By Daniel Nash

The Courier-Herald

Sheryl Lathrop is a lesbian. She is also a science teacher at White River High School. But she doesn’t have time to push an agenda, talk about hot-button political issues or otherwise discuss her lifestyle during class.

“With what I have to teach and the curriculum I have to stick to, I don’t have time to push an agenda to my students,” she said. “What I do in my private life is my business. Just as you wouldn’t expect a heterosexual teacher to go out of their way to go into detail about being a heterosexual in class, I don’t use my time to talk about being gay. I am who I am.”

However, Lathrop isn’t ashamed of her orientation, she said. She described herself and her partner of four years as very politically active, especially on the topic of Referendum 71.

Referendum 71, popularly known as “everything but marriage,” gives same-sex couples in legal domestic partnerships the same rights as married couples without calling the partnership marriage. It was on the Nov. 3 ballot and passed by a 5 percent margin over the weekend.

The passage of Referendum 71 marks the first time in U.S. history that a state law extending marriage-like rights to same-sex couples has passed in a popular vote. A similar measure in Maine, proposing to grant full marriage rights to same-sex couples, failed in the popular vote.

Some gay Plateau residents aren’t ready to declare the victory as the beginning of a new era of tolerance just yet. Gay business owner Michelle Armstrong said she “wasn’t holding her breath” and pointed to last year’s situation in California. The state supreme court granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning June 16, 2008, but that November, voters approved Proposition 8, which constitutionally redefined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Armstrong and Lathrop are both longtime residents of Washington and, while neither reported direct hardship due to their sexual orientation, they acknowledged that the environment was not always tolerant.

“Lots of people say ‘You don’t come out of the closet because you’re ashamed to be gay,’” Armstrong said. “The truth is it’s because of fear or safety. Hatred and violence can run rampant in some places and gay people stay in the closet for protection.”

Lathrop offered another perspective.

“I’m not sure that this is an unfriendly area per se,” she said. “For some reason, the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) members of Pierce County don’t come out.”

A 23-year resident of Pierce County who has been with her partner for 30 years spoke on condition of anonymity.

“I’m part of an older generation of GLBT people,” she said. “I was around in the ‘60s when people like me were just beginning to come out in the open, but there was still quite a bit of backlash. I wouldn’t call myself fully out of the closet. I’m comfortable with who I am, but I don’t try to wear a sign.”

She owns a business that serves many people in the community, eight to 10 different clients per day in the busy season. She has been in her trade for around 40 years.

When domestic partnerships first became available in Washington state in 2007, she was grateful. But she and her partner had to take additional legal measures to achieve similar rights to a marriage, such as forming a joint living trust, a property ownership trust and living wills.

The approval of Referendum 71 will make such additional efforts unnecessary for other same-sex couples.

Despite the state’s definition, she privately considers her partnership a marriage, she said.

“We even went through a holy union in a church, even though it wasn’t recognized by the state,” she said. “Neither one of us calls each other ‘hubby’ or ‘wife’ or ‘partner.’ We’re just together and we go through the same struggles as anyone else who’s in a partnership.”

Other than a single instance out-of-state where she and her partner were refused service at a business, she said she hadn’t encountered any problems because of her orientation.

“Many of my clients know,” she said. “Some of the businesses (my partner and I) go to more often, they’ve certainly seen us together and it’s never been an issue.”

Lathrop doesn’t take the time to talk about her orientation in her science class, but if students have questions she will answer them after class.

“What I love about science is that you have an endless array of questions to ask, and each of those questions lead to a thousand more questions that take you closer to seeing how it all works,” she said. “Usually when a student finds out about my orientation they’ll say ‘Oh, I have an uncle who’s gay,’ or they have some other family member or friend who has come out. The younger generation has experience with this issue, and they’re more understanding and tolerant because of it.”

If the Plateau area is less tolerant or understanding of homosexuality, it’s most likely an issue of communication and not outright opposition, she said.

“We don’t tend to see ourselves as part of the bigger picture,” she said. “Go to Capitol Hill and it’s like ‘whatever.’ But we’re rural and isolated. People live farther away from each other. I don’t think its appropriate to say gay communities are strictly urban. That’s where the issues have had to be dealt with first because cities have to handle that direct interaction.

“But in a rural community, the attitude is more live and let live, so there’s no deliberate sense of inclusion. But people understand when they know you.”

Next week: A look at gay and gay-friendly businesses in the area.