In conjunction with National Pride Month in June, John Kerry’s Presidential campaign is planning to buy booths at 60 Pride festivals in 22 states, including African American and Latino Pride festivals, in a massive effort to garner the GLBT vote. The move was announced this week in a press briefing between members of the gay press and members of the Kerry campaign. San Francisco Pride will be among the Kerry campaign stops, but San Diego and Los Angeles Pride festivals are not.

“The formal campaign is only doing Pride celebrations in the ‘swing’ states, such as Ohio and Florida, with a few exceptions,” said Stephen Whitburn, president of the San Diego Democratic Club, which has officially endorsed Kerry for President. “I can understand that. They have limited resources and need to use those resources where they are going to be most effective in attracting swing votes.”

Whitburn said Kerry volunteers will be sharing SDDC’s booth at Pride and that SDDC has invited the Kerry campaign to march with them in San Diego’s LGBT Pride parade July 31.

“As I look to this election in November, I just have to say on so many different issues and so many different fronts, I view it as the most important Presidential election of my lifetime,” said Congressmember Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., during the phone briefing on Tuesday, May 25. The Gay & Lesbian Times joined the briefing, which included members of the gay press nationally as well as Kerry campaign workers, including LGBT Finance Co-Chair Jeff Anderson, LGBT Outreach Director Mark Seifert, and Eric Stern, director of LGBT Outreach for the Democratic National Committee.

“The Republicans, and this President, have decided to make LGBT issues wedge issues,” Baldwin said. “They’ve politicized our steady and strong march for full civil rights in part as a diversion to what is happening elsewhere in the economy and in the world. And I think as the gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, we have a special duty to speak out to show the American public that using us as a wedge is not going to work.”

In 1985, during his first Senate term, Kerry sponsored legislation to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and was one of the original authors of the Ryan White Act. Kerry has stated publicly that gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly in the military and has secured the appointments of gays and lesbians to various governmental positions.

“I probably don’t have to tell anybody on this conference call how much of a disappointment this President is to our community,” Baldwin continued. “Our duty as LGBT citizens is to not only step forward and articulate that this has been done and is unacceptable, we also have to win back that small group of gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens who voted Republican and voted for Bush in the last cycle.”

Anderson noted that Kerry’s voting record on GLBT issues has been positive even when there was no political advantage to the Massachusetts senator, such as his vote against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 while he was up for reelection.

“I think indisputably [Kerry] is the most pro-gay presidential candidate ever,” Baldwin said. “… All of us recognize that the reason this issue is before the federal government, before the Congress, is because this President wants to rev up his right wing and because this President wants us as a nation to not think about Iraq and not think about the deficit and not think about the economy, and we have to name that.”

Kerry has stated publicly that he believes marriage should be between a man and a woman only. Though he does not support a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, he does support a Massachusetts constitutional amendment replacing same-sex marriage rights with civil unions.

“His support for that amendment was conditioned on a contemporaneous rider that he only would support the amendment… if civil unions, with full rights, responsibilities and protections, were accorded gay and lesbian couples and their families,” Seifert said. “So in his mind he has made that distinction.”

However, some question whether “separate but equal” rights for the GLBT community in the form of civil unions will work.

Paula Rosenstein, co-chair of San Diegans Against Marriage Discrimination, explained that implementing civil unions for same-sex couples on the federal level would require overhauling numerous legal documents, including adding language to statutes in every state and local government, and adding civil union language into all federal benefits laws such as social security and veterans’ benefits.

“I think in theory it is possible, in practice I suspect it cannot happen, because all of those different legislatures are not going to voluntarily extend equal rights, benefits and responsibilities to same-sex couples,” said Rosenstein. “So the way I can imagine it happening is through a U.S. Supreme Court decision that says ‘you must.’ … But getting to the Supreme Court takes years and years.”

The San Diego Democratic Club issued a response to Kerry’s support of the proposed Massachusetts constitutional amendment when it was announced earlier this year. “The San Diego Democratic Club sent Senator Kerry a letter expressing the club’s profound disappointment with that stance, and noting that that was out of character with Senator Kerry’s longtime support of LGBT rights,” Whitburn said. “… [Civil unions] is the one place in which he is out of line with what the LGBT community would want, and frankly what we would expect of him based on his support for our community historically.”

“[Kerry] has a very long, positive record of support for our community,” Rosenstein said, adding that San Diegans Against Marriage Discrimination focuses on the federal marriage amendment and Kerry has taken a firm opposition to that. “Do we wish his stand was different? Of course we do. But he is, I think, being consistent… in that he thinks that the issue is a question of equal rights and responsibilities and if are given the equal rights and responsibilities, albeit in a parallel institution, that that meets the needs that he has.”

“I have an LGBT steering committee – many of whom are married, who got married in San Francisco – who support John Kerry because they realize that he is light years ahead of where we have been to date,” Anderson said. “We can agree to disagree on this issue [same-sex marriage] and John Kerry has said it right: it is a states issue and we’re going to use our community to fight this battle in each state to get those rights; and John Kerry supports us at the federal level by saying whatever any state chooses to recognize, the federal government won’t discriminate between those various forms to provide all the federal benefits to that designation.”

In response to a question about when Kerry will affirm public support of the GLBT community in his campaign, Baldwin called media coverage of Kerry’s campaign stance on GLBT rights “not particularly evenhanded or fair,” and said that the proactive message is there.

“We have to look at this; I mean, two years ago, we were saying that civil unions in California were not even in reach,” Rosenstein said. “We have to look at this as a progression… [Same-sex marriage] has now become a test that all politicians have to pass, and I think we have to be a little bit more pragmatic than that. We have to allow people the chance to grow, and where they are today, giving us equal rights and benefits, is a major step from where they were a year ago. So I think that John Kerry has the ability to grow to equal marriage rights – using the word ‘marriage’ – and I don’t see that same ability to grow in President Bush.”

“It would be great if there were a candidate for President who believed in marriage equality, but there isn’t,” Whitburn added. “Either Senator Kerry or George W. Bush is going to be elected in November. Senator Kerry has stood up for LGBT rights for years now. … Someday I would like to say a gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender President, but until that day, we have to choose from the candidates that are before us, and clearly Senator Kerry is the best candidate in this election, and the San Diego Democratic Club is going to be working very hard to do its part to elect him.”