Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ruminates on God, family and why marriage equality matters.

by Karen Ocamb

It’s Good Friday, hardly a day of rest for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who just four days from now in his State of the City address will call for “shared responsibility” to save jobs and programs in this deep recession. He also spells out plans to create jobs while greening the city.

Openly gay City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl would later tell Frontiers in L.A. that Villaraigosa’s speech was “well done. He has the right approach.”

On the mayor’s schedule this April 10 is the annual serving of Easter meals at the Los Angeles Mission Easter Meals for the Homeless and meeting privately with constituencies such as the LGBT community, represented by Frontiers.

Actually, Villaraigosa is constantly surrounded by LGBT people—including his personal aide and his senior press secretary, Matt Szabo. Since his election to mayor in 2005, Villaraigosa has appointed seven LGBT senior staff and general managers and 30 LGBT commissioners (including two to the police commission), in a city with a total of 294 commissioners. Nineteen are currently serving.

Villaraigosa’s relationship with the state’s LGBT community has been much-lauded since 1994 when he arrived in the Assembly. And the LGBT community notably backed him in both races for mayor.

But relations grew strained in the two years after he took office, with his once warm accessibility seemingly limited to a few handpicked representatives and his unrepentant skipping out on LGBT events where he was a headliner, as IN Los Angeles magazine reported. Other communities had difficulty with him, too, especially after his affair with a Spanish-language television reporter was exposed.

Villaraigosa’s mea culpa seemed to win him back some friends, though openly gay reporter Patrick Range McDonald in a Sept. 11, 2008, cover story for the LA Weekly challenged how effectively he managed the city given his constant travel.          

Villaraigosa’s recent trips to Sacramento and Washington, however, are being looked at with almost breathless expectation as frightened Angelenos hope the mayor’s old charisma and energy plans will bring state and federal dollars and jobs to the city.

Frontiers’ first official sit-down with Villaraigosa in four years was unexpectedly comfortable, a result of his strong efforts to try to defeat Prop. 8 and his return to the forefront of LGBT politics. He contributed $25,000 of his own money, raised thousands more, spoke at post-Prop. 8 rallies and monitored the LAPD response to protest, and he headlined the recent Human Rights Campaign gala.

Villaraigosa seemed to relish playing the part of “Equality Man” during a photo shoot for Frontiers, sporting Shephard Fairey’s original “Defend Equality” T-shirt contributed to the marriage equality movement. The interview was wide-ranging, but the focus here, now, is on Prop. 8.

Villaraigosa, who was co-chair of the No on Prop. 22 campaign in 2000, was reluctant to discuss what went wrong with the campaign.

“Let me talk about what went right,” Villaraigosa says. “When you look at [Prop. 8] and at the Knight Initiative [Prop. 22], a lot more people are beginning to realize this issue of equality—and in this case, marriage equality—is a fundamental right. It’s an issue that goes to the heart of who we are as a state and a country and what our values are. And for someone who’s been in these battles for years now, it was good to see that.

“It’s clear we still have a lot of work to do,” he continues. “We need to reach out to a broader community. We need to talk to our families. We’ve got to have a serious conversation about the pain that we feel. … We need to reach out to people who don’t agree with us and have serious conversations about the effect of denying someone the fundamental right to liberty and happiness and the right to marry—and the second-class citizenship it denotes ...

“Many of us are faithful people, too. I believe in God,” says Villaraigosa. “I have a deep and abiding love for God. And I believe that Jesus was a shepherd, and the role of the shepherd is to bring the flock in—not some of the flock, all of the flock. And [in] virtually every religion that I’ve ever read about, the human race is depicted as the children of God. I don’t believe that God would want us to discriminate in that way.

“But I do think we have to have those conversations, and we have to be respectful. Sometimes people feel so strongly about their views that they don’t listen to people who disagree ... That doesn’t mean we are not strongly advocating for our view; but often times, when you’re talking and listening and not screaming, you lower the volume. You’d be surprised the common ground that you can find.

“I was with someone recently for dinner who strongly believed that Prop. 8 was right,” he continues. “We talked and talked, and I listened and she listened. By the end of the dinner, she’d gotten herself to the point where—while she couldn’t believe in gay marriage—she knew she couldn’t deny that marriage to someone who did. There’s a power that comes in listening, in reaching out, in trying to find that common ground that’s so necessary for the change we want.”

Suddenly, Villaraigosa gets animated as he remembers the massive nighttime re-commitment ceremony he conducted in front of City Hall.

“I did the re-commitment ceremonies in the pouring rain. We were in the pouring rain!” Villaraigosa says, his voice rising, pounding the conference table for emphasis. “Hundreds and hundreds of people were there, re-committing themselves to their love—and it was one of the most beautiful things. Wasn’t it powerful?” he asks Szabo.

“I thought it was one of the most powerful moments of this entire process because you were able to see exactly what this means in real terms,” Szabo says.

“Yeah,” says Villaraigosa. “I think what we’re doing now, that’s important and different. We’re talking about families. Before everybody said you shouldn’t do that; the talking points were, ‘Don’t talk about families.’ And the polls said that.

“And you know what? He [pointing to Szabo] can tell you. As soon as they told me that, I said, ‘That doesn’t make any sense!’” Villaraigosa gets louder, his voice almost hitting a falsetto as he expresses disbelief. “You know how I came by these views! I supported gay marriage in 1994 when they first asked me! I’m not going to tell you I had thought about it. I’d never thought about it, really. But when they asked me, I stopped for a moment, and I thought about my cousin [openly gay Assemblymember John A. Perez]. How good he is to our kids. I thought about my family—my nephews—and I said, ‘Who are we to deny somebody that right to love, to have a family? I think that’s always been fundamental to this. Those who talk about family values? What is more family-like than wanting to have a union of love and commitment with somebody? To have a family? I love the commercials that are coming out now that emphasize that.”

(Look for more of the interview with Mayor Villaraigosa in the next issue.)