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critical of BRO and the way it handled the
No on 36 campaign.
1 was a volunteer for the No on 56 campaign
myself, and 1 had some definite concerns, as did
many other people in our community. BRO had
raised twice the money that the Yes on 36 cam
paign had, and yet it didn’t start running televi
sion ads until the last month of the campaign,
after many people had already submitted their
ballots. Meanwhile, the “Yes” folks had been
running a successful ad campaign for months
prior to the election.
I kept track of how many times 1 saw a “Yes”
ad and how many times 1 saw a “No” ad. There
were three times as many “Yes” commercials in
any given evening.
Where was BRO when the “Yes” folks start
ing telling their lies about how a “No” vote
would force schools to teach homosexual sex?
Where was BRO when the “Yes” folks were
showing respected members of the community
like teachers, politicians and even a gay couple?
The “No” ads never once mentioned the phrase
“No on 36” but were ambiguous, unknown het
erosexual talking heads going on about what
marriage meant to them.
BRO continues to drop the ball time and
again when it comes to same-sex marriage.
1 have to ask: Just how effective is BRO?
If it wasn’t for the hard work and dedication
of Tinker and Love Makes a Family, we would
n’t have been successful in fighting the anti-gay
initiatives introduced by Lon Mahon and the
Oregon Citizens Alliance. Tinker was fighting
for lesbian/gay/transgender Oregonians years
before BRO existed and Roey Thorpe came to
Portland. Tinker is a knowledgeable, seasoned
voice in the community, one of many that needs
to be heard.
Instead of tearing down respected activists in
our community, we should be seeking input
from everyone, even when we don’t fully agree.
The “my way or the highway” attitude doesn’t
work for rhe Bush administration, and it doesn’t
work in our community, either.
While civil unions are a step in the right
direction, I wonder what Rosa Parks’ reaction
would have been if she had been told by leaders
in her community, “Well, you have to sit at the
back of the bus, but at least you get to ride the
bus.” Let’s not forget, civil unions are second-
class citizenship, and everybody knows it. We
should be picketing straight weddings, blocking
access to marriage license offices and protesting
at the churches that participated in rhe Defense
of Marriage Coalition. Passive civil disobedi
ence is not a contest about who gets along bet
ter with whom.
B rad T ownsend -B runs
Portland
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lthough Jack Nichols was
not from Oregon, he
touched all gay Oregonians
with his five decades of gay
activism. He died May 2 in
Florida at the age of 67.
1 was first touched by
Nichols’ 1972 book, I Have
More Fun with You Than Any
body, which he co-authored
with his lover, Lige Clarke. For
many years prior to the publi
cation of this bcxik, Nichols
and Clarke had touched many
other gay people with their
column, “The Homosexual
Citizen,” published in Al
Goldstein’s very heterosexual From left, Frank Kameny, Jack Nichols and George Weinberg
Screw newspaper. This column were honored as grand marshals of New York City’s 2004
was one of the only sources of Heritage of Pride Parade.
gay news available to Oregoni
ans. Screw was only sold in adult bxxikstores.
Nichols was interviewed by Mike Wallace of
Nichols and Clarke’s column led them to CBS News for the first nationally televised doc
become the editors of Gay, the first weekly gay
umentary on homosexuality March 7, 1967. He
newspaper. (The Advocate was a biweekly news
was one of the first homosexual Americans to
paper.) It was often sold in hippie-style bxxik-
come out publicly.
stores and cigar store newsstands alongside the
Nichols never retired. His gay activism con
other radical political publications of the periixJ.
tinued into the Internet age. From 1997 until
Nichols’ activism started years before the
2004 he edited the Web site Gay Today, which
1969 Stonewall rebellion. In 1961 he and Frank
was read hy more than 50,000. people worldwide.
Kameny started the Washington, D.C., chapter
In 2002 I sent Nichols an e-mail thanking
of the Mattachine homophile rights organiza
him for his 1972 Ixxik. As he seemed to do with
tion. Inspired by Martin Luther King’s famous
everyone who came close, we became friends.
1963 march on Washington for black civil
Even though he lived on a beach in Florida, the
rights, Nichols and Kameny led a protest July 4,
Internet enabled our frequent long-distance
1965, at Independence Hall calling for homo
communications.
sexual civil rights. Bayard Rustin, the man who
Professor J. Louis Campbell of Penn State
was the driving force behind King’s march, was i University has spent the past several years
working on a biography of Nichols. A contract
also gay.
with a distinguished hx>k publisher is under
Nichols was rhe first activist to challenge the
negotiation. An early draft of the fxxik promis
medical dogma that homosexuality is a sickness.
es to preserve this important part of gay history.
He worked with George Weinberg and other
More about Nichols can be found at his per
activists to get homosexuality removed from the
sonal
site,
www.jack-nichols.com,
and
official list of mental disorders. Weinberg coined
www.gaytixlay.com.
the term “homophobia" in the 1960s and initi
—Thomas Kraemer
ated psychological research on the subject.
A
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