gay peoples CHRONICLE

Publisher

Cleveland Gay Peoples Press Associates

Advisory Board Jerry Bores

Charles Callender Rob Daroff, Bob Downing Karen Giffen, Mark Kroboth Joy Medley, Martha Pontoni Bob Reynolds

SUMMERFEST '85

Everyone involved in the planning and presentation of Summerfest '85 deserves well-earned congratulations. The Committee responsible for this important event impressively fulfilled all its announced objectives. As an AIDS fundraiser, Summerfest was an outstanding success. The money it raised will be used for AIDS-related needs where funding by the government is even less adequate than the funds it has grudgingly made available for research. The information it provided about AIDS and safe sex extended beyond gay people. As a community-building event, it fostered pride in our gayness, and enjoyment in being gay. It drew significant support from

the lesbian segment of our community, and increased understanding across the gender lines that can divide us. It represented an important step toward the uncloseting of the Cleveland gay community. It was alSo our own street fair, and fun. The community clearly wants Summerfest repeated. The tentative dates for next year fall around Gay Pride Week. Perhaps Cleveland will again, after many years, have its own Gay Pride celebration. For that matter, a Gay Pride March ending on West Ninth Street with a Summerfest celebration would be a welcome way to avoid the repetitive speeches that often prolong Gay Pride March rallies.

THE PLAIN DEALER: BRAVOS AND A BOO

Gay people often have good reason for objecting to our portrayal by the mainstream media, which often limit this to reporting murders, sex scandals, and more recently AIDS, while otherwise treating us as invisible. As Rob Daroff points out in this issue, our status as nonpersons even extends to most college handbooks.

This is something we can change by expressing our dissatisfaction. In the July 9 Village Voice, Larry Bush points out that the recent marked shift in the New York Times' reporting of gay and lesbian news resulted from a discussion its senior editors had with gay leaders Virginia Apu-

Richard Failla, and David Rothenberg. If we want the media to listen to our criticism, gay people must also speak out when pleased with their coverage. The Chronicle did so in our March issue after Plain Dealer television columnist Maria Riccardi described us as ten per cent of the population whose existence national television should accept as a fact.

For many years the Cleveland media did a very poor job of reporting gay-related news, concentrating on stories that portrayed our lives as sordid and dangerous and ignoring opportunities to show us as we are. There were a few exceptions: Cleveland Magazine in its very early years; Channel 5, which unlike the rest of the media, did not ignore the annual Lesbian/Gay Conferences at Case Western Reserve University; and occasionally Channel 25. The attitude of Cleveland journalists during these years was epitomized by Dick Feagler. When President Reagan appointed to the Civil Rights Commission a bigoted fundamentalist minister who announced that gay people were sinners, Feagler said he understood this view and that gays would draw less hostility if they stayed out of parades.

Our Dark Ages seem to be over. For some time local radio and television talk shows have given us an important forum, (although we could do without occasional warnings that our appearances are not suitable viewing for children). Media coverage of the Bob Navis firing and the Vigil for Truth and Justice was notably fair. The July 9 Plain Dealer carried an excellent article on AIDS by science writer Karen Long, a comprehensive, clearheaded examination that incorporated statements by gay spokespersons. Long also not-

ed the Celeste's administrations's pro-

beating fi ing up

and its appointment of Buck Harris_as_gay health consultant for the state. On July 17 a Plain Dealer editorial praised the state program. Last April the Plain Dealer's Friday Magazine carried a glowing review of Kate Clinton before her performance here. August 13 it ran a paragraph announcing Summerfest '85, and August 30 carried an article about Mona Desmond.

We are not sure whether this shift represents a conscious chance in policy, the that accepts gay influx of a generation people as a fact of life, or is a response to our growing visibility. Perhaps all three factors Ere avolved. In any case, the change is very welcome.

Two items recently carried by the Plain Dealer have offended people in our community. One of these, a cartoon on August 6 showing an atomic explosion with one military person saying to another "...only known cure for AIDS" was interpreted by some as a suggestion AIDS could be controlled only by killing all gay men. This interpretation, we think, was a misunderstanding. An August 18 cartoon by the same person clarified his view of AIDS as nonhomophobic.

The second item, on August 28, gave gay people much reason for anger. The Plain Dealer printed an Associated Press dispatch that came straight out of the Dark Ages of our repression: a textbook example of vicious homophobic actions and exprèssion whose author was not named. It described the campus security force's arrest of 10 men charged with soliciting sex in restrooms at Bowling Green State University. Reminiscent of the Metroparks campaign against gay men, the context was blatantly homophobic and obviously involved entrapment (although this was not stated). Although Ohio law makes homosexual sex between consenting adults legal, while forbidding solicitation, they were charged with "importuning deviate sexual activity." Naming all ten men, the article identified some of them by their University positions and others by the towns they came from. Printing the dispatch in its entirety is a black mark in the Plain Dealer's history of covering gay-related

news.

Advertising Manager Joy Medley Business Manager Bob Reynolds Circulation Manager Bob Downing Editor-in-Chief

Charles Callender

Reporters

Charles Callender Katherine Clark, Rob Daroff Dora Forbes, Mark Kroboth

Casimir Kuczinski Sebastian Melmoth Martha Pontoni

Photographer and Cartoonist Rob Daroff

Columnists

Peter Beebe, L. Kolke Jym Roe, Julian Wilde

Production Staff James Amerson, Rod Caldwell Charles Callender Rob Daroff, Mark Kroboth

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