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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 8, 1999)
NO REDEEMING SOCIAL VALUE— OR YOUR MONEY BACK! Frozen out TRIANGLE PRODUCTIONS! presents A fire in Lee Lynch’s belly yearns to thaw some cold-hearted conservatives O C om e , play That’s right, kids, you won’t find any books filled with noble ideas here at CounterM edia, just the Northwest’s best selection of gay smut, including: • every photo and art book in print • hard-to-find magazines like Blue or TRASH — always 20% off! • vintage material from the 50s-70s • and the steamiest fiction around! CounterM edia. Downtown at 927 SW Oak. 11-7 M-Sat, 12-6 Sun. Ph 226-8141 ONE-STOP SHOPPING FOR PORTLAND’S DEGENERATES! there’s anything else, I don’t know what it is.” It’s a tempest in a teapot. Gays get some rights acknowledged and a little judicial pro tection, and one of the legislators who’s refer ring ballot initiatives whines, “1 believe that marriage and family are at the heart of our social institutions and social structures. It’s extremely important to maintain and protect them." Protect them from whom? Abra cadabra! I sign up for insurance and your wife runs off with another man and three of your seven kids come out? Right. What do these legislators want? First, voters would get to approve the definition of “tradi tional marriage” as a union between man and woman. O f course, that definition exists in state statute and was even acknowledged in this recent Oregon court decision, but who’s counting? The strategy is to trick the voters into saying yes to a no-brainer for heterosexists so the voters will say yes to the next two. Second is an initiative to nix the dreaded peril of government employment benefits to same-sex partners. Note here that we’re no longer talking about any unmarried couple, only same-sex couples, many of whom would marry in a flash but for the above definition of marriage. And note too that all this is designed to elicit a yes vote from anyone with a fear of additional taxes. Just to cover all the bases, the third initia tive would give largely undereducated voters the power to make sure government employees can be mistreated and fired for being gay. The bright side of all this is that gay people no longer have to carry the burden of fighting the radical right wing by ourselves. We’ve been tation to squash more victims of radical right wing wrath. Is this further revenge because Bill Clinton can see that gay people are human, but they cannot? Or do they think they’ll stay in office this way? Ha! Come next election, let’s show them what we the people want because, surprise, conservatives, the president’s popularity ratings went up 10 points as soon as you impeached him! Folks in the U.S. can be rough on one another, but some still under stand the concept of fairness. Unlike the weather. I just got this e-mail from a cold friend in the next town: “I’ve been hanging blankets over doorways out in the laundry room, covering vents under the house, positioning heaters and heat lamps, dripping the faucets, feeding the pets extra, monitoring the outside water dishes for the birds, heating rice bags for the foot of the bed, and keeping the wood box full and the tea kettle on. If trying to tell the country for years that radical conservatives might pull a stunt like tossing out a president because they loathe his slightly liberal leanings. We’ve been telling them that the right was interfering with the judicial process to impose its untenable values on everyone. And we are being heard. One Ore gon Democratic legislator responded to these threatened initiatives by saying, “We certainly will take on the responsibility of protecting tht human rights of everyone in this state.” Lover trekked through the snow to assem ble a little pumphouse of reflective material. I put a rickety wooden lean-to over that and a lamp inside to heat the pipe. Tonight’s going ti be another ffeezer. But we’ll have water again one of these days. And we’ve all— Lover, our friend in the next town, me— learned how to take care of ourselves when the elements are against us. We’ll be OK. ri BINGO WITH THE G ir ls ! Reservations: Box office @ 239-5919 FASTIXX @ 224-8499 m ~ ur pipes are frozen. I spent an hour out in the 19-degree back yard with a hair dryer. The pump guy said to forget it, things would thaw later. It’s three hours later and one degree warmer. This isn’t supposed to happen on the Oregon coast. 1 came in to defrost, kept my toasty fedora on, made a cup of decaf tea and picked up the paper. “Strategy Aims to Block Same-Sex Ben efits.” Oh, thank you, just what 1 needed. It was only last week that the Oregon Court of Appeals decided domestic partner benefits were long overdue and that we gays are definitely a dis tinct class of people who have been — discriminated against. To add insult to injury on this day when even the waterfalls have turned into ice sculptures, it’s not the Oregon Citizens Alliance that’s turned on us. Lon Mabon and his hate-mongering hench-crew didn’t have to lift a finger. They’ve scared the legislators so badly that two state representatives are doing their dirty work by introducing three separate anti-gay measures for inclusion on the next ballot. Is this the form the next onslaught will take in other states as well? Will politicians elected to represent the people turn against —— the people to take away our rights? Perhaps these two Republicans BY are feeling so powerful after brand LEE LYNCH ing our president with a scarlet let ter that they can’t resist the temp- 3430 SE Belmont St ~ ri