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LOMAX LEADS MAYOBAL DACE
IN ACKNOWLEDGING GAY CLOUT
By Peter Whiteside
UNSPEAKABLE QUOTE
To a caller who haplessly referred to his lover as his "ladyfriend":
" Lady friend?! What are you, some kind of a HOMO? You mean, "This
girl I'm dating"! Gary McKee, disk jockey, WQXI FM, Atlanta
★
Come to the RAUCUS CAUCUS,
Atlanta's Un-Conventional
welcome to the Democrats. Rub
shoulders with the famous,
infamous and not-so famous., and
have a good time supporting your
local PAC! Colony Square Hotel,
July 16th; 9-12 PM. $15/single,
$20/couple. For information, 888
0510.
The Georgia State University Gay
Student Alliance is dead.
The problems were burnout, lack of
interest, and lack of support from
the University and the Atlanta
Gay/Lesbian community.
These were the same problems the
organization was facing three years
ago when I attended my first GSA
During the past three years, the
GSA was fueled by a small handful
of highly energetic men and women.
We brought speakers, participated
in marches, held rap sessions, tried
Now, any student who happens to
be gay or lesbian will not have to
walk up and down the hall outside
our meeting room trying to decide
whether or not to come in. Now,
any young gay man worried about
AIDS will not have a safe place to
go within the university for help
(if you knew about AIDS awareness
at Georgia State, you'd know what
I mean). Now, Atlanta will not get
a look at gay students marching in
the Martin Luther King Jr. March
every year, or the Pride March.
Now, Atlanta's Gay/Lesbian
Community won’t get the speakers
we used to bring to town with
funding from within the university.
These are just some of the things
that will disappear now that the
GSA is gone.
It grieves me to see this
organization die. The GSA
provided a place for me and other
IMPACT.
YOU CAN HAVE IT TOO.
Volunteers needed:
Candidate interviews (we train),
candidate forum workers, voter
registrars, secretaries, computer-
friendly people, programmers,
writers, editors, telephone callers,
table captains for November
dinner, party throwers, coordina
tors to keep us on track. What
ever you like to do, whatever
vour talents, we can use vour
help. Call 888-0510, or 521-0630.
gay students to meet each other in
an otherwise heterosexually
oppressive environment which is
dominated by frat boys and sorority
sisters.
And Georgia State can be an
especially lonesome place. It isn't
like most schools with dormitories;
the commuter school atmosphere
makes it very difficult to meet
people, especially if you're gay.
But keeping the group alive was an
up-hill battle all the way, and I
don't blame anyone for not wanting
to put their energy into a vacuum,
while at the same time try to keep
I wonder, though, how gay men and
lesbians are going to improve their
situation if there isn't some sort of
support for those who are in the
same place they were years before?
For obvious reasons, gay people
cannot easily pass what they know
along to the young people who will
follow. But if every young gay man
and lesbian who comes along is
forced to reinvent the wheel,
unknowing that it has been
invented countless times before,
what is. going to keep us all from
getting run over by people who are
our enemies? If the only place
young gay people can go is a bar,
where are our leaders going to come
from? If gay people cannot even
support each other, why would
anyone even want to "come out of
the closet" and take all the risks
involved?
Sunday, June 11, 1988, an event
quietly took place that was
historic in its significance to
Atlanta's Lesbian/Gay community.
In the Presidential Suite of the
Pierremont Hotel, Michael Lomax,
Chairman of the Fulton County
Board of Commissioners, held a
reception for the leadership of
Atlanta's Lesbian/Gay community.
The reason: to announce his
candidacy for the 1989 Atlanta
Mayoral race, and to ask for our
community's support in winning
that race.
To my knowledge, this is the first
time a major contender for one of the
most important elected offices in
Georgia has, at the outset of his
campaign, openly positioned
himself in support of gay issues,
and aggressively courted gay
backing. In his presentation at the
reception, Commissioner Lomax
noted, "You know my record on
lesbian/gay issues, AIDS, and
human rights in general. I'm not
coming to you six weeks before the
election to make promises, get your
vote, then ignore you once elected.
You have over a year and a half to
look at my record, watch my
campaign, and know that I am
serious about human rights issues,
and the participation of lesbians
and gays in the success of this city."
Lomax went on to say that our
community was one of several
diverse constituencies important to
Atlanta, that he had targeted for
support in his campaign.
But Mr. Lomax did not put on the
spread and open the bar for idle
flattery. He'd done his homework.
He needs the lesbian/gay vote
every bit as much as we need a
mayor who can effectively,
creatively take Atlanta into the
21st Century with a strong human
rights priority.
Lesbians and gays make up, in most
conservative estimates, 10% - 15%
of Atlanta’s population. Lomax is
facing a tough battle and close race
with Maynard Jackson, Atlanta's
first black mayor and as-yet
unofficially declared candidate. In
a close race, a 10% block vote is
more than enough to decide the
election. Michael Lomax wants
that vote.
By comparison, he is also targeting
the elderly for support. The reason:
their sheer numbers; they are
registered and they vote —- a
reputation that the gay community
should have as well.
Michael Lomax is only one of
numerous local candidates, though
certainly the most politically
prominent, who have been calling
GAPAC seeking lesbian/gay
support. Such candidate
soliciations have catapulted our
community into the arena of
principal players in local politics.
While this phenomenon is a
gratifying result of years of work by
a handful of hardworking local
leaders and activists, it presents a
new challenge which affects every
single gay man and woman in the
city.
To date, our leaders have
successfully convinced the straight
political establishment of the
potential political power of our
community — a large, cohesive
minority with money and votes —
but we are still a sleeping dragon.
It is unclear yet what Maynard
Jackson will have to say to our
community. (GAPAC will have an
early rating of the declared
mayoral candidates in next Fall's
GAPAC News quarterly insert.)
But it should be obvious that an
informed, registered voting
lesbian/gay community will make
it impossible for any candidate,
especially a mayoral candidate, to
ignore us. And having two leading
candidates in any race, competing
to best the other on our issues, is the
stuff sweet dreams are made of.
Help GAPAC have the largest
campaign coffers in the city; then
come on down and help us interview
the hundreds of candidates we need
to rate for the summer primary
elections. It's fun, and it's
exciting. Help make the dream
come true. We're out and we're
never going back in.
We've reared our heads and
shocked them with a city-wide gay
rights ordinance that withstood a
recall challenge. We put in the
strongest showing of the South at
the March, in Washington, D.C.,
and our local March committee was
one of the strongest in the country.
Every year, we've been successful in
holding back the bigots in our
Legislature who would rather
legislate from fear than from
reason. LEGAL (Gay/Lesbian
Democratic Club) sent shock waves
to Washington in winning delegates
seats to the Democratic National
Convention in the Georgia
Caucuses. Our local HRCF
committee (the national PAC),
counted over 650 people (at
$150/person) at the first Atlanta
HRCF annual dinner. Every
summer, our city hosts a gay raft
race that draws an international
crowd of thousands. And this is
only a fraction of our community's
activity.
It is obvious that the talent is here,
the money is here, and by the
hundreds of thousands, we are here.
The time has come for us to prove
that Michael Lomax has seen the
awakening of the sleeping dragon,
and that every other candidate
had best follow Lomax's trail to our
political doorstep. To see this
happen, we must raise money, we
msut stay informed, and we must
vote!
If you are not registered to vote, do
so, now! There will be registration
at the Piedmont Park festival
during Gay Pride Week. There will
be more registration the weekend of
July 9-10. If you miss all that and
don't know how to register, call the
GAPAC number (888-0510).
Stay informed. GAPAC is now a
regular part of the Southern Voice,
with a large insert quarterly and a
monthly column. If you are not
where you can pick up a copy of the
Voice, fill out the subscription form
in this issue. For $28/year, you
well get bi-monthly editions sent
confidentially to your door. All the
news you'll need to be an informed
gay voter will be there.
GECCGU STATE
GAY STUDENT ALLIANCE ECLDS
By Charles Haver