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Page 2 THE NEWS June 20,1985
Hindsight About Anita
by Gene Koland
Recently WAGA-TV, Atlanta’s chan
nel 5, removed erstwhile anti-gay agitator
Anita Bryant from a new job on its show
PM Atlanta after one episode. The station
bowed, it was said, to overwhelming
pressure from the gay community.
While it is very difficult to feel too
sorry when any sort of pressure from the
gay community has any sort of results,
and while it is even more difficult to
muster up a whole lot of sympathy for
Anita Bryant, not every gay or lesbian
person in Atlanta would agree that conti
nuing to dump on Anita is the best possi
ble place to spend the gay/lesbian com
munity’s prestige and influence.
The memory of what Anita Bryant did,
and the suffering it caused to so many, is
very clear. She ran a crusade which had
as its direct object depriving all of us of
the opportunity to work for a living, to
have a place to live, and even to live at
all. As a result of her efforts, she lost her
job as spokesperson for the Florida Citrus
Commission. Her personal life, which
had been built as was her crusade on a
Sunday School view of life which rarely
works out that way in the real world, col
lapsed in disillusion and divorce. She
retired for a time to Selma, Alabama to
lick her wounds, and later emerged from
that retirement to sell Christian
sunglasses and tty to work her way back
into show business. She moved to Atlan
ta.
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Books By
Christopher’s
Kind
Positive Image: A Portrait of Gay
America by Stephen Stewart. $22.50.
Photos of people and events illustrating a
history of gay pride.
Throughout all this she showed no in
clination to return to a public role as
America’s number one enemy of gay men
and lesbians. I, for one, was glad to see
that Anita Bryant had better things to do
with her time than to make a living by
causing suffering among other people.
Whether her distance from the anti-gay
movement was because she was afraid of
us or because she had learned kindness
from her own mistreatment at the hands
of her ex-husband was not really the
point.
She was being silent on gay issues, and
we should have wanted nothing better
than to keep her silent. Instead, certain
individuals who are more interested in
vengeance than in bringing about enlight-
ment among straight people—but whose
visceral reaction is perfectly
understandable—got Anita fired.
The satisfaction was probably momen
tary at best.
I’m afraid I relate to Anita’s positon all
too well.
Years ago I promised myself one thing-
-that if I ever lost a job because of my
sexual orientation, that I would get back
by becoming a professional gay activist. I
would, I reasoned, have nothing more to
lose.
Have we manuvered Anita Bryant into
a position where she has nothing more to
lose by trying to avoid the gay issue? She
could command lecture fees from the nut
right which is today in control of this
country far in excess of whatever TV5
was paying her. Will she now be forced
to do this in order to make a living?
My modest opinion is that Anita on PM
Atlanta being superficial was much to be
preferred to her on the stump nationwide
urging that we be put in concentration
camps.
Mayor of Castro Street by Randy Shilts.
$9.95. Harvey Milk, subject of an
academy award winning documentary,
has become a symbol of gay pride.
Gay American History by Jonathan
Katz. $13.95. This popular documentary
l of lesbians and gay men in the USA, has
been recently reissued in a convenient
large format.
Homosexuals in History by A. L.
Rowse. $9.95. An ever-popular account
of some well-known figures of history
who are thought to have been homosex
ual.
Sweet Dreams, Golden Years, Deadly
Lies. $4.95 each. John Preston, in his
Alex Kane thrillers, has given us some of
the most gay-positive popular fiction.
More on the way.
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An Alternate View
Evangelical Gays Speak
Nobody has said much about it. Yet the
real issue in the gay rights struggle, as
perceived by Americans is not one of
human rights,' nor of personal
privacy...To put it bluntly, most
Americans who oppose the goals and ob
jectives that gay people represent, do so
because they regard gay rights as a moral
and religious issue that runs counter to
the values they have traditionally believ
ed.
All of the talk in the world that we do,
casting our objectives in political
language that speaks of human rights, has
no impact and little meaning for our real
opponents. For them the issue revolves
around another pole—that of ethical and
spiritual values. For this reason much of
what we do here today and much of what.'
we say will speak'only. to the already con
vinced, onjy to our supporters.
We need to honestly admit that there
are millions of people in this country for
whom appeals to a sense of political
equality, justice, and human rights, are
less important than appeals to decency,
morality, and personal responsibilty. In
this sense, I speak not primarily of the
Moral Majority, but I speak of persons in
nearly all denominations. When it comes
to the issue of homosexuality, everybody
reverts to a fundamentalist interpretation
of Scripture, everybody recites fun
damentalist arguments as their rationale
for opposing gay rights—even those in
large liberal denominations who other
wise reject the fundamentalist mentality
on other issues both theological and
political.
So long as those of us in the lesbian/gay
movement think that we can change peo
ple to our way of thinking by appealing
only to their sense of human rights—while
avoiding all mention of their religious
beliefs—just so long will our crusade re
main only partly effective.
• Unfortunately * whether we like it or
not, this means that most of the burden,
most of the hope for real change, rests on
those of us who are people of faith. It
rests on those lesbians and gay men who
are believing, practicing members of
their faith, whose primary sense of identi
ty is their relationship to God; it rests on,
those lesbians and gay men who share the
same kind of spiritual experience and talk
the same kind of spiritual vocabulary as
those who oppose us.
In this sense, in the final analysis much
of what we have been doing to confront
the Moral Majority and similar groups
has been and will continue to be ineffec
tive. As long as gay people continue to
reject all religious moorings, as long as
we continue to place materialistic and
hedonistic values above spiritual values^
as long as our lives are centered in self
rather than centered in God, we cannot
hope to change the climate of opinion that
works against the demands we are mak
ing.
Now let me say a word to my Christian
right-wing friends themselves about our
struggle. I speak to you as one who is a
brother. I make no apologies whatsoever
for the fact that I too am a fundamentalist,
an evangelical, and that I live my life in
allegiance to Jesus Christ as my Lord. I
am a born-again homosexual; but I am a
homosexual still, as hard as that may be
for some to understand or comprehend.
And I am not alone. There are thousands
of other gay Christians throughout this
country, some of whom are here today.
Others are worshipping this very moment
in churches all across the land. They
represent ^separate, formal, national
organizations of gay Methodists, gay
Pentecostals, gay Southern Baptists, as
well as many more denominational
caucuses and support groups.
It is on their behalf that I appeal to you,
my fellow Christians, to consider the ef
fects of your stance. When you oppose
gay rights, you are opposing the lives of
those of us who are your Christian
brothers and sisters, who happen to be
gay. When you fight against'the basic
amenities of life for gay people, you are
causing Christian brothers and sisters to
loose houses and jobs as well. When you
are against basic protection for gay peo
ple, you are unknowingly subjecting gay
Christians to violence and death.
My appeal to you, my fellow
evangelical Christians (who are not gay)
is to remember that what you think of as
the ’’Gay Movement” is not only com
posed of soqj^ who are lawless and
unbelieving, but it also includes those of
us who are born-again, gay Christians,
sincerely anckearnestly seeking to live out
our faith and exemplify God’s will for
our lives.
Where is the bbdy of Christ, .the family
of God? We are over here, in this crowd,
as well as over there in your churches.
And where, might I ask is the love for all
the members of this royal family that you
often so sing and preach about? I must be
honest and say that most of the time we
cannot feel it. It is not reaching over here.
Which brings me to my final appeal, to
my non-gay evangelical fellow Chris
tians. Have you ever considered how dif
ficult you are making it for those of us
who are ministering and serving and
preaching in the gay communities of this
nation? Have you ever thought about how
we have to bear the repercussions, the
fallout, from your anti-gay tirades—in
terms of added barriers to our witness,
and increased hostility to the Gospel?
And do you realize that your antigay pro
nouncements “turn off” millions of
honestly searching and seeking gay men
and women, who otherwise might be
receptive to the Good News of redemp
tion and reconciliation? I beseech you, I
beg you, in the name of Him who “so
loves” us.all so much, If you cannot sup
port us, please stop fighting us.
Syndicated by EQM, Inc.
Box 7882, Atlanta, GA 30357
261-5710
Dr. James' Tinney, founder of the
Pentecostal Coalition for Human Rights
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