2004’s Year of the Queer was dominated by stories surrounding same-sex marriage: the fight for gay nuptials and the massive right wing backlash against them. But no queer year would be complete without surprise outings, gay divas gone wild and other tales bordering on the bizarre. Here are Quest’s picks for the top ten national and top ten state stories of 2004. Plus we’ll put on our bright red Jeanne Dixon lip gloss and make five predictions for the coming year? Don’t like our selections or the view from our crystal balls? Start your own gay newspaper then! I hear just about everybody’s doing it these days!

Top Ten National Stories of 2004

1. Karl Rove Bushwhacks Gay Americans To Cinch George W’s Second Term - Rove’s cold, calculating use of the lives of LGBT Americans to create a new right-wing wedge issue for political gain is not only the biggest story of 2004, it is the most disturbing. Rove’s stated intention may have been to galvanize the GOP’s evangelical Christian base, but the tactics were far more akin to Mein Kampf. In his twin appeals to patriotism and bigotry Rove mixed terrorists with gays while appealing to Christian superiority just as Hitler mixed communists and Jews while touting Aryan supremacy seven decades earlier. From President Bush’s call to sanctify discrimination in an amendment to the U.S. Constitution last March, through the cultivation of anti-gay marriage ballot measures in battleground states, the GOP’s patently pandering platform at the NYC convention, to the mock shock at the mention by Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry of Mary Cheney’s lesbianism during the final debate, Rove took every opportunity to manipulate the gay issue to swing votes to the Republican ticket. Even more amazingly about the same percentage of LGBT votes went to Bush in 2004 as did four years earlier.

2. Gay Faux-Marriage Escapades Bait The Bigots - In terms of its impact, the eruption of ersatz gay weddings around the country last winter prior to the first legal nuptials in Massachusetts is the runner up for top-story of the year. Beginning with the Valentine’s Day week bevy of nearly 4,000 same sex weddings at San Francisco’s City Hall last February, and continuing through similar nuptials in New Mexico, New York, New Jersey and Oregon, the deluge of events set the same-sex marriage issue on the fast track for the balance of the year, for better or worse. The combination of ordinary-looking, stereotype-busting pairs of gay men and women proclaiming their undying commitment in front of assembled relatives and friends appeared to be as distressing to right-wing Bible-toters as the alleged “legal anarchy” caused by the widespread by the joyously peaceful civil disobedience.

3. Anti-Gay Constitutional Backlash Reaches Tsunami Level - It began in Missouri last August, continued a month later in Louisiana and turned into a tidal wave in November. By overwhelming margins in initiatives in both “red and “blue” states voters added amendments to their state constitutions barring same-sex marriages and - in some cases - any legal recognition of same-gender unions. The lightning quick passage of so many amendments by typically 2-1 and 3-1 margins stunned gay rights activists, who outspent their opponents by large margins in several states. Seventeen states now have constitutional prohibitions to same sex marriage of varying types, and many are now being challenged in the courts. More ballot initiatives loom in early 2005.

4. The Guv Is Gay! - The unexpected and unceremonious self-outing of New Jersey governor James McGreevey last August captivated America just a weeks before the Republican national convention. With his wife at his side, scandal-tainted McGreevey announced “I am a gay American” to stunned reporters at the close of a press conference and said that because he had had an adulterous affair he would leave office in November. Though pledging her support for her husband at the time, when the McGreevey’s did leave the governor’s mansion the couple separated. The mixed messages of the governor’s outing, ethical problems and resignation continue to perplex New Jersey’s gay and straight communities.

5. Legal Couplings Continue in Two States (Yawn!) - In Massachusetts, where the state’s high court ruled in November, 2003 that barring gays from marrying was unconstitutional, the first legal same-sex marriages in America officially began in May, despite attempts by the right to abort the process. Six months later Vermont quietly celebrated the fifth anniversary of its legal civil unions for same-sex couples, as the Bay State began to see its first gay divorces. Amazingly, according to records of divorce proceedings, not a single couple in either state has cited legal same-sex pairings as the cause for the failure of their heterosexual marriages. It is the lack of impact on the general community that makes this story the fifth biggest of 2004.

6. A Breakthrough in AIDS Treatment? - Coming like a Christmas surprise just weeks after the gloomy predictions of ongoing planetary expansion of HIV/AIDS and a resurgent gay epidemic in the U.S. on World AIDS Day, Rutgers chemist Eddy Arnold and his team of researchers announced a new class of DAPY (rhymes with “happy”) reverse transcriptase inhibitors may be able effective respond to the deadly virus’ ability to rapidly mutate by literally shape-shifting themselves into its genetic strands to completely (and possibly permanently) disrupt HIV’s reproductive process. Phase I trials of the most promising of the drug class has yet to begin, but Phase III trials of TMC-120, the first DAPY discovered, are set to start by mid-2005. That the reality of a inexpensive, once-a-day dosed, single pill to combat their illness may be less than 2 years away, has brought renewed to the 42 million people living with HIV worldwide at year’s end.

7. Federal Marriage Amendment Falters - The sole bit of good news for gay activists in their constitutional battles over same-sex marriage this past year was the failure in both houses of Congress of the GOP-touted Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). Following an outright embarrassing performance by Republican leadership in the Senate in July, where the amendment stalled in a 48-50 procedural vote, Republican House leaders saw the amendment fall almost 50 votes short of the two-thirds needed for passage in a 227-186 vote on September 30. Though shortly after his re-election President Bush promised to again pursue passage of the FMA in the coming year, the historically precedent-setting executive branch initiative appeared to get lost in a subsequent bevy of domestic and foreign policy proposals.

8. Robinson Becomes Bishop - In early 2004 openly gay V. Gene Robinson, assumed the post of bishop of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church following a contentious year of church infighting, and a looming schism in the worldwide Anglican Communion. An international church commission released the Windsor Report in October urging apologies and reconciliation, and Robinson himself signalled he would be willing to consider other options to prevent the sect from splitting. The Episcopal struggle over gay clergy was the most dramatic in a year that saw fellow mainstream Protestant denominations from Presbyterians and Methodists to even the Baptists struggle over the morality of homosexuality. American Catholics endured dire Vatican warnings about same-sex marriage and dealt with demonstrations by the Rainbow Sash movement. Evangelicals saw fading, philandering Jimmy Swaggart first encourage his kill any gay man who’d make a pass, and then claimed he was being “historically euphemistic.” Any Christians of all stripes had to engage the minions of Dr. Mel White’s Soulforce on the gay morality issue and their national convocations and general assemblies throughout the year.

9. 20/20 Tries To Re-Write History - The memory of Matthew Shepard’s 1989 crucifixion-like beating and murder was “just a drug deal gone bad” if one believed Elizabeth Vargas’ unbelievably-biased report aired November 26 on ABC’s prime time newsmagazine. Apparently recanting their on-the-record “gay panic” defense, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson now have claimed they killed Shepard because McKinney was strung out on drugs, not because Shepard was gay. Reaction from Shepard’s parents and the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs was swift. NCAVP called the segment irresponsible, biased, shameful, and destructive. “The fact is that there is nothing significant in the 20/20 program that wasn’t raised during the trial,” said Clarence Patton, NCAVP’s Acting Executive Director. “One has to question the motivation of the show’s producers in not only attempting to engage in revisionist history, but in doing so at this point in time, as our nation’s lesbian and gay community is fighting for its life to an extent not seen in years.”

10. Obama Buries Anti-Gay Carpetbagger Keyes - This past November up and coming Democrat superstar Barack Obama crushed Republican conservative talk show gabber Alan Keyes in a landslide 70-27% victory to become the only African American currently in the United States Senate. Keyes, who moved from Maryland to take on Obama following his inclusive vision of America speech that highlighted July’s Democratic Party convention in Boston, did not help his cause by spewing rhetoric that even offended members of his own party. The low point of Keyes’ hate speech was calling Vice-Presidential daughter Mary Cheney a “selfish hedonist” because of her lesbian genetic pre-disposition. Subsequent Illinois Republican coordinated campaign materials failed to include Keyes in the mix in “an unfortunate ov1ersight” according to party leadership.

Top Ten Wisconsin Stories of 2004

1. Wisconsin Legislature Passes Anti-Gay Constitutional Amendment - Both houses of the the state legislature last Spring passed AJR-66, so-called Wisconsin Marriage Amendment, that in fact would bar any legal recognition of same-sex or even heterosexual non-marital unions. The passage was the first of two necessary to put the proposed amendment to the Wisconsin constitution before the voters in a binding referendum. The Republican-sponsored bill passed both house by largely partisan votes, and GOP gains in the November elections portend the second consideration of the measure likely early next year. Voters could have their say as early as April, 2005.

2. Action Wisconsin Emerges As An Effective Statewide LGBT Political Voice - The Wisconsin Marriage Amendment was just the latest challenge to gay equality to spur the further development of the statewide LGBT civil rights organization into well-organized and listened-to voice on gay rights issues. The metamorphosis of the AW from a “kitchen table” volunteer-driven group to a full-time political force began with the 2003 DOMA debate, but has escalated in 2004 to a fully-staffed operation conducting town hall meetings throughout the state and finding receptive ears to its message at newspaper and broadcast media editorial boards from Superior to Racine. AW’s ally contact list has seen more than a thousand percent surge in size in less than nine months, with the number of non-gay supporters now eclipsing LGBT-identified backers. Even Milwaukee’s With an operating budget likely second only to ARCW’s among the state’s LGBT organizations and the infrastructure to match, only one question remains: can Action Wisconsin successfully challenge the forces of organized religion.

3. Assembly Speaker Disses Gay Couples At State Convention - In a story first reported by Quest, then picked up by WisPolitics.com and eventually the mainstream media, Assembly Speaker John Gard (R-Peshtigo) made comments characterizing same-sex couple’s relations as either sub-human or bestial at the Republican Party of Wisconsin convention in LaCrosse on May 22 that raised the ire of the state’s Log Cabin Republicans. To a smattering of applause, Gard claimed that “There are a lot of people out there who think that people should be able to marry whoever theywant, or whatever they want.”
It wasn’t Gard’s only anti-gay gaffe, however. Just two weeks later on June 14 Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison) complained that despite three requests since last February, Gard had failed to sign a routine citation for the New Harvest Foundation, honoring the Madison-based LGBT philanthropic organization’s 20th anniversary and its record of donating more than $300,000 to area organizations.
Gard’s shenanigans were the most prominent of a series of sometimes bizarre anti-gay behaviors by leading state GOP legislators. In January Milwaukee Journal Sentinel political columnists Cary Spivak and Dan Bice “outed” State Senator Tom Reynolds (R-West Allis) for both his attendance at an anti-gay conference months earlier and for profiting from printing anti-gay literature at his privately-held print shop. (Reynolds’ provision of back rubs to most of the male senators supporting the Wisconsin Marriage Amendment in the middle of the night during last Spring’s floor debate certainly cannot be construed as anti-gay, just bizarre.) State Senator Scott Fitzgerald’s (R-Juneau) decided to call the cops to investigate his own county’s openly-heterosexual former party chair Jim Laird after the man had copied the senator on a letter opposing his sponsorship of the Wisconsin Marriage Amendment last April. July’s decision by the Wisconsin State Bar Association to honor longtime anti-gay and anti-abortion rights legislation sponsor Mark Gundrum (R-New Berlin) with its “Scales of Justice” Award was widely criticized by progressives statewide.

4. Gay Press Pioneer Geiman Succumbs To AIDS - Ron Geiman, founder, longtime publisher and editor of the Wisconsin IN Step and the man who brought consistency and credibility to Wisconsin’s gay press succumbed to complications of the HIV/AIDS in Milwaukee on May 11 at the age of 52. For nearly twenty years Geiman published, edited or wrote for a variety of incarnations of his own paper and - as he described it - his “friendly competitor” the Wisconsin Light. Geiman was also instrumental in awakening both the state’s gay and straight communities to the coming scourge of HIV/AIDS beginning with reports in IN Step’s premiere issue, through the publishing of the columns of long-term survivor Arnie Malmon’s final years of struggle with the disease in the early 1990s and finally his own personal journey through HAART chemotherapy and its effects in his own “Steppin’ Out” column.

5. PrideFest Proves Politically And Financially Successful - After a devastating loss a year earlier, Milwaukee’s PrideFest, the state’s top gay pride event, came roaring back with slightly down-sized but highly successful run in 2004. From its grand opening that featured Governor Jim Doyle, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and other top state and local politicos, to its $51,000 profit PrideFest 2004 with near-record proved itself a winner. Though at year’s end controversy began to bubble about its revamped organizational structure, the LGBT festival still appeared to be on track to continue repay the debts of its 2003 rain-soaked debacle.

6. 7 Rivers LGBT Center Opens - Reflecting the continuing expansion and development of LGBT community infrastructure statewide, the August opening of LaCrosse’s 7 Rivers LGBT Center was the most prominent new edifice to arrive in Wisconsin in 2004. Also, Chippewa Valley and Milwaukee’s LGBT Centers saw relatively smooth first transitions of directorship, and Green Bay’s Positive Voice opened its first office. Madison’s Outreach saw a wide expansion of supportive programs for the city’s bisexual and transgendered population. The “edifice complex” also included agencies with a strong presence in the LGBT community. In March, ARCW’s Green Bay office moved into its newly constructed and expanded space. Expansion there continued with the completion of a food pantry in late November.

7. Wisconsin’s Gay Media Choices Contract, Expand - The sudden, unexplained loss of Wisconsin IN Step at the end of last year created a void that was quickly filled by Quest’s decision to add news coverage to its entertainment and lifestyle editorial content in January. Almost simultaneously, Rockford, IL-based Edge magazine expanded distribution of its lifestyle glossy to the major LGBT markets in the eastern half of Wisconsin. At the end of summer Outbound quietly ceased distributing its pocket-sized lifestyle monthly outside of the metro Milwaukee area, even as it added “Midwest” to its title. In late November, former IN Step publisher Bill Attewell began running a Drudge Report-like “beta” website called Wisconsin Gay News on the paper’s old internet address. Within a month Attewell had claimed his new site had recorded over 10,000 page hits. In December two new monthlies made their debut: Queer Life and Outbound News both made color-filled splashes on the 15th. At year’s end Edge was in final negotiations to rent space in the heart of Milwaukee’s gay district, apparently to enter the now glutted monthly lifestyle publication fray, even as Quest prepares to enter its 12th year as the state’s only truly statewide,biweekly news and entertainment publication.

8. Bar Brawl Spurs Hate Crime Charges - A late night June bar brawl in a rural Jacksonport tavern brought not only hate crimes charges but heightened tensions to quaint, artist-friendly Door County for the latter half of 2004. In late December hate crime enhancers were dropped against the two oldest of five men accused of starting the fight with bed and breakfast owners Darrin Day and Bryon Groeschl because the pair were believed to be gay. Though the actual trials will begin in 2005, the defense reasoning thus far seems to be that because the couple were able to not only able to successfully defend themselves but were able to actually injure their attackers, the brawl’s motivation cannot be considered a hate crime.

9. Wisconsin Activists Make National Impact - In August, Joshua Freker of Action Wisconsin was named to the board of the newly rechristened Equality Federation. The nation’s top LGBT statewide leaders, representing over 25 organizations from across the country, had met in Austin, Texas to launch an aggressive new action plan to boost statewide organizing efforts across the country. The newly renamed Equality Federation was formerly known as the Federation of Statewide Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Advocacy Organizations. Several weeks later the Proteus foundation, known for its national grassroots advocacy awarded Action Wisconsin and the Milwaukee LGBT Center Advocates at $100,000 grant that was split 6040 between the groups. In November, the Human Rights Campaign hired away Action Wisconsin’s President Tim O’Brien to a DC-based post, based on his work with the statewide LGBT civil rights group.

10. Sapp’s “Amber Alert” Drama Revealed As Exit Strategy - The are probably more newsworthy pieces that I could have selected for the final spot on the state’s top 2004 stories, but the sheer “tempest in a teapot” factor that surrounded Quest leather columnist and Argonaut President Michael Sapp’s alleged Labor Day abduction, there’s nothing else still lingering more largely in the the collective frontal lobes of Wisconsin’s gay bar community. Sapp’s mysterious disappearance sparked the gay equivalent of a national Amber Alert. His “lost in action,” and subsequent curiously silent “safe and sound” return message apparently served as cover for a semi-smooth transition to a new life and a new boyfriend in Atlanta, GA. It just goes to show that the girls in cowhide drag are just as capable as their chiffon-clad sisters in vying for the coveted tiara of drama queen.

Top Five Predictions For 2005

1. The Anti-Gay Wisconsin Marriage Amendment Will Pass - If the state’s GOP leadership has any sense of the political moment - and I assess their political acumen equal to if not surpassing their right-wing zealotry - I expect to see early 2005 consideration and quick passage of the anti-Gay Wisconsin Marriage Amendment, followed by a solid voter verification in April, 2005. Unlike their Taxpayer Bill of Rights amendment initiative which continues to founder in light of hard statistical data on its impact, the GOP sponsors of WMA has a good chunk of organized religion on its side. Action Wisconsin is battling a force that goes to church more times a week than most LGBT folk frequent their favorite gay bar. The vote will look more like Oregon’s margin than Missouri’s, but pass it will - provided it makes a Spring ballot. Any delay, however, and all bets are off. Assuming an April ballot my confidence in this prediction is 90%

2. PrideFest Will Have Another Successful Year - Despite the current whining going on by some Milwaukee activist types, PrideFest found a successful formula in 2004: politics at the ribbon-cutting then party on. Pride parades? That’s so 70’s, attracting both the “embarrassing” fringe elements and religious wackos videotaping every over-the-top-second. Hopefully they’ll stick with success. As for complaints about “open process” and possible profiteering (by a 501 (c)3 charitable community foundation no less), the PrideFest organization can nip all the “watches” by inviting the noisiest camels into their organizational tent with board membership or consultancy offers. Short of a tsunami on the lakefront June 10-12, my confidence in this prediction is 95%

3. The Iraq Quagmire Will Slow Bush’s Revolutionary Domestic Agenda - As I write these predictions the odds of truly meaningful elections happening in Iraq in late January is a 50-50 bet at best. Osama has now weighed in on the issue and his “democracy is anti-Muslim” allies appear to be gaining ground daily. Unsuccessful elections will cause the situation to deteriorate more rapidly. Any attempt by the White House to push its domestic agenda from Social Security reform to the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment will be seen by his own party’s leadership as a potentially politically disastrous attempt at diversion. The President has been making all the right moves to reapproach our western allies in the last few weeks. He has even been able to stop “no disasters please, I’m on vacation” critical spin on his laggardly response to the Asian quake/wave. But actually getting genuine allied miliary support in Iraq will take more than a little jawboning on a couple of weekend-length multinational sound bite tours of foreign capitols. Sadly, the higher the body count in Iraq, the more confidence I will have in this prediction. Right now it’s at 80%.

4. The Moderate Middle of Wisconsin’s GOP Will Emerge in 2005 - The warning shot has already been fired with aborted “anointment” of Scott Fitzgerald as Senate Majority leader. The lingering distaste for hard-right rhetoric following Mark Belling’s “wetback” episode is emboldening politicos in the center of the state’s Republican Party. A few switched votes on TABOR or possibly even the Wisconsin Marriage Amendment might signal the return of the party’s moderate faction to the driver’s seat. The desire to win back the Governor’s Mansion also portends a GOP run to the middle in the coming year. Given the feisty and downright stubbornness of the stat GOP’s hard right, however, I only have a 60% confidence in this prediction.

5. Bush Will Get His First Supreme Court Nominee Opportunity - Even if Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wanted to stay on after he administers the Oath of Office to George Bush this January, his terminal thyroid cancer likely will not allow him the opportunity. George W. will get his first opportunity to nominate a new chief justice and his replacement to the Supreme Court by the summer solstice. Whether his pick will put Biblical values equal to Constitutional ones is anyone’s guess. But my confidence in his chance to nominate one is 95%.
That’s it - Quest’s Big 25 - we’ll check back in July to see how cloudy or clear my crystal balls really were.