From the Hawaii court decision that got all this started in 1993, through Congressional passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, through all the homophobic ballot initiatives and the first weddings in Massachusetts and then the outrage over Proposition 8 in California in 2008, the din created by the same-sex marriage debate has grown ever louder.

Illinois has been, comparatively speaking, a relatively "quiet" state. The legislature affirmed in 1996 that marriage was the union of a man and a woman and that same-sex unions were prohibited. But there haven't been statewide ballot initiatives or constitutional amendments. There haven't been reversals of local domestic partnership benefits.

But, believe it or not, a generation ago same-sex marriage for a time became quite the hot issue in Chicago. It made the news, not only in the young gay and lesbian press, but in the mainstream news media as well. It's a story not well known, and mostly forgotten now. Whether to call it tragedy or farce, melodrama or comedy routine, I'm not quite sure. But it's a tale worth telling.

*****

On Monday, Oct. 20, 1975, Nancy Davis, age 22, and Toby Schneiter, age 20 ( two "self-proclaimed" lesbians, as the Tribune put it ) , walked into the Cook County Marriage License Bureau and requested a marriage license. When told the law didn't allow for it, they announced that they were commencing a sit-in and a hunger strike, and that they intended to stay until forcibly removed. Soon deputies removed them, and once outside, released them, whereupon Davis and Schneiter marched right back in and continued their sit-in. Removed again, this time they were arrested and put in the county lock up overnight. The next morning, instead of showing up for their court appearance, they went back to the Marriage License Bureau for a third sit-in. They were jailed again, this time for a week, during which they continued their hunger strike. When Davis and Schneiter were released, the wear and tear of a week in jail without food visibly showed.

So, were they given a hero's reception upon their release from jail? Were there marching bands and speeches honoring their courage and their fierce commitment to gay freedom? Not exactly.

After Davis and Schneiter announced their intention to seek a marriage license, representatives from many of the gay organizations in the city met to plan a response. They called a press conference while the two were in jail, and they disavowed the actions of the young women. In the statement released to the press and in articles written later about them in the gay press, Davis and Schneiter were variously called "crazies" and "eleventh-hour opportunists." Their actions were criticized as "a publicity stunt" and "a half-baked scheme" that left many activists in the community "in a furor." What was going on to provoke so intensely negative a response to these two young women?

A number of things aroused the anger of others. For one thing, it turned out that Schneiter was already married to a man, an immigrant whose chances of staying in the country might be jeopardized by an action that made their marriage seem not quite on the up and up. How serious could the request for a marriage license by Davis and Schneiter be, if one of the potential spouses was already wed? For another, gay groups in the city had been working closely with Alderman Clifford Kelley on a gay rights bill. Suddenly injecting marriage into the equation would muddy the waters and might easily jeopardize progress on that front.

Perhaps most of all, many Chicago activists were angry because the marriage license ploy seemed to be a route to other ends. Davis and Schneiter took their actions as members of a newly formed Gay Rights Action Coalition. The group consisted of maybe half a dozen men and women, most of them associated at one time or another with the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP had developed a reputation around the country of using the gay and lesbian movement as a recruiting ground, of presenting themselves as more-militant-than-thou, and of engaging in tactics designed to provoke outrage and mass demonstrations, as if that was the only path to change. One of the members of the group, Jeff Graubart, had already angered lots of activists in town the previous June, when he used the platform at the Pride Rally at Civic Center Plaza to launch a verbal attack on other gay activists for not being militant enough.

One action provokes a reaction which sets in motion another reaction. After the press conference disavowing the actions of Davis and Schneiter, a number of lesbian activists in town criticized the criticizers as a male-dominated group that left lesbians out of the loop. How dare these guys try to quash the initiative of two young radical lesbians!

And so a whole new round of meetings occurred. This time, "a general town hall meeting" was held in the lesbian-friendly space of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union. Some of the women talked about how hard it had been to work with men. Out of the meetings came a new citywide group, the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Metropolitan Chicago, which led to a much expanded dialogue and more cooperation in the ensuing period. The group as a whole decided that they would help get Davis and Schneiter out of jail. But, interestingly, even among this larger gender-mixed group of activists, there wasn't much interest in pushing forward with the marriage issue. The idea of sit-ins and hunger strikes and court challenges to achieve the right to marry wasn't high on anyone's list of priorities.

Except, however, for Davis and Schneiter and Graubart and the handful of others in their Gay Rights Action Coalition. Over the next months, Davis and Schneiter kept sitting in at the Marriage License Bureau, and kept being jailed. By summer 1976, the pair had spent over 120 days in jail! Early during Pride Month that summer, Graubert called for a demonstration at the Civic Center to support the two women and their quest for the right to marry. But only about 50 people showed up, suggesting how little enthusiasm and how little patience the larger community had for the issue and the tactics.

But still they continued. In another effort to support the two women, Graubert and a male friend filed a court suit to force the County Clerk to issue them a license. But the pair didn't have a lawyer and Graubert, with no legal training, argued the case himself. In August 1976, a judge ruled against them. Meanwhile, Davis and Schneiter kept going back, kept getting arrested, and kept going on hunger strikes. Indicted on criminal trespass charges, they demanded a jury trial and, after just two hours of deliberation, the jury found them guilty. Now they faced a 364-day sentence at the Women's Penitentiary in Dwight, Illinois.

The experience in the penitentiary was not a pretty one. By the time they were released in 1977, Schneiter had had enough. But Davis just kept going on. She found another woman to marry, and announced that she would engage in yet another sit-in. When Renee Hanover, a much beloved lesbian attorney in Chicago, spoke out strongly at a community meeting against such a course of action, the audience applauded Hanover, not Davis. Undeterred, Davis went ahead with the action and received yet another 364-day sentence.

At this distance in time, it's easy to see that all these sit-ins and arrests did nothing to advance marriage equality. There was no community support, no meaningful campaign of public education, and no small victories en route to a bigger one later on. But, paradoxically, some good may have come out of it all. As Bill Kelley, writing about the episode at the time, observed: "If the Schneiter-Davis debacle has helped to discredit doctrinaire opportunism, to foster cooperation among Chicago gay groups, or to improve understanding between lesbian and gay male activists, and if the resulting publicity has helped more than harmed gay rights goals, then all the energy expended during the imbroglio was not utterly wasted."

Copyright 2009 John D'Emilio