Dramatization of Legislation Committee Meeting After Defeat

Several days later, Winston, Reggie and I were back in the Committee Room of the Urbana City Building, facing Barber and two other “Concerned Citizens” I went to the Legislative Committee meeting more out of sense of duty than anything else, feeling like a marionette controlled by a mad puppeteer.

With Roger Hamilton in Europe we were one fewer, but so were they. There was battle fatigue on both sides.

Chairman Ken Boyce, having flexed his political muscle at the city council meeting, wanted a clause “protecting” little old ladies who didn't want to rent their garden apartment to homosexuals. Winston called it a 'Mrs. Murphy's clause'. When Gay Liberation finally agreed to allow Mrs. Murphy the right to discriminate, the result was not a resubmission of the ordinance, but rather, a Pandora's box of so-called oppressed groups were introduced for inclusion, mostly by Democratic aldermen hoping to bury the whole gay thing in a laundry list of the disadvantaged. They spoke of height, weight, eye color, hair color, you name it. The absurdity reached its logical conclusion when it was suggested by one of the aldermen that perhaps the law should say 'you can't discriminate against anybody for any reason.’

"When you choose an employee," explained Winston. "You discriminate against those applicants who are not qualified. This is as it should be. You are attempting to render the entire ordinance meaningless. Passage of such an ordinance, with all its amendments, would not only be a slap in the face against gay people, but against all groups protected by the current ordinance."

Interestingly, the Concerned Citizens concurred. Like the Gay Liberation Front, they wanted a vote on gay rights, with nothing else to obscure the issue. The meeting ended with nothing resolved.