HIGH GEAR/FEBRUARY 1978

Page 5

I.W.Y. ZENITH

Patricia Benevides of Seattle,

By The Women's Caucus of Jeanne Cordova of the Lesbian NGTF

The scene was the National Women's Conference held in Houston November 18-21. Two thousand delegates from all over the country had gathered to discuss resolutions included in the National Plan of Action an agenda of 26 issues of concern to American women. Our issue, Sexual Preference, was number 23.

Rumons of a right-wing plot to delay the conference proceedings had circulated. Would the agenda move along on schedule? Would we get to number 23? Our concern was not only that the issue be approved, but that it be heard and publicized. And that would be possible only if there were time for the resolution to be discussed separately and fullyinstead of being included in a block vote on several issues at the end. Raising cautious hopes, we dug in for the long haul.

By your calculations, if the Equal Rights Amendment passed by midnight Saturday, we'd be right on schedule. Discussion on the agenda began Saturday afternoon and one by one, the motions were introduced, considered and approved. Sure enough, precisely at midnight, the ERA passed, accompanied by the thunderous cheers of celebration. We grew more' confident. The next morning, at a 10 o'clock press conference, NGTF co-executive director and !WY commissioner Jean I'Leary predicted passage of the Sexual Preference resolution, based on the steady movement of the agenda and the fact that the Pro-Plan Coalition, comprising about 80% of the delegates and supporting all of the issues, was holding firm.

By Sunday afternoon as things continued to move along, thanks to an excellent job of chairing by Anne Saunier of Ohio, what-ever fears we had left that our isssue might not be reached or that it might be passed in a block of "leftover"

issues without discussion and

media attention dissolved rapidly.

At approximately 7:30 pm on Sunday, the moment had come.

In the observer section

surrounding the floor where the delegates were seated, hundreds of "We Are

Everywhere" balloons, supplied by NGTF, began to appear in the hands of the lesbians throughout the Coliseum.Tension mounted.

Then it was time. Jean O'Leary introducted the threepart motion on Sexual Preference. The crowd roared its support, and a forty-five minute discussion ensued. Delegates speaking eloquently on behalf of the issue included NGTF board member Charlotte Bunch, NOW president Ellie Smeal, former NGTF board cochairperson Betty Powell,

Tide in Los Angeles, and to the surprise of just about every one Betty Friedan, who reversed her anti-gay position and urged delegates to join her in support of the resolution.

"I am known to be violently opposed to the lesbian issue in the women's movement, and indeed i have been," she acknowledged. "As someone who has grown up in Peoria, Illinois and who has loved men perhaps too well I've had trouble with this issue. We have all made mistakes and we have all learned. I now see that there is nothing in the ERA to protect homosexuals. We must help women who are lesbians in their own civil rights."

Religious opponents of the motion warned that the lesbian lifestyle was a threat to family life, and conservative feminists

complained that sexual preference was an "albatross round the neck of the women's movement," "a burden we do not need," and a threat to passage of ERA.

Then NGTF board member Barbara Love called the question, followed by another jubilant roar from the crowd and a waving of balloons, "Stay in order!" the chair insisted. "All in favor of the resolution on sexual preference please rise." An overwhelming majority rose in confirmation. "The motion on sexual preference is approved!"

Tears flowed, friends hugged, lesbians and their supporters danced joyously in the ailes. Helium . filled We Are Everywhere" balloons floated to the ceiling. History was being made before our eyes and we were proud to be a part of it. cameras Television and

REPLY TO POLICE

By Joe Murray

The response by leaders of several police organizations to a non-discrimination policy on homosexual cops is an example of why a such a policy is needed.

The statement by John Dineen, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, that "I don't know any policeman who wants as a partner a guy who wants to be a girl" brings up the question of whether gays can expect fair treatment from a police officer who knows nothing about gays except what he hears in lockerroom jokes. There's a name for someone who wants to be the opposite sex--and it's not homosexual. (The name is transexual-and transexuals do not consider

homosexuals.)

themselves

Dineen further cites the theoretical case of a homosexual cop assigned to investigate a sex case involving a homosexual and a child. The parents would be infuriated, he says. Aside from the fact that there rarely is a need for police officers to identify themselves by sexual orientation, Dineen infers that being gay has some link to being a child molester. Yet a lopsided proportion of sexual assaults on children are committed by heterosexuals. Are heterosexual cops suspect when they investigate such cases?

Most

gays, like most

heterosexuals, are law abiding

members of the community. But there's another side to this coin. When gays have been assaulted by heterosexuals (a recurring problem), the police department attitude often has been one of considering the victim a second-class citizen. Yet gays do not demand that only gay cops handle such caser. What gays want-and straights want too-is that such crimes be investigated by competent police officers who will uphold the law, not their personal prejudices.

Another police organization official, Joseph Percerare of the Chicago Patrolmen's Association, raised a similar question. He said he doubted that homosexuals could effectively patrol areas that are gathering spots for gay persons. if he means that gay officers might not illegally harass gays, as some straight officers have done with impunity, he may be right. But if it is a question of upholding the law gay officers might well be more effective in dealing with gays whose distrust

photographers were rushing everywhere. Representatives of the women's movement had officially endorsed the gay issue. A major victory had ween won.

"This has really put us over

the top," an elated Ms. O'Leary exclaimed afterwards at an "This is clearly an issue whose NGTF victory press conference.

time has come."

It has, indeed.

I.W.Y. RESOLUTION I.W.Y.

"Congress, state and local between consenting adults." legislators should enact "State legislatures should legislation to eliminate disenact legislation that would crimination on the basis of prohibit consideration of sexual and affectional prefersexual or affectional orientence in areas including, but ation as a factor in any not limited to, employment, judicial determination of housing, public child custody or visitation accommodations, credit, pubrights. Rather, child custody lic facilities, government cases should be evaluated solely on the merits of which funding, and the military." party is the better parent, without regard to that person's sexual and affectional orientation."

"State legislators should reform their penal codes or repeal state laws that restrict private sexual behavior

of the police is a product of unequal treatment in the past. Yet another official, Jack Hawkonsen of the Confederation of Police, warns that "certain kinds of people who frequent saloons might resort to violence if a homosexual policeman attempted to arrest them." "Certain kinds of people" have resorted to violence when black cops at tempted to arrest them. "Certain kinds of people" have resorted to violence when white cops attempted to arrest them. "Certain kinds of people" have resorted to violence when female cops attempted to arrest them. And

"certain kinds of people" have resorted to violence when heterosexual cops attempted to arrest them. (Homosexuals, alas, are just like heterosexuals in this area too.)

The idea that a cop would say "I'm gay and you're under arrest" is almost as ludicrous as Hawkonsen's suggestion that a criminal's bigotry would dictate police department policy.

In the final analysis, the issue of discrimination against police ... officers or officer applicants on grounds of sexual orientation is a matter of equal rights for all law-abiding citizens.

SCOT ROASTS BODY POLITIC

Ladies/Gentlemen:

I just recently read of your misfortune and the cause for it. While I can extend a certain amount of sympathy for your current plight, that sympathy stops short of complete.

On December 5, 1977, I had sent you an article which called for you and other gays to get off your dead asses and start moving against this oncoming crusade before it is too late. You replied that you were "thinking about running it" and that you would let me know within "six weeks." Well, the six weeks are up, and in the meantime the Toronto Police Department has taken away from you that "decision-making" process so that you need not be bothered that decision. It is not a funny with the necessity of making irony that you got steamrollered with the very issue that that article was about while you sat around diddling yourselves trying to decide which side of the fence you were going to come down on. Nor is it a likely coincidence that your bust came just two weeks before Anita Bryant's visit to Toronto as a guest of that City.

If there is exasperated anger to be found in the fact that you were so busy "thinking about it" that you got slammed with it

while you were "thinking," there is nevertheless an infuriating bewilderment in the excuse you gave the Toronto Police Department for your bust. Your lack of judgment and wisdom in providing the excuse for that raid has got to be unparalleled in the history of mankind. Just what in the hell possessed you to run an article extolling the joys and ecstasies of "man-boy" love in the midst of an atmosphere so supercharged with the issue of child molestation? Your collective evaluation of the situation bears remarkable resemblance to the queen running around San Francisco wearing a T-shirt proclaiming "Anita is Right About Me." While I can perhaps vacuous dunce running around understand some empty-headed, making such a stupid statement at a time like this, I am at a loss to understand your judgment in running that article. And the combination of your procrastination and lack of wisdom left you with not even the opportunity to be able to claim "unfair politics" as a reason for the bust you have, simply, no response to a morals charge because you weren't even playing politics at the time. In view of the circumstances, it just might be better for us all in

the long run that you were busted immediately after running that article before you had a chance to do any more damage to the entire gay cause and get us all killed.

And finally, there is an anger at the loss of one of the better publications throughout the gay press. Anger, though, not just at the loss of one of the better papers, but anger at the loss of yet another much-needed voice in this coming battle for our lives (you may think it is an

issue of "rights," but if you listen to Anita Bryant and her adherents a little more closely, you'll find that it is a matter of "lives" not "rights").

On the assumption that my original article is now in the files Department, I am enclosing a of the Toronto Police copy of that same article. Should you find that you are going to publish again, maybe you'll be more inclined to get off your butts and get moving (whether you use that article or write one of your own) now that you have been told by Toronto which side of the fence you are on, regardless of the kind of "decision" you may have been trying to make about it.

Sincerely, Donald Cameron Scot