WEDNESD A Y
March 21, 2007 Volume 16, Issue 6 www.stonewallnews.net Serving the GLBTQA Community of the Pacific Northwest since 1992
Stonewall News Northwest turns 15!
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Bunko nets big fun, big dollars for GLBT center First of a series of “Gayme” Nights to be held as fundraisers for the future GLBT center
SPOKANE, Wash. - Bunko Night, the first of a series of “Gayme” Nights to be held as fundraisers for the future LGBT center, raised more than $900 in community dollars for the general operating fund on March 10. After expenses, the event netted more than $700. With the current match campaign, the money raised from the event will total more than $1800. More than 40 people attended Bunko Night which included a debut performance by Spokane’s new drag king troupe, “Chix & Dales.” Please see BUNKO page 13
In only three hours, Bunko sponsors and participants at Studio One on March 9 doubled the GLBT center’s previous seven months of fundraising efforts.
The Gittings Legacy By Tracy Baim, Windy City Times
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One of the most important pioneers of the modern gay and lesbian rights movement died Feb 18. Barbara Gittings, 75, passed away in Wilmington, after a long battle with breast cancer. Her death was announced by her partner of 46 years, Kay Tobin Lahusen, and her friend and fellow activist, Philadelphia Gay News Publisher Mark Segal. Gittings was involved in several critical moments of the GLBT movement. Her first protest effort was in 1965 when she and a few other activists made history
in the first public demonstrations for “homosexual” rights, outside the White House in D.C. and Independence Hall in Philadelphia. She was featured in the documentary Before Stonewall. “There were scarcely 200 of us in the whole United States. It was like a club; we all knew each other,” Gittings said of those early years. “Things were heating up but had not yet reached their peak” in 1965 in terms of social protest over civil rights and Vietnam, said activist Frank Kameny after Gittings’ passing. “At that point, picketing at the White House was the expression of dissent par excellence.” It
THIS ISSUE
Cody - Part 2 by Tim Anderson Page 5
Remembering Barbara Gittings by Joan Opyr Page 4 52 Things we can do For Transgender Equality...................4 Arts & Entertainment.............................8 Business Directory . ..............................11 Calendar....................................................14 Classifieds.................................................13 National & International........................6 Resource Directory................................12 Reviews & Previews ...............................9 Spokane & Regional................................3 Voices...........................................................2
got so congested that police assigned groups particular spots in front of and along the sides of the White House compound. “Those demonstrations put the issue of gay rights on the table in ways that it hadn’t been done before,” added Ken Sherrill, professor of political science at Hunter College. “They said that this was a fit subject for discussion.” In the late 1950s Gittings helped organize the New York City chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis ( DOB ) , at the urging of the group’s national founders, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin. It was there Gittings met Lahusen. She was chapter president for three years and edited the national publication of DOB, The Ladder ( taking over for Lyons and Martin ) , from 1963-1966. She worked with her partner on The Gay Crusaders book in 1973. In her writing and her activism, Gittings challenged earlier gay-rights strategies that were against direct political action, a position which caused her to leave DOB. Perhaps the most long-lasting impact of Gittings’ decades-long work was in helping to change the American Psychiatric Association ( APA ) categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness, in 1973, and her work campagning for GLBT books in public libraries, as a leader of the Task Force on Gay Liberation of the American
Please see GITTINGS page 11
Speaking at a Pride Week brunch sponsored by the Spokane’s Rainbow Regional Community Center on Saturday, June 4, 2005, Barbara Gittings, center, is joined by Center board members, from left, Sharon O’Brien, Lorin Miller, John Brindle and Jeff Buckner. Barbara Gittings appeared in Spokane by invitation of the Spokane GLBT Film Festival, sponsor of the Pride Week opening event, a Friday, June 3, 2005 showing of the documentary “Gay Pioneers.” Gittings was featured in the film. “You have to keep your sense of humor and work with your allies,” Gittings advised. She went on the say that the GLBT community as a whole is made up of individual thinkers who have strong opinions; humor and compromise are necessary to continue to make progress. While in Spokane, Barbara Gittings marveled that 55 years of activism had just flown by. Her continuing gift to the GLBT community is a look into the past to invigorate the present and plan for the future. Whatever you do, Gittings laughed, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” For the full article on Barbara Gittings’ visit to Spokane for Pride 2005, please see the July 2005 issue of Stonewall News Northwest. Back issues are available for free download at www. stonewallnews.net .
Barbara Gittings’ first protest effort was in 1965 when she and a few other activists made history in the first public demonstrations for “homosexual” rights, outside the White House in D.C. and Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Gittings, pictured above, demonstrated outside Independence Hall on July 4, 1965.