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SOUTHERN Vol. 3, No. 1 "Taking Pride in Our Culture” March 1,1990 The Catch-22 in Gay Activism 75C WHERE SOLD Angela Motter takes a look at the Grammys and makes some awards of her own. 5 Atlanta Feminist Women's Chorus is about far more than music. If Woody Allen wrote a play about AIDS, it would sound like this. In order to gain our rights we must be both outrageous and respectable, ostentatious and invisible. by AI Cotton Did you go down to the Capitol for ACT UP's sodomy demonstration last month? Were you exhilarated by the prospect of all of these queer people standing up for* their rights, try ing to change the system? Were you embar rassed by the sight of two inflatable dummies simulating oral sex atop a giant bed? Or did even the prospect of attending a "Sodomy Demonstration" make you a very nervous nelly? Perhaps you were caught somewhere in between these conflicting emotions, as I was. Confused enough to turn to After the Ball: How America Will Conquer its Fear and Haired of Gays in the 90's, by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, a book which contains a most detailed response to what ACT UP does and what non-activists see as wrong with such direct action. A book that presents the "respectable" response to discrimination, one that supporters propose should take the place of ACT UP's radical, polarizing and in-your- face aggression toward the system. Separatism vs. assimilation—the poles around which any minority movement estab lishes how separate and how white/male/het erosexual it wants to be. Historical circum stances determine the extent to which it is possible to assimilate, to what extent you are selling out your heritage trying to assimilate, and so forth. From Jewish intermarriage to the maintenance of a Black college system sepa rate from the integrated American universi ties, assimilation has always been a bone of contention in minority communities. The lesbian and gay community has argued its version of this issue extensively in the literature of the movement, but usually only from the separatist viewpoint best articu lated by Judy Grahn in Another Mother Tongue. Grahn thinks gay people are meant to be outside the mainstream, acting as a mirror to reflect society's flaws back toward itself in hopes of correcting them. In this construct, if we are assimilating we are denying ourselves DAN IS GAY. SO THEY CRIPPLED HIM FOR LIFE. Six years ago in San Antonio, Texas, Dan Guiling was attacked by a pair of gay-hating young men. They stabbed him and left him for dead. He has a severed spinal cord and is paralyzed for life. PHOTO BY: Valerie Snyder Dan is just one of thousands of gay men and lesbians who fall victim to hate crimes each year. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force catalogued a record 7,248 incidents na tionally during 1988 ranging from harassment to homicide. Education is the only lasting weapon against bigotry. Don't let this happen to someone you love. We are fighting ignorance and baseball bats with hearts and minds. Join us today. © 1989 Lesbian and Gay Public Awareness Project Thanks to Chicago Resource Center. Valley Business Alliance, and Christopher Street West for supporting our work through finding grants. Lesbian and Gay Public Awareness Project P.O. Box 65603, Los Angeles, CA 90065 • (213) 281-1946 Victim Mentality ? Is the road to lesbian/gay libera tion paved with portraits of us as victims? The authors of After The Ball think so. And so, evidently, does the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. During the recent drive to pass the Hate Crimes Statistics Act the Task Force, delivered copies of the ad shown above to virtually every member of the U.S. Senate. The ad was created by the Lesbian and Gay Public Awareness Project of Los Angeles (LGPAP). Catherine Coker of LGPAP says the ad generated local interest around hate crimes and LGPAP's "People United to End Homophobia" campaign which has been running this and similar ads in L.A. area magazines. the opportunity to fulfill our rightful role in society, thereby also doing it a disservice. Indeed, Grahn is not alone in foreseeing a holocaust at the hands of male leaders if the gay/lesbian alternative perspective is not nourished and acknowledged. Edmund White looked more sympatheti cally at assimilation in States of Desire when he compared the radical, politically correct community in Boston with the strongly assimilationist bent prevalent in D.C. As a center of learning Boston boasts substantial intellectual curiosity; it's contribution to lcs- bian/gay political thought is therefore philo sophical. The importance of the issue of sup port of the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) in the late '70s is an example of political thought that abandons practical considerations in favor of an ideal ism not grounded in the real world. The assimilationist viewpoint is based on accepting society as it exists. Its goals are narrower and pragmatic in nature: the produc tion of a pamphlet debunking myths about gay teachers; the election of a gay-friendly candidate; the passage of an ordinance. Though White's discussion is dated (writ ten in '80) his points are well made and still pertinent. Can the lesbian/gay movement survive an intellectual idealism which seeks to glorify and protect actions that the majority of soci ety fmds abhorrent ? Is any movement for societal change grounded in reality ? Had Martin Luther King Jr. not imagined a new reality for Black Americans, would it have ever come to pass ? Enter ACT UP, the radicalized gay response to society's indifference to AIDS. And by far the most creative expression yet of gay displeasure with the status quo. Many consider ACT UP little more than the gay equivalent of the NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the civil Continued on page 15