Gays gear up to keep Granite State in blue column

The most powerful gay/lesbian organization in the country opened a New Hampshire campaign office two blocks from the Statehouse this month to protect the state’s new same-sex civil unions law and sway some presidential politics. The Human Rights Campaign gave state Democrats $150,000 in 2006 to help sweep the long-time minority into control of the House, Senate, Executive Council and both Congressional seats. The group would like to repeat that success.

National field director Marty Rouse said the goal was to pass a gay partnerships law and beat down a proposed state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and woman.

“That’s why we made a major financial investment here,” Rouse said. “Thanks for your victory. Now we want to make the same difference at the national level. The goal remains simple and profound. We want equality. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

First-term Representative Ed Butler (D-Hart’s Location) gained office as part of the Democratic landslide and sponsored several pieces of gay rights legislation last session. He previously served on a statutory gay unions study commission dominated by Republicans. He heard their promises to use the issue with voters. It spurred him to run and prove them wrong. He’ll be getting hitched this April under the state’s new same sex unions law to partner Les Schoof on their 30th anniversary. They were among the losing plaintiffs in a Massachusetts lawsuit to let out-of-state couples get married in the Bay State.

“That gays and lesbians can open a storefront like this anywhere in America is significant,” Butler said. “That it’s two blocks from the Statehouse means gays and lesbians have become something people can talk about and support openly. Thirty years ago we were just trying to get people to believe we were not sick and a danger to ourselves and society.”

He said New Hampshire is moving at a fairly comfortable pace in making the gay community feel safe and accepted in their families and communities.

“But we haven’t heard the last of the marriage amendment,” Butler said. “We’ll have to defeat it again, but we won’t roll back the clock on the struggle for justice.”

Senator Kathy Sgambati (D-Tilton) helped organize the event, noting she has worked most of her career helping groups like the mentally ill and disabled who faced discrimination.

“It’s incumbent on us to make sure everyone has the same access to the American dream,” she said. “That’s pretty dear to me.”

Her straight son Mike wore a bright yellow Human Rights Campaign T-shirt, knowing it might trigger some questions outside on the street. He suffers from epilepsy and had to overcome the stigma of it.

“I was discriminated against too because I was slower,” he said. “I have gay friends who got beaten up for it in Manchester. Now I’m proud of being different too. We’re all different in some way. No one is perfect.”

After most of the guest had left, Rouse said New Hampshire has huge strategic importance as the first presidential primary state. Any gains here could be multiplied across and set the domestic agenda of the future president. He was sorry to write off the Republican Party as anti-gay. No serious GOP hopeful could win the nomination, he said, by courting the Human Rights Campaign the way all the Democrats are doing.

His sexual orientation drove him away from the conservative values he gained from his parents, A Jew and a staunch Catholic. He went to Mass every week, but felt the parishioners were doing a poor job of living what they heard preached. He couldn’t keep going to a church that said he was evil. Now he’s a Unitarian Universalist.

“I want my kids to be involved in religion. It supports equality,” Rouse said. “I still have strong moral values. Be kind to your neighbors. Make the world a better place. Help the unfortunate.”

The national Gay Lesbian Task Force has posted the positions of the leading Democrats and Republicans on same sex issues. All the Democrats want to cover AIDS better under Medicaid, end the ban on open gays in the military, protect people with transgender orientations under hate crime laws, legalize civil unions, and block a federal marriage amendment making the institution heterosexual.

All but Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kuchinich support same–sex marriage, according to the Task Force. The Task Force found the Republicans consistently hostile to gay rights.

The Human Rights Campaign gave the 2006 Congress a score based on half a dozen key votes. John Kerry voted with the Campaign position 100-percent of the time. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama scored 89-percent, Joseph Biden 78, Christopher Dodd 67 and John McCain 33. NH GOP Senators John Sununu and Judd Gregg scored 33-percent.

Rouse said Mitt Romney was supportive of gay rights in the 1990s, but has since switched to the right. As mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani helped the partners of city employees share in job benefits.