gay people's

SOCIAL OIL PERIODICAL

HRONI

Cleveland Public Library

September, 1991

Volume 7 Issue 3

SEP 3-19

Cleveland, Ohio

Let everyone in

Photo by Tom Ritter

Roger Zucker has founded Cleveland Unite, a new group dedicated to eliminating discrimination and separatism in the lesbian-gay community. Story on Page 4.

New statewide gay organization is focus of Columbus meeting

Gays and lesbians from across Ohio are invited to attend a statewide town meeting on Sept. 28-29 in Columbus.

The two-day meeting offers various regional and statewide sessions of interest to all Ohio lesbians and gays. Of particular interest to the community will be a 'state of the state' address delivered by Rhonda Rivera, who is a professor of law at Ohio State University. There will also be breakout sessions to clarify goals, purposes and structure for a new statewide organization.

Mike Radice and Chris Cozad have agreed to co-facilitate the meeting. Radice is a Cleveland native and currently serves on the board of the Center. He is also active in Stonewall Cleveland. Cozad is a longterm lesbian activist from the Columbus area and the current president of Stonewall Union in Columbus.

Both Radice and Cozad were present at a July 20 meeting organized by Lynn Greer in Columbus. More than 20 lesbians and gays from across Ohio met then to share their interest in forming a statewide political and educational organization. Issues discussed included how such an organization might get started, how it should be structured and other relevant topics. Those attending agreed on three basic ideas:

There is a need in the lesbian and gay community for a statewide vehicle to transmit information.

There is a need for genuine two-way communication between the state government and the statewide lesbian and gay community.

There is a need for a statewide lesbian and gay organization whose function is primarily political and educational.

Organizers admit that the July meeting was hardly representative of the whole state. It was decided that more comments are needed before any further plans can be made. Organizers are seeking input from all corners of the state's lesbian and gay community to make meaningful decisions.

Accommodations for out-of-town guests are available in public facilities as well as private homes. Child care, accessibility and dietary needs have also been addressed

AnIndependent Chronide ofthe Lesbian & Gay Community

Soviets make history with their first gay pride event

Symposium includes film festival and kiss-in

by Christine H. Stockton

Moscow History was made July 23 through August 2 in the Soviet Union, when 70 gay activists, primarily from the United States, met with their Soviet counterparts for the International Symposium and Film Festival in Leningrad and Moscow, held a kiss-in, distributed condoms and cruised up the Neva River.

The fact that the symposium took place at all in the homophobic and byzantine Soviet system was due to the herculean efforts of the organizers. Those included Julie Dorf and Jim Toevs of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Right Commission; Roman Kalinin, president of the Moscow Union of Lesbians and Gay Men; and Olga Zhuk, president of the Tchaikovsky Foundation for the Defense of Sexual Minorities.

For four days in Leningrad and three in Moscow, U.S. and Soviet participants met to share information in small workshops with topics ranging from gay media to AIDS-prevention education to spirituality. Daily plenaries drew hundreds of people to seminars on such topics as the world AIDS epidemic, homophobia and forms of oppression.

Such luminaries as Victor Dzozdovt of

Leningrad City Council; Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society; Marjorie Hill, New York Mayor David Dinkins' liaison to the gay community; and Sven Robinson, the openly gay Canadian Member of Parliament, spoke movingly in the many plenaries to an audience that had never experienced such a public gay

event.

The Gay Film Festival, brought by Frameline of San Francisco, coincided with the symposium. Films such as Maurice, Desert Hearts, and The Times of Harvey Milk were screened to full houses. More than 15,000 tickets were sold, making it the fifth largest gay and lesbian film festival in the world.

CONTENTS

Editorials

Letters

Hate Crime Update

Question of the Month

Cleveland gay rights measures.

Forty Whacks.

Eleventh bowling season.

Book Briefs.

Gay Steppers

Charlie's Calendar.

Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Student Serv-

Personals

Resource Directory

ices, at 614-292-6200; Mike Radice in They left the dust, too

Cleveland at 651-4439; or Karen Schnei-

by the meeting organizers.

For reservation forms or for more infor-

mation, contact Phil Martin, OSU Office of

Four lesbians and two gay men from Siberia attended the symposium. Having just recently come out of the closet, they organized a group in the area, and decided to travel over 1,000 miles to the symposium.

On the second day of the symposium, there was a night cruise up the Neva River. The only serious run-in with Soviet officials occurred at a gay disco in Leningrad. U.S. citizen Alan Samuelson was arrested while

re-entering the disco about 4:00 a.m. with two Soviet friends. The police made lewd references to them being gay, beat up one of the Soviet men and put Samuelson in jail for six hours. When the police supervisor arrived at 11:00 a.m., he apologized and said the police thought the young men were thieves and that they were "protecting" Samuelson. He was released with most of his possessions.

Ironically, Samuelson is a member of the San Diego police force.

Thirteen members of the U.S. gay media were allowed to visit a minimum-security prison in Leningrad. After a two-and-a-halfhour wait outside, the group entered the dingy, run-down prison yard. To the shock of the group, they were escorted right into the cramped men's barracks, where j freely interviewed the prison inmates, including offenders of Article 121, the country's sodomy law. One man serving time under Article 121 claimed he was heterosexual and that his wife had accused him of being gay to get rid of him.

Some of the U.S. contingent paid an unusual visit to the AIDS ward in city hospitals of both Leningrad and Moscow. Only a few patients with AIDS at a time are allowed to come and go as they please from the hospitals. Many stay, however, because their passports are stamped "infected" and they cannot work or even safely go home to an Continued on page 16

Photo by Tom Ritter

derman in Wooster at 262-1927. ▼

One printer was all that was left of the Chronicle's publishing system after thieves stole computers and other equipment August 10. Story on page 4.

Milwaukee gays talk about Dahmer case

Page 11