Gay Rights

HE'S A GUY who doesn't want to know what sexual activity his neighbors engage in behind closed doors, or what their sexuality is. Nope, he's not an avid defender of gay rights. He's Tres Kerns, the head of TakeBackMaryland, the group that challenged the anti-gay discrimination law recently crammed down the throats of Marylanders by our wacky legislature. Kerns ran a petition drive to put the new law up for referendum in the 2002 election. He and his supporters have been portrayed as homophobic, bigoted Nazis with X chromosomes shaped like swastikas, but if you talk to the guy on the phone, you get the impression he's no hater.

OPPONENTS of a gay-rights law secured enough signatures to put the matter before voters in November 2002. That gives Marylanders a chance to emphatically reject the narrow-minded bigotry that inspired the referendum drive. Opposition to the gay rights bill is all about intolerance. One group claims the measure will lead to children being "taught how to do homosexual sex in school," and to government forcing companies to hire and promote gays as a protected class. That's a gross - and intentional - distortion of the law. Adding the words "sexual orientation" to the state's anti-discrimination laws doesn't pose a threat to anyone.

WASHINGTON -- In a setback for the rights of gays and lesbians, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday that city and county governments have full authority to bar local officials from acting to protect homosexuals against discrimination.Because such a ban is "of purely local scope," the appeals court said, it does not run afoul of a 1996 Supreme Court ruling on gay rights. That ruling struck down a Colorado referendum that barred all gay rights laws at every level of state and local government.

NEW YORK -- Ronald Prince has lived a gay life since his mid-teens. Now 43, he readily recalls moments when he hid his homosexuality rather than face public ridicule.He could conceal his homosexuality. He could not conceal his race. Mr. Prince is black."A lot of times when you're black and gay, you don't know whether the discrimination is due to your blackness or your gayness," said Mr. Prince, who grew up in Birmingham, Ala., when it was segregated.Mr. Prince said he had learned to live with the dichotomy that is his life.

The Frederick County commissioners ducked the contentious issue of gay rights yesterday, deciding not to recommend passage of an anti-discrimination law but ordering public hearings on the issue.The unanimous vote to send the proposed law back to the county's Human Relations Commission allowed the commissioners to defer taking a stand on the measure this year. The compromise also gives supporters time to build a case that anti-gay bias is a pervasive problem in the county.The result disappointed Frederick's leading gay-rights activist, who called the board's action "a very watered-down compromise."

FREDERICK -- Gay rights advocates and conservative religious groups will be watching intently today as the Frederick County commissioners vote on a proposal to ban discrimination against homosexuals.Supporters and opponents don't agree on much, but both sides say the vote will be a defining moment for the fast-growing county.The issue, which has divided residents, is surfacing at a time when gay rights activists are nursing the wounds of defeat at the statewide level.The vote comes six months after a Senate committee in Annapolis, including Frederick's two Republican senators, frustrated Gov. Parris N. Glendening's attempt to win passage of a similar anti-discrimination measure.

Tres Kerns didn't care much for politics until he heard that the sister school of his alma mater had, in his view, begun promoting homosexuality. "I felt that since I went to the boys' school, I should speak up and become active," says Kerns, 41, a graduate of the St. Paul's School for Boys. "It prompted me to start paying attention and start fighting." Since then, the Severna Park father of five has become a leader in the struggle against what he sees as efforts to give legitimacy to an immoral lifestyle in Maryland.

Gay and lesbian activists thought they had a friend in Martin O'Malley. As a progressive mayor in Baltimore, O'Malley attended gay pride parades and signed into law a measure to protect transgender people from discrimination. When he ran for governor, he said he supported civil unions and wanted to extend benefits to same-sex partners of state employees, as he had done for city workers. But two years into O'Malley's first term in Annapolis, neither has happened. He largely stayed out of the debate over legal recognition for same-sex unions that fizzled in the General Assembly, and aides say his financially strapped administration probably won't grant benefits for at least another year.

WASHINGTON -- As a college senior at Princeton University, Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a report that recommended the repeal of laws that made sex between gays a crime and urged new anti-discrimination laws for gays in the workplace. He was writing as the chairman of a 16-member student conference that had been asked to examine the "boundaries of privacy in American society." The 1972 report takes a decidedly liberal view on a series of controversies. "It is quite wrong for military intelligence to get deeply involved in domestic intelligence," Alito wrote.

Prospects for passage of the governor's gay rights bill all but vanished yesterday as a Maryland Senate committee voted to add amendments gutting the measure.The legislation, designed to prohibit discrimination against Maryland's gay men and lesbians, won approval in the House of Delegates but ran into serious trouble in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.Committee members attached four weakening amendments to the bill yesterday, including one that advocates say would prevent it from being an effective tool against discrimination.