JIMMY BIBLARZ: The fight continues for LGBTQ+ rights

The city of Los Angeles’ Fifth Council District shares a long border with the city of West Hollywood, with several CD 5 residents referring to this portion of the district as the “LA part of WeHo.” It’s only natural, then, that CD 5 has the largest LGBTQ+ population of any City Council district.

But we’re at an inflection point in our community’s history. The upcoming June primary, less than a month away, will determine whether or not there will be any LGBTQ+ representation in the county and city of Los Angeles. Our current queer elected leaders, Sheila Kuehl, Ron Galperin, Mike Bonin and Mitch O’Farrell are either termed out, stepping down, or in tougher-than-expected primaries. We’re at risk of backsliding from the historic gains our community fought and sacrificed for. And we know all too well what happens when queer voices aren’t represented in government.

Growing up, I felt like politics and public service were off limits to someone like me. Coming of age in the mid-2000s, LGBTQ+ victories were scattershot, and the arc of the queer moral universe did not seem like it would inevitably bend toward justice. I know I’m not the first to use this analogy, but I was buried so deep my friends and family now call it my “walk-in closet.” The joke’s a lot funnier in retrospect.

Upon coming out, I threw myself into learning about local gay political history, and saw that while LGBTQ+ folks had historically been brutally excluded from political institutions, they certainly were political. I studied LA’s rich queer history–from the Mattachine Society to the Black Cat uprising to the gay bars of downtown in the 1920s. Learning this history, my history, our history, was a revelation. I felt proud, empowered, and confident enough to enter political life as an openly gay person.

We’ve come so far as a community in such a short amount of time, it’s easy to forget the years of fear, struggle and pain that lead to those victories. One such struggle happened in the district I was raised in, the district I’m running for: CD 5. How many of you know about the Black Pipe 21?

In August of 1972, the LAPD raided a fundraiser for HELP (Homophile Effort for Legal Protection) being held at the Black Pipe, a popular leather bar on La Cienega. Twenty-one men were arrested and subsequently prosecuted for lewd conduct under under 647(a) of the California Penal Code. One of those arrested was a deputy state attorney general who was fired by then-California Attorney General Evelle Younger when the charges were filed. The ACLU of Southern California even got involved, filing an amicus brief on behalf of the men. While 647(a) is no longer used for discrimination against LGBTQ+ spaces, it remains on the books.

It’s easy for the Black Pipe raid to feel like a story from another time and place. We have made huge progress since then, boasting so many historic local LGBTQ+ electoral victories, including Jackie Goldberg, Jeffrey Prang, Bill Rosendahl and Sheila Kuehl amongst other queer pioneeers. But we would be wise to remember our history. LGBTQ+ progress has come through winning elections, public activism, and high-stakes litigation. We have seen scary, dark backsliding on gay rights throughout the country. The Human Rights Campaign has logged 240 anti-LGBTQ state bills filed in state legislatures in 2022 alone. We must remain vigilant.

California, especially Los Angeles, can feel immune from these bigoted realities. West Hollywood and Los Angeles have been models for what inclusive politics can look like. But even here, LGBTQ+ people fare far worse than the general population by every metric on all major social issues: homelessness, housing affordability, public safety, substance use, wage and housing discrimination, and the list goes on. It’s abundantly clear that the fight for full LGBTQ+ inclusion, even in progressive bastions, is far from over.

For the LGBTQ+ rights movement to live on, to grow in the ways it must, to always be on the cutting edge of social policy, we must continue to demand representation. We must support LGBTQ+ candidates especially in the few remaining LGBTQ+ parts of the city. There is no better way to honor the sacrifices of those who came before us, the Black Pipe 21 whose lives were ruined on bogus charges because they lived their truth, than to get informed, learn what’s on the ballot, and make political participation part of our daily lives. We know the very real consequences of not having real LGBTQ+ representation. Just ask anyone you know who lived through the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

So here’s my challenge to you: get informed, get involved and most importantly, VOTE. It doesn’t matter what your party is (or isn’t) or where you lie on the ideological spectrum. Democracy only works and is sustainable if its citizens participate in it, especially at the local level. We owe a debt to those who came before us. Let’s learn our history, learn more about what’s on the ballot and vote on or before June 7th. We’ve come too far and we won’t go back.