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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 16, 1994)
/ national news Murderer confesses A “natural-bom killer” of gay men is in jail, and communities all along the East Coast are breathing easier. Gary Ray Bowles, a 32-year-old drifter and small-time hustler, was arrested Nov. 21 in Jacksonville Beach, Fla. ‘Tim Whitfield” had been brought in for ques tioning about the slaying of his roommate a week earlier. According to police reports, after about an hour he said, “Look, I’m tired of this. Do you really want to know who I am? I’m Gary Ray Bowles.” For the next few days, as police investigators flew in from Maryland, Georgia, and other parts of Florida, Bowles gave detailed accounts of the six murders he had committed over the last eight months. His victims ranged in age from 37 to 72. Some were tricks he had known only a few hours. But it was more common for Bowles to befriend an older man and move in with him for a few weeks. Then something inside Bowles would snap and he would beat, strangle, stab or shoot his benefactor to death. Each murder was savagely brutal. In a signature ritual, he would stuff some thing— a towel, dildo, leaves—down the victim’s throat, reportedly to keep them from breathing should they have somehow survived their ordeal. Bowles would then take off with the victim’s cash, car and credit cards. “Whitfield” had been arrested earlier in No vember in the Jacksonville area on drunk and disorderly charges. The police routinely check fingerprints against local files, not against the national register. Had they done so, Bowles’ last victim would still be alive. “It’s time,” Bowles told the police. “I want the killing to stop.... I’m either getting six life sen tences or the electric chair.” Birch to head HRCF Elizabeth Birch will become the next execu tive director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund. She was chosen by the board of directors at its meeting in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 19 and 20. She will take over for Tim McFeeley in early January. McFeeley is stepping down after more than five years as head of the nation’s largest gay and lesbian political organization. Birch, a 38-year-old attorney, will be leaving Apple Computer Inc., where she has served as the company’s chief litigator. She was influential in getting Apple to adopt domestic partner benefits and other nondiscriminatory policies for lesbians and gay men. Her principle work within the lesbian and gay community has been the six years she served on the board of directors for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the last two years as co-chair. Newt in the House “I think our position should be toleration [of gays],” said Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich, the next speaker of the U.S. House of Represen tatives. Newt Gingrich “It should not be promotion and it should not be condemnation. I don’t want to see police in the men’s room, which we had when l was a child, and I don’t want to see trying to educate kinder- gartners in understanding gay couples. I think both approaches are fundamentally wrong. ‘‘I think where we’re moving towards as a society and in our party’s position is that consent ing adults can have private relations without—in any way—the political system being involved.” The remarks came during an extended inter view by freelance writer Chandler Burr, which took place in April of this year as part of an article Burr was writing on semi-openly gay Rep. Steve Gunderson (R-Wis.). They were published in the Nov. 25 edition of The Washington Blade. Gingrich’s views, which could perhaps be described as “benign neglect,” do not please ac tivists, who seek to enlist government as an agent cathartic comics I | I S e a s o n 's G re e t in g s fro m th e B a b y B o m b e r Regular readers of Cathartic Comics Can't understand it? Well get Hooked on Phonics! Good games of Scrabble, the joy that friends bring These are a few of the year's coolest things ” Jh \ •Sm tg to ^ f Digital Queers combines technology and activism featuring The Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé b y P r o f. I.B . G itte n d o w n e G a il Shihley, Charles Moose and jolly George Eighmey Whitney in concert and Queer Night still slays me No Denny Smith, nor Measure 13 These are a few of the year's coolest things I f this season, without reason should feel real sad Please send me a few of my favorite things and then I won't feel so had / Y Jjj ftf f OlHe North's defeat—a fa ll oh so rapid Hashing Rush Limbaugfi, a madman so vapid The movie "Priscilla, it made my heart sing These are a few of the years coolest things for pro-gay and -lesbian policies. But they do, at wards its goal—to bring the latest technology to least philosophically, leave the door open to re the gay and lesbian civil rights movement. “We wanted to have some benefit come from move vestiges of government discrimination such as sodomy laws at the state level, and at the our many friends and contacts in the computer national level, the ban on gay men and lesbians industry that might help gay and lesbian nonprofits with their computer needs,” said Wickre. “We in serving in the military. the technology business take our tools for granted; Gingrich believes there may be a genetic com ponent to homosexuality but sees that as a predis nonprofits tend to fight for crumbs and accept position not an absolute factor. “I believe it’s an orientation in the way that alcoholism is an orien tation," he said. "1 think that on most things, most days, the vast majority of practicing homosexuals are good citizens.” He bases this view on his positive experience with a number of people. ' including a respected teacher growing up; ! Gunderson and his partner, Rob Morris; and his own lesbian half-sister, 28-year-old Candace Gingrich. The congressman strongly supports a “bias in favor of heterosexual marriage and heterosexual couples raising children.” He said, "It is madness to pretend that families are anything other than heterosexual couples. I think it goes to the core of how civilization functions.” Turning to partisan politics, he speculated, “[T]he numbers of those whose primary motiva tion is their gayness is a very small percentage of gays, and it’s all Democrat. “But I absolutely think we can be a comfort Digital Queers has given computers, modems able party for folks who share a lot of other beliefs and printers to groups around the country, such as with us but happen to be homosexual.” Gingrich called “the people who really are the Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum in Los Angeles and the National Latino/a Lesbian morally offended by gay people...the [Pat] and Gay Organization in Washington, D C. But it Buchanans and the [Robert] Dornans [R- Calif.]...not representative of the future, they’re is because of DQ’s “computer makeovers” that it is becoming well known. just noisy.” When an organization which fits its criteria (gay, nonprofit and national) approaches Digital Queers needing new equipment, the group holds a fund-raising event and calls on its major donors to match funds collected. It then works closely When you need computer savvy, on-line con with the staff at the organization to assess its tacts, and lesbian and gay sensibilities, who do computer and network needs, its workload, etc. Another of DQ’s goals is to change the demo you call? If you’re a national nonprofit organiza tion, you call Digital Queers. DQ has been pro graphics of gay network users. Currently, there moting its grass-roots, electronic activism since are no studies relating sexual orientation and network use— but Wickre feels the average queer its inception in 1992, reports The Washington on-liner is male, white and “undoubtedly between Blade. 25 and 40.” Digital Queers was conceived by Tom Rielly, then a marketing executive working in the Silicon She says, "We are very interested in deviating Valley, the heart of the computer industry. He from that norm by training and supporting lesbian cites his involvement with Queer Nation-San and people of color organizations. We at DQ hope Francisco as part of the inspiration for the group. we can help educate and train more and more With the help of Karen Wickre, who worked for people on the value of electronic activism so that a software company, and core members employed the work will spread even further.” at some of the largest computer-related firms in Compiled hy Boh Roehr and Jann Gilbert the country. Digital Queers began to move to j W g X h T his j « s r u th n c er T N is a f ra t r s j s o SMANVE lf o n n f 'w r! WAY of AS KING fOR CHWST/WVS > Q f T S , DONT TOO THINK? I— y HAPPY ROUOAXS, v EVERYON E } ) —