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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
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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
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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
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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
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