..::Nebraska Democratic GLBT Caucus

(Speech given at annual Democratic banquet thanking all unions in Lincoln, Nebraska - 9/16/2005.)

Hello, my name is Barbara Baier and I am the newest member of the Lincoln Board of Education. In many ways, the reason that I was elected to the school board is thanks to you, the organized labor movement. The Lincoln Education Association PAC chose to endorse my candidacy, and I am forever thankful for that critical endorsement. The teachers' union backed that endorsement up with money, lots of technical advice and eager volunteers. Thank you for your support!

But more than endorsing my candidacy for the school board, I am here to express my gratitude for your support when I was nothing but an impoverished student who had to drop out of college to work full-time. I came to Lincoln 29 years ago this last August as a scholarship student from Bloomfield, Nebraska. My father had been a dairy farmer in northeast Nebraska until my schoolteacher mother was stricken with a catastrophic illness. She lapsed into a coma late one night never to awaken again. I was ten. My sister was soon to be three. The family of course desperately tried to save her, and after ten days of experimental brain surgery, we decided to let her go. The resulting medical bills wiped out my father's livelihood and we lived in poverty trying to save our title to the family farm.

So when the farm crisis of the 1980s hit, what little means I had to attend college was completely erased. I went to work for an employer which remain unnamed. After my six months probationary period, I was quickly promoted and, well, some in the administration of this business were not happy with that. Fortunately I worked in a unionized business, which is rare in Nebraska. I, of course, had joined the union, always believing when we stand together, we succeed. I handled the petty harassment on my own for a little more than a year. During this time, I made the difficult decision to come out as a lesbian. On a personal level, this was the best decision I have ever made. My discomfort with people and public places disappeared when I could be myself. But in the arena of my employment being an out-lesbian in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1985 was definitely a problem. The harassment from the administration became intense. They tried to illegally lay me off. I called my union steward, a kind, patient man in his 50s. Out-lesbians were definitely new to him, but he never, ever wavered for a single second in his support for me. He met with the management. He saved my job.

Then administration started a campaign to get me fired. They encouraged staff members to harass in me in the halls. They placed threatening notes on my desk. Once they filled an envelope with dirt and wrote a note on it stating that I was less than dirt. My union steward was there for me every time, every day. He called in the union's lawyer who threatened to the sue the pants off my employer if they did not cease and desist. It worked. The harassment stopped. I kept my job for another three ½ years and moved onto the Lincoln Action Program to establish my professional career.

My union steward never questioned why I was a lesbian. He never swayed in his support. In fact, he explained to me that all of this was new and strange to him, but that he had attended a national training on how to support gays and lesbians in the workplace a few months prior to my difficulties. He said he understood that it was his duty as union steward to maintain the stance of being there for all workers whenever they were under attack and he had no problem with doing that for me. He said that I reminded him of his mother, another strong woman, and that in a way he admired me.

So I'm here to say to each of you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me a chance to establish my career, for supporting me even when it wasn't easy and felt strange and different. Thank you.

Now, I want to take a couple of minutes to relate to you a worry I have for all of us who believe and support the organized labor movement. Very dangerous precedents are being proposed to change this country's constitution. These changes are hidden within the Defense of Marriage Amendment promoted by the right wing. On the surface of it, the Defense of Marriage Amendment looks like what it states it is, a simple desire to keep marriage between a man and a woman. I'm not here to debate whether or not same-sex couples should have full citizenship in this country. That is a discussion for another day and time. Rather, I'm here to tell you about the Clause of the Bill of Attainder. This is a very important concept in our constitution that simply stated means no legislature can pass laws that only effect certain classes of people. Thus, laws cannot be passed that only impact those who are involved with the organized labor movement, or who are black, or are some way less than popular. Nebraska Defense of Marriage Amendment did just that. And, I fear that the proposed federal Defense of Marriage Amendment would also set the precedent that Congress could pass laws only impacting certain groups of people or individuals. Nebraska's Defense of Marriage Amendment most certainly said that same-sex couples must be singled out and kept from seeking any kind of redress for discrimination.

Judge Bataillon stated in his recent decision overturning Nebraska's Defense of Marriage Amendment, "The court finds Section 29, the Defense of Marriage Amendment, is a denial of access to one of our most fundamental sources of protection, the government. Such broad exclusion from 'an almost limitless number of transactions and endeavors that constitute ordinary civil life in a free society' is 'itself a denial of equal protections in the literal sense.'"

I sincerely fear that the right wing of this country has a hidden agenda behind its strong promotion of a federal Defense of Marriage Amendment. I believe they want to establish a precedent that would water down or actually do away with the Clause of the Bill Attainder. I believe they want the ability to pass laws that pick and choose who is affected by that law. I believe they would use it to destroy the organized labor movement among other things that make the United States a great country and wonderful place to live.

As for the whole same-sex marriage issue, well, each state will figure out its own compromise in due course. This is already happening. Vermont has civil unions, fine. Massachusetts has same-sex marriage, but only within its borders, fine. And the rest states over the next ten years or so will figure out what works for them. A federal Defense of Marriage Amendment is something else altogether. It tells the states that they cannot figure out their own compromises. I think it is a Trojan Horse that we hurt us all. I encourage you to read an article I wrote for the most recent issue of the Lancaster County Democrat, our monthly newsletter. In it I more thoroughly explain the Clause of the Bill of Attainder.

In closing, I just want to tell you again thank you for your support in this most recent election cycle, and, most important, thank you for saving my life from poverty. Keep up the good work. We must together make our unions stronger, more inclusive, and bigger! Thank you!