Gay leaders pit selves against conservatives

States along the East and West coasts have been more liberal.
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio (AP) -- Mayor of one of Ohio's most liberal cities, Edward Kelley works closely with gay-rights activists. Yet looking ahead to Election Day in this crucial swing state, he has blunt advice for them on the topic of gay marriage: Tread lightly.
"If I were in the gay and lesbian community and wanted John Kerry elected, I wouldn't be pushing this issue," said Kelley, a self-described conservative Democrat. "All you're going to do is help [President] Bush get re-elected."
Kelley may prove right; statewide polls show Ohio voters opposing gay marriage by a 3-1 ratio. But gay and lesbian leaders in the Cleveland area are reluctant to back off on an issue that has galvanized their traditionally cautious ranks as never before.
"It's daunting -- but what better thing to be working on?" said Mary Zaller, co-director of the Lesbian Gay Community Center of Greater Cleveland. "Largely because of this marriage stuff, our community is growing up, coming out of its adolescence and saying, 'We're here' ... We can't be seen as backing down."
Developments elsewhere
The most eye-catching developments on the gay marriage front have unfolded in relatively liberal states along the East and West coasts -- Massachusetts' high court ordering same-sex marriages to commence in May; local officials defiantly performing such marriages in California, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey and New York.
However, debate also has flared in the heartland, providing a dramatic election-year barometer of the political clout of gay-rights advocates and those who oppose them.
"This will be THE issue of the election -- categorically the issue that will decide Ohio," said David Zanotti, who heads a conservative public-policy group called the Ohio Roundtable.
"But it's not the issue the paid political consultants will tell their candidates to focus on. They are so far removed from the grass roots that they just don't get it."
Until this year, Ohio had been one of 13 states without a recent law explicitly banning same-sex unions. In February, however, Republican Gov. Bob Taft signed one of the toughest bans yet, containing an extra provision barring state employees from obtaining benefits for their unmarried partners.
Ohio gay-rights groups, by contrast, lack the political muscle to advance state legislation. A few years ago, they even failed to persuade officials in Lakewood, a Cleveland suburb with a large gay population, to offer domestic-partner benefits to city employees.
'Closeted, conservative'
"The gay community here is incredibly closeted, very conservative," said Jack Hart, an activist who worked in Boston, New York and Washington before moving to Cleveland. "Sometimes I feel I've stepped back into the '50s."
However, Hart said attitudes are changing because of the nationwide campaign to broaden rights for same-sex couples.
In January, Cleveland Heights implemented a domestic-partner registry -- the first in the nation approved directly by voters. The measure won 55 percent support in last November's election thanks in large part to door-to-door canvassing by gay activists and their straight supporters.
Among the canvassers was Katy Alex, 24, a graduate student in neuroscience at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University who knew no other gays or lesbians while growing up in upstate New York and had never engaged in politics.
"I was always the girl who didn't know who the vice president was," she said. "Now I feel I've stumbled on a whole new side of myself."
Engaging voters in conversations about gay relationships was the key to winning support, Alex said. "People were willing to listen; even people who were against us were respectful."
Registered
Among those promptly registering as partners -- a symbolic gesture with no legal impact -- were mortgage lender Thom Rankin and his partner of 17 years, Ray Zander, a home decorator and costume designer.
Rankin, president of the Cleveland lesbian-gay center's board of directors, said he and Zander have spent several thousand dollars in legal and administrative fees to replicate, as best they can, the protections afforded automatically by marriage. They were among more than 50 couples who went to a Cleveland courthouse last month and requested marriage licenses that they knew would be refused.
"We're becoming more aggressive than in the past," Rankin said of the local gay community. "After the Massachusetts court ruling, and the backlash, that's when we said, 'We've talked the talk, now we have to walk the walk."'
Although the Cleveland Heights registry carries virtually no legal weight, the Rev. Jimmie Hicks -- one of two blacks members of the suburb's city council -- has filed suit trying to quash it.
"It's another level of protection for homosexual relations," he said. "Once you have that, then you have civil unions, but none of that will be enough. The ultimate goal is marriage."
Hicks, an insurance salesman and youth pastor, said he has quit the Democratic Party because of support by Kerry and other party leaders for civil unions.
"It's a defining issue for me," Hicks said. "We have to look at whose moral standards align with our beliefs."
Blacks less supportive
Blacks comprise roughly half of Cleveland Heights' 50,000 residents, and -- according to organizers from both sides -- were less supportive of the registry than voters as a whole.
However, John Everett, director of an organization of gay blacks in greater Cleveland, said he encountered little hostility during his door-to-door campaigning for the registry in Cleveland Heights' black neighborhoods.
As for gays in his own organization, BlackOut, Everett said many have priorities other than marriage rights. "They're more concerned about economic issues, about whether they are accepted by their churches," he said.
In Ohio, as elsewhere, the marriage debate has a distinct economic subplot.
Opponents of the state ban on same-sex marriages argued in vain that the measure might deter some businesses and talented individuals from moving to Ohio. Some civic leaders in Cleveland Heights hope its liberal stance will enhance development, attracting the so-called "creative class" that Carnegie Mellon University researcher Richard Florida says gravitates toward gay-friendly cities.
Hicks, for one, was bitter that others on the city council saw an economic rationale for supporting gay couples. "My colleagues sold their soul for the 'creative class,"' he said. "I'm not going to do that."
Emotions overtake practicality
Lee Badgett, a University of Massachusetts researcher who has studied the finances of gays and lesbians, believes gay marriage would be an economic boost to any state that allows it. But she says such pragmatic arguments get overshadowed by more emotional factors.
Badgett also challenges the stereotype that gays collectively are a hedonistic, affluent elite who don't need the economic protections of marriage.
"The gay community doesn't have nearly as much clout as people think," Badgett said in a telephone interview. "Alone, we're too small to make a difference, except in a few cities. We always have to win allies."
Kelley, the Cleveland Heights mayor, is such an ally -- proud that his city recognizes domestic partners, disappointed that other Ohio municipalities haven't followed suit. He's convinced that President Bush has endorsed a constitutional ban on gay marriage as an election-year tactic to divert attention from problems like the economy and Iraq.
Yet Kelley remains unsure what he would do if pressed to perform gay marriages.
"I've been approached by some couples," he said. "I haven't made up my mind. I'm just scratching my head."