PAGE 6 Q-Notes
June 1995
I
QCitter & (Be Qayi
A cabaret show to benefit OutCharlotte 95!
Featuring a talent competition with cash prizes!
\
Friday, June 23 - 8:30pm
Saturday, June 24 - 7:30pm^ & 10:00pm
*This p>erformance will be interpreted for the deaf and hard of hearing.
Theatre Charlotte, 501 Queens Road
Creative Team
Dan Kirsch, Rodney McAllister,
Mark Propst, Elaine Rhodes
Cabaret Performers
Ennory Clark, Doug Dozier, Diann Hinson,
Lisa Hammond, Matt Hough, Travis Osley,
Tamera J. Whisnant
MC: Sidney Horton
Stage Manager: Lois Webster
General Admission tickets:
$10 - $17.50 sliding scale
(Sliding scale allows a person to determine
their level of ability to pay. We are
committed to keeping paid events accessible
to people of various economic backgrounds.)
Reserved Patron tickets: $25.00
(includes reserved seating,, name in program if
ordered by June 19, and complimentary beverages)
Tickets available at:
Rising Moon Books & Beyond t Urban Evolution
Order by phone 563-2699 or by mail
(write OutCharlotte, PO Box 32062, Charlotte NC 28232-2062)
Talent Competition
All kinds of acts are needed! At each
show, the audience will vote for the top
two acts. First prize for each show is
$50.00. Second prize for each show is
$20.00. Call 563-2699 to receive
competition guidelines. All acts must
register by June l2, and will be notified
of acceptance by June 16.
OutCharlotte is an annual cultural
festival celebrating the lesbian/gay/
bisexual/transgender community.
October 11-15
Volunteer.
It feels good.
Volunteer to be a Buddy.
A Buddy is (i) A committed
volunteer who works directly
with a person with AIDS; (2) A
caregiver; (3) A companion, but
mostly a friend. People from all
walks of life are needed to help,
especially Afro-Americans.
Training is required and starts
June 15, 6pm-10pm and
continues June 17, 9am-6pm.
Give something back to your
community. Call Metrolina AIDS
Project at 333-1435 and
volunteer to help someone.
Candace Gingrich thriils
North Caroiina audience
by David Jones
Q-Notes Staff
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC—
Candace Gingrich hadn’t planned on coming
out publicly, at least not when she did and
certainly not so dramatically. But when her
brother, Newt Gingrich, was elected the first
Republican in a century to be speaker of the
US House of Representatives, the media
swarmed around her family.
A reporter interviewed her mother and
wanted to know about the family. Her mother
took out a 10 year old photo of Candace in
high school, complete will long hair and a
permanent, nail polish and lipstick. Then Mrs.
Gingrich said to the reporter, “I don’t want to
show you a picture of her in college,” but
promptly did. “It’s something my mother
does, tells you she can’t tell you and then
does,” said Gingrich. That photo showed her
in her college rugby uniform with a crew-cut.
The reporter followed up later with Candace
Gingrich and, after a 45 minute routine inter
view, asked “the question.” She said, “Yes, I
am a lesbian,” and has been in the news ever
since.
That was just one of the stories that drew
gales of laughter and thunderous applause
from a packed hotel ballroom of over 300
lesbians and gay men in Research Triangle
Park on May 10. Part of a 48-city speaking
tour, Gingrich spoke to a special meeting of
the Triangle Business and Professional Guild,
an organization of some 400 lesbian and gay
professionals and business people in the Tri
angle area. The tour is sponsored by the Hu
man Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF), the
country’s largest gay and lesbian political
organization, as part of its National Coming
Out Project. It was an unprecedented open
meeting of the Guild, which allowed report
ers and TV cameras in for the occasion. Mem
bers were notified before and at the meeting
that the press would be present.
The story of her mother’s interview was
just one, and the last, of her three-part coming
out story. The first was in college when she
joined the rugby team and met a number of
women who were openly lesbian. “They were
proud of it,” she said, “and it meant that all of
the things that I felt as I was growing up were
true — I didn’t stop smiling for a year.” The
second happened when her mother found “the
box we all kept in the closet,” which con
tained a copy of The Lavender Letter, a local
lesbian newsletter. Her mother asked and she
told her that she was gay.
Gingrich said that her brother’s election as
speaker of the House gave her a “unique
opportunity and ability to be heard,” and that
the road she has traveled has been “a long and
gradual process.” “I’m glad that all of you are
here,” she told the audience, “and that you
didn’t wait for your brother to become speaker
to get involved.” Saying that no one can
change what they didn’t do in the past but
everyone can get involved in changing the
future, she said that there was no road map to
coming out or a right or wrong way to do it.
But she called coming out a way of ending the
bias against gay people by “promoting the
values of openness and honesty.”
As for her relationship with her family and
powerful brother, Gingrich said there was no
hostility toward her when she came out to
them; “We just didn’t discuss it much.” When
Newt Gingrich found out, he told their mother
that “it’s her life and she has a right to live it
as she needs to.” There was not much contact
between Candace and her brother over the
years. “I had just sort of blocked him out of
my mind,” she said, until it was clear that he
would be the Speaker of the House in a new,
conservative Republican House of Represen
tatives. When the news broke about her sexual
identity, HRCF invited her to be the national
spokesperson for the National Coming Out
Project, and she accepted.
Gingrich said she believed she could talk
to her brother about lesbian and gay issues
and he would listen. Answering a question
about seeming contradictions between Newt
Gingrich’s words and actions, she said, “I
think his heart is in the right place. He says the
right words about tolerance, but then he goes
to work with the right wing and does things
that are inconsistent with that.” She specu
lated that Speaker Gingrich and others could
not ignore what she stands for because, “I
represent the truth to America because gay
men and lesbians are a part of the fabric of
America.”
“The American people are way ahead of
the Congress on gay and lesbian issues,” she
told the crowd, “because when people are told
that it is legal to discriminate against us, 77%
say that it is wrong to do that.” HRCF is
supporting federal legislation to ban discrimi
nation against gay people.
She pointed to what she called “a radical
minority in public life” that is controlling
much of the debate now, but that “America is
in the midst of a coming out revolution”
through the work of the Human Rights Cam
paign Fund and other groups and individuals
all over the country. She invited her audience
to “come out and join the revolution” by
participating in National Coming Out Day on
October 11. She said that coming out may
seem like a burden, but it is really a gift,
quoting Richard Bach’s book///usio/is, “There
is no such thing as a problem without a gift in
its hand.”
Gingrich was followed by Kris Pratt of the
HRCF staff who gave an overview of the
Fund’s programs and a tour of the newly
conservative political landscape.
She pointed out that the Fund has 100,000
members, but the anti-gay Christian Coali
tion has over 1.5 million and strong political
influence in Washington. She called for gay
men and lesbians to let politicians know how
they felt. She seemed to anticipate a question
in the mind of her audience, and said, refer
ring to Jesse Helms, “Yes, write to him, too.
At least bother him a little. He needs to Imow
where we stand.”
As a sign of why it is important to commu
nicate with every politician, she pointed out
that Republican Congressman Frank
Heineman, the conservative former police
chief of Raleigh, has signed a statement agree
ing not to discriminate based on sexuality in
his office hiring. She said that HRCF was
seeking meetings with every member of Con
gress, including two conservative members
of the US House, former Charlotte mayor Sue
Myrick and former ambassador David
Funderburk.
At the end of the evening, Candace Gingrich
was greeted by a loud, sustained ovation from
the crowd.
Speedy Printing
• Printing * Typesetting
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• Notary Public • Invitations
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• Full Color Copies • Rubber Stamps
30 copies with this ad
1400 East Morehead Street
(1/2 block from Kings Drive by Corolinos Medical)
Charlotte, NC 28204
(704) 375-8349 / FAX (704) 342-1066
Monday-Friday 8:30 - 5:30 Saturday 10:00 - 2:00