The euphoric optimism gay and lesbian Americans felt entering 2004 dimmed throughout a year when gay marriage, and society’s disapproval of it, became a part of the national discussion like never before.

The gay rights movement seemed to turn a corner in June 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could no longer make homosexuality — or more specifically, consensual adult sodomy — a crime.

And in November 2003, when the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts decided that it was unconstitutional to block gay couples from marrying in that state, some activists hailed the decision as the movement’s “biggest win yet.”

But that big win may have also led to the movement’s biggest political loss: the Nov. 2 election, during which millions of voters in 11 states overwhelmingly supported state constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex unions. Two other states had voted earlier this year prior to add constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.

For many, the election results were an exclamation point that captured the anti-gay marriage tone that dominated 2004 from its opening month, when President Bush announced his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which defines marriage in the U.S. Constitution as between a man and a woman.

The stinging election defeat — coupled with some political pundits’ assertion that the marriage debate was responsible for Bush being re-elected president over Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) — caused some to question whether the American public had been forced to deal with gay marriage too soon, and if activists made it more difficult to attain rights on other fronts by focusing on marriage.

But as loud and painful as the rejection from their fellow citizens was on Nov. 2, the election results should not overshadow the historic progress made in 2004, according to U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), one of three openly gay members of Congress.

On May 17, 2004, gay and lesbian couples flocked to city and town clerk offices throughout Massachusetts to marry legally for the first time in the history of the country.

More importantly, Frank said, on May 18, the sky in the Bay State had not fallen, heterosexual marriages and families were not under siege, and God did not unleash a wrathful plague.

“The single most important thing of 2004 is that we achieved gay marriage in the state of Massachusetts, because now we will have the reality to debate,” Frank said. “People have these fears beforehand, but after you see it in operation, those fears [dissolve].”

Bush backs FMA
Weeks into 2004, Frank knew the issue of gay marriage was going to receive unprecedented attention.

Frank and millions of Americans watched as President Bush used his Jan. 20 State of the Union address to inch closer toward endorsing the FMA.

“On an issue of such great importance [as marriage], the people’s voice must be heard,” Bush said. “If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process.”

One month later, during an early morning appearance on Feb. 24 at which he took no questions, Bush made his support for the federal marriage ban official.

“I call on Congress to promptly pass and send to the states an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife,” Bush said. “The amendment should fully protect marriage, while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage.”

Kerry, Bush’s presidential opponent, opposed the federal amendment, although he also said he opposed gay marriage and supported a state constitutional amendment in his home state of Massachusetts.

With passage of a federal constitutional amendment unlikely, political observers and gay activists accused the president, and his top campaign adviser Karl Rove, of pandering to Christian conservatives and using the issue as a re-election get-out-the-vote ploy.

“It definitely took the issue to a different level,” said Seth Kilbourn, national field director for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights group.

“It sort of gave the green light for extremists on the state level to put [state constitutional amendments] on the ballot,” he said.

But Bush’s support for the FMA was not enough to get the measure through Congress. The amendment stalled in the U.S. Senate on July 14 in a 48-50 procedural vote — 12 votes short of the 60 needed to bring the proposed constitutional amendment up for a direct vote, and 19 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass a constitutional amendment.

The amendment then fell almost 50 votes short of the two-thirds needed for passage when the U.S. House rejected the ban outright in a 227-186 vote on Sept. 30.

States pursue bans
The day after Bush’s State of the Union address, a state senator in Georgia held a news conference saying that the president’s speech inspired him to introduce a state constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Within weeks, anti-gay marriage amendments spread like brushfire through state legislatures across the country, with a total of 24 state governing bodies either adopting or rejecting constitutional gay marriage bans, and many more considering other bills related to gay couples.

Additionally, citizens in six states —Arkansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio and Oregon — collected signatures to ensure voters in those states would have the opportunity to outlaw same-sex marriage in their constitutions.

Gay activists were able to defeat the proposals outright in eight state legislatures —Alabama, Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland and Vermont — and bottle up the proposals until they died in six other states: Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina and Washington.

“We were successful at defeating [many of the] constitutional amendments in the state legislatures, so I think that’s good news,” said HRC’s Kilbourn, who discounts the theory that the ballot measures were a “backlash” to the progress being made by gays.

“The word ‘backlash,’ it implies there was a group of people who were with us, and are now not with us,” Kilbourn said. “But the truth is there was nothing to lash back against in those states; the ballot measures were used as a political weapon against us.”

Eventually voters in 13 states —Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah — got the chance to have their say on whether gay marriage should be unconstitutional. All passed easily.

State legislatures in Massachusetts, Tennessee and Wisconsin also approved anti-gay marriage amendments in 2004, but must do so again next year before sending those measures to voters.

Gays marry around U.S.
But conservatives weren’t the only ones mobilized by President Bush’s increasing support of the federal marriage amendment.

Less than two weeks into his first term as mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom attended Bush’s State of the Union address. Upon hearing the president’s veiled endorsement of the FMA, Newsom began thinking about how San Francisco could begin marrying same-sex couples.

Two weeks later, after consulting with gay and lesbian advisers and activists, Newsom sent a letter to the San Francisco County Clerk’s Office — which handles marriage applications and licenses — asking that gay and lesbian couples be allowed to marry.

On Feb. 11, Newsom told reporters that the oath he took to uphold California’s constitution and treat all citizens equally prohibited him from recognizing the state law, overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2000, which defines marriage as between man and woman.

The next day, lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons were married by San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Mabel Teng, igniting a month-long parade of more than 4,000 gay and lesbian couples lining up outside San Francisco City Hall to get married.

Images of gay couples celebrating their love began dominating national newscasts, and debates erupted about whether Newsom was a renegade lawbreaker, or a hero engaging in justifiable civil disobedience.

“I think the visuals from San Francisco are very important,” said Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund. “A big part of the battle we’re in is the need to get our stories out, the need to show this country who we are.”

Newsom’s actions in San Francisco opened the door for public officials across the country — from New Paltz, N.Y., to Portland, Ore., to Sandoval County, N.M. — to begin marrying gay couples.

At a Feb. 24 appearance, President Bush announced his support for a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. (Photo by AP)

But courts quickly ended the gay marriage sprees occurring in several states and nullified most of the same-sex unions solemnized.

Frank, who called Newsom to discourage him from issuing the marriage licenses, continues to believe the random gay marriages “stirred our opposition without any real gain.”

“The question is how do you manage [attaining marriage for gays], and I think they contributed to the backlash without contributing to the gain,” Frank said. “The civil disobedience didn’t lead to any real marriages.”

Although poignant, the images of gay couples marrying in San Francisco empowered conservatives to rally against “the bogeyman of rogue elected officials,” said Chris Barron, political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group.

Newsom could not be reached for comment.

Massachusetts impact
The outlaw marriages in San Francisco and New York had little impact on the debate over gay marriage in the Louisiana legislature, said Chris Daigle, director of Equality Louisiana, a gay rights group that unsuccessfully battled a state constitutional amendment there.

“Over and over the proponents of the amendment in Louisiana continued to point to Massachusetts as to why it was needed,” Daigle said. “If anything helped solidify support for the proposal, it was the fear that what was happening in Massachusetts would happen here.”

The November 2003 high court ruling in Massachusetts called for the state legislature to enact a law that would allow gay couples to marry, or the court would begin issuing licenses on May 17.

Responding to a state legislator’s inquiry about whether the creation of Vermont-style civil unions would satisfy the court order, Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret Mitchell and three other justices said only marriage would suffice.

“The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal,” Mitchell wrote on Feb. 4 “The [civil unions] bill maintains an unconstitutional, inferior and discriminatory status for same-sex couples.”

Three months later, thousands of gay couples in Massachusetts donned tuxedoes and fancy dresses, raised champagne glasses and toasted their love in legal matrimony.

“It marks the high-watermark of equality,” HRC’s Kilbourn said about the Massachusetts marriages. “It’s a mark we can’t retreat from, one we shouldn’t retreat from, and it needs to be protected.”

Barron, from Log Cabin, said the marriages on May 17 were “the biggest non-event of the year” since they failed to cause the turmoil predicted by conservatives.

“The only thing that changed was that folks who had previously been locked out of marriage were finally a part of that phenomenal institution,” Barron said.

But gays have struggled to get the message out that same-sex marriages are not destabilizing, Frank said.

“The public doesn’t fully recognize it yet because we have the 11 [state constitutional amendments passed Nov. 2] and those other events in San Francisco and other places kind of distracted them,” Frank said.

Election lessons
Unlike some gay activists who hoped the Oregon marriage ban could be defeated, Frank said he never doubted all of the amendments placed before voters in 2004 would pass.

Missouri voters approved a gay marriage ban on Aug. 3, followed a month later by Louisiana voters, who ratified an amendment to their constitution on Sept. 18.

Both of those votes were considered bellwethers for the 11 state amendments that were decided on Nov. 2.

Lambda Legal’s Cathcart accused conservatives of cherry-picking states that were more likely to pass gay marriage bans, but said gay organizations didn’t do enough to prepare average gay citizens for the inevitable losses.

“It’s perfectly fair to be depressed by the election results — and it’s very debilitating and depressing for individuals in those states — but we’ve got to regroup,” he said.

“The gloom and inertia [expressed by some gays following the election] could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if we let it,” Cathcart said.

Lost among news reports about the state constitutional amendments’ overwhelming passage is how strongly politicians who supported gay marriage in Massachusetts performed in the November elections, Frank said.

“Literally everybody who voted for same-sex marriage and ran for re-election won, so the general impression in Massachusetts — the only state where gays are being married — is that voters decided same-sex marriage was not a problem.

“I believe next year, the single biggest event will be the vote of the Massachusetts state legislature not to amend the state constitution [to ban gay unions],” Frank said. “And then, [gay marriage opponents] will be fighting with the elected legislature of Massachusetts, instead of just, so-called ‘judicial activists.’”

© Copyright 2006 Window Media LLC | User Agreement and Privacy Policy

Southern Voice | Express Gay News | David Atlanta | The 411 Mag | Genre Magazine