SF Pride must void Pink Brick...

Feinstein Gets Pink Brick For Anti-Gay Remarks
by Lisa Leff, Associated Press

Posted: April 8, 2005 8:02 am ET


(San Francisco, California) In Dianne Feinstein's hometown of San Francisco, hard feelings linger about the senator's remark that the push to make marriage legal for same-sex couples hurt Democrats in the November election.

Organizers of the gay pride parade held in the city every June announced Thursday that Feinstein was the winner of this year's "Pink Brick" award, a dubious honor bestowed on the public figure the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Committee decides has done the most to damage the gay rights cause. President Bush and talk show host Laura Schlessinger were the previous winners.

Joey Cain, president of the committee said Feinstein was nominated for the prize for telling reporters the morning after Bush's re-election that progress on the gay marriage front "has been too much, too fast, too soon."

"There are a lot of people in the community who feel very betrayed by her because they have supported her," Cain said.

Howard Gantman, a Feinstein spokesman, called the senator's nomination for the Pink Brick "very unfortunate," saying it neglects Feinstein's long record of support for gay and lesbian issues not only as a senator, but as a former San Francisco supervisor and mayor during the early days of the AIDS crisis.

"It's really too bad they haven't chosen, in terms of this effort, to really focus on people who have been longtime opponents of the gay community," Gantman said earlier this week.

Feinstein's competition for the prize, which is the gay community's answer to Hollywood's "Golden Raspberry" awards honoring the worst in film, was the Rev. Lou Sheldon, a vocal opponent of gay rights, and the Traditional Values Coalition, the Orange County-based organization Sheldon leads.

Balloting was open to the public through the committee's Web site, but turnout was feather light: Feinstein secured 363 votes, the coalition received 276, and Sheldon got 131. Some longtime activists objected to putting California's senior senator in the same category as Sheldon, but others argued that Feinstein's comments were more hurtful and damaging because she is supposed to be a friend, according to Cain.

"I'm personally shocked that she won," he said. "I consider Lou Sheldon way more evil, but I have to go with what the community voted for."

Geoffrey Kors, executive director of Equality California, California's largest gay rights lobbying group, agreed that while there were probably public figures more deserving of a Pink Brick than Feinstein, her nomination and selection did not come out of nowhere. Rather, Feinstein always has had a lukewarm and occasionally rocky relationship with her gay and lesbian constituents, Kors said.

"She has a mixed reputation," he said. "She has generally supported basic nondiscrimination laws, but she vetoed the San Francisco domestic partner legislation at the request of the archbishop. ... I think people are frustrated by her lack of movement over the last decade on these issues, for never making them a part of her agenda."

But James Hormel, a gay San Francisco philanthropist who served as U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg in the Clinton administration, said he doesn't think the small number of people who cast votes in the Pink Brick election "in any way represents the LGBT constituency in San Francisco." Feinstein has long been a champion of gay issues, as evidenced by her appointment of gay and lesbian aides while she was mayor and her vote as a senator against the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

"I don't really think this is in the realm of things a big deal," Hormel said. "On the other hand, I find it curious that this constituency, which is struggling so hard to end its second-class citizenship in this country, would turn on somebody who has in many ways been a major supporter."

Cain said that in the past the committee has tried to attach an "educational component" to the award. The year Schlessinger won because of her opposition to same-sex couples adopting children, the group organized a postcard campaign for parade goers to urge radio stations to stop carrying Dr. Laura's show.

The committee hasn't decided what kind of project would best-suit Feinstein's brick, but Cain suggested that a place to start would be for the senator to attend the parade on June 26.

"We are going to send an invitation to the senator to ride in the parade or speak from the stage, something she has never done," he said. "I'm hoping (the brick) sends a message to the senator, and I want to see it create more of a dialogue with her."

©Associated Press 2005