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Serving the Carolines' Gay & Lesbian Communities for Over Eighteen Yea ,>< MS** G&L Bank, : Homophobia ln The Media, Ml HoiidwGmm December 18. 1998 ■ Judge Ray Warren of Mecklenburg County comes out to family, the world. By Paul Falduto Contributing Writer The ranks of openly gay elected officials in North Carolina doubled last week when Ray Warren, a jus tice of the state’s Superior Court declared that he is gay. Warren joins Carrboro mayor Mike Nelson as one the state’s two open ly gay elected officials. | Warren, who was elected to the Superior Court from Mecklenburg County in 1994, held press confer ences in Raleigh and Charlotte on December 9. He made the announcement, hie with HTwi^^^a^ewI^dT^ “a public official, in today’s climate, really does not have the ability to have a truly private, private life.” They were concerned, he added, “that within the next four years before I have to run for re-election, that at some point this would become an issue for somebody. That was like a bomb or a gun over our heads, and together, we want ed to pull this trigger ourselves, when we were ready and when my children were ready.” Warren, 41, has been married to his present wife for ten years, but they seperated in October. They have two children, a girl, 8 and a boy, 6. His wife has been very support ive, he said, and his children too young to really understand. He and his wife have not discussed a divorce yet (under state law, a cou ple must be seperated for a year before either can file for divorce.) Although Superior Court judges are now elected by districts (they were elected state-wide until 1994), they serve state-wide at die discretion of die Chief Justice of die Supreme Court Beginning in January, Warren will be sitting as a judge for the next six months in Bryson City, Murphy and Franklin. Since he would be gone from home so long, he was worried that should he “outed” against his will, he would not be able to respond in a timely way. “I didn’t want to ' handle this when I was outside of my home district and more or less living out of a hotel,” he said. Although Warren’s current office is non-partisan (another change made in 1994), he has been an active Republican for years, serving two terms in die state ho use (1985-89), where he was one of only a handful of Republicans inthatbodty. . 4 __ He generally towed the conserv ative line (he was strongly anti abortion), but sometimes strayed, drawing fire from his fellow con servatives for voting for the Martin Luther King holiday, for example. In 1988, he ran for the Republican nomination for Secretary of State, losing to John Carrington (who lost in the gener al election.) _ Two years later, Republican Crovernor Jim Matin appointed LiP the Superior Court, but he i later that f year (Superior Court judges were elected state-wide by party at that time and few Republicans ever won). Back practicing law, Warren handled some high-profile abor tion cases. He sucessfully chal lenged the 1993 arbortion clinic access law in federal district court as an unconstitutional infringe ment on anti-abortion protestors’ first amendment rights, but his vic tory was later overturned on appeal. In 1994, Warren again ran for Superior Court, and in a heavily Republican district (in a Repub lican landslide year), he was elect cu uj tin cigiu-year icnn. Two years later, Warren chal lenged NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Burley Mitchell, who, as chief justice, was Warren’s “boss.” He lost (in a Democrat year), but ran much better than die polticasl pundits had expected, drawing 49% of the vote, and receiving more votes than any other Republican candidate in NC that year except Bob Dole and Jesse Helms. Shortly after he lost to Mitchell, he was assigned to Henders onville, which he saw as “pay back” from Mitchell. Mi-tchell said Warren was a whiner. This year, Warren tried again to move up in the judicial ranks, run ning for one of the five available seats on the states’s Court of Judg* Ray Warran (left) with the openly g&y mayor of Carrboro, at a press conference December 9, in Raleigh disclosed that he is gay ; : - (Photo Courtesv the Asftnciaterl Press) Appeals, choosing to run for die only seat where an incumbent was not running. But, even as Republicans were making gains on the Supreme Court (winning both available seats) and one of the Democrat seats on the Court of Appeals (ousting a Demoicrat incumbent), Warren lost to Dem ocrat Bob Hunter by fewer than four thousand votes out of over 1.8 million cast, one of the closest races in state history. Warren claims that he would have come out even if he had won, leading some journalists to ques tioning his timing. Why didn’t he make this announcement before the election? warren responded that his fami ly was “just not ready” and that it was .‘just a coincidence that my self-realization process and my ability to deal with these issues, and the election happened to occur at the same time. There are some tilings you can plan in a political context and there are some tilings that just happen.” If he had been asked directly if he were gay, he maintained that he would have answered honestly, “but no one asked.” But there were rumblings, he acknowledged. Looil Republicans were suprised to see a letter from Warren in the Charlotte Observer criticizing a Supreme Court deci sion that was detrimental to gay and lesbian parents. He also publi cally argued with Mecklenburg County Commissioner Bill James, a conservative leader of the “Gang of Five,” the anti-gay group which controlled the Commission until the recent elections. Finally, Warren got a call from Carson Daves, husband of Mecklenburg County GOP Chair Linda Daves, who said he had heard rumors about Warren and wanted him to deny them. Warren refused. u was tear 01 ucuig ouieu oy someone like James that led to his decision to come out on his own, Warren said. He was not afraid that the media would out him, he said, but if someone like James did so, the media would have to report it Reaction firm Republicans was swift and critical. James told the Observer (12/9/98) that he felt sorry for Warren’s wife and chil dren and that “this had been brew* ing for some time in Republican circles” after Warren’s letter to fire Observer. “I hope Mr. Warren will turn from die destructive behavior that he obviously has been engaging in,” James said. -• Tom Bush, another member of the “Gang of Five,” also criticized Warren, telling the Observer that Warren had professeed to be an anti-abortion evangelical Christian. Bush added that conservative Christians should not shim Warren personally, but suggested that Warren might consider resigning since he could no longer be impar tial in cases involving gay issues. But Warren rejected that sugges tion, asking whether Bush would have black judges recuse them selves in civil rights cases or women judges in domestic dispute cases. Lee Currie, Executive Director of flie NC Republican Parly, told die Raleigh News and Observer (12/10/98) that Warren hai “betrayed die trust” dial die party had put in him. ‘Hay Warren has misled die people he represents and he has destroyed his family with his deviant and destructive behavior,” said Currie. Warren acknowleged that he would have a difficult time win ning a Republican primary and also said that he believed that gays “have gone as far as they can go” in the Democratic Party and that future gains would be made in die Republican Party.
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