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VIEWPOINTS
The Decade in Preview
by Paul Varnell
Who Are Those
Masked Men?
To the Editor
I don't know whether to thank you or cuss
you out. I mean, am I the only one who's
more confused now that I’ve read all the articles
about trying to repeal the sodomy law in the last
two issues of Southern Voice and the last
Creative Loafing ?
The problem seemed pretty simple at first.
The law needs to be changed and there are two
schools of thought on how to do it: Zap the leg
islature or work with the folks inside.
If you go with the Zapping theory, things are
pretty easy I guess. But, unlike the majority of
those in your poll, I don’t like that route. I sup
pose that means that I agree with Chris Hagin's
methods, but what I read comments like his
"only 25 players involved and that was too
many" it makes my blood boil. And then (in
CL) Jeffrey Laymon ups and says, "The wheeler
dealers in the gay political community were not
consulted at all." Talk about arrogant! Who are
these guys anyway, what gives them the right to'
wheel and deal in my behalf and why should I
trust them?
At least ACT UP, much as I dislike what
they're doing, offers me the chance to do some
thing about the law. But nowhere do I see men
tion of a benefit for the works of Hagin,
Laymon and the people like me who aren't
demonstrating. Where's the phone number to
call them and offer my money or help? And
who are they anyway ? Maybe I didn't read
closely enough, but neither your numerous arti
cles nor the one in CL said which organization
was working on the inside to try to repeal the
law. Is there a Repeal the Sodomy Law
Coalition, or is Mr. Hagin doing this good work
on my behalf all by himself?
I've spent years reading articles about how
not enough people are involved and the apathy
of Atlanta's gay community and yearly ask
myself if I should become more involved. If the
kind of dissension and confusion that the
sodomy law issue has brought up is typical of
the so-called Gay '90s, I think I'll be spending
the decade quietly in my condo.
A Reader
Smyrna
Where Were the
People on Jan. 8 ?
Fellow Lesbians & Gays,
The March that took place on January
eight was very interesting. I have never
been exposed to ACT UP before the
march on Monday. At first I felt out of
place, then joined in the march. I thought
that some of the signs were a bit graphic,
not to mention the chants that were vocal
ized. I felt that the people at home would
see this and classify all gays as radicals.
Don't get me wrong, I think that ACT UP
is doing a great job in the streets for OUR
rights and for OUR lives.
What I don’t understand, where were
all the people who frequent the bars? If
the ones who go to the bars would have
been there our numbers would have
looked greater. My friends, if you do not
get (Hit and fight for yourself and others,
there won't be any bars to attend, much
less anyone alive to meet When will the
mainstream gay population get out and
protest to make the changes that are so
desperately needed? Yes, this was my first
time to march, but not my last
I would like to mention that a friend
was marching with his father. The father
feels that the sodomy law is wrong. If a
heterosexual man took the day off from
work to protest alongside his son, why
didn't you get out and march?
Atlanta, WAKE UP! How many more
deaths and funerals will you attend before
you get mad and do something for YOUR
rights and for YOUR life.
Signed,
Angry mainstream gay male.
Did you get enough of the "Decade in
Review"? In newspapers and magazines
across the nation, retrospective stories
abounded. It was the decade of Reagan,
of Gorbachev, of AIDS, of junk bonds
and leveraged buyouts, of New Age
music and post-modem architecture, of -
well, quite a bit, actually.
What we need to do now, having fon
dled the past, is to set goals for ourselves
as individuals and as a movement, to try
to determine what we would like to
achieve in the next year, the next five
years, the next decade. It is all very well
to say (with an eye to old Samuel
Gompers) that gays simply want "more" -
more equality, more clout, more policy
input - but if we don't have some sort of
strategic plan, some sort of Step A, fol
lowed by Step B followed by Step C, we
won’t get very far. Our goal, after all, is
to become part of the context that other
people have to take account of. I don't
think we are that now.
Do our national gay and lesbian orga
nizations have such plans for the 1990s?
Have they told us what they would like to
do during the next decade such that we
should send them money? Not that I
know of. [Windy City Times] gets a bun-
tile of press releases from national gay
organizations, but I have yet to see one
about long-range planning. But if we do
not know what they plan to try to) do,
how can we - somewhere down the line -
judge the quality of their performance? If
they do not tell us their goals, how can we
say that they did or did not effectively
reach those goals? In other words, what
kind of performance standards can we
hold them to?
This "problem" of national gay organi
zations (and local ones too, for that mat
ter) is going to be of increasing impor
tance in the '90s. For one thing, we des
perately need them. For another, there is
far more potential support for effective
ones now than there was in 1980: after
AIDS there is certainly more of a national
gay consciousness than before, a greater
sense that we are somehow "in this
together." For a third, I suspect that a lot
of people who moved from early gay
activism to AIDS activism will be return
ing to gay activism and - accompanied by
a large number of people who cut their
teeth on AIDS activism - they will bring
not only knowledge and skills but
demands to achievements and successes.
But the recent widely publicized diffi
culties at the National Gay Rights
Advocates, with the departure at one time
or another of almost every significant
staff member, suggest that the quality, the
amount, and the type of work done was
not being monitored at all well. You may
recall director Jean O'Leary's fundraising
tactics were assailed, the percentage of
income designated for litigation was sur
prisingly low, O'Leary may have had con
flicts of interest as a member of the steer
ing committee of the national Democratic
Party (however gratifying such an
appointment may have been to all of us as
evidence of our own significance), and
O'Leary apparently used NGRA funds for
partisan political purposes. Just as trou
bling was the fact that the NGRA's Board
of Directors seemed wholly unequal to
the task of stepping in and setting affairs
aright until a disastrous blow-up occurred.
But none of these problems was new:
they had happened at other gay organiza
tions. The Human Rights Campaign
Fund, led by Vic Basile, startled people
not so long ago by revealing how little of
its total income it was spending on direct
contributions to candidates. Maybe their
resource allocation was valid, but is was
not well-known and, after all, HRCF did
promote itself primarily as a political
action committee. The National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force for many years
(intermittently) was plagued with charges
of inept management and internal con
flict. And faithful Democrat that she
was, director Virginia Apuzzo engaged
NGLTF in partisan politics in a vigorous
way when die had the task force endorse
Walter Mondale. But the point of gay
advocacy is not whether Mondale was
better than Reagan, but that national gay
organizations are supposed to try to work
with whoever wins and not get them
selves frozen out by endorsing the (mas
sively and predictably) losing side.
So Boards of Directors, as Boards of
Directors, seem regularly to be missing
the essential element competence. We'll
have to fix that in the '90s.
Electorally, we have several projects.
As always we need to elect friends and
defeat enemies. I suspect that most of us
would be enormously gratified by the
defeat of Doman, Helms, Dannemeyer,
and others (Gordon Humphrey of New
Hampshire is taking an early - and rather
prudent - retirement). But is is not clear
if involvement in those races will benefit
us as much as involvement in closer
races. Yet eventually our goals must be
to make the expression of homophobia
politically impossible. Whatever their
private feelings, no national legislator
publicly expresses disdain for Blacks and
Jews. We must make that true for us.
Take Jesse Helms, the Manuel Noriega
of the Carolinas. Helms has enormous
power partly as a result of his seniority on
the Agriculture and Foreign Relations
committees. He is not defeatable by gays
on gay issues. In fact, probably most of
his North Carolina constituents agree
with him about homosexuals. So what
can we do?
Well, he may be vulnerable on other
issues, so we will want to offer consider
able financial support to a challenge by
and (credible) opponent. But we cannot
do this through gay organizations or
Helms will use that fact to his advantage.
(In fact, HRCF should probably con
tribute to Helms rather than to his oppo
nent) With the decline of the Cold War,
Helms as a leading Hawk may find that
he has become less important. That
leaves tobacco and homosexuality /
obscenity as his major topics. We might
then weaken him by a flank attack - on
tobacco subsidies and privileges. At the
same time, if we can make tobacco lose
battle after battle, then Helms’ con
stituents may come to see Helms as
increasingly ineffective on one of the
main economic issues for which they
voted for him. And the recent clever ads
placed by People for the American Way,
claiming that Helms is "soft on crime,"
suggest an additional angle of attack.
> cur letter', to
tight to e»lit for space. Mail
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January 18,1990 • Southern Voice/1