[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 70 (Monday, May 1, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E889-E890]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   AFFIRMING EQUALITY IN RHODE ISLAND

                                 ______


                          HON. GERRY E. STUDDS

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, May 1, 1995
  Mr. STUDDS. Mr. Speaker, on March 19, the Rhode Island House of 
Representatives approved legislation to prohibit discrimination on the 
basis of sexual orientation. If, as expected, the bill clears the 
Senate and is signed by the Governor, Rhode Island will become the 
ninth State to provide such protections to its citizens.
  This milestone was marked by the Providence Sunday Journal of April 
2, 1995, in a superb column by M. Charles Bakst which I am proud to 
insert in the Record.
  The article describes the passage of this legislation through the 
eyes of one of the people who worked hard to bring it about. His name 
is Marc Paige. Among other things, he is gay and living with AIDS. He 
is also a former member of my campaign staff whom I am proud to call my 
friend. His personal journey is a familiar story for all who grow up 
gay in our society, and the families and friends who love them.
  The article follows:
           [From the Providence Sunday Journal, Apr. 2, 1995]

                 Gay Rights Activist Savors Big Victory

                         (By M. Charles Bakst)

       When the House last week passed the gay rights bill, 
     supporters of the measure were jubilant. One of them, 
     watching from a gallery seat, was Marc Paige of Cranston.
       He is 37. He is a gay activist. He is Jewish. And he has 
     AIDS.
       Paige is part of the army that has long fought for this 
     measure to ban discrimination against homosexuals in 
     employment, credit, housing, and accommodations. It has 
     kicked around the capitol for 11 years and now, having 
     survived the House, appears headed for Senate passage and 
     signing by Governor Almond.
       ``All Rhode Islanders won today,'' Paige enthused after 
     Wednesday's House vote. And, of course, he was right. 
     Whenever society takes a stand against discrimination against 
     anyone, it is a victory for everyone. But if you sit and talk 
     with Paige, you will get a better appreciation of why this 
     bill has such meaning for gays and lesbians, and of the hurt 
     and pride that motivate him to seek its passage.
       If the bill is enacted, he says, it will be a ``very big 
     deal.'' Though not transforming society overnight, it will be 
     a start:
       ``It's going to give gay people the knowledge that they do 
     have recourse if they are discriminated against. And it's 
     going to, hopefully--and I have no delusions that it's going 
     to be in my lifetime--make things easier for, particularly, 
     the children who realize that they're gay, that they're 
     lesbian. Because it
      pains me the most to know that kids today are still 
     experiencing the isolation, the fear, that I had to go 
     through. Being a teenager is hard enough. These are 
     needless, senseless, tragic emotions that they have to 
     deal with.
       Paige, who has helped organize demonstrations against anti-
     gay-rights legislators, can be as militant as they come. But 
     he also can sound gentle, and sunny.
       A friend, former Sundlun administration staff chief Dave 
     Cruise, says, ``He's an amazing person. With what his future 
     holds for him, he doesn't bear ill will toward anyone.''
       Paige tested HIV-positive in 1989. He says this was a 
     result of unprotected gay sex years earlier in a less 
     enlightened age. By 1993, he had full-blown AIDS.
       ``I feel sometimes like I'm living with a time bomb inside 
     me,'' he says. ``And I know that I could get very sick. But 
     I'm starting new treatments and I'm trying to stay healthy as 
     long as possible and I take it a day at a time.''
       [[Page E890]] He adds, ``I couldn't say for sure that I'm 
     going to be here for my niece's bar mitzvah, which will be in 
     three years. I'd say it's even money. But we don't know what 
     will be developed, so there's always hope. As long as you're 
     breathing, there's hope.''
       He grew up in a middle-class family.
       As a teenager, he realized he was gay--and that he felt 
     isolated.
       ``Teenagers especially want to fit in, and, when you're 
     gay, when you're lesbian, you don't fit in. So then I threw 
     my energy into other causes. I was very involved with B'nai 
     B'rith youth . . . I worked very hard on Jewish causes, on 
     Israel.''
       He was a student at Cranston West and he was still in the 
     closet:
       ``I knew a couple of gay people at my high school. They 
     were constantly tormented and harassed. So
      the messages I received throughout all of society were, 
     `This is very bad.' So I kept it hidden, as most gay kids 
     do.''
       Then he went to college in New Jersey:
       ``One night, when I enrolled at Rutgers University, my 
     freshman year, a snowy December night, I got up my courage 
     and I went to a meeting that was advertised in the school 
     newspaper for the Homophile League, which is a very 
     antiquated term, but this was back in 1976, and I expected to 
     find the monsters that society told me would be there, and 
     what I found were wounderful, supportive, warm, welcoming 
     people and I realized then I wasn't some terrible person.''
       Now it was Christmas vacation:
       ``I wanted to share the joy that I was feeling with my 
     parents. I was finally able to be comfortable with who I was, 
     and I shared that information with them. Their reaction was 
     shock, disappointment.''
       Did they send him to a psychiatrist?
       ``No, because I wouldn't have gone to a psychiatrist. There 
     was nothing wrong with me . . . It took me about six years of 
     torment, really, to come to this position, so I wasn't going 
     back and I wasn't going to feel badly about myself ever again 
     on this issue.''
       Eventually, he says, his parents came around, ``because 
     they loved me, whoever I was.''
       Paige often speaks in schools and in temples, including 
     Barrington's Temple Habonim, where I first encountered him. 
     He says his Jewishness played a large role in shaping his gay 
     activism:
       ``Growing up, my parents
        instilled in both my sister and myself a strong sense of 
     Jewish identity, and also we learned about the injustices 
     that were brought upon the Jewish people throughout the 
     ages, particularly, of course, only 50 years ago, when 25, 
     30 percent of the world's Jewry was eliminated from the 
     planet. I have seen what the seeds of hatred, bigotry can 
     do.''
       He no longer works--he was in the fashion industry and, for 
     awhile, in the state Department of Administration--but he's 
     still out speaking, often on AIDS prevention.
       This past Tuesday, he was buttonholing legislators, and on 
     Wednesday, the day of the House vote, he was at the State 
     House again to take in the scene.
       Outside the House entrance, we happened upon Linc Almond, a 
     backer of the bill. ``I want to thank you very much for your 
     support,'' Paige said. In fact, he had some news for the 
     governor. When Almond was barraged by anti-gay-rights calls 
     on a recent Steve Kass WHJJ talk show, Paige's was the only 
     supportive call that got through.
       We went up to a House gallery and there was Eileen Gray, 
     Paige's 66-year-old mother, sporting a button that said, 
     ``I'm straight. But not narrow.''
       I took her aside for a moment and asked why she was there.
       ``Because I believe in the bill and I'm supporting my 
     son,'' she said.
       Many parents would say, ``It's bad enough that he's gay. 
     Why does he have to be public about it? The last thing I want 
     is to be public.''
       Gray said, ``I'm his mother. I love him with all my heart 
     and soul. I don't think there's anything wrong with him. I 
     don't think he's `sick.' I have become educated and wiser, 
     hopefully, to understand that a certain percentage of the 
     population, from the beginning of time, is born gay. What's 
     the big deal?''
       Not that it was easy for her to accept initially. She said 
     when she
      first heard Marc's news, she spent a day in bed with a 
     headache, and her daughter, three years older than the 
     son, phoned.
       ``My daughter Robin called me and said, `Mom, what's the 
     matter?'''
       ``I said, `It's Marc.'''
       ``She said--in a frantic voice suggesting a fear of 
     something like cancer-- `What?'''
       ``Marc told me he's gay.''
       The daughter, relieved it was only that, said, ``Thank 
     God.''
       That helped, Gray said.
       Now Marc, with AIDS, does face a grim future. But Gray was 
     upbeat.
       ``He's very good,'' she said. ``He takes very good care of 
     himself.
       And, with medical technology, I think he's going to be here 
     a long, long time. I truly believe that.''
       Now the House debate began and droned on--with exquisite 
     odes to equality and dignity, but also with ugly, arrogant 
     talk of gays and their so-called lifestyle that is, in some 
     eyes, such an abomination before God.
       Paige told me had a headache. ``I don't know if it's from 
     this or the AZT I took a couple of hours ago.''
       He sat with a House seating diagram, with notations of the 
     expected vote lineup, which was thought to be very close.
       And then the actual tally came--passage by a surprisingly 
     comfortable 57 to 41. Thrilled, he turned to me and said, 
     ``Wow!''
       As they made their way out of the gallery, he and his 
     mother kissed.
     

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