SATURDAY
SEPTEMBER
30TH
2006
PRIDE-NOT PREJUDICE
NCS 22nd annual GLBT EVENT
BANDS, aOATS, PARADE, FESTIVAL
SCHEDULE
OF
EVENTS
&NEWS
Durham Asst. City Attorney to speak at Pride
Sherri Zann Rosenthal shares her
recollections about the LGBT
struggle for equality in the Triangle
by Jim Baxter . Contributing Writer
Sherri Zann Rosenthal, assistant
city attorney for the City of Durham,
had been to lunch with the county
Bar Association earlier on the same
day she was interviewed by Q-Notes.
“As friend after friend came in, I
started thinking back,” she said. “In
1985 when I first became an attor
ney, I felt so alienated from the bar.
“It was just these old white men. I
had to sort of push myself to talk to
them, because for the most part they
had zero interest in me. With some
exceptions. But now who makes up
the county bar is very different. It’s
multi-racial now and it really wasn’t
back in the ’80s. The way men and
women interact is very different. So
it’s really interesting.”
Rosenthal has seen a lot of
changes in the community around
her, and she’ll be speaking about them at NC
Pridefest on Saturday, Sept. 30. As a keynote
speaker, she’ll share her reflections on
Durham’s early Pride parades and Pride
activists.
Rosenthal was a founder of the Lesbian
Newsletter, which was pub
lished in Durham for over
20 years. She led the cam
paign to get domestic
partner benefits for the
City of Durham and co-led
the campaign for employ
ees of Durham County,
which both succeeded. In
2004, she received the
Human Rights Campaign
Carolinas Community
Service Award for her work
on domestic partnership
benefits.
She was the attorney for
Senate Vote ’90, which was
an anti-Helms political
action committee that orig
inated from the gay and
lesbian community. She
Openly lesbian Sherri
Zann Rosenthal is
Assistant City Attorney
for the city of Durham.
currently serves as Secretary of the Board of
Directors of NC GALA, the gay and lesbian
attorneys association.
Said Rosenthal:
‘“Our Day Out’was the very first march and
rally in 1981, and yes I was there. It was fasci
nating because there weren’t very many of us
marching down the street and a bunch of obvi
ously very poor folks were looking at us very
oddly.
“‘Our Day Out’came in the wake of anti-gay
attacks at the Little River in Durham, which
resulted in the death of one man, Ron
Antonovitch. But there were years of communi
ty organizing in other areas that made that first
event possible.
“Many had been active in movements for
other peoples rights — civil rights, all kinds of
voter registration drives, protesting against
racial discrimination, but it was after the
Antonovitch murder that more public organiz
ing around coming out as being gay began to
happen.
“My impression, and this could have been
just where I was coming from, was that there
wasn’t much happening among men at that
time. That for the most part it was women who
were doing the community organizing and
political organizing with some real exceptions
like Lightning Brown, Faygele ben Miriam, Carl
Wittman and Allan Troxler.
“Later on, AIDS hit and women were very,
very involved in the organizing around that,
and that’s really where we had more men and
women joining together.”
“Triangle Area Lesbian Feminists was
another group that was a big thing at the time.
There were also ‘Take Back the Night Marches.’
A lot of the women who were doing community
organizing were very involved in those.
“One of the most interesting things about
Pride then and now is that back then it was all
participants. Now it’s more of a spectator event.
That’s a huge change.
“There are more of us, that’s part of it, but I
also think that culturally the really good thing
about it is that Pride — as well as being for
community activists - is abo for folks who are
not organizational or public in their being.
People who do not see life though a political
lens. And that’s great. I think that’s why the
numbers are up.
“The numbers are abo up because people
aren’t afraid.” i
Former Air Force sergeant to speak at Pride
Bruce Wyatt was ousted from the Air
Force under the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell’policy
by Jim Baxter . Contributing Writer
On Saturday, Sept. 30, crowds will gather
on Duke University’s East Campus in Durham
for NC Pridefest. At noon, before the annual
Pride parade, there will be a rally with several
speakers — including Chapel Hill City
Councilman Mark Kleinschmidt, Dr. Janie
Long of Duke University, Durham County
Assistant City Attorney Sherri Rosenthal and
former Air Force Sgt. Bruce Wptt.
Wyatt was a serviceman with over 20 years
of experience before he was discharged at
Pope Air Force base in Spring Lake under the
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
“It was 13 months ago, Aug. 23 of last year,”
Wyatt said in an interview with Q-Notes.
“I was 20 years old when I joined. I kind of
got tired of hearing Dad say,‘you need to go
get a job’ and there was not much to be found
in northeast Kentucky where I’m from. So I
left home and joined the Air Force, which was
a good move, since I discovered I love to trav
el. I didn’t know it at the time. I hadn’t been
very many places.”
Wyatt spent six years on active duty, fol
lowed by 10 years on reserve duty and then
went back to active duty in many different
places across the states. ,Most of his time was
spent in education training and management.
“1 had been dating someone, a civilian liv
ing in Raleigh,” he said. “We had a good
friendship going and were starting a relation
ship. He was a person who made himself out
to be someone that he was totally not. He con
tinually lied, w’as extremely deceitful. I told
him,‘I can be your acquaintance, but I can’t be
your partner anymore.’ Once 1 did that, he
actually fought me physically. He destroyed
things in my home when he became violent
after the breakup. I took him to court for the
assault, but that’s another story to tell.
“Turns out he had stolen the recall roster
from my wallet. A recall rosier contains the
phone numbers and names in my chain of
command. After 1 kicked him out, he began
calling people.
“1 didn’t know what was going on, I just
went to work like normal with that guy out of
my life, I thought.
About four months later, on Veteran’s Day,
Nov. 11,2004, they called me into the legal
office. They told me that they had
this evidence against me indicat
ing that I’m homosexual and they
wanted to know if it was true.
And I said,‘Yes it is true. I am
homosexual. My military career
has been outstanding. This hasn’t
affected my career at all.’
“They said,‘Well, you will be
discharged,’because 1 admitted it.
But they did tell me that if I didn’t
tell them the truth, they would be
digging deeper, they would find
out the truth and then they would
take appropriate action which
would probably be prosecution
and jail time.”
Wyatt was given an honor
able discharge, but lost his pension and his
medical benefits. “My children lost their med
ical benefits as well,” he said. “I’m not allowed
on base anymore.
Former Air Force Sgt.
Bruce Wyatt v/ill talk
about his experiences
with the U.S. Military.
“Because I had the number of years in the
service that 1 had, I was entitled to a board
hearing. My board hearing date was coming
up, but my treatment on the base at the time
— because of everybody know
ing about me — was not very
pleasant. 1 was required to have
an escort to all the discharge
appointments: medical, anything
dealing with paperw'ork, any
where I went on base I had to
have an escort. And I outranked
that escort, so that was kind of
demeaning. I chose to go ahead
and waive the board hearing.
“Once I did that, they set a dis
charge date. They completed all
the discharge paperwork, offered
me a severance package —
$24,000 for 21 years worth of
service, six months worth of med
ical and base privileges. The sev
erance package was not paid out until six
months later. I actually had to fight for that,
argue with the finance department to get paid.
I finally got it Feb. 2006.” I
' iMMh north CAROLINA
Hi
'WWW.NCPRIDE.ORG
SEPTEMBER 23.2006-Q-NOTES IS