Prop 8 is struck down; great. Now, let's do everything else

On Wednesday, a federal judge struck down Proposition 8, the California ban on same-sex marriage. Judge Vaughn Walker's decision is now part of a gradual trend toward making our world a more just and humane place for gays and lesbians.

But despite that trend, we have a long way to go. Here in Minnesota, when advocates for gay rights objected to Target's support for GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, he denounced the criticism as too "personal."

"We have to get over this personal issue," he said. "We have to start talking about who has the positive vision for the future of the state of Minnesota."

Excuse me -- "personal"? In what sense is the denial of civil rights to a class of people personal? Judge Walker properly found that equal treatment for GLBT people was not some personal issue, but a constitutionally protected right.

Even so, I accept Emmer's challenge to present a positive vision for the state of Minnesota. In explaining that vision, let me get personal.

When I first came out to a friend in 1972 at the age of 18, Minnesota was not an easy place to be gay. As an artist and cultural activist, I have dedicated my life to changing that.

Coming out, I often felt alone in the world. I looked everywhere for gay people. Loving history and foreign languages, I looked there.

I learned that English, German, and Italian all have words for gay men that originated with the inquisitions, when gay men were burned alive by the church. "Faggot" comes from a bundle of sticks -- gay men were bundled together to be burned. Schwul, in German, comes from a word for the smell of burning human flesh. Finocchio, in Italian, means fennel -- an herb used to cover that same stench.

Considering the horror of what had been done to gay men in history, maybe I should have felt content just to be left alone. Although I no longer felt welcome in the Catholic Church, in which I had grown up, and though I knew that I was committing a felony every time I had sex with a man in Minnesota, I hoped such organized violence against gay men had passed.

At least that's what I hoped until November 1979, when a man who had approached me pulled out a knife and club and screamed, "Get down on your knees, faggot! You're dead!" I ended up in the emergency room at Hennepin County Medical Center, getting stitches in the back of my head, and advice that I should report this to the police.

The police never seriously investigated the assault, even though I knew my attacker.

A few years later, my assailant was arrested after his second armed robbery. The prosecutor called to have me testify against him. The authorities planned to throw the book at him for the robberies, and on top of that, they would charge him with disorderly conduct for his attack on me.

I was dumbfounded. Disorderly conduct? The prosecutor explained to me: If this goes to a jury, there are going to be a lot of little old ladies on it, and they are not going to like your lifestyle. So we have to charge him with something that will stick.

I walked out. It felt as if the inquisition had simply changed clothes. How could I have been so naive as to believe I had recourse to justice? My heightened anger fueled my activism for years.

Twenty years later, I moved Patrick's Cabaret into the old fire station on Minnehaha Avenue, flying a prominent rainbow flag right next door to the Third Precinct station of the Minneapolis Police. A performing space run by an out gay man next door to the cops: It would have been unthinkable 20 years earlier. When Sharon Lubinski, the first openly lesbian cop in Minneapolis, arrived as the precinct commander, I knew the Minneapolis Police Department, like the world, had changed. Last year, she became the first openly gay U.S. marshal.

Seeing how far we have come gives me hope, as does yesterday's decision in California. But there is much more to do. What's left? For starters, more than 500 state laws and more than 1,000 federal laws that discriminate based on marital status.

If anything ever happened to Tom Emmer, his wife would have access to his pension and Social Security. My partner Kevin and I have no such access. Kevin's mother was killed in a horrible car accident two years ago. His father was able to sue for wrongful death. Should that ever happen to one of us, we have no right to such recourse.

If I get Kevin medical insurance as my domestic partner through my job, I first have to pay taxes on the income I use to buy that insurance. As a married heterosexual, Tom Emmer doesn't pay taxes on his wife's coverage. These are the sorts of inequities that the Proposition 8 ruling can help address, and they are only the tip of the iceberg of anti-gay discrimination as I experience it personally.

Minnesota, the United States and the planet as a whole are continuing to improve as places for lesbian, transsexual, bisexual and gay people. As the Rev. Martin Luther King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Injustice is not some abstract policy concept. It strikes people in very concrete, personal ways; but we shall overcome. I take comfort in other words of King's: "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

Decades from now, when I leave the planet, I believe the world will be a much better place for GLBT people than it is today. It's very personal. It's my work. It's my dream.

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Patrick Scully, of Minneapolis, is a performance artist and gay and HIV activist.

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