Newspapers / Q-notes (Charlotte, N.C.) / April 18, 1998, edition 1 / Page 10
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PAGE 10 ▼ Q-Notes T April 18,1998 Come Party to Defeat the Gang-of-Fiye! IPire-ICll€ctii€ii 1feai IDance Sunday May 3 Hartigan's Pub 601 S. Cedar Street Charlotte, NC 4:00 - 7:00pm Donations Accepted Co-sponsored by: Mecklenburg Gay & Lesbian PAC and North Carolina Pride PAC Life May Be A Box of Chocolates. A Don’t Expect Any Disappointments From Us! * what you see is what you get If you are coping with financial pressures, you know best what you need: the highest amount for your Life Insurance... Plain and Simple. Our name says it all. We care about the individual. As an independent resource, we charge no fees while we negotiate for you the greatest possible ben^ts. We specialize in Fedeial Government and\feteran’s Policies. 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Protect yourself with the knowledge you cannot afford to be without! ^ Groups fight military ban in court by Kathy Strieder Special to Q-Notes NEW YOPJC—^The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union, having won a federal court ruling that the military’s unequal treatment of lesbian and gay servicemembers is unconstituitional, fought the government’s ap peal in New York on April 2. “This case is and always has been about just one thing,” said Matthew Coles, director of the ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. “The government says that, unlike everyone else who serves, lesbians and gay men in the military have to be celibate. Its only explanation for doing Last July 2, Judge Eugene Nickerson struck the ban as unconstitutional. grading and deplorable condition for remain ing in the Armed Services.’” The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard the appeal in Able v. USA, the government’s first full defeat in a case involv ing the militaiy’s anti-gay policy. Ruling on the case last July 2, Eastern District Court Judge Eugene Nickerson struck the ban as unconsti tutional. He said, “It is hard to imagine why the mere holding of hands off base and in pri vate is dangerous to the mission of the Armed Forces if done by homosexuals but not by a heterosexual.” Nickerson found that the special rules the military imposes on gay servicemembers serve only to accommo date the anticipated anti-gay feelings of other servicemem bers. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” bans all that to gay people is that it thinks straight sol diers and sailors are uncomfortable around les bians and gay men. We say you do not discrimi nate against one group of Americans to make another group feel better. That is the whole case. Lamba Legal Director Beatrice Dohrn said, “It is time for the court to call an end to the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ charade. Quali fied lesbians and gay men should serve under the same rules as non-gay personnel.” Dohrn added, “Judge Nickerson said it best when he noted that-‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ creates ‘ade- ft HO'"- lesbian notions Queer writers required by Paula Martinac Special to Q-Notes The San Francisco Board of Education has become the first in the country to require its high school curriculum to include books by authors of diverse racial bacl^rounds. Since only 13 percent of the students in that district are white, this move provides students with the opportunity to see their own cultural experi ences reflected in their required readings. Be fore any of my readers sit down to write me incensed letters about imposing political cor- recmess on education, there’s something about this resoluuon of specific interest to the queer community. One of its provisions states, “Writ ers who are known to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender shall be appropriately identified in the curriculum.” Originally, the school board intended to impose quotas on the number of books by non white authors (four out of seven) and GLBT authors (at least one). In the current backlash against affirmative action, the antagonism to ward quotas was so strong that the final com promise resolution eliminated any stipulations about numbers. While works by writers of color must be read, the resolution only requires that known GLBT writers be “identified” as such. (It doesn’t explicidy consider that some writers of color are dso queer.) Should we be thrilled or disappointed? I happen to think that the school board should be applauded for this first step toward educa tional reform, despite some flaws. The proposed ciu-rioJum has something for everyone, straight and gay, conservative and progressive, white and nonwhite. It respects the much-touted canon while at the same time expanding its defini tion. The compromise resolution is probably better news for the GLBT community than the original plan. Not that I dislike quotas. It s just that the queer contribution to literature has been so enormous and at the same time so se cret that the potential for setting the record straight, so to speak, is vast. A couple of years ago, I was invited to give a public reading and then to guest lecture in a literature class at a small private college in up state New York, hardly the most liberal area of the country. When, at the first event, I read from my lesbian-themed novel, I was greeted first with stony silence and then rude questions from the audience about why lesbian and gay writers could never create viable straight char acters. It seemed easy for homophobic students to dismiss contemporary GLBT authors, whose same-sex, but not mixed-sex, off-duty sexual and affectionate conduct, and also prohibits gay personnel from making statements that refer to their sexual orientation. Able differs from previous challenges in that six servicemembers proactively sued, asserting that both the conduct and speech portions of the ban are imconstitutional. Other cases re garding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” have been in response to discharge proceedings and most have focused on the “speech” portion of the ban and its presumption that anyone who speaks out also engages in prohibited conduct. ▼ work they viewed as politics and not art. Since it’s harder to dismiss the classics, I decided to open my guest lecture to a fresh man and sophomore course the next day with a litany of GLBT writers from the past. I watched as the smdents’ mouths dropped open. Most of them had read or knew about Walt Whitman, Willa Gather, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Edna St. Vincent'Millay, James Baldwin, E.M. Forster, Oscar Wilde, Langston Hughes, and other writers who have become part of the literary canon. But their teachers had never stood up in class and pro nounced those writers queer. Simply knowing that a writer is lesbian,, gay, bisexual or transgender is, of course, just a stan. What is more important is how being queer affects a writer’s work, and it’s unclear if teach ers in the San Francisco schools will go that distance. For example, Carson McCullers, whose uncomplicated prose is considered per fect for teenagers, was a bisexual woman mar ried to a bisexual man, and both were troubled by their same-gender desires. This may help students understand McCullers’s penchant for creating outcast loners such as Frankie in A Member of the Wedding. In addition, Willa Gather’s story, “Paul’s Case,” is often taught in high schools without the gay subtext that the author incorporated into it because she couldn’t write openly on gay themes. Having these kinds of classroom discussions not only informs stu dents but stretches teachers, too, making them examine the constraints placed on artistic ex pression. It could also have a big impact on iso lated and vulnerable queer teens, who, just like white and nonwhite students, need validation of their experiences. Unfortunately, though, high school is almost too late to introduce GLBT topics. The earlier that sexual orientation is addressed, the greater the chance that children will learn to accept difference. In their wonderful documentary. It’s Elementary, filmmakers Debra Chasnoff and Helen Cohen record the marked differences in student reactions to GLBT themes from el ementary through middle school. At six, kids are open to the idea that we’re not all the same. By 14, many are already wrinkling their noses and saying “^t)ss when the words gay or “les bian” are uttered in class. The problem remains that sexuality and sexual difference are still seen as unsuitable top ics for younger children, and this simply per petuates ignorance and intolerance. What we clearly need are more GLBT people — even those who arcnt parents getting involved in their local school boards to try to influence curricula at all levels. T {Paula Martinac is a lesbian activist and writer. Her latest books are the novel Chicken and the forthcoming Lesbian ^d Gay Book of Love and Marriage. She can be reached care of this publication or by email at LNcolumn @aoLcoml\
Q-notes (Charlotte, N.C.)
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