Page 6
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
March, 1991
GLAAD says Sears and Allstate caved in to bigots
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation of New York is demanding an apology from Allstate Insurance, and its parent company, Sears, Roebuck. GLAAD is charging the companies with directing ABC-TV, in effect, not to place their commercials on television programs that include lesbian or gay characters.
An article in the January, 1991 issue of the American Family Association's Journal complained that Allstate advertised on a November 7 episode of ABC's nowdefunct Cop Rock that promoted "normal" homosexuality and "other perverse sex." It
urged its members to contact Allstate's parent company, Sears, for "helping to bring this sex sleaze to family viewing."
In a January 7 letter to Sears chairman Edward Brennan, GLAAD media committee chair Stephen Miller urged Sears not to be influenced by the American Family Association's protest.
"Imagine our surprise," said Miller, "when we received a form letter from Allstate vice president John Flieder apologizing for placing the commercial on a program with a content he deemed ‘offensive,' although he never saw the show!"
Rangers lists contributions
Rangers, Inc. has released its charitable contributions for the past two years as an indication of its ongoing commitment to help support the community. The Cleveland men's group is the only uniform club in northeast Ohio, and holds fundraising events, such as bar nights and runs to other cities.
Rangers considers its fundraising ef-
1989:
forts and charitable contributions to be important, and will continue these activities and will keep the community informed of their progress.
Rangers meets at 7:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of the month at the Leather Stallion, 2205 St. Clair. They can be contacted at P.O. Box 6504, Cleveland, 44101.▼
Northern Ohio Coalition AIDS Hospice Fund
$612.00
Northeast Ohio Task Force on AIDS
$390.00
Westem Reserve AIDS Foundation
$280.00
Living Room Project
$75.00
Lesbian-Gay Community Center
$50.00
Total
$1,407.00
1990:
Northeast Ohio Task Force on AIDS
$350.00
Western Reserve AIDS Foundation
$208.00
Health Issues Task Force
$158.00
Living Room Project
$150.00
Columbus AIDS Task Force
$100.00
Summit Bowling League (Christmas hams for PWAS)
$280.00
Collette Marie Infant Home (for children with AIDS) Total
$99.09
$1,345.09
$2,752.09
Total contributions for 1989 and 1990
Names Quilt returns to N.E. Ohio
Panels for the Names Project Quilt are now being accepted by the Cleveland Chapter for upcoming displays. Ohio Quilt panels can be seen in a week-long display from March 24 to 30 at the Rhodes and Riffe state office buildings in Columbus.
The Quilt comes home to Northeast Ohio, May 3 to 5, to Lakeland Community College. All Cleveland and Northeast Ohio-area panels have been requested for this display. If you would like to request that a panel be part of a specific display, please contact the local chapter.
The Cleveland Chapter of the Names Project continues to provide panels for small displays in northeast Ohio. Upcoming displays are scheduled for Youngstown, Canton, Orange, and Ohio Wesleyan University.
New panels for these and future area displays should be turned in now to the Cleveland chapter.
For panel-making assistance or information, or for answers to questions about displays, please contact the Names Project Cleveland Chapter at 281-1610. ▼
Marie Bielefeld, Ph.D.
Counseling Psychologist
Individual/Couple Counseling Women's Issues
●Self Expression Through Vocation ●Personal/Spiritual Growth
Challenges Associated with Medical Problems
and Disabilities
Health Insurance Accepted Day, Evening & Weekend Hours
15268 Triskett Rd.
(near Warren Rd./W.150th)
MICHELE
1-800-233-4799
HEART TO HEART Professional
Dog & Cat Grooming
"PLACE YOUR PET IN OUR HEARTS"
7 DAYS BY APPOINTMENT
(216) 741-2663
4760 STATE ROAD CLEVELAND, OHIO 44109
In addition, another letter was enclosed from Flieder to Thomas Murphy, chairman of Capital Cities/ABC Inc., charging that programming like the Cop Rock episode "degrades American views on the family and desensitizes youngsters' perceptions about sex." Flieder added, "The continued pushing of our country's moral standards is what should be considered. I have children and a grandchild and join with others in their concern about the direction too much television programming is taking."
"Allstate's corporate cowardice smacks of the blacklisting of the '50s," said Miller. "The company has bought into the fanatical right's definition of 'family viewing' as code for its anti-gay agenda. Flieder's letter to ABC adds to the climate of corporate
SACGLI
Continued from page 1
The committee produced its first report in 1985, which listed six recommendations. These included a ban on anti-gay discrimination in state labor contracts; adding sexual orientation to all state antidiscrimination posters; equal health and other benefits for lesbian and gay state employees; and developing a lesbian-gay sensitivity-training program for the governor's cabinet.
The 1985 report also recommended revising the earlier executive order banning anti-gay discrimination to include sexual orientation as an enumerated class covered by state equal employment opportunity policy, and the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. It said a a new executive order should be issued, prohibiting sexualorientation discrimination by people doing business with the state.
Optimistically, Eliot Fishman, a Columbus attorney and member of the SACGLI committee, told the Columbusbased Stonewall Union Reports, "The Celeste Administration has implemented quite a few proposals.”
In the five years since the 1985 SACGLI recommendations were proposed, Ohio has yet to amend relevant collective bargaining laws which would assure equalization of health and other benefits for lesbian and gay employees. Although an executive order included sexual orientation as an enumerated EEO class, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission still does not have jurisdiction over complaints of sexual orientation discrimination or harassment. There is also no executive order banning sexual orientation discrimination by people who contract with the state. Further, the cabinet training was never completed.
After submitting their first report in 1985, the committee began to organize public hearings for a more detailed report. SACGLI held public fact-finding hearings in Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, and Cincinnati. Hearings in Dayton were cancelled, despite recent incidents of discrimination and anti-gay violence in the southwestern Ohio city. The SACGLI committee was unable to find willing lesbians and gay men from Dayton to publicly testify. As the committee notes in its January 11 report, the public hearing process was hampered by a perception that public discussion of one's sexual orientation would merely foster more discrimination. According to Van Auken, who organ-
ATTENTION OVERWEIGHT
LESBIANS
Finally a Super Newsletter Just for You!
L.O.S.S.
(Lesbian Overweight Support Source) Informative, Supportive, Positive, Loving & Very Nicely Priced! Packed with 30 Pages or more of Articles, Information, Personals & More!
All overweight lesbians are welcome, L.O.S.S. editors are of mixed races.
Send $5. for a sample copy. Money Order Only To: L.O.S.S. 23146 Lorain Rd. Suite 321 North Olmsted, Ohio 44070
censorship of television programming which includes positive portrayals of lesbians and gay men. Gay people have families, too, and 25 million gay men and lesbians buy insurance and refrigerators. We won't support companies that exclude us."
In addition to an apology, GLAAD is asking Sears and Allstate to instruct their advertising representatives at Leo Burnett Co. to add “sexual orientation" as a category to any nondiscrimination policy in their advertising guidelines. GLAAD also has asked the companies to inform ABC that they will not allow anti-gay bias to play a role in the placement of their commercials.
ized the Cleveland hearings in 1988, the format at the hearing sites was not uniform. The only city to record the testimony was Cleveland. Other sources feel that the responsibility for the limited public testimony must fall on the committee in its failure to assure confidentiality, or to promote special provisions for assuring confidentiality.
The committee is also responsible for the delays in failing to produce this testimony into a useable product. According to Van Auken, at the end of October 1990, some important testimony had been misplaced or not yet typed.
Van Auken also said that SACGLI'S state-paid staff person, who was assigned the task of overseeing the public hearings and report, produced often unusable work product, had little insight to the relevant issues, and was not even a member of the Ohio lesbian and gay community.
The final SACGLI report, presented on January 11, expanded the recommendations from six to eight. The relevant changes were: the establishment of a permanent state office through the State's EEO office to address lesbian and gay concerns; statewide educational programs on lesbian and gay issues for state employees, expanding the sensitivity training of the governor's cabinet to include all EEO and personnel managers, and revision of the state's AIDS policy.
The final recommendation of the report is the governor should propose to the Ohio General Assembly amendments to various civil rights laws to include sexual orientation discrimination protections in employment, housing, public accommodations, and hate crimes for all Ohioans, not just state employees.
The report, according to Van Auken, left out critical testimony regarding hatemotivated violence, housing discrimination, and the need for expansion of the traditional family concepts.
Russ Stalk, the president of the Columbus Stonewall Union, praised the report and its recommendations in the group's newspaper, Stonewall Union Reports. "Members of SACGLI should be commended for the commendations made in their 1991 report," said Stalk. He recommends that "state officials act quickly and without unnecessary delay on the committee's recommendations."
Stonewall Cleveland president Karen Schneiderman reviewed the report and expressed her disappointment in the document. "Given the City of Cleveland's current interest in expanding local civil rights protections of lesbians and gay men in Cleveland, we had hoped this document would provide more testimony evidencing the urgent need for these legislative changes."
Schniederman also added that "we hope that the mistakes and difficulties experienced by the SACGLI committee will not be repeated. There is a history of regionalism and conflict within Ohio's lesbian and gay community which must now end. The entire state must from a collective, unified, and productive voice if we are to make any substantive changes in the status and protection of Ohio's lesbians and gays."