GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE NOVEMBER 26, 1993

GIFTS OF ATHENA

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Judge blocks Issue 3

Continued from Page 1

nati, said "One of the tricky things we have to focus on now is public education. One of the main reasons Issue 3 passed was the rallying cry of 'no special rights', which was based on myths and lies. What will happen now is that people will say we are getting special treatment because the majority of voters said one thing and now the court is saying another."

She said it is now important to tell the public that the court made its decision not to extend special rights, but because one group of people had been targeted for attack and were being denied civil protection.

Bunge said there are a variety of options open to the gay and lesbian community to fend off attempts by the radical right to pass a statewide anti-gay initiative.

"We could push for a gay rights bill in the Statehouse, or, in coalition with other oppressed groups, we could try to push for an equal rights amendment to the state constitution," he said.

Another option is to adopt a wait-and-see approach and watch what the radical right does before taking any action, Bunge added.

In order to make some decision about the appropriate action to take, Citizens for Justice will co-sponsor a public forum December 7 at Ohio State University. Similar forums are being planned at locations throughout Ohio.

"We want to find out what people in the community think our strategy should be," Bunge said.

For more information about the public forum at OSU, call Stonewall Union in Columbus at 614-299-7764. ♡

AIDS activists cleared

Continued from Page 1

Says Al Cowger, ACLU of Ohio cooperating attorney who represents DeLong and Schwitzgebel, "I'm always an eternal optimist. I thought we had an open-and-shut case all along, but I'm glad it turned out this way."

The decision now facing DeLong and Schwitzgebel is whether to file a civil suit, and who to name in that suit if the decision to go ahead is made. "Right now I think we're going to give ourselves a little breathing room," says Cowger. "We may pursue this and try to put something on the books, trying to stop something like this from happening in the future."

Cowger and his clients agree that Bush officials were intent on presenting a supportive, unified photo opportunity for the media, and were willing to discard free speech in the process. In addition, campaign organizers seemed particularly "paranoid" about the possibility of disruption by members of ACT UP. After their arrest, the men endured several hours of interrogation by Secret Service agents centered largely on questions about ACT UP and any possible connection between the men and the group. Ironically, Cleveland had no organized ACT UP chapter at the time.

"The Secret Service agent was fully func-

tioning out of concern for the safety of the President," says Schwitzgebel, "and that's fine, it's his job. But I finally had to say 'Do you know of any ACT UP people in the area that I can talk to?" " DeLong continues, "I think then they realized that these two guys were no threat and they didn't know why we were being held."

For now, the ordeal has steeled the men's desire to continue their own activist efforts and may influence their decision to pursue the matter further. Both also now have established FBI and CIA files. "Rather than take my papers and run, I feel I owe something to my friends and my community to not take this behavior as okay," says DeLong. “I, as a born American, took this stuff for granted. I never knew we had these rights until they were taken away."

Freedom of speech is a right that many people easily demand and many more take for granted. Loss of those rights has chilling implications for everyone. "This was clearly a unilateral move by the mayor to provide space for his party's campaign, I can find no forms on file requesting that space's use," says Cowger. "The government may make demands and regulations on the use of public space, but it all boils down to a balancing act. You can have free speech, but you can't interfere with someone else's right to speech."

Navy must reinstate Steffan

Continued from Page 1

McLarty said he had no comment until he could review the ruling.

Beatrice Dohrn, legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, called the ruling "an important victory for gay and lesbian service members and for all gay and lesbian Americans because it establishes the proposition that other people's prejudice against us should not be the basis... ... for government policy."

She predicted that the ruling would serve as precedent for a lawsuit that challenges President Clinton's new policy allowing the discharge of gay service members who declare their sexual orientation.

In the decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Navy rules calling for Steffan's expulsion from the academy "solely because he admitted his gay orientation are not rationally related to any legitimate goal."

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"America's hallmark has been to judge people by what they do, and not by who they are," Chief Judge Abner Mikva wrote for the panel. "It is fundamentally unjust to abort a most promising military career solely because of a truthful confession of a sexual preference different from that of the majority, a preference untarnished by even a scintilla of misconduct."

Steffan resigned from the academy six weeks before he was scheduled to receive his diploma and be commissioned as an officer. He left after a special review panel recommended that he be discharged for "insufficient aptitude for commissioned service."

Steffan, who now lives in Sharon, Connecticut, was in the top 10 percent of his class at the Academy and was slated for duty aboard a nuclear submarine before he said he was gay. The following day, his military performance grade was reduced from an Aminus to an F, according to his lawyer, Marc Wolinsky.

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