After marriage, LGBT activists prepare for next challenge

Mark Leno, the first openly gay man to serve in the California state Senate, has been on the front lines of the legislative battle for same-sex marriage, a quest that has galvanized a generation of LGBT activists, fueled protests, boosted fundraising, and reshaped grassroots politics in dozens of states.

And after Friday’s Supreme Court decision striking down bans on same-sex marriage, the culmination of a dream come true, Leno and other key lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists say they’ll celebrate — but not for long.

San Francisco’s battle-scarred state senator raised eyebrows — and sparked national controversy — when he introduced the state’s first marriage equality bill on Feb. 1, 2004, the same day then-Mayor Gavin Newsom made headlines by ordering that marriage licenses be issued to same-sex couples. Leno watched the California Legislature become the first in the nation to pass a same-sex marriage bill — only to have it vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004, and again the following year.

Today, he’s among a core of gay and lesbian leaders already looking ahead and steeling themselves for the next big legal and legislative challenge.

“Once the government sanctions (same-sex) relationships and that hurdle is crossed,” Leno said, “how do you then deny someone who happens to be gay or lesbian freedom from discrimination in employment or housing?”

The favorable Supreme Court decision can’t change the fact that “in more than a majority of the states, there’s no protection — none — for discrimination” in those key areas for LGBT Americans, Leno warned. The harsh reality is that “our federal government is light-years behind every other industrialized nation” on that front, said Leno, who has been talked about as a possible successor to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

Making plans

Leno’s remarks underscore how, even in the midst of this weekend’s Pride celebration in San Francisco, key legislators and LGBT rights supporters are making plans for a new generation of activists to meet the political hurdles that still loom large.

The Supreme Court’s validation of same-sex marriage “is the brass ring — but it’s not the gold ring,” said Fred Sainz, spokesman for Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy group.

With its highly anticipated decision on the case of Obergefell vs. Hodges , the justices at last ruled on whether states can ban same-sex marriage — in effect, by a 5-4 vote, determining that gay and lesbian couples have the same rights as straight couples.

Even after that decision, though, LGBT couples confront a “very stark reality,” Sainz noted. “In the vast majority of states, you’ll be able to get married at 10 a.m. — and by noon, you’ll be able to be fired for having gotten married, thrown out of your apartment at 3 p.m., and denied a hotel room at 4.”

Jessica Levinson, a clinical law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, says it is clear that “even if you have the right to be married, it doesn’t mean you are free from all discrimination — so the next frontier will be looking at discrimination laws.”

“You have to give couples the same rights in employment ... in hospital visits, and there are other instances of discrimination. It’s not the only question,” she said, “but it may be the biggest.”

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside — California’s first openly gay member of Congress — agrees that while “it’s wonderful to feel the profundity of recognition in the law for who you are, we can’t confuse legal equality with social equality.”

“When we change the law, it’s not going to change people’s hearts overnight; I expect people to be discriminated against, which is why we need laws to protect them,” he said.

The battle moves on with a two-pronged strategy, Takano said — the drive for an LGBT Comprehensive Civil Rights Act, which he acknowledges is a huge challenge in the current GOP-led Congress, but also “pursuing litigation in the courts.”

New generation of activists

Some veteran gay and lesbian leaders say to do that they will have to meet one of the movement’s most pressing challenges: energizing a new generation of LGBT activists who may never have directly confronted the kind of legal and legislative roadblocks faced by their older counterparts.

Former state Sen. Carole Migden, the state’s first openly lesbian legislator, helped write a landmark California domestic partnership law in 2000. She recalls the struggles it took to gain even basic recognition of gay and lesbian relationships.

“There’s more work to be done, but if you have the largest overarching issue structurally in place, then you have a strong-rooted foundation,’’ said Migden, who — along with state Sens. Sheila Kuehl and Christine Kehoe and Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg — is the subject of a new documentary about groundbreakers in the early lesbian political rights movement.

Still, “young people communicate differently, and they’re inheriting a new world — and it’s not necessarily predictable what the agenda may be,” she said, though new emphasis on areas that include transgender rights may be key.

Some LGBT leaders, like Sainz, say the positive media coverage of former Olympic athlete Caitlyn Jenner serves as an example of a new sensitivity toward the transgender population, and that popular TV shows like “Orange Is the New Black” have made transgender issues and characters commonplace in American living rooms.

Still, Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California, one of the state’s leading LGBT advocacy groups, said there is growing concern that “we see people coming out of religious communities being very threatened by the advances we made, and we really need to work on that.”

“Here in California,” he said, “we’re still seeing continued attacks by the religious right on the transgender community, and ballot measures by the same right-wing extremists who brought us Prop. 8,” an initiative that banned same-sex marriage when it passed in 2008.

Since last January, “about 120 anti-LGBT bills were introduced in 28 state legislatures across the country,’’ Sainz said, running the gamut from religious-refusal bills passed by Indiana to “bathroom checks on transgender people.”

In recent months, Southern California attorney Matt McLaughlin attempted to put the “Sodomite Suppression Act” on the state ballot — a measure that called for killing gays and lesbians, and $1 million fine, prison time and expulsion from the state for distribution of gay “propaganda.” A Sacramento Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that the measure was unconstitutional and that state Attorney General Kamala Harris could ignore it.

But Harris recently issued a title and summary — “Limits on Use of Facilities in Government Buildings and Businesses” — for another controversial ballot measure that has raised alarms in the LGBT community. Critics say it would bar transgender people from using bathroom facilities of their choice in government buildings and require monitoring of bathroom use, while allowing those offended by that use to sue individuals for up to $4,000 and attorney fees. Supporters of the “Privacy for All” initiative are now in the process of collecting the 365,880 signatures needed to get it on the November 2016 ballot.

Fast-changing attitudes

The best news for future political reform on those issues, Leno said, is “the extraordinary and uncommon speed and change in public attitude’’ on gay and lesbian rights.

Less than two decades ago, in March 2000, 61 percent of California voters approved the Knight Initiative, Proposition 22, which said “only marriage between a man and woman” would be recognized by state law. Eight years later, Proposition 8 “put those same words into the Constitution,” Leno said.

Today, the polls and public attitudes have flipped, he said, because Americans recognized themselves, people they knew and loved, and their kids, their neighbors in the struggle.

“They saw we were in every corner of their lives; we taught their kids, we provided medical care, we did their lawn and their hair and everything ... and that was the turning point,” Leno said.

To get to the Supreme Court decision, “it took bold action, and a lot of lives were destroyed,” he said. “And now, look how far we’ve come.”