July 12, 2002

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

on the airoff the press

Ann Landers had a long history of supporting gays

by John Graves

Syndicated advice columnist Eppie Lederer, better known as Ann Landers, passed away June 22 at the age of 83. Not many know she was one of the first advice columnists to deal with the issue of homosexuality.

Landers' obituary in the New York Times mentions how the St. Joseph, Michigan newspaper which ran Landers' column in the 1950s refused to print her response to a letter about homosexuality. Instead, the publisher told Landers he planned to run a page 1 announcement that the column was not being run because "the subject matter was unfit for a family newspaper."

In a 1995 interview in the New Yorker, Landers said she called the publisher to complain that the letter and its response were about a human issue.

"That is what I do," she told him.

When he still refused to publish it, Landers told him, "Fine. Then everyone in St. Joe is going to buy the Detroit Free Press to see what you won't print."

"I called the Free Press," Landers said, "and told them to get ready for a lot of extra sales. From then on, boy, that St. Joe paper printed every damn word I wrote . . .'

""

For now, Landers' spirit is carried on by her sister, Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby) and niece Jeanne Phillips, who responded to a July 5 letter from a 16-year-old who was having trouble coming out to her conservative, religious parents.

In their response, Van Buren and Phillips, writing as Dear Abby, said, "There is no onesize-fits-all answer to that question. Some parents feel that homosexuality is a choice, and that by coming out, their child is being defiant. Parents like that have been known to throw the child out or make life so difficult at home that the child becomes a runaway. You know your parents better than I do. If that description applies to them, postpone your announcement until you are out of high school and self-supporting."

Victim of the Gay Mafia

Ousted Hollywood magnate Michael Ovitz caused quite a stir when he said he blamed what he calls Hollywood's "gay mafia" for his downfall in his interview in the August issue of Vanity Fair.

Ovitz, who was forced to sell his oncepowerful Artists Management Group last year for a personal loss estimated at $200 million, says the failure of his business was due, in part, to a conspiracy by the "gay mafia," who he blames for wrecking his business deals and stabbing him in the back.

Although a number of the executives Ovitz includes in the "gay mafia," such as Disney chief executive Michael Eisner, are not gay, Ovitz said openly gay Dreamworks SKG cofounder David Geffen was their leader. Besides Geffen and Eisner, other "gay mafia" members listed by Ovitz include New York Times columnist Bernard Weintraub, former business partner and Universal Studios COO Ron Meyer, Ovitz protégés Bryan Lourd, Kevin Huvane and Richard Lovett and talent manager Bernie Brillstein.

In the interview, Ovitz claims he has no idea why he was targeted, saying, "I didn't kill anybody. I'm not a murderer. The money I lost was mine. My money, my gamble, my mistake. And still they hate me. Everyone. David [Geffen] has always hated me. He got Ronnie [Meyer] to turn on me, and then Bryan Lourd and everyone else. It was the goal of these people to eliminate me. This business would have worked except for these five or six guys. They wanted to kill Michael Ovitz."

In particular, Ovitz claims Geffen and Weintraub teamed up to smear him at every turn, telling Vanity Fair, "If I were to estab-

lish the foundation of the negativity, it all comes down to David Geffen and Bernie Weintraub. Everything comes back to those two. It's the same group [quoted] in every article.

* In reaction to Ovitz's charges, USA Network chairman Barry Diller told the New

worse

York Post, "You're not serious. Wow! He said that on the record? Wow... Wow, wow... A statement like that is. than unfortunate. It's fairly rotten." Geffen himself responded to Ovitz's charges by saying, "Oh please, A gay Mafia? This is so crazy. This is insane... All the gay people get together, like all the Jewish people get together. I mean yeah, we meet on Thursday. I'm offended."

"This is so crazy," Geffen continued. "This is insane. I think he needs a psychiatrist. It's so paranoid, and so crazy, and so irresponsible, and makes him look like such a nut. On a scale of 1 to 10 crazy, it's 11."

In a later statement published in Variety, Ovitz apologized for his remarks about gays. "I made some statements that were inappropriate during an open and frank discussion with Vanity Fair," Ovitz said, but he stuck by his other accusations.

Upbeat vampire slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon plans to perk up the show's storylines for the fall season.

"Last season," Whedon told Entertainment Weekly, "was about getting everyone so depressed they wanted to kill themselves, and next season's about bringing [the show] back to life. I want to get back to where we started and to the theme, which is girl power."

Among the changes are a new job for Buffy and a new villain, who Whedon promises will be "everybody's worst nightmare."

Willow (Alyson Hannigan), the lesbian witch who lost her true love Tara (Amber Benson) to a stray bullet from geeky but evil Warren, will have a sojourn in England with Giles (Anthony Stewart Head). There, she will try to deal with the consequences of killing Warren with black magic in revenge for Tara.

Whedon said, "I'm shooting scenes with Alyson and Tony in his [real life] estate for the Buffy premiere that will involve Willow trying to deal with the magic in her that she can't get rid of."

Soap Opera Weekly says that Benson may put in an appearance as the late Tara next

season.

A sporting chance

Two professional athletes made headlines by coming out of the closet.

Sue Wicks, an all-star forward with the WNBA's New York Liberty, told Time Out New York that, unlike Mets catcher Mike Piazza, she is gay and not afraid to talk about it. She made the comment May 30, at the time Piazza was denying it.

"Being from New York, if you're gay, you're gay," she said. "I think it's important that if you are gay, you not be afraid to say who you are.

It was less expected when Déric Peterson, the 2001 U.S. 800-meter indoor running champion, came out in the July issue of Genre magazine.

"I called Adidas [his sponsor] and told them that I was thinking of doing this story," Peterson said. "They said, "Great, that's not a problem at all.'”

Peterson is one of the few openly gay African American male athletes.

Rosie's evil side

Calling herself"a bitch who's not so nice," newly out of the closet Rosie O'Donnell, the so-called "Queen of Nice" returned to the stand-up circuit at the grand opening of the Mohegan Sun Hotel and Casino in Connecticut June 22.

Speaking of her return to stand-up comedy, Rosie told People (July 8), “It felt great. It's still like a mound of wet clay. I have to work with it a little bit and get it into a fully functional mold. It's new material, new point of view on where I am. Tonight was the beginning."

Everyone from Michael Jackson to Bill Clinton to Oprah Winfrey were the targets of Rosie's barbs before the estimated 1,900 people who attended the grand opening. Rosie said she had put this acerbic side to her

comedy away when she got her talk show.

"People were not able to incorporate the two [onstage personae] but, now that the show's over, I'm going to go back to doing this."

Still, Rosie spoke to a women's conference in Miami Beach the day after the hotel opening. She talked about her experiences as a lesbian mom and advocated for gay adoption. "This is not about a homosexual agenda," she said. "This is about a child agenda. Every child deserves love, and every child deserves to be respected."

MTV celebrates Pride month

MTV closed out June Pride Month with I'm Coming Out, a special installment of the network's True Life series in which several lesbian and gay people allowed cameras to document their actual coming out announcements to their families on video.

Included in the show were a gay FilipinoAmerican teen of who was surprised by the acceptance of his father and distraught by the rejection of his mother; a lesbian high school student from George Bush's very conservative hometown of Midland, Texas and a gay teen from an upper-middle class family in the Northeast.

Perhaps the most touching, and the most disturbing, was the story of a young gay man adopted into a Mormon family who showed the scars he still carries from the electric shock aversion therapy his church put him through in an attempt to "cure" him. He told how his father had given him 2 days to clear out of the house after he told them he really was gay.

Jeffrey Mostade, PCC, NCC

But I'm a winner

Jamie Babbit, Cleveland-area native and director of the hit indie film But I I'm A Cheerleader, won the third annual PlanetOut.com Short Movie Awards Grand Prize, presented by HBO and the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Stuck, her winning film which played in the Cleveland International Film Festival, is about two elderly lesbians who realize, after running someone over in their car, that they really don't have much in common any more.

Gracias

Finally, I want to thank those of you who phoned in a pledge to the WRUW telethon last month and make a correction to the web address listed at the end of this column for the station that has been home to my Gaywaves show for the past 25 years. The web address listed in previous columns was a holdover from when the station first got into webcasting a few years ago.

We now have our own web site at www.wruw.org where, besides our on-air broadcasts, you can download archived shows, find all kinds of interesting facts about the station and find out about upcoming station-sponsored events.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian-gay public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7:30 pm, and at www.wruw.org. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contributed to this column.

Affirmative counseling for growth, decision making, relationship issues, loss, life choices, and lesbian, gay,

questioning, and transgendered issues.

SENEX

ELDERCARE COUNSELING TRAINING

12200 Fairhill Road Cleveland, OH 44120

www.senexcare.com

216.421.1793

Therapeutic Massage

...for the Akron/Canton connection

Benjamin T. Vise, L.M.T.

(330) 493-9395

Bodywork by Benjamin

2311 Fencegate St. N.E., Canton, Ohio 44705

Rely on Someone You Can Trust in Our Community

Full Time Agent Over 9 Years Top 10 Office Producer

▼I have the "411" on Over 6,000 Homes ▼Many Qualified Buyers

I'm on Your Side of the Negotiation Table

Century 211

Beyond 2000 Realty

1-800-219-9471 Office 1-216-533-6965 Voice Mail

Mark Snyder

Multi Million Dollar Producer Professional of the Year Award President's Sales Club Award

At Your Disposal "24/7"!! 216-533-6965