Ka-ching!
It’s taken n early a decade,
but the payback fin ally begins
by I nga
S orensen
t was a crisp evening back on Oct. 8, 1991.
Peacenik diners popped into Old Wives’
Tales, an East Burnside bistro with a beloved
Hungarian mushroom soup.
A block or so away, a substantially different
crowd gathered near the Portland Foursquare
Church.
The men looked dour, the women too, as
they wore the stem faces of those preparing for
battle.
This was a particularly special night, and the
assembled knew it. Each had received an invita­
tion to the premiere screening of the Oregon
Citizens Alliances new anti-gay video, Gay
Pride.\ touted as “a key
8j element in the cam-
| paign to stop the mili-
< tant homosexual agen-
I
1
da"
£
Parents were told
| not to bring their kids
due to the perverse
nature of the footage.
Inside, the seques­
Catherine Stauffer
tered listened attentive­
ly to anti-gay lectures by OCA officials Scott
Lively and Bill Casey.
Then they moved to the really good stuff—
the viewing of a 40-minute video comprising
footage from the 1991 San Francisco gay pride
march and the 1987 national gay and lesbian
rights march in Washington, D.C.
OCA bigwigs prefaced the screening by
warning that “Portland will be San Francisco in
10 years if we don’t do something about it now!”
Lights out.
The video honed in nearly exclusively on
scenes of public nudity, female impersonators,
and leather and SM enthusiasts.
Many times throughout the video, the faces
of children were featured and then freeze-framed
in contorted poses. One shot gave the subtle yet
distinct impression that a gay father was
attempting to have anal sex with his young son.
(Dad was simply holding the boy as they rode
together on a float.)
Gasps of disgust could be heard among the
‘roughly 50 viewers when the “Gay Fathers” and
“Gay and Lesbian Educators” contingents
appeared on the screen.
The message? Gays are destructive and
manipulating—and trying to lure your children
into their deviant lifestyle.
A subtitle saying “This is what gay rights
means” flashed periodically.
When the video ended, the alarmed sat
silent.
OCA leaders, meanwhile, noted that they
planned to distribute copies, at the cost of about
$7 per cassette, to pastors and other supporters
throughout Oregon, all in an effort to pass their
newly crafted initiatives, one of which equated
homosexuality with bestiality and necrophilia.
C ontinued on P age 6