Gay rights activist continues fight for justice

Wednesday, October 14, 1998

Gay rights activist continues fight for justice

INTERVIEW: Candace Gingrich endeavors to educate, change
society

By Andrea Perera

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Nearly 20 years ago, 100,000 people attended the first Gay and
Lesbian Civil Rights March on Washington. Yet, despite legislative
efforts to secure same sex marriage rights as well as AIDS funding
increases, discrimination persists. Hate crimes against gay
individuals continue to occur as evidenced by the recent kidnapping
and murder of University of Wyoming student Matthew Sheperd.

In the following interview, gay lobbyist Candace Gingrich
discusses coming out, dealing with Congress and the current
administration’s grade on gay issues. She also discusses how far
civil rights for gay individuals have come … and the steps that
will be needed for gays and lesbians to achieve true equality in
the future.

What do you see as the importance of National Coming Out
Day/Week and what do think it symbolizes to the gay community?

One of the most important things about coming out is your
ability to free yourself. When you live your life in the closet,
you have to change your pronouns and you have to make up stories;
you have to hide an entire part of your life, and for most people,
an important part of your life … and it eats away at your
soul.

On one level, it’s very powerful because of how it changes you.
Something that actually benefits society as a whole is that you
change the people around you too when you come out. There’s still
misconceptions and myths and misinformation and stereotypes that
persist about gay people and one of the reasons that they persist
is that we still don’t have enough people showing what the truth is
through their lives.

You’ve got people in America who don’t know someone gay or who
don’t think that they know someone gay (which is most usually the
case). If they get information about gay people it usually comes
from really unreliable sources, it might be the fund-raising letter
that they got from the Christian Coalition or it might be what they
heard Pat Robertson say at the "700 Club" the night before. Unless
there’s somebody in their life – a relative, neighbor or coworker –
showing them differently, that’s all the information they have, so
that’s what they believe. So, you can turn ignorance and
misunderstanding into understanding by coming out to people.

What was it like when you came out?

I was 20. I had certainly had an underlying understanding that
there was something different about me. On some levels I probably
understood that it was that I was gay. But, I didn’t really have
any way to deal with the information. There weren’t school
counselors talking about it and at that time there weren’t positive
examples or images of gay people in the media or on television or
in my community.

I just found that the easiest way for me to deal with it was
just to pretend that those feelings didn’t exist and to just kind
of ignore that whole part of myself, which lasted for about seven
or eight years. I don’t look back and see that it really adversely
affected me in any way, but I also realize that that was a whole
part of my life that I was denying and ignoring.

When I got to college I became friends with some women who
turned out to be lesbians. What it was about them that helped to
changed things was that they were open and out and comfortable and
proud and not hiding at all that part of themselves. Being in that
situation, finally seeing other people who felt the same way that I
felt, but weren’t hiding it, to be able to recognize that I could
express that part of myself – I could accept and acknowledge that I
was a lesbian.

Most of the people that I’ve talked to say that the turning
point in the coming out process was realizing that they weren’t the
only one. Nobody wants to feel that they are the only person that
feels a certain way or that is a certain way.

Just being able to say, OK, there are other people who are like
me. This part of me is something that doesn’t have to be hidden
anymore. It’s part of who I am. It was instantly gratifying to me
to be able to say that about myself.

I came out to my family and felt very, very fortunate. Sure, it
was a shock to them. Just as I didn’t have any information to deal
with my being a lesbian, they didn’t have any information or frame
of reference either. In fact, one of the funniest things that my
mom said to me was that when she was growing up they didn’t have
gay people. I tried to explain to her, "Well, Mom, there were gay
people when you were growing up; you just didn’t know they were
gay." I felt very, very fortunate for their acceptance and kind of
just left it at that.

Do you feel as if members of Congress are adequately meeting the
Human Rights Campaign’s (a gay lobbyist group’s) funding
demands?

I think that there are still some members of Congress that are
too willing to sacrifice the advances and the research that’s being
done with AIDS now for other issues. We still see people in
Congress playing politics when it comes to AIDS funding.

Recently, when the Ryan White Care Act was being reauthorized a
couple years ago, you still saw, again, Jesse Helms up there
talking about how the government shouldn’t be helping to take care
of people who basically asked for it, who basically deserved what
they got.

But, I would have to say that most members of Congress get it.
So, it’s improving, but there are still burrs in the saddle who
don’t even want to acknowledge that it is still a huge problem and
are willing to sacrifice those monies and the lives that are
affected by them for other causes.

Could you discuss the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)
and what kind of a reception it’s receiving?

It was first introduced in ’94 and each year that it’s been
reintroduced and each session of Congress that it’s being debated
and talked about we see increased support. As the education
continues, more and more members and reps realize that it’s not
about special rights and that it’s not about affirmative action –
that it’s about fairness. We’ve had some really strong support from
the administration.

Clinton was the first president to endorse any kind of gay civil
rights legislation. They were instrumental in ’96 when there was a
vote in the Senate on ENDA and bringing us so close to victory.
President Clinton and Vice President Gore themselves individually
called up senators and talked to them about the issue.

One of our biggest challenges is still, like so many of the
things that have to do with queer peoples, battling the
misinformation. We’ll talk about the merits of ENDA. We’ll talk
about how it will help Americans. We can talk about what it will do
and won’t do.

They call it the homosexual quota bill – which it isn’t. That
always seems to be the biggest challenge when it comes to issues
about gay people, is correcting the misinformation that’s out there
just kind of erroneously and the misinformation that’s out there on
purpose from those people that don’t want to see us make any
advancements.

Same sex marriage seemed like it was getting a head start in
Hawaii, yet voters could limit marriage to "man and woman" come
Nov. 3. How are other states responding to the idea of same sex
marriage?

There are more than 24 states that have passed, within there own
legislatures, anti-gay marriage bills essentially saying that even
if Hawaii decides to allow gays to marry, their state won’t
recognize it.

There are some states that have been welcoming – like
Massachusetts. When William Weld was still governor he stated that
he would welcome gay people who live in Massachusetts that go to
Hawaii to get married.

In other places, you’ve seen the issue come up within the
legislature, but the people within the states have been able to
defeat it, to help people to see it for what it was –
discrimination. But unfortunately that’s been rare.

When we first started talking about gay marriage, most of
non-gay America just automatically had this image in their head of
two men in dresses or two women in tuxes knocking on their church
or temple door saying, "Stop, you have to marry us." We need to
help people see beyond that and talk about the issues. The
ceremony’s just one aspect of it. We’re talking about hospital
visitation, inheritance, custody, health care and all of those
things.

We need to keep talking about those issues so that people don’t
just have that gut reaction about gay marriages and instead
recognize that we do have families, we do have relationships and we
are affected by not having legal recognition of them.

The trend seems to be that companies are beginning to offer more
same sex spouses benefits such as health and life insurance
benefits. Yet, we are far from domestic partnership benefits being
a commonality, being "a given." What do you think is needed for
that to occur?

Employees themselves are taking the initiative. (Employees) are
coming up with proposals, getting facts, doing research and showing
their employers why this is the right thing to do, why this is a
good thing to do. I think that the more that we come out as
families, the more that employers will recognize that we’re
affected by not having some of the benefits that non-gay couples
get to take advantage of.

Hate crimes against gay individuals persist, the latest example
being the kidnapping and murder of Matthew Sheperd. Do you think an
event of this magnitude will hasten the passage of legislation like
the Hate Crime Prevention Act (which allows FBI investigation and
prosecution of hate crimes against gays, lesbians, and
bisexuals)?

What disappoints me is that it takes something of this magnitude
for them to recognize, for them to have their wake up call. We’ve
done our best to educate people about the fact that although
violent crime has been decreasing over the past couple of years,
violent crime against gay individuals has increased.

But there are still folks who are willing to say that we get
what we deserve – which is really pathetic and really disappointing
and really offensive … but it still happens.

With an event like this, we are going to renew our call to them
to make time before the session is out to vote on the Hate Crimes
Prevention Act. I know that they’re busy. I know that the
appropriations bills need to get done. I know that they’re busy
with their impeachment hearings and all of that. It’s not just
whatever state that they’re in that may or may not have hate crime
laws, but it’s our country as a whole that will not tolerate that
kind of behavior. We need somebody like the federal government to
send a really strong message saying, "We will not tolerate
that."

Concerning the current administration, how do you feel that it
is handling gay rights issues?

I don’t think that I’m going to ever remember (President
Clinton) as anyone other than the first (president) to do what he
did for gay and lesbian people. Before he kind of dropped the ball
on the whole "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy, (Clinton) was the
first president to specifically campaign to gay Americans.

We’ll all be waiting a really long time for the perfect
candidate. So, in acknowledging "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" and the
Defense of Marriage Act, I also have to recognize the Employee
Non-Discrimination Act, the Hate Crime Prevention Act and the first
White House Summit on AIDS. I’m not going to completely ignore the
advances that he has made because of the bad stuff. But, I’m still
going to give him a B- when it comes down to rating him in the
end.

But it’s a higher rating than you would have given past
presidents?

Oh my gosh, yes. I’m not sure any one of them got more than a D
… if that. Candance Gingrich speaks in Westwood Plaza on Monday.
Photo by David Hill

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