Path to gay rights will be straight, but far from narrow

Path to gay rights will be straight, but far from narrow
By Burt Constable
Copyright by The Daily Herald
Tuesday, August 29, 2006

For those of you who long for the media to say something good about old-fashioned straight people for a change, here is the scoop.

In the next decade or so, when gay people finally win their civil rights, much of the credit will go to old-fashioned, straight people for a change.

“I think we are on the right side of history,” says John Cepek, a suburban husband and dad who will become national president of Parents, Families and Friends of Gays and Lesbians at the group’s annual meeting Nov. 3-4 in Chicago. “We’re just trying to get it to the tipping point more quickly.”

With a campaign dubbed “Straight for Equality,” Cepek will call for more heterosexual people to “come out” for civil rights for gay folks. He’s seen that strategy already pay dividends in Illinois.

Heterosexuals played a huge role this month in thwarting anti-gay activists’ attempt to amend the state constitution to make sure homosexual unions would never be legal in Illinois.

Cepek’s wife, Char, president of the state PFLAG chapter, rounded up a dozens of heterosexuals who voluntarily looked through petitions and found the errors a judge used to keep the “Protect Marriage Illinois” referendum off the ballot.

“That was a prototype of what we want to do on a large scale with Straight for Equality,” John Cepek says.

Opponents give them credit.

“I’ll concede that they are effective,” says Peter LaBarbera, the Naperville man who championed the anti-gay amendment as executive director of the conservative Glen Ellyn-based Illinois Family Institute (www.illinoisfamily.org). In the wake of that defeat, which is being appealed, LaBarbera says he will revive Americans For Truth (www.americansfortruth.com), a group to “counter the homosexual movement.”

LaBarbera hears the word gay and immediately begins talking about males having indiscriminant, disease-laden sex in steam rooms.

While that hedonistic niche of the “gay lifestyle” exists — see public billboards hawking gentlemen’s clubs, Mardi Gras Web sites, hotel porn and the popular “Girls Gone Wild” series for the heterosexual take on hedonism — John and Char Cepek stress family values.

“We’ve been married 37 years. It’s been good,” says John Cepek, sitting in his living room in Indian Head Park as his wife gives a phone interview to another reporter. “We like the idea of hearth and home, and having someone to greet you when you come home.”

They say they hope their straight son and their gay son have equal opportunities to find the same.

“We’re grumpy, old, middle-class people,” John Cepek says. “We’d like to see a commitment ceremony, a house and a dog, and kids and all that.”

That message resonates with similar heterosexuals, says Rick Garcia, executive director of Equality Illinois (www.eqil.org), which fights for civil rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in the state.

“These folks really make a huge amount of difference, because we are talking about families and parents who love their kids and want to see them treated fairly,” Garcia says. “I think they are one of the strongest groups we have in the movement toward equality. We can’t do it without them.”

They will do it because of them.

“All we want is our law-abiding, taxpaying gay son to have the same civil rights as our law-abiding, taxpaying straight son,” Char Cepek says.

When John Cepek becomes president of PFLAG (see www.pflag.org for more), “we’re going to do a major outreach to the straight community and get these people involved as well,” he says. By “awakening the giant” that is the “straight alliance,” the movement can change hearts and win support, he says.

“This stuff has give meaning to our lives and it’s fired us up,” Cepek says. “Fair-minded straight people have to make their voices heard.”