A Disturbed peace

HIGH GEAR. Page 9

Milk: "One of our brightest lights"

By Brian McNaught

Harvey, Milk is dead, felled by the bullets of a desperate associate for yet to be revealed reasons. Harvey was not the Martin Luther King, Jr., of the Gay Civil Rights Movement as his grief-striken friend and aide Harry Britt suggessted, but given the chance, he might well have been. Surely, he was one of our brightest lights.

I didn't know Harvey Milk personally. We were supposed to work together on the March on Washington but the sponsoring committee in Minneapolis dissolved themselves and our chance of meeting. I therefore do not dare to speak of what I think Harvey would want us to think about his life or the meaning of his death. Nonetheless, there are meanings and lessons which I find inescapable.

Dan White, the former paratrooper police officer and firefighter who has confessed to murdering Harvey and San Fr. ancisco Mayor George Moscone is too easy an enemy to hate and

too easy a scapegoat for our compliance in Harvey Milk's pain. Dan White is everything almost every one of us secretly admires and oienly despises. He is, as described by the media, a man's man. He is young, strikingly handsome, unabashedly male. He is an athlete, a a fighter, a celebrated rescuer of children. White reprsents everything we have been taught we should become as males or sh. ould desire as females. He epitiomizes the people who bullied us throughout or in our imagination, What sweet satisfaction! Yesterday he was a hero of our enemies. Today he is a national villain. He is a mockery of masculinity. He represents the irrational and irresponsible aspect of every American male who believes too strongly in the het erosexual dream. He has always been easy for us to hate and now his former admirers must publicly sympathize with us.

Lest there be any confusion, I too "hate" Dan White for his

Gay Rights Lobby

By Steve Endean

The past two decades have ing for its interests on the seen substantial progress in the national level. The gay communstruggle to secure basic civility must not be an exception. rights for gay people. However, it Because of the ever-increasing has only been recently that these influence of federal laws on the accomplishments have reached lives of all Americans, the need the national scene and we have a for a professional and effective long way to go to achieve lobbying effort is acute. national civil rights legialtion.

The Gay Rights National Lobby has been in existence for only about two years and, unfortunately, during much of its early existence, it has been plagued by financial and organizational difficulties that kept GRNL from fulfilling its early promise. Steps have been taken, however, to eliminate those problems and the Lobby is getting on with the important business of establishing a strong and professional lobbying presence in our nation's capitol for gay civil rights.

The top priority of the organization is to build such a presence. This will include a wide variety of things, such as the edu cation of Members of Congress and their staffs on gay issues; demonstrating to them that support for the civil rights of lesbians and gay men is not equivalent to political suicide, building a large, strong constituent network; and gaining and increasing the active support of progressive and public interest lobbies.

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In addition to supporting positive legislation regarding gay civil rights, the Lobby must also be on the lookout for negative legislation such as the so-called McDonald Amendment to the Legal Services Act of 1977. The Lobby will carefully watch seem ingly non-gay legislation (such as HEW funding, sex education funding, etc.) to attempt to block any anti gay efforts in these

areas.

Virtually every group or issue in the country has a lobby work

But the process to gain national legislation will not be an easy one. Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Nick Coleman (a co-sponsor of statewide gay civil rights) once said that it takes at least three or four times though the legislative process to pass controversial legislation. It will probably take even longer to secure federal legislation. We must begin now.

haunting image during my childhood and from fear of what he and others like him might do to me, given the chance. A part of me hopes he goes to prison for life and becomes prey to more macho inmates who are looking for passive sex partners. The other side of me hopes Dan White will be treated fairly, rehabilitated and spared the horrors of our penal system.

But Dan White is only part of my personal pain at this moment. Much more, I am concerned about the cheap sentimentality pouring out of different camps within the gay community over Harvey Milk's death. Two such camps immediately come to mind. The first group whose wailing and gnashing of teeth is both amusing and annoying is that Xnumber of persons whose only connection with the struggle for gay civil rights is an occasional "Anita Sucks Oranges" button which they wear only in a bar and only if others are doing the

same. These are the bereaved Their writings are dominated by survivors who greeted the news of the death of the man who abhorred the closet and everything it represented with "Harvey who?" While I am aware that every minority is dominated by indifferent, non-political opportunists, I find it most distrubing within my own community.

The other camp which prompts the greatest amount of distaste is that of, those intellectual "prophets" of the revolution who have dedicated themselves to making every gay person feel guilty about everything and who have successfully splintered the Movement into a modern-day Tower of Babel.

While this small corps of proverbial bellyachers will undoubtedly invoke Harvey Milk's name at every one of their future Bible burnings and antiAdvocate rantings, they would have been the first to publicly criticize Harvey had he led the ill-fated March on Washington as planned. You know these people.

negativism. We are all guilty, they insist, for being too conventional. Leaders, they insist, should never seek support! They should seek constant criticism. So why praise Harvey Milk in his death when during his life he drew their fire.

Harvey Milk's death is a tragedly and an enormous blow to all of us. Given the opportunity, he might have become our own Martin Luther King, Jr. But Dan White and a large segment of the gay community denied Harvey that opportunity. White denied it through death. Others denied it by refusing to get involved, refusing to compliment and support, refusing to have heroes and heroines.

Harvey Milk's death reminds me of the heroes we have today from whom we withhold our support for fear of allowing them to think good things about themselves.

(Steve Endean is the Executive Director of the Gay Rights National Lobby. For information, write GRNL, 110 Maryland Ave., N.E., Suite 210, Washington, D.C. 20002, or call (202) 543-2447).

riately be leveled. Some lobbying efforts have failed when they have forgotten the necessity for both efforts taking place.

Currently, there are a number of fine organizations which work effectively on educational efforts. On the national level, they include the National Gay Task Force, the Human Rights Foundation and others.

On the local level, there are countless organizations which are effectively working to dispel myths about gay people and to provide information about gay

concerns. The Gay Rights National Lobby certainly does not view itself in competition with such organizations but rather it believes that communication and cooperation are imperative.

But education alone will not suffice. The history of education eliminating discrimination suffered by oppressed groups is not a good one. While the goal of legislation is, of course, civil rights, the struggle for legislation can provide an excellent vehicle for the educational process.

Based on the experiences of

other groups, no matter how much education takes place, there will always be some discrimination. At the present time, there is no legal recourse for gay people. Most gay people who are discovered to be gay or who choose to "come out" may still be fired from their jobs simply because they are gay. Education alone will not solve this problem.

Legislation, on the other hand, can provide the recourse necessary to respond to this arbitrary

discrimination.

Employment and being gay

While the Gay Rights National By L.J. Hershkoff Loby has been around for a couple of years, the support for the Lobby has been inadequate and therefore it has been less effective than it could have been with more extensive funding.

Lobbying versus Education

Until recently, the string of referenda losses throughout the nation seemed to be giving rise to a growing call for "education" as opposed to a lobbying effort. While the victories we have gained in California and Seattle in the November elections may have lessened this debate some what, there still seems to be a misconception that the two ideas are mutually exclusive.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Clearly, the lobbying process requires the education of the Councilpersons, legislators, or Members of Congress and their staffs. The passage of legislation must also be accompanied by the development of support within the community. And it is here that criticism can most approp-

Most people assume that if they're fired for being gay that there is nothing they can do about it. This is largely myth While it is true that some employers can legally discriminate against gays and lesbians. this rule has many exceptions.

The most important exception is when the employer is a governis when the employer is a government body or agency. If it's a civil service position the employer (government agency or office) (government agency or office) can only discharge the person it it can establish that the person's sexuality significantly affects the individual's job performance to the detriment of the agency's public business. Furthermore, the agency must comply with its own rules and regulations in how it arrives at and carries out its decisions to discharge the individual

In the area of governmental employment the current legal trend is very encouraging. There have, of course, been a few wellpublicized setbacks. However, the set backs are far out-weighed by the large number of quiet victories which have been won

For non-civil service govern ment jobs the legal trend is similarly encouraging. Here, again, the government entity must afford the employee it is dismissing procedural due process. That is, the agency must follow fair procedures when it discharges or inflicts lesser discipline on an employee. The agency must also afford its employee substantive due process. In other words, it cannot act for arbitarary or discriminatory reasons such as firing someone just because of his/her sexuality

Private businesses are not subject to the rules and procedures which government bodies must follow. Indeed, generally speaking, private employers are free to discharge their employees for being gay However, any employee fired for being gay would probably be entitled to receive unemployment compensation. This is because firing someone for his/her sexuality is probably a "wrongful discharge" under the unemployment compensation law. It is also possible that the discharge may violate a

contract, union agreement or established personnel policy, in which case the discharged employee may be entitled to legal redress.

It must also be kept in mind that it is illegal to discriminate in employment (in hiring, firing. promotions, benefits and union membership) on the basis of race, religion, sex (but not sexual preference), union activity and ethnic heritage. The usual and appropriate remedy would be reinstatement with back pay for all lost wages. Moreover, unions too can be held liable for discrimination. For example, if a union fails to represent one of its members because of the member's sexuality then the union may have violated the law and may be liable for all damages caused by its discriminatory conduct.

In light of the developments in this area of the law I would urge anyone who feels that he/she might have been discriminated against to contact an attorney. Who knows, you must might win one of the increasingly frequent quiet victories.