UNFLAGGING
With their ambitious billboard campaign, PFLAG keeps up their never-ending crusade to “Tell the truth in love relentlessly”
by Laura Springel

All over the city the gay community will be seen and talked about...or at least that’s what PFLAG is hoping will happen with their ambitious billboard campaign, which debuted in mid-March. PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) wants all of Houston to see their three slogans: “Hate Hurts,” “Unconditional Love,” and “Safe Schools.” PFLAG wants every gay person to know support exists, and wants everybody else to see what being a loving ally to gays looks like.

“Many people just don’t know about PFLAG,” PFLAG co-president Jeanne Edmonds says. “Many people feel alone in a closet of myths and misinformation.”

PFLAG would like to keep the billboards up for a year—but at a pricetag of about $100 a day each, this message of love is still in need of some fairy godmothers. One gay man sent in a $200 check saying that he and his partner were not giving one another birthday presents, but instead were donating the money they would have spent to the PFLAG campaign. Thus far, PFLAG has only raised about $16,000 toward the approximate $100,000 needed.

PFLAG has done this once before, only less extensively. Their 1996 billboard campaign ran for about two months, and received an excellent response from the gay community, according to Kyle Young, who was PFLAG’s media director at that time. Six billboards at multiple locations in the Houston area proclaimed, “Someone you know and love is gay.” Being an election year, PFLAG made use of the media coverage of the billboards to speak out against several politicians who were campaigning on an antigay platform. One of the billboards was vandalized during that time, which actually only led to further free publicity.
“PFLAG is an incredibly strong and well-respected organization,” Young says. “It has the support of parents, families, and friends of sexual minorities. They are essentially straight people speaking out to encourage the community to embrace all human beings.” PFLAG does an amazing amount for the gay community. Their mission is threefold, says Edmonds: supporting families, educating the public, and advocating for equal rights. PFLAG holds monthly meetings, offering books, magazines, videos, and a speaker’s bureau to get information out to those in need.

PFLAG chose their locations carefully: I-45 North driving southbound (seen by commuters coming in from the Woodlands, plus traffic heading in from the airport); I-59 North at the Eastex Freeway (seen by those driving to both the industrialized Ship Channel area, and Kingwood and Atascocita); and finally, Richmond Avenue in the Galleria area.

I myself have personal experience with the PFLAG family, as one of the PFLAG/H.A.T.C.H. youth scholarship recipients last year. At the time I applied for the scholarship, it all seemed pretty wild: I had only just begun the coming-out process when a counselor at my high school encouraged me to try for the PFLAG money. Suddenly PFLAG’s “favorite aunt” types were asking me, “What has been your experience as a gay youth?” “I don’t know,” I felt like saying, “I’ve only been one (in public at least) for about 20 days!” But the $10,000 scholarship has not only sent me to college, but has provided me with emotional support, as the PFLAG family has let me know they’re behind me. When I interviewed PLAG’s Jane Smith for this article, rather than discussing the billboards, she spent most of our time together asking about me and where I am on my “gay journey.”

As I sat in the March PFLAG meeting watching the smiles and the greetings among old and new friends, I began to finally understand the spirit of PFLAG. Rev. Ken Martin, the March speaker, and a leader in the Soulforce gay religious movement, best expressed it. “Tell the truth in love relentlessly,” he said. “Never forget there is no statute of limitations on hope.” The PFLAG proud parents and friends are examples for the rest of the community, maybe even the world, for standing up and speaking out for those you care about. Thinking back to my conversation with Jane Smith, I remembered that she was telling me just what Rev. Martin was saying, “Never give up.”

PFLAG is far from giving up on its vision. They have donated their time, energy, and funds to this campaign and now they are asking their allies, supporters, and members who believe in equality and justice for all persons to help in any way that they can.

If you’d like to make a donation, send it to PFLAG, 2700 Albany, Ste. 304, Houston, TX 77006, indicating that you’d like your money to go to the billboard campaign. All gifts are tax deductible. With permission, contributors’ names will be included in PFLAG literature.
PFLAG has monthly meetings at Christ Church Catherdral, 1117 Texas Avenue, the first Sunday of the month, 2–4:30 p.m., and third Tuesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.; Church of the Epiphany, 9600 S. Gessner at Bissonnet, third Tuesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.; Hollyfield Conference Center, 2700 Albany, second Tuesdays, 7:30–9 p.m.; Northwood Unitarian Church in the Woodlands, 1370 N. Mill Bend Dr, 713/867-9020, third Sundays, 2 p.m.; and in Galveston at the AIDS Coalition of Coastal Texas, 1405 39th St., 409/744-3200, third Sundays, 2 p.m.

For more information, call 713/807-7878. PFLAG also has a helpline at 713/46-PFLAG (713/467-3524), and a website, www.pflaghouston.org. And look for the PFLAG/OutSmart booth at the Houston International Festival.

TUTTI FRUITI
The International Festival reaches out to the gay community with a Carmen Miranda theme
by Ann Walton Sieber

The Houston International Festival is making their first concerted effort to reach out to the gay community to attend this festival, which will run the weekends of April 8–9 and April 15–16. Every year the festival spotlights a different country; this year the country is Brazil, and that’s what got the ball rolling with the gay outreach ... Carmen Miranda.

“From the first day I came on board, I had lots of anecdotal evidence that the gay and lesbian community was a big supporter of the festival, and we’d always looked for the right angle to bring in the gay community,” said Jim Austin, who has been executive director ever since it became an international festival in 1988. “Then I was in Rio, and the Brazilian government set me up with the Carmen Miranda people—Brazilians are enamored with Carmen Miranda—and I thought, this is a great hook for us.... She’s an icon in the gay community.... Ever since then, the ideas have been flowing like crazy about Carmen Miranda.”

The I Fest folks asked Alan Davidson to be the liaison between the festival and the gay community. Alan has been good friends for years with Kathy Austin, who is director of marketing for the festival, and is Jim Austin’s wife. Alan is also a regular writer for OutSmart, as well as being a public personality in the gay community. Alan and Kathy have been putting their heads together to do gay marketing for years. But except for Sweet Honey and the Rock in 1989, and a Shawn Colvin concert in 1998 (“that a crowd of lesbians braved the rain to come see,” according to Alan), not much has been planned at the I Fest with the gay community specifically in mind.

Until the Carmen Miranda hook, that is. This year, there’s going to be lots of Carmen, and no small amount of drag. The I Fest is flying in a Carmen Miranda band from Brazil (which includes two male Carmen Miranda impersonators) to perform three times daily on the festival’s “cabaret” stage (on the north side of the old library building). There’ll be a Carmen Miranda museum. And there’s a Carmen Miranda lookalike contest on April 1 at Rich’s, coordinated by Davidson. The top three winners from the drag show will each get to perform their song on the cabaret stage, and the winner gets a trip to Rio.

We must admit, when we first heard about the whole concept, we were a tad bit skeptical: a campaign of gay outreach starting with a drag show? Isn’t that, maybe, slightly stereotypical and not exactly representational of the wider gay community? But, it’s a place to start, and in talking to the Austins, their intentions seem to be in the right place.

“We’re the city’s official celebration of the city. We’re mandated to reach all of our citizens and to exclude no one,” Jim Austin said. “We’re serving our crowd, and the gay community is a legitimate group of citizens.”

Said Kathy Austin: “The festival as an international festival is here to promote diversity and harmony between people of all kinds. Different ethnic backgrounds, different religions. This is the one time of the year when we all come together to celebrate this in Houston.... A person’s a person’s a person.”

To balance out the “gay outreach,” OutSmart asked the I Fest to donate a booth for PFLAG and the magazine. To their credit, the festival staff readily complied. PFLAG and a drag show: a little weird, but at least a little bit more of a balanced version of the gay panoply.
Is the festival worried about any possible protest or opposition to their gay outreach from the homophobic conservatives?

“If we get hit by opposition, I’ll be shocked and not very happy,” Kathy Austin said. “It’s hard for me to understand any reason why we shouldn’t be doing it. We’re billed as a family event. Gays and lesbians are in families.”

“We’re not promoting anything,” said Jim Austin, “because by ordinance we can’t promote anything.... It’s all going to be innocuous and fun. When I was growing up, Milton Berle was on the television dressed in a dress, and it was fine.”

It’s not like the festival hasn’t seen drag before, Jim Austin tells me. In 1988, the first year it was recast as the International Festival (it had formerly been the Main Street Art Happening), the country was Australia. “The Essendon Police Women’s Marching Band from Sydney, Australia, played at the mayor’s ball,” Austin said, “and there was not a woman among them.”

The plan for marketing to the gay community is just part of the I Fest’s overall schema for outreach to all the city’s sub-constituencies. “We’ve learned the hard way,” said Kathy Austin. “It was when we spotlighted the nations of west Africa in 1996. We had been publicizing the festival through the Chronicle and the other mainstream media. We never realized we had been omitting anybody or doing anything wrong.” In the resulting turmoil concerning the festival’s overlooking of the African and African-American communities of Houston, they had to turn to Bill Lawson, well-known and esteemed pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, whose daughter, Melanie Lawson, was chair of the I Fest board. “Melanie’s father helped straighten out hurt feelings and misconceptions before the festival,” Kathy Austin said.

Speaking of controversy, what does the I Fest do when the political and cultural policies of their spotlighted countries are less than utopian? We were thinking about Brazil’s rather horrifying record toward gay freedom, with frequent reports about gay murders.

“When we started the festival, we asked, let’s name a country that we wouldn’t have any political problems with,” said Jim Austin, “—and we couldn’t come up with any. In Mexico there’s Chiapas. With England, North Ireland. What are we going to do?

“The only way to do an international festival is to do a cultural festival. We’re not a political statement, we’re not proselytizing anything.

“In the end, more good will come from taking a positive embracing of the people themselves and their culture, than any political censorship.”

OK, we’re convinced. Fruitbasket, anyone?

Even though Dillon got the second-longest sentence of the group, after Buice’s 45 years, he was the only one eligible for the mandatory release law, which is no longer in force.

Love marches on
We’re pleased to report that MCCR’s associate paster, the Rev. Ralph Lasher, and his partner Harry Gibson will be specially recognized as the male couple who have been together the longest (of any couple willing to come out of the closet, at least) at the mass wedding performed by the Rev. Troy Perry on April 29 at the Millennium March on Washington. By happy kismet, April 29 will also be Harry and Ralph’s 45th anniversary. “I am somewhat overwhelmed at the moment,” Lasher writes.

Activists urge couples to be counted in census
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Rights advocates around the nation are urging gay and lesbian couples to make sure they’re counted in the U.S. Census which arrived throughout the country in March.

But, activists said, couples shouldn’t expect to find any special check-off boxes for gay and lesbian couples. Instead, the census form includes an unassuming box labeled “unmarried partners” that rights advocates say same-sex couples should check for describing their relationship.

The “unmarried partner” box first appeared in the 1990 census, but rights activists said the Census Bureau counted only 150,000 same-sex households from that enumeration. And that, they say, was a serious undercounting that they hope to at least partly correct in this year’s count.

Budweiser’s our bud
ATLANTA—The antigay Richmond, Va.-based Family Policy Network (FPN) took its call for a boycott of beer producer Anheuser-Busch to NASCAR’s March 12 auto races in Atlanta where bemused spectators could see—or at least try to see—an airplane hired by FPN to tow a giant banner denouncing Anheuser-Busch for what the group says is an “endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle.”

FPN has singled out Anheuser-Busch because, not only does the beer-maker advertise in several gay and lesbian publications around the country, it also donates funds to charitable gay and lesbian events, including especially the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, touted as the largest leather event in the world.

“Our opposition to Anheuser-Busch goes far beyond the fact that they sponsor homosexual newspaper ads affirming homosexuality,” said FPN spokesman Joe Glover. FPN said the beer-maker’s sponsorship of the fair amounted to an endorsement of sadomasochism and “degrading and dangerous behavior” and that if people who drink Budweiser “knew what that company does with the profits they get from the beers they drink, they wouldn’t drink their beer.”

The Folsom Street Fair raised some $215,000 in 1999 for several charities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Florida town gets gay-majority council
WILTON MANORS, Fla.—Voters swept John Fiore into the Wilton Manors, Fla., mayor’s office making the small Fort Lauderdale suburban town of some 12,000 people the second in the nation to be governed by an openly gay majority on its five-member city council.
Fiore handily defeated Sandy Steen, a former mayor, with more than 56 percent of the popular vote. As mayor, Fiore will also have a seat on the city council along with two other openly gay council members, Gary Resnick and Craig Sherritt, who ran unopposed in the election.

“I’m glad it’s over,” Fiore said after learning the election results. “I’m very drained.”
West Hollywood, Calif., became the country’s first city with an openly gay majority council, and remained the only such city until now.

Tempe, Ariz., sweeps mayor to fourth term
TEMPE, Ariz.—Neil Giuliano, the openly gay mayor of Tempe, Ariz., won a stunning 70 percent of the city’s vote to win a fourth term in office. “I’m very honored by the level of support I received,” Giuliano said of his electoral win. “I didn’t expect that big of a victory.” Tempe, a Phoenix suburb of more than 106,000 people, is the largest U.S. city with an openly gay mayor.

Antigay conference slated for Dallas
DALLAS—The Colorado-based antigay group, Focus on the Family, will be running a day-long conference touting “reparative therapy” as a way to “cure” homosexuality in Dallas on May 6 at the First Baptist Church of Dallas. The organization said it selected Dallas as the site of the conference because it is the home of the Cathedral of Hope, the largest gay and lesbian church in the country.

The conference, entitled “Love Won Out,” will cover a range of topics and is expected to feature self-proclaimed “former homosexual” John Paulk, who now heads up much of Focus on the Family’s antigay activities. The Colorado Springs, Colo., group has held similar conferences in Columbus, Ohio, Seattle, Memphis, Tenn., Wheaton, Ill., Sacramento, Calif., and Tampa, Fla.

Gay man gives up green-card battle
SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Charles Lago, a British citizen who was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol officers late last year for living in the country illegally, says he had decided to take his attorney’s advice by agreeing to leave the U.S. voluntarily rather than continue to fight INS deportation proceedings.

Lago, a 43-year-old former London police officer, and Charles Snell have been in a relationship for more than 13 years and Lago moved to the U.S. with Snell in 1992. Lago runs a successful gay theater in San Diego and said he had assumed U.S. immigration regulations would allow him to remain in the country as a citizen because of his longterm relationship with Snell. But the INS doesn’t recognize same-sex relationships and when it learned Lago had never applied for U.S. citizenship, it arrested him and began the deportation proceedings. Although Lago had said he would fight deportation, his attorney advised him that he had no chance of winning.

Lago says he will move to Vancouver, Canada, and that he and Snell will continue their relationship in spite of U.S. immigration restrictions. Unlike the U.S., most Western nations allow gay and lesbian partners of their citizens to become permanent residents or in some cases even citizens.

Gay adoptions—one loss, one win
Bad news: Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt quickly signed into law a bill that would bar unmarried couples from adopting children or serving as foster parents in the state. The state law is aimed at gays and lesbians, and one provision even required child welfare employees to determine if an unmarried couple seeking to adopt or foster children through the state have a sexual relationship—a unique provision that civil rights advocates have said violated the constitution and invites government intrusion into the private lives of citizens.

Activists and civil libertarians expect the new law to be challenged in court on constitutional grounds very quickly after it takes effect.

Good news: A broad coalition of local, national, and Internet online activists helped mobilize opposition to a proposed measure in the Mississippi legislature that would have barred gays and lesbians from adopting children in the state—as well as refusing to legally recognize similar adoptions in other states.

The measure, which looked like it was destined to sail through the state legislature, finally died from lack of support after university groups in Mississippi organized in opposition to it, along with national groups and Internet sites that urged current or former Mississippians to contact lawmakers in the state to voice the opposition to the bill. The ACLU in Mississippi led the opposition, saying the measure was “unconstitutional, through and through.”

Whirlpool employee group forms
BENTON HARBOR, Mich.—The Whirlpool Corp. took two steps toward equality by adding nondiscrimination employment protections covering sexual orientation and by approving an employee group for gay and lesbian workers at the firm. The gay and lesbian employees group held its first organizing meeting in February, but the company said it doesn’t have any plans now to add domestic partner benefits for gay and lesbian workers. Whirlpool employs more than 60,000 people at locations around the world.

Canadian mayor’s life threatened
WINNIPEG, Manitoba—Police in Winnipeg have advised the city’s openly gay mayor, Glen Murray, to routinely wear a bulletproof vest during public occasions because of death threats his office has received. The telephoned threats were antigay and anti-Semitic, and police said the caller threatened to blow up the synagogue where Murray was expected for a funeral service for the late Canadian chess champion Abe Yanofsky, a one-time Winnipeg council member. Murray said he feels adequately protected by police and that such threats were “part of public life.”

Feds add second lesbian/gay historic landmark site
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The federal government has added a second gay rights site to its list of National Historical Landmarks—the blocks of Greenwich Village where gays and lesbians fought against police bar raids in 1969 in what’s been known ever since as the Stonewall Riots.

Last year the Interior Department designated the Stonewall Inn, the bar where a police raid sparked several nights of rioting, a historical landmark. Now the department has also designated several blocks around the bar as another historic landmark. In its announcement of the new historic site, the Interior Department news release said, “This area is associated with events that represent the struggle for Gay civil rights in America.... Stonewall is regarded by many as marking the birth of the modern Gay and Lesbian liberation movement.”

Poll: attitudes toward gays & lesbians changing
NEW YORK—According to a recent Newsweek poll, fewer and fewer Americans view homosexuality as a “sin,” and a strong majority say gays and lesbians should not face discrimination in employment or housing.

The poll found that 46 percent of those surveyed said they still think homosexuality is a sin, a significant downward shift from the 54 percent who held that view in a similar 1998 poll. The publication reported that a nearly equal number (45 percent for both years) said they don’t think being gay or lesbian is a sin.

The poll also found that 71 percent said gays and lesbians should be allowed to hold major political office, and 60 to 63 percent say gays and lesbians should be allowed to teach in the nation’s schools.

But majorities still opposed legalizing same-sex marriages (57 percent) or letting gays and lesbians adopt children (50 percent). The poll also reported that a strongly growing majority of the public (69 percent) now think gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve in the country’s armed forces. That represents an 11-point increase over the 58 percent who felt the same in a 1994 poll by the newsmagazine.

In a rare step, the magazine also conducted separate polls of gays and lesbians as well about their attitudes. The poll found that most gays and lesbians (56 percent) think tolerance in the country has increased during the past few years, although a substantial majority (60 percent) say discrimination remains a major problem in America.

The poll even sounded gay and lesbian respondents on what they see as important goals for their civil rights movement and found job opportunities and workplace discrimination was the leading issue (92 percent), equal housing rights (84 percent), and health and other spousal benefits for partners (80 percent).

Some 15 percent of all gays and lesbians (and 18 percent of all gay men) polled said they’ve been the victim of a beating or other physical attack prompted by hatred of gays.
The polling was part of the magazine’s March 20 cover story on gays in America that hit the newsstands on Monday, March 13.

Student officer arrested in gay-straight club fracas
ORANGE, Calif.—Police arrested an unnamed 17-year-old student from El Modena High School on charges she bit Stan Pasqual, principal of Canyon Hills High School, during a meeting of the Orange Unified School District’s board about a Gay Straight Alliance club at El Modena. The student, an officer in the Gay Straight Alliance, was charged with suspicion of assault and battery, but was released in the custody of her parents, police reported. Authorities said Pasqual was bitten by a masked student during a fracas that involved some 30 supporters of the club as they tried to keep an opponent of the gay-straight group from addressing the school board.

The school board had initially refused to allow the club to meet, but in February a court ordered the school to allow the club to hold meetings while a lawsuit by students in favor of the club works its way through what is expected to be a lengthy court battle.

The Orange County Register reported that protesters from Utah had remained in the area following the court ruling, passing out fliers, showing up at school board meetings, and even picketing at meetings of the club while shouting antigay slogans, increasing tensions between supporters and opponents of the club. Anthony Colin, a founder of the gay-straight club, said he was upset by actions on both sides and by the arrest of the club’s officer. “This may have been exhilarating at first,” Colin said of the attention the club has generated. “But now people just need to go home so we can all cool off.”

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