News stories from the Gay People's Chronicle

August 25, 2000

Radio stations ponder how much is too much

AIDS Walk hosts joke about ‘wiener mobile’ in Lakewood

Cleveland--Two radio stations are wrestling with questions of free speech, offensive speech, and how seriously to take a comic dialogue following recent incidents that raised the ire of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and others concerned with what radio personalities do.

WTAM 1100 AM received the fury of angry fans when it conducted a cyber-vote on its web site August 16 and 17 asking “Do you think the majority of Rockers fans at the Gund Arena are gay?”

The station is the radio home of the Cleveland Cavaliers men’s pro basketball team, but not the Rockers of the pro Women’s National Basketball Association.

Fans quickly called the station in protest and showed up at the August 17 Rockers game with banners reading boycott wtam.

“Listeners raised the issue and I’m glad they did,” said WTAM general manager Jim Meltzer.

Meltzer said he was out of town at the time and first heard about the incident when he tuned in to the station.

“I was livid,” he said. “There is no excuse for what we did. It was hurtful.”

“I was concerned for the young girls that watch the sport and for the team,” Meltzer added.

“I go to some games, too, and I realize that the team has a large gay following and many of our employees that ask for tickets are gay, but this was lack of judgement at the time.” Meltzer added, “I don’t think it was done with the intent to hurt. It was just stupid.”

WTAM program director Ray Davis took responsibility for the incident, telling the Gay People’s Chronicle that he did not post the question, but is ultimately responsible for the web site content.

Upon learning of the posting, sports director Mike Snyder interrupted the afternoon sports talk show hosted by Mike Trivisonno and Kim Mihalik to rail against the question on the air.

“All three of them were embarassed about it,” said Meltzer. “Mike [Snyder] was just furious, Kim was concerned that we hurt people, and Mike [Trivisonno] was embarassed that in the middle of the playoffs when the Rockers were doing well, that this was what the conversation was about.”

The station posted the results of the survey on August 18, with an apology, “The WTAM programming department recieved many complaints about the question. An apology will be issued to the Cavs/Rockers/Gund Arena management. The poll question was ‘out of bounds’ and we are sorry if it offended you.”

“With rock morning shows and talk, you’re always going to offend someone,” said Meltzer. “And in the business, we are taught to apologize for offending, but not for what was said. That is not the case here. We are sorry for what we did.”

AIDS Walk hosts mouth off

Two morning show hosts on another Cleveland station have come under fire for comments made about tennis great Martina Navratilova, Olympic diver Greg Louganis, and the Oscar Meyer Wiener Mobile driving through Lakewood.

Danny Czekalinski and Maria Farina, hosts of the Danny and Maria weekday morning show on WQAL 104.1 FM, are also the celebrity hosts of the Cleveland AIDS Walk on September 17.

When they learned that Navratilova is the first openly lesbian spokesperson for an automaker, Subaru, the morning duo did a routine that ended with a joke about Ford pursuing Louganis to “back the Probe.”

Additionally, the two spent the greater part of a week cracking jokes about the problems that might arise when the hot dog maker’s promotional Wiener Mobile stopped in Lakewood, a suburb known for its gay male population.

Nancy Menendez, education manager for the AIDS Taskforce of Cleveland confirmed that people who have been part of the AIDS Walk for years wrote letters to the taskforce and to station management about the dialogue.

WQAL General Manager Dave Urbach said that he had received the letters and apologized, saying the comments were not intended to be mean-spirited.

“It’s sad that one comment made on one show at one time takes away from the positive things Danny and Maria have done for the gay community,” said Urbach.

In addition to promoting the AIDS Walk, the hosts did an interview with students from the North Olmsted Gay-Straight Alliance on their effort to add “sexual orientation” to the school district’s non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.

“We have daily meetings about the morning show and do some longer range planning about content, and I don’t want to muzzle them unless I have to,” said Urbach.

Urbach described the routine of the morning duo as “irreverent” and said, “It’s a tight line we walk. It’s a gray area.”

“When do you censor them?” asked Urbach. “I can’t imagine, for example, Howard Stern’s station manager calling him in to tell him he’s pissing people off. It’s a routine and people know what they are going to get.”             _|

Protesters assail Boy Scout policy and United Way funding

by Anthony Glassman

Cleveland—He didn’t look like a crusader, with a bashful look in his eyes, squinting in the early afternoon sun as the reporter questioned him.

Lance Williams stood in front of the Boy Scouts’ Greater Cleveland Council building at the corner of East 22nd St. and Woodland Ave. on August 21, leading a small group of protesters rallying against the Boy Scouts’ discriminatory policies.

He is the leader of Cleveland’s chapter of Anti-Racist Action, but the Supreme Court ruling allowing the Boy Scouts of America to ban gays angered him, broadening the range of his social activism. As the saying goes, he’s straight but not narrow.

In Toledo, 20 people gathered by P‑FLAG, Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays marched in front of the Scouts’ Erie Shore Council headquarters downtown. The group included former Toledo city council member Mike Ferner.

The scene was repeated all over the country that day, as groups in 19 states and Washington, D.C. rallied under the aegis of the organization Scouting For All.

Protests occurred in every area of the country, most at local Boy Scouts council headquarters, as was the case in Cleveland and Toledo. A protest in Irving, just outside of Dallas, Texas, delivered a petition to the Boy Scouts of America national headquarters with 55,000 signatures on it.

Steven Cozza and his father Scott of Petaluma, California are the founders of Scouting For All. Steven, at the age of 15, is already a veteran in the battle for gay civil rights, having helped organize the group several years ago.

“Scoutmasters are people to look up to. What’s wrong with being influenced by a gay man?” Cozza said in Texas, where he and his father, neither of whom are gay, were delivering the petition. “Someone’s sexuality has nothing to do with his character or personality.”

Alongside these protests, the United Way chapter in San Jose, California, has announced that it will no longer be donating funds to the local Boy Scouts. As yet, only seven of 1,400 United Way chapters across the nation have withdrawn funding for the Scouts, but a number of others are looking closely at their funding, in relation to the United Way’s own non-discrimination policies.

United Way organizations in both St. Paul and Minneapolis are hiring volunteers to examine the issue, although the Scouts’ local Indianhead Council, known as one of the most progressive councils in the nation, doesn’t ask about the sexual orientation of its leaders or members.

United Ways in Rhode Island, Maine, California, and New Mexico cities have cut funding to their local Scouts councils, some of whom received nearly 20% of their budgets from United Way.

One of the major points that the protesters make revolves around the Scouts’ funding: If they are indeed a private organization, why is so much of their budget coming from public organizations?

“This judgmental attitude and discrimination is going on, and I don’t think this is right,” said Corey Brunson, one of the protesters in Texas. “I reject the notion that this is a private organization. It couldn’t survive without public support.”

Brunson would like to see her son, who is now four, join the Scouts some day, but only if their anti-gay policy is dropped.

In Cleveland, members of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Educators’ Network and the Human Rights Campaign held signs and waved to the passers-by for three hours. People honked, waved, and gave the “thumbs up” to show their approval as they drove by on Woodland Ave. Lance Williams, who arrived with a friend wearing a Boy Scouts uniform, summed up the message of the day:

“While the Boy Scouts of America have won the right to discriminate, we don’t have to be accomplices.”       _|

News Briefs

Adoption suit dropped in case of molested girl

Indianapolis—The Indiana Civil Liberties Union on August 18 dropped a lawsuit they filed on behalf of Craig Peterson, who alleged anti-gay discrimination when his petition for the adoption of a little girl was denied.

The girl was later found to have been molested by her foster father Earl Kimmerling, who had waged a campaign against Peterson and gay adoption in general.

Peterson had already adopted the girl’s three brothers, and wanted to reunite the siblings.

The suit alleged that Bruce Stansberry, the director of Madison County’s Division of Family and Children, denied the adoption because of Kimmerling’s campaign, which involved several elected officials.

Sean Lemieux, the ICLU attorney, said that child welfare officials had had the girl evaluated by two psychologists who believed that, since the Kimmerlings had taught her that homosexuality was a sin, the girl would find it difficult and potentially damaging to live with a gay man.

The girl was eventually adopted by her foster parents. Earl Kimmerling was later convicted of molesting the girl, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The girl now lives with Kimmerling’s wife, her adoptive mother.

Birth certificate lists two mothers

Boston, Mass.— Mary Jane Knoll and Christine Finn will both be named as mother on their son’s birth certificate.

The hospital where the baby was born, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, had looked to the court for guidance in the ground-breaking matter. In a ruling revealed August 11, Probate Court Judge Nancy M. Gould held that the document could list two mothers and no father.

Knoll and Finn decided to have the baby by in vitro fertilization after regular artificial insemination failed. Knoll’s ovum was inseminated, then implanted in Finn’s womb, effectively making both partners the boy’s biological mother.

The women asked the hospital to replace the “father” line in the birth certificate with a second “mother” line.

The ruling, while hailed by gay parenting advocates, may not be the landmark it appears. The women’s attorney pointed out that the ruling would not necessarily apply to lesbian couples who use more traditional means of alternative insemination.

Colorado fights same-sex certificates

Boulder—The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment revealed August 21 that they will ask the state’s Supreme Court to overturn seven Boulder court rulings allowing same-sex parents to be listed on their children’s birth certificates.

Two district court judges ruled that seven lesbian couples could have both members listed on the certificates, holding with Colorado state law that allows people without biological connection to a child to be listed on the child’s birth certificate.

The health department appealed to the Colorado Court of Appeals earlier in August, but the appellate court refused to overturn the decision, rejecting the department’s claim that Judges Roxanne Bailen and Morris Sandstead had overstepped their authority in creating a new parent-child relationship.

DeGeneres and Heche break up

Hollywood—August 18 saw the end of one of show business’ most talked-about relationships, as a joint statement from Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres confirmed that the most visible queer couple in the world had decided to part ways.

Hours later, Heche was briefly hospitalized after she appeared at the door of a house in Fresno County, California, and started talking strangely to the residents, who called the police.

The sheriff’s department and officials at the University Medical Center, where she was taken, would not comment on the possibility of drug use, but a spokesperson for the sheriff’s department told the press that there is no criminal investigation underway.

According to hospital records, Heche was released after two hours.

Author makes return after beating

Philadelphia, Penn.—Robert Drake, author of The Man and co-editor of the anthologies His and Hers, will be reading from his latest collaboration with Terry Wolverton at Giovanni’s Room bookstore on October 10, it was announced August 9.

On January 31, 1999, Drake, who had moved to Ireland, was returning home from a pub when two men beat him nearly to death and left him lying in a pool of blood. The men later claimed a classic “gay panic” defense, saying that he had made a pass at them.

He was in a coma for weeks before being flown to Philadelphia, where he showed signs of severe neurological damage, unable to talk, walk, or use his hands.

In the months since then, through tremendous effort and the help of his lover Ciaran Slevin, on leave from medical school in Dublin, and his former partner Scott Pretorius, he regained use of his arms and his ability to speak. Drake will undergo surgery next May, which may restore his ability to walk.                _|

Compiled from wire reports by Anthony Glassman, Patti Harris and Brian DeWitt.