Then came the calls from Catholic Church leaders.
The calls reportedly came shortly after the senate's Democratic minority, helped by the defections of two Republicans, seized control of the senate floor using a rare procedural move. A month earlier, the Democratic-controlled house of representatives had passed the bill--known as the gay civil rights bill--only to watch it die in committee in the Republican-controlled senate. Now shrewd senate Democrats and their two Republican accomplices were brazenly yanking the bill out of committee and bringing it to the senate floor for a vote--a vote they appeared set to win. For state Catholic leaders, who not only believe that being gay is a sinful, immoral choice, but also have explicit orders from the Pope to fight against advances in gay rights, the possibility of a gay civil rights bill passing could not be ignored.
According to West Seattle Democratic senator Margarita Prentice, it was around this time that one of her colleagues received a call from Seattle's Catholic archbishop, Alex J. Brunett. The archbishop, a 70-year-old Detroit native who has spent his life rising through the church hierarchy, is widely respected for his work building relationships between Catholics and Jews. But recently Archbishop Brunett, who was appointed to his current post by the Pope in 1997, has spent a lot of time talking about relationships he doesn't support: the scores of abusive sexual relationships documented between Seattle-area Catholic clergy and young church members, which Archbishop Brunett has publicly apologized for, and the marriages of gays and lesbians, which Archbishop Brunett has publicly criticized Seattle mayor Greg Nickels for recognizing.
Prentice says her colleague, Pacific County Democratic senator Mark Doumit, was told on March 5 by the archbishop that he should help kill the gay civil rights bill because its passage would create a slippery slope leading toward gay marriage. Prentice says it is unusual for the arch-bishop to call legislators while a bill is being considered on the senate floor, but that she's heard Doumit was not the only senator Archbishop Brunett called that day.
"It certainly was the talk of the place afterward--all the pressure that was put on people by the Catholic Church," says Prentice, who is Catholic herself but supports gay rights. "To see this assault that was completely unjustified--it was disappointing and I just felt bad that it was my church doing it," Prentice continued. "This was not gay marriage we were voting on. This was something so basic.... It was surprising that the church would weigh in against it, because this is about something they're always on the side of: justice."
Prentice says she's heard from colleagues that the bishop of Yakima also made a Brunett-style call to Yakima's Republican senator, Alex Deccio, who was one of those who defected in order to bring the gay rights bill out of committee. Seattle Representative Ed Murray says that on top of the phone calls to senators from church officials, a church lobbying group, the Washington State Catholic Conference, also swung into action that day, faxing senators a statement purporting to be committee testimony given by the church against the civil rights bill and its "gay activist agenda." In fact, Murray says, the church never gave any such committee testimony.
Doumit, who Prentice says told her directly about his conversation with the archbishop, did not return calls seeking comment. But the comments and no-comments from Washington's Catholic leaders certainly don't deny the last-minute lobbying. The spokesperson for the Seattle archdiocese, Greg Magnoni, at first told The Stranger that he was "99 percent certain" Archbishop Brunett did not call one of the senators in question--but he also noted that Catholic opposition to the bill should come as no surprise: "You can tell your readers that the Catholic archdiocese holds the same position that we did last year," Magnoni said. Later, when asked in a phone message about calls Archbishop Brunett reportedly placed to other senators, Magnoni did not respond. The bishop of Yakima, Carlos A. Sevilla, did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and neither did the executive director of the Washington State Catholic Conference, Sister Sharon Park.
Murray, a practicing Catholic and one of four openly gay state legislators, thinks he knows why the church hasn't been crowing publicly about the role its leaders played in thwarting efforts to pass the bill: "I think they're doing it on the sly because they realize the reaction they would have. I think they realize that they would have quite a problem on their hands among the members of the Catholic Church in Washington State. I would guess that when it comes to civil rights, the people who attend church would disagree with what the archbishop has done."
And what, exactly, did the calls from the archbishop and other Catholic leaders do to the gay civil rights bill? "Helped to defeat it," Prentice says simply. "We lost control at that point." Deccio switched back to the Republican side (he didn't return calls for comment either), giving Republicans enough votes to adjourn for the day--two and a half hours ahead of schedule. The abrupt adjournment killed the gay civil rights bill, along with dozens of other bills.
Murray has been promoting the gay civil rights bill to the invariably tough crowd in the Washington State legislature for years, having become "the gay community's legislator" after Senator Cal Anderson died of AIDS in 1995. It's a mantle Murray proudly accepts, even if his efforts on behalf of the gay community are often thankless and frustrating. The state's three other openly gay legislators are not exactly out in front on gay rights issues, leaving the task of championing the gay civil rights bill largely in Murray's hands. And Seattle's gay community often doesn't pay enough attention to what's going on in Olympia, leaving Murray at times feeling like he's the only one watching the gay-haters.
The attitude of the Seattle gay community has to change, Murray says, now that the stakes have been raised by the landmark lawsuit filed in King County by gay couples and gay legal groups seeking to overturn the state's law against same-sex marriage.
"Everyone's very excited about the court action," Murray says, "but they're not thinking about the fact that most state courts say, 'Yes you should let these people marry,' and then send it straight to the legislature." It's entirely possible that gays and lesbians could win in the courts and lose in the legislature--via legislative stonewalling or a push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
Murray believes there is an important lesson for the gay community in this year's defeat of the gay civil rights bill--and in last year's defeat, and in the defeat the year before that. It is that the gay community needs get more organized, raise more money, and pay more attention to what's happening on gay rights at the state level. In the past, Seattle's gay community could perhaps be excused for not paying much attention to distant legislative machinations and battles over the statewide gay civil rights bill. After all, in Seattle--as in other major cities and counties in Washington--gays and lesbians already have basic civil rights protections. But the time for such myopia is over.
Homosexuals in other parts of the state are still suffering from a lack of civil rights protections--they can still be fired, denied a loan, or kicked out of an apartment simply because they are gay. And if that doesn't get people in Seattle to look toward Olympia, there is also this: The Seattle gay community is going to have a hard time making any pro-gay-marriage court decision stick if it keeps allowing itself to be steamrolled on gay rights issues in the state legislature.
So where are the gay rights advocates who should be publicly chastising Arch-bishop Brunett for his behind-the-scenes lobbying against gay civil rights? Until they step up--until gays and lesbians get organized and engaged--the gay community can only expect more defeats in the legislature.
A town hall meeting to discuss the future of gay rights in Washington State will be held on March 30 at 7 pm at Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca Street).
