JUNE 24, 1994
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 19
COMMUNITY GROUPS
Your next three steps . . .
by Bill Henderson
What a jam-packed June! Out Voice salutes the 1994 Cleveland Pride Celebration committee and Brynna Fish for outstanding work that was done to make this year's March and Festival such a success.
Stonewall Cleveland and its annual dinner committee also deserve a salute for the second year of its Pride Week kickoff event, and for bringing Torie Osborne to meet and speak with this community. If you are not yet a donor to the Pride Celebration event or a contributing member of Stonewall Cleveland, Out Voice trustees from Region 2 [Cleveland area] hope you will reflect on the great work these neighbors are doing for you! Imagine what could be done if you added a small bit of your time, tal-
guaranteed by the Constitution to all citizens. Pick one, or more than one if you can, and give it your time, your unique skills, your financial support. Do it now. If there isn't an "interest" group to your liking, call Judy Rainbrook at the Cleveland Center or an Out Voice Region trustee and tell us what you would like to see created and to participate in.
OUTVoice
ent, and disposable cash to their efforts . . . The Out Voice trustees enjoyed meeting folks from all over northern Ohio who stopped by our Pride Festival booth to learn more about the regional organizing Out Voice is doing to counter anti-gay political activity by the Ohio Pro-Family Forum, American Family Association, Focus on the Family, and the Christian Coalition. It was clear that everyone who stopped to register to vote, buy an OutVoice “Equal Rights for All Ohio” pin, or tell their story of discrimination, wanted to know what next step they could take to help. Yes, there is a lot of anxiety about the threats from the Radical Right, but we discovered a wealth of enthusiasm to end discrimination in Ohio, and more than enough untapped local skills to do that job!
The next step is Outward... into the general community of which we lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered citizens are a small but natural and co-equal part . . . no less significant than any other class of citizens, including the ultra-conservative, straight, mostly white Radical Right. They are using fear to manipulate groups in the general community against each other to generate funding for their political control agenda.
That fear depends upon you or people you know remaining in the closet, so that society can be lied to about the "unnaturalness" or "perverseness" or "ungodliness" of who we are. The closet is their weapon. and it makes their stereotypes of us, their dehumanizing of us, their marginalizing of our lives and our numbers, believable to folks who have no other way of learning about us. The closet kills freedom and cquality.
The next step has to be Outward along with those of us who are creating or sustaining local and state groups to support you! The Cleveland or Lorain Centers, Stonewall Cleveland or Akron, SOAR, and all other area lesbian-gay organizations are working hard for you, learning together, achieving together, stumbling together, reorganizing together, growing together, marching together closer to the full rights
YOUR FAVORITE NEWSSTAND IS JUST THREE MINUTES FROM THIS SIGN.
Together with you, local lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people can accomplish anything we need to do to achieve full civil rights and an end to discrimination by those mean-spirited people in society. The next step Outward to full civil rights is to become a member of a statewide educational and lobby organization, like OutVoice, and to be a donor to Ohioans Against Discrimination, the statewide political action committee. Out Voice supports local and regional groups organizing efforts and education directed to society about who we really are as a class of citizens and how we are discriminated against. Out Voice, as announced at the Cleveland Pride '94 celebration, his also begun to facilitate the process of developing an Ohio law to end discrimination based on sexual orientation. Your support be becoming a member of OutVoice is critical toward achieving such protection. Dues are low and income-level flexible.
Ohioans Against Discrimination is beginning the process of creating the financial power we have lacked... but is now necessary to support electing the local leaders, politicians, and representatives who won't dessert us as the radicals' anti-gay Project Spotlight campaign intensifies at home, in your neighborhood. It will not be expensive if every lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered person in Ohio contributes proportionally to enjoy equality.
Do it now.
To join Out Voice and educate all Ohioans send $25 ($10 if limited income) payable to: Out Voice, 1487 West 5th Ave., Suite 226, Columbus, OH 43212, or contact your regional trustees at the phone numbers listed in the Chronicle Resource Directory.
To make you first donation to Ohioans Against Discrimination make your check payable to: Treasurer, OAD, 395 E. Broad St., Suite 310, Columbus, OH 43215.
Membership in OutVoice and donations to OAD will be used for political purposes, and are not tax deductible.
The way I see it, for $75 to $150 for one full year, you will support one (or more!) local organizations, a statewide group working to achieve a legal end to discrimination against you, and keep your local political representatives, who like you as you are, in office! That's $1.50 to $3.00 a week... that's 50¢ a day! If you can't do that swing, step out of the batter's box, Skippy...you don't really want to play in the big leagues.
Bill Henderson is vice-chair of Out Voice.
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