POLITICS
Facing Retirement, Gottfried Refl ects on LGBTQ Work
Longtime state lawmaker has supported queer causes for fi ve decades
BY DUNCAN OSBORNE
In his fi rst year in the State
Assembly, Richard Gottfried,
who represents Hell’s
Kitchen, Chelsea, and part
of Midtown in that body, joined a
fellow Democratic assemblymember
who then represented Greenwich
Village to introduce LGBTQ
rights legislation.
“When Bill Passannante introduced
the fi rst gay rights bill in
1971, I was one of a small handful
of legislators with him at the press
conference announcing it,” Gottfried
said in an interview outside
a Chelsea café. “That press conference
was so small that we held it in
the legislative library in the capitol,
and nobody had to come over and
tell us to be quiet.”
While the Republican-controlled
Legislature had just enacted a law
that legalized abortion in New York
and Nelson Rockefeller, the state’s
Republican governor, had signed it,
there was little interest in protecting
what we now call the LGBTQ
community. Just two years after
the Stonewall riots, the modern
movement was in its infancy and
activists had just begun to press
allies in government for legal protections.
“To me, it didn’t seem like a
particularly bold or striking position,”
Gottfried said. “It was what
I and most people I knew believed
in. I don’t know that I had the feeling
of being part of a vanguard at
the time. Looking back, of course,
Manhattan Assemblymember Richard Gottfried will retire at the end of 2022.
that’s what we were.”
That legislation was signed into
law in 2002 — 31 years after the
press conference — when then-
Governor George Pataki made a
deal with the Empire State Pride
Agenda (ESPA), then the state’s
LGBTQ lobbying group, to endorse
Pataki, a Republican, in his
campaign for governor that year.
Pataki served from 1995 to 2006.
The law generated controversy in
the LGBTQ community because it
did not include gender identity as
a protected class. Gender identity
was added to the state’s anti-discrimination
law in 2019.
DUNCAN OSBORNE
This is a notable feature of what
will be Gottfried’s 52-year career in
the state Assembly. The 74-yearold
often championed causes such
as legalizing marijuana or establishing
legal protections for the LGBTQ
community, including adding
gender identity to state law, well before
they had broader support and
years or decades before they became
law. Gottfried has also been
an advocate in the movement to
decriminalize sex work — an issue
that has had a major impact on the
LGBTQ community. Since 2019, he
has carried legislation that would
comprehensively decriminalize sex
work in the state. He also co-sponsored
the successful legislative effort
to repeal a loitering law known
as a “Walking While Trans Ban”
because authorities often used it to
target transgender individuals.
On December 13, Gottfried announced
he will retire at the end
of 2022.
“I propose to really, truly retire,”
he told Gay City News. “I’m not
looking for another job. I plan to
be able to take one of my Chinese
calligraphy or painting classes any
day of the week. I hope the world
situation enables my wife and I to
travel.”
Gottfried has served long
enough to see the State Legislature
move from being controlled
entirely by Republicans — though
Republicans in 1971 were a different
brand from 2021 Republicans
— to now being entirely controlled
by Democrats, with a number of
those Democrats professing progressive
values.
“There are a lot more members
of the Legislature who are fi rmly
committed to fi ghting for what they
believe is correct public policy than
people give us credit for,” Gottfried
said. “That wasn’t so true when I
fi rst arrived in ’71, but happily it
has been a steady trend. It’s one
of the most important things that
has changed in the Legislature.”
Gottfried was made the chair of
the Assembly’s Standing Committee
on Health in 1987. He would
continue in that position. In 1987,
HIV/AIDS was killing gay men,
drug injectors, and other groups.
Effective prevention, other than
condoms, would not arrive for more
than two decades. Effective treatment
arrived in the early ’90s. Gottfried
credits David Axelrod (no relation
to former President Obama’s
chief strategist of the same name),
who was the state’s health commissioner
from 1979 until 1991, with
educating him on health policy.
“When I became health chair, I
got a very good education in public
health principles,” he said. “I felt
very strongly that it was my job to
stand up for those principles.”
Gottfried defended those “public
health principles” when other politicians
were pandering. In 1997,
Nushawn Williams, a Black man
who was HIV positive, was accused
of infecting several women
who were white. He was convicted
on criminal sale of a controlled
substance, second degree rape,
and two counts of reckless endangerment.
He was sentenced to up
to 12 years in prison, but as the
end of his sentence approached,
the Cuomo administration suc-
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