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SOUTHERN VOICE SEPTEMBER 23/1993
Nancy Schaefer running for mayor
Anti-gay leader joins three
openly gay candidates filing
for city posts
Atlanta —Nancy Schaefer, Atlanta’s best
known and most vitriolic anti-gay/lesbian ac
tivist, is running for mayor.
Last Wednesday, on the last day to qualify
for the Nov. 2 city election, Schaefer, who is
the head of Family Concerns Inc., a Christian
supremacist group that works against gay and
lesbian rights, paid her qualifying fee at City
Hall.
But in the event that she were to pull off a
victory over the three major candidates in the
race, Schaefer might have to face the prospect
of a gay or lesbian face—or two or three—on
the City Council. That’s because one lesbian,
Carolyn White, and two gay men, Andy Loftis
and Eric Spivey, qualified to run for City
Council posts. .
When contacted by Southern Voice, a
spokesman for Family Concerns, Eddie Can
non, said Schaefer was out of town and un
CONTINUES ON PAGE 21
Schaefer is the outspoken spokesperson for the anti-gay/lesbian right in Atlanta
Cobb loses three conventions over hate votes
Marietta—The campaign to steer conven
tion business away from Cobb County because
of the county commission’s anti-gay/lesbian and
anti-arts resolutions has scored its first success.
The Georgia Society of Association Execu
tives has cancelled its annual meeting, sched
uled for next summer in the new $43 million
Galleria Centre, and two other groups have
stopped negotiations for use of the facility. All
three specifically cited the commissions’ recent
actions.
“We are an inclusive organization made up
of many diverse elements,” said Sharon Hunt,
executive director of the Georgia Society of As
sociation Executives. “After a long and serious
discussion, the board of directors...thought that
it would be inconsistent to take our organization
into an area whose government is not accepting
of any segment of society.”
The decision by the association executives
to move their meeting out of Cobb is an even
more significant victory for the economic cam
paign against the county because the group’s
450 members are executives of a variety of non
profit organizations, such as trade associations
and professional groups. They are the people
who help make decisions about where their indi
vidual organizations will holding meetings and
conventions, and the cancelled meeting would
have introduced them to the new Galleria Cen
tre.
In fact, Galleria Centre general manager Don
Poor told Southern Voice that the convention
center was offering its facility free of charge to
the group.
“It was a marketing tool for the facility,”
said Poor. “[GSAE is] a group we would like to
have had [so much that] we were giving away
the space.”
Two other organizations, which could have
brought nearly 4,500 people into Galleria Cen
tre, have cancelled their negotiations for the fa
cility, citing the commission’s actions, said Poor.
The Association for Worksite Health Promo
tion, based in Illinois, was negotiating a trade
show that would have had 1,300 participants,
and a software show sponsored by Auto Desk,
based in California, would have drawn 3,000
participants.
Jon Greaves, an organizer for the Cobb Citi
zens Coalition, one of the organizers of the cam
paign to steer business from the Galleria Centre,
said that he was happy with the cancellations.
“As far as I’m concerned, we’ve been a suc
cess,” he said. “We never sat a goal about an X
number of dollars we wanted the center to lose.
The message has been sent through these can
cellations that these groups have the same con
cerns as the gay community.”
The economic campaign is sponsored by the
coalition and boosted nationally through the net
work of local Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against
Defamation chapters. It was launched after the
county commission passed a resolution saying
the “gay lifestyle” was inconsistent with the
county’s values and after commissioners, moti
vated by complaints about a play with gay refer
ences, cut all county funding for arts groups.
KC WILDM00N
Pastor says he
helped Wysong
Comments cast doubt on
Gordon Wysong’s claims
that he came up with Cobb’s
anti-gay resolution.
Marietta—Cobb County Comm issioncr Gor
don Wysong’s assertion that he acted alone in
penning his anti-gay resolution took a serious
blow last week when a televangelist who heads
one of Marietta’s largest churches admitted that
he had conferred with Wysong “long before this
went public.”
“Communities all over the nation have had
to act remedially, and it was thought to be to our
advantage to act preventively,” Nelson Price,
pastor of the 9,500-member Roswell Street Bap
tist Church, told The Christian Index, a weekly
newsletter from the Georgia Baptist Conven
tion. “What we’ve tried to do...is to keep this
from appearing to be a religious issue. It is, but it
is more than a religious issue.”
Price’s church has a television ministry that
broadcasts his services nationally.
In media appearances, and before the Cobb
Commission itself, Wysong repeatedly said that
he acted alone while writing the resolution that
declared homosexuality incompatible with Cobb
community standards. After Price’s comments
became public when they appeared in the Sept.
2 issue of The Christian Index, Wysong told the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “obviously I
did consult him at the time it was drafted, but the
content was entirely my own.”
“Wysong has not been honest with his fel
low commissioners. He has not been honest with
the public, and he has not been honest with the
press,” said Jon Greaves, an organizer of the
Cobb Citizens Coalition, which is fighting the
anti-gay sentiment in Cobb County.
Greaves also noted that the religious com
munity has not been unanimous in its support of
the Wysong resolution. Price, in the Christian
Index article, revealed that he sent out nearly
300 letters to religious leaders asking for their
supportof the measure. He said he was “tremen
dously amazed at the lack of response” from the
ministers.
“That tells me that the religious community,
while not openly supportive of gays and lesbi
ans as a group, also will not support open attacks
on us,” Greaves said.
KC WILDM0 0N
Censored lesbian film leads to policy change at
Decatur—The outcry over a station
manager’s censoring of a film with lesbian con
tent at DeKalb’s public access cable television
station has resulted in a new policy for review
ing such films before broadcast.
Ann Landers, a spokesperson for Georgia
Cable Television (GCTV), which funds DeKalb
Community Television (DCTV), said that the
public access station would institute a review
panel to preview films, taking the final decision
about broadcast out of the hands of a single
individual.
“GCTV doesn’t feel it’s appropriate for one
person to make these decisions—pro or con—
on potentially sensitive material,” Landers said.
“We’ve decided the best tactic would be to cre
ate a board of community members who can
comment prior to cablecast.”
Landers added the panel would be drawn
from diverse segments of the community at large.
The film in question, “From the Goddess,”
produced last fall by Donna Collier at DCTV’s
studios, was originally approved for broadcast
by then-station manager Nancy Lowe but was
removed in May from the station’s broadcast
rotation by Tony Briscler, who replaced Lowe
in February.
“Without even telling me, he took it off the
air,” said Collier. “[When I did finally speak
with him], he told me the ‘simulated sex scene’
between two women was not acceptable, and
that he had gotten one complaint.”
Collier said the film had been aired “a couple
of times a month” since its approval, and that
she found it remarkable that “as many times as it
aired, he got only one complaint.”
“[Briscler] decides what’s right and what’s
wrong, what’s offensive and what’s not,” she
said. “But his saying [“From the Goddess”] is
offensive is offensive to me.”
According to Collier, the film’s one time use
of the word “fuck” and a scene at the end with
the two lesbian characters in bed caused the
problem.
“It ends with the two women in bed, clothed,”
she said. “They kiss and are in an intimate em
brace. My sister told me that the ‘sex scene’ was
boring.”
Doug Loggins, who was in charge of sched
uling at DCTV at the time, said that Briscler told
him to pull the program from the air.
“He said it has these words and adult situa
tions,” said Loggins, who said the incident, and
another in which Briscler refused to allow a
belly dancer to appear, prompted him to quit his
position. “He said he was going by FCC (Fed
eral Communication Commission) guidelines,
but those guidelines are very subjective.”
FCC guidelines prohibit the airing of mate
rial that violates “community standards” but do
not define those standards. Most broadcast sta
tions air programs of potentially controversial
material late at night to avoid problems with
complaints.
Briscler would not speak with Southern Voice
on the record about the incident, referring a
phone call to GCTV. GCTV’s Landers said that
DCTV management told her they had gotten
“one or two” complaints about an early evening
airing of the film.
“One or two complaints does not make com
munity outrage,” she said. “And then you have
to consider who the outrage is coming from.
These decisions [about airing programs] just can’t
be made in a vacuum.”
Collier’s film, Landers said, will go before
the review panel when it is in place.
KC WILDM00N
DeKalb TV
Film producer Donna Collier says she was
told a lesbian scene, with women fully
clothed, was unacceptable.