Search Articles:

 

Breaking News......... Whitefish-area couple deny stealing $30K in tools......... Anaconda-Deer Lodge County OKs wind power talks......... Ghosts trip Osprey, 8-6......... Missoula Masons to celebrate lodge's centennial......... Local News......... Schweitzer: ‘Damn right I'm mad' at GM........Three council members file suit against city........Fishing limits dropped on 6 backcountry lakes........Baucus: Health care plan will be produced before end of August........Fighting fire with fire on Blue Mountain: Strategy designed to keep smoke from billowing into Missoula during the summer........Jury acquits ex-Griz Wilson in second murder trial........

A few months ago, my girlfriend and I crossed the North First Street pedestrian bridge on our way to have dinner downtown. We noticed a group of junior high and high school-age boys on bicycles hanging around the top of the bridge, so we stopped holding hands. When you are gay, you learn to pick and choose your battles.

Even though we weren’t “flaunting it” or “asking for it,” as gay rights opponents often say, the boys started calling us “dykes” and “lesbos.” We walked by them, trying to ignore it. But when they began following us, yelling slurs for female genitalia, I decided to call

9-1-1. When the young men saw me on my cell phone, they backed off, and we cut over to a busier downtown street. The Missoula police officer I spoke with never found them, and there’s not much he could have done if he had. The laws in Montana don’t protect queers the way they do Native Americans, blacks, Catholics, Jews or any other historically oppressed minority group.

I’m hopeful that may soon change, given the recent Montana Human Rights Network poll, the results of which were published by the Great Falls Tribune on June 12.

Turns out, a majority of Montanans support much of the so-called “gay agenda” n straight people agree that no one should be beaten up, fired or denied housing because of whom they love or who they are.

The pollsters asked 600 Montanans likely to vote in the general election their views about employment discrimination. The results: 70 percent support inclusive hate crimes legislation, 58 percent support housing discrimination protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Montanans and

58 percent even support civil unions or domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, so long as it’s not called “marriage.”

Even though America has long since done away with “separate but equal” statutes, civil unions or even just inclusive hate crimes protection would be important stepping stones toward the rights that law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working people like my girlfriend and I deserve.

Please encourage your legislators to vote with the people this session when it comes to human rights, and join the Montana Human Rights Network in working for a day when all Montanans can walk hand in hand with the one they love without fear of violence or discrimination.

Caitlin Copple is a gay rights activist and the co-founder of Out Words, a monthly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community newspaper. She lives in Missoula.

---

---

Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)

---