30 Deborah Johnson and Zandra Rolón Part II Transcript In this Give Voice to History Project archival audio oral history recorded in 1991, you will hear Deborah Johnson (“D” in the transcript), Zandra Rolón (“Z”), and the interviewer, Eric Marcus (“E”). E: I’m Eric Marcus from Making Gay History. Over the course of two decades beginning in 1988, I conducted a hun- dred interviews with trailblazers from the LGBTQ civil rights movement. Now, with the Give Voice to History Project, I’m bringing some of those trailblazers into your classrooms to help tell the story of this part of the American Civil Rights Movement. We’re back with Deborah Johnson and Zandra Rolón Amato. for the second part of their story of how they challenged discrimination after a Los Angeles restaurant refused to seat them in a romantic booth for two. D: When we filed, we filed under two laws. One was a local ordinance, which was a city ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, specifically in housing, employment, and public accommoda- tions. We also filed under the state Unruh Civil Rights Act. Unruh is the guy, Jesse Unruh, was the author of the bill. The Unruh Civil Rights Act pro- hibits discrimination on the basis of sex, creed, race, color, nationality, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it doesn’t specifically say sexual orientation, so the courts have been interpreting that. So, we went to court, first time go- round, for an injunction. An injunction is basically to ask the restaurant not to do it anymore. The lower court said, “No, we’re not going to do that because we think it’s an important issue and it should really go to trial. And if we issue that injunction the restaurant may be hurt, and, furthermore, we're not so sure, basically, that you have any rights as lesbians.”You know, because the lower court thought that there was a double standard in society. That’s what he said, and that is what went on the paper—that behavior that was okay for straight people in public was not okay for gay people and that the public might be offended by us. We were basically asking him to jump the gun to... Z: … and make a decision. D: Yes, stop the practice. You don’t know how long it’s going to take to go to court. Issue an injunction. Stop the practice now so that nobody else gets hurt. And he’s saying,“Well, I’m not willing to jump the gun, because I re- ally don’t know what’s going to happen. You should go to court. You should have a trial.” We go to court, again, for what’s called a motion of summary judgment, which is in lieu of a trial, which basi- cally says, you know, here are all the facts. Nobody disputes the facts, give us a ruling. He didn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole either. Then it makes it to the appellate court. E: Every time there’s a decision… Z: Major, major. We’re in magazines, we’re in every single newspaper. D: Los Angeles Magazine. Z: Los Angeles Times, the Valley. E: And every single time… Z: And front page! D: The appellate court basically over- turned the lower court decisions. The lower courts rule against us and the ap- pellate court rules for us, so they have a right to petition the Supreme Court, which they did. When the Supreme Court said they weren’t going to hear it, then that meant that the next lowest 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80