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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

September, 1991

Editorial

JoAnn Boscia for Lakewood mayor

Northeast Ohio's gay and lesbian community consists of many cities, villages and towns. The largest city is Cleveland, but the largest percentage of gays and lesbians live in Lakewood. How do we know that? Besides the Trivial Pursuit question which declares that Lakewood, Ohio has the greatest number of gays per capita in the U.S., we only need to look at the community mailing lists. Clearly, the overwhelming majority of our community lives in Lakewood, and the adjoining section of Cleveland.

October 1 is the Democratic primary for Lakewood mayor. Despite the large numbers of lesbians and gays who live in Lakewood, we as a community has been conspicuously quiet in political matters in that community.

That has to end. Gay and lesbian Lakewood citizens have no more excuses not to become involved. We are going to start now.

There are five Democratic candidates running in this primary: JoAnn Boscia, John Gallagher, Edward Graham, Brian Flannery and William Hudson.

Our choice for mayor of Lakewood is JoAnn Boscia.

The decision was between Gallagher and Boscia, because the other three candidates were either unreachable or did not want to talk to a gay newspaper. Both Gallagher and Boscia are fine candidates. If John Gallagher was running against anyone but Boscia we would be behind him. Even though we felt he had some learning to do about our issues, we felt he was teachable and preferable. But his lack of contact with the gay community, and his lack of knowledge of the issues which most affect us, such as police relations, violence, and visibility, made us wary. The bright spot is that he is willing to listen and hopefully to learn. If Gallagher were to win this election we would not be disheartened, just disappeintuu.

Our best bet for any kind of movement politically for the lesbian and gay community in Lakewood is JoAnn Boscia.

Boscia is no rainbow-flag waver. She isn't going to step into office and automati-

cally sign an executive order banning discrimination against lesbians and gays in public service. Boscia will make the lesbian and gay community work for what we want, but she is concerned, educated and willing to help our community be a visible part of

Lakewood.

learned there may be some problems. Again, actions speak louder then words.

Abortion is legal in the United Statesyou just can't have one in Lakewood. Last year the trustees of the city-owned

1 to r: Tim Hagan, Patrick Sweeney, JoAnn Boscia, Ed Feighan

As we were unable to ask her our questions directly because of our burglary and her family reunion, some of our information comes from her campaign chairman, Dennis Roche. Although it does seem strange we would endorse someone we didn't talk to directly, members of our editorial board have met with her on other occasion and Boscia herself has arranged meetings with Stonewall Cleveland and the Center. Information from those meetings was used, along with the answers to our questions, to make the decision.

Boscia says she is willing to publicly acknowledge the large number of lesbians and gays living in the city of Lakewood, a far cry from the days of the Cleveland magazine cover story in which a Lakewood mayor swore there were no gays in his city. She also eager to learn and be educated on those issues which are important to us. She is meeting with officials of the Maryann Finegan Project and the Center just to leam about being gay in the Cleveland area. Her interest is genuine and actions do speak louder than words.

Neither candidate would comment on a domestic partnership ordinance for Lakewood.

While Gallagher thought the police are probably doing okay dealing with anti-gay violence, and he did "assure they [the lesbian-gay community] are going to be safe and treated with respect,” Boscia has spent many hours riding around with Lakewood police, and set up the meeting with the Maryann Finegan Project when she

Guest Opinion

Lakewood Hospital voted to ban abortions from the facility. Now Lakewood women need to go elsewhere. Both candidates are pro-choice, but only Boscia said she would consider a trustee's stand on abortion when appointing them to the board. Gallagher specifically said he would not. Again, actions speak louder than words. A woman's freedom of choice is an important issue for everyone.

The endorsement may have been more difficult if Gallagher had been more active in the lesbian and gay community. The fact that he could only identify five calls from the community when he was Ward 4 (Gold Coast) councilman for nine years would indicate his contact with us is limited. We are encouraged about Gallagher's interest, but in this case Boscia is the person who will best serve not only our community, but all of the residents of Lakewood.

Because of our burglary, and space limitations, not all of the answers to the questions we asked of the candidates can be printed. If you are concerned and would like to know in more detail before you vote, call the Chronicle office at 6215280. We will be glad to talk to you and provide you with more detailed information.

National organizations are out of step on outing

by Tim Campbell

In February 1987, at one of the largest gatherings of committed gay rights activists in American history, the "war conference" that preceded the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, delegates endorsed sticking pink triangles on the `doors of legislative offices whose occupants opposed gay and lesbian rights during the day while enjoying the nighttime benefits of the gay community.

That's when "outing" got a national mandate. Subsequently, both the Human Rights Campaign Fund and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, our stodgiest rights groups, took stands opposing outing as if the war conference had never happened.

That's sad. Particularly now that Queer Nation groups throughout the country and abroad have commenced outing legislators and government officials with impressive

successes.

During the recent outing of Rep. Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin, the Human Rights Campaign Fund put itself in a particularly dishonorable position. While Queer Nation types were using data about Gunderson's House votes supplied by the

Campaign Fund to attack his record, HRCF officials Eric Rosenthal and Greg King vigorously denied knowledge of their own data and custom-designed a report card for Gunderson on which they gave him a 100 percent rating.

In order to construct this report card, Rosenthal and King had to overlook the fact that Gunderson is not a sponsor of the lesbian and gay rights bill; overlook ten consecutive votes against abortion rights in the last Congress; overlook 24 bad votes out of 25 on feminist issues in the last Congress; overlook bad votes on some of HRCF's own issues in the last Congress and only calculate ten selected votes; overlook bad votes on every civil rights bill yet to be presented to Congress during his tenure; overlook votes for Bork and Souter; and finally overlook his June vote against the 1991 Civil Rights Act.

They are probably also overlooking Gunderson's vote against a motion to conduct a national survey of teen-agers and their views on sex as a tool for fighting AIDS.

HRCF justifies its defense of Gunderson by characterizing him as "a moderate Republican."He does not look at all moderate on the battery of issues most likely to

concern the lesbian and gay communities as I see them. For HRCF to score him 100 percent when the National Women's Political Caucus scores him 4 percent insults one of our closest allies. To protect a politician who constantly votes against civil rights is sheer folly.It seems abundantly clear that HRCF and NGLTF need to come up with more complete report cards for members of Congress. Queer Nation types are on the right track.

HRCF and NGLTF also need to take a stand of neutrality rather than opposition to outing. They should take the same neutrality on all battles undertaken by hard-hitting activists. There's plenty of room in queer activism for both tough guys and nice guys, as long as we stop fighting each other. It's the so-called nice guys who err most frequently on this count.

When one looks at the infighting among gay activists on Capitol Hill, one senses quickly that there's something rotten in Denmark. I think the rot is on the side of HRCF, not Queer Nation and not ACT UP. ▼

Campbell is publisher and editor of GLC Voice, a Minneapolis lesbian-gay newspa-

per.

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Correction

In the August issue, Mayor Michael R. White's representative to the Stonewall political reception was incorrectly identified. His name is Jack Krumhansl. The Chronicle regrets the error.

Please bear with us

The theft of our computers is continuing to create difficulties. A lot of advertising and subscription information was lost with the machines.

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