24 ▼ fo b ru a ry 17, 1 0 9 5 ▼ ju s t out
OUR
W ords
of
E xperience
A new anthology offers teens a sense
of being grounded in queer history
▼
anm vers
by Olivia Alvarez
GAY MliN'S CHORUS
W e\ie
rriaM na
n iU m
litional performance
Salem
Saturday, March 4th at 8:00 pm
Elsinore Theatre
For tickets call Fastixx at 370-7469.
u !
The fifteenth season of the Portland Gay Men's
Chorus continues with a rich shared history for
PGMC recaptures the
ourchorol family. We reflect on the rich
dynamic experiences that we have shared and
joy of the 7 0 s ! Join us as
look forward to the future.
we return to this era and
We invite you to join us in our celebration!
All Portland performances this season are at
the Intermediate Theatre, Portland Center for
highlight the growing
visibility of the Lesbian and
Gay Community during that
time.
W e conclude the
the Performing Arts and are A.S.L. interpreted
evening with the magnificent
and wheelchair accessible.
tribute to our struggle with
For Portland Tickets
Please Call PGMC
at 699-8586.
The Portland Gay Men's Chorus
Post Office Box 3223
Portland, Oregon 97208-3223
Turn your
the A ID S epidemic, "Hidden
Legacies."
It is an evening
that w ill touch your heart as
an affirmation of our strength
and a celebration of our
collective courage to live.
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COURTESY OF BROADWAY BOOKS
H
P O R I I. A N D
community included mistakenly joining several
earing Us Out is a collection of
straight softball teams before finding a gay league.
insightful and frank conversations
Then she stumbled onto a feminist lesbian league.
with members of the lesbian and
The experience demonstrated the power struggles,
gay community and their support­
on and off the field, that exist in the gay and
ers. Written for teenagers who are
community.
gay, straight, or still thinking about it, lesbian
Hearing
Rivera recounts his outing while still a
Us Out chronicles the joys and sorrows of Jeff
being
high
school student and the resulting rejection
gay or lesbian in a mostly homophobic
world.
and harassment. Teachers failed to be supportive
Author Roger Sutton, editor of The Bulletin of
or even protect him from threats by other stu­
the Center for Children’s Books, began the project
dents. That lack of support forced Rivera to quit
school.
While not all the stories have happy endings,
Sutton leaves his readers hopeful. Rivera and the
others retain a sense of humor, able to laugh at the
insanity and prejudice that sometimes surrounds
to give teenagers the stories and history of the gay
them, without falling victim to it.
and lesbian community. To that end he con­
ducted interviews with a variety of
people, from a 15-year-old to a
grandmother. Stories based on the
interviews range from heroic to
comical.
Hearing Us Out has coming out
stories, yes, but also stories about
staying out, dealing with AIDS,
lesbian separatism, dreaming about
first lovers, and the politics of be­
ing different.
Dorothy Knudson, an openly
lesbian police officer from Chi­
cago who founded the Lesbian and
Gay Police Association there, dis­
cusses the acceptance she has en­
joyed from her fellow officers.
Knudson, who was out while still
in the police academy, says, “I think
if you’re really comfortable with
being out, it helps other people be
comfortable with it, too.”
Terrence Smith, a self-pro-
claimed “in-your-face drag queen”
and Queer Nation’s presidential
candidate, recounts his attending
the Democratic National Conven­
tion in a miniskirt and stiletto heels.
Fred M itchell, an A frican
American working class father,
accepts his teenage son’s homo­
sex u ality but w orries about
society’s reaction. He says, “People
can be very volatile about people
who don’t fit in. Especially gay. But I want to try
And there is a sense of pride. It is echoed by
Terrence Smith when he says, “The fact that we
to at least be in his comer.”
are different is what makes us so special, and it
Yvonne Zipter, who wrote Diamonds Are a
makes being gay very special. It’s not just this
Dyke's Best Friend, a cross-country survey of
lesbian softball, discusses the effect of softball on
accident of nature— it’s this wonderful thing that’s
happened.”
her politics. Her early efforts to find a lesbian