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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1987)
The Straight Stuff How the mainstream press sees it B Y W C. M c R A E oice Booth, columnist in This Week magazine, aimed her March 4 rightist harumphing at HB 2325, Oregon’s gay rights bill. Booth, who seems to be former Portland mayor Frank Ivancie in drag, lathered herself up about the legisla ture’s inattention to her personal agenda. On jobs: “ We’ve asked for help on the economy. We need jobs, we’ve said. Do something. So what do they do? They come up with gay-rights legislation. Fine. Swell. Lots of jobs in that.’’ What the Imperial We misses is that, for 10-15 per cent of the Portland homes that This Week intrudes upon weekly, the gay rights bill is a jobs bill. To discontinue This Week distribution at your address, call 620-4121 and ask for circulation. But be patient, it may take months to free your home of this menace. J ast month’s story about organized religion and gays is this month's story on priests and AIDS following an “ Up Close and Personal” journalistic logic of personalizing religion into priests and foreshortening gays into, well, AIDS. Priests with AIDS stories have appeared in most major dailies and are being reprised now in the weeklies. The story plays well because the association of priests with AIDS discredits the priesthood at the same L time that the association legitimizes AIDS. From between the lines comes a plaintive plea for understanding and gay rights. These stories about the Cloistered be coming the Political almost all ignore nuns. The press uses the AIDS association to draw conclusions about the sex lives of all the men and women of the cloth. Why such a discussion wasn’t prompted by the Lesbian Nuns remains a mysery. riter David Leavitt called it “ the love that dare not speak its name’’: friendships between gay men and straight women. Last month. Gentlemen’s Quarterly stopped squirming long enough to print a story on the subject. The story — of course written by a woman — is the First I recall where GQ even acknowledges that gays exist, which is pretty astonishing considering what GQ is and who reads it. GQ must have a larger gay readership than all the gay papers and magazines in the world combined, a situation not un realized by its advertisers. While the arti cle by Laura Furman is predicable enough — it’s all, “ Oh, what nice clothes; my, such manners; and who made the quiche?” stuff — her final paragraphs reveal her real “ gay” concern: AIDS, “ I can no longer afford the luxury of glamorizing [her gay friend’s) life . . . Now I see the boundary between us as a minefield, across which I W C a n ’t B elieve keep an eye on my friend.” Fag Hag, get thee behind me. n fact, one of the editors of GQ is pictured in Vanity Fair's two-page photo memorium of arts and entertain ment types who have died of AIDS. Typically for Vanity Fair, even the road to AIDS is paved with name-dropping, and one could certainly view the photos and the long accompanying story as merely a voyeuristic “ how the good die young” story. But the story transcends its classist context, and becomes a moving testimony. We’re at least spared the mawkish decep tion of Liberace. I ou may have naively thought that if a gay person were to run for elected office, then the gay press would do everything in its power to promote the candidate. Wrong. The candidacy of Harry Britt, the openly gay supervisor from San Francisco, for California’s fifth congressional seat is proving that San Francisco gay politics is easily as Byzantine as anything Chicago could serve up. Coming Up!, a San Francisco gay Y SofiAiâticated newspaper, has endorsed Britt’s principle opponent, Nancy Pelosi, who is a major fundraiser for the California Democratic Party but has no elected parliamentary ex perience. Coming Up! editor Kim Corsaro, busily tossing garlands, invests Pelosi with almost superpolitical powers: “ [Pelosi] is responsible for replacing Strom Thurmond as chair of Judiciary. Jesse Helms got his comeuppance from Pelosi when he lost the chair of Foreign Relations.” Makes you kind of wonder how Pelosi could have done all that from an unelected position in San Francisco, doesn’t it? Corsaro scolds Britt for being “ simply in over his head,’ ’ and assembles lots of off the record grumbling about Britt from gays and lesbians, all of whom are portrayed as resignedly supporting the “ incompetent” Britt. Coming Up! thus promotes itself as all the more principled for speaking out and having the integrity of breaking rank. It must be difficult using a word proces sor when you’re shaking your own hand. The New York Native has also drawn a bead on Britt, but for being too progres sive. Britt has truck with the Democratic Socialists of America, and views “ his ties to the Democratic Party in the most nomi nal of terms.” Whatever Britt’s merits, we’re left with the unsightly vision of the gay press abas ing itself deliriously each time a main stream politician agrees not to quarantine us, while lashing out at a gay candidate who might presume to be good enough to join the mainstream. Of course, nothing looks so principled to its partisans as factionalism. • 23rd & Flanders! PORTLAND SYMPHONIC CHOIR PARKING IN REAR Bruce Browne, Director YOGURT! Frozen Yogurt Stores JUST OPENED presents HAIR styled superbly BLOCH: S A C R E D S E R V IC E Members of the West Coast Chamber Orchestra Michael Delos, Baritone y2 THE CALORIES 97% FAT FREE 3 OTHER LOCATIONS • Beaverton Town Square • 363 S. State Street Lake Oswego • Lower Boones Ferry Rd. and 1-5 Tualatin GARY meticulously manicured Give a gift certificate LUCXEY and receive mention this ad to off any NAILS TREAT A LOVED ONE COME RELAX IN OUR service SMOKE-FREE ENVIRONMENT 1225 NE Broadway — 281-7831 & 288-7831 ‘ Just Out $. April. 1987 8t’l .InqA ?\uOt»ui ____ % Saturday, April 4,1987, 8:00 PM Portland Civic Auditorium Tickets; $7.50 (regular) $5.00 (student/senior) Call 248-4496 for tickets (sponsored in part by the Metropolitan Arts Commission)
