by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

The politics of firearms freedom versus sexual orientation have collided head on in Massachusetts. A gay and lesbian gunowners’ organization has declared open warfare on anti-gun state Sen. Cheryl Jacques, and the gun legislation she sponsored.

While there has been a growing shift in how the traditionally liberal gay community views gun ownership, this may be the first time their political activism has been directed at one of their own.

Sen. Jacques, who did not return several telephone calls from Gun Week, “came out” last year as a lesbian. But instead of being targeted by the religious right, she’s in the crosshairs of a small, but growing organization of gay gunowners calling themselves the Pink Pistols.

Jacques is reportedly considering a run for the office of lieutenant governor. She was a prime sponsor of the state’s “Chapter 180” gun law passed in 1998. Sources in Boston said gun control is one of Jacques’ “hot button” issues. And that’s what has the Pink Pistols’ Massachusetts chapter on the offensive.

What is occurring in the Massachusetts gay community, it appears, may be a microcosm of a growing movement nationwide by gays toward more conservative, pro-gun politicians.

In a somewhat stunning move, Jacques noted almost as an aside in a guest column that appeared in the June 1, 2000 edition of the Boston Globe, that she is gay. That did not stop the Needham Democrat from clinching her fourth re-election last November.

According to David Rostcheck, an activist and organizer in the Pink Pistols group, Jacques’ anti-gun philosophy puts her squarely at odds with gays and lesbians who shoot and own guns. Jacques recently announced she wants to further ratchet down on Bay State gun rights, in the wake of the December “Mucko Massacre” in Wakefield, MA. That has outraged virtually every gunowner in the state.

It appears to have particularly infuriated gay shooters, and that could cost Jacques support amongst voters she might have otherwise taken for granted. In a recent news release, the Pink Pistols declared that Chapter 180 “legalizes discrimination.”

“From a civil rights standpoint, the law is horrifying,” Rostcheck said in the release.

“It’s racist, classist, sexist, homophobic, and it discriminates against the elderly and disabled. When people actually sit down and read it, even ardent gun control advocates are shocked at what it legitimizes. A police chief can deny a license to a legally qualified person based on their gender, their housing, their sexual orientation, absolutely anything they want. Jesse Helms never managed to pass legislation this discriminatory.”

Pretty strong stuff, and Rostcheck did not tone it down when he spoke with Gun Week.

“This law,” he argued, “gives every local police chief the power to decide who gets a license to carry. They can make their own criteria…We have heard some stories indicating that (people) are being denied permits because of their sexuality. We have heard from people who are denied because of their housing; they live in an apartment.”

Rostcheck said Pink Pistols members are furious, because the local police chiefs, “Don’t have to give you a reason when they deny you. They just have to say you are not a ‘suitable person.’”

That point was emphasized in the Pink Pistols news release by its founder, Doug Krick:

“Chapter 180 was a stealth law. It purported to be a tough gun law, but what it really did was make guns and gun licenses difficult to legally get and use. And how did it do that? By legalizing discrimination in almost any way you can imagine.

“Discretionary licensing,” he continued, “is literally just a code phrase for ‘arbitrary discrimination.’ An applicant’s right to defend herself is utterly subject to the whim of her town’s police chief, regardless of need. Many towns, especially around Boston, use this power to discriminate heavily. A police chief may deny a license because the applicant is a lesbian and her abusive partner or stalker is not considered a serious threat, or because her violent husband has a friend at the police station. Some chiefs simply don’t want to issue any licenses in their town and deny almost everything. They don’t even need to give a reason.”

National Movement
Gays supporting gun rights is not a new phenomenon. Several gay rights activists have written articles in liberal magazines opposing so-called hate crime laws and urging gays to acquire guns for personal defense. Some of those articles have also included accounts of armed homosexuals fending off threatened attacks from gay bashers.

Years ago, in San Francisco, a group calling itself “Gays For Guns” organized to help defeat California’s Prop. 15. The Pink Pistols is just the latest in a string of pro-gun movements within the gay community. The founding Pink Pistols chapter is based in Boston, but it followed a lesser-known effort that began two years ago in the Pacific Northwest that calls itself “Ceasefear.”

Ray Carter, a Ceasefear founder, acknowledges that the name of his organization is a direct slap at Washington state’s anti-gun organization “Ceasefire.” Traditionally, he confirmed, gays and gunownership simply did not mix because the gay community has largely followed the liberal agenda.

But that has slowly been changing. Carter told Gun Week that the issue of personal protection from “gay bashing” and other violence, and a common interest in shooting and firearms, is creating a “community within a community.”

“I believe there is a growing shooting community within the gay community,” Carter stated. “We’re seeing gay shooters actually coming out of a ‘second closet’ and making contact with each other.”

Early in the process of creating Ceasefear, Carter recalled, he sought and received some logistical help from the National Rifle Association, Citizen’s Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and Washington Arms Collectors, of which Carter is a member. Ceasefear has offered some NRA basic firearms courses in the Seattle area, which received a “mixed reaction,” Carter said.

Likewise, Pink Pistols activities have garnered a mixed reaction in the gay community, Rostcheck said, but so far, there has not been a strongly negative response. Rather, he explained, the reaction has ranged from supportive to somewhat neutral.

There are now a dozen Pink Pistols chapters in the country, and that’s what elevates the Jacques situation to a national issue.

“She has announced her candidacy for lieutenant governor,” Rostcheck explained, “as a ‘progressive civil rights activist,’ and she is soliciting the gay vote, so we’re in this strange position. We’re fighting a discriminatory law passed by someone who claims to be a civil rights activist.”

Long before Chapter 180 became law, police in Massachusetts had discretion on the issuance of pistol licenses, Rostcheck acknowledged. What this law has done, however, is hand over to police chiefs the power to abuse the system, he maintained.

Alluding to his earlier remark about denial on the basis of not being a “suitable person,” Rostcheck said there is no uniform standard that establishes any guidelines that define what a “suitable person” actually is. He hypothesized that in one jurisdiction, an unsuitable person could be gay or lesbian, in another town, it might be a black or Hispanic person, and in yet a third town it might be someone from the wrong economic class.

Discrimination
It is the potential for such discrimination that has gay gun rights activists fuming, Rostcheck intimated. He said there should be some sort of uniform criteria for issuance to prevent discrimination, as exists in 32 so-called “shall-issue” states where any citizen who meets the legal requirements must be issued a license.

“Once you start allowing extra-legal criteria into the decision, you open the door to pervasive, systemic discrimination, which is what we see in this state today,” Rostcheck stated. “A denied applicant at risk for her life may actually need to move to another town. Urban communities with many minority applicants issue almost no licenses, but a similar applicant in an affluent white suburb could get a license. That’s discrimination, and it’s wrong. The criteria should be written in law and should apply equally to everyone.”

The Jacques candidacy could become a catalyst for Pink Pistols chapters and other gay gun groups across the country to start paying closer attention to the actions of lawmakers who claim to support gay rights.

Ceasefear’s Carter said it is time for gays to question legislators about their stands on guns and self-defense, especially when they support laws that leave gays and lesbians, like everyone else, at peril of criminal, perhaps fatal, attack.

“For years,” he said, “it was heresy to raise these questions. But educating (the public) isn’t working, thinking happy thoughts isn’t working, carrying whistles isn’t working.”

What’s left is carrying a firearm, an option that Carter acknowledged is still sometimes a “tough sale” among gays. But it’s become less tough in the wake of high-profile cases like the murder of Matthew Sheppard in Wyoming.

“The biggest issue that we faced,” Carter recalled, “was that we were sort of groundbreakers. But we opened a discussion…and made it more acceptable to admit that, yes, you own a firearm.”