Thomas Suddes: Why Gay Street is Gay Street and some Ohio lawmakers embrace anti-gay laws – The Columbus Dispatch
As LGBTQ Ohioans and their families and friends know, it’s Pride Month. Please don’t tell the Ohio General Assembly’s members: Some might try to ban it.
Actually, you’d think a legislature elected to represent all Ohioans might try to do just that: Represent them.
But stuck in a state Senate committee is Senate Bill 119, the Ohio Fairness Act, co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Nickie Antonio, of Lakewood and Republican Sen. Michael Rulli, of Salem.
(The House companion, House Bill 208, is cosponsored by Republican Rep. Brett Hudson Hillyer, of Uhrichsville, and Democratic Rep. Michael Skindell, of Lakewood.)
Here’s what Equality Ohio, a Statehouse lobby for LGBTQ people, says about the Antonio-Rulli and Hillyer-Skindell bills: “In most parts of Ohio, it’s still legal to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. [The proposed legislation] protects against employment discrimination, housing discrimination, and discrimination in accessing basic goods and services (also known as public accommodations).”
In 2009, when Greater Cleveland Democrat Armond Budish was speaker, Ohio’s House, in a 56-39 vote, did pass a bipartisan LGBTQ civil rights bill sponsored by then-Reps. Ross McGregor, a Springfield Republican, and Dan Stewart, a Columbus Democrat.
(Among those voting “no”: Future state Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican.). The bill died in the Ohio Senate.
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Despite Statehouse prejudice, many Ohio communities, paced by Columbus, are considered gay friendly.
Speaking of Columbus, please tell General Assembly zealots, who might try to rename it, that Gay Street, the east-west street a block north of the Statehouse, wasn’t named to honor the “lifestyle.”
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It commemorates Dr. Norman Gay (1820-1898).
According to the Columbus Landmarks Foundation, Vermont-born Gay was a respected surgeon who treated patients at Camp Chase, a Civil War army camp in Columbus, and also at the old Ohio Penitentiary in downtown Columbus.
Since Jan. 1, 1974, same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults has been legal in Ohio. But later in 1974, Ohio’s ever-regressive Supreme Court said Republican Secretary of State Ted Brown could refuse to incorporate a group called the Greater Cincinnati Gay Society. In a 4-3 ruling, the court said that while “homosexual acts between consenting adults are no longer [illegal] … promotion of homosexuality as a valid life style is contrary to the public policy of the state.”
But the main event came at the Statehouse in 2003-04, when Ohio’s General Assembly passed a bill – which then-Gov. Bob Taft signed – forbidding same-sex marriage in Ohio.
Among the marriage ban’s key Statehouse backers were then-Speaker Larry Householder and Rep. William Seitz, a suburban Cincinnati Republican. Then late in 2004, Ohio voters, via a statewide ballot issue, banned gay marriage constitutionally. The ban carried 87 of the 88 counties, all but Athens.
Six years ago yesterday, however, in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, its syllabus says, that – no matter what Ohio legislators thought – “The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person … couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty.”
Some Ohioans still in public office who were legislators in 2003-2204 may remain proud of their anti-gay law. Others – who count on voters’ amnesia – may want everyone to “move on.”
But facts are facts.
Besides Householder and Seitz, among then-General Assembly members who voted to ban same-sex marriage were future Lt. Gov. Jon Husted; future State Auditors Keith Faber and Mary Taylor; John Carey, future director of the Governor’s Office of Appalachia; future Chancellor Randy Gardner, of the Ohio Higher Education Department; future Statehouse lobbyists Chuck Blasdel, Kevin DeWine, Jeff Jacobson and Thomas Niehaus; future U.S. Reps. Bob Latta, of Bowling Green, and Jim Jordan, of Urbana; state Sens. Jay Hottinger, of Newark, Kirk Schuring, of Canton, and Tim Schaffer, of Lancaster; then-Rep. James P. Trakas, once Cuyahoga County’s Republican chair; and state Reps. Jamie Callender, of Concord, Jim Hoops, of Napoleon, Thomas Patton, of Strongsville, and Jean Schmidt, of Loveland.
Want to know if, beyond the Supreme Court ruling, much else has changed at the Statehouse, for the better, for LGBTQ Ohioans? Until Antonio’s bill becomes law, the answer is no.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com