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The article discusses an "historic first," when five Burlington area lesbians and gay men met with Governor Kunin and her chief of staff to discuss lesbian and gay rights. That meeting provided the very early stages of what is now known as the equal rights amendment. The meeting explored the use of the Attorney General's office to documents cases of discrimination toward gay and lesbians to gather further information on it's nature and extent.
The article outlines a series of meetings between The National Association of Social Workers Lesbian and Gay Issues Committee (NASW-LGIC). The discussed meetings between Governor Kunin, the Attorney General's office, and Senator Pat Leahy. The outcome was the introduction of federal civil rights legislation for gays and lesbians.
Longtime lesbian feminist activist Peggy Luhrs points out in this article the historical link between the dissolution of bonds between women and patriarchal oppression. Since lesbians actively refuse to let these bonds be broken, they occupy a central space in the struggle for womenÕs rights. Luhrs illustrates how homophobia has been used by conservative forces since at least the turn of the century to "divide and conquer" women, enforcing self-hatred and distracting women from issues such as economic inequality. In a particularly telling example, due to its fate in a nationwide vote, she highlights the struggle to pass the ERA as one place where separating women based on homophobia has been particularly successful.
This article lays out the definition of civil rights, and how, although strides had been made in many arenas regarding civil rights (race, creed, color, national origin), lesbians and gay men had yet to benefit from civil rights protection in any state. This seems to mark the beginning of the eventually successful bid for gay and lesbian civil rights on the congressional level. Note: gay marriage is mentioned here as a civil right not accorded to lesbians and gay men. "Certainly lesbians and gay men are not entitled to marry."
Dan White, the convicted killer of San Fransisco's mayor George Moscone and city council member and gay activist Harvey Milk, committed suicide in November 1985. In this touching and still-relevant article, Euan Bear deconstructs her reaction to White's suicide, ranging from "a kind of angry relief" to "grief that a society so discriminates against [her] that [she] feel[s] relieved at someone's death." She points out the anger and fear that come in reaction to a series of shockingly lax sentences for murderers of gay men and lesbians, and the necessity for us to take pride in our identities, to "show that we live our lives strongly in spite of harassment and threats, to show that we are not ashamed of who we are."
