Don Smith remembers the first picnic for gays and lesbians ever held on the island. “About 20 people were at the first one,” he said. The picnic took place a year after the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City,
Don Smith remembers the first picnic for gays and lesbians ever held on the island.
“About 20 people were at the first one,” he said.
The picnic took place a year after the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City, which is considered the beginning of the push for equal rights for gays and lesbians.
Over the years, a more organized group has been formed on the island, and an annual picnic takes place.
Yesterday, the 13th annual Lambda Aloha Pride picnic was held at ‘Anini Beach. Martin Rice said he is one of about 20 co-founders of Lambda Aloha, a Kauaian group of bisexual, transgendered, lesbian, gay, questioning and intersex people.
“Questioning and intersex people are those who are born with ambiguous genitalia,” he said. “Panicky doctors and parents assigned the sex shortly after birth because the genitalia was ambiguous. Well, 50 percent of the time they were wrong.”
He said since it is easier surgically to turn someone into a woman, often the person is made female.
“In years past, those people were known as hermaphrodites,” he said.
He said Lambda Aloha advocates for equal rights for roughly 1,000 people on the island. Martin said he has not experienced outright, blatant discrimination on Kaua‘i.
“I think for the most part, the local people are pretty accepting and inclusive. However, there are problems with the transplants,” he said.
The transplants Rice refers to are those who move here from another state, and bring their prejudices and their stereotypes with them.
“For the most part, I have not run into much discrimination. There was an elderly Hawaiian lady who said to me, ‘Hey — there is one in every family,’ and that is matter of fact,” said Rice.
He said there are people or groups on each island that advocate for protective laws for gays at the state level.
“The first thing we were able to do was to get a hate crime bill passed in 2000. Then, we had other areas of concern, like housing and public accommodations and partnership rights,” he said.
Rice said this year the public accommodations law was passed in the Legislature that forbid discrimination based on perception.
“If, for instance, you were perceived to be gay, you could be told to leave a restaurant,” said Rice.
With the new law that type of behavior is outlawed.
Rice said the next big push is going to be for same-sex marriage.
“Even the right-wing pundits know it is coming, but they are fighting to stave it off. But it is going to happen across the country,” he said.
Rice said same-sex couples in Hawai‘i are “technically strangers” before the law.
“We cannot file jointly on our taxes. There are over a thousand federal benefits that are not available to us, and over 300 state benefits that are not available to us,” he said.
When asked if there is a fear that the group is going to destroy the institution of marriage, he said, “oh, yeah.”
“That is a false argument, because the broader you expand it, the more inclusive it becomes, the greater the strength of the institution,” said Rice.
Jeff Demma, interim executive director of Malama Pono, the Kaua‘î AIDS project, was at the picnic.
“Our agency has been on the island for 20 years,” he said.
He said his agency goes after state and federal funds and funds from private groups to help people infected with HIV and hepatitis.
One of the federal funds he goes after is named after Ryan White, the Indiana teen who acquired the HIV virus from a blood transfusion in the 1980s.
He said Malama Pono is about four weeks away from its July 15 and 16 fundraiser, Paradise Ride, a 130-mile bike ride on Kaua‘i.
“It’s a huge opportunity for general fundraising for funds that can be used to pay rent, to pay utilities and overhead,” said Demma.
He said Malama helps clients acquire health insurance, rent money to keep a roof over their heads, and help with getting food.
“If you ask people what we do, very few understand the complexity and the value of the services we bring to the island. We are a free, nondiscriminatory resource for anyone walking off the street. They have access to any of the services we provide, if they qualify for it,” Demma said.
Malama provides free HIV testing and hepatitis testing, and prevention counselors regularly go to bars or into places like parks where people tend to take part in more risky behaviors.
“We go out and make sure they understand we are there to help them. Maybe people don’t know what HIV is. Maybe they’ve never had an HIV test, and maybe they don’t understand what the issues are.” he said.
He said someone today who tests positive for HIV is faced with an overwhelming number of decisions to make.
“It is not an easy thing to deal with,” said Demma. “It is a life-changing event that will forever impact what you do and how you live your life. And we are there to try and make that road as easy as it possibly can be,” he said.
• Cynthia Kaneshiro, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) or ckaneshiro@kauaipubco.com.
