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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1992)
national news Lesbian columnist in mainstream press "The Christ you say you believe in needs to speak to your heart and teach you that hatred is wrong, bigotry is a sin and his love is for all people in all situations," White told the wearying fundamen talists as they finally retreated from the sidewalk. The showdown was particularly meaningful for one onlooker. James Dale was dismissed from the Boy Scouts last year in New Jersey after the Scouts learned that he is gay. Dale had been a Scout from age 8 to age 20. In the next few weeks, he will be filing suit against the Boy Scouts of America under New Jersey’s new sexual orienta tion anti-discrimination law. “I think I’ve given a lot to the organization for more than half of my life. I see a lot of good in the Boy Scouts, and I want to change it for the better. Bigotry and intolerance cannot be accepted,” Dale said. Ken McPherson of the Forgotten Scouts said, follow ing the demonstration, he would present 1,000 signatures to the four companies supporting their decision to defund the Scouts. McPherson said it was only the beginning. Rachel Timoner At long last a gay journalist has convinced the established press that there is a receptive audience for a column devoted exclusively to gay and lesbian issues. Deb Price, a news editor for the Washington, D.C., bureau of the Detroit News, began writing her column in May and is now transmitted by Gannett News Serv ice to 80 news papers. Price appears in USA Today, the Des Moines Register, the Rochester Democrat and The San Francisco Chronicle. “I’m so excited,” Price says. “I hope to be a bridge between the gay and straight communities. I’d like to push the discussion of gay issues forward. Everybody knows a gay person-a brother, a sister, someone who is gay. With the column. I’m saying, ‘It’s OK to say we’re gay’.’’ The column has inspired a huge response from readers. Though most have been positive, not everyone is pleased. Bob Giles, editor and pub lisher of the Detroitpaper, however, is happy with the experiment “Deb’s column is a valuable addition to the paper and is providing badly needed Born-again “ex-gay” information. We knew we would get a strong response, and my reaction to the negative letters becomes born-again gay is that it simply demonstrates all the more why we David Caliguiri, who earned one of The need this column.” Advocate's 1985 homophobia awards for offer Jim Hunger ing discontented gays and lesbians “a way out of the homosexual deathstyle” through the born- again Christian tenets of his Free Indeed national Queers take on ministry, has reaffirmed his gay sexuality. Also founding the Phoenix chapter of Homosexuals the Christians Anonymous during his eight-year digression into Fewer than 50 staid fundamentalists caged the “ex-gay” movement, Caliguiri says he started themselves in with barricades and police protec Free Indeed after a traumatic week in 1981. His tion on the sidewalk in front of the Bank of male lover had ended their romance and business America World Headquarters in San Francisco relationship, and Caliguiri went on a drinking July 15 as at least four times as many counter- binge. He ended up going home with a man who demonstrating queers taunted them from the steps tied him up and raped him several times. Finally above. freed the next day, he returned home to find his The fundamentalists had planned to protest ex-lover with another man, and he recalls think the decision by Bank of America, Wells Fargo ing at that time, “If this is what being gay is about, Bank, Levi Strauss and United Way of the Bay I don’t want to be this way anymore.” Area to quit funding the Boy Scouts of America Caliguiri became a major organizer of anti until that organization ends its discriminatory gay protests beginning with the 1985 gay pride policy against gay men. parade in Phoenix and through his Free Indeed Instead, they were overwhelmed by whistle organization employed deceptions typical of shrieks, boos, chants of “Shame!” and “Bigots go homophobic pseudo-Christian groups to attract home!”, showers of paper triangles and a choral people. “We were listed under Lesbian and Gay rendition of slightly adapted Christian hymns. Alternative Services, so people thought we were The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender a gay information board,” Caliguiri says. “People activists definitely had the upper hand when it would call to find out where the local bars were, came to crowd size, volume, originality and sense and we’d preach to them about the sins of homo of humor. As the fundies read the Pledge of sexuality.” Allegiance, the queers sprinkled them with pages But Caliguiri was hardly reformed. By the from hymn books. As the fundies sang “Glory, time he was appearing on the Sally Jesse Raphael Glory, Hallelujah,” the arm-waving queers swayed show as a champion of the ex-gay movement, he in choral formation, singing, “What a friend we recalls, “I’d started having sex with men again. have in Jesus/He is not bound by bigotry/He Men would call our hot line and tell me about their teaches love and understanding/Why do you tie latest sin: sex with their pastor, sex with their him to the tree?” father. I was homy all the time.” To avoid being recognized, he resorted to anonymous encounters The fundies were not pleased. “I think homosexuality is immoral and the in bookstores or slept with other “reformed” ho Boy Scouts have a right to exclude homosexuals,” mosexuals. “I didn’t realize it at first, but a lot of said Chuck Mollhenny, an organizer of cam Homosexuals Anonymous leaders were having paigns against San Francisco’s domestic-partner sex with one another,” Caliguiri says. “We’d go law. “I disagree that they’re bom that way. to conferences in other cities, and we’d be paired Everybody is bom a sinner, but they have a choice up in hotel rooms. Everybody was sleeping with everybody else.” to go with God.” Hundreds of onlookers lining the streets and Eventually Caliguiri’s duplicity began to af tourists on stopped cable cars watched the fect his health. Suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and candidiasis, he was too sick to circuslike face-off. After one woman yelled repeatedly, “Mary attend church. “The more time I spent away from was an unwed mother!”, a fundamentalist vented these people, the more I began to feel like myself. his frustration over the microphone: "This is our I began to remember who I used to be,” he says. demonstration. We called the police ahead of Turning over the Free Indeed phone lines to a local church in late 1991, he closed the ministry’s time, and yet we’re under siege.” “I’m here because they’re throwing away ev doors and is now studying alternative spirituali erything they say they believe in. They’re feeding ties (“I’m interested in belief systems that aren’t Satan with their hate and bigotry,” explained judgmental”) and considering romance (“But not Robert White, a minister at the Universal Life with a Christian!”). Jim Hunger Church and a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence. I ju s t OM« ▼ a u g u st 1 0 9 2 T 0 DAVID W. OWENS, PC & ASSOCIATES ATTORNEYS AT LAW David William Owens lennifer F. 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