GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

October 5, 2007

October is LGBT-History Month!

M. UNTU

CALIFORNIA

COL

In 1994, educators across the country began working to counteract the lack of information about LGBT people in textbooks. The efforts of Missouri high school teacher Rodney Wilson led to the creation of LGBT History Month in October.

This issue marks the beginning of the second year the Gay People's Chronicle, along with other newspapers across the nation, honor LGBT History Month with a month-long series of articles by and about people, organizations and events that shaped the world and continue to strive for greater equality.

Leaning toward justice

LGBT Americans still have far to go, but we have witnessed a change in attitudes

by Rep. Tammy Baldwin

In the 1960s, while confronting segregation, discrimination, obstruction of voting rights and physical violence, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. often borrowed the words of another pastor, an abolitionist from Boston named Theodore Parker, to inspire and give strength to those in the civil rights movement.

"The arc of the moral universe is long... but it bends toward justice."

You may wonder how I can say that in 2007, when LGBT Americans are still the victims of violent hate crime and discrimination, still unable to serve openly in the armed forces, still unable, in many states, to adopt children, still unable in 49 states to marry, still denied the full and equal rights that citizenship grants and morality demands.

Gay History Month is an appropriate time to step back from our daily struggles and frustrations to assess how much progress we have made in recent years. Despite political setbacks and hate crimes against the LGBT community, young Americans are growing up in ever-more tolerant times.

Ten years ago, Ellen DeGeneres announced she was gay on national television and cynics predicted it would end her career. Earlier this year, she hosted the Academy Awards where a billion viewers around the world were not only entertained by this openly gay and hugely popular comedian, but then heard Oscar-winner Melissa Etheridge thank her own wife and their four children.

In 1998, the people of Wisconsin's Second District elected me, the first out lesbian and the first openly gay non-incumbent, to Congress. I was only 36 years old and had entered college in 1980, seven years after the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders.

Today, you can go into almost any bookstore and find aisles of gay and lesbian literature. But one of my friends (now in his mid-sixties) reminded me that when he was in college, the only mention of homosexuality came in textbooks next to adjectives such as "deviant," "aberrant," and "criminal."

Right after I graduated from high school, in the summer of 1980, the Democratic Party at its national convention included this one phrase deep in its 38,000-word platform: "All groups must be protected from discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, language, age, sex or sexual orientation."

Over two hundred years after our Declaration of Independence professed that all men are created equal, the first gay rights plank appeared in a major political party platform.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but

it bends toward justice."

I grew up in the progressive city of Madi-

son, in the birthplace of "progressivism," Wisconsin, and I had gone to one of the best public school systems in the country, yet no one had ever uttered the words gay or lesbian in a class. Never mind that there was no gay-straight student alliance or anything remotely like it. There were no openly gay characters on TV. No same-sex partners in advertising. No same sex marriage or civil union announcements in the society pages of the New York Times or any other newspaper. No protections against discrimination for LGBT people in housing or at work. At the time, not so long ago, queer was a curse word and "being queer" was a curse.

No role model ever told me about the Daughters of Bilitis, the Mattachine Society, or Stonewall; Elaine Noble, Frank Kameny, or any of the courageous leaders who shaped our movement or contributed their art, their science, their sweat, and their intellect to this world.

Well into the 20th century, our nation's and the world's history was never whole and truthful because the role of LGBT people in shaping that history was, quite simply, "the greatest story never told."

After graduating from high school, I went to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was during my sophomore year at Smith, 1982, that the first Gay Games were held in San Francisco.

Reuters news service reported, "Homosexual athletes and their fans from eight countries and across the United States are streaming into San Francisco for the opening today of what has become known as the

Curbside

WE FINALLY HAD OUR BIG TALK.

HEY

MG BALDWIN WISCONSIN

Gay Games. Some 1,365 men and women, including 62 Canadians, will compete for nine days in 17 events designed to show the world that homosexuals make as good competitors as anybody else."

Last year, the seventh Gay Games were held in Chicago, attracting nearly 12,000 sport and cultural participants from around the world. Corporate sponsors included Nike, Walgreens, the New York Times, Gatorade, and Ernst & Young, among oth-

ers.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

During my junior year at Smith, in 1983, Rep. Gerry Studds announced that he was gay; after being censured by the House for having an affair with a 17-year-old page.

In a speech to his colleagues, Studds said, "It is not a simple task for any of us to meet adequately the obligations of either public or private life, let alone both, but these challenges are made substantially more complex when one is, as I am, both an elected public official and gay."

It was during that same year, my junior year in college, that I began my own process of coming out. But as I approached the end of my undergraduate career and looked to my future, I believed that in order to live my life and my dreams, I'd have to make a choice between pursuing a career in public

I'VE BEEN A FOOL. THIS SMART, HANDSOME, WONDERFUL GUY COMES INTO MY LIFE A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, PROFESSING HIS LOVE AND DEVOTION, AND I GO CHASING AFTER SOME VAGUE INTRIGUES THAT NEARLY COST ME MY LIFE, AND MAY HAVE LOST ME J.T. TOO.

AS WE SAT THERE TALKING I REALLY W

DIDN'T WANT TO THINK OF A FUTURE WITHOUT HIM. BUT I HAD TO BE CAREFUL NOT TO OVERPLAY MY HAND.

I THINK WE NEED TO GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER ALL OVER AGAIN. I'D LIKE TO ASK YOU OUT ON A DATE

COME ON

OULD HE SAY YES? HOW FOOL HAVE I BEEN

gulp.

service and living my life in an open and honest way. I did not believe that I could have both.

In November 1985, a little over a year after I had graduated from college, a small group of elected officials met in West Hollywood, California. The group included a few city council members and county board supervisors, a state assemblywoman, and a state senator from Minnesota, Allan Spear. That a dozen or so elected officials would enjoy meeting with each other to discuss their work is not unusual. That they were all openly gay is extraordinary!

Keep in mind that, at that time, gay people were still stereotyped as drag queens, predators, or sissies. As perceived by society, gay people were pretty much all men, you know. Gay or straight, it was still very much "a man's world." Back in the '80s, AIDS, the "gay plague," was decimating our community and bolstering a public image of gay men as promiscuous sex fiends.

These elected officials who met in West Hollywood were progressive and multidimensional politically. Individually and collectively, they wanted to give a voice to our community and encourage others to come out of the closet and participate in public discourse and the political process.

It was Allan Spear who said, "Unless you learn and respect the process, you are not

By Robert Kirby

WOULD HE FORGIVE ME MY NEGLECT AND TAKE ME BACK? DO WE GET A SECOND CHANCE? ALSO, WHEN HE SAID NO, NO, YOU'RE NOT A FOOL, WAS HE JUST BEING NICE...?

BIG A

WE'RE MEETING FOR COFFEE THIS SATURDAY AT 2. JUST LIKE THE VERY FIRST DATE WE EVER WENT ON! WAIT'LL I TELL NATHAN!

#373