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DES MOINES REGISTER Gay School Board Member Jonathan Wilson, who was defeated last year, looks back

DES MOINES REGISTER
Box 957,Des Moines, Iowa 50304
(Fax 515-286-2511)
(E-MAIL: letters@dmreg.com)

LOOKING BACK, BUT ONLY BRIEFLY by Rekha Basu

[Note: A Des Moines School Board member for 12 years, Jonathan Wilson was defeated in a bid for re-election last year after he came out as gay during a discussion of including information about homosexuality in the curriculum. His opposition was well financed and orchestrated by the religious "right."]

For about a minute about a month ago, Jonathan Wilson took a glance at the pool of candidates shaping up for Des Moines school board, and considered giving it another shot.

Away from the national spotlight, he thought, away from the gay-bashing that accompanied the convergence of GOP presidential candidates on Des Moines; removed from the massive outlays of cash and the mustering of voters for the wrong reasons; the visceral impact of his public coming out muted by time . . . Maybe he could just pull it off. The moment passed. Last Wednesday, sitting in his 25th-floor law office, Wilson smiled and said he couldn't be happier with the previous day's victories of Mark Schuling, Margaret Borgen and Nadine Hogate.

After all, he pointed out, he doesn't have time to be on the school board. His ego doesn't need it. He likes being around for his daughter's birthdays for a change. All of which are true, but none of which answers a key question that some part of Jonathan Wilson still needs answered, as some part of any of us would:

Was it personal?

Wilson has had plenty of time for reflection this past year. He's reflected, though it's not his job anymore, on the Balkanization and resegregation of schools and communities, and the role of Des Moines' open enrollment policy in the flight of tax dollars from city schools to suburbs.

He's reflected on the segregation of gay people in the community, and turned that concern into action by helping to start a Des Moines breakfast club for gay men. With 225 members on the roster and about 100 turning out at any given meeting, First Friday, as it's called, is by his account the largest breakfast club in Iowa. It gives the gay community visibility with policy makers from the police chief to the newspaper editor, and a chance to network socially and professionally away from the bars.

Wilson has reflected on the need for more out gay people in public office. In July, he became executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund in Washington, D.C., a political action committee for openly gay and lesbian candidates.

Wilson understands that such an association might backfire. He's the first to recall how much his opponents last year made of his Victory Fund financing. He has, however, become convinced that the only way to counteract the negativity is with enough money to get your message out.

But how are other gay candidates to interpret Wilson's defeat last year, after 12 years on the board, when a massive turnout of voters responded to anti-gay appeals and tapped into a furor over a curriculum proposal on gays and lesbians?

He acknowledges his candidacy came to be seen as some sort of referendum on gay rights. "I think I became for them a symbol of advances being made for the cause of equality for gay and lesbian people," is how he puts it.
But he thinks the outcome would have been different if it weren't for the national presidential "sweepstakes." And he thinks it gave the right-minded people of the community "a very loud wake-up call."

And they seem to have heeded it. The anti-gay Concerned Parents organization, which roared into victory last year, getting Wilson out and Jane Hein and Harold Sandahl in, seems this year to have gone out with a whimper. Its candidate, Marty Mauk didn't even finish close, and voter turnout fell from last year's 29,417 to this year's 10,917 (Wilson garnered 10,000 votes last year and lost, while Schuling, this year''s top vote-getter, won with 7,914.)

A Concerned Parents move to overturn a school district non-discrimination [on the basis of sexual orientation] hiring policy also fell on its face after it triggered the opposite effect -- a massive petition drive in support of existing policy. And in the mayor's race, Wilson's colleague, Mayor Arthur Davis, defeated Concerned Parents' candidate, George Flagg.

Jonathan Wilson notes all of this with more than passing academic interest, though his arena is national now, his concerns broader than Des Moines. He has clearly moved on. Except for one moment when he caught himself looking back.