Tapia's gay son
speech praised around world
Sexual orientation
bill that prompted talk on Owens' desk
By Lynn Bartels,
rockymountainnews.com from the Web, May 18, 2005
It was the speech heard 'round the
world.
Sen. Abel Tapia still gets letters and e-mails from people touched by the Pueblo
Democrat's Senate-floor disclosure that his son is gay, and the prejudices his
child encounters.
"You made this speech in Colorado, and I read about it here in Georgia," one
e-mail said.
"Those of us who share the same situation as you have are so appreciative when
we see someone in the public light express their feelings about their gay loved
ones."
Another e-mail, this one from Washington, D.C., said: "It does not matter
that I am not a constituent. I am not a parent. I am not gay.
It is clear you are a man who respects others. That's what's important."
Tapia said this week that he's gotten more than 300 letters and e-mails since
April 20. That's when he gave his impromptu speech as the Senate was
engaged in a fierce debate on a bill that adds sexual orientation to the list of
traits protected by job-discrimination laws.
Senate Bill 28 arrived on Republican Gov. Bill Owens' desk Tuesday. The
governor has until June 8 to sign it, veto it or let it become law without his
signature.
Owens has said he is concerned the bill could increase workplace discrimination
lawsuits.
Bill supporters who believe otherwise point to a 2002 study by the U.S. General
Accounting Office. The study found that "in those states with a law making
it illegal to discriminate in employment on the basis of sexual orientation,
relatively few complaints of such discrimination have been made."
Tapia rarely speaks on other lawmakers' bills, and wasn't planning on adding to
the debate when Senate Bill 28 came up. But he said he could not stay
silent after a fellow senator said the Bible refers to homosexuality as an
"abomination."
"I have three children and I actually did not have any sensitivity to
homosexuals," Tapia began. "But one of my three children, my second son,
is a homosexual."
Tapia's colleagues sat stunned as the lawmaker described his son coming out to
him a decade ago.
"I even asked him, 'Do you really want to do this?' " Tapia said. "Do you
have a choice, because that's a terrible choice to make. People are going
to shun you.
"But I've grown to love him even more because of what he has had to go through,"
Tapia said, repeating words as he struggled to keep from crying.
"So don't be talking about abomination because I don't believe that's true."
The letters and e-mails began.
"I, too, have a gay son," one person wrote. "He is married to a Dutch
citizen and lives in the Netherlands. It hurts that he has more rights as
a non-citizen there than he has a citizen in his own country."
A registered Republican from Greenwood Village wrote to say his late brother was
gay.
"My parents and his siblings loved him very much," the author wrote. "He
was taken from us prematurely because of AIDs, but he lived a very happy life.
"I know he was a contributing person ... and not an 'abomination' in any sense
that term implies."
Tapia said he was particularly struck by the letter from a parent who called his
gay son after reading the lawmaker's speech. The two had been estranged.
"It turned out," Tapia said, "that I spoke for a lot of parents of gay
children."
bartels@RockyMountainNews.com
or 303-892-5327
|
