Page 6 HIGH GEAR

GEAR Survey

Once again the survival of the Cleveland Gay Community Center is in jeopardy. The absence of funds to cover rent, utilities and miscellaneous expenses threatens the continued operation of the Hotline and Rap Groups. A group of concerned gays put together this survey in an effort to learn whether others feel that the Center provides a worthwhile service to the community. The survey asks gays 1) if they think the Center should continue current activities, 2) if it should expand programs, and 3) if they have suggestions regarding ways the Center could obtain a reliable source of financial support. We are asking you to complete the survey and then either mail it or return it in person to the Gay Community Center, 1012 Sumner Court, next to Dimensions. Discuss it with friends and urge them to complete one. Your interest and support is appreciated. If possible, return the survey by May 10.

1. The Gay Community Center (GCC) should expand programming into social and recreational areas: ......yes......no

2. I would consider participating if the GCC offered (check as many as desired):

......bowling

......baseball

......chess

......bridge ......cards

......ping pong

......group excurions out of town

......pool ......group trips to area concerts, sports events, etc. .....Other (specify)

3. I think other gays would participate if GCC offered:

......bowling

...baseball

......chess

......bridge ......cards

......ping pong

......pool ......group trips to area concerts, sports events, etc. ......other (specify)

4. The GCC should continue and expand its program to include the following support to gays:

(Check as many as desired)

a. ......counseling by gay volunteers b.......information and referral to psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers who are able to counsel gays with emotional, mental, interpersonal problems.

c.......information and referral to attorneys who accept/have worked with gay clients and the legal issues they face d.......information and referral to medical doctors known to treat and be sympathetic to the concerns of gay people. e.......other (specify)

5. The GCC should continue and expand the following educational activities (check as many as desired):

a.......rap sessions on topics of concern to gay men and women b.......guest speakers and panels who are knowledgeable about issues of interest to the gay community c.......workshops of varying durations and facilitated by "expert" resource people

d.......other (specify)

6. Which (if any) of the following activities might you utilize or participate in if they were offered by the GCC (check as many as desired):

a.......rap/discussion groups b.......workshops

C.......speaker and/or panel forums

d......counseling by gay volunteers

e......information and referral services

Brydon Named NGTF

Co-Executive

The Board of Directors of the National Gay Task Force announced today that Charles F. Brydon, 40, a Seattle insurance executive and gay movement leader, has been appointed to the position of Co-Executive Director, replacing Dr. Bruce Voeller, who resigned in January. Brydon will assume the post on April 9. NGTF Board Co-Chair Kay Whitlock, in announcing the appointment, said: "The Board's decision to appoint Mr. Brydon to the position of Co-Executive O Director comes after a long and careful search for and review of qualified applicants. We look forward to a productive and enjoyable working relationship with him."

Brydon brings a wealth of movement experience to the job. Most recently, as founder and Co-Chair of Citizens to Retain Fair Employment, one of the major organizations opposing Seattle's anti-gay Initiative 13, he helped lead a winning campaign to defeat the measure in the November election. (Voters rejected a proposal to repeal the city's gay-rights ordinance by a 3-2 margin.)

Mr. Brydon has had a distinguished career on both the national and local levels. In 1976, he joined the Board of Directors

Director

of the National Gay Task Force,and has served as a member of the Executive Committee and, with Kay Whitlock, as current, Co-Chairman of the Board. At NGTF's White House Conference on Gay Rights with Presidential Assistant Margaret "Midge" Costanza in 1977, Mr. Brydon presented a paper on discriminatory policies in the Defense Department.

Brydon became active in Seattle's gay movement in 1974. founding one of the city's largest and most influential gay organizations, The Dorian Group, and serving as its president until 1977. In his leadership role with Dorian and Citizens to Retain Fair Employment, Mr. Brydon has been interviewed extensively by the Seattle media and has emerged as one of the city's bestknown and respected gay representatives.

Mr. Brydon's interest in women's concerns is reflected in his service on the Seattle Women's Commission and in his successful efforts, as President of the Dorian Group, to encourage a restructuring of the organization to include male and female Co-Presidents as a means of promoting equal visibility and participation for men and women.

Other local activities include founding the Seattle Municipal Election Committee for Gays (SEAMEC), and serving on the Board of Directors of the Seattle Gay Community Center.

Brydon was born and raised in Summit, New Jersey, the son of a plumbing contractor. After attending a military prep school in Georgia, he studied political science at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, and Monmouth College in West Long Branch, New Jersey.

After enlisting in the U.S. Army as a private in 1961, he received a direct field commission, and held the rank of Army Captain in the Adjutant General Corps at the time of his honorable discharge' in 1970. His duties in the Adjutant General Corps included personnel administration and data processing. Brydon's military service included overseas assignments in Germany, Korea and Vietnam. For his Vietnam service, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with 1st Oak Leaf Cluster.

After a brief period in hospital administration, Brydon joined the staff of AFIA Worldwide Insurance in San Francisco, moving to Seattle in 1974 to become AFIA's Northwest Branch Manager....

Brazilian gays coming out

Rio dejaneiro, Brazil -In 1976 Celso Curi, a 27-year-old editor with a Sao Paulo newspaper, introduced a column in his paper concerned with gay rights. Not only was Curi fired, but the government subsequently filed suit against him for "gathering abnormal human beings." Though Curi's lawyer notes that this is the first time in Brazilian history that a suit has been filed against homosexuality, he also notes that his client's experience is indicative of the unwholesome attitudes toward homosexuality in Brazil, a country where the

7. Do you have any suggestions for other activities that the GCC could Iberian tradition of machismo is sponsor? Is so, what?

strongly entrenched. There are signs, however, of

8. Can you think of any methods whereby the Gay Community Center gays beginning to come out of can raise money to insure its continued operation:

......Yes

If yes, How?

..No

We'd appreciate the following demographic information in order to obtain a general idea of who the survey respondents are. (Of course, since the survey is completed anonymously, we shall not specifically know who people are).

1.1 am

2.1 am

3. I live on

4.1 read High Gear

5.1 have

......Male

......Black

......Hispanic

...the east side (city) ....the east side (suburb) .....the west side (city) ......the west side (suburb) ......regularly or often ......sometimes

-seldom

.......never or almost never

......Female ......While ......Other (specify)

......never gone to or utilized the Gay Community Center ......have gone or utilized it

Thank you for your time and attention. The GCC will attempt to provide feed-back regarding the results of the survey in a future issue of High Gear

the closet. An important news weekly in Brazil recently dedicated its cover story to "Homosexual Power" illustrated with a drawing of two hairy and evidently macho males holding hands. In May of this year the first Brazilian gay liberation paper was founded. The paper's name, Lamplao, means "lantern", but it was also the name of Brazil's most famous bandit, a northeastern cowboy figure who established himself as a macho in the national lore. "We named it Lamplao to enlighten our way and help us get together and fight for a place in this macho society." said Aguinaldo Silva, a 34-yearold journalist who edits the paper along with a staff of eleven other volunteers.

Though homosexuality is not a most gays here it might just as crime in Brazil, according to well be. "Discrimination against us is even worse here than in

other countries because we don't know how far we can go," Silva noted. Brazil is a police state, the local police have broad discretionary powers in dealing with virtually all elements of society.

Actually, there is a duality in the view of gays in Brazilian society. Once a year, gays are even publicly praised during the Carnival, the three-day annual bash known as the world's greatest popular party and which takes over the entire country. All the samba schools which parade in richly decorated costumes along Rio's main streets -with the main attraction of spectacularly beautiful and scantily clad mulattas also make room for parading groups of self-declared gays.

Most tourists also know of the celebrated San Jose theater in the old part of Rio. The stars of its Carnival Saturday Ball are exquisitely made up transvestites. Outside of the Carnival, however,

the most common expression which angry soccer fans yell at a player or referee who errs is "bicha" a derogatory slang word similar in meaning to the English queer."

Darci Penteado, age 51 and a well-known painter, writer, and now member of the Lamplao staff, became one of the bestknown Brazilian gays when he jumped out of the closet publicly in 1976. "My works are sold among the upper middle class, and I discovered that they are much more open minded than one can imagine," he said in a recent interview. In Lamplao's first issue the main story was that of the Celso Curi case. In one part of the story there is a letter to Curi from a gay in a small rural town in the southern state of Parana, who declares that he had been saved from committing suicide by reading Curi's onetime column.

KGLF workshop

The Kent Gay Liberation Front will hold its annual workshop on Saturday, April 28, in the Kent State University Student Center, Room 206.

Principal speaker this year will be Ginny Vida, Media Director of the National Gay Task Force and editor of Our Right To Love: A Les bian Resource Book, and David Homosexual Rights Movement in Thorsted, author of The Early Germany. Both Vida and Thorsted will participate in a joint panel

from 1-3 p.m. and each will lead a workshop later in the afternoon. In the evening, there will be a showing of the film, "In the Best Interests of the Children" on lesbian mothers, and another film yet to be announced. Saturday morning, there will be other workshops.

For further details, write KGLF, 238 Student Center, Kent State phone 216-672-2068 the KGLF University, Kent, OH 44242. or office, or 216-672-2676 for Dolores Noll.