Benefits ordinance revisited by Catherine D. Willis The Spokane City Council revisited the domestic partner benefits ordinance Sept. 6, meeting before an overflowing gallery of advocates and opponents intent on influencing the status of the controversial measure. On the agenda was a resolution to put the ordinance, passed April 25, on the Nov. 8 ballot. A petition drive to qualify the matter for a referendum vote fell 121 signatures short of the number needed, Spokane County election officials determined in July. “I brought the resolution before us tonight because of an overwhelming appeal by the public,” said Councilman Bob Apple after hearing public testimony and before the council voted 5-2 against the proposal. “Personally I believe this is a moral issue.” He went on to question the right of governments to legislate morality, suggested that domestic partner benefits constitute an inappropriate and illegal redefinition of marriage, and urged voters to use the issue to remind elected leaders of their representative role, ending with the declaration, “They are not dictators.”
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Vol. XIV, No. 10
Serving the GLBTQA Community of the Inland Northwest since 1992
Apple’s tone echoed about a dozen of the 39 speakers who favored the resolution, among them conservative stalwart Penny Lancaster. Dressed in a green shirt and vest that formed an inescapable frame for the bright red Nancy McLaughlin campaign button on his chest, Will Parks said, “This is about standing up for the moral climate of our city and our county and our country.” Referring to sexual orientation as a “preference,” a choice, he characterized the critical issue as “an agenda to completely bring about moral decay.” In the end, he said, “It’s not about money.” Others nevertheless focused on prospective costs of the ordinance, among them 6th District Rep. John Ahern. Many simply asked the council to let the people decide. Defenders of the ordinance were outnumbered by a wide margin in the council chambers and by more than 2-to-1 among speakers. The seventh public commentator overall, the first of 15 GLBTQ community members and allies to speak against the resolution, was Jim Jones, an information technology professional. He gave a re-
Eastern Washington University student Megan Cuilla, 23, did not plan to speak at the Sept. 6 meeting of the Spokane City Council. Her intent was to support friends and acquaintances there to address the council in opposition to a resolution to put the domestic partner benefits ordinance to a public vote. An error occurred. Her name was called. And she decided to go ahead and make a short statement. “I don’t think this needs to be put on the ballot,” she said. “You’ve already voted on it.” She stepped away from the microphone, left the council chambers and was heading up the stairs to exit the building. “That’s when I heard somebody ‘boo’ me,” she reported.
October 2005
Packed house
photo courtesy Spokane City Hall
A standing-room-only audience filled the Spokane City Council chambers Sept. 6 when advocates and opponents of the domestic partner benefits ordinance spoke before the City Council about a resolution to place the ordinance on the November ballot.
searched summary of the history, actual costs and economic advantages of domestic partner benefits around the country. “I chose the costs,” he later told Stonewall News, “because it seems to be their primary talking point, and anything else I
Megan Cuilla
“I knew who it was from the way he had been acting,” she told Stonewall News. The man in green had been “very rude,
thought to discuss would be too emotional for me to get through.” Mike Kress, vice-chair of the Spokane Human Rights Commission, dismissed arguments against the ordinance based on Continued on page 7
making comments every time someone who opposed him was speaking.” “I came back down the stairs and said to him flat-out, ‘Did you just boo me?’ and he said, ‘yeah.’ And I said to him, ‘That’s real grown up,’ and I just walked away.” Asked how it felt to confront the man, she said, “It was empowering to say something, to stand up for myself, but at the same time it was frustrating. These are the same people who are standing there saying they’re against moral decay. … They are so righteous and yet they’re booing me.” Despite the unsettling interaction, Cuilla answered a final question without hesitation, “Yes, I would definitely do it [speak to the city council] again.”
The U.S. House at last says no to GLBT hate The U.S. House of Representatives surprised gay rights activists Sept. 14, voting 223-199 to pass the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which adds protections for sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability to the 1968 federal hate crimes law. The bill makes resources available to local law enforcement authorities to facilitate investigation and prosecution of certain hate-based crimes. Similar measures have passed the Senate on several occasions over the past decade, only to be stalled in committee or defeated outright
in the House. This is the first time legislation of this type has included language specific to transgender people. Co-sponsored by Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Tammy Baldwin (DWisc.) and filed in May, the bill won passage as an amendment to the Children’s Safety Act of 2005. This legislation subjects sex offenders who prey on children to strict new monitoring requirements and increased penalties. The measure had wide bipartisan
support (371-52) and is expected to move quickly through the Senate. The White House has voiced support for the bill’s enhanced sex-crime provisions, so there appears to be no serious threat of veto. The vote came the same week a California jury convicted two men for the killing of transgender teen Gwen Araujo (see story on page 8). Violence against members of the GLBT community is rising, up 4 percent from 2003 to 2004, according to a report published in April by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.