Newspaper Page Text
NGLTF
Cont'd from page 4
was the organization's chair, and Berrill, he
recalls, "was the staff assistant, answering the
telephone and opening the mail."
Apuzzo pushed the project. It survived,
barely, the 1986 belt tightening, publishing an
annual national survey of violence against gays.
Berrill and Bill Bailey of the APA got "sexual
preference" added to a bill requiring the FBI to
keep statistics on hate crimes. New York City's
chief of police spoke on behalf of the gay part of
the bill at a Capitol Hill hearing. Church groups
and the International Association of Police Chiefs
endorsed the act The result; the bill has twice
passed the U.S. House of Representatives, the
only bill supporting gays that has ever passed a
Congressional vote.
The issue, Berrill says, is a great one for gays.
"It's the least controversial part of our agenda.
Violence goes against all social and religious
norms. There's nobody trying to justify it." But
there are those willing to help it out a little.
Hate Crimes
Cont'd from page 3
of Helms' time agreement proposal, no "second
degree" amendments limiting the scope of his
rider would be allowed, nor could his
amendment be tabled.
Supporters of the bill did not find that
acceptable. They decided to try a different
strategy. They would try to win the hard way.
With over 50 cosponsors already signed on to
the popular bill, the broad hate crimes bill
coalition has targeted a handful of conservative
senators for co-sponsorship, the strategy being
that if they can get 60 cosponsors, they might be
Senator Jesse Helms has twice stalled the bill in
the Senate.
There's been depressingly little news
generated by Jeff Levi's departure from NGLTF
August 1 (to do AIDS lobbying for Gay Men's
Health Crisis of New York City) and his
replacement by NGLTF Public Information
officer Urvashi Vaid. The small staff in the
unpretentious offices-in addition to Vaid and
Berrill, Sue Hyde leads the projects to repeal
sodomy laws and overturn the military's policy
against gays, Ivy Young directs the new gay
family project and Peri Jude Radecic runs the
lobbying operation-hums with energy to the
background buzz of constantly ringing phones.
Although the organization will hire an AIDS
project director, AIDS will probably not occupy
the key place in the agenda it has in the past.
Vaid says that "NGLTF tries not to be
duplicative. Jean McGuire and the AIDS Action
Council do good work; the Human Rights
Campaign Fund is doing good work lobbying
Congress. What we need is someone to focus at
the state level."
able to break a Helms filibuster.
As of the end of the 1989 congressional
session, there were 56 senators cosponsoring the
Hate Crimes Statistics Act, with Sens. Sam
Nunn (D-Ga.) and James Sasser (D-Tenn.)
becoming the latest cosponsors.
"[Having 60 senators on the bill] sends a
signal to Jesse Helms that these people support
this legislation as it is written and they want the
bill to pass," said Peri Jude Radecic, lobbyist for
the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
"Helms could come up with any number of
variations in his homophobic campaign," stated
People for the American Way lobbyist Sue
Armsby, "but Senators Hatch and Simon are
This focus keeps NGLTF in the direction Levi
headed it. He came to realize that gays will never
have "a real seat at the table" until they have the
votes to make politicians pay attention.
Vaid plans to continue this direction, because
she sees trouble ahead in the 90s. "In the
1980s," she says, "the right wing partly self-
destructed. The Jim Bakkers and the Jerry
Falwells and the Moral Majority, the television
evangelicals-they self dcstructed.
"But the grass roots folks did not The anti
choice people, the anti-abortion and anti-gay
people, are probably the fastest growing political
activists. People like the Traditional Values
group in California and No Special Rights in
Washington State. They are interconnecting and
talking to each other in the same way our
movement is talking to each other."
In the 90s, Vaid figures, local referendums are
where the action is going to be. It's an arena, as
people from Anita Bryant on have found, which
gays have trouble winning. Vaid has her fingers
crossed that NGLTF can continue to help gays
turn crisis and opposition into opportunity.
dedicated to thwarting whatever it is Helms
comes up with, because they really want to keep
the focus on the bill, data collection and nothing
beyond that at all."
The White House has come out in support of
the bill, with Attorney General Richard
Thornburgh lobbying the Senate on the bill.
Bush pledged his support of the bill on the 25th
anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
"Clearly Helms is all by himself on the
Republican side opposing this," added Armsby,
"and, in fact, he is going against the
administration's position."
Action on the bill is expected soon after
Congress returns in late January.
Urvashi Vaid
Cont'd from page 4
Evott Bennett
NGLTF Exececutive Director, Urvashi Vaid
made sense of the course of my life."
She also attended Northeastern University's
law school. Law school also led her to
Washington.
She connected with NGLTF in D.C.and Jeff
Levi.. He urged Vaid to run for NGLTFs board
of directors. Vaid was on the board in 1986 when
Levi became executive director and moved
NGLTF headquarters to D.C.. Shortly afterward,
she became a member of the staff as NGLTFs
public information director. Vaid moved into
NGLTFs top spot in Aug. 1989.
There's something inherently amusing in the
picture of the tiny dark-haired activist debating
the portly, rightwing ideologue with the Smith
Brothers goatee. "It was fun," she says.
But then she gets serious." We have to take
opportunities to be openly gay to somebody who
is an elected official or in government It was
important for him to see that there is a face to the
issue."
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14/Southern Voice • December 21,1989