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GAY PEOPLE's ChroNICLE JULY 24, 1998

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ON THE AIR-OFF THE PRESS

The 'I'm not a homophobe' line is wearing really thin

by John Graves

Conservative columnist Powell Caesar took the occasion of his final "Perspectives" column in the May 25 issue of the Call and Post, Ohio's largest African-American newspaper, to attack the recent same-sex marriage of two New Jersey gay men in an Episcopal church.

Caesar wrote, "I am not a particularly religious man, nor am I a homophobe...I can live to be 100 years old and nobody is going to ever convince me that homosexuality is okay and same sex marriages are an inalienable right."

After more of his rambling diatribe against same sex marriage, Caesar concluded by saying, "No doubt, gays and gay sympathizers will take this particular view as intolerant, unsympathetic and arcane. Too bad. Get over it. For those who have this 'alternative' lifestyle, do us all a favor. Go back in the closet. Nobody cares about your proclivities. Nobody wants to hear your skewed rationale celebrating gayness. It just ain't flying."

As a member of both the lesbigay and African-American community, this writer hears a lot about not comparing the bigotry experienced by the two communities. To me, the bigotry evident in Caesar's column seems to be an echo of "white flight" and suburban segregation which was intended to keep African-Americans out of sight in urban ghettoes and the current movement to roll back programs intended to bring races together.

Well, Mr. Powell, your disclaimer about not being a homophobe sounds about as believable as a Klansman saying he is not a racist. You trot out an "old worn out (and homophobic) cliche" that says "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve and Ada and Eve."

Well, for your information, God did create, and continues to create, Adam and Steve and Ada and Eve as well as Adam and Eve. And, just as you may refuse to live out of sight in the ghetto closet, we refuse to go back in our closets to appease your homophobic ideas.

To quote another old saying, "We're here. we're queer. Get used to it." I wish I could report that Caesar and his homophobic musings would quietly disappear, but unfortunately, Caesar's "Perspectives" column now moves to the suburban Cleveland Sun papers were it will run every other week.

Real detectives, real gays

Lesbians and gays were the focus of two cases featured in the first two episodes of L.A. Detectives, a new reality-based police series which began airing on the Arts and Entertainment cable channel this month.

On the premiere episode of the show, which follows individual cases from start to finish, Los Angeles detectives investigated the murder of a respected gay artist living with polio. The second episode involved the investigation of an alleged consensual lesbian relationship between a 13-year-old girl and a 27-year-old family friend.

Frugal Gourmet settles suit

PBS's Frugal Gourmet, Jeff Smith, has settled a sexual abuse suit with seven men who had accused the popular TV chef and minister of forcing them to have sex when they were teenagers.

The settlement, which the attorney for the seven men said was “very satisfactory for my clients," included no apology or admission of guilt. PBS has not aired any new Frugal Gourmet shows since the lawsuit became public in 1996.

An outspoken Miss America

According to a report in USA Today, Miss America 1998 Kate Shindle is making quite a name for herself as an outspoken supporter of AIDS and lesbigay causes such as same-sex marriage, needle-exchangeprograms, and condom distribution in schools.

Shindle, who co-chaired a panel at the World AIDS Conference in Geneva, says she got involved in AIDS causes when a professor in her theater department at Northwestern Uni-

versity died of AIDS complications. She later learned that a family friend was HIV-positive.

This past April, Shindle wrote an open letter to President Clinton to express her outrage at his refusal to support federally funded needle-exchange programs saying, "My generation is dying... No more stalling. No more 'looking into the issue'... You need to hold up your end of the deal."

Administrators who invited her to speak on AIDS issues at a South Carolina high school gave Shindle list of words she was told not to say, including homosexual and heterosexual, and topics she was told not to discuss, such as sex and drugs. She got around the bans by insisting on an open question-and-answer period in which the students brought up the forbidden words and topics.

Shindle, who refuses to wear the customary crown and gown of Miss America when she speaks, told USA Today of a Tennessee teenager who joined the Army in desperation after he was thrown out by his parents because he was gay and had an HIV-positive lover. According to the story, Shindle said, sarcastically, "There's a place to be accepted."

Movie moguls attend Outfest

Outfest '98, Los Angeles' 16th annual lesbigay film festival, opened this month featuring over 250 films from more than 25 countries. In a special report to USA Today, correspondent Hunter Garcia noted that major distributors are expected to attend this year's festival in the wake of the recent success of mainstream lesbigaypositive films such as In and Out, As Good as It Gets, and My Best Friend's Wedding.

Good Pride coverage

Thanks to the Cleveland daily Plain Dealer and weekly Free Times for providing some of the best media coverage ever of this year's Cleveland Pride Parade and Festival.

Thanks also to WVIZ Channel 25 for recognizing Pride month by airing the exceptional lesbigay history documentary The Castro and Licensed to Kill, Arthur Dong's chilling look at gay-bashing murders.

Although some of the blame can be attributed to the storms that moved through the area, coverage of Pride '98 on the other Cleveland TV stations was, to put it nicely, minimal to nonexistent.

Sleuth may come out

Entertainment Weekly book critic Mark Harris believes author Patricia Cornwell is about to bring her mystery novel sleuth, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, out of the closet. Comwell was outed in 1996 after her lesbian affair with a former FBI agent became the focus was of the agent's messy divorce and child custody case.

In his review of Point of Origin, Cornwell's ninth Scarpetta mystery just released, Harris says, "Scarpetta herself is, in fact, like a remnant of those pre-Ellen days when pop culture's professional women of a certain age who might otherwise have been identified as gay (a tradition extending from Miss Hathaway to Hill Street Blues' Lucy Bates) were instead given frown lines and tepidly heterosexual romantic lives."

In the book, Harrisnotes, “amild erotic humidity overtakes Scarpetta whenever she locks homs with another strong woman." Harris notes one passage especially, in which “Kay watches Lucy (Scarpetta's lesbian niece a former FBI agent whom Harris describes as "the most interesting character in the series") undress and thinks, 'It was if I had never noticed her full lips and breasts, and her arms and legs curved and strong like a hunter's bow...I felt ashamed and confused... It did not seem so foreign that a woman would want to touch my niece'."

Harris concludes, "[Re]defining Kay Scarpetta's sexuality may give her increasingly gloomy and meandering travails some much needed focus."

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian-gay public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7 pm. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contributed to this column.