INTENTIONAL SECOND EXPOSURE
'Queer Nation' proliferates nationwide
by Carrie Wofford
QUEER NATION-RING LOWER BELL, the halfinch tall lettering directs the newcomer. Upon ringing, one is admitted to a dimlylit, unrenovated basement room where twenty-eight people sit on chairs and pieces of wood in a circle not larger than 14 feet in diameter. This is the fifth meeting of the Queer Nation of Philadelphia.
On the other side of the country, a member of the 300-strong Queer Nation of San Francisco announces she's tired of making the trip from Oakland to sit through a strict and confusing meeting structure, and wants to start a Queer Nation of Berkeley/Oakland. The room is loud with applause, and others flock around her to plan their first meeting.
Just as ACT UP spread like wildfire through the country, groups of young lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, calling themselves the "Queer Nation" are now cropping up in major cities throughout the United States and Canada, just five months after Queer Nation was founded in new York City.
The last twelve days in July witnessed the simultaneous (though not coordinated) emergence of Queer Nation groups in Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Providence, Philadelphia, and Toronto. Recent additions include Detroit, Austin, Texas, Berkeley/Oakland, Calif., Contra Costa County (north of Berkeley), and Ithaca in upstate New York, which changed its name from Queer Rage to join the national
movement.
Sporting "Queers Bash Back" T-shirts and bright fluorescent stickers proclaiming "Keep America Queer" and "Dykes Demand Action" while they chant "We're here, we're queer, we're fabulous, get used to it," members of these "Queer Nations" are staging kiss-ins and marching through downtown and neighborhood districts across the country, garnering mainstream media attention along the way. Queer Nation was featured in New Yor
newspaper last month, and the front page of the New York Times' Metro section on Labor Day focused on the Pink Panther anti-violence vigilant patrol of New York's Queer Nation. Similarly, TV news shows
and mainstream newspapers carry reports of the group's actions in its many locales. A new militancy
Characterized as "more radical than ACT UP, if you can believe it," by Ed Koch, former mayor of New York, Queer Nation is the first group since the 1969 Stonewall Riots to espouse violence in the form of the slogan "Queers Bash Back!”
Currently, smaller and oftentimes more conservative cities seem closer than ever to the rumors of New York members chasing down 'queer-bashers' and holding them for the police. In San Francisco, it has become commonplace for the home addresses of gay-bashers to be announced at Queer Nation meetings.
Boston member Gregg Gonsalves threatens, "You bash us, we are going to bash back. We are out to show our anger and our rage." Given the militancy, some may wonder why Queer Nation is so popular around the country.
Providence organizer Padric Meagher described the impetus for the group as stemming from "a new militancy promoted at Pride." "I think protesting is unusual [here]," member Greg Gross offered. "People are used to seeing the gay pride march, but this kind of activism is new."
Gross attributes the new militancy to a number of recent homophobic incidents which "radicalized people."
In many cities, an increase in gay-bashings, as well as an increase in the awareness and publicity of those gay-bashings, have served to anger people, who then may be more open to the radical tactics of New York.
Following a rash of gay-bashings in Boston's gay neighborhoods this spring
and summer, Boston activists attending New York's Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade found the Queer Nation Take Back the Night March tremendously powerful" explained organizer, Michael Cronin. "A lot of people were talking about it. We saw an idea that was working." Similar gay: bashings, and the proximity to New York inspired Philadelphia's Queer Nation.
In addition to growing reports of gaybashings, the Providence gay community had suffered: the defeat of the gay rights bill in June; the entrapment of eleven gay men, and, for the first time in Rhode Island history, the creation of a legal defense for them; a "mini riot and weird slug-fest," as Meagher described it, at the AIDS Walk for Life June 3, when anti-gay radio talk show host and gubernatorial candidate,
Guardian Angels (called the "Pink Panthers" in New York and "DORIS SQUASH Demanding Our Rights In the Streets, Super Queers United Against Savage Heterosexism" in San Francisco,)
Direct actions galore
Toronto's 150 Queer Nation members have been busy since they formed July 22 through a rally in syr treal's severe police cra
and lesbians. They became the
Mongays! ry on
all the TV stations when they drowned out evangelical minister-turned-candidate Rev. Ken Campbell at a candidate's forum, and blocked the TV monitors with posters stating, "Queers Are Here, Get Used To It." They addressed gay students at the Univer-
dence, Rhode Island, activists representing the two queer political groups in Providence ACT UP/R.I. and the Rhode Island Alliance for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights-formed the group, and occasionally find themselves at odds with each other.
Those who called for the formation of a Queer Nation in Boston represent the broad range of Boston gay and lesbian organizers from the radical ACT UP and street theatre groups to the more establishmentoriented, lobbying groups, to Men of Ali Colors Together, to the gay funding and party source, the Grass Roots Gay Rights Fund, and even a publicity group, The Information Project. Of his lobbying group's interest in the broad Queer Nation coalition, Cronin said "the presence of a Queer
Just as ACT UP spread like wildfire through the country, groups of young lesbians, gays, and bisexuals calling themselves the "Queer Nation" are now cropping up in major cities throughout the United States and Canada, just five months after Queer Nation was founded in New York City.
Steve White showed up with supporters, unplugged the generator for the microphone, and spit on participants before police escorted him away; and a "homophobic diatribe" on White's radio station, WALE, including a report by the station manager that PWAS had told his sponsors they would spread AIDS-after ACT UP phone-zapped a list of advertising spon-
sors.
Gross joined Queer Nation after his lover was spit at. "You hear about homophobic people, but you don't realize the effect until you see it face to face."
Similarly, Mike Snell, the individual Currently trying to drum up support for a Queer Nation of Detroit, became politically involved this year when he found a lack of support for his gay marriage (or
sity of Toronto and other campuses with posters asking "Are You Enjoying Your Orientation?" about the now famous "Kissing Doesn't Kill" poster by Gran Fury for the Chicago transit system of two same-sex couples kissing. And they "crash[ed] that party" when Rev. Jerry Falwell joined his Toronto equivalent in Campbell on Friday, September 14. They also plan to travel to Ottawa with Montreal's Lesbians and Gays Against Violence in October to demand that sexual orientation be included in the federal Bill of Rights.
In Los Angeles, the 35 members of Queer Nation have helped
beer with ACT UP, have picketed to high light homophobia in the entertainment industry, and have visited the Beverly Center shopping mall and Hard Rock Cafe-which
Nation in Boston-pressure from the leftwill make it easier for those of us who are more moderate to get [legislation] through."
How confrontational can we be?
Already, groups are debating how confrontational they can afford to be. In Providence, members who are also involved in lobbying for the gay rights bill have voiced opposition to actions which might alienate legislators.
And, in Detroit, lesbians, bisexuals and gay men may not be ready for a Queer lot of people are
very closeted... and are opposed to joining groups," explains Snell. "I've had a hard time getting a chapter going." Additionally, Snell's vision of a Queer Nation is
"union") with his lover of seven years they armounced with flyers stating. "We're quite different from that espoused in New
The Queer Nation craze begins
Queer Nation started on March 20 of this year in New York, when a word-ofmouth meeting of a couple of friends "all longtime members of ACT UP,” according to one of the founders, Alan Klein turned up 60 people. The name “Queer Nation" came from "something [activists] had been saying for a long time”—an underground or joke name of sorts which had only been used officially once, a few years ago, by an ACT UP affinity group. "It just stuck and we used it for the group," explains Klein.
Currently 400 people attend the bimonthly meetings in New York, and break into 1520 different 'working groups, each to plan their own action on some current act of anti-gay violence or homophobia.
With a mission as "the new lesbian and gay direct action group dedicated to fighting homophobia and lesbian and gay invisibility," and without a leader, Queer Nation New York can be anything individuals plan.
Other cities have different (although similar) missions, and each city struggles with itself to develop its own way of making decisions.
Most of the Queer Nation groups engage in similar projects, such as visiting traditionally heterosexual nightclubs and shopping malls for non-confrontational visibility; "zapping" or showing up at homophobic institutions (e.g., religious groups aimed at 'saving' gay people, and music groups promoting gay-bashing); holding "Take Back the Night Marches," where gays march through and "reclaim" areas of frequent gay-bashings; and monitoring city streets at night for gay bashers through highlypublicized vigilante patrol groups, like the
Here, We're Queer, and We're Going Shopping," a take-off on ACT UP's chant to gain seriousness that they are "here, queer, and not going shopping."Plans include protesting the City Council for the lack of open recruitment of gay police officers.
The three actions in Providence, Rhode Island have focused exclusively on politicians who voted against their recentlydefeated gay rights bill. With a diversity of age and men and women, and with top billing on news stations, Queer Nation of Providence is feeling successful.
Boston traffic lights and subway station signs are routinely plastered with graphic images of gay and lesbian sex acts, as members of the Queer Nation Art Brigade visit city streets after taking over a heterosexual nightclub. Wheat-pasting posters and spray painting led to the arrest of one member on September 13. Boston is also planning a Queer Fair in a traditionally lesbian and pay gay area of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Similarly, in San Francisco, Queer Nation has staged numerous Kiss Ins, picnics, and frolics in major tourist areas such as Pier 39. Hundreds of members have visited shopping malls through their Suburban Homosexual Outreach Project (SHOP) and marched in the streets, with actions staged at least once and sometimes twice a week.
Moderate and radical come together
In most cities, ACT UP members are among the first to be interested in starting a chapter of Queer Nation, presumably because of the radical direct actions occurring in New York's Queer Nation.
Queer Nation has also produced some new partnerships for this visible, directaction movement. In the small city of Provi-
York. Snell plans to "try to keep it organized without a bunch of radicals running around" since "no one in town liked the Detroit ACT UP" leader. Snell is currently negotiating with the gay and lesbian lobbying group, the Michigan Organization of Human Rights to take on some of tha! group's activities. "I think sometimes ACT UP goes too far; sometimes they step over the boundaries, ruffling too many feathers."
t
And in Los Angeles, members disagree over whether to be less noisy and confrontational than New York and ACT UP/L.A., according to member Bill Faulkner. Acknowledging his personal preference, Faulkner states, "If I would have been in New York, I would have probably been dropping out by now" because of New York Queer Nation's loud disruptions of anti-gay religious groups.
In Los Angeles, the disagreement is less between radical vs. moderate queer activists, and instead falls along lines of angry vs. New Age anti-anger thinkers. Faulkner and others try not to respond out of anger, following their New Age spirituality, “A Course in Miracles," and their belief system of radical faeries. In order to continue planning actions, Los Angeles has “shelved for the moment" any discussion of how confrontational to be. ▼
Conclusion next month: Action versus "process," and should the insult queer be part of a group's name?
Carrie Wofford currently lives in North Carolina, where she is working to defeat Sen. Jesse Helms.