Marriage ambassadors push for gay-nuptials equality

By Chris Lombardi

Greenwich Village resident Edith Windsor, 77, has vivid memories of a rally at the LGBT Center on February 7, 2005. It was three days after a state judge had ruled in Hernandez v. Robles that New York City was violating the state constitution by refusing to marry same-sex couples. Mayor Bloomberg was instructing the city to appeal the decision instead of issuing marriage licenses to gay couples such as the 100 or so that filled the LGBT Center room that day.

As the crowd chanted angrily, in what the Village Voice characterized as “a Bloomberg roast,” Windsor, a retired computer programmer, remembers thinking, We are running out of time.

By “we,” Windsor meant herself and her love of 40 years, 75-year-old psychologist Thea Spyer. In the years since 1965, when Spyer proposed to Windsor on bended knee, Spyer has contracted multiple sclerosis and become quadriplegic. And though the couple lives a full life in their home at One Fifth Avenue, with Windsor serving on the board of SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment) and Spyer continuing her private practice despite her limitations, the question of their legal status still rankled.

For Windsor, New York City’s decision to challenge a judicial order that might have allowed her and Spyer to marry just seemed wrong. Not one to brood, she decided to channel her anger into a constructive cause that year, becoming one of the first “Marriage Ambassadors” trained by Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA), a Chelsea-based gay rights political action committee. Together with 100 others, she began to tell her and Spyer’s story—along with a few key talking points about civil marriage for same-sex couples—to community groups, churches and the media to try to shift the tide of public opinion.

There’s some evidence that, as the effort has grown and picked up steam, the strategy has begun to work.

Founded in early 2005 to educate the public about the realities of life for lesbian and gay families, ESPA’s Marriage Ambassador program got rolling as the decision on Hernandez v. Robles was moving up the court system. At first, the campaign’s 100 volunteers spoke chiefly in non-political contexts, such as churches, living rooms and schools. But since July 2006, when the New York State Court of Appeals ruled against the plaintiffs in Hernandez, the ambassadors have become political organizers, turning up in Albany for ESPA’s May 1 Lobby Day and organizing others to keep the pressure on. The ambassadors, now 324 strong, have been rewarded for their efforts: May 2007 saw ESPA’s largest lobby day ever, while some legislators have found themselves persuaded to sign on to the new marriage bill sponsored by Governor Spitzer, State Senator Thomas Duane and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried.

Started in 1990 as a merger of two LGBT state legislative-action groups, ESPA had long been promoting legislation to protect same-sex couples, along with its successful campaigns on hate crimes legislation and employment discrimination. But after 2004, when equal-marriage lawsuits were first filed in New York, ESPA’s leaders saw a need for a larger dialogue.

Nora Yates, ESPA’s field director, told Chelsea Now that that her group originally started the Ambassadors to create a new narrative, countering those offered by right-wing radio and churches. “We knew the [Hernandez] decision was coming,” said Yates. “We needed to have a chorus of voices around the state, talking about their lives to friends and family, their church….” So ESPA began to enlist sympathetic pastors in its Pride in the Pulpit initiative, and trained its first ambassadors at houses of worship, including the Upper West Side synagogue B’nai Jeshurun.

The first group, including Windsor, then fanned out to families, churches and the media with one simple message: that gay and lesbians have families like anyone else. In addition to gay couples like Windsor and Spyer, the corps includes single gays and numerous straight allies, such as Linda Hellman, of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). A longtime activist in civil rights and anti-war protests, Hellman told Chelsea Now hat she joined PFLAG 10 years ago when her son John came out. She added that at first, she went to meetings for the support, but the more she learned, the more she felt the old activist energy return.

“I thought, How do I tell my son, ‘I’m sorry, you don’t have the same rights as your brother and sister?’”

That question took on greater urgency after July 2006, when the New York State Court of Appeals rejected Daniel Hernandez, along with dozens of other plaintiffs, in three separate lawsuits. The decision listed numerous possible grounds for a denial of equal marriage to same-sex couples, and refused to open the door.

“After the decision, some of the air went out,” confirmed Hellman.

Yates concurs but said that many ambassadors nevertheless spoke that day at rallies around the state, from Buffalo and Rochester to Greenwich Village. And then they dusted themselves off and began to organize. Hellman, for one, was prepared to begin to exert pressure on Albany.

“Either way, it was going to the legislature,” she said. “We’ve been to Albany three times, and each time it gets a little better.”

Windsor was similarly galvanized. “I spend something like 24 hours a day on the phone,” urging people to contact their elected officials, she said. “And the day of the [May 19 Wedding March] across the Brooklyn Bridge, I even tried to give a flier, with phone numbers to call, to [Councilwoman] Rosie Mendez!”

Windsor also contributed highlights of her and Spyer’s 42 years together to an Ambassadors “Family Album,” which gets used in presentations and has become an effective tool. “I couldn’t make it to Albany this year,” she said, “but people called me and said they were looking at the photos and crying.”

Hundreds of others did make it to ESPA’s 2007 Lobby Day on May 1, including most of the Ambassadors and many pastors from Pride in the Pulpit. Linda Hellman said she spoke to legislators parent-to-parent, as did many PFLAG members who came with her.

“When we were up in Albany, I [explained] to the politicians, ‘Our kids came out, and now we gotta come out.’” Hellman said “It’s not enough [for parents] not to kick your kids out. Now we have to fight for their civil rights.”

Overall, said Yates, it is not easy to quantify the effects of her Ambassadors. But one key legislator, she said, has admitted that meeting with gay families and with Pride in the Pulpit pastors made a real difference.

Ron Canestrari, a moderate Democrat representing Albany and Saratoga, had not received ESPA’s endorsement in 2006, despite his support for many of ESPA’s initiatives, because he had said he would not advocate equal marriage rights. But “he met with some of our same-sex families, looked at our photo albums and talked to some ministers,” said Yates, “and he changed his position. He was on the Albany NPR affiliate talking about it!”

Still, with less than a week left in the state legislative session, all involved told Chelsea Now that the task before the Ambassadors was not going to be easy. Yates said that her program, which in the fall will include three new organizers co-sponsored by the New York Civil Liberties Union, has few illusions that equal marriage will be achieved this year.

“Now our Ambassadors are heading up Local Marriage Action Teams,” Yates said. “They know we have a lot of work to do.”

Meanwhile, Windsor keeps working the phones, although this spring, she and Spyer decided that they couldn’t wait any longer. With the help of three of Spyer’s homecare aides, the couple flew to Toronto on Memorial Day weekend.

The judge who married them, Windsor told the Toronto Globe and Mail, said that “we had married for all the people who died before same-sex weddings were possible.” Telling the story to Chelsea Now, Windsor’s voice was gentle as she spoke of New York’s slow path.

“When California was the first state to drop the miscegenation [laws against interracial marriages in 1947], it took 20 years until the Supreme Court did the same,” she said. “It might be the same now.”