Newspaper Page Text
Child Killed Because He
Appeared to be Gay
NewsHIH
Keith Haring
Dead at 31
Artist, pop icon and AIDS activist Keith
Haring died February 16 of complications
due to AIDS.
Haring's bold images first appeared on
New York subway walls in the late '70s.
Immediately popular, his work moved quick
ly into galleries and the artist became part of
New York's East Village scene then populat
ed by the likes of artists Jean-Michel
Basquiat, Kenny Scharf and singer
Madonna. Despite the fame and attention,
Haring maintained a distinctly anti-elitist
attitude towards his art.
While his canvasses have sold for up to
$100,000, his work was widely available in
popular-priced markets on clothes, watches,
posters and other small pieces. He regularly
worked with children to produce large art
works that now adorn schools and hospitals
around the world. In May 1988 he painted a
mural on two walls of the pediatric emergen
cy clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital. His
anti-drug and graphic safe sex billboards dot
the landscape in New York city.
Haring was well known in the gay com
munity for his National Coming Out Day
poster, New York Pride Day posters, a mural
in New York's Gay and Lesbian Community
Services Center and his fundraising efforts
on. behalf of ACT UP/New York.
The artist last visited Atlanta in
December 1989 for the opening of a show
ing of his works—based on the images of
California photographer Herb Ritts—at the
Photo courtesy Fay Gold Gallery
"Untitled with Herb Ritts" is one of
Haring's last pieces. "His famous
crawling baby is mutating and car
ries a load on it's back," says Fay
Gold, Haring's representative in
Atlanta. This and other of Haring's
works are avilable at Gold's Gallery.
Fay Gold Gallery. More than 30 of Haring's
drawings and collages remain available at
the gallery in Buckhead.
Keith Haring was born in 1958 in
Kuntztown, Pennsylvania. He is survived by
his parents.
Gay Man in Crescent
City Election Run Off
Homophobia virtually non-existent in
campaign so far
After defeating sixteen other candidates
in the primary election, Louisiana's first
openly gay politician, Larry Bagneris, Jr.,
will face Jacquelyn Clarkson in the March 3
run off of a hotly contested New Orleans
City Council Seat.
Bagneris is Black and a long time gay
activist who once served on NGLTFs board
of directors, helped plan the '79 March on
Washington and was Texas' first openly gay
delegate to the Democratic National
Convention in 1980. His opponent is white
and "a well financed candidate of the conser
vatives" according to Bob Batson of the
Bagneris Campaign.
Bagneris received 15 percent of the vote
in the primary, 173 behind Clarkson. He is
supported by a broad coalition of civic orga
nizations, women, preservationists, Blacks,
gays and other traditionally progressive
groups.
Clarkson's main support is from the white
business community.
Despite Bagneris' openness about his sex
ual orientation and previous activities within
the gay community, both his opponents and
the New Orleans Times Picayune have yet
to make an issue of his sexual orientation.
Says Batson, "Larry did everything but
describe what he does in bed" to the conser
vative daily newspaper. So far its only
response has been to ask the candidate
whether his showing was the high point of
the gay community’s success in the city.
Bagneris' candidacy has been supported
by GALAPAC (Gay and Lesbian
Association Political Action Committee) a
relatively new group based in West
Hollywood, California. GALAPAC supports
the election of openly gay/lesbian public
officials nationwide, fights anti-gay initia
tives and supports lobbying efforts for
gay/lesbian and AIDS related causes.
There once was a child in Chicago who
danced and snapped his fingers a lot Now he
is dead.
What was four-year-old Lattie McGee's
blunder? Appearing "gay" to his mother's
boyfriend, John Campbell, who in August,
1987 found the child's femininity offensive
enough to warrant torturing and killing him
for it. Prosecutors urged a Cook County
Circuit Court judge to give the 40-year-old
man the death penalty.
"Campbell stuck Lattie with pins and
burning cigarettes in the face and chest and
tried to drown him in the bathtub," said
Assistant State's Attorney Judith Mondello.
The Washington Blade learned from State's
Attorney James Bigoness that Campbell's dis
like for Lattie McGee was because the boy
"walked and danced like a girl." (Does this
line of reasoning sound familiar?) Campbell
also saw fit to reward the boy's "girlishness"
by frequently tying rubber bands around the
child's genitals, suspending him upside-down
in a closet overnight, and depriving him of
food and water for days at a time. Bigoness
said that the request for death penalty owes to
the brutality of the crime.
Privacy Bill Introduced
in Maryland
would short-circuit sodomy and
abortion statutes
"Every person in a free society has the
fundamental right to be let alone and free
from governmental intrusion into personal
and private matters." So reads HB 716, a
bill introduced in the Maryland legislature
by Democratic delegate Dana Dembrow.
The bill would amend the state's constitution
to include a "right of privacy.”
Dembrow hopes, with this bill, to "permit
the reversal ... of our own sodomy restric
tion and our archaic abortion laws." The last
decade's Supreme Court rulings, Dembrow
told The Washington Blade, are leading to
"an erosion of constitutional liberties."
Atlantan's recall a particularly erosive ruling
from that decade: Hardwick vs. Bowers.
Census
Cont'd from page 3
But the bulk of the Census Bureau's $73
million promotional budget for the 1990
census will target racial minorities that have
traditionally been undercounted. Homeless
persons are another group traditionally
undercounted. The Census Bureau is taking
a number of measures—including hiring
homeless as census takers—to alleviate that
situation. No educational outreach to the gay
and lesbian community is planned
Ivy Young, director of National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force's Families Project, said,
"the struggle to have our relationships and
our families recognized and protected will
assume much greater urgency in the decade
to come. Accurate statistics gathered from
the 1990 census could provide us with a
small, but important weapon to help wage
that struggle."
Questions or comments ? Contact the
Census Bureau information line (404)
347-2274 orNGLTF at (202) 332-6483.
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4/Southern Voice • March 1,1990