This Way Out; 36

We wanted to foster the development of statewide political action networks where there are none and strengthen existing local and state organizations where they now exist. The Bluffer's Guide to Music rather northerly suggests that Britain wrote Peter Piers as an early opera in one act. My entire generation has been the recipient of the work that Harvey Mood and so many others have carried on since Stonewall. She said that in Africa, AIDS is just another disease that they've added onto a long list of things to be battled. Welcome to this way out, the International Lesbian and Gay Radio Magazine. I'm Lucia Chappelle. And I'm Greg Gordon, activists use skillsharing as a way of creating change. The United Nations' World AIDS Day spreads information and encourages tolerance. And ten years later, everybody still needs milk. All that and even more. Now that you've discovered this way out.

I'm Sandy Dwyer and I'm Tony Sullivan. With News Wrap, a summary of some of the news in and affecting the gay and lesbian community. After a 14 -year court battle, the European Court of Human Rights ruled eight to six in favor of a challenge to the Republic of Ireland's Sodomy Law. Openly gay Irish Senator David Norris filed a complaint even though the law has been rarely enforced since its passage in 1861. The ruling, which cannot be appealed, forces the Republic to either reform its Sodomy Law or withdraw from the council of Europe and the European common market. The law in the Republic of Ireland provides for a maximum of life imprisonment for same -sex intercourse, even when it occurs in private. The Needle Exchange Program in the Netherlands to help prevent the transmission of AIDS amongst IV drug users has now been automated. In Amsterdam, five -foot tall machines issue a sterile, hypodermic syringe when a used one is put in a specially

designed slot in the top. A new syringe can also be purchased from the machine for 50 cents. Only 27 % of Amsterdam's IV drug users test HIV positive compared to the 60 to 70 % infection rate in cities such as New York, Paris and Milan, where no exchange programs exist. Alpha Interferon has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Kaposi Sarcoma. Before the AIDS crisis, Kaposi Sarcoma was a rare form of cancer. Now, it accounts for 24 % of all AIDS deaths. The drug has been found to be most effective in the early stages of the disease, but it does have severe side effects for some people. In New Zealand, immigration officials are preparing new regulations that would allow gay men and lesbians to sponsor their foreign -born lovers for permanent residency. The tentative regulations are similar to those for heterosexuals, although the same sex

relationship must be of a far longer duration. And finally, retired U .S. Army Colonel William Glasgow Jr. has started a recall campaign against the mayor and four city council members of Alexandria, Virginia, because they voted to outlaw discrimination against lesbians and gay men. Glasgow, who was defeated both times he ran for city council, must gather 1900 petition signatures before a recall would be considered. Commenting on the action, Mayor James Moran said, I am pleased that Colonel Glasgow has decided to come out of the closet and declare himself to be a practicing homophob. That's NewsRap for this week, written by Sandy Dwyer of the News, serving the greater Los Angeles area with contributions from other gay and lesbian publications throughout the world. Remember, an informed community is a strong community. Find out what's happening in your area by reading your local gay and lesbian publication. And

for this way out, I'm Sandy Dwyer, and I'm Tony Sullivan. Stay tuned to this edition of this way out for reports on two major events of interest to the lesbian and gay community, the 10th anniversary of the Harvey Milk assassination and World AIDS Day. This is Suhide of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force for out in Washington. On the weekend of November 18 through 20, it's about 200 gay and lesbian activists and organizers from around the country came to Washington, D .C. to discuss topics ranging from direct male fundraising to civil disobedience at a conference sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force called Creating Change. Creating Change included 43 workshops and three plenary sessions led by activists and organizers with backgrounds in political lobbying,

fundraising, public relations, social work, and a range of other subjects related to the gay and lesbian political movement. We wanted to provide time and space for sharing skills and experiences with other organizers and activists. We wanted to begin the work of coordinating strategies both regionally and within states. And we wanted to foster the development of statewide political action networks where there are none and strengthen existing local and state organizations where they now exist. We believe that our movement will be as strong nationally as we are locally and at the state level. So many of the workshop sessions were devoted to the nuts and bolts of beginning and maintaining gay and lesbian organizations which include political activism but don't necessarily begin and end with that. We believe that our community's social and cultural needs must also be met by our organizations and so those issues were addressed in workshop sessions.

And our minds must be fed as well. In about one fifth of the sessions presenters and participants batted about the theory which underpins our movement. Some of those sessions were shaping the debate on family, sex and politics, direct action and traditional political work. After the presidential election, now what? And a session called mixing up the movement about how to make our movement more inclusive of women and people of color. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force plans this as an annual event to take place in the fall of each year. And we hope after one more session in Washington in 1989 to get the show on the road in 1990. Our movement is alive and well out in the Midwest, in the Southwest, in the Southeast, in the Northwest all over the country. And we need to get to it as much as it needs to get to us.

Without in Washington, this is too hard reporting for this way out. Part two of Immortal Fire, Hugh Young and Barry Empson's feature on the life of Benjamin Britain, continues to examine how the composer's work reflected his relationship with tenor Peter Pierce and how those gay illusions were suppressed. Most of Britain's vocal works have a major tenor part, specially suited to Pierce's voice, which didn't record well. And, like Britain's music, is an acquired taste. In fact, it was at its best on one note, e above middle c. And so Britain favored that one, even writing most of an aria on it, in probably his greatest opera, Peter

Grimes, the strange words express the lonely fisherman's visionary nature. You might say, Pierce singing embodies the saying, it's not what you've got, it's how

you use it. And the bluffers guide to music rather naughtily suggests that Britain wrote Peter Pierce as an early opera in one act. Britain and Pierce's circle of friends included many gay talents of their day. For nearly a year, they lived in a brownstone house in New York with variously Odin, Odin's lover Chester Kalman, Christopher Ishward, and a frequent visitor was Gypsy Rose Lee. No, she was visiting her man friend. At Kalman's 20th birthday party, in what we now call a crossover, Pierce sang Jerome Kern's Make Believe from Showboat. No doubt with Britain at the piano, each a heart outkiri. Britain had written the music for a film documentary Night Mail, that's M -A -I -L, to Odin's words. Odin wrote the libretto for Britain's unsuccessful opera, Paul Bunyan, about lumberjacks, very butch. It was E .M. Forster who recommended the 19th century poem that became Peter Grimes. The love of Grimes for the widow Ellen

Orford seems more beautiful and passionate, doesn't that sound familiar. And in fact, the early suggestions that he had a homosexual aspect were weeded out of the libretto, doesn't that sound familiar. The opera was written and rehearsed as the war ended, and soon after the first performance, Britain visited the concentration camps with Yehudi Menwen. Having flattered with the author of Goodbyte Berlin, Britain would be well aware that Jews and Gays had died together in the camps. Owen Wingrave, in Britain's television opera of the same name, is another man whose love of women seems strangely unmotivated, and whose manfriend figures far more strongly in his life. Henry James, who wrote the story, was one of us. Forster wrote the libretto for Billy Bud, using the short story by Herman Milville, the man who wrote Moby Dick was one too. With its all -male cast, Billy Bud has a strong, low -deeply -closeted gay theme, Sotomous Beacham called it the Bugger's Uproar and refused to see it.

Billy is a handsome sailor, beloved of all his shipmates, but brought down by a man who can't bear to love him. He was the one who wrote the story, the handsomeness of all his shipmates, all that I never see you, all that I never see you. Piers wasn't, thank heaven, cast as Billy. In the first production, that role went to a handsome baritone called Theodore Uppman. Piers was the captain who allowed Billy to be martyred to prevent a mutiny. This theme of innocence destroyed runs through most of Britain's vocal work, even his comic opera Albert Herring. Although he was annoyed when a young and deeply -closeted reporter asked him directly about it during his brief visit to New Zealand in 1970, Auckland's gay community threw a party for the couple, inviting a number of young and spunky music lovers. Homophobic critics link the innocence theme with

Britain's gayness, with sadomasochism, and with his love of boy's voices. That has much more to do with the English choral tradition than any suggestion of Peter Filia. For Britain, boys' voices usually symbolize purity, innocence, or just high spirits. For Britain, boys' voices symbolize purity, innocence, or just high spirits. For

Britain's fascination with the theme of lost innocence will be further developed in the conclusion of Immortal Fire, featuring excerpts from Turn of the Screw and War Requiem, next time on This Way Out. You are listening to This Way Out, the international lesbian and gay radio magazine,

with Lucia Chappelle, I'm Greg Gordon. Across the United States on November 27, memorial activities marked the 10th anniversary of the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and the city's first gay supervisor, Harvey Milk. 25 ,000 gathered in San Francisco, and in Houston, supervisor Harry Brit, Milk Successor, was a featured speaker. Peter Cashman and Rob Ditto have reports. The size of the crowd exceeded all expectations, as it moved off from the Castro downmarket street soon after 7 o 'clock. Leading the marches was the honor guard, the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Flag Corps. Among dignitaries in the front line were Mayor Art Agnoss, Gina Moscone, Widow of the Slean Mayor, and Cleve Jones of the name's project, Sponsors of this year's Remembrance. A motorized cable car carried people with aids into

arc. On reaching the crest of Market Street in 13th, marches stopped, turned and lifted candle skyward in a salute to the thousands who followed, block after block as far as the eye could see. Then a resounding wave of cheers and whistles rippled back down the line of march to the Castro. Outside City Hall, Joan Baez set the mood for the rally, as she sang, I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night bringing tears to the eyes and warming the hearts of those who were with her that night in 1978. You look wonderful, she told the crowd, and so do you, screamed an admiring lesbian. Mayor Art Agnoss invoked the image of a caring and inclusive San Francisco. He called it the Rainbow City. In a message to Harvey, lesbian feminist activist Sally Gearhart railed against the onslaught of the right wing, which threatened even their beloved city San Francisco. Reverend Cecil Williams, pastor of the downtown glide memorial church, got to the heart of the matter for lesbians and gay men. In the wake of San Francisco's Roman Catholic Archbishop John Quinn's eviction of dignity from churches in his

archdiocese, Reverend Williams challenged his fellow church persons to embrace the lesbian and gay community. Speaking out against the increasing violence towards lesbians and gay men, Williams called on the people of San Francisco to take to the streets in protest, wherever a gay bashing takes place. California assembly speaker Willie Brown paid his respects and the San Francisco gay men's chorus and the Washington sisters rounded out the entertainment. At the invitation of Mayor Agnoss, marches were invited inside City Hall for a moment of remembrance, names project quilt panels hung from the galleries, and high up sashes of fabric and graduated colors reached to the peak of the rotunda. An honor guard stood at attention on the main staircase at its foot, a simple blow -up portrait of George Musconi and Harvey Milk surrounded by vases of flowers, many knelt and spent a quiet moment and some left their own flowers. By 11 p .m., all was quiet again at City Hall. San Francisco had remembered Harvey and George, as had cities and communities

across the United States and around the world. Reporting from San Francisco, this is Peter Cashman for this way out. A celebration of life that was the theme of last Sunday's rally in the city of Houston marking the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk. It was an emotional homecoming for Harry Britt, President -elect of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors. Britt traveled far from the city where Harvey Milk served to reaffirm that man's message for a crowd of Texans gathered by candlelight on the steps of Houston City Hall. I'm here partly tonight to say some good things about Texas. I'm proud to be a Texan. I know that I could not have heard Harvey Milk challenge to me and not something in my life in this day prepared me to hear the word of freedom that Harvey spoke to us. I am here tonight because it is time that all of us who love this day that gave us life and has nurtured

us and taught us our values to stand up and claim the history of this day for freedom and justice and human respect, a way for the forces of narrow -mindedness and dignitaries that do often dominate the politics of the state of Texas. Supervisor Britt grew up and came out in the state of Texas. At the rally, he pointed out social and governmental forces that keep many Texans lesbian and gay people in the closet. But even though the turnout of 300 at the rally was much lower than that at San Francisco's march, the memories of Harvey Milk shown no less rightly. For many, the celebration of life rally was a time to take stock of years of memories of the struggle for lesbian and gay rights. But for others, the event was a chance to learn how one man's life and death helped to shape the world into which the younger generation has come out. One young person touched by Harvey Milk's history rather than memory was John Borgo, president of the gay and lesbian students association at the University of Houston. When Harvey Milk was assassinated, I was nine years old, just beginning to deal with my own

emerging sexuality, unaware of what had happened in California, unaware of the terrible loss the gay community suffered. Still, his life and death have affected me a great deal. For my entire generation has been the recipient of the work that Harvey Milk and so many others have carried on since Stonewall. So today I am here to say thank you. Thank you to Harvey Milk and to Harry Blit. All the lesbian and gay people who worked so hard to ensure that the lives of the younger members of our community would be better than theirs were, that we could live with just a little more pride, a little more hope. Reporting from Houston, Texas, I'm Rob Ditto for this way out. And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone, and I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone. Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone, so I guess I'll

have to do it while I'm here. There's no place in this world where I'll be long when I'm gone, and I won't know the right from the wrong when I'm gone. And you won't find me singing on this song when I'm gone, so I guess I'll have to do it. I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here. This is Sandy Dwyer. World AIDS Day was observed December 1st. The World Health Organization initiated the plan to highlight the global scope of the disease and to foster understanding, tolerance and compassion for HIV -positive people. The names project provided panels from the AIDS Memorial Quill

for display in cities around the world. Participating cities included Cologne, West Germany, Oslo, Norway, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Sydney, Australia, as well as Geneva, Switzerland, the headquarters of the World Health Organization. In the United States, there were a variety of special activities. Act up Kansas City passed out AIDS literature and condoms. Leonard Bernstein, Laureate conductor of the New York Philharmonic, presented serenade, an evening of entertainment at Carnegie Hall, with up to $1 million of the proceeds to go for community -based research. I candlelight vigil in Winter Park, Florida, and an all -day prayer vigil dedicated to AIDS service workers in Omaha, Nebraska. Recently, John Kelly of W .A .I .F. in Cincinnati interviewed Ron Clemens, president of the lesbian and gay mental health professionals, and founding member of the Black gay men's support group about his observations at last October's AIDS vigil in Washington, D .C.

Clemens was most impressed by Ugandan woman who pointed out the differences between the epidemic in the United States and in Africa. One of the big differences that she pointed out was that there were here in this country, we have educational programs, we have commercials, we have a lot of printed material that we pass out to give people information about AIDS and the signs and symptoms and safe sex, and how to avoid it. She said that a lot of people in Africa, most of them are very rural, live out in the country, they are not educated, they cannot read, and all of their safe sex and AIDS information and education has to be done through either art, music, song, dance, which is a much more difficult way to translate those ideas because they don't translate quite as clearly when using those types of media. The other thing that she pointed out was that Africa is such a, in a lot of ways, an underdeveloped country that a lot of the healthcare and a lot of the medical facilities are

years behind the United States. So not only are they battling AIDS, but they're also battling things like malnutrition and other diseases that we wiped out a long time ago, there's still battling those, so AIDS is just another disease that they've added onto a long list of things to be battled. And without the money, without the medical facilities, it's a very difficult thing for them to make any head wear or any ground in that battle. Is an AIDS a very heterosexual disease in Africa? Very much so, and she also pointed that out, that's one thing that they do not have to deal with over in Africa is the discrimination that goes along with AIDS in the United States, it's supposedly being a gay disease here and a heterosexual disease there. And saw that people here in the United States and a lot of the funding agencies and just a lot of the policy makers use AIDS as an excuse to discriminate against gay and lesbian. April the 11th, 1987, passing through the pain, missing

you. I keep hoping that you will walk in and tell me about a great new song or maybe we'll talk about the international politics of AIDS, the killings of gay men while their murderers walk free. We were from the same class, we were gentle together, but you had to go, leave, pass on, you just died. I wanted to be with you, work with you, have one last good time, but you didn't stay, you left, passed, and died. I take your death one day at a time, I think dying is like reading a book, it will end, the pain will end, and the joy of it all will become clear. We will remember your love, the beauty of your spirit, the lessons of how to live, your humanity, your quest for life, after the pain, the last page in the book, we will all know what you have left.

Your friend, Hitagi, April the 11th, 1987, 238 in. Thanks for choosing this way out, the international lesbian and gay radio magazine. This week, Sandy Dwyer and Tony Sullivan, Peter Cashman, Suhide, Rob Ditto, John Kelly, Hugh Young and Barry Empson contributed feature material. Gil Scott Herron,

Aaron Copeland conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, and Phil Oaks performed the music you heard. Hitagi Azaz, read an excerpt from her poem, Why Did He Leave Me, and Kim Wilson composed and performed our theme music. Satellite distribution of this way out is made possible through a grant from the Chicago Resource Center. We'd like to hear from you with any comments, suggestions or questions you might have. Address to this way out, post office box 38327, Los Angeles, California 900038. That's post office box 38327, Los Angeles, California 900038 USA. This way out is produced by Lucia Chappelle. And Greg Gordon, and we thank you for listening on WORT Madison. CFRO Vancouver, and KUMD Duluth. Among others. And for supporting this local community radio station. Stay tuned.