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VIEWPOINTS
EDITORIAL
Is the Journal Homophobic?
The picture that accompanies this article
suggests that someone thinks so.
We saw about 30 Atlanta Journal
boxes stuffed with pink and black signs
that said "Homophobic" on the morning of
Saturday August 4. No one has claimed
credit, so we can't tell you how many dis
tribution points were so adorned.
That about covers the who, what, where
and when of this story. We can only guess
at the "why."
Unless someone has found some bit of
fatuous gay bashing that we've missed,
we'd bet that it was Gene Basset's distaste
ful cartoon in the July 30Journal that
resulted in the refreshing bit of activism.
That cartoon showed a stereotypical
politician (heavily jowled, balding, over
weight) slapping the (limp) wrist of an
effeminate man carrying a purse. The purse
says "Rep. Frank;" the caption reads,
"Action by the House." Yuk.
We are accustomed to ridicule and prej
udice in the more conservative of the Cox
sister’s two local newspapers; it is not with
out cause that respondents to our recent
reader survey chose Journal editorialist
Dick Williams as the person who had done
the most to harm gays and lesbians in
Georgia.
Williams has practiced a particularly
nasty brand of gay-bashing for at least sue
or seven years now, brutalizing us whenev
er legislators introduce bills that would
attempt to protect us from bigotry.
Bow-tie bobbing, Williams has consis
tently said he'd be willing to lay off com
pletely if we could just prove that we were
bom this way—prove that we're not run
ning around practicing our perversity out of
some kind of God-, family- and hetero-
hating malice.
We'd begun to have hope for the
Journal and for Williams. The latter has
not spouted any homohatred since March.
And on July 14, the Journal ran an amaz
ing editorial about Marvin Liebman's com
ing out. (See page 32 for info on Liebman)
The remarkable part of that editorial
was this statement: "The simple fact is that
some percentage of humankind is as natu
rally homosexual as the larger percentage
is heterosexual."
With that simple sentence, the Journal
has, blessed be, given Mr. Williams some
thing between permission and a mandate to
quit bashing us.
But if the Journal's editorial board real
ly believes what it said in the Liebman
piece, why the aforementioned Bassett car
toon? And why even include mention of
Frank's homosexuality in the editorial that
accompanied the cartoon?
Why? Either Journal Editorial page
Editor Durwood McAllister and his cohorts
are blatantly dishonest or plain old igno
rant. We trust it's the latter.
And we trust that the editorial board will
take Mr. Liebman's words to heart; that
they will realize the tremendous damage
right wing homophobia has done to mil
lions of Americans—including card-carry
ing conservative heroes like Mr. Liebman.
If what we hope is true, the ball is now
in our court. It is time for members of our
community—preferably conservatives—to
seek to establish a relationship with the
Journal's editorial committee. Time to
begin an educational process that will
result in an editorial policy that does not
abuse us for being who we are.
All this highlights an unmet need in
Atlanta: a local chapter of a Gay and
Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation—or
some equivalent.
At various times in the past, ad hoc
groups have marched upon local media and
made a fuss. But good media relations are
not made by occasional angry contact; they
are the result of an ongoing dialogue and
education, through good times and bad.
Such a group needs to have media rela
tions as its sole focus; it should not be the
offspring of some existing political or
social organization, although it should cer
tainly seek the support and input of such
groups.
Like the Journal's admission that our
way of loving is natural, establishment of a
media-watch for gay and lesbian Georgians
is an idea whose time is long overdue.
GUEST EDITORIAL
The Joy of (Gay) Politics
By the time you read this the primary
run-off will have taken place and GAP AC
will be hard at work interviewing and
preparing a new slate for the November
general election.
One of GAP AC's main functions is to
provide accurate information to the les
bian/gay community on local elected offi
cials and candidates running for State and
local offices. With our election slates we
have never presumed to tell anyone how to
vote, but rather provide a piece of informa
tion in helping gay and lesbian voters to
make well-informed decisions.
Politics is all about the gathering and
use of information. Only half of the people
eligible to vote are registered; of those reg
istered only half or less usually turn out to
vote. One of the main reasons for this
depressing phenomena is that the average
person doesn't know much about what is
going on in politics. That lack of knowl
edge intimidates folks, so they choose to
ignore politics altogether.
Our community should better those
national figures. Demographics say that
gays and lesbians tend to be better educat
ed than the average. But does that translate
into the gay community having a higher
than national average number of gays who
are registered and vote?
If Atlanta's lesbian/gay community con
sistently voted and consistently voted
together where there were specific issues at
stake, we could significantly affect the out
come of most elections: So how do we
accomplish this?
First every gay man or lesbian in
Georgia needs to be registered to vote.
That's easy. You simply go to most any
library or bank with a valid driver's license
and you'll be given your card on the spot.
The person registering you will tell you
where you need to go to vote.
The next step is getting the information
you need to know who to vote for. Watch
the nightly news. Read at least the Sunday
edition of the Atlanta Journal/
Constitution. Read Southern Voice and
make sure that you are on GAP AC's mail
ing list. If that seems like too much trouble,
talk to your friends who do follow politics.
And have fun with it—politics have
amused people for centuries. Making a
decision on how to cast your vote doesn't
have to be intimidating.
GAP AC feels that our slate is a key
piece of information in your gay vote.
Untold hours go into gathering the infor
mation we need for the slate, but since
GAP AC is a totally volunteer group, there
are limitations on what our process can
accomplish. We cannot cover every race
in an election. We start by choosing those
races that are in heavily gay populated
areas. Next we prioritize races in terms of
their general importance to gay issues. We
then go back and see if we have enough
volunteers to work on additional races.
This year GAPAC covered more races
than ever before. But here is what we were
up against: The primary had 158 races
with some 350 qualifiers. Some people
were running unopposed so we eliminated
them and finally settled on 30 races that we
wanted to cover. This included about 93
qualifiers we needed to interview or get a
questionnaire from. We ended up trying to
interview 45 people in 11 races with a total
of almost 30 volunteers.
In addition there were countless discus
sions with almost anyone in our communi
ty who offered an opinion. Finally we put
all this together and designed a slate that
wouldn't confuse the hell out of everyone.
GAPAC seeks your comments and sug
gestions on what you want to see on our
slates. We would love to include a lot more
information but obviously there are space
limitations. In the future, when we publish
our slate, we hope to provide more infor
mation through backup articles in
Southern Voice.
One last comment on our most recent
slate. For those of you who did not read the
article in Southern Voice on why GAPAC's
choice for governor was Bubba McDonald,
it certainly was not for his catchy name.
First, none of the candidates for
Governor returned our questionnaires or
agreed to be interviewed. We thought that
Young might be the lesser of evils, but his
staff was downright rude to us.
We almost decided not to cover the
race, but a final look at McDonald turned
up some interesting information: the man
has a reputation for great integrity; he has
consistently voted correctly on our issues
during his years in the legislature; and he
was supported by the Speaker of the
House. In fact the speaker had called in our
AIDS lobbyist, among others, to ask for
our support of McDonald. Finally,
McDonald, when asked, clarified his posi
tion on sodomy reform showing that he
would support it.
Our conclusion-better to support a
known quantity of high moral fabric, even
if he was an underdog, and thus gain some
leverage with the Speaker, than to not sup
port anyone. Remember elections are not
horse races. You don't vote for the winner,
you vote your conscience.
GAPAC thanks all the people who have
helped in this process of informing the les
bian/gay voters. Feel free to call us and
come have fun with us. Stay informed!
Peter Whiteside, Chair GAPAC
m
Nc.fJSpA'y
" I MISS THE AVATOLLhH! "
6
Southern Voice/August 16,1990