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SOUTHERN JUNE 23 - JUNE 29 / 1994 GO FISH New lesbian movie destined to be a hit page 21 LOCAL NEWS Botched big-name concert angers performers, Pride PAGE 3 Cobb Chair Bill Byrne offers new resolution; Cobb Coalition gives it a thumbs down PAGE 3 SOUTHEAST KY judge says okay for gay parents to visit children of divorce PAGE 4 NATIONAL NEWS Bill banning job discrimination against gays is introduced this week f m, OUT & ABOUT THEATRE it's not on Broadway, and it's still not a movie but the Normal Heart, Kramer and Streisand's baby, is at least a CD page 27 BOOKS John Boswell's scholastic master piece about church-sanctioned same- sex marriages in the Middle Ages has the Pope shaking in his robe PAGE 31 VBLBME T/KUMBiR tB PlfASE RECYCLE 75G WHERE SOLO COBB COMMISSION CHAIR S LESBIAN DAUGHTER COMES OUT Shannon Byrne, the 24 year old daughter of Bill Byrne, is tired of keeping silent about Cobb County’s anti-gay resolution In a meeting between the Cobb Citizens Coali tion and Cobb Commission chair Bill Byrne last fall, Byrne surprised Coalition members when he told them that one of his three daughters is a lesbian. And this spring, he said it again—when the Coalition began an aborted series of meetings with the chair man in an attempt to work out a compromise over Cobb County’s anti-gay resolution. “The very first words out of his mouth were ‘you don’t have to tell me anything about the gay and lesbian community,”’ Coalition member Cherry Spencer-Stark recalled. ‘“After all,” he said, “I have a 24-year-old lesbian daughter.’” But if Bill Byrne thinks that having a daughter who is a lesbian means understanding the lesbian and gay community, he’s dead wrong, says Shannon Byrne. After watching the controversy simmer and boil for nearly a year, the “24-year-old lesbian daughter” of Cobb County’s Commission chair has decided to step into the fray, aligning herself with the Cobb Citizens Coalition in their efforts to have the resolu tion rescinded. “I just thought that maybe I can. make a differ ence,” she said during an interview last week. “I’m tired of hearing about family values. They’re not speaking about family values at all and I just feel I need to correct that. Obviously, my dad and the commissioners don’t know anything about the gay community, so they have absolutely no right to con demn us. If they knew anything about us, there would be no resolution.” The resolution and the continual bantering about family values hurts, she said. And the entire contro versy—from the anti-gay resolution, to the cutting of arts funding for the county, to the Olympics Out of Cobb movement—cuts close. “In every way, this is personal,” Byrne said. “For example, the arts funding. I went to college, I’m an art major. I’m a photographer. I went to college to play soccer. I’m an athlete. I played volleyball in high school. The whole family thing. It’s extremely personal. This has hit me in every way possible.” And she’s concerned about the gay men and les bians who live in Cobb County, hoping that her public coming out can help. “I’m sorry for what my dad has done,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I’m coming out. I want to do what I can [for Cobb’s lesbians and gay men]. I just wasn’t at peace with keeping quiet. I felt like I needed to tell these Christian people that they are dead wrong. I don’t think they have any idea about how to be Christian.” The decision to speak publicly has not come easy. Byrne was at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, last July when Commissioner Gordon Wysong first introduced his resolution proclaiming the “gay lifestyle” incompatible with Cobb’s “com munity standards.” She graduated in late August, and returned to Atlanta with her partner of two years, Cheryl Crowson, to begin looking for an apartment. “We came into town to look for a place to live after my graduation and just to be in Atlanta for the weekend,” she said. “I knew absolutely nothing about the resolution. I came into town, picked up a South ern Voice, and read all about my dad. That was how I found out.” Instead of a planned fun weekend in Atlanta, Byrne and Crowson spent the entire time in then- hotel room, with Byrne desperately trying to reach her father by phone. “I left hundreds of messages for him all weekend long, but he was out of town,” she said. CONTINUED ON PACE 13 KES