Dec 12, 2008   | COMMENTS     

To the Editors:
Re: “Harvey Milk’s friends reminisce about gay hero” (news, Nov. 21)

As much as I admire and honor the work and sacrifice of Harvey Milk, I wish the Blade and other media outlets would stop mischaracterizing him as “the first openly gay man elected to public office.”
 
Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Previously, lesbian Elaine Noble’s election to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1974 inspired Minnesota State Sen. Allan Spear to come out in a front-page Minneapolis Star newspaper article. In 1976, Minneapolis voters re-elected Spear to the state Senate, where he continued to serve until 2000.

Spear died unexpectedly of a heart infection in October at the age of 71. Hundreds of us who knew and worked with him gathered in Minneapolis on Nov. 23 to celebrate his lifelong advocacy for social justice. He successfully led the Minnesota Senate fight for the state’s gay rights bill (the first in the nation that also banned discrimination on the basis of gender identity), and he worked with others to achieve legislative victories for women, racial minorities, immigrants, prisoners, minors and people with disabilities.

Our heroes and pioneers have arisen in communities across the country and around the globe. Let’s not forget courageous leaders who provided inspiration far from the gay ghettos of Castro Street and Greenwich Village.

ERIC STULTS
Washington
Editors’ note: The writer is correct about the role Elaine Noble and Allan Spear played in gay rights history, but there’s an earlier example of an out gay politician winning office. Kathy Kozachenko, a lesbian, won a race for the Ann Arbor City Council in January 1974, about 10 months before Noble’s victory.

Gay couples can be married in eyes of God                                  

To the Editors: Re: “Building on Prop 8 protests” (news, Nov. 21)

In responding to the passage of Prop 8, let us remind ourselves and others of the freedom of speech and freedom of religion, which we have not lost. The first thing to do is to tell everybody that we will be using the word “marriage” anyway — because so-called “defense of marriage” laws only prevent use of the word in legal documents.

Any same-sex couple can still call themselves married whenever they feel like doing so as long as their doing it does not constitute legal fraud. In no jurisdiction in the United States can same-sex couples be prosecuted for fraud for saying that they are “married in the eyes of God.” “Eyes-of-God” marriage is just as easy to say as “common law marriage,” and I suggest that we use this phrase frequently — especially when confronting opponents of same-sex marriage who cite religious grounds.

Let us point out to everybody that supporters of “defense of marriage” laws have been hoodwinking themselves because such laws do not actually do the main thing they want done. They do not prevent same-sex couples from being referred to as “married.”

Same-sex couples that live in “defense of marriage” jurisdictions should be referred to as couples “with marriages legally unrecognized,” not as couples “who cannot be married.” Whether or not something exists in the real world and whether or not it is recognized legally are two different things.

The most famous example of a legally unrecognized marriage is that of Adam and Eve as presented in the Bible. They are said to be man and wife when they were the only two people alive with no civil governments in existence. Passing laws that say that same-sex unions will not be recognized legally as marriages makes as much sense as passing laws that say children born out of wedlock will not be recognized as legal human beings.

ROBERT S. WOODWARD
Lakewood, Ohio

Boycotts and protests won’t win marriage rights                         

To the Editors: Re: “Building on Prop 8 protests” (news, Nov. 21)

It was obvious that voters in California were disgusted at their high court mandating same-sex marriage. That is the start of this whole Prop 8 fiasco. Not even the most left-leaning liberal wants to have their voting privileges taken away and yet the court did just that by taking matters into their own hands. That is the reason for the surprising backlash.

Many of us who live outside the confines of California expected it not to be such a tight race. We should have known better. Any time a runaway court mandates something, it results in a resounding backlash. The court overstepped its bounds, and as intelligent legal professionals they should have known it would turn out ...