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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE July, 1991

Editorial

Signs of the times

With the end of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month otherwise known as June comes a more quiet period. Now we can take a little time to reassess and reflect after several weeks of special activities, fun and visibility.

Hopefully we each were able to accept ourselves a little more. For that's the basic issue of "pride": accepting ourselves and then feeling good and proud about who we are, regardless of where we are along our private journeys.

If you are just beginning to come out, or to accept yourself as lesbian or gay or bisexual, congratulate yourself on your decision. If you've traveled far in your personal journey as a gay man or lesbian, issues such as "being out" don't frighten you as much as before. But your energies are probably focused on other concerns such as discrimination and bashing issues. Don't forget to also use your knowledge and experience to help others who aren't so far along and confident.

Why such a focus on gay and lesbian concerns? Well, if the human population could accept each member without

of where we stand based on incidents observed during the past month.

Banner day

The Cleveland Lesbian-Gay Pride Committee arranged to have a banner stretch across Detroit Ave. at West 29th announcing that June 22 was Pride Day. Everyone on the committee knew that a risk was being taken. Instead of hoisting the banner on June 1 as originally planned, it was delayed until June 10 in the hopes that this simple statement of fact would last the two weeks until Pride.

This was not to be.

Some self-appointed defender of majority ignorance chose to tear down and destroy the sign. We still take pride in the fact that it was on display for three days and reached an audience of thousands. We also applaud the Committee's decisions to take the initial risk, prosecute the individual, and hoist a replacement banner on June 20 which lasted through the Pride festival.

hang-ups, reservations or prejudice, Sing it loud

then being lesbian or gay would be a non-issue and we could all get on with loving whomever we choose. But that is not yet the case.

So do we hide and wish the situation were different? Or do we accept ourselves and stand up for our basic rights? Do we educate the population, or do we wish someone else would? Do we identify ourselves only in June?

The Chronicle has never suggested hiding and waiting. Maybe some people will be "offended" in the process of asserting ourselves, but the alternative is darkness, loneliness, shame imposed by othe and self-denial.

Let's not restrict our pride to a oncea-year celebration, like old soldiers with their medals. Let's live it every day and work in whatever way we can towards full acceptance of our basic human rights.

Gay visibility takes may forms within the community. In some cases it is near invisibility which, in our opinion, does not help the cause. Here are some signs

The North Coast Men's Chorus has already been chided in the Chronicle about its omission of the word Gay in its name. We don't seek to constantly bash a group which is a vital and visible force in the community, but we do need to clarify our position.

Yes, the Chorus makes a point when they say the only purpose of the group is for men to sing: "We're not just a gay group.' But'cha are, Blanche. We find their logic weakest when they use it as an argument to allow straight men to join. Precisely what straight men? And if a straight man joins the Chorus, can he request that the others not talk about their lifestyle? Will he feel threatened if he is cruised? If a straight man wants to join a group composed entirely of gay men to sing, fine. But we don't think the inclusion or exclusion of the dreaded "G" word will change the decision of this hypothetical straight man.

We do think certain members of the Chorus are using this as an excuse to perpetuate their own internalized homophobia. Since its founding, the Chorus has

Guest Opinion

AIDS hysteria at our borders

by Julie Rioux,

Dana Van Gorder

and John Willoughby

Ten years into the AIDS epidemic, even the most basic efforts to stem the tide of the disease can still be derailed by "politics as usual." If we needed more confirmation of this dismaying fact, we received it last month when members of the Bush administration moved to continue bans on travel and immigration to the United States by people with HIV.

This development, which ignores sound public-health policy in order to pander to homophobia, racism and xenophobia, is all the more discouraging because it had seemed that this time, on this one issue, common sense and medical science might prevail.

After a nationwide survey of publichealth officials, the Centers for Disease Control had concluded that entry of HIV-infected people does nothing to protect the American people, and even the conservative American Medical Association weighed in on the side of

reason.

In the face of this unanimous body of

medical and public-health opinion, the administration's own top health officials had publicly called for lifting travel and immigration restrictions.

James Mason, assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, declared that unrestricted travel by HIV-infected individuals "imposes no significant additional risk of HIV infection to the U.S.," and in January of this year Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan issued a proposed regulation removing HIV from the government's list of diseases that trigger restrictions on entry into the United States.

This regulation was to take effect June 1. At the last minute, however, conservative forces within the Bush administration pressured Sullivan into leaving in place the old list, which does contain HIV. The government has allowed a 60-day period for public comment on this action.

As they so often do, those who would institute reactionary AIDS policies are attempting to throw up a smokescreen of justifications. In this case, they argue that immigrants with HIV may become "public charges," costing the nation scarce healthcare dollars.

caved in to the irrational fears of a few. It would be nice to see the majority of the membership push down the closet door and stand up gay and proud.

Bar none

The Stonewall incident of 1969 is recognized as the start of the modern-day gay movement. The participants rebelled against "routine police raids” of gay bars. In a generation we have emerged from those dark days when no one talked about being out.

So, we wonder, why do so many gay bars perpetuate that in-the-closet type of shame by neglecting to post noticeable signs outside their establishments? To this day you can go into most towns and find a gay bar by looking for a building with lots of parked cars, but without a sign! Yes, there are occasional raids or police harassment incidents which, as a community, we need to monitor and resolve. But let's not deny our right to be out and proud in the meantime.

To those bars and clubs that are willing to identify themselves to the "outside" world with more than a street number or discreet note on the door we say thank you for reminding us that this is the gay '90s, not the 1950's.

Pearl of wisdom

And finally, the big non-event of June was the lack of any anti-gay commentary on the Sysack billboard at the intersection of State and Pearl Roads. For two years running this opinionated individual has chosen anti-gay themes to grace his personal soapbox during June, including the notorious Names Quilt parody which the community protested against last year.

Perhaps our show of force got through to him then. For some people, education means more than a calm discussion over coffee. If indeed Sysack has seen the harm in verbal and written gay bashing, we've done our job and we thank him for his community responsibility.

But we must be ever vigilant throughout the year, not just June, to claim our rights and also to celebrate the signs of events changing in our favor.

This argument, however, is the height of hypocrisy. No such arguments have been raised with regard to other, equally expensive diseases, and in any case the purpose of the list of excludable diseases is to protect, not the wallets of the American people, but their health.

In this regard, the revived entry restrictions are not only useless, they are actually harmful. They lend widespread public credence to discredited notions that the threat of AIDS comes from abroad, or that the disease can be spread by casual contact, rather than by engaging in specific, unsafe behaviors.

By reinforcing these dangerous myths about the ways in which HIV is transmitted, the Bush administration cynically undercuts the very education and prevention efforts it claims to support.

These restrictions also convey to the American public-and to the entire world the message that it is acceptable to discriminate against people with HIV. After 10 years of struggling to lift the burden of discrimination in housing, jobs and health care, we cannot allow the U.S. government to take such a step backward. We can be virtually certain that the re-

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stored regulations will be arbitrarily enforced, not only against people with HIV in general, but disproportionately against gay men and people of color.

To encourage and sustain this cruel and groundless prejudice is a brutal and unconscionable act which must be repudiated.

The discriminatory nature of the proposed regulations is even more widespread than it would appear on the surface. For example, people who are seeking to enter the United States but are refused entry on the grounds of their HIV status will in many cases be subjected to severe discrimination in their country of origin once the reason for this denial is revealed. Nor is the reach of bigotry limited to those outside our borders. Under the proposed regulations, resident aliens in the United States who are found to be HIV-positive can be deported to their country of origin. The cynicism and hypocrisy of this rule is underscored by the fact that most people in this situation became infected during their

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