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The Texas Lesbian Conference
The Texas Lesbian Conference is going to be exciting this
year, with a truly remarkable lineup of speakers. “It’s
empowering just being in a room with that many women,”
says Christy Burchette, who is co-chair, along with Madelyn
McNeil. “Not only are we the only lesbian conference
in the United States, but it’s our 16th year.”
Although the conference is supposed to rotate between
Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, this year
Austin was not able to pull together the volunteer core
needed to put on the event, so it returned to Houston.
Workshops will be given in topics such as spirituality,
massage, relationships, finances, humor, health, pets,
sexuality, and more. We hear the Saturday evening party
is definately worthwhile, “especially for single
women.” Throughout the conference, vendors will
be selling their wares; many of these only travel to
women’s festivals. TLC is continuing their controversial
policy of only admitting women.
The Texas Lesbian Conference runs Friday–Sunday,
May 19–21, at the Renaissance Houston Hotel in Greenway
Plaza. Friday evening is keynote speaker Urvashi Vaid
(also a LiB meeting). Saturday will have morning and afternoon
workshops; lunch with Alison Bechdel; and a dance in the
evening. Sunday morning starts with spiritual services
and workshops then brunch with Ntozake Shange.
TLC has extended earlybird registration of $65 through
May 10 for OutSmart readers; this includes Saturday
lunch and Sunday brunch. One-day passes available for
Saturday $40 ($55 after May 10); Saturday night only
$15 ($20); and Sunday $25 ($35). Call 713/863-1452 for
a registration form, or register at www.2meg.com/tlc2000.
Urvashi
Vaid
by
Maria E. Minicucci
Monday morning arrived and I was facing the usual beginning-of-the-week
ritual—scheduling errands, work deadlines, social
engagements, an overwhelming amount of laundry. I also
had a 9 a.m. interview scheduled with Urvashi Vaid.
I’d spent the better part of my weekend preparing
to come across as casual, yet confident, witty, yet
worldly, knowledgeable, and interested.
As former director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force (and currently directing their Policy Institute),
Urvashi is both a public and political figure—particularly
since Time magazine recently listed her among the nation’s
most promising leaders under the age of 40. She authored
Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian
Liberation which won the American Library Association’s
1996 Book Award. She also writes a regular column in
The Advocate. And she is lovers with Kate Clinton.
I asked Urvashi how she found her way to NGLTF.UV. Laughing,
she says working with NGLTF is akin to “a life
sentence.” While working as an attorney in Washington
with the ACLU, she started volunteering for the task
force. Founded in 1973, the NGLTF is one of the earliest
gay and lesbian organizations for social change, and
they’ve gained considerable foundation and credibility.
Urvashi’s initiative and fierce dedication to gay
and lesbian issues were soon noticed, and she was invited
to run for NGLTF’s board of directors, then was
hired on as media director, and soon thereafter, named
executive director in l989, which she continued through
l992. While executive director, she also solidified
for herself why NGLTF was so important—to gays
and lesbians, yes, but also to mainstream society as
well. The organization is committed to building a movement—a
grassroots movement which is flexible, inclusive and
where progressive politics are the number one priority
in each state.
Urvashi radiates a never-ending passion for the lives
of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered persons.
Her desire, hopefulness, and spiritedness certainly
reenergized my activist self!
OutSmart:
What inspired Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of
Gay and Lesbian Liberation?
Urashi Vaid: I became much more reflective of the work
I had done up to 1992 and also had a desire for a personal
life, so I made a decision to write full time. I had
a need to write a book about the transformation of the
gay and lesbian movement during the previous decades—where
it began, how it evolved, what it accomplished. This
book is strictly an opinionated assessment of this movement.
I view the priorities of this movement to be equality
in the most fundamental of ways—all persons’
possessing civil rights is critical. I believe that
this is also a liberation movement for fundamental freedom,
economic justice, social justice...
Everything
you are saying about the gay and lesbian movement, what
it stands for, and what it is working relentlessly toward
emanates directly from feminist theory—wouldn’t
you agree?
Oh, yes. I have been and am a feminist. And, I am heartened
that more and more younger women and men are affiliating
with a feminist perspective. I have been to gatherings
around the country and people are very troubled by the
force of fundamentalist groups like the Promise Keepers.
And, what is happening in Afghanistan where women are
stripped of their personhood—people, not only gays
and lesbians, are very troubled by this. Feminism is
very much one of the values of the Task Force.
So
many groups, with the same good intentions, set out
to launch an organization for this or that cause, only
to have conflict and differences fracture relationships
and sabotage the very work they set out to do. How has
NGLTF transcended that dynamic?
Yes, we have not had that happen in our organization.
Some of the reasons are that we value local and state
leadership in whichever part of the country we are in.
Respect is the constant bottom line—no matter where
someone is coming from, they are regarded with the utmost
respect. We are not a single-issue group. We have a
core of values and we are upfront about those values:
We are feminist, anti-racist, are determined to end
homophobia, and end economic and social injustice.
...We uphold a spectrum of values and continually build
coalition. We also accept that we all want the same
thing but we all do not agree on how to get there. So,
we are prepared for and do work with people who disagree—but
always with respect.
You
have agreed to speak at the Texas Lesbian Conference.
What role do you see lesbians having in this movement?
Oh, my! Lesbians have had an integral role over the
decades and our presence is constantly increasing especially
in the political arena. On the more grassroots level,
I see much more mixed leadership rather than gay men
dominating every group, meeting, etc.
Without
letting the cat out of the bag entirely, can you give
us some idea of what message you hope to convey to Houston
lesbians at the conference?
Oh, I am so excited about being invited to attend that
conference. Do you realize that this conference is the
only lesbian gathering right now throughout the country?
I really commend the women who put this together for
making sure this happens every year. It is so important
to have a place to meet, share ideas, and of course,
have fun. My address will be about lesbian leadership—lesbian
vision, and what lesbian feminists bring to our movement.
Urvashi
Vaid will be speaking at the TLC on Friday, May 19,
7:30 p.m. (Registration available at the door.) She’ll
also be at a “meet and greet” gathering at
the Houston Lesbian and Gay Community Center, 803 Hawthorne,
Saturday, May 20, 2–4 p.m., as well as at a Saturday
evening cocktail party reception for her hosted by Ken
Bohan and Dean O’Kelley in Avalon Place, which
is a fundraiser for NGLTF, co-chaired by Clarence Bagby,
Mike Bodin, and Annise Parker (for info, call Clarence
at 713/861-8238).
Maria E. Minicucci is president of the Houston Lesbian
and Gay Community Center and director of the Center
for Creativity, Knowledge and Change.
Ntozake
Shange
Playwright
Ntozake Shange has been writing about women and women’s
relationships to each other since she burst on the scene
in 1974, at age 27, with her play for colored girls who
have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, which
played on Broadway to “somewhat stunned audiences”
as the New Yorker said at the time. Since then, colored
girls has become part of the stock of much-produced African-American
classics. Shange has lived in Houston on and off through
the years, teaching at the University of Houston, acting
as playwright in residence at the Ensemble Theater.
What Shange writes about are: “The problems and
mysteries that in some way or another have to do with
all different kinds of rites of passage for women,”
as she told me in an interview when she directed colored
girls in 1994 at the Ensemble, “the first
betrayal by a friend, the first betrayal by a female
friend, your first make-
believe friend, the disappearance of your make-believe
friend, your invisible pal. All these things that are
rites of passage—your first love affair, the very
first true depression. All of these things are things
all women go through—they may be right-to-lifers,
but they still got their period. So at a certain point
it obfuscates certain political differences that we
as women may have, which we’re entitled to have,
but that doesn’t take away from the integrity of
our female experience.” —Ann Walton Sieber
Ntozake
Shange will be giving a dramatic reading from one of
her works at the Sunday brunch, May 21, 10:45–11:30
a.m.
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