idea that gay people could be written into the Civil Rights Act in all its glory bursts from the heart as an intrinsic truth. For others, it’s just plain obvious, harking back to the old 1974 adage: “It’s the Civil Rights Act, stupid.” But for everyone, it offers a turning point of transcendent potential. The outcome of this work will mark history as the day American public policy finally rejected cultural homophobia, making non-discrimination the law of the land for all. This is that moment.
In sync with this energy, the grassroots organizing propelling the American Equality Bill echoes the faerie spirit of Harry Hay and spans the community from the Stonewall generation to today’s queer-identified activists. Direct action people are joining forces across the U.S., rejecting the command-control-insider mindset that rules Gay, Inc., to empower one another to take this demand directly to our representatives from Vermont to Utah. All are welcomed.
For those blazing this trail, the American Equality Bill can’t happen fast enough. The intention is to file in November, demand televised Congressional hearings by May 2011, and attend the bill signing on at the Lincoln Memorial by June 2012. Possible in today’s political climate, the AEB’s trajectory will ultimately depend upon each person’s ability to embrace a new collective vision and take action.
The heroes we seek as lead sponsors, and all involved, must understand that this bill belongs to the people and is as much a legislative strategy as a movement—a beacon, designed to summon the people we need to deliver our cause from second-class citizenship to full equality. On this footing, with a bill worthy of our pride, together we will win our quest for equality. Our civil rights era is finally at hand. Let’s get this party started.
J. Todd Fernandez, JD, LLM, is an attorney based in New York City.
