Longtime gay activist, a top state education official, was near victim of anti-gay beating

Robert Harkins at a recent education rally on the Capitol steps in Olympia. (Courtesy of Robert Harkins)

Robert Harkins, who was the face of the gay rights organization Hands Off Washington in the 1990s, knows that gay-bashing occurs.

He wasn’t expecting it Friday night, though. Not as he walked with a friend Friday night. Not on Capitol Hill – the traditional center of gay life in Seattle.

But at about 11 p.m., Harkins, who is now the state’s deputy superintendent in the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he watched his friend get shoved to the ground on Pike Street and three men kick his friend in the face while yelling anti-gay and anti-Hispanic slurs.

The friend has two black eyes, Harkins said Tuesday.

The man, who didn’t want his name used, was still near tears when talking about it Monday.

Harkins’ friend said he’s not surprised to hear anti-gay remarks walking in Belltown. But on Capitol Hill, he said, “you’re supposed to feel safe.”

Harkins, who is in his mid-50s, said he and the friend, who is in his mid-20s, were walking on Pike Street, near Broadway, at about 11 p.m. when they passed a few people smoking outside a bar.

A woman in the group made a remark about a “pretty boy walking with his daddy,” Harkins said.

The friend stopped and said he wasn’t going to take that. He demanded an apology. A man who was with the woman stepped in.

Harkins’ friend still demanded an apology.

The other man shoved him to the ground, Harkins said.

Immediately, three other men began kicking Harkins’ friend.

The friend said he didn’t know if the same man who had shoved him kicked him. He just remembers going down and then feeling the kicks.

Harkins said others passed by on a busy Friday night. Only one woman stopped to help. She and Harkins stepped in stopped the attack.

He and the friend are just friends, Harkins said. Indeed, Harkins said Friday was the anniversary of the death of his fiancé.

“This weekend was supposed to be about my friends gathering around me,” he said – not of watching brutality.

Two years ago, I wrote a story for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about a spate of anti-gay attacks on Capitol Hill. Gays said the neighborhood was changing. It wasn’t just the move of the annual gay pride parade to downtown. More people from out of the area were coming to the neighborhood – perhaps not knowing of Capitol Hill’s significance in the gay community.

Harkins was sore Monday from pulling a muscle in his chest from breaking up the fight. He emphasized he wasn’t the one physically attacked.

But emotionally, he was still shaken, Harkins said.

That the attack happened on Capitol Hill was upsetting, Harkins said.

Harkins is a veteran of the gay rights movement, having served as the spokesman for Hands Off Washington, which fought statewide initiatives in the mid-1990s that would have prohibited state and local governments from protecting gays and lesbians under anti-discrimination laws, prohibited schools from portraying homosexuality in a positive light and banned gays from adopting children or getting custody of children in a divorce.

The three men, he said, “were just looking for a reason to whale on someone who was gay.

“You’d like to think we’ve come farther than this,” Harkins said.

Murakami was formerly the neighborhoods and City Hall reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer