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Filled with GLADness
BY ADAM REILLY
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Last week, Gary Buseck — executive director of Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) — announced he’ll step down early next year to become legal director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national, New York–based GLBT advocacy group. It’s a big change for Buseck, who’s led GLAD since 1997 and been involved with the organization since 1981. It also comes at a time when the Supreme Judicial Court ruling in the Goodridge case — in which GLAD filed suit on behalf of seven same-sex couples seeking the right to marry — is being anxiously awaited, and the debate over gay marriage and civil unions has an especially high profile on Beacon Hill. On Tuesday, Buseck discussed his move with the Phoenix. Q: What made you decide to leave GLAD? A: I’m a lawyer by training, and this was an opportunity to actually go back to being a lawyer as a full-time job. My primary motive was to get more hands-on involved in the law again. Obviously, I’ve had some involvement at GLAD, but it’s not been my primary responsibility. Q: Are you at all reluctant to step down with the Goodridge decision still pending? A: The timing is something I didn’t have any control over. I see this as kind of a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity, and it happened when it happened. But I’d love to be in Boston when the SJC rules in Goodridge. Q: When will that be? A: I don’t think there is any way of predicting. Everyone who predicts, it’s just a reflection of what’s going on in their own head, and not a reference to what the court is thinking or doing. Q: What’s your take on State Representative John Rogers’s proposal to offer civil unions in exchange for a DOMA law? A: From GLAD’s perspective, we think marriage is the only straightforward, fair, and simple answer that satisfies what is necessary to protect LGBT families the same as any other family. To us, it’s always been simple — and we saw the most recent poll results as really consistent with the poll the Globe did earlier in the year. [A new poll by Decision Research put support for and opposition to same-sex marriage at 59 and 35 percent, respectively; a Globe/WBZ-TV poll last spring identified a 50-44 percent divide.] It basically says people in Massachusetts are just as supportive of marriage as civil unions. And the shrinking bloc of people that are adamantly opposed are opposed to everything — to marriage, to civil unions, to domestic-partnership benefits. So it almost seems like there isn’t any reason to be talking about civil unions. The answer is marriage. Q: With you leaving GLAD to join Lambda and Cheryl Jacques leaving the state Senate to join the Washington, DC–based Human Rights Campaign, Massachusetts is losing two of its most prominent voices for gay rights. Should people be concerned? A: I can speak from GLAD’s point of view, and GLAD will be just fine. Because the work’s really being done by our lawyers like Mary Bonauto, who’s been at GLAD for over 13 years; Ben Klein, who’s been here almost 10; and Jennifer Levi, who’s been with GLAD almost six years. In some ways, nothing will change. Q: Some people have speculated that GLAD could one day become a Boston branch of Lambda. Is that a possibility? A: I don’t see that. I think GLAD has its own identity. It’s a homegrown New England institution that puts a lot of resources on the ground in six New England states, and it is really solid at this point.... I guess anything is possible, but I think GLAD right now has an identity and a value here in New England that is worth maintaining. Q: What’s it like leaving an organization you’ve been affiliated with for almost a quarter-century? A: I’m not a person who loves change, so it’s hard. But there are ways, I think, in which organizations need change in their executive directors. I ultimately think GLAD will just become better because somebody will come in with new skills I haven’t had and will take the organization another step forward. I think that’s a good thing, even though change is always kind of jarring for everybody.
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