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SOUTHERN VOCE Celebrating Mother’s Day Page 13 Vol. 1, No. 5 INSIDE Florida to Quarantine PWAs, if Governor Bob Martinez has his way. Described as a "fight for survival," Bob Kuntz of Cure AIDS Now details the plans that may stop this AIDSphobic administration. Page 3. Lesbian and Gay Pride Week returns to Atlanta June 18th through the 26th. Plans are now underway for the festive celebration of gay and lesbian life in "the city too busy to hate." Page 6. Black-feminist Poets are featured in Terri Jewell's review of A Dangerous Knowing; Four Black Women Poets. She finds haunting rhythms, woman to woman bonding, and "poetry...steeped in the roots of black culture" in the works of Barbara Burford, Jackie Kay, Grace Nichols and Gabriela ■ ■. Pearse. Page 7. '86 International Women's Weightlifting Champion, Colleene Colley breaks new ground with each "snatch" and "clean and jerk." Raised in an exclusively female home, Colley surges past old records while making a place for other women to follow her into the male- dominated sport. Page 11. Dear Governor Harris: Georgians are tired of seeing their friends die due to your lax attention to the health of this State. The Atlanta March Committee is sponsoring this clip-out campaign of thousands of letters to be read at the Spring AIDS Action '88, and then delivered to Harris' office. Page 12. Dykes to Watch Out For almost makes the term 'dykes' politically correct. It certainly makes Keep Refrigerated funnier. Bestseller Alison Bechdel draws women and men into the hilarious escapades of Mo, Clarice and Lois. Page 14. Taking Pride in Our Culture April 26,1988 Gay "Leaders" argue over taping of Police Advisory Committee meeting. Photo by Cathy Denobriga. Favorable Ruling by Georgia Supreme Court in VanderEls Case Atlanta-In an apparent legal victory, the Georgia Supreme Court has remanded lesbian- mother Leigh VanderEls' appeal to the Gayton County judicial system. VanderEls, who lost a January, 1987, trial to retain custody of her then 7-year-old son, Chase, is now preparing her case to prove that the original judge, William Ison, exhibited "actual and personal bias and predjudice against the appellant..." A motion for recusal asks a judge to remove themselves from hearing a case due to a possible perceived or actual prejudice against the litigants, "The ruling is indicative that the (Georgia) Supreme Court had extremely serious problems with the trial judge's behavior,” said Michael Hauptman, attorney for VanderEls. Ison, who denied VanderEls' original motion for recusal, alledgedly made use of the Gayton District Attorney as an agent to cause VanderEls' supervisor, Anne Plant of the Gayton County Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS), to telephone him During that conversation, Ison reportedly told Plant that DFCS didn't need "people like that" working with children. He also was said to have warned Plant that VanderEls' publicly-acknowledged sexual orientation would destroy her credibility as an expert witness in Gayton County DFCS court proceedings. VanderEls was immediately dropped from consideration for a new position and "constructively terminated." The constructive termination occured when VanderEls was transferred to an inferior position and given demeaning tasks to perform, considering her past experience and training. Ison would not allow Plant to testify to these allegations when he heard VanderEls' original request that he remove himself and schedule a new trial. The new hearing will deterine if Ison should have removed himself from hearing the motions. If either VanderEls or her ex-husband appeal the decision, the case will return to the Georgia Supreme Court The date for the hearing has yet to be set Said VanderEls, "I feel optimistic about the Supreme Court's ruling. However, the length of litigation still required before a ruling will be made on the actual custody case is disheartening." Leigh VanderEls is a staff member for Southern Voice. Chase, now 8, currently lives with his father and step-mother in Memphis, Tennessee. ■ Chris Duncan Atlanta - Representatives of several metropolitan Atlanta gay and lesbian organizations met April 20 to discuss proposals to alter the present formation of the ACLU's Police Advisory Committee of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Chapter. The meeting was the culmination of a month-long series of events that began with the March 11 shooting of Midtown residents Jamie Bowman and Michael Denyou, involved Atlanta Public Safety Commissioner George Napper directly, and ended with a fractious display of non-cooperation which disrupted last Wednesday’s meeting. Early reports on the shooting of Bowman, a transsexual who prefers to be referred to in the feminine gender, and her lover, Denyou, during an apparent robbery attempt, led some local activists to conclude that the incident was a case of anti-gay, hate-motivated crime. Bowman later stated her belief that the incident was not motivated by either her perceived sexual orientation or her status as a transsexual. Immediately following the double shooting, however, Atlanta Gay Center (AGC) Administrator Richard Swanson and Board of Directors member Bill Gripp began a frantic media campaign to draw attention to the escalating incidence of bias- motivated crime directed at persons who are perceived to be gay or lesbian. Gripp later termed the tragic shooting a "window of opportunity" for the AGC to focus non-gay society's attention to the dangers the lesbian and gay communtiy face daily. Gripp and Swanson subsequently formed the AGC Task Force on Anti-Gay Violence, of which Gripp is the chairperson. Also on the Task Force are Jean Levine of AID Atlanta and AGC Board members Dr. Donald Smith and Michael Wilson. The AGC Task Force and other concerned members of Atlanta's gay and lesbian community met with Commissioner Napper on March 24. During that meeting, complaints by the AGC contingent that the current Police Advisory Committee was ineffective prompted Napper to ask Gene Guerrero, Executive Director of ACLU-GA, to "assume the chairmanship (sic) of a committee that will come up with recommendations on how a more active and more representative policy advisory committee can be structured." Guerrero also agreed to participate, in the meantime, as a liason between the Commissioner and the lesbian and gay community. Agreeing to serve in an official capacity with Guerrero were Swanson, Gripp, Ray Kluka, president of the Midtown Neighborhood Association, and Judd Herndon of the ACLU's Lesbian/Gay Rights Chapter. The ad hoc committee was apparently hampered from its very conception by the radically conflicting goals of the participants. AGC Task Force members originally asked that they be accepted as the Commissioner's advisory committee, but quickly retreated to a position calling for a body which would be "completely independent and not controlled by any organization or group of organizations." Representatives of the ACLU's Advisory Committee, meanwhile, accused the AGC group of "sour grapes" political maneuvering and maintained throughout the public fracas that their organization was representative of the community and performed its mandate successfully. In a letter to Napper dated April 13, Guerrero acknowledged receipt of a summary of the March 24 meeting from Napper’s office, and said, "My effort in bringing this committee together has been Continued on Page 3