August, 1990

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Page 3

Letters

Continued from last page

bian-gay agenda. However, I felt that the Support unfettered

decision whether to allow them to participate was one which should not be made based on personal feelings. The reason I voted the way I did was because the Pride '90 committee has no established policies or guidelines for preventing anyone from participating in the event. We have publicized it as something that is open to everyone. I felt that barring NAMBLA from Pride '90 would be discrimination and censorship of ideas, neither of which I think the Pride committee should be guilty of. In America free speech belongs to everyone, no matter how odious their ideas. Practicing discrimination and censorship makes us no better or more advanced than those who have used exactly those same tactics against the lesbiangay community for many years.

In spite of the fact that I would have been personally very uncomfortable having NAMBLA present at Pride '90, I did vote to allow them to be there. There were people threatening to leave the committee if NAMBLA was not barred from participating. I however, told the group that even though I held the minority opinion, I would not leave the committee if the vote went against me. I agreed to abide by the will of the majority because my commitment to the event goes much deeper than this one issue. Furthermore, I was led to believe that everyone's opinion would be respected and that there was room for disagreement among reasonable people.

Little did I know that a few short weeks later I would be told, in print no less, that my work in the lesbian-gay movement is not serious. After two years of being very active on the Pride committee it has been decided that I'm in it for "playtime."

I hope that readers of this letter can understand why I take Drew Cari's comments so personally. I have not spent a good portion of my adult life being involved in the lesbian-gay civil rights struggle just to be treated so shabbily. Frankly I think that I deserve better. NAMBLA is an easy target to attack, but in the zeal to do so the wrong person has been hurt.

NAMBLA creates exactly the kind of tension within our movement that we ought to beware of. This experience with them has brought forth some very ugly and divisive feelings from our community that I hope to never have to witness again. They hold a sort of threatening power over us because, even though their numbers are small, their issue is very emotionally charged and has the ability to divide us if we let it. That is where NAMBLA presents its most serious danger to the lesbian-gay community.

The key to dealing effectively with NAMBLA is not to hide them or to banish their members from our ranks, but to simply learn to respect all of the differing opinions that we each have about them. It also comes in not allowing them to have the unauthorized power to play upon our feelings and to launch us into a hateful, emotional frenzy each time their very name is uttered.

David G. Lansaw

The Chronicle did not intend for the story to be biased. We do our best to present unbiased news stories. Ed.

Drew Cari responds: "I was posing a question more intended to be food for thought than anything else, It was intended as a response to the NAMBLA line of thought, not a reflection on the vote of any Pride committee members.

"I regret that my remark was misinterpreted. Mr. Lansaw is and has been a valued member of the Pride committee, one whose dedication, innovative ideas, and support I prize. He is a pleasure to work with."

NEA

To the Editor:

As lesbian writers, we are sending out this letter to protest current right-wing attempts to censor art that is about sexual issues and that has sexual content; in particular, we protest the congressional ban on funding of homoerotic art by the National Endowment for the Arts. These censors are defining lesbian and gay existence, and any art that springs from our experience, as obscene.

Because being lesbian-gay is not obscene by definition, we must be able to make art about any part of our livesgoing out to dinner, backpacking with friends, raising our children, or attending a political demonstration. There is nothing obscene about the art, whether or not it has explicit lesbian-gay content. The art that we create from the substance of our lives is not obscene. It is about different ways of creating loving relationships, families and communities. To the censors, however, our very presence, our very existence, renders us obscene.

In art, explicit sexual descriptions and depictions of women by menboth loving and hateful have long been acceptable. However, lesbian celebration of our own bodies and relationships in art challenges sexist assumptions that women's lives matter only as they are intertwined with men's, that women's bodies exist only for male pleasure and use. Lesbian art presents the power and beauty of female sexual pleasure, the possibility of sexually autonomous women, complexity of lives which are not constricted by sexist and heterosexist roles.

Lesbian and gay art which shows the complexities of same-sex love challenges societally constructed definitions of sexuality, gender, and nature. It is no accident that the forces of censorship are being led by Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina: Helms has made a political career of passing off as "truth" such social myths as that a person's gender, race, or religion makes her or him superior or inferior to another.

In fact, Helms and other censors fear

and others, need about the realities of our lives as gay and lesbian people.

Elly Bulkin

Chrystos (Menominee Nation)

Audre Lorde Judith McDaniel Minnie Bruce Pratt

Chrystos, Lorde and Pratt have recently received grants for their work from the National Endowment for the Arts

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to defend the Bill of Rights. Yet your sign mocks certain of these same principles of freedom.

Furthermore, I will stand corrected if I am wrong in believing that your attitude is well communicated to your employees and to many of your customers. Consider that they probably attempt to instill that same attitude in their own children, among whom, statistics prove, exists a percentage of homosexuals. Do not be

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Sysack Sign is

lesbian-gay art precisely because public irresponsible

viewing, reading, and discussion of our work lead to a questioning of so-called "normal" patterns of power and hierarchy in U.S. culture.

The current attempts to censor sexually explicit lesbian and gay art are tied to attempts to control information about sexuality in general, including information about safe sex and AIDS, about contraception and abortion, about lesbian and gay sexuality. This censorship is being imposed not just in the art world but in radio programming, reproductive rights counseling, and classroom teaching. The struggle about censorship of information is happening not just at the level of federal government, but also within private corporations and within public schools and universities.

The current struggle about sexual censorship is part of an intensifying climate of repression that targets many groups, including African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and all people of color; Arabs and Jews; poor people, women, and the disabled; the young and the old; lesbian and gay people-groups that have been called "special interest groups" but that are, in fact, the majority of "the people" in this country.

Please raise your voice, within the context of this larger struggle, against censorship of lesbian and gay art. Contact your congressperson immediately to demand re-authorization of the National Endowment for the Arts with no restrictions. Work in whatever capacity you can in your community to ensure we do not

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To the Editor:

In response to the appeal made at Pride '90, I am enclosing a copy of my letter to Sysack Sign. I sent it certified mail in hope that it would look important enough not to be discarded unopened by a secretary directed to vigilance against protest. On Sunday, I drove by the Pearl Road address. Even my fifteen-year-old daughter commented with insightful understatement on the character of the maker of such a sign.

I dare not be a high profile in our community. I can, however, write a letter to vent my own anger and, perhaps, to cause Sysack to do some self-assessment. As organizer of [the June 23] protest, you have serious consequences to consider. I wish success to you and to all participants.

Mr. Sysack:

We are blessed that our nation grants us all freedom of speech and that you are exercising this right through your Pearl Road sign addressing the gay and lesbian community. However, you seemingly ignore the fact that a right is void without a responsibility. Specifically, your sign ignores your responsibility to use your right in a manner which respects the right of others to a personal life free of harassment. Your apparent lack of responsibility would indicate that you do not support the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Indeed, for more than two hundred years, American

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alarmed: homosexuals are usually the children of heterosexual parents. More importantly, your attitude may be causing that percentage of youth considerable psychological stress, a form of abuse more damaging than physical abuse. Consider as well the financial loss you perhaps have caused your company. Knowing your bias, many businesses that acknowledge the Bill of Rights in its proclaiming of individual right with responsibility may have taken their patronage elsewhere. As a result, you deprive income to your company and, therefore, to your employees. By most standards, this is irresponsible management, but you have the right to lose as much money as you choose.

In conclusion, I anticipate that your sense of responsibility will quickly improve and that I will soon receive written reply as evidence. I anticipate also that your reply will include specifics concerning your obliterating the abusive sign and your replacing it with one expressing your company's apology to the gay and lesbian community in particular and to the residents of Cleveland in general. I will be pleased to write this apology for you. I offer this service because the present offensive sign also proves your company's need for competency in written English.

(Name withheld by request)

The Chronicle encourages everyone to write and express their opinion about the paper or life in general. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity. We will print your name unless you specifically ask us not to.

Address letters to the Chronicle, P.O. Box 5426, Cleveland, Ohio, 44101. Include your address and phone number, so we may contact you.