June 18, 2004 Serving the Carolinas’ Gay & Lesbian Communities Since 1979 Volume 25. Number 12 Local: SC Anti-Marriage Amendment Dies, p.4 Remembering Reagan: What Do We Do With the Rage & Fury? p.12 It’s Smarmy Recollection Time in America By Ann Rostow The Texas Triangle I've been reading- quite a few articles on "our" reactions to Reagan. For the record, we weren't too crazy about him, considering his administration was responsible for killing off half a generation of gay men by pretending that a major epidemic did not exist. Aside from that that minor detail, he was just dandy. We particularly appreciat ed the fact that he proba bly single handedly defeated a citizen-led effort to ban gays and les bians from teaching in California's public schools. The Briggs Initiative, as it was called, was considered a likely winner at the ballot box until the popu lar former governor came out publicly against it in 1978. When he was first elected, my neighbors and I were so distraught that we drank every thing in our adjoining New York apartments, including a half bottle of some mint stuff that had been under my sink for several years (which I have never forgotten — God it was horrible). We then watched him preside, in his unconvincingly genial fashion, over a slew of misguided policies. His insane tax cuts — which Paul Krugman now informs us were promptly reversed. The reckless and ill planned deregulation of the S&L industry — how much did that cost us? Over time, I have come to respect the once discomforting figure of Nancy Reagan, who now seems quite courageous, devoted, and dignified. And I have no problem with a fancy Presidential funeral, complete with riderless horse and missing man fighter jet formations. After all, the man was President of the United States for eight years. But let's cut down on the smarm just a bit, shall we? One commen tator on Saturday afternoon intoned, "none of us will ever forget where we were on this day." Please! September 11, 2001. Sure. November 23, 1963. Yes. But the day Reagan died after a decade of senility? I don't think so! Hate Campaigns Can Be Harmful to your Health We now have six states preparing to send anti-marriage constitutional amendments before their voters this year, but this week we can report one silver lining. Missouri's high court has ruled that the governor has the right to schedule an anti-marriage amendment for continued on page 14 Pride + Vote = Power By Bob Roenr Contributing Writer Pride + Vote = Power, the theme of gay pride in Washington, DC, kicked off with a June 6 forum of local and national leaders dis cussing those issues. It was no sur prise that talk of gay marriage dom inated the evening. Most notable were a consensus on principles and a minimum of partisanship. "We're an economic powerhouse. The problem is that some people think we can't talk about activism and talk about economics in the same sentence," said Justin Nelson, co-founder of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. He said other communities have used that power to help gain acceptance. "When you take this out of the bedroom and stick it in the board room...when you talk about job cre ation, healthcare for employees, how do you grow the overall eco nomic health of our community and our nation," then some people are more likely to listen. Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, was perhaps the most upbeat. She recounted how in 2002, about 5% of the popu lation was covered by laws protect ing the rights of transgender per sons. Legislative action and the courts have expanded that to about 45%. "During that time the popula tion protected on the basis of sexual orientation has remained almost stagnant at 45%." She could count 30 trans friends that had been fired in the last two years, and yet there is resistance to including trans persons in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). "We are spending so Cornelius Baker Photo by Bob Roehr much of our energy fighting our friends." She singled out Barney Frank for criticism. "We have trad ed the closeted folks for the assimi lators who have sort of gone away. Before, where we couldn't get most of the people because they were in the closet, now we can't get a lot of them because they've move on. We've shifted that much." "I think we are all very nervous about what will happen if Bush is reelected," said one young member of the audience. "But in some ways I'm even more scared by the direc tion of the Democratic Party, because these people are suppose to be our allies. How can we keep them accountable?" Moderator Jonathan Capehart asked whether Senator John Kerry's opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) but possible support of an amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution "kind of sounds like he's trying to have it both ways. Can we really trust the guy?" "I think we can/' said Chrissy Gephardt, representing the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. It is about "which candidate is going to fur ther our rights the most...[Kerry] is going to be leaps and bounds above President Bush." "There is a common language in this country, and it is called money," said DC Council member David Catania. He said the GLBT commu nity is the fourth largest block of contributors to the Democratic Party - unions, trial lawyers, Jewish Americans, gay Americans. " What do we expect of the Democratic Party? It [the gay community] should get something in return." "If the community is dispropor tionately in one party, then we real ly have no place to go," he argued. Catania raised over $75,000 for President Bush's reelection. "But there comes a time when a party does something so egregious that it makes it impossible for us to be at home there." Catania broke with the President when Bush announced his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). "George Bush won 25% of gay votes in 2000; he will be lucky if he gets 12% this time. And what he will have done is hurt two genera tions of gays who will be outside." He compared it with 1960 when Richard Nixon won 26-27% of the African American vote, but that fell to 12% in 1964 under the insensitive policies of candidate Barry Goldwater. The party has yet to continued on page 10 ,ii,M m Members of the Pride + Vote = Power Panel Photo by Bob Roehr Carolina Pride 2004: www.ncpride.org

Page Text

This is the computer-generated OCR text representation of this newspaper page. It may be empty, if no text could be automatically recognized. This data is also available in Plain Text and XML formats.

Return to page view