Sen. Alex Mooney
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Official says non-commercial ‘cruising’ not prosecuted
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JOE CREA
Friday, April 16, 2004
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland lawmakers killed two pro-gay measures in the
final hours of this year’s legislative session, prompting a pledge from
state activists to investigate filing a lawsuit seeking marriage rights for gays.
Conservative Republican state Sen. Alex Mooney (R-Frederick) succeeded in
killing an expanded hate crimes bill by adding amendments to the measure that
sought to protect an array of other groups, including nurses, veterans and
lawyers. Critics decried Mooney’s failed amendments as making a “mockery” of
the hate crimes bill.
“For someone who has publicly proclaimed his status as a survivor of
domestic violence, I think it is shocking and appalling that he could be so
uncaring about the violence we face,” said gay Del. Rich Madaleno (D-Montgomery
County).
“He relishes the chance to play the spoiler because he thinks he’s
being so smart by putting his perceived opponents on the hotseat by throwing
these outrageous amendments protecting teachers, nurses, lawyers and veterans.
And no one in the Senate challenged him by saying, ‘You know what senator,
show me one case where a veteran was tracked down and beaten solely on the
basis that they were a veteran.’”
But the bill, which would have added protections based on sexual orientation
to the existing state law, was not just unpopular among conservative legislators.
Transgender rights activists were outraged after the bill was stripped last
month of protections based on gender identity and expression by a House committee.
Although Maryland’s gay advocacy group, Equality Maryland, had stated
that it would not support hate crimes legislation that did not include protections
based on gender identity and expression, one activist said the group should
have done more to actively defeat the watered down measure.
“If their mission — like their name — is clear, and this
fight is about equality for all and not about specific groups or communities,
then they should have gone out to fight this,” said Earline Budd, a transgendered
activist who is the executive director of Transgender Health & Empowerment.
Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland, said that the people
who were involved in the process — Budd was not — “knew how
hard we worked on the bill to make it more inclusive.
“We made it very clear that we would rather not see any bill if it wasn’t
inclusive,” Furmansky said. “We even asked key allies at the last
minute to offer an amendment that would protect transgender people. Such a
move would have cost us some support but we were clear that we wanted an inclusive
bill.”
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality,
criticized “alleged LGBT allies” who say they wanted a bill that
included transgendered protections yet voted to either strip the bill of such
provisions or voted against advancing such a bill out of committee.
Del. Anthony G. Brown (D-Prince George’s County), the vice chair of
the House Judiciary Committee, was responsible for stripping gender identity
and expression from the House bill. Sen. John A. Giannetti, Jr. (D-Prince George’s
County) was one of seven senators who voted in committee to postpone the Senate
version of the bill that included transgender protections, despite telling
the Blade last month that he wanted the bill to include protections based on
gender identity and expression.
“It appears that our allies in the legislature are not willing to express
publicly that they are all that concerned about transgendered hate crimes,” Keisling
said. “We’ve been asking them for a positive statement that it
is not OK to kill transgendered Marylanders and my sense of it is that they
have a political calculus, that politically, transgendered people are too hated
to be protected from hate crimes. In the big picture, our big allies wouldn’t
support us.”
Brown, who said if he were king, “[transgendered protections] would
be in the bill today,” called himself “just one legislator” who
puts bills “into the form that would get the most amount of support in
committee.”
“We are not going to send out something more inclusive when we are not
even certain the Senate is going to take what little we sent to them last year,” Brown
said. “It really was a matter less on the merits of which groups of people
need more protection but what did the Senate do last year and what are we going
to do this year.”
Last year, the Senate did not hear a hate crimes bill that offered protections
based on gender identity and expression. Giannetti did not return Blade calls
by press time.
Keisling criticized Brown’s remarks saying, “Our allies are more
worried about what others think than what they think.”
“We get a lot of legislators who say that,” Keisling said. “One
of the things they were concerned about were diversionary amendments Sen. Mooney
would introduce. Well, he did it regardless and with a bill that only protected
sexual orientation. People like Mooney will still do what they do. There’s
this fallacy in the LGBT community and among our allies and legislators that
trans people are somehow more hated than gay people, that somehow these homophobic
bigots will get out of our way if we take the trans people out of the bill.”
Keisling said it is possible to pass a hate crimes bill that offers protections
based on gender identity and expression in a conservative legislature and cited
Pennsylvania, where such a measure passed a Republican House, Senate and was
signed by a Republican governor.
“I don’t know at this point that their strategy worked,” Keisling
said. “Could either of them say that keeping gender identity would have
hurt the bill? They can’t really say that we hurt it.”
Madaleno said that GOP Gov. Robert Ehrlich has “paralyzed” Annapolis
and that some legislators feared that they would be targeted with attack ads
in future campaigns for supporting pro-gay measures.
“I had it said to me by a number of legislators who said they did not
want to be targeted for trying to cater to the needs of drag queens, while
we can’t solve the budget problems, as outrageous as that comment is,” Madaleno
said.
Medical Decision Making Act voted down
The Medical Decision Making Act (HB 1284), which would have established a
domestic partner registry and offered medical decision-making rights to unmarried
couples, was killed in the Education, Health & Environmental Affairs Committee.
Sen. Sandra Schrader (R-Howard County) cast the deciding vote dooming the measure.
“We are deeply disappointed that the General Assembly failed to address
this most basic, human form of discrimination against our families,” Furmansky
said. “It’s clear that the time has come to fully investigate seeking
redress from the judicial branch of government and Equality Maryland will do
just that.”
Furmansky declined to elaborate, but confirmed that he and the Equality Maryland
board are exploring options regarding a lawsuit seeking marriage rights for
gays in Maryland.
Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George’s County), a member of the Education,
Health & Environmental Affairs Committee, said his colleagues were eager
to bring a vote on the medical bill to hold legislators accountable. He called
the 6-5 vote against the measure “unfortunate.”
“It’s very frustrating,” Pinsky said. “This is such
a modest first step and to not allow this is pretty objectionable.”
Pinsky said he did not know why Schrader voted against the measure. Schrader
did not respond to Blade phone calls seeking comment.
Joseph Zuber, president of the Maryland Log Cabin Republicans, said he was
confused by Schrader’s vote. His group endorsed Schrader, a moderate
Republican who represents a Democratic district, during her election in 2002
and said she “came out very supportive over our initiatives and we all
saw eye-to-eye.” Zuber said Schrader has not returned his phone calls
seeking comment on her vote.
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