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Loading ...Hawaii gay rights pioneer Bill Woods dies
09.29.2008 3:39pm EDT
(Honolulu, Hawaii) Bill Woods, one of the first gay community leaders in Hawaii, died after a lengthy illness. He was 58.
Woods arrived in Hawaii in 1969, a transplant from Illinois. As the LGBT rights movement was born, he founded what is now known as the Gay and Lesbian Center, which he ran for 17 years.In 1990, three same-sex couples were turned down when they attempted to get marriage licenses from the state Department of Health. In response, Woods founded the Gay and Lesbian Education and Advocacy Foundation, a nonprofit organization that solicited gay couples in Hawaii who wanted the right to be married.
The next year, civil rights lawyer Dan Foley, who today is a state appeals judge, filed a lawsuit that won a landmark favorable ruling from the Hawaii Supreme Court. That led to a decision by Circuit Judge Kevin Chang in 1996 which would have made Hawaii the state first in the country that would have allowed same-sex couples to marry.
A state constitutional amendment in 1998 had 70 percent of voters coming down against same-sex marriage, and a state high court decision the next year effectively ended the advancement of the movement in the state.
But Woods was not deterred.
In 2003, Woods and longtime partner Lance Bateman went to Vancouver to marry, shortly after same-sex marriage became legal in the Canadian province.
Wearing Hawaiian shirts and leis, Bill Woods and Lance Bateman entered hand-in-hand, their heads crowned with Hawaiian orchids and other tropical flowers.
They watched as a traditional Hawaiian dancer performed a marriage dance, and then proceeded to pledge their love in front of Rev. Diane Baker, a lesbian minister from Texas, and Svend Robinson, the first out member of Canada’s parliament.
While much of the service was a typical Christian wedding ceremony, the couple then exchanged personalized vows starting with the first words Bateman said to Woods when they met, while the crowd laughed.
“Do you want a ride home or are you taking the bus? What will you do now?” said Bateman. “Who knew where those few words would lead?”
Woods was a district chair for the Democratic Party and both he and Bateman were on the party’s central committee.
Woods also ran unsuccessfully for the state House in 2006.
