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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (April 2, 1999)
PHOTO BY UN DA aprii 2.1999 » J u s t o u t 21 Carl Kiss (far left) with the Tanner plaintiffs at a press conference in December 1998 Straight ALLIES Continued from Page 19 Upon composing himself, he called the plain tiffs, then his wife. “She cried, too,” he says. It was— and continues to be— very soul stirring and personal; re-envisioning the sce nario three years later draws tears from Kiss. case he spent nearly eight years working on: Tanner vs. Oregon Health Sciences University. Queer community, meet Carl Kiss, a man who speaks of the pleasures of teaching his 9- om in 1956, Kiss was raised in a Chicago year-old daughter, Molly, how to dribble a bas suburb by parents who engaged themselves ketball and snare a softball. A man who, after and their two sons in “active discussions” 14 years of marriage, still gushes when men around the dinner table. (Kiss’ dad did most of tioning his writer-editor wife, Lynn Lustberg. the talking, though.) Kiss is a Portland-based attorney who pored Kiss aspired to be an astronaut until the no fewer than 1,000 hours of labor— and expo sixth grade, when he figured he’d eventually nentially more via the expenditure of emo tion— into crafting a legal case that would eventually lead to a historic _________ episode. On Dec. 9, 1998, the Oregon believe that all Court of Appeals released the people are equal, or Tanner ruling— the first of its kind in the nation—stipulating created by God, or that all state and local govern however you wish to ments in Oregon must offer spousal benefits to the same-sex phrase it. Why should domestic partners of their employees. we single out and The ruling stemmed from a despise people just lawsuit initiated by three lesbian employees at Oregon Health Sci because they're ences University who claimed their domestic partners were different?" entitled to benefits. The unani mous three-judge panel said — Joseph Tam denying the benefits violated equal protection provisions of the Oregon Constitution. The ruling goes even further. It prohibits private employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation in hiring, firing, promotions and pay— marking the first time an appellate court has interpreted a statecon- stitution to prohibit employment discrimina tion on the basis of sexual orientation. In playfully simplistic terms, its awesome. The court’s action snagged some serious media attention, and spawned a jubilant exhaustion among those closest to the epi sw# center: the six plaintiffs— Christine Tanner, School board buddy Joseph Tam Lisa Chickadonz, Barbara Limandri, Regenia Phillips, Terrie Lyons and Kathleen Grogan; sprout too tall. (By eighth grade he had already Kiss; and Portland attorney Lynn Nakamoto, reached 6-foot-3.) St) Kiss pondered becoming whose contributions Kiss warmly cites. a pediatrician. The appellate ruling upheld a 1996 trial “I always loved kids,” he explains. But Kiss ruling by Multnomah County Circuit Judge possessed concerns about a life potentially Stephen Gallagher, which, when unveiled, plagued by sleep deficiency— and watching shtxik Kiss. cranky kids in pain and discomfort was hound “ I cried," he says, recounting the moment to pose a challenge to someone not inclined to he learned of Gallagher’s opinion. It was a Sat squelch his sensitive ways. urday, and he received word through the mail. B 7 So law it was, or as Kiss describes it, “another means to help people who needed it.” In fact it was at the New York University School of Law— in queer-saturated Greenwich Village— that Kiss became aware of gay folks. “My last prejudice was against gays and les bians,” he concedes. Not a prejudice that manifests itself in an active, bashing manner, but rather a prejudice that takes the form of oblivion and disassocia- tion. “I didn’t know any openly gay or lesbian people before I went to NYU,” he explains. And so a new world was revealed. He learned of gay and lesbian students who opted for NYU over the more prestigious institutions of Harvard and Yale in order “to find that sense of acceptance and family.” It was a revelation, says Kiss, to see the lengths gay men and lesbians traveled to attain that connection. A W ell -R ouped E ducation Jo sep h T am and Marc Abrams have shaped the Portland school board's gay-friendly policies by P atrick C ollins t’s important that queers have allies at the White House, the U.S. Capitol, and in the legislative halls closer to home. But it seems equally important to have allies seated at the table of another body of decision-makers: local school boards. In Portland, two such individuals stand out. Both Marc Abrams and Joseph Tam are straight, married, and have children who iss estimates roughly 25 attorneys turned attend Portland public schools. Both work in down the Tanner plaintiffs before he took on professions that require a degree of advocacy, the case. Perhaps those esquires were over or at least empathy: Tam as an investigator in worked, unenthused, or believed the plaintiffs the civil rights division of the state Bureau of were cradling a lost cause. After all, no matter Labor and Industries; Abrams as an employ how cogent the argument before them, judges ment attorney. traditionally balk at “going where no judge has And each has stuck his neck out on behalf gone before,” as Kiss puts it. of the queer community, and not, say both, And when it comes to sexual orientation because of any personal connection to the issues and the law, we’re talking about massive issue, but because of a foundation of ideals ly unexplored terrain. each acquired early in life. But Kiss saw something else: “This was the Once on the school hoard, Tam helped type of case you go to law school for.” The rare form a sexual minority parents advisory group; Abrams spearheaded what eventually became a Portland Public Schools policy forbidding military recruiters on school property due to the military’s discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Tam’s awareness sprouted halfway around the globe, in Hong Kong, where he grew up. “When I was growing up, Hong Kong was 99 percent Chinese, so I wasn’t exposed to a lot of other cultures,” recalls Tam, who immi grated to the United States in 1972. “ But I’ve always had an innate desire to learn. I remem ber looking at the globe as a kid, identifying where Hong Kong was, and then looking across the ocean and several time zones at this place called America and wondering how peo ple live over there.” For Abrams, who grew up in New York City in what he describes as an activist house hold, the mere notion of not integrating other cultures into his world vision wasn’t even an option. “I grew up in a family where you walk the talk, period,” he says, adding that both his grandparents were union organizers and that his father served for many years as the treasurer of Amnesty International. For Abrams, the family’s agitation gene took him in a different direction. In 1981 he earned a dual master’s degree from the Univer sity of Michigan in journalism and law, and from 1983 to 1985 he directed the Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C. "I could very well he the only school board member in America who once earned a living suing school hoards,” he notes. In 1988 Abrams moved to Portland so that find that offers an attorney the chance not his wife, Barb, could take a position with the only to help the people he or she represents, Oregon Historical Society, of which she is now hut also to transform the legal landscape, and deputy director. maybe even culture. Not one to sit still for long, Abrams has Kiss, a solo practitioner, hunkered down; since racked up an impressive list of accom nearly a decade later, the legal landscape— and plishments. In 1991-92 he served as president maybe even culture— is a little more gay- of his neighborhood association. In 1992 he friendly. K Continued on Page 23 1
