Dramatization of 2nd Meeting of Legislation Committee on Gay Rights Bill-July 9,1973
It wasn’t until very late Sunday night that we returned home, riding high on the spirit of the parade. This sense of empowerment made it very difficult for Winston to write up religious exemptions for Urbana’s proposed gay rights ordinance. But these were the instructions from Committee on Legislation Chairman Ken Boyce and we agreed to accept this compromise in exchange for passage.
On Monday, Joel and Winston spent several hours at the City Building modifying the ordinance to allow churches to discriminate against gays in both their hiring and social functions. "I feel dirty writing these lines,” said Winston that evening over beer, “but against fifteen hundred signatures, we can live with the compromise." Nevertheless, Seth Heller screamed at his partner and called him a sell-out.
It was déjà vu the next week at the Legislative Committee hearing; same cast of characters, same arrangement of chairs around the table. When the reworded ordinance was presented, the compromise seemed to be viewed by the Bible thumpers as a sign of weakness and they became more intransigent. The Concerned Citizens wanted no ordinance, period, and we had no intention of sitting back and enduring abuse by these fundamentalists. All hell broke loose; blows were averted, but barely. Ken Boyce called for a committee vote to place it before the August meeting of the council. It was two for and two against as expected. A tie was sufficient to advance the bill so I failed to notice that Ken Boyce could have made it 3-2.
