August 15, 2006 Volume 15, Issue 9 www.stonewallnews.net Serving the GLBTQA Community of the Pacific Northwest since 1992 THIS ISSUE Arts & Entertainment.............................8 Business Directory . ..............................10 Calendar....................................................12 Classifieds.................................................14
An interview with Mayor Hession City of Spokane Mayor Dennis Hession talks about sexual orientation, the proposed Gay District, equal marriage and his leadership in Spokane
Distribution Locations.........................14 Letters of the Law....................................5 Money Matters.........................................4 National / International News.............7 Practical Spirituality..............................10 Regional News . .......................................4 Resource Directory................................15 Reviews & Previews ...............................9 Spokane Downtown Map...................11 Spokane News..........................................2 Voices...........................................................2
DEDICATION This Issue dedicated to
Susan Fabrikant and the Staff of Spokane AIDS Network
Photo by Pat Devine
for more than 20 years of dedicated and untiring vigilance in combatting AIDS and HIV for our community in the Inland Northwest!
Fly your Flags on Fridays! From his 5th floor office in City Hall, City of Spokane Mayor Dennis Hession talks with Stonewall Publisher Mike Schultz.
Publisher’s Note: Former Mayor Jim West declined Stonewall interview requests. The opportunity to engage current Mayor Hession in questions relevant to our GLBTQA community was a welcome shift in posture. Questions posed in the interview included some from community members as well as other questions designed to gauge the Mayor’s position on homosexuality and equal marriage; discussing the Mayor’s leadership; and exploring discrepancies that might exist between his (pro) position on equal rights and yet potentially perceived inaction to further them.
Edited transcript of interview with Spokane Mayor Dennis Hession: STONEWALL: Do you think sexual orientation is a choice? MAYOR: No, I do not. I have a good friend who is gay . . . in San Francisco. We’ve had that discussion about choice before, and I honestly rely substantially on my conversations with him in making that sort of quick statement about whether I think it’s a choice or not.
STONEWALL: Did he change your other words, you represent a constituency mind? that’s obviously across the board, and it’s incumbent upon you to bring everybody MAYOR: No. I don’t know that I had to the table. Do you separate that? an opinion before I talked to him. But I probably had the same opinion . . . I have MAYOR: I guess I’m not sure quite a lot of respect for him. He’s a great guy, what you mean. I don’t take different a good friend of our family, and he means positions privately and publicly. Is that a lot to us, and so when he told me that what you mean? [it was not a choice], I believed him. STONEWALL: Yes. STONEWALL: Do you separate your personal belief from your Please see MAYOR page 6 professional position in that regard? In
Gays can learn from civil rights backlash
be replaced by a go-slow approach aimed at giving white supremacists more time to Gays can learn from civil rights see the error of their ways. backlash The aftermath of the Brown decision In May 1954, overjoyed by the U.S. has much to teach those of us who are Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board gay and feeling wobbly after a string of of Education that racially segregated heartbreaking setbacks in our push for public schools were unconstitutional, equal marriage rights. NACCP attorney Legal scholar Thurgood Carlos Ball Marshall The aftermath of the offers historical predicted school Brown decision has much perspective and segregation to teach those of us who are a much-needed would vanish gay and feeling wobbly after pep talk in “The within five years. a string of heartbreaking Backlash Thesis Instead, a and Same-Sex setbacks in our push for decade later, only Marriage” in the equal marriage rights. 1 percent of black William & Mary children in the Bill of Rights Deep South sat in Journal. (Find the same classrooms as whites. it using Google.) He stresses that the What had interfered? A fierce backlash heterosexual backlash after the 2003 by the white majority. Massachusetts ruling opening marriage That backlash prompted black leaders to gay couples was a predictable majority to debate whether full-throated demands response to minority progress -- much for equality, particularly in courts, should like the backlash after Brown.
by Deb Price
Yet NAACP attorneys wisely pushed Why? Because civil rights movements ahead, getting the Supreme Court in 1955 ask “the majority to give up privileges that to order desegregation “with all deliberate reinforce their perceived superiority,” speed.” Ball says. And a lot of people get mighty Resistance intensified: Southern angry when their special privileges are voters replaced moderate politicians with threatened. strict segregationists. The Ku Klux Klan The Massachusetts marriage decision spread like a virus. Nearly 100 Southern certainly wasn’t the first ruling to trigger congressmen reactionary blasted the high constitutional civil rights movements court. Some amendments or ask the majority to give up towns shut down to bring out the privileges that reinforce their their schools. worst in some perceived superiority But once folks. backlash is Soon after recognized as unavoidable, it is “less Brown, 11 black children were admitted to threatening,” says Ball, who adds, “The a white high school in Milford, Del. White aftermath to Brown teaches us that the parents were furious; outsiders burned backlash can be overcome.” crosses; the school was boycotted. In the Recent gay marriage setbacks -- court end, integration was delayed another eight losses in New York and Washington state, years. and the sad breakup of the lead lesbian Louisiana amended its constitution in couple in the Massachusetts case -- are 1954 to declare that public schools “shall painful. But civil rights movements are be operated separately for white and colored children.” Please see CIVIL RIGHTS page 15