by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2012 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
Christine Kehoe and
San Diego Democrats for Equality president Doug Case
Mayor-elect Bob
Filner
Christine Kehoe
Jess Durfee
Eric Isaacson
Assemblymember-elect Dr.
Shirley Weber and President’s Award winner Gloria Johnson
Craig Roberts
Don Mullen auctions
off the flag he had signed by Queer elected officials at the 2012 Democratic
National Convention
“Victory in All Four!”
Four states’ voters break the jinx against marriage equality at the polls
What a difference
two years makes! The predominantly Queer San Diego Democrats for Equality’s
2010 Freedom Awards, held in the aftermath of a disastrous election for
Democrats both locally and nationwide, was so dispirited that the cover of its
program actually said, “It Gets Better (for Democrats).” This year it did get better. The club had a lot to celebrate when it
got together for the 2012 Freedom Awards November 17 at the 1202 club on
University and Vermont in Hillcrest. President Obama had carried San Diego County,
the first time any Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt had won this county’s
presidential vote twice in a row. Bob Filner had won a close-fought race to
become San Diego’s next Mayor — beating out Right-wing Queer Republican Carl
DeMaio — and Sherri Lightner had easily won re-election to the San Diego City
Council, preserving the Council’s Democratic majority.
Indeed, all four
of the club’s top-priority candidates for November 2012 won: Filner, Lightner,
Scott Peters — who beat longtime Republican Congressmember Brian Bilbray in one
of the nation’s most heavily watched Congressional races, with lots of
out-of-town money and supposedly “independent” super-PAC’s on both sides — and
openly Gay Democrat Dave Roberts, who beat out Republican Steve Danon to become
the first openly Queer member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and
the first Democrat to sit on that board in 20 years. The club also won its
fifth priority race: No on Proposition 32, the initiative that would have
effectively eliminated organized labor’s ability to raise money for political
action.
And the club had
plenty to celebrate outside San Diego,
too, including the election of Tammy Baldwin as U.S. Senator from Wisconsin —
the first openly Queer person in the Senate (though in her victory speech she
referred to herself, not as “Lesbian” or “LGBT,” but as “Gay”) — and Elizabeth
Warren’s defeat of Republican Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts. What’s
more, the jinx against marriage equality at the ballot box was definitively broken
on November 6, 2012. Voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington states approved
laws allowing same-sex partners to marry each other, and in Minnesota an
attempt to freeze the legislative ban on legal recognition of same-sex marriage
into the state constitution was defeated. One of the slides shown at the
Freedom Awards linked to http://thefour2012.com/, a Web site which
coordinated nationwide support for the marriage votes in those states
and is now celebrating the historic 4-for-4 sweep.
The exuberant
mood was apparent throughout the Freedom Awards, from the introduction by
current club president Doug Case — who opened the event by acknowledging the
elected officials present and joking about Republican presidential candidate
Mitt Romney’s recent charge that Obama bought his re-election by offering
“gifts” to the groups that supported him — to the featured speakers. The second
half of the event had been announced as a tribute to State Senator Christine
Kehoe, who in 1993 won a seat on the San Diego City Council and thereby became
the first openly Queer elected official in San Diego County. But her remarks
and the slide show documenting the history of her campaigns, though well
received, were overshadowed by the appearance of Mayor-elect Filner in the
first half.
“It was a great
election,” Filner said. “Dave Roberts was elected to the Board of Supervisors,
Scott Peters gave us a three-Democrat Congressional delegation, and when Sherri
Lightner and I won, we had the first Democratic Mayor and City Council majority in San Diego history. … This
is going to be the biggest change in San Diego history. We’re going to have a
new city and new people at the table. We’ve seen the precinct-by-precinct
analysis by City Council districts, and it’s safe to say that I was elected
because of the Gay community in San Diego.”
Filner
acknowledged that the struggle for change begins, not ends, with an election victory. “I’m going to need your help even
more in governing than I did in being elected,” he said. “To govern in a
progressive way, we’re going to have to organize. We can’t just move ahead of
everybody because then they’ll just pick us off. The newspapers, utilities and
businesspeople will try to kill us off. We’re going to talk about government
and public employees in a new way. We have not tapped the resources of our
communities. … If we’re going to have neighborhoods and ethnic groups that have
real power, if we’re going to have real public transit and deal with
homelessness in a humane way, we have to work hard because the public has been
brainwashed for so long about what is possible. To get things done, we’re going
to have to accomplish even more.”
The awards
ceremonies themselves occupied the first half of the program, and went faster
than expected because two of the honorees — labor representative and Queer
activist Brian Polejes and veteran club member and volunteer John Lockhart —
were unable to attend. The award winners who were there included Jess Durfee, former Democrats for Equality president
and currently finishing his unprecedented fourth term as chair of the San Diego
County Democratic Party; attorney Eric Isaacson, honored for the
friends-of-the-court briefs he submitted in marriage equality litigation in
California; and Craig Roberts, former club president who was honored for his
seven-year stint editing the Democrats for Equality’s newsletter.
Durfee, who won
the A. Brad Truax Human Rights Awards, opened his speech by regretting that he
never got to meet the award’s namesake, who served as club president in the
early 1980’s and later died of complications from AIDS. “But I’ve heard a lot about his
contributions to the political landscape of San Diego,” Durfee said. “This is
my home club, and I have always felt that the folks in this club had my back
and gave me a level of support and confidence. I will always appreciate this
club for the support, the critiques and the personal friendships, and as I end
my tenure as Democratic Party chair, there couldn’t be a better election to go
out on.”
Isaacson said
his work on behalf of marriage equality began when “my wife and I asked the
board of our church, the First Unitarian-Universalist Church, if we could
represent them. You can expect the Right to file briefs against marriage
equality that say their traditions go back to the Pilgrims — only today the
church the Pilgrims founded welcomes same-sex couples and performs marriage
ceremonies for them. The largest congregation of American Jews, Reform Judaism,
supports marriage equality. I want to thank churches like the
Unitarian-Universalists and United Church of Christ, and the people over the
years who have taken churches that punished you for not toeing the line and
turned them into churches that are loving and accepting.”
“I’m so honored
to receive this the night we are honoring Chris Kehoe, because she got me
started on this,” said Roberts. “The last 20 years of being involved in the
club, and the seven years I’ve been working on the newsletter, have enriched my
life in ways I couldn’t possibly have imagined. I feel a great sense of
community and family in this club.”
The tribute to
Kehoe was kicked off by former club treasurer Mel Merrill, well known at club
events for his wryly humorous talks. “Nine years ago I had the honor of being
one of Christine’s roasters at an event celebrating her tenth anniversary in
elective office,” Merrill said. “We probably want to cheer Chris up a little
tonight. It must make you feel very old when your office files are packed up
and delivered to the Lambda Archives, as they were last month, actually
displacing a large part of the porn collection to make room for them.”
Merrill pointed
out that this year five out of six Queer Congressmembers won their re-election
bids, and between that and Tammy Baldwin’s U.S. Senate victory (Baldwin was the
keynote speaker at the 1999 Freedom Awards, then called the Freedom Banquet,
and gave a cover-story interview to Zenger’s Newsmagazine) it was a good year for Queer candidates for office.
He also recalled that when he and many of the club’s members first met Baldwin,
“all we could talk about was how much she reminded us of Chris.”
“What we have
done since 1993 is we have finally built a Democratic majority that has turned
San Diego County blue,” Kehoe said in her featured speech. “But I must say
nothing in my time in San Diego has meant as much to me as the election of Bob
Filner as Mayor. The San Diego Democrats for Equality are the core of that
movement. You have been here through all those dark years of Republican Mayors.
We haven’t had a Democratic Mayor or County Supervisor for 20 years, and now
we’ve changed that.”
Kehoe profusely
thanked her early supporters in the 1993 City Council campaign — particularly
Bill Beck, Ruth Bornstein, Toni Atkins and Jeffrey Tom — as well as the openly
Queer Councilmembers who have filled her seat since she was termed out, Atkins
and Todd Gloria; and Bonnie Dumanis, who became San Diego’s first openly Queer
Republican elected official when she won her race for San Diego County District
Attorney. “We’ve got to make sure we still have people coming through the
pipeline,” Kehoe said. “We need to bring in new people, keep Democratic voters
in track, keep responding to the Right and look at every election, every City
Council race.”
The President’s Award — the only one not announced in advance — went to veteran activist Gloria Johnson, who’s been involved with the club for over three decades. The event concluded with club member Don Mullen auctioning off the rainbow flag he had had autographed by openly Queer elected officials at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, where he served as a delegate.
The President’s Award — the only one not announced in advance — went to veteran activist Gloria Johnson, who’s been involved with the club for over three decades. The event concluded with club member Don Mullen auctioning off the rainbow flag he had had autographed by openly Queer elected officials at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, where he served as a delegate.
