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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

November, 1991

Western reserve log cabin club formed

by Kimberly Taylor

Within the community, the mere mention of lesbian and gay Republican produces a wave of giggles and moans at the very least. Bob Reynolds, co-founder and treasurer of Stonewall-Cleveland, believes that many doth protest too much.

"I would guess that behind the closed curtain of the poll booth about 40% of the gay community votes Republican. Certainly a significant number do."

Reynolds, who is ou as a Republican, was one of seven people who attended the first meeting of the Western Reserve Log Cabin Club, September 30.

The national executive director of the Log Cabin Club, Scott Minos, came up from Washington, D.C. to tell the gathering about the history, goals and benefits of the organization. The Log Cabin Club has 21 chapters representing 15 states and more than 600 members.

To form a chapter a group must have 10 members, pay national dues for the

newsletter and accept the national bylaws.

According to one local member, the group was welcomed and recognized by Lee Atwater, the late national committee chairman of the Republican Party. Also, representatives of the group were invited to the White House to witness the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Hate Crimes Bill.

Asked whether the Log Cabin Club would address the need for gay Republicans to come together or the need for gays to participate in the two-party system more fully, Reynolds said he would hope the group would address both issues.

"It is appropriate that the Republican Party be reminded of its heritage," Reynolds said. "So it is important that gay activists be involved in the process.'

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Because the group is in the organizational stage, Reynolds did not want to speak specifically on what the group hopes to do. He did have some ideas on what he would

like to see happen.

"My personal goal is that we will go beyond being a discussion group. The core of people involved are interested in being part of the political process," he said.

He said he would hope to endorse candidates, but that it is too premature to speculate on that. "But we do plan to form a PAC. So we would financially support candidates who support our issues."

"I personally hope that it will be inclusive. We want to identify the fact that there are lesbians and gays who are registered Republicans and that we are politically active. We want to bring this to the attention of the Republican Party."

Reynolds is aware that there are recent incidents that have not put the Republican Party in a favorable light, specifically the veto of the gay rights bill by Calif. Gov. Pete Wilson and the hearings and even the initial nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas. He said that he could not really speak to

why Wilson would do an apparent about-face in California without being more aware of the political environment, but he did have some comments on Thomas and the "Anita Hill fiasco."

He believed that the Confirmation hearings were approached from a “purely political standpoint and, as a result, the process was defeated. Logical questions dealing with appropriate issues were not asked."

In fact, it is Reynolds' belief that the reason Thomas appeared evasive was because the questions asked were not clear.

What Thomas and Hill went through was unfortunate for both, he said. "Public awareness on sexual harrassment will be gained because of the process they went through. But the personal price on the part of these two individuals was an awfully high price to pay."

The Western Reserve Log Cabin Club will meet next at Snickers at 6:30 p.m. on November 13. ▼

"My Own Private Idaho" not perfect, but worthwhile

by W.A. Brooks

Gus van Sant has written and directed a beautiful film, though by no means a perfect nor politically correct vehicle. However, "My Own Private Idaho" is a thoughtful effort, a film more than a Hollywood backers' investment.

It is a despondent love story,--and that love is homosexual, despite Vincent Canby's sterile and skewed New York Times plot retelling, which skirts the centrality of this love in the film.

Van Sant, a painter-turned-filmmaker, has made use of the success of his last film, "Drugstore Cowboy," which gave him financial credibility in Hollywood, to realize a project he has been thinking about for some time. "Idaho" combines stunning imagery, sometimes-Shakespearean prose, existential

emptiness and despair in this tale of yearning, affection, loyalty and muted pain.

Mike Waters (River Phoenix) is a street hustler, a sensitive, passive young man with a past and future both uncertain. Mike has narcolepsy, an a-typical case with epilepsy-like twitching), and fellow-hustler Scott Favor helps him out of some of the situations, e.g. tricks he falls asleep into.

Scott (Keanu Reeves) comes from a privileged background, his father being the mayor of Portland. And so his street life is an education and a rebellion. He will soon inherit the family money.

Heading the loose confederation of hustlers is a delightful character named Bob "round as butter". He is at once foolish and wise, perverse, and grandiloquent; his

dialogues with Scott are bafflingly absurd and pitifully comic. Bob has been Scott's mentor; they had a "thing," as Scott puts it.

Mike and Scott grow close. On a trip in search of Mike's mother, home movie flashbacks of whom keep haunting him, Mike gently, touchingly, confesses his love for Scott. This scene is beautifully, achingly inarticulate.

We hope for more, but eventually Scott does come into his fortune and his "respectability," and finally, we are left with: Mike, unfulfilled, on the long, empty road, just as the movie opened.

When taken together, the long still shots of gorgeous landscape and clouds and the snapshot love/sex scenes interspersed with the artificial/theatrical and naturalistic elements of the action, are not easy to

understand. But they add an atmosphere of sad, mythological dream-intensity, and a comic theatricality to the experience (e.g., the touching, comic, pitiful idea of a street hustler falling uncontrollably into a deep sleep in the middle of a public road).

The atmospheric background music of Bill Stafford adds to the general cool stillness of the movie.

The director, who does not see himself as a spokesperson for the gay and lesbian movement, much less as a political person, has not made a movie for all gays and lesbians to identify with; several of its gay characters are predatory, unloving, eccentrics. As an artistic experience-a movie about loneliness, beauty, and inarticulate love-it is head and shoulders above most of what-passes-for-art in movie theatres today.▼

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