The Carolinas’ Most Comprehensive Gay & Lesbian Newspaper
Festival events
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One queen’s last
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.Page 18
Published Every Two Weeks On Recycled Paper • Volume 11, Number 7 • August 24, 1996 • FREE
Group asks for
boycott of NC
by nim industry
by David Stout
Q-Notes Staff
RUTHERFORD COUNTY, NC—A
grassroots organization called Citizens Against
Discrimination (CAD) has formed to spearhead
a boycott of NC by the fdm industry, due to
the recent passage of several anti-gay resolutions
in the western portion of the state.
The Rutherford County Council was the
first to pass a resolution labelling homosexual
ity “incompatible with community standards,”
but four others have now taken a similar stance.
They are Cherokee, Jackson, Madison and
Northampton Counties.
To pressure these local governments into
repealing their resolutions, and stop others from
enacting more, CAD is asking the film indus
try to steer clear of the region and show locals
just how great the costs of prejudice can be.
Charles Merrill, the openly gay founder of
CAD, has been in contact with Barry Diller,
founder of cable giant QVC and one of the most
powerful figures in the entertainment indus
try, about the boycott and says that the mogul
may be willing to help.
Merrill says he formed Citizens Against Dis
crimination because of his own difficult path
to acceptance of his sexual orientation. “I’m
trying to make things better for the next gen
eration. I don’t want them to go through what
I went through.... When all these counties
started passing anti-gay resolutions, I said
‘somebody’s got to do something,’ and decided
to begin right here in my own front yard.”
If the ad hoc group successfully organizes
its campaign to blackball the state, the moun
tain region — where the measures are clustered
— will be one of the hardest hit.
Since the middle 1980s, the western por
tion of NC has played host to such hit films as
Dirty Dancing and The Last of the Mohicans.
The latter film was especially important to the
area — not only did the production pour
money into the local economy, but its breath
taking scenery was a nationwide promotional
pitch for Appalachian tourism. According to
Mary Jaeger-Gale, marketing consultant for
Chimney Rock Park, attendance there increased
by 20 percent the summer following the mo
tion picture’s theatrical release and question
naires revealed that many visitors came because
they had seen Mohicans.
Apart from the ban, Merrill’s real dream is
to have a popular country music figure, whom
locals admire, deliver a message of tolerance at
a rally. “If Dolly Parton or Garth Brooks came
out that these resolutions are wrong, they’d lis
ten to them.” These particular superstars are
on Merrill’s wish list because they have been
vocal about their support for gays and lesbians
in the past. Patton’s manager and business part
ner Sandy Gallin is openly gay and Brooks’ sis
ter is openly lesbian.
Pending the acquisition of permits. Citizens
Against Discrimination are also tentatively or
ganizing a peaceful march and rally at Lake Lure
in Rutherford County, scheduled to take place
October 27 at 2:00pm. Citizens Against Dis
crimination would like all local residents to
participate in the rally. “We’re hoping a big
crowd will come and show their support. We’re
all targets of the religious right,” said Merrill.
For information about Citizens Against Dis
crimination, write PO Box 519, Edneyville, NC
28727 or call (704) 685-7666. T
ASO director resigns post
by Eagle White
Q-Notes Staff
Raleigh’s AIDS Service Agency (ASA) re
ceived some tough news to end the summer —
Executive Director Cullen Gurganus has re
signed his position with the agency. In early
September, Gurganus will tackle a new profes
sional challenge as Director
of COMMUNITY
SHARES, a Durham orga
nization which oversees
fundraising for 18 non
profit organizations. For
Gurganus, the new position
will be the latest chapter in
what has been a varied and
fascinating life marked by
great huge personal transi
tions and great successes.
Gurganus’ early life
seems at odds with his
present position as an active
member of the gay commu
nity and advocate for per
sons with HIV/AIDS. His
father was a minister in the
Pentecostal Holiness faith, a religious denomi
nation not known for its tolerance of gays.
Gurganus grew up very involved with the
church and its liberal doses of fundamentalism.
He says, “I remember that as I grew up, I al
ways knew I would be a minister.” After a high
school education at a fundamentalist theologi
cal academy, Gurganus worked for a summer
as a Pentecostal Holiness missionary in Nova
Cullen Gurganus
NC Campaign ’96 ups the
ante in critical Senate race
by David Jones
Q-Notes Staff
RALEIGH—^The landscape of North Caro
lina gay and lesbian political activism changed
with the opening of the NC Campaign ’96 of
fice. The Campaign is a project to defeat Jesse
Helms, managed by North Carolinians and
sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign
(HRC), the country’s largest lesbian and gay
political organization. The project was officially
launched on August 6 with a visit by HRC’s
executive director, Elizabeth Birch.
Where gay political groups once operated
mostly out of cramped and borrowed space.
Campaign ’96 is located in a professional of
fice complex in Research Triangle Park, sur
rounded by the offices of dentists, realtors and
engineering firms. There is no mistaking who
is there, however. The HRC equal-rights logo
is prominent in one ground-floor window and
a huge “Stop Helms” poster stares out through
the front window. Inside, the five-room suite is
bright, clean and organized: conference tables
arrayed with telephones, stacks of campaign lit
erature, flow-charts and calendars, volunteer
rosters, computers and copiers.
Mitch Foushee, the campaign manager,
greets a visitor graciously and quickly gets down
to business, sitting in a quiet office for an in
terview while the campaign’s field director,
Mark Donahue of Carrboro, and two volun
teers keep a room across the hall buzzing with
Scotia. He then continued his education at two
Bible colleges and married in the early 1970s.
He left school in preparation for the birth of
his daughter. He stayed in the Pentecostal
church, first working as a youth minister, and
later as a fully ordained minister in the evan
gelical faith. After the birth of his child,
Gurganus and his family
made plans to go to Buenos
Aires as missionaries — yet
Gurganus was struggling
with his own sexual orien
tation.
Gurganus shakes his
head while recalling his in
ner turmoil at the time.
“Here I am, going to a for-
^ eign country to help people
.2 with their lives,” he says,
5 “when I don’t know my-
^ self”
^ Gurganus never made
o the trip. Instead, he began
the difficult process of
coming out. “In the mid-
70s,” he says, “I left my
wife, the church, and everything I had known.”
He credits several gay friends with helping him
deal with his own gay issues at the time — no
small feat for the man who had been voted
“most inspirational” at a fundamentalist camp
earlier in his life. For the next 12 years,
Gurganus worked in the restaurant industry.
By the mid-80s, he had lived in Virginia, Cali-
See GURGANUS on page 8
plans for an organizing trip to Charlotte.
Foushee says he returned to his native North
Carolina to teach after several years working in
Washington, DC for US Senator JeffBingham
(D-NM). While he was still in Washington, a
friend, Durham’s Michael Armentrout, a mem
ber of HRC’s board and chair of NC Campaign
’96, started recruiting him to get involved in
the 1996 election in some way. After Foushee
arrived back home in North Carolina, it didn’t
take long for him to realize that working full
time on the election was something he had to
do. “When I was a student at UNC in Chapel
Hill, I’d always watch Jesse Helms’ View Point
(TV editorial broadcasts) just because they were
so outrageous,” then, with a big grin he con
tinues, “but it never occurred to me then that
one day I’d be managing a campaign to unseat
him.”
When asked what NC Campaign ’96 will
be doing, Foushee gets very serious and starts
ticking off the parts of the project, pausing now
and then to say that he can’t discuss some of
the specific details because, “I’m not interested
in telling Helms how we’re going to do it.”
What the Campaign will try to do is no se
cret, however: identify, educate and motivate
swing voters. Recent polls show Helms and
Harvey Gantt, the Democratic nominee, about
even with around 7 percent of voters undecided.
There are reportedly some 687,000 new voters
See CAMPAIGN on page 17
NC health officials endorse
new home HIV test kits
by David Jones
Q-Notes Staff
RALEIGH—North Carolina’s AIDS Advi
sory Council voted on August 9 to recommend
that the state not take any action which would
interfere with the distribution and use of home
HIV test kits. The resolution was adopted af
ter NC State Health Director Ron Levine met
with several AIDS groups to get their advice.
The groups included the HIV/AIDS Alliance,
a lobbying organization, the Minority AIDS
and Health Advisory Coalition, Minority
Health Council and the executive committee
of the AIDS Advisory Council.
In a written summary of those meetings for
the full Council, the state health department
outlined a number of concerns about home
tests, mainly pertaining to the quality of pre-
and post-test counseling. There seemed to be a
consensus, however, that the tests would enter
North Carolina whether the state sought to ban
then or not, and that they would reach some
people at high risk of HIV infection who were
not being tested.
Members at the Council meeting were sur
prised to read that the state planned to “restrict
licensure” of the tests unless changes were made
in the telephone counseling procedures that the
two US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-
approved companies plan to offer. (Four more
tests are said to be pending approval by the
FDA.) North Carolina health officials have re
peatedly expressed concerns about home test
ing because it is anonymous and prevents the
state from obtaining the names of sex and
needle partners of those who test positive.
When the resolution was introduced, many
Council members voiced their desire to work
with both the state and the tests’ manufactur
ers to improve the quality of counseling, but
they did not want the state to block the use of
the tests in the interim. Assistant health direc
tor Chris Hoke said that officials would sup
port the resolution as long as it did not prevent
the state from seeking to improve the content
of counseling, including securing formal FDA
requirements to include additional information.
The Council then passed the resolution unani
mously. Several health department officials later
told the Raleigh News & Observer that the state
would not take action to block sale of the home
tests in North Carolina. ▼
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