Citizen McConkey: a one-man battle against state’s gay marriage ban

Madison Capital Times: Bill McConkey's street cred as a straight man, as he finds himself reminding people these days, is ironclad. "I've been married three times," he says, with just a touch of swagger. "If this one slips away, the next one will be a woman." The topic keeps coming up because McConkey, a father of seven and grandfather of eight, is the man behind the pending challenge to Wisconsin's constitutional ban on gay marriage that will be heard this fall by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Adding to the incongruity of his challenge is McConkey's deep Christian faith, conservative leanings and, until recently, long association with the Republican Party. McConkey filed his lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court in July 2007, eight months after Wisconsin voters passed a statewide referendum amending the Wisconsin Constitution to ban gay marriage and civil unions. He was told at the time that his suit didn't have a chance, but he didn't listen. "I'm not impressed by people," he says. "I'm too old. I've flown on Air Force One. I've worked in the White House."

McConkey, who turned 67 on July 4, is a political science and communications professor at UW-Oshkosh. He's also a constitutional scholar, mediator, motivational speaker, author of a book on voting behavior and a "semi-trashy, supernatural murder mystery," and, as of this year, owner of a livestock fencing and watering systems business in Tennessee. Conspicuously absent from his long and varied resume is a law degree. But as he recently told a roomful of lawyers in Milwaukee gathered for a symposium on "Marriage Equality in the Heartland," his lack of legal credentials has some advantages. "That gives me a great deal of license in interpreting what the law means," he said to laughter. So when faced with what he saw as an egregious, unconstitutional assault on the fundamental rights of Wisconsin's gay citizens -- and a personal attack on his own lesbian daughter -- McConkey filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban: "I was outraged as a scholar and a professor but I was energized because it was my daughter." At the time, local and national gay rights groups declined to sign on to the lawsuit.

Legal observers say caution is always advised in these matters since a court could, if provoked, hand down a broad ruling that would actually set back the fight for marriage equality. But McConkey was undeterred. The legal issues now before the Supreme Court are much more narrow than were originally proposed but, if successful, the effect will be the same: an overturning of Wisconsin's constitutional ban on gay marriage. McConkey continues to have skeptics and there are those who consider him an oddball. But Milwaukee attorney Christian Thomas Eichenlaub is grateful that McConkey, once an amateur boxer, threw himself into the ring despite a lack of institutional support. "You can't fail if you don't try," says Eichenlaub, who worked as a volunteer with Fair Wisconsin, the statewide group that organized opposition to the amendment. As it turns out, McConkey's timing is looking a little better these days.

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