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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 1996)
jus« out ▼ January 19, 1996 ▼ 9 So far, so good Washington initiative effort fails; Oregon activist cautions: ‘This is no bellwether 9 V by Inga Sorensen atrick Hogan knows that tenacity can pay off. P And when your organization’s over all two-year-budget hovers at the $ 10,000 mark, it’s a good thing that dedication is to be found in abundance. “We spent a lot o f time and energy training volunteers who really cared about preserving people’s civil rights. They were the heart o f this effort,” says Hogan of the Seattle-based Bigot Bust ers, a group which was formed to discourage voters from signing petitions for initiatives aimed at limit ing citizens’ basic human rights, specifically the rights of sexual minorities. The “effort” Hogan is referring to is the failure o f anti-gay-rights backers to gather enough signa tures necessary to place two anti-gay initiatives before the 1996 Washington Legislature. Initiative 166 would have prevented govern ments from granting civil rights protections based on sexual orientation. Initiative 167 would have limited adoption and foster parenting rights to mar ried heterosexual couples. A lack o f voter interest and disorganization are cited as primary reasons initiative proponents were unable to collect the necessary 181,667 signatures by the Dec. 29 deadline. The work of Bigot Busters and other groups is also being touted as a factor. “And I think people here are getting tired o f this whole issue,” says Hogan, who says the campaign seemed relatively low key. “It was not emotionally charged whatsoever. It was actually quite unevent ful. People in Washington are pretty sophisticated.” Like their counterparts in Oregon, which has been bigot busting since the volatile Ballot Measure 9 campaign of 1991 -92, Bigot Buster volunteers this year headed out to shopping malls and state fairs— “and lots o f Costcos”— to pass out literature and encourage voters to “decline to sign.” It is a call many of the state’s residents appar ently heeded. In fact, it was the second consecutive year that anti-gay-rights proposals have failed to win widespread support in Washington. Last year, two other anti-gay measures, initia tives 608 and 610, failed to get on the ballot due to a lack of signatures. This time anti-gay supporters tried to go through the Legislature rather than di rectly to the voters, partly because they had more time to collect signatures if they took the legislative route. Gay-rights advocates have even more reason to cheer: W ashington state Rep. Val Stevens (R-Ar- lington), who was ready to push anti-gay bills simi lar to the initiatives, has backed off due to the short session and other priorities. “I’m not going to pursue them this year,” Stevens told The Seattle Times. Another group being credited for its work is Hands O ff W ashington, which has reportedly spent $1.5 million fighting the initiatives this year and last. During the past couple o f years the group has helped form 26 coalitions in both urban and rural Washington. It also launched a pledge campaign ever, think it isn’t. “Anti-gay-rights proponents in Washington state have never been able to gather enough signatures,” says Julie Davis, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon, the successor organization to the No on 13 campaign. “They have never built a base, which in turn leads to their inability tocollect signatures. That has never been the case in Oregon, where the Oregon Citizens Alliance has a solid base and has proved time and time again that it can get an initia tive on the ballot.” “The OCA has been successful since the [late 1980s]. This is not new to them,” adds Marcy W esterling of the Rural Organizing Project, which assists human rights efforts in small-town and rural Oregon. “And I don’t think it’s a matter of people here being less sophisticated. I think it’s that the OCA may be more sophisticated at crafting its strategy than other similar groups.” Both Davis and ROP’s field network coordina tor, Kelley Weigel, report that they have heard little about sightings o f OCA-backers working to collect the necessary 97,000 signatures to the anti-gay Julie Davis that asked W ashingtonians to sign a Northwest Pledge in which they agreed not to support anti human-rights measures. “I think the various groups have worked well together,” says Kelly Evans, executive director of Hands O ff Washington. “For instance, Bigot Bust ers focused on countering the petition signing, while we worked on different educational components and a lot o f the press w ork.... W e’re very pleased.” h eth er the success in W ashington is a bellw ether for Oregon— which is currently facing four statewide anti-gay- rights initiatives aimed at the Novem ber 1996 ballot— remains to be seen. Leading activists, how W initiatives on the ballot. “It seems very quiet out there,” says Weigel. “We did expect to see some activity at the shopping malls during the holiday season, but we haven’t heard o f that happening. It could very well be that they have enough support that they don’t have to utilize those very public venues anymore.” “I think w e’ll see a lot more activity in the next few months,” adds Davis. ROP continues to promote its “Enough is Enough” campaign, of which the centerpiece orga nizing tool is a postcard that urges Oregonians to uphold democratic principles and think twice before signing anti-human-rights petitions. Westerling es timates that 25,000 have been sent since the cam- paign was launched several months ago. Davis, meanwhile, applauds Washington activ ists’ success, and says the respective camps con tinue to share ideas and strategies. For example, Basic Rights Oregon, which unveiled its pledge campaign several months ago, shared the concept with Hands Off Washington, which embraced it. “Activists in Oregon, Washington and Idaho all model off each other,” says Davis. “For Hands Off Washington to be interested in the pledge idea was a reinforcement o f what we are doing in Oregon.” Davis says her group has collected 6,000pledges from Oregonians who vow to oppose all anti-gay- rights initiatives. Basic Rights Oregon is hoping to gather 200,000 such pledges, and is currently gear ing up to raise nearly $2 million for the campaign. One of the organization’s largest obstacles, how ever, remains the public’s misperception that it is already illegal to discriminate against someone due to his or her sexual orientation. To deal with that inaccurate yet widely held view, the group is creating a “Fair Workplace Project” video, which is designed to educate the public about what is and is not legal with respect to sexual orientation discrimination, particularly as it pertains to employment issues. Davis says production of the video is in the final stages and that it should be released soon. She also says she’d like her group to eventually emulate Hands Off W ashington’s ability to “work the Legislature,” rather than simply mobilizing Or egonians to vote no on an initiative. With the 1-166 and 1-167 defeats under their belts, Washington lesbian- and gay-rights support ers have, in fact, turned their sights toward other measures likely to be considered by state lawmak ers, who began their 1996 session on Jan. 8. A handful of anti-gay measures are expected to make an appearance. Evans believes that her organization, along with the Seattle-based Privacy Fund, which is much like Oregon’s Right to Privacy, will be able to counter that activity because their respective followings are savvy on issues involving the state Legislature. “I think that has a lot to do with the fact that these initiatives were aimed at the Legislature anyway, so people really had to make themselves familiar with the system,” she says. “I think that will greatly help when we are mobilizing the community around bills this session.” “Hands O ff Washington is good at using their base-building to work the Legislature. They did last session and they’ll do it again this session. We are still building our base here in Oregon,” says Davis. “My hope is that we can come out o f the 1996 elections and begin to take it to a more multilevel approach. You need all of the components working together. It takes more than a lobbyist and a bill. 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