Date: Wed, 21 Jun 95 10:23:22 0000 From: Jean Richter If you think this would be of interest, feel free to put it in the QRD: I, my lover, and our housemate attended the Alameda city council meeting last night (all 5 hours of it!). In case you hadn't heard, the new mayor of Alameda refused to issue a proclamation declaring June gay pride month(as his predecessor had last year), instead referring the issue to the city council. While the end result of the council meeting was not positive (the one supportive councilmember made a motion to declare the proclamation, but the motion died for lack of a second), it was gratifying to see so many supportive people (gay and straight) come out and speak on our behalf. (my housemate gave a brief but moving statement about being beaten up and losing jobs because of her sexual orientation.) The people speaking in opposition were nearly all evangelical christians, whose arguments consisted mainly of quoting bible passages out of context and rehashes of the tired "special rights" rhetoric. "Our" side was by far more articulate, reasoned, and polite. It was especially nice that all the clergy who spoke were in favor of the proclamation, providing a good contrast to the religious bigotry of the opposition. It's a pity all this was lost on those councilmembers opposing the proclamation, whose minds were apparently made up long before the meeting began. One of them read a prepared statement denouncing proclamations in general, but with carefully crafted language allowing himself to vote for other, less controversial proclamations in the future. Even more disappointing was the statement from the other opposing councilmember, who said that since not all people in Alameda were in favor of the proclamation, he couldn't vote for it. (The numerous logical fallacies and hypocrisy of this statement in light of his support of every other proclamation issued by the city is left as an exercise for the reader :-) One opposing councilmember didn't attend the meeting at all, and the mayor, presumably in a futile effort to offend as few voters as possible, made no statement. (he looked extremely uncomfortable throughout the entire meeting; as this story has made the national wire services and the accompanying buzzword for Alameda is the "island of intolerance", I'm not surprised by his reaction - this is a PR disaster far greater than what would have happened had he just quietly approved the proclamation as his predecessor did last year.) All in all, while it was encouraging to see so many people speaking up on our behalf, it was demoralizing to see firsthand the hatred and bigotry some (very organized) groups of people have for us, and even more demoralizing to see to what extent politicians will waffle, obfuscate, and just generally run away from any even remotely controversial issue. (I applaud Councilmember Lucas for her willingness to stand up for her convictions and support this proclamation.) More importantly, consider this a wakeup call - it happened in Alameda last night; it could happen in your hometown tomorrow. Jean Richter richter@eecs.Berkeley.edu http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~richter