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can be found. The Burlington Free Press
ran an editorial (12/3/87) supporting the
proposed legislation and Governor Made-
leine Kunin has also expressed her support.
Groups around the state including Vermont
Psychologists Association, Vermont
Chapter of the National Organization of
Women, and the Vermont Chapter of the
National Association of Social Workers are
supportive.

This bill extends to all Vermonters,
regardless of their sexual orientation, the
right to equal treatment in housing, em-
ployment, credit, and public accomoda-
tions. It will remedy a serious civil rights
problem that faces Vermonters every day.

 

January 1988

Senator Sally Conrad Speaks Out

by Eileen
On December 9, 1987, state Senator
Sally Conrad spoke to a group of more than
thirty people at the Unitarian Universalists
for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (UULGC)
bi-weekly worship service. Senator
Conrad is a co-sponsor of the anti-discrimi-
nation bill currently pending before the
Senate. She declined, however, to discuss
that bill in particular because of the pres-
ence in the audience of many more knowl-
edgeable supporters. Instead, she at-
tempted to explain her commitment to gay
and lesbian rights.
~ As many of us have suspected for
years, every legislator has a predisposition
about every issue, according to Senator
Conrad. Her predisposition in support of
gays and lesbians stems in particular from
one college sorority friend’s coming out.
The evening was particularly significant
because the sorority was celebrating their
disbarment from their national organiza-
tion for accepting a Jewish member. After
a long evening of intimate conversation,
Conrad’s friend confided in her, “I am a
lesbian. Are you afraid of me?” Conrad
was stunned - not because her friend was a
lesbian, but because the friend worried that
the revelation would change their relation-
ship. For Conrad, a friendship did not
change just because of an individual’s
sexuality. Nor could she comprehend why
the knowledge might cause fear.
That event sparked Conrad’s concern

for action. She realized that we all need not
only to learn to appreciate each other’s
humanity, but also to speak and reach out in
support. As a favorite quote of Conrad’s
quips: “there is no such thing as an innocent
bystander; if you're a bystander, you aren’t
innocent”. In the wake of this year’s March
on Washington and Civil Disobedience at
the Supreme Court where thousands of
lesbians and gays chanted “Silence is
Dea ”, Conrad’s words not only echo a
familiar theme but give hope that gays and
straights can work together to end discrimi-
nation on the basis of sexuality.

After her talk, Conrad was persuaded
to briefly discuss the pending legislation.
Although cautioning that over-advocacy
turns legislators away, she encouraged
everyone to contact his or her local repre-

sentatives and urge them to support the bills .

(in addition to the anti-discrimination bill,
two bills pertaining to AIDS testing are
pending in the Senate). In particular, she
urged face-to-face dialogue.

After the service, Senator Conrad was
available for questions and conversation.
For those of you unfamiliar with Unitarian
Universalism, the concept of a “worship
service” involving a talk by a senator may
seem unusual. It’s not. The UULGC serv-
ices combine music, meditation and cama-
raderie with thought-provoking speakers
(and refreshments afterwards). Please join
us some time (see Vermont Resources
List). And thanks to Senator Conrad.

Lambda Defense Fund Comes of Age

New York Times

It took a ruling by New York’s high-
est court before a group of homosexuals
was permitted to incorporate as the Lambda
Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc. in
1973. Even as recently as 1980, Lambda
was, in the words of its executive director,
“still a bit too fringe” to be taken seriously
by many people outside the homosexual
community.

But now Lambda, the nation’s largest
organization working for the civil rights of
homosexual men and women, has achieved
a degree of acceptance that Thomas B.
Stoddard, the executive director, said was
unthinkable before the AIDS epidemic.

How far Lambda has come was evi-
dent recently when three prominent law
firms, a major corporation and a labor un-
ion sponsored a benefit for the organization
on the first anniversary of the passage of
New York’s homosexual rights bill.

About 300 people attended the bene-

fit, which raised $50,000 for Lambda, and
also honored Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr.,
who as the city's Corporation Counsel for
five years drafted and lobbied for passage
of the bill that on April 22, 1986, became
local Law 2.

The bill, which was signed by Mayor
Koch, prohibits discrimination against
homosexuals in employment, housing and
public accommodations.

A measure of Lambda’s emergence
came in the accolades it received. David N.
Dinkins, the Manhattan Borough Presi-
dent, said, “I would be hardpressed to think
of another organization that has done so
much to advance the rights of lesbians and
gay men.”

Lambda’s growth and its acceptance
within legal, political and philanthropic
circles has been attributed to a variety of
factors, including what Norman Dorsen, a
professor at the New York University Law
School and president of the American Civil

Liberties Union, describes as “the general
movement toward egalitarianism at the
ground level of this society, and educa-
tron.”

That acceptance was reflected in the
sponsorship of the benefit by three law
firms: Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher &
Flom;Wachtel1, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and
Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim and Bal-
lon; the American Telephone and Tele-
graph Company and the United Food &
Commercial Workers Union.

More than anything else, Mr. Stod-
dard said, Lambda’s growth must be attrib-
uted to AIDS and to the Supreme Court’s
ruling last summer in Bowers v. Hardwick,
which affirmed the right of the State of
Georgia to prosecute a man who was ar-
rested in his bedroom while engaged in acts
of sodomy.

“Our contributions shot up dramati-
cally as a result of Bowers v. Hardwick,

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