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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 2003)
g jH S t a n t » november 21. 2003 OUR PLANTS ARE 6 ON THE KINSEY SCALE Continued from Luge 5 would like to see more positive strokes given to the paper and its dedicated staff. As a business owner 1 also encourage you all T h o se w e re th e d a y s to remember to spend your dollars in the G LB T Just CJut is supported by their adver community. To the E ditor : tisers, and these advertisers need your business appy 20th anniversary, Just Out ! Your £ anniversary reminded me of a wonderful to remain open— it is a circle. Think where you spend your dollars and pennies; you are affecting experience I had with one of your founders, Jay a bigger picture than you might actually realize. Brown. Thanks again, Just Out, and keep up the 1 have a lot of history in this town and was amazing job you are doing. First and third Fri privileged to he part of the original gay youth group in Portland, which was called Wtndfire. 1 days are always a joy to look forward to for see ing and reading what is new and happening. was interviewed by Jay when 1 was 16, along with others who were in the youth group B ecky B ilyeu (“Growing Up Gay in the ’80s,” January 1983, Touchstone Coffee House Cascade Voice cover story]. As 1 kxik hack on that interview, 1 now real ize how special those times were for me, how Jay The inform tu rn e d acknowledged the unspoken voice of gay youth and how he turned his attention toward helping To the E ditor : enjoyed Pat Young’s piece on Lon Mahon and gay youth. He also provided a safe place for me the Oregon Citizens Alliance, hut there is to stay when 1 had nowhere else to go. When things were had at home, 1 ran away a one extremely important (to me, at least) ele ment left out, and that is the fact that Lon couple of times and Jay let me sleep on his Mahon IS N O LONGER A REPUBLICAN! couch. I assure you it was all innocent. I was not (“O C A Play-by-Play,” Nov. 71 attracted to him and he never made a move on In the mid-1990s my wife, Nancy, and I, me, plus he had a boyfriend, hut if I had no place along with several dozen like-minded, mixler- to sleep, he would say, “Knock on my dtx>r and ate-to-liberal Republicans, got so fed up with you can sleep on my couch.” 1 the O C A ’s thuggish and bigoted tactics that we Happy anniversary...and Jay, thank you. formed the Oregon Republican Mainstream Committee, an organization devoted to the “big R oger V ines Hillsboro tent" philosophy of the late Lee Atwater. The O R M C (www.graphyx.com/mainstream/main- strcam.index.html) has since become one of the P in k in k G O P’s major players in the ongoing struggle against single-issue politics and litmus-test To the E ditor : endorsements. ongratulations on 20 years of service and Lon Mahon and his O C A storm troopers , celebration! had for years been masquerading as Republicans, What would Portland he without Just Out! A when in actuality they were no such thing. Portland native, 1 began reading Just Out in 1984 as a senior in high schixil exploring my Thus, when this little worm of a man finally sexuality. It was a comfort to me as I searched for announced, with great fanfare, that the Repub answers to the many confusing questions 1 had. lican Party was tix> liberal for him and that he When I was a student at University of Ore was signing on with the Constitution Party of gon in the late ’80s Ju st Out was my connection Oregon, champagne corks popped all over the to Portland and what was happening. As a place. client service specialist at Cascade AIDS Proj With apologies to Dr. King: “Gone at last, ect in the early ’90s, when the epidemic was hit gone at last, great Gixl almighty, Mahon’s gone ting Portland so hard, once again it was a com at last!” fort to me. And damn gtxxl riddance, I hasten to add. Now years later I am the proprietor of Touchstone Coffee House, and Just Out has R olf G lerum given me an incredible amount of support. The Portland paper has been the main source of my commu nication with the G LB T community. The paper Hit th e s tre e ts to d efen d has held singles parties at Touchstone, it has ab o rtio n rig h ts kept the calendar open for live music and events, and it has profiled Touchstone and the To the E ditor : women musicians who play here. am outraged and disappointed by the way the As a business owner I appreciate and value U.S. government is interfering with the right the pages of Just Out as a way of communicating to abortion. But Congress and President Bush with the community. The mission of Touch are hell-bent on removing this right with the stone has always been to he more than a coffee “Partial Birth” Abortion Ban Act of 2003. house; it is intended to he a safe, tun and nur Public officials are representing the interests turing community space as well. Just Out, of a right-wing movement eager to eliminate through the years, has helped convey that in women’s freedom. Their message that women’s many ways. Whether it he an advertisement, a lives are not their own is conveyed through var calendar listing, a club listing or a story, without ious methixls: attacks on reprtxluctive rights, Just Out 1 know my business might not he what government rewards for marriage and the U.S. it is tixlay. Supreme Q uirt’s refusal to hear the appeal of a So I honor and celebrate your tireless devo woman convicted of homicide for dmg use that tion to our community. For being a window for led to a stillbirth. Add the increased social pres all of us to see through to opinions different sure on women to stay home, make babies, care from our own, to celebrate the triumphs and -* for parents and fill in for de-funded public serv stniggles and growth and change of our commu ices, and it is clear that the government is acting nity from the small to the mighty. on a mandate to subjugate women by any means Our community would not he where we are necessary. without Just Out. I challenge everyone in our Capitalism needs women to fill the role of an community to speak up and out, not just when underpaid, expendable part of the workforce you don’t agree with an editorial or an opinion and provider of free labor at home. Without printed in the paper, but when you see or read this, the system would go broke. something that you enjoy as well. This staff Our elected officials play to the tune of cor works harder than we all can imagine, and I porate wealth and voting blix:s. They are eager F ClSTUS NURSERY 22711 N W G ILU H A N ROAD SAUVIE ISLAND w e d - su n 10-5 6 o 2 SE 38th Ave. Portland, OR 97214 503.231.3922 Wed - Sat PRU L M ITC H ELL Je w e l A . R o b in so n 1 B’Zillion $$$ Producer V isit me now at: http://www.jewelrobinson.com 1730 N.E. 10th Avenue Portland, OR 97212 Prudential Northw*« Proporti« A&BW Hepatitis A and B are highly contagious viruses that affect the liver. Men who have sex with men are at greater risk lor getting Hepatitis A and B. 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