2008: A Year of Progress for Boston GLBTs

With marriage equality in Massachusetts secured for the foreseeable future in 2007, GLBT-rights advocates turned their attention to the transgender community early in 2008.

MassEquality in January unveiled its plans for the year, which included getting protections for transgender men and women added to the Massachusetts hate crimes and nondiscrimination statutes.

The trans-rights community brought out its big guns for a blockbuster 13-hour Judiciary Committee hearing in March featuring written and oral testimony in favor of the bill from Gov. Deval Patrick, Attorney General Martha Coakley, and nearly 100 citizens.

Less than a dozen people, including MassResistance organizer Brian Camenker, testified against the bill. Despite the strong showing, the bill never made it out of committee, but its passage remains a priority for the GLBT community in 2009, advocates say.

Another long-standing legislative priority was the repeal of a 95 year-old law that had been used to prevent out-of-state gay couples from marrying in Massachusetts.

Proposals to repeal the so-called "1913 Law" had been floated ever since 2004, when then-governor Mitt Romney revived the law, which was initially created to curb interracial marriages. But those attempts consistently failed to gain traction in the legislature.

Thanks largely to the initiative of Senate President Therese Murray, (D-Plymouth), and former state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, (D-Boston), who called the 1913 Law a "dark chapter" in the Commonwealth's history during an impassioned speech on the Senate floor in favor of a bill repealing the 1913 law, the senate passed the bill in a voice vote on July 23.

Patrick, surrounded by Murray, Wilkerson and civil rights leaders, signed the bill at an elaborate State House ceremony on July 31, as tourist communities from Provincetown to Northampton expected an influx of gay-wedding related business. Efforts by MassResistance to challenge the repeal with a statewide ballot initiative failed due to a lack of support.

At the same time he was signing the 1913 law repeal, Gov. Patrick signed the MassHealth Equality bill into law. The bill, sponsored by openly lesbian state Rep. Elizabeth Malia, (D-Boston), and also championed by MassEquality, assures access by gay couples to federally funded, state-administered programs such as Medicare where the Federal Defense of Marriage Act prohibits the recognition of those couples.

Boston's South End gay community was shaken early in 2008 by the Jan. 16 murder of 20-year-old Daniel Yakovleff, who was last seen at the Eagle on Tremont Street before being found dead in a Dorchester apartment.

After nearly a year of frustration on the part of many in the community, on Dec. 17, Steven Odengard of Dorchester was arraigned in Yakovleff's murder.

Days before Boston's annual Gay Pride event, Patrick's 18-year old daughter, Katherine, came out as a lesbian in a front-page article in Bay Windows. Her coming out made national headlines, and Katherine marched at the Boston Pride Parade with her father and mother, surrounded by a crush of photographers.

2008 saw the fall from grace of one of the staunchest, long-standing allies of GLBT equality on Beacon Hill. It was clear by early fall that Dianne Wilkerson's reelection bid was in trouble.

Despite a series of MassEquality sponsored rallies and fundraisers, Wilkerson lost by two percent in the September 19 Democratic Party primary to Sonia Chang-Diaz, who had also pledged support for GLBT issues.

Wilkerson's subsequent decision to run a write-in/sticker campaign against Chang-Diaz split the community. While MassEquality urged its supporters to "vote their conscience," Wilkerson was arrested, less than a week before the Nov. 4 general election, on Federal corruption charges. She received less than two percent of the general election vote, and, at the urging of her senate peers, resigned her senate seat on Nov. 19.

Openly gay state Rep. Carl Sciortino, (D-Medford), also faced a tough reelection challenge this year, after the alleged theft of election papers from his State House office forced him to run a write-in/sticker campaign against challenger Robert Trane. Thanks, in part, to massive organizing by MassEquality on Sciortino's behalf - Sciortino easily beat Trane, and was unopposed in the general election.

Diego Sanchez, director of public relations and external affairs for the Boston-based AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, made history as the first transgender person to be a elected not only as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention but to be appointed to a DNC standing committee. In December, it was also announced that Sanchez had been appointed as legislative aide to openly gay U.S. Rep Barney Frank (D-Mass). In Frank's office he will serve as the congressman's contact for GLBT rights, health care and labor.

In October, the Boston-based advocacy group Queer Today staged a protest against the Human Rights Campaign at their October 25 dinner at the Haynes Convention center, for their support of a version of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), under consideration by the U.S. Congress, that failed to include protection for Transgender individuals, as well as their selection of a non-unionized site for their event.

In November, 7000 people gathered at Boston's City Hall plaza to protest the passage of California's Proposition 8, banning gay marriage in that state after it had been allowed.