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Summer brings a wave of gay and lesbian advancements
Factoid: The Saluki Rainbow Network Prideline number is 453-5151
On the third floor of the Student Center, Bradley Wilkins, treasurer of the Saluki Rainbow Network, organizes the small third floor office. Outside the office door he has finally completed his summer project of creating the club's bulletin board.
The board is covered with Advocate Magazine covers that feature famous gays and lesbians, politicians and an A-list of Hollywood stars who consider themselves supporters of the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transsexual community.
"An advocate is someone who pleads the case of another and tries to understand about new things that could be viewed as non-traditional," Wilkins said.
The Saluki Rainbow Network has been a Registered Student Organization for 32 years at SIUC. Wilkins said the club has 120 members on its mailing list, and about 20 to 30 people attend weekly meetings that are open to everyone.
Besides weekly meetings, the SRN operates the Prideline, a telephone hotline that allows callers to get connected with someone to listen to their problems. The Prideline also acts as a hub, connecting callers to the counseling center or the crisis hotline.
Wilkins said that most callers are coming out and need someone to talk to. Wilkins uses his own knowledge and personal experience to relate to the callers.
The biggest obstacle to the SRN is outreach; it is difficult to get the message out to the community, Wilkins said.
"Look, I'm here in Southern Illinois," Wilkins said. "And I'm gay."
Wilkins' message of acceptance was echoed around the country this summer.
In a historical ruling in June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Texas sodomy law, which in effect banned laws against homosexual sex in 13 states.
The Supreme Court ruling, which passed 6-3, made sodomy laws an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. The first state to repeal its sodomy law was Illinois in 1961.
While the decision was a monumental victory for gays, there is still no federal law that protects a person from being fired or refused a job or housing on the basis of sexual orientation. Proposed Illinois Senate Bill 101 would eliminate this discrimination.
The aim of Senate Bill 101 is the fair and equal treatment for all Illinois residents by creating protections based on sexual orientation. The bill would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in a number of critical areas, including housing, credit, employment and public accommodations.
The passage of the bill would assure a level playing field for all people in the state of Illinois but would not grant special privileges for any one group of people.
The Illinois House already has adopted a measure similar to Senate Bill 101, adding sexual orientation to the classes protected under the Illinois Human Rights Act.
Advancement in the recognition of same-sex partners got an additional boost from the University of Illinois last Thursday. The University of Illinois Board of Trustees voted to extend health and dental benefits to employees involved in same-sex partnerships.
Illinois is the first public university in the state to offer the same-sex benefit, which will cost the university $320,00 to $400,000 per year. According to a story in the Springfield State-Journal Register, about 100 of the university's 23,000 full-time employees are expected to use the benefit that only applies to same-sex domestic partners, not unmarried partners of opposite sexes.
The summer's substantial gains in gay and lesbian rights did not come without criticism.
The House Republican Study Committee issued a statement this week for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. The RSC is a group of 85 U.S. House Republicans, two of whom are from Illinois.
The proposed Federal Marriage Amendment (H.J.Res.56) states: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."
A driving force behind the proposed amendment is the pending Massachusetts court decision that could affect the legalization of homosexual marriage there. If homosexual couples can legally marry in Massachusetts, then couples in other states may also seek same-sex marriages. Currently, same-sex marriages are not legal in any state.
The concern over the preservation of family values is not so clear-cut for Wilkins, who asked what the traditional family values of today are.
"The mom stays home with the kids, and dad works? Now traditional family values have gone out the window. Today, mom and dad are divorced and they both work," Wilkins said. "Why shouldn't gays and lesbians be allowed to marry, just because it's not traditional?"
Until the fall 2003 semester begins, Wilkins and the SRN will prepare and organize for the year to come. If the summer is any indicator of what the following months have in store for gays and lesbians, maybe Wilkins will get his message out of the closet.
