News :: GLBT
Pressing the flesh
Thursday Mar 15, 2007
She may be the new president of the Boston City Council, but don’t expect to see Maureen Feeney dancing a jig down West Broadway in South Boston’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday. For starters, Feeney only does the Dorchester Day Parade, a summertime celebration that takes place annually in the neighborhood that the Council President has called home her entire life.
So why doesn’t she march in other parades? “Well, first of all because I just can’t afford to,” Feeney explains. “They’re so expensive. And once you march in one, you have to march in all [of them].” She admits that since being elected Council President in January, she’s been considering a colleague’s request to march with him in another neighborhood parade.
But as long as groups like Dorchester’s LGBT neighborhood group DotOUT aren’t welcomed to participate in the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade, Feeney isn’t interested in participating. “I mean, I am so proud of the work that DotOUT has done in Dorchester,” Feeney says, noting that DotOUT gathers “a huge delegation” to march in the Dorchester Day Parade. “And guess what? They’re our neighbors, they’re our friends, they’re our leaders in the community. You know how many civic associations I have that are led by gay men or lesbian women? It’s amazing. These are people that are givers; they’re community activists.”
As for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade organizers, Feeney says: “They have their position … If I was going to march in a parade, that wouldn’t be one of ’em.”
It’s a strong statement of support from an Irish Catholic woman who in the early 1990s opposed a simple domestic partnership ordinance unless it was expanded to include non-gay partnerships as well — a ploy that opponents of gay rights often used to water down or kill gay- specific DP bills. But her support is less surprising when one considers that Feeney was at Mayor Tom Menino’s side on May 17, 2004, greeting the hundreds of gay people who descended on City Hall plaza to file for the first legal marriage licenses offered to same-sex couples.
“I could still cry,” Feeney recalls of that day during a recent interview in her City Hall Office. Indeed, her blue eyes get a little misty. “People I didn’t even know in my district came up and told me how grateful they were that I was there and how they knew where I had come from, because of course I was the bane of their existence for a long time,” she admits with a laugh. “But what a gift that was to have not missed that.”
Feeney is at a bit of a loss to completely explain her past opposition to DP benefits for same-sex couples. It was partly rooted in her religious beliefs, she begins by way of explanation, but then concludes, “I don’t know. I have no idea. It was just pathetic whatever it was.” When I laugh, Feeney protests, and starts laughing herself: “No, it was,” she says, “It was truly pathetic.”
Nonetheless, Feeney confesses that she struggled with the state Supreme Judicial Court’s mandate in Goodridge that same-sex couples be allowed access to the institution of marriage. “I knew it was the right thing,” she says of the November 2003 court decision. “I couldn’t get there. I couldn’t get there.” At the height of the political hysteria in the aftermath of the ruling, Feeney recalls, “People were saying, ‘Where are you?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’” She credits the likes of longtime friend Harry Collings, the openly gay executive secretary of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and gay constituents like Steven Rumpler and DotOUT co-founders Daniel Cushing and Michelle Gillen for patiently helping her move to a position of full support for marriage equality. Feeney was among a group of Dorchester movers and shakers that in 2005 urged Democratic state Sen. Jack Hart, whose district includes a portion of Dorchester, to switch his position from supporting attempts to ban gay marriage to his current position of opposing them.
Cushing, who has known Feeney for nine years, says the City Council President enjoys a strong relationship with Dorchester’s LGBT community because “she’s worked for it. She’s gotten to know the gay community. She wasn’t exactly familiar with our community for a long time. She is a product of her upbringing,” says Cushing, “and a good Catholic girl.” But Cushing, who has helped raise money for the councilor and volunteered on her campaigns, admires Feeney’s “sense of humanity” and her efforts to get to know her gay constituents on a personal level. “I think that … helped her evolve to the person she is today,” he says.
Having watched Feeney’s struggle to move to a place of support for marriage equality, Cushing says, “I was so proud to tune in to the news and see my city councilor standing next to the mayor on the first day that gay people could come in and get marriage licenses. She was standing there greeting people. I mean, you just gotta love that.”
So how does Feeney aim to use her new perch as president of the Boston City Council, which has long supported LGBT rights, to further advocate for the community? “I think in some ways it’s just having an open-door policy to continue to work with the gay and lesbian and transgender community to identify situations and to lend support or direction whenever we can,” says Feeney, who worked closely with advocates to pass the city’s transgender non-discrimination ordinance back in 2002. For instance, when the town of Lexington and its school system were sued last year by the parents of two students who were upset that their children were exposed to gay-themed books at the Estabrook Elementary School, Feeney says she immediately contacted the Boston school department to determine the city’s protocols around the use of gay-themed materials. “I was very grateful to talk to the school department and to be reassured that everything is age-appropriate but that there is nothing to prohibit any teacher from taking this issue on and addressing this issue,” she says.
Feeney also has a few words of advice for the seven candidates vying in the special election to replace the late District 2 Councilor Jimmy Kelly, whose staunch opposition to gay rights softened slightly during his 20-plus years in office (although the Southie icon continued until his last years to toast the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s upholding of the ban on gay groups marching in the St. Paddy’s parade with parade organizers): Don’t overlook the district’s sizeable LGBT population. “I think it is critically important that whoever the person is that hopes to succeed Jimmy Kelly that they recognize even his progress [on gay issues],” says Feeney, who notes that she encountered several of Kelly’s gay constituents who had come to pay their respects to the late councilor at his wake and funeral. “That meant so much, it meant so much to his family, it meant so much to his staff to know that Jimmy had also grown in his positions and had come to see people as they are,” she says. “I’m not saying he was necessarily their strongest advocate but I think he was someone who had come to see the value of individuals who were willing to stand up and work towards better community and a better Boston.”
And these days, Feeney also says, any candidate who fails to recognize the roles that many gay people play as community leaders in their neighborhoods “is probably not worth their salt … I just think that we’ve been blessed with tremendous leadership from the gay community and I think anyone who is running for public office is very naïve if they don’t recognize that,” she asserts. “Very naive. I think it’s critical that those candidates reach out and see the changing face — not just in the gay community — but throughout the city. There’s not a neighborhood that hasn’t changed and evolved, and I think for the better. I think the more opportunity there is to expand your horizons and have opportunity to meet and live with people who have perhaps different perspectives and different ideas on what they’d like to see for their community, we’re all the beneficiaries of that.”
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