PUBLIC

gay people's CLEVELAND PURUARY

HR O

SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPT.

PERIODICAL

Cleveland, Ohio

October 16, 1992

Volume 8 Issue 4

60 cents

On Newsstands

An Independent Chronicle of the Lesbian & Gay Community

Gay city workers get job bias protection

by Brian DeWitt

A new contract agreed to by the City of Cleveland and a union representing 1,500 city workers includes, for the first time, protection from job discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Local 100 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees voted over the October 3 weekend to accept the contract, which was the result of negotiations between the city and the union. The local, the largest of 22 city worker unions, represents clerical, professional, and technical workers in all city departments.

"To my knowledge, this is the only city contract with sexual orientation protection," said Bob Laycock, a community development planner with the city. "It may be the first time Cleveland employees have had this protection." Laycock, who is also a past board president of the Center, initiated the process which led to including the language in the contract. Prior to entering into negotiations with the city Local 100 leaders sent questionnaires to members last November asking what issues concerned them. Laycock included a document with his form urging the union to take up a lesbian-gay non-discrimination clause as a bargaining issue, and explaining why it was needed. With no fanfare, his request was included in the closed-door bargaining sessions. "I didn't hear any feedback from the leadership," Laycock said, "It was just done."

The resulting contract added "sexual orientation" to the six existing categories in its non-discrimination clause, which now reads: "... Both the City and the Union hereby reaffirm their commitments, legal and moral, not to discriminate, in any manner relating to employment, on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, handicap, age, or sexual orientation."

The contract only covers Local 100 members. The city is also negotiating contracts with 20 other unions. "It's unlikely to have much impact on the others at the moment," Laycock said, because they are at an advanced stage of negotiation. How-

ever, he expressed hope that this would influence the other city unions to include sexual orientation protection in future con-

tracts.

The 341-214 vote in favor of the contract

be 104

Someday, we'll read that headline

Photo by Kevin Beaney

Lesbian-Gay Community Service Center board president Dolores,Noll, right, and Judy Maher of Greater Cleveland Community Shares help kick off Shares' annual fundraising drive on Public Square, September 10, with a headline-writing contest. Noll's headline, CITY PASSES GAY RIGHTS ORDINANCE, in the background, was one of several winners.

Greater Cleveland Community Shares is an umbrella federation that raises funds for 21 social justice and advocacy groups, including the Center, through payroll deduction. Offered as an alternative to the United Way, Community Shares supports grass-roots groups that focus on social change, in addition to providing social services.

Each year at this time, Community Shares campaigns for employers and individuals to sign on and make donations through payroll deduction programs.

As a Shares member, the Center annually receives unrestricted funds from the collective. In 1991, Community Shares raised more than $240,000.

Kentucky high court strikes sodomy law,

was the final step in the negotiating process. says U.S. Supreme Court is 'misdirected'

The contract will go into effect immedi-

ately upon being signed by union and city by Lisa Keen representatives, in the next few weeks.

Suspect held in Nusser

murder case

by Martha Pontoni

In a defiant rebuke of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1986 decision upholding laws prohibiting homosexual sodomy, the Kentucky Supreme Court last Friday struck down its sodomy law, saying that the phrase "Equal Justice Under Law" inscribed above the entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court "is more than a mere aspiration" in Kentucky.

"It is," wrote the Kentucky high court, "part of the 'inherent and inalienable' rights

protected by our Kentucky Constitution."

Detailing how the Kentucky attorney general's office had relied heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court's reasoning in the Bowers v. Hardwick sodomy opinion, the Kentucky high court rejected the reasoning that "the level of moral indignation felt by the majority of society" is justification for a sodomy law as applied to gays only.

The Kentucky court also chastised the state attorney general's office for trying to justify the sodomy law using the same

argument used in the Hardwick decision-that homosexual sodomy has been punished as a crime since the creation of "common law."

"While we respect the decision of the United States Supreme Court on the protection of individual liberty, and on occasion we have deferred to its reasoning," wrote the four-to-three majority, "certainly we are not bound to do so, and we should not do so when valid reasons lead to a different conclusion . . . '

Evan Wolfson, an attorney with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, in the case, said the Hardwick decision has,

Surprise--no veto! But California which submitted a friend-of-the-court brief

rights law covers workplace only

Brooklyn police have arrested and charged a suspect in the murder of Robert Nusser. According to the police, Kevin Alan Fisher, 30, Nusser's longtime sexual partner, left Mix Drinkery with Nusser on September 18. They proceeded to Nusser's Brooklyn home where the murder took by Rachel Timoner place. Robert Nusser was stabbed over 70 times in the back and chest.

Nusser, 42, taught in the Cleveland School District for 21 years. He was a member of Over the Rainbow's softball team and bowled with the Sunday Gay Bowling league.

Although the Brooklyn police refused assistance from the gay community to help find Nusser's murderer, it is widely believed that the anonymous call to Crime Stoppers leading to Fisher's arrest was from a member of the gay community.

Fisher was arrested at his apartment Saturday, October 3 without incident. Fisher, according to the police, has no prior criminal record, and is unemployed.

Anyone with any additional information can call the Brooklyn police, the Maryann Finegan Project at 522-1999 or the Chronicle at 621-5280.

To the shock of lesbian and gay leaders and activists across the state, California Governor Pete Wilson signed a very limited sexual orientation anti-discrimination bill into law on September 25. He had been expected to veto the bill, having vetoed another gay civil rights measure a year ago.

The action made California the seventh state in the nation to protect lesbians and gay men from discrimination on the job, after Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut, New Jersey and Vermont.

Assembly Bill 2601, the bill signed by the governor, officially states the inclusion of sexual orientation as a protected category in the state's Labor Code. It does not include protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, nor does it apply to religious institutions or

small business enterprises with fewer than five employees.

According to the California Employment Development Department, more than 60 percent of the state's 725,000 employers are small business enterprises.

"Let's be clear: Wilson is not being generous but politically astute. This is a watered-down version of AB 101 (the bill vetoed last year). This is the right and decent thing and its time has come," said San Francisco Supervisor Carole Midgen.

Many people in the community felt, and continue to feel, that there was much ado about nothing, including Supervisor Harry Britt. "No, I wasn't out there dancing," he said. "That's because I don't think that anything that straight politicians do is going to make us free."

But Britt said that he thought that the Continued on Page 8

Continued on Page 8

CONTENTS

Election endorsements

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2 3

Is Oakar not our ally?.. Torie Osborn to head NGLTF .. 4 Colorado votes on gay rights ban 6 Pontoni on police board .... West Point Market case dropped 8 17 performers at Center show. 10 18 This Buchanan isn't Pat ..... Rep. Pringle is solid supporter. 19 Candidates answer Stonewall.. 20 Gay radio at a Catholic school? 22 Are we 10%, or a lot more? ... 24 Cornelius Utz has retrospective 28 On coming out.. Charlie's Calendar Resource Directory.

Election information and endorsements inside