Pastor Tom Brown
The New York Times on Sunday took a look at the battle over domestic partner benefits in El Paso. The one thing about the story that stood out to me — in addition to some of the extreme anti-gay rhetoric — was this passage:
While some groups have organized in support of the three officials, the city’s gay community has been noticeably quiet.
Tony Ramos, a retired Army sergeant who works on a statewide H.I.V. and AIDS prevention program, said the gay community was taking a wait-and-see attitude. “For most of us here,” Mr. Ramos said, “being gay is not an issue.”
But he predicted that gay El Pasoans would band together to fight for those who had supported them.
“People are tired and they are fed up,” Mr. Ramos said. “And they do not appreciate El Paso being painted as such a backwards type of city.”
Let’s hope Ramos is right, and the LGBT community in El Paso does stand up. Furthermore, let’s hope the LGBT community around the state and across the nation stands up behind it.
The story notes that of the 19 El Paso employees who signed up for DP benefits, only two are gay. But make no mistake — anti-gay hatred was behind the 2010 ballot measure that overturned DP benefits, just as it is behind the effort to recall the city officials who voted to reinstate them.
National LGBT groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force raise a lot of money out of Texas. This seems like one of those times when they need to put some back in.
Totally agree with ya John about some of these national organizations helping out. They’re all getting geared up to fight in NC but this just as important. Also, I tried to contact someone from one of the local LGBT organization in El Paso over a year ago to see what we can do to help. No response. I hope they’re staying on top of this b/c they’re gonna “wait and see” their family benefits stripped from them and their only allies booted out of city hall.
Tisha, We would more than welcome help form national organizations. Thus far the only one that has been helping and guiding us is GLAAD, but they do not have the deep pockets to mount a campaign that would rival the hatred we are experiencing at this time.
Also, when I said “wait and see’ what I meant was that the signatures themselves and the recall effort are wrangling various legal challenges, so we, as a community were waiting to see where they went before taking action. Now we know, and now we are getting together to work on this. We sure could sue some help though!
@tony…please contact me at brufanegra@hotmail.com…not sure if I can help but I would like to try 🙂