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GAY COLE'S CHRONICLE

An Independent Chronicle of the Ohio Lesbian and Gay Community

Volume 10, Issue 5 September 2, 1994

We're here, we're queer and we're going to the fair

LEE ANN MCGUIRE

Annie West, Patti Eastman and Amy Meister, I to r, check out the Stonewall Union booth at the Ohio State Fair. For the past 12 years, Stonewall Union has maintained a gay presence at the Fair, providing educational information about lesbians and gays to a wider public. More than 160 people worked this year to make the Ohio gay community a visible reality to fairgoers.

Study finds there is no 'gay elite'

by Mary Pemberton

Baltimore-A University of Maryland study contradicts the notion that gay men and lesbians make more money than heterosexuals.

Lee Badgett, a labor economist at the College Park campus, found that gay men make 11 percent to 27 percent less than heterosexual men in comparable jobs. Lesbians earn 5 percent to 14 percent less than heterosexual women.

"Far from having some mysterious advantage in the labor market, gay workers face discrimination that

actually hits them where it hurts— in their paychecks," Badgett said. Badgett found that lesbians were more likely to hold lower-paying jobs than heterosexual women and gay men held fewer managerial positions than heterosexual men.

Lesbians may be suffering the double whammy of not only being women but also being homosexual, Badgett said. Gay men may find fewer advancement opportunities because they can't network as easily, she said.

But the director of the survey which Badgett used as the basis for

Second NGLTF

director steps down

by Kim I. Mills

Washington-The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is searching for a new leader again-less than a year after its board promoted veteran activist Peri Jude Radecic from within.

Radecic, 34, will return to her previous job as the group's director

of public policy when her one-year contract expires in November.

Her move comes at the end of a troubling summer: Seven key staffers and the board's longtime cochair have announced their resignations since July.

The board's other co-chairman, Chris Collins, said August 26 he Continued on page

her study said the small sample size she used made her findings "tentative and suggestive" at best.

Using information collected between 1989 and 1991, Badgett compared age, education, occupation, race, sex, residence and marital status to reach her conclusions. The information was gleaned from the Continued on page 4

INSIDE

California senate

passes partner bill

by Steve Lawrence Sacramento, Calif.-A bill to give lesbian, gay, and heterosexual unmarried couples some of the same rights as married spouses is headed to the governor's desk after conservative lawmakers failed to bottle it up in the Senate.

The bill is the first measure of its kind to pass both houses of a state legislature.

The Senate approved the measure August 23 when an ailing legislator came in to cast the decisive vote and break an eight-hour deadlock. The final 21-17 roll call was the bare majority needed for approval in the 40-seat upper house.

Then senators rejected an attempt by a Republican lawmaker to keep the bill from moving to the Assembly and to force the Senate to reconsider the proposal.

The Assembly approved the bill two days later by a 45-26 vote. Gov. Pete Wilson has not said whether he will sign it.

The bill would give unmarried domestic partners who registered with the state the right to visit their partners in the hospital and would make it easier for them to be selected as a conservator for an incapacitated partner.

The measure would also make it easier to will property to domestic partners by including them in the short-form will in state law.

To register with the state, domestic partners would have to maintain a common primary residence, agree to share basic living expenses, not be married or related by blood in a way that would prevent them from marrying and be over age 18.

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Also, they could not have been a member of another domestic partnership in the previous six months unless that relationship ended with the death of the other member.

A senate staffer said domestic partners can now be barred from visiting an ailing partner, for instance, in a hospital emergency room or intensive care unit.

Domestic partners are also ranked low on the list of potential conservators. The bill would move them to the top, making them equal to spouses.

Sen. Leroy Greene, DCarmichael, cast the 21st vote. Greene, who is recovering from gall bladder surgery, missed most of Tuesday's session but came in Tuesday night to break the deadlock.

"I was needed for a vote," he said. "I've got to do my work. That's what they pay me for."

Sen. Gary Hart, the Santa Barbara Democrat who carried the legislation on the Senate floor, described it as a "very simple and straightforward bill."

"It addresses some of the very real problems faced by couples in California who are not married," he said. "These are not so much benefits as they are fundamental human rights."

Much of the opposition to the bill comes from anti-gay conservative and church groups. But bill supporters said it would also help unmarried heterosexuals who live together for a variety of reasons.

Sen. Henry Mello, DWatsonville, said many senior citizens live together as unmarried couples because they would lose some of their Social Security benefits if they got married.

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