Our Own, January 1997

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Hawaiian court says "YesU
I~ same-sex marriage
- b~t don't paclc your bags yet
by Rosemary Doud
Assistant editor
On .December 3, 1996 Circuit Court Judge Kevin
Chang announced his judgment in favor of the plain­tiffs
in Hawaii's same-sex marriage case, Baehr v.
Miike. The judgment
was announced in a
private session with
the involved parties,
and means that same­sex
marriage in the
state of Hawaii is no
longer banned.
Chang ruled that the
state had not justified
its ban on same-sex <J
marriage, and reject- §
ed a11 the state's argu- :;:;
ments put forth at the ~
trial. In addition, -5
Chang issued an ~
injunction to have the 0
~ state begin to issue ~
decision by Judge Chang was expected, and marks
the beginning of the next round in the fight for same-sex
marriage in H ·aii. ·
The history of the fight dates back to 1980, when
research on gay marriage possibilities in all 50 states
led to the determination that Hawaii's constitution
provided an excellent
basis upon which gays
could sue to attain legal
marriage status. This
concept finally began to
materialize in 1990,
when three same-s<!x
couples, including
Ninia Baehr and G.
Dancel, applied to the
Hawaii State Depart­ment
of Health for mar­riage
licenses. The
applications were
denied.
marriage licenses to g
same-sex couples. On
the following day,
Chang granted state
Ninia Baehr and G. Dancel, flt'O of the plaintiffs in the Hawaii nwrriage
In May, 1991, a
lawsuit was filed, suing
the Director of Health
and the State of Hawaii,
contending that
case. Hawaii's marriage law
attorneys' request for a stay of the injunction pend­ing
the outcome of their appeal to the Hawaii
Supreme Court. This means that the state will not
issue marriage licenses until the case is complete or
until other action is taken to remove the stay. This
is unconstitutional
because it bars same-sex couples from obtaining
licenses based on sex and sexual orientation. In
October of the same year, the case was thrown out by
a circuit court judge before trial. This ruling was
See Marriage, pA6
Sentenced to llfe
Edge of hope, edge of fear
Note: This is part one of a series
on how promising treatments for
HIV are raising hopes, and ques­tions,
in gay America.
-by Richard Shumate
Contributing writer
The crowd of about 100 was
mostly male, mostly white,
mostly gay. As
these people
walked into the
why he had come out to this
forum on this November night.
He was trying, he said, "to fig­ure
out what in the hell I'm sup­posed
to do now."
The audience roared ·with a
knowing laughter. These were
people 'who bad been Jiving with
HIV, or struggling against AIDS,
or caring for and loving those
slightly-tat­tered
auditori­um
of an inner­city
high
school, many
stopped to
greet and· hug
long-time
friends, fellow
warriors. Some
faces showed
the strain of
Protease inhibitors
hold the promise of a
way out of the AIDS
nightmare. But they
hove also given gay
America a puzzle
with oil new pieces.
who had been
staring into the
pit of a holo­caust.
Up on the
stage, facing
the question­ers,
were
activlsts and
lawyers, psy­chologists
and
people in the
insurance..busi­ness
- learned
men and
women who'd
gathered here
battle, some
bodies still ,
bore the obvious traces of ·wast­ing.
But these were not, in either
body or spirit, the walking dead.
As the night's program began
and the conversation grew, a
weathered but still handsome
Latino man with · m<2re than a
trace of an accent s1>9ke up to
ask a question, prefacing it with
a simple, elegant statement of
to offer their best advice as to
what in the hell these people
were supposed to do now. But as
the night drew on, it became
obvious that they would only be
able to provide advice, not
answers.
This gathering took place in
Atlanta's gay Midtown neigh­borhood,
but it could just have
easily taken place in Norfolk or --------------------------===-........ ------------....!.,,...._.------=-------- · Boston or Austin or any other
Welcome to my home:
1he lives behind transgender sex worlc
by Arie van der Ven
Contributing writer
Roxanne has not always been a hooker. In
fact, she has probably worked for more
employers than most of us, but was always
fi red when they found out she was not "a real
woman.'' Once it happened when the air-con­ditioning
was out, and her five o'clock shad­ow
became all too visible through her make­up.
Once a company doctor checked her for a
throat infection and found a well-formed
Adam's apple. Many transgenders describe
the daily dread of being found out, and the
humiliation of being fired from jobs they per­fonned
successfully for years. One partici~
pant in a recent Boston study of transgenders
from low income backgrounds remarked, "A
"A normal woman might
worry about loolclng grim in
the mor11ing, but she doesn't
hove to worry about losing
her iob over II."
fulJ .. or part~time in the role of the opposite
sex. According to The Advocate, they are
acquiring more political clout. A Boston­based
study, undertaken by three senior
anthropologists for the Massachusetts
Department of Public Health (1995)~ found
that job discrimination and the search for a
place where they are accepted drives many
transgenders out of lawful work into sex
work (prostitution). Here they are consider­ably
more vulnerabJe to HIV infection than
their male and female colleagues. In a study
done in Atlanta, and published_ in Social
Science Medicine in 1994, researchers found
65 percent of transgender sex workers to be
HIV-infected, many times the average for sex
workers. These numbers- prompted the
place where AIDS has taken its
toll over the past 15 years.
Because as gay America enters
1997, we are entering a new real­ity,
a place where AIDS may no
longer be the death sentence it
once was. And we have begun to
gather in forums such as this to
sort out what that might mean.
At last July's International
Conference on AIDS in
Vancouver, scientists reported a
major breakthrough. Medical
studies on a new class of drugs,
called protease inhibitors,
showed that, used in conjunction
with existing AIDS drugs, they
·can give many - but not all -
people with HIV a dramatic new
lease on life. In some patients'
blood, the level of the virus has
become undetectable, leading to
a still-unproven hypothesis that
this treatment could even eradi-
See Sentenced, p. All