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Providence gay rights group speaks to criticsAssociated PressSaturday Nov 28, 2009 Gov. Don Carcieri is a staunch social conservative who headlined a fundraiser for an anti-gay marriage group and says same-sex couples have no civil right to marriage.
So it surprised even some of Carcieri’s toughest critics when the Republican sat down this month for a tense but polite meeting with six members of Queer Action of Rhode Island, the state’s newest gay rights group. When he emerged, Carcieri announced he would consider supporting a domestic partnership system similar to one recently expanded by voters in Washington state.
His suggestion was an early victory for Queer Action, which wants to lobby for gay marriage and stronger hate crime laws while taking its message to opponents like Carcieri who are accustomed to a normally sedate Statehouse. Its tactics have included Internet campaigns, protests and the sitdown with the governor.
"If you cut off communication, then people aren’t going to be held accountable," said Susan Heroux, a Queer Action founder who was at the meeting. "And we want politicians to be held accountable to all the people, including gay people’s lives."
Heroux’s group, which counts more than 200 members on its Facebook Web site, organized this summer to protest the corporate sponsorship of a celebration held by the Rhode Island chapter of National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay marriage group.
It successfully pressured Canadian coffee shop chain Tim Hortons and Blount Fine Foods to withdraw their sponsorship and then held a protest outside the event.
"We wanted everyone to see us, we felt that was really important," Heroux said. "And that’s a part of the idea behind Queer Action -- it’s about visibility."
Among its next goals are increasing pressure on Congressional leaders who oppose the federal recognition of gay couples and seeking meetings with House Speaker William Murphy and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva-Weed, both Democrats who oppose gay marriage.
Heroux said she considers Murphy a bigger obstacle to gay marriage in Rhode Island than Carcieri. Unless a bill gets to Carcieri’s desk, it doesn’t matter whether he would veto it.
The drive toward gay marriage has lost ground in Rhode Island even as every other New England state besides Maine has adopted it. A gay marriage bill has been introduced in the General Assembly every year since 1997, but it has never received a floor vote.
It seems unlikely the state judiciary will legalize gay unions as happened in Massachusetts. In 2007, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled a lesbian couple married in Massachusetts could not get divorced in their home state of Rhode Island because state lawmakers have never recognized marriage as anything but a union between a man and a woman.
Marriage Equality Rhode Island is unwilling to debate anything short of gay marriage because it believes alternatives like domestic partnership and civil unions create a second-class system for gay couples. Heroux is also unwilling for settle for any system short of full marriage, but she is willing to debate others protections, mostly to prompt a larger debate about the problems gay couples face.
"Marriage equality is the end goal," she said. "But if it’s going to take a few years to get to that and there’s something incremental that will help people right now, that’s great."
Critics are looking to pounce on any split in the gay rights movement, whether big or small.
"Obviously, from my position, divisions are a good thing," said Christopher Plante, executive director of the National Organization For Marriage Rhode Island. "Anytime your energy is divided strategically, that’s a problem."
The failure of one of those incremental bills provided Queer Action an opportunity to confront Carcieri.
Members of Queer Action had earlier scheduled a meeting with the governor to express their anger at his headlining a fundraiser for the Massachusetts Family Institute, which opposes gay marriage.
Shortly before their sitdown, Carcieri vetoed legislation permitting gay couples to plan the funerals of their late partners. In a letter to lawmakers, Carcieri called the legislation part of the "incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage."
As a result, Heroux brought a man who had struggled for weeks to reclaim the body of his late partner from the state Medical Examiner’s office because they could not get married. Heroux also brought her mother, who spoke about what she considers hurtful rhetoric from anti-gay marriage groups, and a gay woman married in Massachusetts who cannot get divorced after her spouse left her.
"After an hour and 15 minutes of talking to gay people about their stories, he changed his tone radically," Heroux said. "He came out with much more understanding."
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