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Urban Issues: Civil Rights


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URBAN ISSUES - CIVIL RIGHTS
• Affirmative Action
• Gay and Lesbian Rights

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George W. Bush

George W. Bush says that he "opposes racial quotas and racial preferences."

Bush opposes gay marriage and is supporting a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman. (Learn more)

Bush has continued the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for gays and lesbians serving in the military. They can participate only if they are not open about their sexuality.

John Kerry

John Kerry says he supports affirmative action programs. (Learn more)

Kerry opposes gay marriage, but is opposed to a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman. Kerry supports gay civil unions. (Learn more)

Kerry would allow openly gay men and women to serve in the military.

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Back to Urban Issues Main Page
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GOTHAM GAZETTE’S RELATED ARTICLES

 

Council Leads on Some Civil Rights Issues, Finesses Others


Civil rights was at the top of the agenda at the City Council's last meetingbefore the summer recess, but while several long-debated major pieces of legislation were passed, the impasse over how protesters at the Republican National Convention in late August will be accommodated was not resolved.

Equal Benefits

By a vote of 41-4-3, the Council overrode Mayor Bloomberg's veto of Council Member Christine Quinn's (D-Chelsea) Equal Benefits Billthat requires city contractors to provide the same benefits to the domestic partners of their employees as they provide their spouses. Mayor Bloomberg promptly said that he would "probably" go to court to block implementation of the bill, though he supported it as a candidate in 2001. Now the mayor says using the procurement process to "advance social policy" is illegal and bad practice for the city. Quinn called the mayor "hypocritical," since he has signed other bills requiring such things of some contractors as paying a living wage.

Quinn's bill had more than enough votes to pass back in 2002 when Miller first became Speaker, but the mayor's evolution from support to qualified support to opposition to the threat of legal challenge forced Quinn and other advocates for the bill to have to work hard for a veto-proof majority. The bill was also redrafted as carefully as possibly to help it withstand lawsuits from the mayor and conservative religious opposition that emerged late in the game.

Anti-Bullying

Councilmember Alan Gerson's (D-Lower Manhattan) Dignity for All Schools Act, an anti-bullying measure that creates policies and procedures in the schools to combat the problem, passed by a vote of 45-3-0, but the mayor has not said if he will sign it. The Council and the Department of Education were unable to come to agreement on a program that might have avoided the need for legislation.

This bill, too, has enough votes to pass more than three years ago when the mayor did not have control over the schools. But it was resisted by the chair of the Education Committee, Council Member Eva Moskowitz, who pursued other priorities. She ultimately supported the bill in its final form.

Racial Profiling

Without dissent, the Council also passed Council Member Philip Reed's (D-Manhattan Valley/East Harlem) billto prohibit the use of racial or ethnic profiling by law enforcement officers. It is also known as the "stop and frisk act." Its operative clause: "Officers are also reminded that the use of characteristics such as religion, age, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation as the determinative factor for taking police action is prohibited."

Same-Sex Marriage Resolutions

Some council members congratulated themselves at this meeting for doing more work in a day than the State Legislature has gotten done all year. For all this action, however, there remain many bills and resolutions that enjoy broad sponsorship that have not yet had hearings.

Council leaders made a great display in March supporting the right of same-sex couples to marry. But even with the United States Senate poised to vote on amendment to the United States constitution limiting marriage to man-woman couples in mid-July, the council has no plans to act on their resolutions to oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment, oppose state interference with same-sex couples seeking to marry, or recognize the "fundamental rights of same-sex partners by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in NYC."

Right To Protest

Indignant City Council members and civil libertarians attacked Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York Police Department at a press conference June 28 at City Hall for failing to grant a single permit to any of the myriad groups that have applied to demonstrate during the Republican National Convention at the end of August.

Two days later, the police department finally issued the first two permits to groups seeking to protest the Republicans. Planned Parenthood will march across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall Park on the Saturday before the convention. And the National Abortion Rights Action League got a permit for a rally in Union Square for Tuesday of convention week.

But the largest action is expected to occur on Sunday, August 29, the day before the convention when United for Peace and Justice, which organized the big anti-war marches last year, will protest United States involvement in Iraq. As with past conventions in New York (all Democratic), the protesters want to exercise their right to march within sight and sound of Madison Square Garden, and have their rally on the Great Lawn of Central Park. (See arguments for and against the use of the lawn.) United for Peace and Justice is still being denied the chance to march near Madison Square Garden or to hold a rally in Central Park.

What is the City Council's reaction? The council passed a strongly-worded resolution denouncing the police department. But it has stalled on legislation proposed by Councilmember David Yassky that would require the police, among other things, to explain permit denials, "holding the city accountable for its decisions to limit speech."

It is likely that, as in past tangles with the Giuliani administration, the New York Civil Liberties will go to federal court to secure the right to protest.

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (34 on Time-Warner; 107 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lagging Behind In The Fight For Gay Rights


The modern movement for gay rights was born in the streets of New York's Greenwich Village in June 1969 when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, fought back against a police raid and three nights of riots ensued. That historic rebellion is chronicled in a new book by David Carter and will be celebrated for the 35th time by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Paradedown Fifth Avenue on Sunday, June 27th. But in a year of tremendous progress for the American gay movement, New York pegged itself as more of a follower than a leader, while holding the line against some of the severe backlash throughout most of the South and Midwest.

DOMESTIC PARTNER BENEFITS

Mayor Michael Bloomberg kicked off Gay Pride Month by vetoing a City Council bill that would require contractors with the city to provide domestic partner benefits to their employees if they provide spousal benefits. The "Equal Benefits Bill" passed on May 5 by a vote of 43 to 5. Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Councilmember Christine Quinn, the bill's chief sponsor, have vowed they will override Bloomberg's June 3rd veto. But they will also have to contend with the mayor's threat to take legal action to prevent the law from going into effect, contending it violates his city charter prerogatives and state law governing municipal procurement. And though the bill had broad religious and corporate support, the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities, both of whom have millions in city contracts, opposed it.

While New York City continues to debate the merits and legality of requiring contractors to treat gay partners equally, San Francisco beat us to the punch in 1997 with such a law and got the Catholic Archdiocese there (but not the Salvation Army) to go along with it. San Francisco's law has withstood several legal challenges and is credited with triggering 80 percent of the corporate domestic partner benefits available throughout the country -- because companies not based in the city but who did business with it started extending the benefits to all their employees rather than just those who worked there.

MARRIAGE

New York will also have to follow the lead of another state if it is to catch up in recognizing the marriage rights of same-sex couples. Massachusetts became the first state to marry gay couples legally on May 17. But Governor Mitt Romney invoked a 1913 law, designed to prevent interracial couples from coming to the Bay State to marry, to prevent out-of-state gay couples from marrying there. That law forbids clerks from licensing couples whose marriages would be "void" in their home states, but clerks in a half dozen towns did not interpret the law to prevent them from marrying gay people.

New York domestic relations law expressly voids underage, incestuous, and bigamous marriages, but not same-sex ones. So the lesbian and couples from New York who married in Massachusetts might be able to avoid dissolution of their marriages by Romney. The 1913 law is also being challenged in Massachusetts by both the legislature and gay legal groups.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer opined in March that legal same-sex marriages performed in other states or countries (such as Canada) must be recognized here even though New York does not allow for licensing such marriages here. But as the state's lawyer, Spitzer is opposing a challenge to the marriage law by gay couples including John Shields, the mayor of Nyack, and his partner. The Attorney General professes to be personally supportive of the right of gay people to marry, but is vigorously defending the law that excludes them.

Lawsuits have also been filed by gay couples seeking to marry in Albany, where State Assembly Member Daniel O'Donnell of the Upper West Side of Manhattan is a litigant in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union, and against City Clerk Victor Robles in New York City in a casebeing argued by Lambda Legal Defense, a gay legal group.

All of the New York same-sex marriage cases are expected to work their way through the courts over the next two years and be grouped together before the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court.

New York State does have the distinction of being one of eleven states that has yet to pass a law forbidding recognition of same-sex marriages. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, a Republican, has expressed interest in such a ban. Governor George Pataki is opposed to same-sex marriage. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has remained mum on the subject. And while there is a "Right to Marry" bill for gay couples in both houses, sources say that the most likely action in Albany is no action on the issue pro or con. That puts New York ahead not just the 39 states that ban same-sex marriage in law, but the growing number that are moving to amend their state constitutions to limit marriage to man-woman couples.

FEDERAL MARRIAGE AMENDMENT

No state will be allowed to recognize a same-sex marriage if the Federal Marriage Amendment to the United States constitution is enacted. It would define marriage as between a man and a woman and forbid judges from extending marital benefits to gay couples, while allowing state and federal legislatures to create domestic partnerships or civil unions as long as they are not called marriage. The Defense of Marriage Actpassed in 1996 and signed by President Clinton--and supported by New York Senators Hillary Clinton, then First Lady, and Chuck Schumer, then in the House--prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriages and allows the states to do what they want on the issue, including not recognizing legal same-sex marriages performed in other states. Clinton and Schumer still oppose same-sex marriage, but support civil unions and oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment.

President George Bush endorsed the amendment and 60 percent of the American people supported it in the most recent CBS News poll. But United States Senate Democrats recently pledged to block any such amendment. It is opposed by Democratic Presidential nominee Senator John Kerry. Two-thirds of the House and Senate would be required to send the amendment to the states. Three-quarters of the states would have to ratify it for it to become part of the constitution. It is not expected to get out of the Congress, but a vote on it is expected this summer because of a strong push on the issue by the religious right.

VIOLENT BACKLASH

Progress in the gay movement has not come without a price. The New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Projectreported last month that reports of violent attacks against people perceived to be gay, lesbian, or transgendered were up 43 percent here in the second half of 2003 versus the same period the year before. The project cited the historic United States Supreme Court decision overturning sodomy laws last June and the explosion of gay images on television as contributing to the backlash.

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (34 on Time-Warner; 107 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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