Newspapers / Q-notes (Charlotte, N.C.) / April 1, 1995, edition 1 / Page 26
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PAGE 26 Q-Notes T April 1995 ILLLSICNS . Get Ready For A T ' Hot-In-The-Ass Season At Illusions! 1012 S. Kings Huui,i. • Myrtle Beach, SC • (803) 448-0421 Starring In April... Saturday - 5th Sable Chanel Friday - 14th Evelyn King Wednesday - 19th The Lady Jonel Monday Re-opening Soon Tuesday Re-opeinng soon Wednesday Beer Bust • Showtime 12:30 Thursday Country Music Night Line Dancing 10pm Friday Male/Female Revue Saturday Dance Your Ass Off House Party Sunday Retro/Techno Night Coming In May Ernest Kohl National Notes Continued from page 24 provided with new opportunities for building a true rural, grassroots movement.” Tampa anti-gay measure removed from ballot TAMPA—A circuit court judge struck a proposed anti-gay referendum from Tampa’s March 7 ballot. Referendum 1 sought to repeal the portion of Tampa’s Human Rights Ordinance that bans disaimination based on sexual orientation. Judge Manual Menendez struck the mea sure the first week of March and reaffirmed that ruling on March 6 because the wording of the ballot measure had been illegally altered from the original language circulated on the petitions by the American Family Associa tion (AFA) of Florida, a Radical Right orga nization based in Tampa. A flurry of last minute appeals and hearings did not alter the judge’s original ruling. Citizens for a Fair Tampa (CFT), a broad coalition of civic, religious, business and com munity groups, filed the successful suit chal lenging the validity of the measure’s lan guage while also mounting a vigorous cam paign to defeat the measure at the polls. “The courts acted properly to protect vot ers’ rights by recognizing the danger and the potential for abuse in allowing altered lan guage to be placed on the ballot,” said Keith Roberts, a CFT attorney. CFT said they mobilized hundreds of vol unteers, raised more that $60,000 and reached more than 100,000 voters through an inten sive voter education effort. Before the sched uled vote, polls showed that 6 of 10 voters opposed the measure. Nadine Smith, CFT campaign manager, called those efforts and the court ruling, “a victory for the citizens of Tampa. Across the city, people have sent a strong message to the AFA that its agenda of discrimination is not welcome in Tampa.” “Although civil rights should never be put to popular vote, there is a silver lining in this terrible assault by the Radical Right,” said Susan Hibbard, campaign consultant to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) who was dispatched to assist the Tampa campaign. “We are seeing an in creased mobilization by gay people and our allies to battle these measures.” Hibbard noted that the people of color communities in Tampa were heavily opposed to Referendum 1. As in Cincinnati in 1993, the referendum’s supporters in Tampa used the propaganda video, “Gay Rights/Special Rights” in an attempt to convince African American voters that the inclusion of sexual orientation in the city’s anti-discrimination measure would negatively impact on African American civil rights. [The anti-gay measure passed in Cincinnati but was ruled unconsti tutional by a lower court.] The video was used in Tampa in public and private screen ings and was aired on the Christian television station. However, in a predominantly African American city council district, eight of the nine candidates for the-hotly-contested coun cil seat opposed Referendum 1 while the ninth candidate took no position on the mea sure. La Gaceta, a weekly Latino newspaper, prominently displayed its support for the No On One efforts. “One of the noticeable shifts in this cam paign is that no viable candidates supported Referendum 1,” Hibbard said. “Candidates either opposed the measure or took no stand.” (Only two of 22 candidates in Tampa’s elec tions supported Referendum 1). Mandy Carter of the Human Rights Cam paign Fund (HRCF) and the National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum agreed that strategies used successfully by the Radi cal Right in Cincinnati were countered in Tampa. According to Carter, who was in Tampa supporting CFT efforts, AFA-sup- porter Rev. James Sykes was not a credible leader in the African American community while CFT had the eloquent support of the well-respected Rev. Dr. Mozella Mitchell, Presiding Elder Tampa District of the AME Zion Church. Mitchell went head-to-head with Sykes, challenging him to identify what positive family-related measures the AFA is working on in the African American commu nity, such as issues related to health care, child care or education. “We will no longer fall for the divide and conquer tactics of these extremist groups,” Rev. Mitchell said. “An agenda that seeks to pit citizen against citizen in an effort to legal ize discrimination is an agenda that we all must reject.” “In Tampa, we had African American lead ers willing to challenge the Radical Right’s divisive strategies,” Carter said. “When the Radical Right came in and tried to use the African American community, we had lead ers willing to step forward and say, ‘What are you doing positively for our community? Why focus on these divisive campaigns?’ Engaging with our opponents in that manner has been very effective here.” This is the third time the AFA in Florida has been unsuccessful in its bid to enact anti gay measures. The AFA placed a similar . measure on the Tampa ballot in 1992, but the measure was later thrown out by the courts because petitions included signatures of people who were not registered voters. Last year, the AFA led a campaign to place on the statewide ballot a sweeping amendment to the state constitution that would have legalized anti gay discrimination. Courts deemed the word ing of the amendment unconstitutional. The March ruling marks the second time in Florida this year that a proposed anti-gay measure was not enacted. Voters in West Palm Beach on January 11 resoundingly de feated an effort to strike sexual orientation from that city’s Human Rights Ordinance. The Radical right campaign to enact anti gay measures through referenda also hit road blocks in Oregon and Idaho last November when voters rejected statewide measures. Voters did approve an anti-gay referendum in Alachua County, FL last November. Gay newspaper wins union recognition SAN FRANCISCO—In an historic joint bulletin, the San Francisco Bay Times and the Northern California Newspaper Guild an nounced on March 8 that the staff of the SF Bay Times has affiliated with the Northern California Newspaper Guild Local 523, and that on Feb. 24, editor and publisher Kim Corsaro agreed to voluntary recognition of staff representation by the union. Tfre SF Bay Times, a newspaper for the lesbian/gay/bi- sexuaFtransgendered communities, is the first gay community paper in the United States to gain union recogiution. The decision to join the union by all five full-time employees was unanimous, and in cludes advertising sales staff, office adminis tration and the st& reporter. Not only is the San Francisco Bay Times the first gay community paper to be repre sented by the Newspaper Guild, it is the first newspaper staff in the history of the gay civil rights movement to unionize. “The link be tween gay civil rights and workers’ rights is clear,” said Times employee Bob Gordon. In making the joint announcement, both Bay Times publisher Kim Corsaro and union Administrative Officer Larkie Gildersleeve expressed their expectations that the union and the newspaper will have a long, success ful relationship. Corsaro, who herself has a history of labor organizing, said, “I’m pleased to see the Bay Times continue in an important tradition — started by Harvey Milk and Howard Wallace in the 1970s—of coalition building between organized labor and the gay community.” Gildersleeve noted that the new union members have “an outstanding focus on their goals andjthe reasons for having a union to represent tiiem. This is a rare opportunity to represent a particularly politically involved group of people, and to work with an em ployer who herself has a well-established reputation for progressive activism.” TheSanFranciscoBay Times was founded in 1979 and is distributed throughout most of Northern California. Founded more than 50 years ago. Local 52 is affiliated with The Newspaper Guild, AFL-CIO, CLC and lo cally represents approximately 2,200 mem bers, primarily of newspaper editorial, sales and office staffs. Study finds Interleukin-2 beneficial for treatment of HIV WASHINGTON, DC—In a small number of HIV-infected patients, infusions of an im mune system protein significantly increased levels of the infection-fighting white blood cells normally destroyed during HIV infec tion, according to researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). As reported in the March 2 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, NIAID Clinical Director H. Clifford Lane, MD, Jo seph A. Kovacs, MD of the NIH Clinical Center’s Critical Care Medicine Department, Continued on next page
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