Word: gayness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most glaring examples of Dukakis' opportunism and inconsistency is his uneven support of gay and lesbian rights. Throughout his first and most of his second term as governor, Dukakis was widely perceived as being a strong supporter of gay and lesbian issues. During his 1986 bid for reelection, however, the Boston Globe ran a story on two gay men who were foster parents to two young children. Legislative outcry and political pressure soon led Dukakis to formulate a plan making it virtually impossible for gays and lesbians in Massachusetts to be foster parents...
During the 1987 legislative session a Gay Rights Bill--having passed the Massachusetts House--was stalled in a Senate committee and kept from the full body, which was expected to approve it. Although he threw quiet support behind the bill, Dukakis--who was campaigning in Iowa--refused to take an active roll in salvaging it and let it die in committee...
...more than 11 million homosexuals nationwide, such random attacks are increasingly commonplace. According to gay-rights groups, hate-motivated assaults have nearly tripled in recent years. In New York City, reported attacks on gays, probably a tiny fraction of the total, jumped from 176 in 1984 to 517 last year. While homosexuals have always been a target of abuse, gay activists attribute the rising violence to the AIDS epidemic and a conservative backlash. "AIDS has provided a green light to the bashers and the bigots," says Kevin Berrill of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "It's a convenient...
Many attacks go far beyond a beating. In New York City's West Village last summer, a young tough wielding a golf club from a speeding car knocked a gay man unconscious, leaving him permanently brain damaged. In Fort Lauderdale, a pickup truck swerved onto the sidewalk outside a popular gay bar, killing a 33-year-old man. Randy Schell, a client advocate at Community United Against Violence, a San Francisco social-service agency, reports cases of men being beaten with logging chains and sliced with razors. "Anything you could imagine being used to desecrate another human being has been...
...meantime, gay support groups are taking action. Last month Horizons Community Services, Inc., a Chicago gay organization, started an antiviolence program with a $27,000 federal crime-victim grant. Los Angeles' Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center has instituted a telephone hot line for assault victims, and San Francisco's Community United Against Violence offers free self-defense classes. But taking a stand means taking a risk. In Indianapolis, a few weeks after Kathleen Sarris appeared on radio and television talk shows as president of the gay-rights group Justice, Inc., she was raped at gunpoint and beaten unconscious...