Celebrating lesbians
and gays together
The Ten Percent Revue was quite an
experience. Never before in my gay life
have I sensed such rapport between per­
formers and audiences. I got goose bumps
at every performance. Tom Wilson Wein­
berg, Jenifer Firestone, Jon Arterton,
Helena Snow, Elliot Pilshaw and Laura
Green are an extraordinary group of people.
The audiences were wonderful as well.
In what must have been the First time in the
history of Portland’s gay/lesbian com­
munity, audiences maintained consistent
gender parity. And that’s for all eight
performances, too.
Many people came to see the Ten Per­
cent Revue more than once, bringing
friends and/or family on their return trips.
A man I know came to a performance on a
Saturday with his boyfriend, and the fol­
lowing evening brought his daughter and
her boyfriend along.
Several people brought their children;
one woman arrived with her five and seven
year old sons in tow. “ I want them to
experience this, too,” she said. And some
people brought their parents.
It was wonderful.
I want to publicly thank Renee
LaChance for bringing Ten Percent Revue
to Portland. Renee saw one of their
performances in San Francisco about a
year ago, and recognizing Tom Wilson
Weinberg’s revolutionary message, gave
herself the task to get them here.
Always the Doubting Thomas, I was
skeptical, not of Renee’s ability to get the
act together, but of the lack of what I
perceived as an integrated audience of
gays and lesbians in Portland. Entertain­
ment events I have attended here have al­
most always been aimed at one part of the
community, not the community as a whole.
Renee knew the audience was there.
Thanks, Renee.
All of us want to express our gratitude to
Oregonian Theater Critic Bob Hicks for a
glowing review. The headline alone (Ten
Percent Revue celebrates gayness) made
my week.
•
Flaunting it in Salem
Monday, February 23, 1987, was defi­
nitely Gay/Lesbian Day in Salem. Four
hearing rooms were filled with lesbian,
gays and non-gays eager to give support to
HB 2325. More than a hundred people
testified at the hearing; most of the witnes­
ses gave evidence in favor of the bill’s
passage.
Secretary of State Barbara Roberts,
House Speaker Vera Katz, Representative
Ron Eachus, Cory Steisinger, (Gov. Neil
Goldschmidt’s representative) Senator
Jane Cease, Senator Nancy Ryles, Mult­
nomah County Commissioner Gretchen
Kafoury, Ellen Rosenblum (Oregon State
Bar), Bill Fitzgerald (AFL-CIO), Portland
City Commissioner Mike Lindberg, Wil­
liam Shepherd (President of P/FLAG Ore­
gon), Estill Dietz, M.D. (Oregon AIDS
Task Force), Alice Dale and Sandra
Nemeth (Oregon Public Employees
Union), Peggy Hanley-Hackenbruck
(American Psychiatric Association), Ben
Merrill (Portland attorney), Rev. Chris­
topher Johnson (University of Portland),
Sue Guthrie (Oregon Women’s Political
Caucus), Representative Shirley Gold,
on the Pope’s itinerary. So far, a papal
mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral has been
cancelled, reportedly because local Catho­
lic officials take the San Francisco lesbian/
gay community very seriously.
So what can the rest of us do? In a letter
to The Washington Blade, Warren A.
Potas suggests, “ Pick a postcard appro­
priate for the occasion, invest 33e for
airmail postcard postage, and tell him to
stay home (address: The Pope John Paul
II/Vatican City/Italy).
Besides, it will make you feel good!” •
‘ ‘
Mary Kay Russell, William Youngren,
Evee Smith, Patti Pate, Patricia McHugh,
Bill McFadden, and others urged the sub­
committee members to recommend a
favorable reading to the full Judiciary
Committee, which will pass on the bill in
the near future. (Witnesses testified into
the night, we left at 6 pm after observing
for 416 hours.)
The witnesses were not all testifying for
our side, of course. The opposition came
from one quarter only — the arch-conser­
vative religious fundamentalists represent­
ed by such Harpies as Betty Freauf and
Priscilla Martin.
Freauf s testimony so angered me, that
when I saw her later in the hall outside the
hearing room, I confronted her with the
following exchange; Me; Why do you tell
all those lies? Freauf: For the same reason
you do. (Thus admitting to lying.) Me:
But, I’m not lying and you are.
It made me feel so good to call her a liar,
and when I later heard that Freauf was
observed in what was described as an
“ hysterical state,” I felt even better.
•
Tell the Pope to stay home
What misguided logic could induce
John Paul II, patriarch of the Roman
Catholic Church, to plan a visit to San
Francisco?
Cynicism, perhaps?
Last October, with his letter on the
Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope placed his
imprimatur on the most virulent attack
against gays and lesbians in recent mem­
ory. The Letter not only condemns same-
sex love, it also condones physical and
verbal abuse of lesbians and gays for de­
manding an end to persecution.
And now the Pope feels the need to add
insult to injury by bringing his traveling
circus to the universally recognized capital
of the gay and lesbian community. His
pontificating and traipsing about San
Francisco will only compound the pain
and suffering which already afflicts many
of us.
John Paul II could better serve his god
and humankind by spending the time in the
Vatican’s Sistine Chapel contemplating
the work of Michelangelo, a man who
loved men. While in awe of Michelange­
lo’s magnificent frescoes, the Pope could
atone for flaunting the Christian ethic.
In San Francisco, gays and lesbians are
mobilizing in protest of the September visit
with planned demonstrations at every stop
Quarantine!' ’
When I was a child growing up on the
high desert plateau of Northern Arizona,
hardly a winter went by without at least
one house in the small town having a
dreaded yellow sign tacked to the front
door. “ Quarantine!” the signs read, in
great big old-fashioned letters.
This was more than forty years ago; the
signs were posted for such childhood dis­
eases as whooping cough, scarlet fever
and meningitis. Our house escaped every
year, although we did have a scare once
when a cousin was suspected of having
meningitis while visiting us.
Quarantine was a fact of life for our
family especially — my father was presi­
dent of the local school board for about ten
years — we always knew which family
was coping with what disease.
Many years later, in August, 1976, im­
ages of those acid colored squares of card­
board with the quaint lettering flashed
vividly into my consciousness. I was liv­
ing in Southern Oregon at the time and had
become infected with a new strain of
gonococci. At one point during the three
months it took to cure the infection, the
county health officials seriously considered
putting me in quarantine.
Because my sexual network was rather
widespread (the public health people found
it astonishing) and because the physician
treating me thought I was being reinfected,
health officials began studying the options.
Someone suggested holding merin the
mental ward of the local hospital.
I had been straightforward with them
and was genuinely concerned myself, so
by promising to modify my behavior, I
narrowly escaped incarceration. And for­
tunately, only one other person I’d had sex
with — the man I got it from — had the
disease.
Currently, attempts are being made to
change Oregon’s quarantine statutes by
adding special provisions relating to the
disease AIDS. Such measures are unneces­
sary (and probably motivated by
homophobia).
Believe me, I know that Oregon’s sta­
tutes relating to quarantine for public health
reasons are adequate for any occasion. «
Quick , what do KBOO and
The Brig have in common?
Since last October KBOO 90.7 FM and
the Brig have been offering the talented
record spinning of DJ Michael Jay. On
KBOO for five years, Michael calls his
slot (Mondays 3:30 am-6:00 am) East
Coast Connection.
DJ MJ plays an eclectic variety of pro­
gressive music, “ Pamela Stanley, Jack
Charles’ Mien Streets, Sylvester,” he
says. “ And on KBOO I play local ‘rap and
scratch,’ like John Carmony from the
Brig.”
At present, MJ is at the Brig on Mon­
days, also and plays what he calls dance-
able rock, “ Such as Def Leppard and Billy
Idol. It’s danceable Top 40.”
Michael Jay has worked as a disc jockey
in several clubs in Portland since 1974 but
until last year had not worked in a gay
establishment. He says he likes working at
The Brig because he can play better music.
“ Gay audiences are better than straight
audiences,” Michael Jay said. Michael and
The Brig also have something in common;
while working as a disc jockey at The Brig
is his first job in a gay establishment, he is
also the first black disc jockey to hold such
a position in Portland.
•
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Just Out 5 March. 1987