"our Rights Are Non-negotiable"
Washington, D.C., April 25---Holding the American flag, Felix Jimenez of Grand Rapids leads a contingent of homosexual Michiganians and their friends toward the Capitol. "We are all Americans," said Jimenez, "and today we (gays and lesbians) are using the system to gain our rights."
"Our Rights Are Non-Negotiable" By Donna Red Wing
Editor's Note: Right-wing and fundamentalist groups launched two state-wide ballot initiatives in 1992, attempting to preclude gay men and lesbians from protection under state or local civil rights statutes. Oregon's Amendment Nine lost at the polls last November while Colorado's Amendment Two passed.
Since then, anti-gay groups are continuing their efforts in Oregon and have launched similar campaigns in several other states - among them Michigan, Idaho, California and Florida. Gay rights groups, meanwhile, are garnering their forces to fight back.
The U-M Lesbian Gay Male Programs Office, The Ella Baker-Nelson Mandela Center for Anti-Racist Education, and Gay Liberation Front presented a conference on March 27 entitled: "What to Do about Nine and Two: Organizing to Ensure LesbianGay Bisexual Rights." Speakers addressed the recent campaigns to limit the civil rights of gay men and lesbians, and discussed ways to organize against these campaigns.
What follows is an abridged transcript of remarks made at the conference by Donna Red Wing of the Portland (Oregon) Lesbian Community Project.
As we look at the challenging and volatile political seasons of 1993 and 1994, we must ask the questions: Who will define our freedom? Who will define democracy In the state of Michigan? Clearly, George Matousek and the Michigan Family Values Committee (MFVC) would like to take on that task. If their anti-gay, lesbian and bisexual legislation were to pass it would profoundly alter the lives of all Michiganders. Nullifying all past and present gay rights and prohibiting all future legislations, it is a shilling piece of legislation that allows certain acceptable people - the Michigan Family Values Committee and their followers - to label and control the destiny of others. (see GAY & LESBIAN RIGHTS, page 14)
Washington, D.C. April 25---Marchers carried banners representing different religious organizations including Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist groups. Here, David Michener of Ann Arbor, William Strickland of Washington D.D., march under a Quaker banner which Strickland made himself.
GAY & LESBIAN RÍGHTS (FROM PAGE 1) Much of the MFVC Campaign will be designed to miseducate and misinform. It will connect lesbians and gay men as predators. It will portray our community as inherently and aggressively immoral and disease-ridden.
They will tell Michigan that we are exotic sexual creatures who are guilty of the most horrific and base acts. They will say that, given the opportunity, we will molest their children and recruit them. They will say that gay men are responsible for AIDS and that we are a perverse abomination with the ability, but not the decency, to be normal. They will talk at length, and in graphic detail, of sexual acts and practices that most of us have never heard of.
They will say that although we are morally bankrupt, we have more money , are more educated and take nicer vacations than heterosexuals. They will paint our lives as thrill and pleasure-seeking, hedonistic and self-centered. The MFVC will define the "homosexual agenda" as an extraordinary conspiracy, a well-endowed and politically powerful plan that, unless stopped, will violate and destroy the very fabric of traditional family values.
The MFVC will feed the fears that people have about us and will create grotesque caricatures, based on stereotypes of lesbians and gay men. They will feed those distorted images and stories to a public that is hungry for someone or something to blame.
Their rhetoric and their misinformation will fuel a climate of distrust and bigotry, of hate and violence against lesbians, gay men and bisexual people. Overt acts of vandalism, espionage and destruction will be juxtaposed against on-going personal attacks. Violence will increase both in numbers & intensity.
The reality of being lesbian, gay or bisexual, in Michigan, will mean that you live in a kind of terror, an overwhelming apprehension of danger. It will not be safe to be an "out and open" lesbian, bisexual or gay man. And, more than ever, it will be critically important, politically and personally, to be "out and open." The dilemma is extraordinary.
They get away with their nasty campaign because so few are willing to stand with us. They get away with it because so many lesbian and gay men lead closeted lives. They get away with it because if they 're coming after me, maybe, just maybe, they won't come after you.
The agenda for the Michigan Family Values Committee must be stopped. If they are successful with this mind-numbing initiative, they will expand their hit list. They will go after the other people and the other communities that they, and the dominant culture, perceive to be expendable - people of color, poor people, women, children, the disabled, non-Christians. Think about who has the power. Think about who makes the rules. Think about who might be next.
Look at the larger agenda of the MFVC. Ask the MFVC about choice, affirmative action, right to privacy issues, universal health care, the ERA, pregnancy, child-abuse prevention programs, parental leave and HIV education. Explore their connections with Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, Concerned Women For America and Operation Rescue. We must, I believe, commit to a campaign that tells the truth about the Michigan Family Values Committee and exposes its sexism, racism, bigotry, xenophobia and homophobia. We must let Michiganders know that the Michigan Family Values Committee is a lot more dangerous than the lesbian, gay and bisexual community. We must commit to a campaign that acknowledges the larger bigoted agenda of the Christian Right and that understands that, this time, in this initiative process, the focus is on lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. We must put a queer face and a queer spin on our work. We must not sanitize our campaign. We must commit to a campaign that helps us to build our movement: our lesbian, gay and bisexual liberation movement.
Michigan must affirm and validate its lesbian, gay and bisexual citizens. It must embrace us, as individuals and as a community. Your rights as Michiganders are non-negotiabie. This campaign, our campaign against bigotry, this wonderful campaign for justice and democracy, is compelling. We must move Michiganders to vote to defeat the Michigan Family Values Committee and its bigoted initiative.
To help organize against the bigoted agenda of the Michigan Family Values Committee, please call the U-M Lesbian Gay Male Programs Office at 763-4186.=, the Triangle Foundation at 313-537-3323, or the Michigan Organization for Human Rights at 517-887-2605.