Differences give strength to backers of marriage law
By Kay Lazar, Globe Correspondent | October 13, 2005
Aaron Toleos has learned it can be a small world.
Fifteen years ago, the Rowley native was a college student in Virginia who made fun of gay members of a rival fraternity during football games. It seemed, he says, a mindless prank.
Today, the Boxford father of two has teamed up with a gay member from that same Virginia fraternity to protect same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.
''Eye-opening" is the way Toleos describes the journey that led him to cofound KnowThyNeighbor.org, a controversial grass-roots group that has pledged to post on its website the names and addresses of people who sign a petition to ban same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.
Toleos's KnowThyNeighbor cofounder is Manchester-by-the-Sea resident Tom Lang, 42, who made headlines in 2000 when he and his partner, Alexander Westerhoff, became one of the first same-sex couples in America to be recognized as legal spouses under Vermont's civil union law. They married last year, when same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts.
At first blush, KnowThyNeighbor's cofounders seem an unlikely team -- a wealthy gay man who describes himself as a steadfast Republican and a straight, middle-class man who usually sides with Democrats.
''The two of us, in one respect, don't have a lot in common," said Toleos, 34. ''But in another way, we do. We are both married to people we love."
Toleos and Lang met last year when both volunteered on the political campaign of Tim Purinton, an Ipswich Democrat who ran unsuccessfully against state representative Bradford Hill. Toleos, a website administrator at North Shore Community College in Danvers, managed Purinton's Internet site. Lang made his rare foray into Democratic politics to help the candidate, a supporter of gay marriage, after Westerhoff got involved in the campaign.
But after Purinton lost the race in November 2004, Toleos and Lang went their separate ways.
Then in June, opponents of same-sex marriage announced a petition drive to put a constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot in 2008 that would ban gay marriage. The move will require petition organizers to collect nearly 66,000 signatures of registered voters by Thanksgiving.
That got Lang thinking. Would any of his neighbors sign the petition? He then found out that the secretary of state's office releases the names and addresses of all who sign to anyone who asks -- a fact not widely known. The discovery gave Lang the idea of starting a website to post the signatures. And the first person he thought of was Toleos.
''Aaron's Web designs give life to people and their politics," said Lang, who co-owns an antiques store in Essex with Westerhoff.
Toleos was intrigued. He had not thought much about gay issues before the Purinton campaign. In fact, Toleos had pretty much sat on the political sidelines until he and his wife met Purinton and his wife at a local concert. Toleos says he was impressed that a man his own age, who also has young children, could find the time to run for political office and be so passionate about it. Purinton, an environmental activist, also supported same-sex marriage.
Another factor pivotal to Toleos's metamorphosis from a frat boy who yelled antigay chants into a political activist is the birth of his two children, now 1 and 4. When people debate the same-sex marriage issue, Toleos says he sees in his mind's eye the children of two lesbian couples he met last year in his daughter's day-care center.
''I can't be telling these kids their families are inferior," he said.
It wasn't until Lang contacted Toleos that they discovered they had both attended the College of William & Mary a decade apart.
Lang, long an outspoken advocate for gay rights, is used to the political spotlight. But his KnowThyNeighbor cofounder says he's received quite an education from the political firestorm their website has generated.
Criticism has poured in from the left and the right. The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, which opposes same-sex marriage, has called the plan to post names of petition signers a ''raw unconcealed attempt to intimidate Catholics from exercising their constitutional rights." MassEquality, which supports same-sex marriage, has also blasted the Web plan.
''The way to have an open and honest discussion about equal marriage rights is to talk to people and not threaten them," said MassEquality campaign director Marty Rouse.
Lang and Toleos say their aim is not to intimidate but to educate, and to spark a dialogue.
''Technology is changing the nature of our government and our democracy," said Toleos. ''Everyone will have direct access to information which has traditionally been filed away in the basement of the State House."
But Toleos, who makes a living managing websites, says he is also discovering the downside to technology as ''ugly" antigay e-mails flood the KnowThyNeighbor website.
''I was updating my resume recently and thinking that if I put KnowThyNeighbor on it, I was concerned I would be discriminated against," he said. ''I never had to think about that before."
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