Only three months into the new state legislative season, New Mexico has terrific news to share: The cultural crossroads that mixes pueblos and high-tech companies is becoming the 14th state to ban job discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The desert is finally blooming for gay New Mexicans, who've sowed seeds for a dozen years.
Last November, they helped elect a gay-friendly governor, Democrat Bill Richardson.
"My advice to activists in other states," says Gloria Nieto of the Coalition for Equality in New Mexico, "is don't show up at the last minute and say, 'We want this.' We showed up early to raise money for candidates and to show we were part of the team."
To the delight of spectators wearing fluorescent labels reading "Another New Mexican for Civil Rights," both the state House and Senate recently passed the breakthrough bill.
The legislature also passed a hate crimes bill to enhance penalties of assailants who target a victim because of race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity. Richardson has pledged to sign it as well as the discrimination legislation (which covers employment, housing, public accommodations and credit, and applies to gender identity as well as sexual orientation).
New Mexico's victories come as many legislatures are turning their attention to those of us who are gay.
Much of that activity is positive: Seven states are weighing bills to give gay couples the state-level rights and responsibilities of marriage, without using the word "marriage."
However, North Dakota, Texas and Oklahoma are considering bills intended to bar gay people from becoming adoptive or foster parents.
"At the state level, gay and lesbian families are being talked about like never before," notes Seth Kilbourn, national field director of the gay Human Rights Campaign. "Gay groups are bringing forward gay men and lesbians to tell their compelling stories. That is really having an effect on lawmakers."
In California, Lydia Ramos recently told lawmakers about the nightmare she endured in a custody battle with relatives of her daughter's biological mother, Lydia's partner, who had died in a car accident.
California is considering a bill to ensure that a gay couple's child cannot be taken away from the surviving parent because of a tragedy. The measure would build on the statewide domestic partnership registry California created in 1999 -- expanding it to give gay couples comparable rights to our married counterparts.
New York is seeing movement on couples' rights as well, following the breakthrough late last year when the legislature and governor joined together to make it the 13th state banning anti-gay job discrimination.
The change of heart in the New York legislature reflects the Sept. 11 tragedy: Lawmakers, seeing that terrorists made no distinctions among victims, moved quickly to treat gay victims and their surviving partners no differently than heterosexuals. For example, the legislature expanded the state's on-the-job death benefits program to include surviving partners of Sept. 11's gay victims.
"Our challenge this year is to expand legislators' consciousness that our gay and lesbian families need protections all year, not just on one tragic day," says lobbyist Ross Levi of the Empire State Pride Agenda, New York's gay rights group.
To help do that, the Pride Agenda asked two similarly situated gay men to tell lawmakers how New York treated them differently: Because of the exception made by the legislature, Larry Courtney was eligible for workers' compensation death benefits after his partner of 14 years was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center. But Bill Valentine was denied benefits after his partner of 21 years, a flight attendant, died when his American Airlines flight crashed in New York two months later.
State lawmakers, long willing to ignore inequities suffered by their gay constituents, are showing signs of listening.
Deb Price of The Detroit News writes the first nationally syndicated column on gay issues and is the co-author of "Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court." To find out more about Deb Price and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com .
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