‘I’m the only one that is opposed to same-sex marriage. The other four, they say they believe in God, they go to church, but they’re also for same-sex marriage,’ mayoral candidate Vincent Orange said of his rivals in a recent interview.
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LOU CHIBBARO JR
Friday, August 18, 2006
Vincent Orange accused his four main rivals of being “morally unfit” to be the mayor of Washington, D.C., because of their support for same-sex marriage.
In an Aug. 5 interview with Channel 5 News, Orange, who represents Ward 5 on the D.C. Council, said he believed gay marriage would become an issue in the final weeks before the Sept. 12 Democratic primary.
“I’m the only one that is opposed to same-sex marriage,” he told Channel 5 reporter John Henrehan. “The other four, they say they believe in God, they go to church, but they’re also for same-sex marriage.”
“So I think coming down the stretch, that’s going to be an issue,” Orange said. “I don’t think they’re morally fit to run the city.”
Gay D.C. Councilmember Jim Graham, a Democrat from Ward 1, said Orange’s remarks most likely would not benefit his campaign.
“He’ll find that in D.C., that kind of appeal is spurned,” Graham said. “This city feels and thinks better than that. So it’s a dead end for him, and I think he should withdraw that statement.”
Orange’s interview with Channel 5 took place in Anacostia at a site where mayoral candidates Adrian Fenty and Marie Johns completed a one-on-one debate minutes earlier. With Orange watching the debate, a member of the audience asked the two candidates if they were “morally fit” to be mayor because of their support for same-sex marriage.
Fenty, the front-runner in the mayoral race, reiterated his longstanding support for same-sex marriage. Johns also reiterated her support for marriage equality for “everyone” as long as churches are allowed to refuse to perform same-sex marriages if they are opposed to such unions.
Gay activists accused Orange of using divisive wedge tactics at a time when he is running far behind Fenty, a Ward 4 councilmember, and Linda Cropp, the Council chair, in a Washington Post public opinion poll conducted in July.
Fenty was the first among the mayoral candidates to express support for same-sex marriage. Cropp, who initially said she favored civil unions over same-sex marriage, later declared she personally backs same-sex marriage while favoring civil unions as a means of averting an almost certain effort by Congress to overturn a D.C. gay marriage law.
“What I believe is the moral position is to increase human rights, not decrease them,” Cropp told the Blade this week.
Alec Evans, a spokesperson for the Fenty campaign, said the candidate remains firm in his support for same-sex marriage and has called Orange’s comments “divisive” and “outrageous.”
Mario Acosta-Velez, president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city’s largest gay political group, said Orange’s negative characterization of gay marriage deflects attention from the problems faced by gay families who are denied the legal rights that come with marriage.
“Instead of focusing on what he can do to make our city a better place for all communities and families, Councilmember Orange has demonstrated that he would rather define his campaign as one based on petty politics that promotes discrimination and intolerance,” Acosta-Velez said.
Orange lags in poll
Orange first expressed his opposition to gay marriage earlier this year at a forum of Baptist ministers, who have criticized the other candidates for backing same-sex marriage. Most political observers have said the gay marriage issue does not appear to have been a factor in the mayoral race so far.
A Washington Post poll conducted July 13-18 showed Orange receiving only 6 percent of support among registered voters and just 4 percent among those saying they were likely to vote in the Sept. 12 primary.
The Post poll showed that Fenty was leading, with support from 39 percent of registered voters and 42 percent of likely voters. Cropp, his chief rival, had support from 31 percent of registered voters and 32 percent of likely voters.
Former Verizon executive Marie Johns had support from 6 percent of registered voters and 8 percent of likely voters, and lobbyist and Democratic Party activist Michael Brown had support from 6 percent of registered voters and 4 percent of likely voters, the Post poll showed.
Johns has said she, too, supports same-sex marriage rights for gays, with the caveat shared by Cropp and Fenty that the city should not adopt a gay marriage law until the current, Republican-controlled Congress is replaced by lawmakers more supportive of gay rights.
Brown said Orange misrepresented his position by labeling him as a gay marriage supporter. In a telephone interview this week, Brown said he supports same-sex marriage in principle but supports civil unions rather than marriage for gay couples at the present time, when a hostile Congress would likely take away existing domestic partnership laws if the city were to adopt a gay marriage law.
“I don’t know what he was trying to say on the question of morality,” Brown said of Orange.
“It seems that the mayor of the District of Columbia needs to be someone who brings us together rather than divides us,” Brown said. “I will be a leader who brings us together, even if we disagree on a particular issue.”
Orange and a spokesperson for his campaign did not return a call seeking comment on his remarks.
A mostly pro-gay record
Orange has had a mostly supportive record on gay and AIDS issues during his years on the Council, with opposition to same-sex marriage and the relocation of some gay entertainment clubs in his ward surfacing as his only recent disagreements with gay activists.
During a Stein Club mayoral forum held earlier this year at the offices of the Human Rights Campaign, Orange downplayed his opposition to same-sex marriage. He said he favored granting gays all the rights and privileges of marriage by expanding the city’s domestic partnership law.
As chair of the Council’s Committee on Government Operations, Orange pushed through a bill introduced by Graham to make the mayor’s Office of LGBT Affairs a permanent part of the city government. He has said he strongly supports provisions in the city’s human rights law banning discrimination against gays and transgender persons.
Some Stein Club members speculated that Orange might have chosen to write off the gay vote after the club voted in June to endorse Cropp and after most gay activists have lined up behind either Cropp or Fenty.
Rick Rosendall, vice president of the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance, said Orange lost support from many gays earlier this year when he organized a meeting at a Baptist church in Ward 5 to line up opposition to the relocation in his ward of gay entertainment businesses displaced by the new baseball stadium.
Gay business owners have said they were looking for possible sites in Ward 5 because it has the city’s largest remaining warehouse districts, where buildings would be most suitable for conversion into nightclubs or other entertainment establishments.
During the meeting, Orange called on ministers and neighborhood activists in the ward to demand that the Council defeat a bill introduced by Graham that would amend the city’s liquor law to allow the gay clubs to move to appropriately zoned locations in other parts of the city.
Noting that some of the gay businesses were adult oriented with nude dancers, Orange said their relocation to Ward 5 would create a “stain” on the community and be detrimental to children.
Graham later withdrew his bill, insisting it was due to technical problems unrelated to Orange’s opposition. Graham said this week that he and the mayor’s office have been working behind the scenes to clear the way for the location of some of the displaced gay businesses. None have reopened since being forced out of the longtime gay entertainment zone on O Street, SE, where the stadium is now being built.
Orange said later that he opposed the businesses not because they would have a gay clientele but because they would likely provide inappropriate entertainment for what he said was a largely residential area close to schools and churches.
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