2,500 Marriage Equality Supporters Petition City Attorney
to Drop Charges
by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2011 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
PHOTOS, top to
bottom: Bringing in the petitions, Sean Bohac, Linda Perine, Dwayne Crenshaw, Michael
Anderson and Brian Baumgardner, Chuck Stemke, Carmen Sandoval receives the
petitions, “Drop all charges,” three crowd shots
More than a year
after nine members and supporters of the San Diego Alliance for Marriage
Equality (S.A.M.E.) were arrested at the San Diego County Clerk’s office for
sitting in to protest the clerk’s refusal to grant marriage licenses to three
same-sex couples, over 50 members of S.A.M.E. and four of the so-called
“Equality Nine” rallied outside the offices of San Diego City Attorney Jan
Goldsmith and asked him to drop the charges against the Nine. After a short
rally in the San Diego Community Concourse downtown, the participants went up
to Goldsmith’s office with petitions signed by 2,418 people asking that the two
misdemeanor charges against the Nine be dropped. The petitions were accepted by
Goldsmith’s assistant, Carmen Sandoval, who asked the protesters to “keep it
professional” and not chant in the hallway.
Speakers at the
rally included four of the Nine — Sean Bohac, Zakiya Khabir, Chuck Stemke and
Michael Anderson, who with his partner Brian Baumgardner was one of the three
couples who tried to apply for licenses on August 19, 2010 and literally got
the doors of the County Clerk’s office slammed in their faces. Dwayne Crenshaw,
executive director of San Diego LGBT [Queer] Pride, and Linda Perine, director
of the San Diego LGBT Redistricting Task Force and co-organizer of the
“Communities in Unity” coalition that lobbied the city’s redistricting
commission to add a second Latino-majority City Council district and increase
the concentrations of African-Americans in District 4 and Queers in District 3,
also spoke.
Bohac, who MC’d
the event as well as being the first speaker, began with a tribute and a moment
of silence for Tom Wilheim, who with his husband Richard had been active for
Queer equality for over three decades. “Tom unfortunately succumbed to cancer
on September 18, so we’re taking this opportunity to honor him in a way he
would have been proud of: to honor his contributions to the LGBT community and
to strengthen our resolve to fight for full equality for all people,” Bohac
said. “Tom really believed in the good of humanity. He was convinced that if we
could get everybody to see the humanity in every person, we as a society would
reject rules like Proposition 8 and others.”
After the
tribute, Bohac recalled how he and the other Equality Nine members were
arrested. Inspired, he said, by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision in
the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case that Proposition 8, the initiative California
voters approved in November 2008 to ban legal recognition of same-sex
marriages, “we accompanied several couples who had appointments that day
[August 19, 2010], hoping to celebrate,” Bohac recalled. “We knew that, just
days before this day passed, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted an
appeal on the decision, or a stay on the decision, that wouldn’t allow Gays and Lesbians to marry. But we believed
there was a chance that the county clerk would be encouraged to follow the
Constitution instead of the judicial process.”
Instead, Bohac
said, “the county clerk didn’t even allow us into the marriage license office,
wouldn’t respond to our questions about his responsibility to provide equality
to the citizens of California, of San Diego.” So he and eight other people
started a sit-in in the hallway of the clerk’s office — and the clerk responded
by calling in 50 riot-clad sheriffs’ deputies to arrest nine unarmed,
nonviolent protesters. “The case is ongoing, and it’s a little bit unusual,” he
said. “We were involved in civil disobedience. We have been charged with two
misdemeanors, fairly steep for civil disobedience, honestly. And so, for the
last few months, we have been collecting signatures to encourage the city
attorney to drop those charges. But he has continued to press the same charges,
the same two misdemeanors.”
Perine added
that the charges are dubious on their face because one of the laws on which
they’re based specifically has an exemption for political activity. The city
attorney, she explained, is prosecuting the Equality Nine “under a statute,
Penal Code 602.1 section (b), ignoring completely the fact that 602.1 section
(c) says, and I quote, ‘Section (b) shall not apply to any person on the
premises who is engaging in activities protected by the California Constitution
or the Constitution of the United States.’ It is my understanding that no one has
ever been successfully prosecuted under section (b) of this statute when, as
here, they are exercising their First Amendment rights. So why is our City
Attorney continuing this prosecution?”
“I can’t believe
that some 40-plus years after the death of Dr. King and the civil-rights
struggle, when folks were arrested time and time again for fighting for basic
civil rights, that we’re still arresting folks and prosecuting them for
fighting for their civil rights,” Crenshaw said. “ I can’t believe that within
days of the unveiling of Dr. King’s memorial statue on the Washington mall,
that we are here still struggling for civil rights. I can’t believe that within
the 90 days’ time frame, where I’m fairly confident that the California Supreme
Court will uphold our right to marry, that we’re fighting for marriage equality
right here in I can’t believe that eight days, just eight days, after we have
the freedom to serve in the armed forces, that we don’t have the freedom to be
married in California, and these nine folks are being prosecuted for their
freedom, for their equality, for their civil rights.”
Crenshaw
compared City Attorney Goldsmith to the bullies who drove Queer teenager Seth
Walsh to suicide. “On that day, today, we’re being bullied, you’re being
bullied, by our own city attorney,” he said. “It’s wrong, and today has to be
the day that it stops! Two
thousand, four hundred and eighteen folks have signed that petition. If you’re
in earshot today and you haven’t signed, sign. If the City Attorney doesn’t drop
the charges today, get on the phone and call tomorrow. Say you don’t want your
taxpayer dollars wasted to prosecute nine people who just want the right, like
everyone else, to be married.”
S.A.M.E. and the
Equality Nine received letters of support from Congressmember Bob Filner, a
candidate for Mayor of San Diego in the 2012 election, and Lorena Gonzalez,
secretary-treasurer and CEO of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Central Labor
Council, which were read at the rally. “The civil disobedience we practiced
during the civil rights movement and the Freedom Rides lives on today in
protests like that of the Equality Nine, who are fighting for their rights.”
Filner wrote. “Discrimination based on who you are or who you love is still
discrimination. I would urge that the charges for the Equality Nine be
dropped.”
Gonzalez’
letter, addressed directly to City Attorney Goldsmith, read, “In the spirit of
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez and Rosa Parks, the labor movement
supports the Equality Nine and their nonviolent civil disobedience in standing
up for their fundamental right to marry. The San Diego/Imperial Counties
Central Labor Council calls on the City Attorney’s office to drop these
misdemeanor charges against the Equality Nine.”
Equality Nine
members Michael Anderson and Chuck Stemke, both active socialists, took a more
radical line than the other speakers. Anderson argued that marriage equality is
mainly an issue for working-class Queer people, since wealthy Queers can
essentially buy themselves legal rights and protection from anti-Queer
discrimination. “Class: this is really why we’re here today,” Anderson said.
“What are the demands of the Queer movement? One demand is the end of housing
discrimination. However, renting property or being denied housing due to one’s
gender, preference or orientation is not an issue of the one percent who own
nearly half the wealth in this country. The end of employment discrimination:
this is an issue for the working class. The rich are not affected by the fact
that Queer people can be fired in more states than not, simply for who we are
or how we are perceived to be, who we and I are.
“We fight so
that our partners have access to health insurance,” Anderson added. “This,
again, is only an issue if you cannot afford to purchase private insurance.
This is not an issue for the one percent. This is an issue for us, the 99
percent. We demand Social Security benefits for surviving partners, but I know
people on Social Security and it is a pittance, crumbs, a few hundred dollars
for our elderly to barely survive on. Are rich people concerned with their
partners having access to a few hundred dollars a month after the death of one
partner? Hell, no! Four hundred families have nearly half the wealth of this
country. As long as there is an upper class and a lower class, as long as there
are rulers and ruled, there will be a struggle between those classes. The
ruling class will use religion, they will use police intimidation, as we were
subjected to, among many other tools at their disposal to divide and conquer
the lower class, us. This is why we are here.”
Being part of
the Equality Nine is something I’ll never forget,” said Stemke. “I’m so proud
of it, and I’m so proud to see all these people out here who’ve come to support
us. To me, what this shows is that the support for the Equality Nine, the
number of people who want to keep fighting Proposition 8, is growing, not
shrinking, not getting tired but growing and getting stronger.” He noted that
Proposition 8 literally went into effect the day it was passed, while Judge
Walker’s decision that it is unconstitutional still hasn’t become effective
over a year after it was handed down.
“Just as we had
feared a year ago, justice delayed is justice denied,” Stemke said. “When
Proposition 8 passed, the next day same-sex marriages stopped. No appeals
process, no stay. But when Proposition 8 is found to be grossly
unconstitutional and injurious to Gay people, then the people behind it were
given an apparently indefinite timetable to regroup and appeal. What kind of
system is this which automatically defaults to the side of bigotry and hatred?
What kind of system is this which will hem and haw while your rights are being
violated? It’s a system that will hold you down as long as you allow it. And
it’s time for this charade to end.”
The next court
date for the Equality Nine is Monday, October 17, 9 a.m. at the San Diego
Superior Court, Front Street and Broadway downtown. A press conference with the
Equality Nine is scheduled that day at noon outside the courthouse. For more
information, visit the S.A.M.E. Web site at www.samealliance.com
