The call went from Denver to Oregon on Wednesday night. State Sen. Abel Tapia, one of Colorado’s most powerful legislators, had something to say to his son:
“I just told the state Senate you are gay.”
It was a father’s best and worst moments wrapped in a single agonizing confession.
On the other end of the line, Sebastian Tapia processed the news the way he might analyze testimony in one of his cases as an assistant prosecutor.
He decided that his father’s speech in favor of a bill that outlaws discrimination based on workers’ sexual orientation was painful but necessary.
“My dad’s a really private person, and so am I,” Sebastian Tapia said in an interview. “But he’s a man of integrity. I think he did what was right.”
His father revealed their family’s most private business to his Senate colleagues to answer the hateful, homophobic stereotypes being spewed by those same Senate colleagues, especially Sen. Ron Teck, a usually decent man whom Abel Tapia considers a friend.
Teck had risen to say that according to the Bible, homosexuality is an “abomination.”
“People have used the Bible to discriminate against groups throughout history,” Sebastian Tapia said. “This was just one more example.
“The very important thing my dad did was put it on a personal level.”
It was not about gay or straight. It was about family.
“It was more of an attack,” said Abel Tapia, “a degrading of people.”
The degradation included a question from Sen. Tom Wiens about whether heterosexuals and homosexuals with a preference for children might eventually be considered a legally protected sexual orientation.
The answer, of course, is that sex with children is a crime.
But the smear, which suggested that gay lifestyles were on par with pedophilia, seemed more about getting in a cheap shot than getting an answer.
The ugliness didn’t surprise Sebastian Tapia, but it shocked his father.
“I don’t remember it being like that before,” Abel Tapia said of his seven years in the General Assembly. “It shows such a deep hatred.”
Too much of the hate comes in the name of a God the Democratic senator from Pueblo doesn’t recognize.
“I was taught that Jesus was all about love, forgiveness and acceptance,” he said.
What the elder Tapia learned as he came to love his son for who he is was the very thing he knew was missing from last week’s Senate debate.
“When I introduce my son,” Tapia explained, “I don’t say, ‘This is my gay son.”‘
That, said his son, is because “anyone who is exposed to gay people realizes the stereotypes just don’t hold.”
Which is finally why Abel Tapia outed his child to the Colorado Senate.
He did it because he doesn’t know an abomination. He knows a nice kid, raised in Catholic church and schools. He knows a fine student who studied engineering like his dad. He knows a proud young man so devoted to justice that he now prosecutes criminals.
“These people who talk so negatively,” Tapia wondered, “if it happened (that they had a gay child), would they talk the same way?”
And so he rose last week to speak in favor of judging people by how they treat others, not with whom they sleep.
The Senate is scheduled to take a roll-call vote on the anti-discrimination bill today. Because Democrats hold a one-vote majority, Tapia thinks it will pass, as it did on a voice vote last week. It also should pass the
Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, Tapia expects to hear his Republican friends defend their “no” votes on legal and economic grounds (adding another protected class of workers creates too much legal exposure for employers, etc.).
He also expects the Republican governor to veto the bill on those grounds.
But last week’s display of ignorance shows exactly why this bill is needed and why – if the governor cares about people rather than politics – he’ll let the bill become law. Folks should be hired and fired based on their job performance, Sebastian Tapia said. As long as you measure up professionally, your private life should not affect your employment.
Last week, a father and son learned that you sometimes must get very personal in public to make that point.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
