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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE AUGUST 5, 1994

THE ONE THING YOU CAN DO AFTER YOU'VE DONE EVERYTHING

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Senate has job rights hearings

Continued from page 1

group around the corner and through an anteroom in an attempt to get them into the hearing room.

But once inside the anteroom "they started shoving people against the wall,” according to Domi. "They actually shoved Ernest Dillon," a gay African American set to testify on his experience of job discrimination.

"It got very violent... trying to push and shove us," said Cheryl Summerville, a lesbian witness in the anteroom. "The hate spilled over more in that room than anywhere I have ever seen before."

"Police. Police here, quick," came the cry from a committee staffer. Several officers jogged across the hearing room as sounds of the furious disturbance spilled into the larger chamber. Witnesses were ushered down out another exit. The TVC group was escorted back to the main corridor and eventually let into the hearing room. Thus, tension was rife when the session began.

"This bill is not about granting special rights it is about righting senseless wrongs," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, DMass., committee chair and chief sponsor of the bill. "Today's hearing brings us closer to the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity."

"This isn't easy for me. But it is important to me and that's why I'm here," testified Summerville, her voice crackling with emotion through her Georgia accent.

She choked back tears describing four exemplary years as a cook for Cracker Barrel and then being fired by that company when it adopted a policy to fire all employees "whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values."

Summerville struggled to maintain her composure, often unsuccessfully, and Kennedy filled those pauses with his own soothing words of appreciation for her efforts, buying time for her to calm down.

She spoke of her small-town roots, of her fears on losing her job-"a mortgage to carry. My son was in high school and had dreams all his own. He was depending on me."

"Since people heard my story," Summerville continued, "I have received harassing and obscene phone calls. I had to take my son out of his high school because the school couldn't assure his safety."

"All of this because I wanted a little piece of the American dream—a loving family, a decent home, and a good job just like everyone else."

Most in the hearing room were moved by her testimony and many a lesbian and gay eye welled with tears at its telling. Among them was Tim McFeeley, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a group coordinating documentation of antigay employment discrimination. Domi said, "I just completely lost it."

Ernest Dillon, the second witness, told his story of long term harassment and assault on the job as a postal worker in Detroit, and of how there was little redress for his problems.

"He threw me to the ground, kicked me, and beat me until I was unconscious. He left me in a pool of blood, with two black eyes, a severely bruised sternum, and gashes in my forehead," Dillon said of one attack.

"I turned to my union, my supervisors, my doctor, and the court-only to find that in America, I am not entitled to be able to work without fear for my life. Well that's just wrong. That is not how I was raised, that is not what I was taught to believe in. Something has to be done, and soon.'

A clarion challenge to religious-based opposition to the bill came from Justin Dart, a moving force behind enactment of the last great piece of civil rights legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"Nothing is wrong with denouncing that which you believe to be immoral," Dart exhorted from his wheelchair. "Everything is wrong with acquiescing in vicious discrimination against American citizens just because you disagree with their personal views and activities activities which in no way infringe the rights of others."

"Mr. Chairman, when Thomas Jefferson wrote that all people are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, he

did not say, except gay and lesbian people. Bigotry is bigotry. Bigotry against gays and lesbians is un-American. It is personally obnoxious to me, and frankly, I think it is obnoxious to God."

Steve Coulter, vice president of Pacific Bell, spoke of that company's experience with a gay and lesbian non-discrimination policy in place since 1981. "The legislation we are discussing today is just plain common sense. It is not an added burden. It is not a significant added expense. It reflects our values as a business."

"It is time to stop this blatant workplace discrimination," said Richard Womack, director of civil rights with the AFL-CIO. He labeled the current non-coverage of gays and lesbians "a serious failure within our federal and state systems of justice."

"Gay and lesbian Americans do not want to be ushered in secretly, through the servant's entrance. They want to walk in the front door."

That sentiment stuck in the craw of the next two witnesses. Their testimony was the beginning of an anticipated onslaught of misrepresentation of the bill by the homophobic right. They pushed their spin that gays are an economic elite seeking "special rights," out to destroy the family.

"It [the bill] will result in special privileges for an elite group that has unjustly played the victim card to advance," said Joseph Broadus, professor at the George Mason University School of Law.

"As a Jew, I have a real problem with what you say," said Sen. Paul Wellstone, DMinn., barely containing his rage. "That is precisely the kind of argument that has been made... in behalf of the worst kind of discrimination against Jewish people."

But Broadus was impervious to the senator's arguments. He went on to label ENDA "the Gay Bill, which might better have been titled the Sexual Liberation Act of 1994."

Robert Knight, testifying for the Family Research Council, said the bill "is less about tolerance for homosexuals than about government-enforced tyranny over those who believe in sexual morality." He threw in examples of cross-dressing and pedophilia for good measure.

The final witness was Chai Feldblum, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and legal council in drafting ENDA. She testified on behalf of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a broadly-based coalition which has been the legislative arm of the civil rights movement for the last forty-four years.

Feldblum exposed the flaws, distortions, and outright lies of the two anti-gay witnesses in a spirited defense of the bill.

She recounted the "evidence of discrimination" presented through personal testimony and submitted reports. It is the same basis that Congress has used to pass all other civil rights legislation.

"Gays and lesbians haven't suffered as much as African Americans and therefore don't deserve civil rights protection," was how Feldblum summarized the "comparison argument."

"To try to create a hierarchy of oppression misses the point entirely. The relevant question is not who has suffered more among minorities, I would never want to answer that question. The relevant question for Congress is: Does discrimination exist? It does exist, and therefore it is appropriate for Congress to act."

Feldblum attacked the argument that gays can change by labeling it "totally irrelevant for passage of this civil rights law."

"An individual's access to protection under a federal civil rights law has never been tied to whether that individual could lose that characteristic." She cited the example of religion, which is not genetically determined and yet is protected by law from discrimination.

"No matter which way you turn this bill, it is not (about special rights) There is a flat out prohibition in this bill against quotas... preferential treatment and disparate impact claims. Laws generally don't get clearer than that."

Feldblum sat down to the only sustained applause of the day.