Film explores Mass. Rep's influence on marriage equality

Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing and the Fight for Fairness also examines the intersection of the African-American Civil Rights Movement and efforts toward LGBT civil rights.

A 15-minute documentary to be released in October tracks Massachusetts Representative Byron Rushing's influence on and participation in the movement which in 2004 yielded marriage equality for the state. The film, Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing and the Fight for Fairness, will also examine the similarities (and disparities) between the push for LGBT civil rights and the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Director Thomas Allen Harris realized the importance of making such a film while in the midst of working on another project. "We were interviewing Representative Byron Rushing for a [different] project," Harris told Bay Windows, describing it as "an online project called Digital Diaspora Family Reunion...it's basically about using our family's photographic archives as a way of telling stories, and telling the stories that we normally just take for granted."

Harris, who is openly gay, and his team reached out to Rushing "because he has such a rich history going back to the Civil Rights Era," and soon learned about the legislator's longtime support and advocacy on behalf of his LGBT constituents.

"I've been, of course, involved with LGBT civil rights since I was first elected," Rushing told Bay Windows. "I was part of that original coalition here in the Legislature to work for the passage of the gay rights bill," he said, which was signed into law by then Governor Dukakis in 1989.

The perspective Rushing offered on same-sex marriage was the impetus for the Marriage Equality documentary, Harris said. "It was great to hear his framing of the issue as a civil right. ... I realized that I actually needed to make this film and really start an education process and speak to my community about this issue." Since the advent of legal recognition of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Washington, D.C., the comparison between LGBT marriage equality rights and African-American civil rights has been made often -- a comparison that is explored in the film.

"I think they intersect in a sense that they're both minorities in a majority culture. ... Both are treated like second-class citizens. One is a race; the other is a sexual orientation," Harris said about the comparison between LGBT and African-American civil rights. "It's an issue around morality. We are less-than, because we somehow are amoral because we don't conform to a certain heterosexual norm, just like African-Americans could not, at that time, conform to a white, Anglo-Saxon norm."

Rep. Rushing recalled that during the struggle for marriage equality, conservatives attempted to divide the LGBT community from the African-American community. "One of the things they tried to do was separate people of color from [the LGBT] civil rights movement. They did that by arguing that somehow the gay and lesbian community was high-jacking the Civil Rights Movement," Rushing told Bay Windows. "What those of us who had been around for all of that had to do was to clearly speak against that, and to remind people that the majority of African-Americans have always seen civil rights as civil rights for everybody. ...Civil rights were not only for the African-American community, it was for everybody, and that this was a legitimate civil rights issue. Just like employment discrimination was a legitimate civil rights issue, the inability to marry was a legitimate civil rights issue that needed to be resolved."

Harris quickly brought more people in on the project to broaden the African-American perspective on same-sex marriage.

"I realized after speaking with Byron that a lot of the African-American politicians and elected officials, the majority of them and the majority of the people working for the Civil Rights Movement actually embraced [same-sex marriage] as a civil right," Harris said. Others featured in the film include former mayor of Cambridge Denise Simmons; Reverend Irene Monroe (a columnist for Bay Windows); constituents of Byron Rushing; Gary Daffin, co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Coaltion; Reverend Leslie Sterling; and interviews with participants in Boston's 2010 Pride parade and celebration. While all participants in the film are African-American, not all of them are gay or lesbian.

Rep. Rushing said that he was "flattered" at being asked to play such a prominent role in Marriage Equality. "I'm, of course, very happy to speak to the issues that [Harris is] interested in speaking to, and being sort of the poster boy for the whole question of same-sex marriage and how it is dealt with inside communities of color," Rushing said.

Harris described what he called the "bold" film as being "a way of celebrating [Rushing] through this particular kind of lens of marriage equality. ...He articulates [his support] both as a civil rights activist, but also as a religious person, as an elected official, and also as a gay ally."

Thanks to Harris' participation in United States Artists' Project Site (www.unitedstatesartists.org), he was able to raise enough money to finish production on the film. "We got the minimum amount of funding we needed to finish the film and so now we're starting funding for our large outreach, which will include a touring road show as well as the educational tool, and also getting it into different film festivals and community screenings, church screenings around the country," he said. Harris and his production company, Chimpanzee Productions, are actively looking for community partners to sponsor screenings and create discussion.

"One thing that films really do is change hearts and minds, and often lead to discussion," he said.

For more information on Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing and the Fight For Fairness, please visit www.chimpanzeeproductions.com.