In the Vanguard of Gay Rights Gains

The federal welfare system is being dismantled. California voters have rejected affirmative action as we’ve known it. The liberal dream of universal health care remains just that.

People on both the right and left complain that President Clinton won reelection by embracing much of the Republican agenda. This is, it is said, a conservative age.

How, then, does one explain the rise of Assemblywoman Sheila J. Kuehl?

When newly elected Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante appointed her Monday as speaker pro tem, it meant that a liberal lesbian from Santa Monica will preside over Assembly floor sessions. Kuehl, whose district straddles the Santa Monica Mountains and encompasses a wide swath of the San Fernando Valley, is the first woman and first openly gay person to achieve the high-profile post.

The day after Kuehl’s appointment, the gay movement achieved another victory when a Hawaii court ruled that a ban on same-sex marriages amounts to gender discrimination. This further advances a national debate that a generation ago would have been unthinkable.

A conservative age? Maybe conventional terms don’t apply. In another life, Kuehl played Zelda on the old “Dobie Gillis” sitcom. The pose of The Thinker might be appropriate.

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And perhaps we could picture ourselves auditing the kind of a lecture that Kuehl, a graduate of Harvard Law School, used to deliver as a professor at Loyola and UCLA. The news from Hawaii had Professor Kuehl reflecting on the majesty of American law.

“I feel very proud of how the law works in protecting minorities. The interesting thing about the Hawaii case,” she says, “is that it’s very much in the same vein as Brown vs. the Board of Education or the federal sex discrimination cases. . . .

“When a state discriminates against its residents on the basis of gender, the state is required to articulate a compelling reason why it has to do that to accomplish its legislative goal,” the professor explains. “So Hawaii had to present a compelling reason in this trial court why the state should bar same-sex couples from getting a marriage license.

“And they really tried hard. The reason they came up with was children--that it was bad for children to be raised in a household where there is not a mother and father, not a male and female influence.”

And the Hawaiian court, after considering the evidence, after considering studies about children raised by single parents and same-sex couples, could not find that compelling reason. The decision is on hold pending an appeal, and no doubt more states will consider legislation expressly banning same-sex marriage. Clinton already has spoken out against gay marriage.

But from where Kuehl sits, the hubbub represents progress. “What was once unmentionable is now mentionable,” she says.

Kuehl offers a twofold explanation for the rapid pace of the gay civil rights movement.

“One is that an awful lot of people have been told they have family members who are gay. A lot of people are coming out.” Media coverage of the Hawaii case, as well as related stories, “really gives people more courage, because it doesn’t sound as horrible, it doesn’t seem as strange.”

And as more and more people come out, Kuehl notes, “there are more people who are really thinking about their prejudices.”

Some observers suggest that the 55-year-old Kuehl has done much to advance the gay cause. Her charm, wit, intelligence and pragmatism have made her an uncommonly popular Assembly member, enabling her to have friendly working relationships with conservative legislators who have little appreciation for the gay agenda or Kuehl’s anti-gun, anti-death penalty liberalism.

“I think they expected an Amazon dyke with a chip on her shoulder,” Kuehl told The Times’ Jenifer Warren last year. “Instead, they got an Amazon dyke with no chip on her shoulder.”

And now she’s studying parliamentary procedure. The work load will be heavy, and 99% of it will have nothing to do with the gay agenda. But her position will give Kuehl a more prominent podium from which to make her case, with a upbeat, patriotic spin.

“What I really love about this country,” she says, “is that it hates unfairness, and it hates discrimination. And once people are forced to even think about their prejudices, most people decide they don’t want to be prejudiced. And they don’t really remember why they felt so strongly about it in the first place. . . .

“One thing about being 55 years old is you remember a lot about the way things were. And I think that things are changing, whether we have court decisions or not.”

Her comments bring another thought to mind. Proposition 209, among other things, bans preferences in state programs based on gender.

How would that apply if two men or two women seek a California marriage license?