interview by MARK
GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2012 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW!:
PHOTOS, top to
bottom:
Sean Bohac
Sean Bohac and Cecile Veillard
August 19, 2010:
S.A.M.E. members sit in at the County Clerk’s office, while sheriff’s deputies
bar them from entering. Sean Bohac is center left (seated, with bag); Cecile
Veillard (with ponytail, back to camera) and Zakiya Khabir are at the right.
(Photo: Courtesy San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality.)
February 7, 2012:
L to R: José Medina (with sign), Lisa Kove (filming), Thomas, Zakiya Khabir
(speaking) and Sean Bohac (behind canopy support) at the celebration of the
Ninth Circuit ruling against Proposition 8.
Despite the
high drama associated with the term “civil disobedience,” it’s actually pretty
rare these days for anyone who’s arrested at a demonstration actually to be
prosecuted and put on trial. But that’s what’s happening Monday, April 30 to
at least some of the “Equality Nine” — Michael Anderson, Brian Baumgartner,
Sean Bohac, Felicity Bradley, Kelsey Hoffman, Mike Kennedy, Zakiya Khabir,
Chuck Stemke and Cecile Veillard — members of the San Diego Alliance for
Marriage Equality (S.A.M.E.) who were arrested August 19, 2010 at the San Diego
County Administration Center just after Vaughn Walker issued his ruling in the
Proposition 8 trial and became the first judge to declare California’s
voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage to be a violation of the U.S.
Constitution.
Zenger’s interviewed three of the Nine — Sean Bohac,
Zakiya Khabir and Cecile Veillard — on February 18. They were reluctant to
discuss the specifics of what happened the day they were arrested (their
attorneys had warned them the prosecution could use whatever they told the
media against them) but were quite eloquent about the sheer length of time both
their case and the overall Proposition 8 litigation is taking, the absurdity of
the arguments used to deny same-sex couples an equal right to marry, the city’s
insistence on spending a lot of money to prosecute them when both the office of
city attorney Jan Goldsmith and the San Diego County Superior Court system
which will try them are facing massive budget cuts, and the possible precedent
their treatment will set for the way the city treats the people who’ve been
arrested in the Occupy San Diego protests.
S.A.M.E. and
the Equality Nine want people to write to City Attorney Goldsmith, 1200 Third
Ave ., Suite 1620. San Diego, CA 92101, phone him at (619) 236-6220 or e-mail cityattorney@sandiego.gov to urge him to
drop all charges against the Equality Nine before the case goes to trial.
They’re also asking people to write letters to the editor of all San Diego’s
newspapers urging them to cover the trial, and to come to the trial site — 220 West
Broadway downtown — for a rally from 8 to 9 a.m. April 30 before the trial
begins, and to attend the trial itself, tentatively set for “District”
(courtroom) 51. [Full disclosure: the interviewer is a member of S.A.M.E. and
was recently elected to the organization’s five-member steering committee. He
is also a legally married Gay man; he and his husband Charles tied the knot in
the 4 ½ months between the legal recognition of marriage equality by the
California Supreme Court in May 2008, which became effective that June, and the
passage of Proposition 8 that November.]
Zenger’s: Just who and what are the Equality Nine?
Cecile
Veillard: The nine of us who were arrested
on August 19, 2010, which was the day that Judge Vaughn Walker had designated
as the first day that a temporary stay [delay] on his decision that Proposition
8 was unconstitutional would be lifted, so that same-sex couples could again
begin to apply for marriage licenses in California. Several same-sex couples
[including Equality Nine members Michael Anderson and Brian Baumgardner]
actually had appointments to be married in San Diego County that morning. They
hadn’t been notified that their appointments would not be honored.
We went in to
support their right to marry, and because of the new stay that had been imposed
by the Ninth Circuit while they were going to hear the appeal by the National
Organization for Marriage of Judge Walker’s decision, we didn’t expect that
those appointments would be honored. But we also didn’t expect to be arrested
by 9 o’clock that morning by 50 sheriff’s deputies in full riot gear. There
were a lot more than nine people in the clerk’s office that morning, but it was
the nine of us who were sitting by the doors of the clerk’s office who were
arrested.
Zenger’s: Why do you think you were singled out?
Zakiya
Khabir: I think what happened was not a
matter of who was in the hallway, but more that there were people who were
trying to get licenses, and we were sitting down in the hallway.
Veillard: What the prosecution is essentially arguing is that
we were preventing “equal access,” which is the most ironic of terms. The
charge is we prevented “equal access” to opposite-sex couples from entering the
clerk’s office, and that’s factually not true.
Zenger’s: So the upshot is you guys were arrested, and
what’s happened since? Isn’t it somewhat unusual for a case of this sort to go
all the way to a jury trial?
Khabir: From what our lawyers tell us, this would be the
first time that someone was prosecuted under this particular statute [Penal
Code section 602.1 (b)] in California. There’s no previous case law on it.
Usually, when the charges are dropped, because presumably they can’t stick.
Because the way it’s written, from what our lawyers say, is kind of awkward and
weird, and it has this First Amendment clause built into it. [Section 602.1
(c): “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.”] So in the course of a demonstration, it
shouldn’t apply.
Zenger’s: What were you hoping to accomplish by the
action, and what are you hoping will be the result of this going to trial?
Sean Bohac: We actually hoped we could get the county clerk to
issue same-sex marriage licenses. There was a couple who was cooperating with
our organizing, who had written a letter indicating that the county clerk
should follow the will of the governor and the attorney general, who are
chain-of-command the bosses of the county clerk. [The couple were Tony and
Tyler Dylan-Hyde; Tyler, an attorney, had written a legal memo to that effect.]
We hoped that the county would do what’s right and issue the marriage licenses
to Tony and Tyler, and Michael and Brian.
Veillard: And Claire and Ditchi [a Lesbian couple who were
part of the action, and who like Tony and Tyler — but unlike Michael and Brian
— also had made appointments].
Bohac: Beyond the possibility of getting marriage
licenses, it’s also really important that the average person remembers that
Gays and Lesbians are discriminated against. I can’t tell you how many smart
people I’ve talked to who say, “Oh, can’t you get married already? I thought
that was illegal,” referring to Proposition 8. And I have to say no,
discrimination is still going on. So every time we do some sort of an action or
event, for me one of the goals is to make sure people know that Gays and
Lesbians are still being discriminated against by the state.
Veillard: It’s calling attention to the fact that the
injustice continues, that Proposition 8 is still the law of the state, in spite
of having been overturned by two federal courts.
Khabir: It’s absurd. When you look at the path of marriage
equality in the U.S., it looks like more and more states within a number of years
are going to adopt it. It looks like Maryland is going to be the next one, and
even though the law that prevents us from getting married had been declared
unconstitutional twice, people still can’t get married. The
reason isn’t because of any harm to the state. There’s no harm to anyone.
Veillard: It’s just a delay in the delivery of justice.
Bohac: I assume I speak for other people in saying that
when we work for marriage equality, we’re working on LGBT [Queer] equality in
general. S.A.M.E. was organized right after the passage of Proposition 8, and
we did focus on marriage equality for at least a couple months. But then we
began working on other issues like “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal, Transgender
acceptance. We have, I think smartly, reached out to other oppressed-people
movements, to create solidarity with LGBT and immigrants’ rights, students who
are fighting for funding in their schools. Marriage equality is an issue we
fight hard for. But it’s a symbol of other forms of discrimination that Gays
and Lesbians face.
Zenger’s: I understand at one point you were actually
offered a plea bargain. What was the deal you were offered, and why did you
decline it?
Khabir: It was a tough decision. I can’t speak directly for
those who took the plea bargain, but no one feels like we’re guilty. I think a
lot of us have a problem with the fact that in order to erase all this, you
have to sort of say something that you really feel isn’t true.
Bohac: Not “sort of.” You explicitly have to
say something that’s not true.
Khabir: I think the day would have happened a lot differently if they’d let us into the
office where marriages were being performed, or the clerk’s office. We weren’t
even allowed into the clerk’s office. No one from our group was allowed in the
clerk’s office.
Veillard: Couples who had appointments were not allowed into
the clerk’s office.
Zenger’s: So they were not allowed in, not even to be
told, “No, there’s a stay that the Appeals Court put on it, you can’t get
married today.”
Veillard: Correct.
Khabir: Right. There were sheriffs blocking the door, and
when a sheriff is blocking a door, keeping you out and letting in a
heterosexual couple, it’s really hard to say, “Well, that’s O.K. We’ll just
sign on the dotted line and forget all about this,” you know?
Bohac: I believe we were offered a plea bargain where we
could plead guilty, accept eight hours of community service.
Khabir: Which shows how minor this really is. What they
really wanted us to do was say, “We did bad,” and end it. Because they know
we’re all involved in a non-profit organization, right? They all know the eight
hours is not a problem. We do 20 to 30 hours a week of non-profit work. But I
think the plea is in and of itself an admission of their
wrongdoing, not an admission of ours.
Bohac: Right. And I felt like they should be
dropping the charges. It wasn’t up to us to drop the charges. The city should
have recognized that they were going to spend a lot of money to try to make an
example out of the nine of us, and they’re not — it’s uncertain what’s going to
come out of the trial, but there’s no guarantee that they’re going to win.
Veillard: And we’re right.
Bohac: They’re the ones who are deciding to
spend a bunch of money to try to get us.
Veillard: These are taxpayer dollars, by the way, to put
things into context, in a time when, according to the judge who’s going to be
overseeing the trial herself, the San Diego County Superior Court is facing
millions of dollars of budget cuts in the next year. And here they are pursuing
this trial, which is going to take tremendous amounts of resources, because
it’s going to take a full week’s trial.
They expect an
extensive jury selection process, because this is a civil-rights case. They
intend to make sure they get rid of any quote-unquote “bias” from anyone who
actually believes in LGBT equality, or anyone who already has an opinion about
Proposition 8 — which is going to be hard to do, since this is a very
polarizing issue. So the jury selection alone is expected to be a drawn-out
process, an expensive process.
Bohac: And it’s not just a three- to five-day trial. I
happened to run into my lawyer last night, and he talked about how the city is
spending time submitting their briefs and doing all kinds of research.
Veillard: A lot of work is going into this.
Khabir: In order to stop people from peacefully chanting,
“We Want Equal Rights.” It’s just absurd.
Zenger’s: Do you think one of the reasons they are pushing
this is to set a kind of precedent for the people who’ve been arrested during
the Occupy demonstrations?
Bohac: I don’t think so, because we preceded it by a year.
Khabir: It seems like we were well on our way to a trial
before the police really cracked down on Occupy the way that they did later on.
Occupy is definitely going to play a part in whatever decision is made. It’s
just that I’m not clear which way it’ll go. But that’s another reason not to
take the plea: because of Occupy, because —
Veillard: We have to stand up.
Khabir: We have been down there, and we have seen them [the
police] tell people they were going to be arrested for leaving their book bag
on the ground.
Bohac: Many of us were excited when Occupy San Diego was
forming, drawing crowds and working towards making a statement that represents
why people are dissatisfied in these times. I think that kind of expression is
really important in society, and so we have to fight this case,
partly because if we win, it’s going to encourage other people to stand up and
represent themselves when they feel like some kind of injustice is taking
place.
Zenger’s: But there are some people who would say, “What’s
the big deal? This is a struggle about marriage equality and civil rights, and
Occupy is about economic distribution and the 99 percent and tax rates and
corporate profits and whatnot. Where is the real connection between the
issues?”
Khabir: The connection is everything that’s used to divide
the working classes. Homophobia is a way for a group of people to be set apart
from another group of people, and not be able to unite and struggle together in
order to make their lives better. As someone who supports Occupy, it’s
important for me to fight homophobia because homophobia is a tool of the 1
percent. And as a Queer person, Occupy is important to me because I am part of
the 99 percent, because I have a job; because a lot of my friends are
unemployed; because I am sick of watching very rich people live very easy
lives, while people who work really, really hard struggle to make it.
Veillard: Another thing I would add to that, too, is that the
way that the Equality Nine are being prosecuted is a counterpoint example to
exactly what Occupy is protesting, which is why is it that the 1 percent get
away with massive economic crimes without trial, without
investigation, without prosecution. Even if you agree with the San Diego city
attorney that we were obstructing business that day — which we contest —that’s
a petty crime. Why is it so important to prosecute these petty crimes, and yet
we can’t get prosecutions against the 1 percent that starve people and make
them homeless and jobless? Why aren’t those
crimes prosecuted with the same zeal? That’s the big question of the Occupy
movement. And I think we’re proud to be a part of that, for that reason.
Also, Occupy has
been so supportive, and expressed such strong solidarity with the Equality
Nine, since learning about our story, not only because of its demand of civil
justice for same-sex couples but also for what I believe they consider to be
the bravery of the Equality Nine in standing up to the law and being willing to
put our bodies on the line, and even be arrested if necessary, to stand up for
what we believe is right. Occupy has that same spirit of militancy, and I think
that’s why they appreciate our struggle.
Bohac: There’s a guy who came to our rally on Tuesday
[February 7] who was with Occupy, and he mentioned that it wasn’t too long ago
that he was homophobic. He said his interaction with Occupy cured him of that
idiocy, and he was impressed with the Queer community because he felt like we
were like the smallest group, but were making the most noise to achieve
justice.
Veillard: There’s a sense of admiration for the LGBT
community and the strength and militancy of its movement and its willingness to
fight back against injustices toward our community.
Another comment
I want to add is that even though we supposedly live on the value of innocent
until proven guilty in this country, the fact is that being arrested is a presumption of guilt and comes with its own
punishment. All of us missed work that day. All of us had to explain it to our
workplaces why we missed work.
That put us in danger of losing our jobs. It’s a loss of a day’s wages. There
are so many punishments built in just to being arrested, supposedly under the
presumption of innocence. It’s a contradiction in itself.
The system is
rigged to find the poor guilty. Had we not had nine extremely qualified,
skilled and experienced civil-rights attorneys offer to defend us, I think almost all of us would have
had to be defended by public defenders. And I don’t think any of those public
defenders would have advised us to plead not guilty and to fight these charges.
Instead, we probably would have been advised to accept the plea, which is
itself punishment.
Khabir: And we probably would have had a much worse plea
offer, as well. But I think the reason we have the support we do is there’s a
really good feeling that the two issues we’re talking about here, free speech
and marriage equality, are really, really important bedrock issues that are worth
fighting for.
Veillard: I want to say, too, that I think the city attorney
is going to pay for having prosecuted us in a couple of ways. One, if he didn’t
want any additional attention to the marriage equality issue, he’s
made a big mistake, because trying us is simply going to force this issue into
the news.
And the second
thing is that he’s on the wrong side of history. Whether it’s this year, or in
10 years, or in 20 years, he’ll be proven wrong. By prosecuting us and forcing
us to fight these charges, and making it a bigger issue than it needed to be,
he’s inflating the level of embarrassment he’s going to have to face by
pressing these charges when he could have simply dropped the charges and saved
the city a lot of money, and us a lot of time.
Zenger’s: I know that’s a phrase that’s used a lot in the
discourse on marriage equality, especially from our side, that this is the tide
of history. On the other hand, every state in the United States that has had a chance
to vote on whether same-sex couples should get married has voted against it.
California, generally known as a liberal state, especially on social issues,
has voted against it twice.
In both
Washington and New Jersey it is likely to come before a vote again — in
Washington because, though the governor signed it into law, the opponents have
a chance to put a referendum on the ballot to repeal it; and in New Jersey
because the governor vetoed it and said, “I want the voters to decide this, not
the legislature.” Given that, so far, it has been impossible for the marriage
equality movement in this country to get the voters of a state to say, “Yes,
same-sex couples should be able to get married,” why do you say, “This is the
tide of history”?
Khabir: I think there are a couple of things wrapped up in
there. One, we’ve lost at the ballot box. But we also get closer to winning at
the ballot box every time around. And we also have some really vicious, really
well-funded opposition that tells lies — yeah, let’s call them lies — to voters
about what these laws actually mean. We also have a huge abstention rate with
voting in this country, and that’s another issue altogether.
So where I say
the tide is changing is, one, public opinion is changing. Two, we are seeing more rights, more visibility, etc. But I think
you’re right in that there are no guarantees. We’ve gone backwards on women’s
rights in a lot of ways. There are some ways in which we’ve advanced, but
without struggle, there’s no guarantee that the tide of history will go on our
side.
But I think what
Cecile is banking on, and what we’re banking on, is that people are not just
going to sit around and wait for it to happen, and that we’re — just what we’ve
seen in the last couple of years. Last Tuesday [February 7] when we had the
rally [to support the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for upholding Judge
Walker’s decision that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional], it shows that people are willing to come out and
make it a big deal to say that they’re going to keep fighting for it, to say
that it’s not O.K., it’s not something that they’ll just wait around for.
Should we be voting on people’s rights anyway is another question.
Zenger’s: I know that a number of people have pointed out
that if the opponents of interracial marriage in 1967 had had a way to put Loving v. Virginia on the ballot, civil rights would have lost
then, too.
Khabir: And they’d do it today. Imagine if that were a law
today, and imagine that the campaign against interracial marriage were being
launched by the National Organization for Marriage and Rick Santorum. I can’t
say for sure that people, even today, wouldn’t vote overwhelmingly against
interracial marriage.
Bohac: I think I’m a little more optimistic. I’m pretty
sure that Maine is going to be the first state to pass a referendum in support
of Gay and Lesbian rights to marry. It’s clear to me that you can judge a tide
of public opinion based on polling. Because we haven’t got the 50 percent plus one in any of the elections
that have taken place, it sounds like it’s all one way. But really it’s been
coming our way the whole time.
Veillard: I wanted to say a couple of things to Zakiya’s
point about whether civil rights should be voted on. I think that’s a debate
that really needs to be had in this country. I think that the principle that
most Americans believe this country is founded on is the basic freedom to do
whatever it is you want to do so long as you’re not harming anyone else.
Gay marriage
doesn’t harm anyone. There’s that clever sign that says, “If my Gay marriage
affects your marriage, then your marriage needs therapy.” You could say the
same thing about abortion rights. You could say the same thing about the
freedom of choice to end your own life with dignity at a time when you feel
prepared to do so if you’re suffering from a terminal illness. The right to use
medical marijuana. All these things that are under attack, that really ought to
be basic civil rights.
And also to
Zakiya’s point about sort of the tide going in our direction, there’s Martin
Luther King’s quote that the arc of history is long, but it bends towards
justice. If you see the arc as a bar of steel, then to Zakiya’s point that
nothing is inevitable, that we have to continue to fight for what we want. Our
job is to keep the iron hot.
Zenger’s: Because I could imagine myself — thought
experiment — interviewing three members of the National Organization for
Marriage and ProtectMarriage.com, and they’d be saying, “Well, what do you
mean, abortion doesn’t hurt anybody else? It’s killing millions of innocent
babies! What do you mean, same-sex marriage doesn’t hurt anybody else? It makes
America disfavored in the eyes of God!”
Bohac: But what does that have to do with government?
Veillard: Yes, with the separation of church and state we’re
not supposed to decide our laws based on the fear of God.
