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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
October, 1991
Lakewood candidates for Judge seek lesbian and gay votes
by Kim Taylor
Pounding the pavement and knocking on doors. It's this style of campaigning that lead Dan Stringer and Kathleen Craig, two of five contenders for Lakewood's Municipal Court, to call on the Chronicle. Both stress that they hope to represent all of Lakewood's citizens, should either be elected.
"I'm interested in all groups of people, and I just want to make sure people know I'm interested," said Craig.
Both Craig and Stringer were led to the Chronicle by people who had the courage to come out. For Craig, it was a member of the housekeeping staff at the County Prosecutor's office.
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Dan Stringer
Stringer was led to seek the gay community's vote by a lesbian who is on his law office staff. He said she took him to the Gay Pride Festival where he spoke with people about their concerns.
Stringer and Craig, despite their common interest in serving all constituents and their door-to-door campaign style do have different ways of approaching problems.
For instance, Stringer freely spoke of his interest in taking innovative approaches to justice, such as alternative conflict resolution and mediation. "Most municipal courts are simple places. I would like to take the court and see how it can be worked to help people."
He thinks most judges understand the law,
but never understand the problem.
When asked about her judicial philosophy, Craig cited the Code of Judiciary Responsibility, most specifically canon seven, in saying that she could not ethically give that sort of opinion. "The most I can say is that I will be fair and impartial."
She feels that Municipal Court is a very important place because it is the most frequent court people will go through. ""That is why it is important to be fair, impartial and honest, to present a positive impact at that level, and to handle each case individually.”
In their legal and personal backgrounds, Craig and Stringer have run up against the inequities perpetrated against lesbians and gays, and have developed their own philosophies on handling these abuses.
During her career, Craig has seen gays as victims of felonious assault. It is important to her that gays in a court headed by her "would be treated with the same dignity and respect as anyone else".
Stringer takes a slightly different stance. "I'm more concerned about minorities because they are usually the ones who society denies their rights.'
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His biggest concern is about what is
happening to the First Amendment because such rights as privacy, freedom of expression
he does not believe people are as secure in
and association and unwarranted search and seizure as they were ten years ago.
"I'm concerned about good people allowing certain things to happen in the name of law and order and the war on drugs."
On gay bashing, Stringer said, "I consider violence more than just hitting someone. I find violence in society to be anything that effects people's basic rights."'
Their Backgrounds
KATHLEEN CRAIG is Lakewood through and through, having been born and graduated from there. She attended both Minnesota and Baldwin-Wallace colleges, getting a bachelor's degree in social sci-
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Kathleen Craig
ences. She received her law degree from Cleveland Marshall School of Law in 1983.
In Lakewood Municipal Court, she was a law clerk and a judicial referee in both the civil and criminal areas.
She has been a Assistant County Prosecutor in the Criminal Division for five years.
You have to like a guy who was blacklisted by Richard Nixon. DANIEL STRINGER had this privilege while working with Ramsey Clark as part of a group of lawyers who observed abuses against anti-Vietnam demonstrators.
Stringer also is a Lakewood native, stating that he comes from "a family of five generations in service to the Lakewood community".
He served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, where he found that a lot of laws are "more poetry than policy".
He has spent 28 years as a trial attorney, and now has his own firm. He was graduated from John Carroll University and Cleveland Marshall School of Law.
The other candidates are Patrick Carroll, John Dowling, and William Chinnock. The election is Nov. 5th.▼
Public Theater adapts Genet's The Balcony
The Cleveland Public Theater is currently presenting an adaptation of The Balcony by 20th-century gay playwright Jean Genet. The play is set in an unspecified revolutionary time and all of the action takes place within Madame Irma's "House of Illusions", a brothel that serves its clientele a little differently.
Each customer chooses a fantasy role to play--usually someone great, like a judge, a general, or a bishop--and Madame Irma has her rooms set up to provide the appropriate setting. Thus the play concentrates more on how people want to deceive themselves and pretend to greatness than it does on sexual release.
So much attention is paid to fantasy that the whole play begins to take on a surreal sense. It's easy to understand the individual johns who want to do drag, but who are these characters who come from the "outside"?
There's a chief of police who makes his way through the revolution to save Irma and the house, but he's not a man of much action. An envoy to the queen spends more time posing riddles than making diplomatic arrangements. Then there's Chantal, the former prostitute who becomes a singing revolutionary symbol.
What precisely is "real" in the play? The audience is left to decide.
CPT's adaptation, by the University of
Akron's James Slowiak and the University of California at San Diego's Lisa Wolford, uses one large stage area to present all the characters, their fantasies, and selfish thinking process. Genet's play is pruned and rearranged, but the essence of the absurd and sexually shocking is retained. The cast is strong and quite pleasant to look at.
The Balcony probably does not meet the definition of a “gay play”, but the sexual ambiguity of many of the characters, including both physical attractions and a penchant for drag, certainly makes a gay audience feel right at home with it.
The Living Room was the recipient of the box office proceeds from the Sept. 19th preview of the production. CPT traditionally donates the preview-night admissions to a community organization, and the HIV support services of the Center's Living Room program received several hundred dollars thanks to the theater.
The Balcony has performances on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8:30p.m. and Sunday at 3:00 p.m. through Oct. 13th. Ticket prices are $12 in advance for reserved seats, $10 at the door, and $7 for students and senior citizens. Also, on Monday, Oct. 7th, at 8:30 p.m. there is a special $2 admission night. Cleveland Public Theater, now sporting a bright neon sign, is at 6415 Detroit Ave. Call 631-2727 for further information.▼
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