JUNE 6, 1997

SPEAK OUT

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

Pride: A time for celebration, and thanksgiving

by Bob Roehr

It's time to show our Pride once again, not that I don't on a daily basis, except for maybe those bad hair days. But as much as celebration, I also think of this as a time to remember all the things for which we should be grateful. This past year has been especially bountiful.

First is the hope of life in the gloom of HIV. A year ago, many in our community

didn't know if they would see another celebration of pride.

Protease inhibitors were only beginning to work their magic. The plague has not ended, but for many people living with AIDS, those drugs have brought a remarkable turnaround; they have literally given them life. Much, much more remains to be done, but now we can face those challenges with a stronger belief that they can be met and

overcome.

What I'm proud of

in this Pride season

me to move beyond taking pride in our identities fransgenders, sex workers, SM players, intersexed, hermaphro fever we're defining as in terms of gender and sexuality. "Ithi kicsUm ide in the values we've upheld in proclaiming those identities. th to base our communities, and membership in them, on values rather than identities. Yeah, I could be proud of that. Real proud. That would include so many more people. Happy Pride Day, Ohio!"

Kate Bornstein author, performance artist, and transgender activist

The Chronicle asked lesbian, gay, bi, and transgender leaders what they are proud of this Pride season. Their responses will appear throughout both June issues.

'Why doesn't Cleveland

have its own Pride march?"

Ten years ago, KWIR Publications took over the Gay People's Chronicle, which had ceased publication following the death of founder Charles Callendar. These are some of the stories appearing in June issues since then. June, 1988

Stonewall Union prepared for the seventh annual Columbus lesbian-gay pride parade, dubbed "March on the Midwest-Equality in '88" on the last Sunday in June. Marchers were to step off at 1 pm from Goodale Park-same as this year-and march to the Statehouse lawn for a rally.

PUBLISHI

THE GAY

PEOPLE'S

KWIR

A DECADE OF

CHRONICLE

The now-defunct Eleanor Roosevelt Gay Political Club bused marchers from Cleveland to the Columbus event, at a cost of $18 each. The Chronicle, then an eight-page monthly, carried an editorial asking why Cleveland didn't have its own Pride celebration. The next year, Chronicle publisher Martha Pontoni and activist Drew Cari organized the city's first Pride festival, a June 18 street fair in front of the Cleveland LesbianGay Center on West 29th St.

June, 1990

Fred Barrick picketed the Cleveland Lesbian-Gay Center daily for six weeks because the Cleveland Pride Committee, which met there, would not allow him to have a booth for the North American Man-Boy Love Assn.

The city's 1990 Pride festivities included a march, the first one since a 1977 demonstration against anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant.

Mike Gelpi won the Democratic primary for the 12th U.S. House seat, parts of Columbus and northern suburbs. The state's first openly-gay major party candidate, he lost to Republican incumbent John Kasich in November.

The Chronicle published its first Pride Guide special issue, with 12 pages of Cleveland Pride events. This year's Pride Guide, which came out May 30, is 88 pages, covering events throughout Ohio and in adjoining states. June, 1991

Ohio Highway Patrol officer Brett Godfrey, the state's only openly gay trooper, was the guest of honor at the June 19 grand opening of the expanded Lorain County Gay and Lesbian Information Center in Amherst.

High school students at the Bay Village Awareness Fair crowded around the table of PRYSM, a Cleveland lesbian-gay youth group there for the first time.

The Cleveland chapter of Queer Nation marched as button-down executives and toolbelted construction workers in the city's humorous Doodle Parade, part of the large, downtown Square to Square festival.

June 11, 1993

In May, the Chronicle began publishing every two weeks.

A policy that would have allowed gay and lesbian student couples access to Ohio State University on-campus housing for married students was about to be thwarted by a budget amendment limiting the facilities to legally married students. The rider, attached by State Sen. Eugene Watts, R-Galloway, was passed in May by the Ohio Senate. OSU trustees then postponed the policy.

June 10, 1994

A Toledo jury found that Dr. Charles Hull and Memorial Hospital in Fremont violated the law when they refused treatment to a person with AIDS. The jury awarded $512,000 to the estate of Fred Charon of Portland, Maine, who had become ill while driving on the Ohio Turnpike in 1992 and sought help at Memorial.

June 9, 1995

A group of gays and lesbians in Erie, Pa. surmounted homophobia, vandalism, and hate radio to enter a float in the city's 200th anniversary parade. Escorted by motorcycle police, the float was cheered at all five reviewing stands, and got a standing ovation from elected officials at the end of the parade.

I'm grateful to the mainstream media for looking at Clinton's record on AIDS and finally saying that the emperor's clothes are in tatters. His most recent pronouncements on a vaccine were lambasted as rhetoric with a dubious scientific base that was bereft of new resources to meet the goals. And the press has begun a drumbeat of calling for lifting the ban on federal funding of needle exchange as a necessary part of limiting the spread of HIV.

Ellen. Yes, I know, I bitched and moaned about the torrent of unrelenting hype surrounding the "event." But amid the barrage, the word lesbian probably was used in the mass media more than all times previously. And with that overkill the word lost much of its secretness, its sting. Oscar Wilde noted the power of language with his phrase "the love that dare not speak its name." Now that America is speaking our name, the word and the people behind it are no longer so distant. We have become more difficult to demonize and deny our full place at the table as family and as citizens.

Just a year ago we were celebrating the powerful Romer v. Evans decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that threw out Colorado's

anti-gay initiative and seemed to declare in the most sweeping language that we are not second class citizens.

Then a Hawaii court made the expected ruling advancing gay marriage. ENDA came tantalizingly close to passing the Senate when few people even expected to see a vote. And two more states passed civil rights protections for lesbians and gays.

I'm grateful for the hissy fit of hate that social reactionaries are throwing over gay marriage. They have raised the issue far higher in the public arena than we could have on our own. America has become much more aware of the legal inequities we suffer. And as the shock of the new wears off, they will come to see the common sense of gay marriage.

Pride in its essence is us, you and I. It is how we each see ourselves and the honesty of how we deal with others. It sounds trite, but we are everywhere. Coming out is the single most important thing we can do for ourselves and for the lesbian and gay community. Take pride in yourself, your family, your work, and your love. Not just one day or one week of the year, but in every hour that Celebrate your life.

you live.

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