Bakst: Gay equality at issue at the State House and beyond
Providence Journal Bulletin
01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, May 15, 2008

When a House panel last week staged the annual charade of a hearing on marriage-equality legislation, the Rev. Eugene Dyszlewski, a minister who backs gay marriage, had the best description of State House life.

Did it remind him of Alice in Wonderland? No, he told me, it reminded him of the movie Groundhog Day.

Well, all the familiar State House earmarks were there: too many bills on the agenda, no set starting time, a room too small, a hearing late into the night.

As in other years, I expect the same-sex marriage bill to die of lawmaker indifference, or cowardice, or prejudice. But there is something different this time around — a bill to allow gay couples who wed elsewhere to get a divorce here. The sponsor, House Majority Leader Gordon Fox, says, “It’s a hell of a way to discuss it, that we’re discussing divorce before we discuss marriage, but maybe that’s a sign of our times.”

The bill was prompted by a state Supreme Court ruling that Family Court here lacked the jurisdiction to grant a divorce to two Providence women married in Massachusetts. One of those women, Cassandra Ormiston, testified for the bill last week, as did Louis Pulner, lawyer for her spouse, Margaret Chambers.

A frustrated Ormiston is planning to move to Massachusetts and get a divorce there, but when I asked if she’d stay in Rhode Island if Fox’s bill became law in the next few weeks, she replied, “I don’t want to move. If I see any glimmer of hope that my rights will be afforded me, I’ll be an extremely happy woman.”

Despite opposition from the Diocese of Providence, Fox, who is Catholic and gay, voices optimism the bill will pass, even amid the financial crisis that monopolizes legislator minds. “The budget is an important issue, but, obviously, it doesn’t mean we can’t multitask,” Fox says.

Elsewhere in the realm of gay issues, a Providence City Hall reception room recently was the setting for a speaking program to generate momentum for a million-dollar Equity Action challenge campaign to help finance programs serving the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) communities.

The Equity Action endowment, which awards grants to address such needs as safe schools, youth leadership, marriage equality, health care and elder interests, is an initiative of the Rhode Island Foundation. If the campaign raises $500,000, the foundation will match it.

Mayor David N. Cicilline, who is gay and who is honorary co-chairman of the drive to raise the $500,000, spoke, as did Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, who is on the campaign committee.

Chairing the campaign is Sally Lapides, president of Residential Properties. She recalled, “When I was growing up, my mother used to make me sit in front of Chellel’s supermarket in Barrington with a cup to collect money for the march in Selma. … She taught us it was not a black or white issue, it was a civil-rights issue, and that’s what I feel we are in the middle of right now. I think this is the civil-rights issue of our time.”

Lapides added, “I will absolutely not be able to put my head down on the pillow until we are all treated equally, we are all recognized for our diversity and people judge us by the quality of who we are inside, not what we look like, who we pray to, who we love.”

She is donating $10,000 to the cause, and she vowed, “We’ll get this $500,000. I’ll be damned if we’re not going to.”

I have known Lapides and her family a long time and I wouldn’t doubt her for a second.

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.