CX lolu'r2S, IW|
Opinion
Three CGLA Members Respond to Speaker Moore
Chjmd^^^cLe^/B/flct Ink
Mike Holland, left, and Bob Garris said CGLA does not sponsor illegal activity.
Last week. Speaker of the Stu
dent Congress Tim Moore spoke to
Black Ink on his reasoning for
wanting to deny student funds from
the Carolina Gay and Lesbian
Association . He said many stu
dents do not see the CGLA as a
minority group on campus, and that
the organization advocates a sex
ual lifestyle that is inconsistent with
the rules and regulations of Univer
sity and North Carolina laws.
Another issue that sent ripples
through the University’s gay com
munity was the furor initiated by a
letter to The Daily Tar Heel written
by Chris Osborne,who said homo
sexuality was unnatural. Osborne
said the physiology of the
rectum.which makes it ill-suited for
homosexual intercourse,proved that
this form of sex was unnatural.
This week, we were able to hear
what three CGLA members thought
about Moore’s push for defunding
the organization, as well as their
feelings regarding a wide variety of
campus issues ejecting gays and
lesbians. They were Hugh Singer-
line, the editor of Lamda, the CGLA
newsletter, Mike Holland, the or
ganizer of a gay studies group, and
Bob Garris, CGLA Office Manager.
Ink St(^ Writer Chandra McLean
conducted the interview.
BLACK INK: How do you feel
about Tim Moore and his reasoning
for wanting to defund the CGLA?
SINGERLINE: I find Mr. Moore
somewhat annoying because when
you counter his allegations, he
doesn’t respond. He simply repeats
them in a different form. I don’t
know the man personally. I just
wonder if he operates on the school
of thought that if you repeat some
thing often enough, it’s true.
I don’t know what he means by
us being a “legal organization.” I
think that was shown in the last
Student Congress meeting because
they found no grounds to defund the
CGLA. Do we support or wganize
illegal activity? No. Even in this
state of North Carolina with Jesse
Helms, gays and lesbians are not
illegal by definition, we are simply
an organizaticai that caters mostly
to gays and lesbians.
I think what Mr. Moore is get
ting at are the so-called “crime
against na&ire” laws. Basically, the
state has declared that certain sex
ual activity is illegal, which is dif
ferent than saying that people arc
illegal, then saying certain actions
are illegal. These are actions that
others besides gay and lesbians
engage in, so if they are supposed to
be illegal for some, they must be
illegal for all.
Does the CGLA sponsor such
illegal activity in its offices? No!
Do we do it at our meetings? No! If
Mr. Moore has trouble with any
thing, he must go on and have some
fraternities and sororities kicked off
campus because some of their
members go out drinking and then
driving which we know is an illegal
activity. If you want to play that.
you have to play fairly. You have to
bump off some of the Christian
groups on campus because no doubt,
their students do the same thing.
INK: Do you feel that Moore is
being unreasonable in the way that
he is looking at the whole situation
regarding the CGLA?
GARRIS: That would be my per
sonal viewpoint It’s the classic
example of someone having a bias
and then trying to find a reason to
justify it He’s not applying his logic
to all student organizations on
campus...
HOLLAND: The fact that he is
trying to say that they can’t fund
illegal activities may be true, and
we don’t encourage them to fund
illegal activities. We give out infor
mation to people, we refer them to
the National AIDS Hotline if they
have questions about AIDS, the
Student Psychological Services if
they have problems coming out and
they want to discuss that with some
one.
We have a s&idy group where
we talk current issues in the aca
demic setting about the history of
homosexual relations and the way
different cultures view homosexu
ality. There is a lesbian lunch where
a bunch of women get together and
eat food, like sandwiches. Nowhere
in any staUite is it illegal to read
information, is it illegal to eat food,
nowhere is it illegal to meet and
talk. That’s what this group does.
We’re not a sex club. We’re not
having orgies at our meetings.
GARRIS: The University funds
classes in which the study of homo
sexuality is the topic in the class.
The state of North Carolina funds
AIDS education and safer sex edu
cation. The CGLA is not doing
anything that conflicts with other
things the University funds or with
other things the state funds. We are
doing it merely with a focus on
students, and the student popula
tion here at Carolina.
INK: Are there many heterosexu
als who support the CGLA and what
you are trying to do on campus?
GARRIS: We have a lot of hetero
sexual members in the CGLA who
support us and our “little button
culture” where you express every
thing through little metal pieces on
your backpack. We have several
heterosexual members who are
happily heterosexual.
HOLLAND: The University saw
fit last year after being pestered for
a while to include sexual orienta
tion as a nondiscrimination policy.
It was pointed out that because none
of the other reasoning seems to hold
in this push to defund the CGLA,
what appears to be the only differ
ence for this organization is sexual
orientation, and to defund a group
on that would go against university
policy, so, I mean the University is
officially behind us.
INK: Do you think that the movie
Paris is Burning (a recent docu
mentary about Harlem drag balls)
had a positive impact on both the
gay and heterosexual communities?
SINGERLINE: It is good some
times to see movies like “Paris is
Burning because that experience is
so different from us and our usual
world.
HOLLAND: We’re middle class
white men and that movie was about
poor, black gays. They are a part of
our community but that is some
thing we don’t experience directly.
It is just as important for us to learn
about the variety within the gay and
lesbian community as it is is for the
heterosexual community to learn
about the gay community.
INK: How did you feel about the
article in the Omnibus (an enter
tainment supplement in The Daily
Tar Heel) about the movie “Paris is
Burning”?
HOLLAND: It was some of the
phrasing they used that we didn’t
like. It was said the movie provided
homosexuals with the opportunity
to come out under the bright lights
of Franklin Street. We’re out there
under the bright lights of Franklin
Street every night. We’re on Fran
klin Street, we’re in the bakery at
Columbia Street, we’ re in Pepper’s,
we’re everywhere, and we don’t
need a movie to bring us out onto
the street.
We watch movies about queers,
we watch movies about heterosexu
als. Most of the movies we see are
about straight people. Then here,
one movie comes along and they act
like all of a sudden, gays have ap
peared because there’s this movie.
We’ve been here all along. It’s like
when people used to talk about
deepest, darkest Africa, you know,
the land of mystery. What is in this
place but savages or jungle beasts,
or the unknown? Well, when they
started to write about gays and les
bians, they got that same tone, and
you want to say, well the streets are
paved and the natives here speak
English, and we’ve been here all
along.
GARRIS: That is the point of Na
tional Coming Out Day, to say ,“You
already know me, you just didn’t
know I was gay”.
HOLLAND: The problem about
the article in the Omnibus is that it
you are gay, you drag, and that’s not
true. That is in a similar way the
same sort of prejudice about black
people that white people hold, and
the black community is not this
monolithic group of people who are
all poor and living in inner cities,
and the gay community is not all
voguing drag queens.
You need to have an apprecia
tion for all the different parts of a
community, and when people begin
to think that this one part is all there
is, that’s king of annoying. The
Ominbus had that tone.
INK: How do you feel about Chris
Osborne’s “The physiology of the
rectum” argument?
GARRIS: His conclusions about
the physiology of the recuim are
shaped by his prejudices about gays.
HOLLAND: The only ones who
are healthy would be lesbians. If
women really want to have safe sex,
they’ll have it with another woman
and not with a man because the
transmission of AIDS between two
women is extraordinarily difficult,
and incidents of virtually all sexual
diseases is much lower between
lesbians than any other group at all.