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Robin Tyler ignored by Gay groups |
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| Robin Tyler ignored by Gay groups | |
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by Rex Wockner -
SGN Contributing Writer Veteran Lesbian activists Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, the first same-sex couple married in Southern California, have been missing from much of the material put out by the Gay organizations involved in the California marriage battle. Although Tyler and Olson filed the first lawsuit in what became the consolidated marriage case, they seem to have been ignored by the publicity machines of key GLBT organizations. On June 18, writing for The Advocate, Tyler shed some possible light on what had become a bit of a mystery for some observers. "The [case against the] ban on same-sex marriage - the one that became the successful Supreme Court marriage case - was filed by us - Tyler et al. vs. County of LA," Tyler wrote. "Rev. Troy Perry and his partner, Phillip Ray De Blieck, filed with us as they wanted California to recognize their Canadian marriage. And we did this against the advice of Gay attorneys and organizations who warned us we would not win because it was a conservative Republican-appointed court, and 'How could we without consulting these attorneys?' Well, we won, and many still haven't forgiven us for filing the suit." Whether or not that's the case, key organizations in the marriage case said there was no conscious effort to blacklist Tyler and Olson or Perry and De Blieck. "Robin and Troy have done a ton for our movement," said Equality California (EQCA) Executive Director Geoff Kors. "I didn't know beforehand that they were planning to file a lawsuit [and] of course you'd like a heads-up ... but people have the right to bring a lawsuit." Kors suggested the lack of references to the L.A. couples in material circulated by the Gay groups probably was just a result of the fact that Tyler and Perry had their own lawyer - famed L.A. attorney Gloria Allred - while numerous other couples and EQCA all were jointly represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union. In addition, a spokesman for Lambda Legal claimed that Tyler didn't want to be part of the GLBT groups' publicity efforts, preferring to handle her own press. Tyler, however, said that happened only once and that, even then, she rushed from her press conference with Allred to the one staged by Gay organizations, but arrived too late, because they had changed the start time. In reality, according to Tyler, she was systematically not contacted for, invited to, or included in the public efforts of the establishment groups. "By having the blackout on Troy Perry and I, they were insulting the work of two pioneers in the Gay rights movement who had been working on the issue of marriage equality for Lesbians and Gays for almost four decades," she said in an interview. "That is no way for them to treat the visionaries in whose steps they walk." Shannon Minter, NCLR's legal director and the lead lawyer for the majority of the couples in the case, said he was puzzled by Tyler's being "angry or upset." "We were not angry with her about [her lawsuit]," Minter said. "We have reached out to her and Gloria every time we plan a press conference and invited them to join. A couple of times they responded by planning competing press events happening earlier. Even so, we have continued to invite them because it's the right thing to do. We don't talk about them in our press releases because they are not our clients. They are represented by one of the most well-known, media-savvy attorneys in the state. It would not be appropriate - or possibly even ethical as attorneys - for us to talk about another attorney's clients in an ongoing case." The alleged "blackout" on Tyler hit its loudest note in an e-mail blast from EQCA on June 16, the day that Tyler and Olson, at 5:01 p.m., became the first same-sex couple in Southern California to receive a marriage license, and that legendary activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, at 5:01 p.m., became the first same-sex couple in Northern California to receive a marriage license. EQCA's blast that afternoon stated: "At 5:01 p.m. in San Francisco, after being together for more than 50 years, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin will finally be legally married. Phyllis and Del, like so many other loving couples, have been waiting for this day for so long." The blast made no mention of Tyler and Olson's simultaneous wedding. "We did want to highlight Phyllis and Del," Kors acknowledged, again pointing out that Lyon, Martin and EQCA all had the same lawyers - Lambda, NCLR and the ACLU. Still, circumstantial evidence could suggest that the groups actively ignored the famous L.A. couples. (Tyler is a longtime, well-known activist and Perry founded the Metropolitan Community Churches.) A search for "Robin Tyler" on EQCA's Web site yields only one hit, for "a special evening with legendary activist Robin Tyler." The 2005 event was a fundraiser in Fresno sponsored by Central California Alliance. A search for "Robin Tyler" on NCLR's Web site gets only four hits, three of which are one press release in three different languages. The fourth hit is a legal filing that was copied to Allred. A search for "Robin Tyler" on Lambda's Web site gets two hits, both of which are a full timeline of the consolidated marriage cases. On the other hand, a search for "Del Martin" plus the word "marriage" yields 61 hits on NCLR's Web site, 42 hits on EQCA's Web site and 13 hits on Lambda Legal's Web site. Some of the hits appear to be duplicates of identical or near-identical documents and a few others are not specifically about the consolidated marriage case. But the large disparity still might be explained by the fact that NCLR was the lead counsel and Lambda Legal was co-counsel for Martin, Lyon and EQCA. After all, turning it around the other way, a search of GloriaAllred.com for "Del Martin" returns no hits. A search for "Robin Tyler" returns three. A search of amglaw.com, the site of Allred's firm, returns one hit for Tyler and none for Martin. But perhaps that's comparing apples and oranges. Allred's law firm is not a Gay rights group, while Tyler and Perry are Gay icons that large Gay legal groups might be expected to take notice of. By the time the six active cases on same-sex marriage were consolidated into one by the California Judicial Council in June 2004, Tyler should have begun to feel some love from the nation's biggest Gay legal organizations and EQCA, she said, even if she still had her own lawyer. "If the organizations are trying to rewrite history, and claim all the credit for this lawsuit, they won't get away with it," she said. "[It] is beneath the dignity of people who are supposed to show leadership in the Gay movement." Tyler is not alone in her interpretation of events, though few activists who agree with her were willing to say so for publication. One who did speak on the record, former EQCA state chair Nicole Murray-Ramirez, said there is no question in his mind that Tyler and Olson were snubbed. "I agree with others' observations that Robin Tyler and Diane Olson's lawsuit and activism on our behalf were ignored and dismissed," said Murray-Ramirez, who chairs the city of San Diego's Human Relations Commission. "I think we all owe Diane and Robin a very big thank-you for stepping up." In the end, Tyler and Olson got revenge for being sidelined - if that's what happened - by the activist establishment. Their marriage was at the top of the Drudge Report, the top of latimes.com, and on the front page, above the fold, in the Los Angeles Times. In addition, the Associated Press and Reuters filed scores of photos of the couple's wedding that were published all over the world. One key activist working with the EQCA/NCLR forces called the coverage of Tyler and Olson's wedding "a media tsunami" - a concept that is not unknown to attorney Allred, who gets 649,000 hits on Yahoo's search engine. |
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| pictues: top - Tyler Olson middle: Geoffrey Kors bottom: Shannon Minter |
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