ACLU Conference Highlights Lesbian and Gay Rights

by Deborah Lashman

A luncheon speech by Tom Stoddard,
President of Lambda Legal Defense
Fund, was one of several sessions de-
voted to the rights of lesbians and gays at
the ACLU’s National Biennial Confer-
ence held in Burlington June 26-30.

Stoddard’s speech, “Five Years After
Bowers and Hardwic ,” walked a fine
line between optimism and reality, as he
described for delegates the enormous ad-
vances in the world of lesbian and gay
civil rights in the past twenty-five years.
In 1966 when Stoddard graduated from
high school, Time magazine described
“homosexuality” as a “pemicious sick-
ness.” In the l960’s no jurisdiction in the
U.S. had a civil rights law protecting les-
bians and gays. In 1970 a mainstream
publisher, Bantam, published Everything
You Always Wanted to Know About Sex,
but Were Afraid to Ask by David Ruben,
which described “homosexuals” as, “try-
ing the impossible, solving the problem
with only half the pieces...eliminating
from the start the most obvious source of
love, woman,” and discussed lesbians in
the chapter on prostitutes.

Today four states (Wisconsin, Mas-
sachusetts, Hawaii, and Connecticut) as
well as 75 localities, including most of
the large cities of the U.S. have some
form ‘of civil rights protection for lesbians
and gays. Approximately one fifth of the
American population is protected. This
past month Time magazine supported the
ACLU’s lawsuit against the Boy Scouts’
attempt to prohibit a gay man from be-
coming a scoutmaster, and last year Time
virtually endorsed marriage for gays and
lesbians. Last year Orrin Hatch, who six

years ago described the Democrats as the
“party of homosexuals,” publicly apol-
ogized and said he made a mistake.

Stoddard acknowledged that we still have
a long way to go. “I don’t mean to mini-
mize the difficulties that we all face. Two
men were arrested six months ago in Cin-
cinnati for holding hands in a public park
under an indecency statute. Particularly
for lesbians and gay men the world is still
full of peril. With increased visibility
comes increased physical violence.”
However, “The world of isolation and in-
visibility of twenty-five years ago is gone
for good.”

The ACLU played a large role in helping
to change that world and Stoddard called
on delegates to continue that tight. “We
need as a civil rights community to em-
brace gay rights...it is the cutting edge,”
“Think what you can do to embrace these
issues on a local level. Make yourselves
visible, march in your parades, include us
in your mailings.” .He concluded his
speech with a plea to delegates to, “Use
the words we have chosen to describe
ourselves...don’t use the word ‘homo-
sexual’, it makes us seem like things”,
and to “help the ACLU be as inclusive as
it can”. “This is ultimately a fight for di-
versity and the celebration of diversity
everywhere”.

A very receptive and responsive audience
gave Stoddard a standing ovation at the
conclusion of his speech. On a more som-
ber note, it was announced immediately
after the speech that Thurgood Marshall
had just resigned from the Supreme
Court, giving rise to a spontaneous groan
of dismay from the crowd.

In addition to Stoddard’s speech, Les-
bian and Gay Rights Issues for the
l990’s, HIV in the Health Care Setting,
and AIDS 1991 were among the work-
shop topics at the conference. V

 

 

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