Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bay Windows - July 8, 2004
Ethan Jacobs, ejacobs@baywindows.com.
Among the attendees were AIDS Action Committee Executive Director Rebecca Haag, political consultant Mary Breslauer, Goodridge plaintiffs David Wilson and Robert Compton, David Tseng, executive director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), and veteran political activist Will Woodruff.
Breslauer, an advisor to the Kerry campaign, said the event pulled in $240,000, breaking fundraising totals of all previous Boston fundraisers for GLBT candidates.
Heinz, 31, who is currently traveling the country raising funds for the Kerry campaign said that his stepfather has garnered support from the local GLBT community because they have witnessed his support for the community firsthand.
"John is obviously someone, we see in the press all the time, he's kind of longer on substance than style, so if you're kind of local to him and you know what battles he's fought, you're more likely to embrace him," said Heinz. "Our challenge for the next three or four months is to disseminate that message to the country, and to all its communities."
Heinz pointed to Kerry's career-long 100 percent rating from the Human Rights Campaign, which scores legislators based on their congressional voting record on GLBT issues. He also praised Kerry's vote against the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act; Kerry was the only one among the 14 senators who voted against DOMA facing a tough re-election challenge that year. Heinz also cited Kerry's vote in 1996 in favor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act as an example of his stepfather's commitment to the GLBT community.
But Kerry has come under fire from many in the GLBT community for his opposition to same-sex marriage. Kerry supports granting same-sex couples all the benefits of marriage through civil unions, and he opposes a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Yet he angered many in the local GLBT community by supporting an amendment to the state constitution that would ban same-sex marriage. Describing Kerry as "old school" in his stance on same-sex marriage, Heinz said marriage is one of the few areas where he and Kerry disagree.
"I've talked to him about it. ... I try to delineate between what's my opinion and what's John's, and in very few places it diverges, and I don't think spiritually I diverge at all from what John is trying to do," said Heinz. "But at the same time, he's got a part of him that believes that the word marriage is reserved for men and women in its own way. But I think he is more sophisticated and cunning like that. I think the political strategy about why we're giving up on the word 'marriage' but using it as a hook to get full rights, all 1200 partnership rights for same-sex couples, is a pretty smart strategy."
Kerry considers himself a "standard-bearer" for the GLBT community in his political career, said Heinz, but among family Kerry is modest about his accomplishments.
"I think of John as someone who's consistently been there, doesn't have a discriminatory bone in his body, doesn't want the Constitution, the real antecedents of our country, to be messed with when you talk about a constitutional amendment or anything like that," he said. "But John is also isn't someone who toots his own horn, at least not around the dinner table, unless he did something really well on a sailboat, in which case we all hear about it."
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