[2001] Tulsa Family News, May 2001; Volume 8, Issue 5
Title
[2001] Tulsa Family News, May 2001; Volume 8, Issue 5
Subject
Politics, education, and social conversation toward Tulsa’s Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual communities.
Description
Tulsa Family News was a monthly newspaper; No. 1 issued December 1993-January 1994. The final issue available was published in September 0f 2001 (Volume 8, Issue 9).
The newspaper brings up important, evolving topics of marriage, Pride, TOHR, HIV/AIDs, events, advice, and politics all at the local and national level.
This document is available in searchable PDF attached. It is also available to be seen at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center with permission.
The newspaper brings up important, evolving topics of marriage, Pride, TOHR, HIV/AIDs, events, advice, and politics all at the local and national level.
This document is available in searchable PDF attached. It is also available to be seen at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center with permission.
Creator
Tulsa Family News
Source
https://history.okeq.org/collections/show/24
Publisher
Tom Neal
Date
May 2001
Contributor
James Christjohn
Karin Gregory
Barry Hensley
J.P. Legrandbouche
Lamont Lindstrom
Esther Rothblum
Mary Schepers
Hughston Walkinshaw
Karin Gregory
Barry Hensley
J.P. Legrandbouche
Lamont Lindstrom
Esther Rothblum
Mary Schepers
Hughston Walkinshaw
Rights
Tom Neal/Tulsa Family News
Relation
Tulsa Family News, April 2001; Volume 8, Issue 4
Format
Image
PDF
Online text
Online text
Language
English
Type
newspaper
periodical
periodical
Identifier
https://history.okeq.org/items/show/612
Coverage
Tulsa(Oklahoma)---newspaper
Tulsa---Oklahoma
Oklahoma---Tulsa
United States Oklahoma Tulsa
United States of America (50 states)
Tulsa---Oklahoma
Oklahoma---Tulsa
United States Oklahoma Tulsa
United States of America (50 states)
Text
Tulsa HIV/AIDS Agency
Alienates Gay Supporters
TULSA (TFN) - For an agency which was founded in
largemeasur¢byTUl~’ s Gay commtmity-the~ommunity
firstandmost~by_theHIV/AIDSpandemic,
it seems a mighty dumb move. Why would Tulsa
C.A.R.E.S., formerly knownas theHIV Resource Consordum,
not to~members ofTulsa" s Gay commuuity,
some of whom had been significant donors, to it,
annual fundraising event, the Red Ribbon Ball? This is
thequesfionwhichanumberof individualswereasking
themselves and their friends after they were not invited
to the April 28 event held at the Williams Center.
While none of the individuals were willing to be
publically critical of an agency whosemission they still
support, several noted that they had gifts of $500 and
more to the fundraising event in recent years, and were
quite surprised not even to receive an invitation. One
noted that even former Tulsa CARES,.board president,
Nancy McDonald, see CARES?, p.2
World Leader Speaks on
Fight against AIDS
PHILADEI ~PHIA (AP) - To wage an effective global
campaign against AIDS, $7 billion to $10 billion a year
is needed from both governments and philanthropists,
U.N. Secretary-General KofiAnnan said. Current spending
on AIDS research and prevention measures in
developing countries is about $1 billion a year, Annan
said at a cxmference last month.
"The world has the resources to defeat this epidemic
if it really wants to," he said. "But at present, there’ s a
lot of confusion abouthow the money should be raised,
where it should be directed and who can ensure that it’ s
well spent."
In his remarks tomore than 2,000 philanthropists and
business leaders during the 52nd annual conference for
the Council onFoundations,Annan called on the public
and private organizations to work together to fight the
spread of HIV and AIDS.
"We are not spending anywhere near what is needed
to fight AIDS," Annan said. "It is not a choice between
prevention and medicine. We need both."
Aunan said national leaders and community grOups
must workto supportthoseliving withAIDS and to help
educate others about the disease. He said the United
Nations must coordinate the batdc against the disease.
His goal is thatby the time delegates meet onJune 25 for
a session on HIV and AIDS, see Global, p. 3
DIRECTORY
EDITORIAL
US & WORLD NEWS
HEALTH NEWS
P. 2
P. 3
P. 4
P. 6
Z ENTERTAINMENT + MORE P. 8
GAY STUDIES/RAGING LESBIAN P. 10/11
Serving Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual + Transgendered Tulsans, Our Families + Friends
¯ Tulsa Receives $50,000 GLBT
:Funding Challenge Grant
¯ TULSA (1TN) - Tulsa is just one of four US commnnities to
: receive a $50,000 challenge grantfrom the National I_~sbian and
¯¯ Gay Community Funding Parmership (NLGCFP) through the
Tulsa Community Foundation.
: The grant specifically targets Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
¯ Transgendered (LGBT)issues and requires matching funds from
¯ Tulsa to be raised. Longtime activist, local PFLAG founder and
: former national PFLAG president;Nancy McDonald wrote the
¯ proposal according to Janice Nicklas, who said she assisted with
¯ the project.
¯ The funds ifmatched locally will be distributed on the basis of
: a"needs assessment" done by a local steering committee. There
: is an initial grant of $7,500 to help prepare the needs assesment.
¯ According to NancyCMnnin~hamofNLGCFP,letters of support
: were received from Sanford Cardin, director of the Schnstermau
: Foundation and ScottZarrow, a member of a prominentbusiness
: family known for its charitable work..
: Per Nicklas, the grant application proposed a parmership
betweensomeofthefollowing organizations: TulsaOklahomann
i for Human Rights (TOHR), Parents, Families and Friends of
i Lesbians and Gays 0aFLAG), Tulsa Public Schools, Youth
_- Services of Tulsa, the YWCA, Tulsa Area United Way and
¯ others. It is anticipated that the effort to create a permanent
". community center might benefit from this grant.
: TheTulsa Community Foundation is less than a few years old
¯ and was founded by oilmanand Bank of Oklahoma majority
¯ shareholder, George Kaiser. When Kaiser started the Founda-
: lion, he responded in an interview with TFN, that his intention
: was that the organization address the needs of Tulsa’ s LGBT
: community, specifically saying that he Supported civil rights for
¯ Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals.
: However, there may be issues with the board ofdirectors ofthe
: TulsaCommtmity Foundation. Although this grant was awarded
~ several months ago, Foundation staff, requested that TFN not
¯ report this information first for a month, see $, p. 3
¯ NGLTF LeaderToledo Resigns
¯ WASHINGTON, D.C. April 20, 2001 - Elizabeth Toledo, ex-
~ ecutive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,
: announced that she has chosen not to renew her contract and is
¯ resigning her position effective May 18.
: "It has been a distinct honor to work at NGLTF and with such
¯ atalented and passionate staff," said Toledo. "I’m confident that
¯ theTask Force will continue to provide progressiveleadership to ¯
the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender movement."
¯" Toledo,anexperieneed organizer, was namedexecutive directorin
April 2000. Underher leadership, theTask Force solidified
¯ its progressive voice on a wide range of issues, expanded its
¯" training and organizing on behalf of the LGBT movement, and
¯ continued topublish cutting-edge research throughits think tank,
¯ the NGLTF Policy Institute. A thoughtful and articulate leader,
." Toledo regularly appeared in the national media and maintained
¯" a high profile of speaking engagements.
¯ Key highlights of Toledo’ s tenure at NGLTF include:
- Establishing NGLTF as a nonpartisan authority on GLBT
¯ electoral issues by providing data and analysis on the GLB vote,
¯ issuing detailed reports on presidential and vice presidential
¯ candidates, convening"What’ s At Stake" forums inkey electoral
¯ states, and maintaining the acclaimed Elections 2000 website.
: -Publishing three important Policy Institute reports:
: "Transgender Equality: A Handbook for Activists and Policy
¯ Makers;....Outing Age: Public Policy Issue Affecting Gay, ¯
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Elderly;" and "Redistrict-
: ing: A Strategy Memo."
- Serving as a watchdog to the Bush White House, including
launchinga"WWatch" web site, organizing against certainBush
: cabinet nominees, and issuing reports on Bushfs proposed gov-
¯ emment-funded religion initiative, the tax plan, and school
¯¯ vouchers, and,
¯ - Establishing a diverse and skilled seniormanagement team to lead NGLTF, improving its financial condition, and imple-
’ menting an innovative and effective membership campaign.
~ Jerry Clark, Co-Chair of the NGLTF Board of Directors said,
¯ see NGLTF, p. 2
¯ not everyone has given up -
HIV’s Ability to Hide
Thwarts Hope for Cure
By Daniel Q. Haney, AP Medical Editor
Will AIDS ever be cured?
The latest research on the resourceful AIDS virus
that causes the disease suggests a disheartening answer:
Probably not.
Just a few years ago, even some of the most soberminded
researchers wondered if the end of AIDS
might be near. Perhaps the pills that miraculously
changed H.IV from a death sentence to a chronic
infection would go the final step, they thought, eventually
curing the infection by purging every trace of
the virus from the human body.
Such talk quickly faded. The new drug cocktails,
amazing as they were, could not get rid of the virus.
Evenifall signs ofit vanished for years, HIV was still
lurking somewhere. Inevitably it roared back by the
billions as soon as people stopped taking their medi-
Ever since that realization sank in, finding HIV’s
hiding places has been the goal of a small group of
researchers. What they have learned is one of the
biggest disappointments in AIDS research.
The fact that HIV is an insidious and resourceful
parasiteis hardly a surprise. After all,AIDS researchgas
already understand in lavish detail how HIV
latches onto human blood cells, how it oozes inside
and kills them. They know the significance of every
bump and crevice on the surface of the virus and how
these shield it fr6m destruction.
But no basic AIDS discovery in recent times has
proved so disturbing as the way HIV burrows in for
the long haul. It has shifted the ultimate goal ofAIDS
treatment toward something less ambitious. Since
eradicating HIV now seems so unlikely - although
see HIV, p. 3
: TOHR + Pride 2001
¯ TULSA - Tulsa Oldahomans for Human Rights
~ (TOHR) will feature at its May meeting, Julie Sum-
" mers and Roxann Moeller from the Tulsa Mental
¯ Health Association to make a presentation about the ¯ mental health issues for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
~ and Transgender communities on Tuesday, May 8th.
¯ at 7:30pro at the Tulsa GLBT Community Center,
: 2114 South Memorial.
¯ Theresa Bamardfrom American Express Financial
¯ Services will also give a short overview of three
¯ upcoming f’mancial planning seminars designed fo]
: our commumty to be held during the month of May.
: .Organizers also will provide updated information
¯ on this years Pride events from Tulsa City/Count)
Library programs to ongoing fundraisingfor aperma-
: nent community center location.
¯ On May 9th at the Center at 7pro, City of Tulsa
¯ Human Rights Dept. staff will hold a foetus group te
: help identify LGBT community issues.
¯ And a number of benefits are ongoing to support
the Parade and Festival. Renegades will host one on
: May 5th as well as another on May 18 featuring a
: farewell performance from Kansas City dancer Doug
¯ Boyce, a great Tulsa favorite.
¯ Also, TOHR reports that more than 30 Cherry St.
¯ and Boston Ave. (SoBo) businesses have signed a
¯" letter of supportfor the Parade which will gofrom15th
near Utica to Boston to 18th and Veterans Park.
¯ At the park, during the Festival after the Parade, ¯ organizers are promising great entertainment, including
"men, women and drag queens."
Greg Gatewood, spokesperson for TOHR board
¯ president, Kerry Lewis, confirmed arumor ofvandal-
, ism at the Center last month. A box of glass jars as
: well as a brick was thrown through the front doors. In
¯ a bizarre touch, a "serenity" prayer was left at the
¯ scene, see TOHR, p. 7
Tulsa Clubs & Restaurants
*Bmnboo Lounge, 7204 E. Pine
*CW’s, 1737 S. MemOrial
*Play-Mot, 424 S. Memorial
Polo Grill, 2038 Utica Square
*Renegades/Rainbow Room, 1649 S. Main
*St. Michael’s Alley Restaurant, 3324-L E. 31st
*Schatzi’s, 2619 S. Memorial
*The Star, 1565 Sheridan
*TNT’s, 2114 S. Memorial
*Tool Box II, 1338 E. 3rd
*Vortex, 2182 S. Sheridan
*The Yellow Brick Road Pub, 2630 E. 15th
832-1269
610-5323
838-9792
744-4280
585-3405
745-9998
280-1316
834-4234
660-0856
584-1308
835:2376
749-1563
Tulsa Businesses, Services, & Professionals
Assoc. in Med. & Mental Health, 2325 S. Harvard -743-1000
Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 8620 E. 71 250-5034
Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 5231 E. 41 665-4580
Body Piercing by Nicole, 2722 E. 15
*Borders Books & Music, 2740 E. 21
*Borders Books & Music, 8015 S. Yale
Brookside Jewelry, 4649 S. Peoria
*CD Warehouse, 3807c S. Peoria
*Cheap Thrills, 2640 E 1 lth
Cherry St. Psychotherapy, 1515 S. Lewis
712-1122
712-9955
494-2665
743-5272
746-0313
295-5868
581-0902, 743-4117
Community Cleaning; Kerby Baker 622-0700
Tim Daniel, Attorney 352-9504, 800-742-9468
*Deco to Disco, 3212 E. 15th
Doghouse on Brookside, 3311 S. Peoria
*Elite Books & Videos, 821 S. Sheridan
Encompass Travel, 13161H N. Memorial
Ross Edward Salon
Events Unlimited, 507 S. Main
Floral Design Studio, 3404 S. Peoria
Four Star Import Automotive, 99~.6 E. 55th PI.
Cathy Furlong, Ph.D., 1980 Utica Sq. Med. Ctr.
Gay & Lesbian Affordable Daycare
*Gloria Jean’s Gourmet Coffee, 1758 E. 21st
Leanne M. Gross, Insurance & financial planning
Mark T. Hamby, Attorney
*Sandra J. Hill, MS, Psychotherapy, 2865 E. Skelly
*International Tours
Jacox Animal Clinic, 2732 E. 15th
*Jared’ s Antiques, 1602 E. 15th
David Kauskey, Country Club Barbering
The Keepers, Housekeeping & Gardening
*Ken’s Flowers, 1635 E. 15
Kelly Kirby, CPA, 4021 S. Harvard, #210
*Living ArtSpace, 308 South Kenosha
*Midtown Theater, 319 E. 3rd
lVlingo Valley Flowers, 9720c E. 31
*Moha~vk Music, 6157 E 51 Place
Puppy Pause II, 1060 S. Mingo
*The Pride Store
Rainbowz on the River B+B, POB 696, 74101
Richard’ s Carpet Cleaning
Teri Schutt, Ellen & Co.
Paul Tay, Car Salesman
*Tulsa Comedy Club, 6906 S. Lewis
Venus Salon, 1247 S.Harvard
Fred Welch, LCSW, Counseling
*Wherehouse Music, 5150 S. Sheridan
*Whittier News Stand, 1 N. Lewis
749-3620 "
744-5556 "
838-8503
369-8555
584-0337, 712-9379
592-0460
744-9595
. .o-0880
628-3709
808-8026
742-1460
459-9349
744-7440
745-1111
341-6866
712-2750
582-3018
747-0236
582-8460
599-8070
747-5466
585-1234
584-3112
663-5934
664-2951
838-7626
743-4297
747-5932
834-0617
834-7921, 748-0224
260-7829
481-0558
835-5563
743-1733
665-2222
592-0767
www.gaytulsa.org - website for TulsaGays &Lesbians
Tulsa Agencies, Churches, Schools & Universities
AIDS Walk Tulsa, POB 4337, 74101 579-9593
¯ 918.583.1248, fax: 583.4615
FOB 4140. Tulsa. OK 74159. e-mail: TulsaNews@earthlink.net
¯
~ublisher + Editor: Tom Neal
¯
Writers + contributors: James Christjohn, Karin Gregory, Barry
¯ Hensley, J.-P. Legrandbouche. Lament Lindstrom Esther
Rothblum, Mary Schepers, Hughston Walkinshaw
¯
Member of The Associated Press
: Issued around the 1 st of each month, the entire contents of this
¯ publication are protected by US copyright 2001 by Tulsa
Family News and may not be reproduced either in whole or in
part without written permission from the publisher. Publication
of a name or photo does not indicate a person’s sexual
orientation. Correspondence is assumed to be for publication
unless otherwise noted, must be signed & becomes the sole
property of Tulsa Family News. Each reader is entitled to 4
copies of each edition at distribution points.
Additional copies are available by calling 583-1248.
All Souls Unitarian Church, 2952 S. Peoria
Black & White. Inc. POB 14001, Tulsa 74159
Bless The Lord at All Times Christian Center. 2207 E. 6
B/L/G/T Alliance, Univ. of Tulsa United Min. Ctr.
Chamber of Commerce Bldg., 616 S. Boston
*Chapman Student Ctr., University of Tulsa, 5th P1.
Church of the Restoration UU, 1314 N.Greenwood
*Commlmity of Hope Church, 2545 S. Yale
*Community Unitarian-Universalist Congregation
Council Oak Men’ s Chorale
*Delaware Playhouse, 1511 S. Delaware
*Democratic Headquarters, 3930 E. 31 742-2457
Dignity/Integrity of Tulsa- Lesbian & Gay Catholics &
Episcopalians, POB 701475, 74170-1475 355-3140
*Fellowship Congreg. Church, 2900 S. Harvard 747-7777
*-7tee SpiritWomen’s Center, call forlocation&info: 587-4669
Friend For A Friend, POB 52344, 74152 747-6827
Friends in Unity Social Org., POB 8542, 74101 582-0438
*Tulsa C.A.R.E.S., 3507 E. Admiral 834-4194
834-8378
224-4754
838-1715
748-3111
365-5658
HOPE, HIV Outreach, Prevention, Education
*HouseoftheHoly SpiritMinstries,1517 S. Memorial
*MCC United, 1623 N; Maplewood
NAMES Project, 3507 E. Admiral PI.
NOW, Nat’l Org. for Women, POB 14068, 74159
OK Spokes Club (bicycling), POB 9165, 74157
*OSU-TUlsa
PFLAG, POB 52800, 74152
*Planned Parenthood, 1007 S. Peoria -
Prime-Timers, P.O. Box 52118, 74152
R.A.I.N., Regional AIDS Interfaith Network
*Red Rock Mental Center, 1724 E. 8
St. Aidan’ s Episcopal Church, 4045 N. Cincimmti
749-4901
587-7674
7494195
584-2325
425-7882
St. Dunstan’ s Episcopal, 5635 E. 71st 492-7140
*St. Jerome’ s Parish Church, 205 W. King 582-3088
Soulforce-OK, Rt.4,#3534, Stigler74462 587-3248,452-2761
*Tulsa Area United Way, 1430 S. Boulder 583-7171
*TNAAPP (Native American men), Indian Health Care 582-7225
Tulsa County Health Department, 4616 E. 15 5954105
Confidential HIV Testing - by appt. on Thursdays only
TulsaOkla. for Human Rights, GayComm. Center 743-4297
TUL-PAC, PositiveAdvocacy Coalition,POB2687,Tulsa 74101
T.U.L.S.A. Tulsa Uniform/Leather Seekers Assoc. 298-0827
*Tulsa City Hall, Ground Floor Vestibule
*Tulsa Community College Campuses
*Tulsa Gay Community Center, 21st &Memorial
Unity Church ofCliffstianity,3355 S. Jamestown
BARTLESVILLE
Barflesville Public Library, 600 S. Johnstone
TAHLEQOAH
Stonewall League, call for information:
Tahlequah Unitarian-Universalist Church
Green Country AIDS Coalition, POB 1570
¯ EUREKA SPRINGS, ARKANSAS
¯ Autumn Breeze Restaurant, Hwy. 23 501-253-7734
" Jim & Brent’ s Bistro, 173 S. Main 501-253-7457
501-253-6807
743-2363 " DeVito’ s Restaurant, 5 Center St.
587-7314 Emerald Rainbow, 45 &l/2 Spring St. 501-253-5445
583-7815 " MCC of the Living Spring
501:253-9337
583-9780 " Geek to Go!,~ PC Specialist, POB 429
501-253-2776
585-1201 " Old Jailhouse Lodging, 15 Montgomery
501-253-5332
& Florence ¯ Positive Idea Marketing Plans 501-624-6646
587-1314 : White Light, 1 Center St.
501-253-4074
747-6300 " JOPLIN, MISSOURI
749-0595 " Spirit of Christ MCC, 2639 E. 32, Ste. U134 417-623-4696
748-3888 ¯
712-1511 " *iswherey°ucanfindTFN’N°tallareGay’°wnedbutallareGay’friendly"
743-4297
749-8833
918-337-5353
918456-7900
918-456-7900
918-453-9360
wasn’t even invited though she attended the
event regardless. And according to a Tulsa
CARES staff member, even Janice Nicklas
of the Tulsa Area United Way associated
Community Service Council,who is easily
one of Tulsa longest and most ardent
fundraisers for HIV/AIDS care and prevention,
had to ask for an invitation.
While a tiny handful of prominent Gays
did attend the event, even those were reported
to be concerned, and in one case,
furious, at the absenceof former donors.
TulsaCARES boardpresidentShannon Hall
expressed great concern about the perception
of exclusion of Gay supporters.
Hall explained that the event orgamzing
was different from prior years and that the
invitations were extended to those on a list
which local decorator and longtime AIDS
~undraiser, Charles Faudree provided. Hall
suggested that the agency failed to see that
their former list of event supporters and the
Faudree list were "merged." Hall went out
of his way to take responsibility as board
president for the negative result.
However, others, while giving Hall full
credibility for his effort, wondered, about
just how accidental the exclusion was, citing
the impression that over time, as Tulsa
CARES has drawnmore"mainstream" funding
and support, the agency has been perceived
as distancing itself from its Gay
origins. This allegation has been made both
by donors and clients.
Regardless of the hurt feelings, alienated
former donors, and ill will which most
fundraising groups seek to avoid, word is
that this year’ s Red Ribbon Ball was a great
success, raising over $100,000 from attendees
characterized as "straight, rich people."
Some who spoke with TFN, just said that
while they support the fight against HIV/
AIDS even when support for that effort is
waning, they wonder if other groups may be
more appreciative of their support.
Editor’s note: in t,~e past, Tulsa Family
News hasprovided news coverageforTulsa
CARES but has also donated advertisements
both to support Tulsa CARES’ Red
Ribbon Galaandto Faudree’ sHopeCandlelightTour.
While the exclusion ofGaypeople
an d media may have been accidental, TFN
urges Tulsa CARES director and staff to
offer letter of apology. We’ ll sure print it.
"It is with great sadness and regret that we
accept Elizabeth’s resignation. She made
significant strides for the Task Force. We
thankherforheraccomplishments and dedication
during the last year, and we are confident
that she will continue to be a voice of
progressive leadership in the movement."
Toledo cited family responsibilities, in
particular, the poor health of her mother and
the heavy travel demands of her position as
reasons for her resignation.
many contend the next best thing will be
somehow limning the body to control the
virus, to help patients live with HIV instead
of getting rid of it.
Many of the insights come from the
work of Dr. Robert Siliciano of Johns
Hopkins University, who regularly tests
the blood of about 50 Baltimore AIDS
patients, measuring the virus’ s persistence
despite the best treatments. "What HIV
has done is tap into the most fundamental
aspect of.theimmune systern,andthat is its
immunological memory," he says. "It’s
the lJerfect mechanism for the virus to
ensure its survival."
Perfect because the virus lies silent inside
cells that are programmed to do nothing
but sit and wait. They are calledresting
memory T cells. Their only job is to store
arecord ofthe germs they encounter, keeping
the body prepared for the next time it
sees them.
These cells literally are the immune
system’s memory, so they must survive
for a long time. Otherwise we would catch
the same diseases over and over. HIV lies
inside these sleeping cells, dormant but
dangerous. Siliciano believes this means
HIV infection will last a lifetime.
The memory cells do die off, but ever so
slowly. At the rate he sees in his Baltimore
patients, it will take 73 years for them to go
away completely. He cannot imagine a
way to speed up the process, certainly not
with the drugs now available or with anything
else on the horizon.
This latently infected reservoir, as scientists
call it, is the single biggest obstacle
to getting rid of AIDS. "It’ s the thing that
keeps us from curing this," says Dr. Roger
Pomerantz of Thomas Jefferson University
in Philadelphia.
None of this was obvious in 1996, the
dawn of the modern age of AIDS treatment.
Doctors watched AIDS patients literally
get up from their death beds after
taking the newly available drug combinations.
Anything seemed possible.
Dr. David Ho of the Aaron Diamond
AIDS Research Center in New York City
cautiously speculated about eradicating
HIV. If the drugs stopped the virus from
infecting more blood cells, then the ones
already loaded with virus would eventually
die off naturally, leaving the body
virus free. Perhaps this would take two or
three years, he thought.
Butin late 1997, another discoverymade
that seem lmlikely. Silieiano and two other
teams independently found the virus insidememory
T cells. They checked people
who had seemed to be free of virus for two
years. Every time, they found fully potent
copies of virus inside their memory cells.
No one tmderstood then how long these
cells would stay alive, although it was
assumedit wouldalmostcertainlybemore
than a couple of years. "It was a sobering
realization about the recalciliant nature of
this reservoir," remembers Dr. Anthony
Fauci, head of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The next obvious approach was to try to
destroy these Trojan horses. Fauci’ s team
tried to "flush out the reservoir," as they
put it. The idea: Intermittently feed the
bodyinterleukin-2, agrowthhormone that
would make these dormant memory cells
awaken and then die.
¯
Theexperiment seemed to go well. Doc-
¯ tors biopsied patents’ lymph nodes and
¯¯ found nothing. They grew hundreds of
millions of their cells in cultures. Still
¯ nothing. Finally they stoppedall treatment
¯ and waited. Within three or four weeks,
¯ they had their answer. The virus came ¯
back in every single patient.
¯ "We are not going to be eliminating this
reservoir," Fauci now says. "Whether you
¯ can measureit or not doesn’t seem to have
¯
a significant impact on the clinically rd-
¯ evant phenomenon of what happens when
¯ you stop the drug." ¯
Nevertheless, scientists have learned
¯
much about how the virus hides. HIV’s
¯ primary target in the body is a kind of
¯ white blood cell known as a cd4 T helper ¯
cell. The virus infects them, hijacks their
¯
machinery so they manufacture more vi-
¯ ms, then kills them.
¯ After they get infected, though, a few of
these helper cells become memory cells.
: HIV has already stitched its genes into the
cells’ genetic code in preparation formak-
¯ ingmore virus. But nothing happens. The ¯
cells go to sleep, virusand all.
¯ All of this happens within the first days
¯ of an HIV infection, even before the body
¯ begins to make antibodies against the vi-
¯
ms. The number of cells involved is rela-
¯ tively small, perhaps 1 million scattered
¯ throughtheblood stream, thelymph glands
¯ and perhaps elsewhere.
Normally, the body kills HIV-infected
: cells. But it misses these, because they
~"’look perfectly normal. ’q’he only difference
between a latenfly infected cell and
its uninfected counterparts is a little bit of
HIV DNA," says Si!ician0. This silnilarity
also makes the infected cells almost impossible
to kill with any kind of targeted
drugs. There is simply no easy way to sort
out the good from the bad.
Siliciano has been counting these cells
in his Baltimore volunteers for five years.
The number he finds in their bodies now
"is essentially exactly the same as they
started with."
Why do they die off so slowly, if at all?
There are two leading theories: Their longevity
reflects the basic biology ofmemory
T cells, or their supply is constantly replenished.
Siliciano favors the first theory. Immunological
memory lasts forever. This is
why ~rmeone who catches measles in
childhood will remain immune to the disease
into old age. Memory cells may die
over time, "but they also make replacements
by cell division. And every time a
memory cell divides, it faithfully reproduces
the HIV that is stitched into its
genes.
However, the Diamond Center’s Ho
¯ prefers the second theory. Actually,
¯ memory cells are mucJa shorter lived, he
¯ believes. But their supply is constantly
¯
being renewed by a continuing cycle of
¯ low-level infection.
¯ The standard drug regimens -what doc- ¯
tors call highly active antiretroviral therapy,
¯
or HAART - can reduce viral levels by
¯ 10,000fold. Butperhaps they do not completely
stop the virus from infecting fresh
¯: T cells. Some of these go on to become
¯
infected memory cells. Thus, however
¯ quickly these memory cells die, they are
¯ replaced by more. see HIV, p. 7
by Matthew W. Holloway
Marriage is an amorphous institution,
changing in response to the demands of
society. Marriage, in some form or another,
has existed in every society throughout
the history of man.
In addition, marriage is
not a purely Christian
concept Marriage is
largely a product of our
society and has not always
had to do with religion.
What relationships are
considered a marriage?
How do we decide
what relationships to call a
marriage? Does a couple
really need a governmentissued
license to be "marfled"?
These questions have
aroused many debates
through the years. Does
society decide if people are
mamed? Or is it to be left
up to the people involved
in the union?
What of polygamous and incestuous
marriages? They have been ridiculed and
defamed in many societies. There are reasons
why polygamous and incestuous relationships
do not benefit society. In some
ways, they can actually harm a society,
depending on the context in which they are
found. This is because of the biological
problems involved in these unions. The
government has shown sufficient reason
to deny these marriages. This is one of the
reasons that their employment has been
limited, even in those societies which see
them as a viable alteruative.
And when we look at redefining marriage,
where do same-sex relationships fit
into the picture? When we look at the
required criteria of a marriage, we will see
that homosexual marriages fulfill all of
them, as well as many of die non-essential
characteristics.
There, what basis does the United States
Government have in denying marriage
licenses to homosexual couples? Absolutely
none.
If the American Government is "of the
people, by the people, and for the people"
then why are these marriages not recognized?
There is no question that homosexuals
are in every way equal citizens of
the United States. The American Government
has in place safeguards against a
conceptknownas "tyranny ofthe masses".
This is a relatively new problem, as it is
found exclusively in one of the newest
forms of government, the republic. It occurs
when the population of the nation gets
so large that any minority group trying to
be heard is drowned out by the din of all of
the other minority groups, clamoring for
their own representation in the elected
assembly.
And the United States elected assembly,
the Congress, is one of the smallest in the
world. This makes it very hard for any
minority group to receive adequate representation
in this nation. One of the major
safeguards against"tyranny ofthemasses"
in this nation is the Supreme Court. One of
its major duties is to protect the Bill of
Rights and to apply the Constitution to the
¯ cases which are presented o :~
With the very conservative ~z
¯
court at this time, there is ~~,~
; reaching a feasible conclusion to
¯ bate over homosexual marriage.
Homosexuals have been
"... when we look at
redefining marriage, "
where do same-sex
relationships
fit into the picture?
When we look at the
required criteria d a
marriage, we will see
that homosexual
marriages fulfill all of
them, as well as many of
the non-essentlal
characteristics.. 7
traditionally discriminated
against for years. This is a
fact. The new laws prohibiting
homosexual couples
from being considered the
exact equals of heterosexual
couples are simply
hate-based legislation.
That anyone could use
our governmental system
to promote hate or defame
any minority group is atrociously
unethical. The
United States Government
has not shown any promotion
of the public good at
all in prohibiting homosexual
marriage, and neither
has any one of our
fifty states.
Therefore, they are
¯ overstepping their boundaries in even pro-
¯ posing legislation such as the Knight Ini- ¯
tiative. In addition, the Supreme Court
¯ must step in to protect the minority from
tyranny. This is the only viable solution to
¯ thecontroversy which shakes ournation to
¯
its very foundations. The fight of the ho-
¯ mosexuals in the United States parallels
¯ that of the African-Americans of the
: 1960’s.
¯ The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 encountered
strong resistance, but eventual! y the
leaders of this nation realized that African-
Americans are citizens, with the samerights
" as any other citizeu of the United States.
¯ Be they black, white, Hispanic, Asian,
straight, Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, male,
¯
female, mentally challenged, handicapped,
or any other nlinority, everyone, every
citizen, every child of the United States of
America and the world deserves a voice
¯
and a positive rol~ model. Can we not give
¯ them this in the new nfille~mium? Let there
¯ be no more Columbines. The world is tired
¯ of hate.
¯ Matthew W. Holloway waJ a recepient
ofa TOHR 2000 Community Hero award
and was afounder ofa Gay/Straighl Alliance
at one of Tulsa’s high schools. This
fall he will be attending Tulsa Community
College, majoring in English.
The same request was made again a month
later. No official explanatio~l was provided
by Foundation staff.for the delay in
accepting the grant.
However, an examination of the membership
of the board of trustees of the Foundation
shows at least three, members with
documented records of engaging in anti-
Gay discrimination or supporting organizations
which engage in discrimination:
Tulsa World pubhsher Bob Lorton, Tulsa
Area United Way executive director
Kathleen Coin and one other.
At press time, no word had been received
about when or whether TulsaCommtmity
Foundation will accept the grant.
Alabama House
Addresses Hate Crimes
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - The Alabama House
voted 45-42 last month to include sexual orientation in
a state law that provides additional penalties for hate
crimes. The vote sent the bill sponsored by Rep. Alvin
Holmes, D-Montgomery, to the Senate, where it died
last year.
Holmes said the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Alabama
supports the legislation.
Reps. Allen Sanderson, Arthur Payne, andDuWayne
Bridges, were among opponents who .said the bill
would increase penalties for crimes against a special
group of people. "We are trying to create a special
privileged class, Gays and Lesbians," Payne said. "If
anyone commits a crime against a Gay or Lesbian they
are going to be punished to a greater degree than if
against another group."
But Holmes said "everybody is covered" under the
hate crime law. "Why shouldn’ t they be ~overed under
it?"he said. Alabamalaw already mandates minimum
prison terms that felons must serve for crimes motivated
b_y race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity
or physical or mental disability.
Colorado House Kills
Hate-Crimes Amendment
DENVER (AP) - For the eighth time in 10 years, abill
has been killed that would have expanded Colorado’ s
hate-crimes law to incl~ade crimes based on a victim’ s
sexual orientation.
The House State, Veterans and Military Affairs
Committee voted 6-5 against Senate Bill 75. which
had passed the Senate on a 20-15"vote. The bill would
have broadened ethnic intimidation laws that levy
tougher penalties for crimes motivated by the victim’ s
race, national origin or religion to include crimes
motivated by the victim’s real or perceived sexual
orientation, gender identity, age and mental or physical
disability.
Sponsor Rep. Mark Larson, R-Cortez, trying to
counter the traditional arguments, said the proposal
would not create special rights for certain groups of
people, nor would it attempt to restrict free-speech
rights. "We are not nmning a government based on our
ownnarrow view oflife,"he said. "Itis the Legislature’ s
responsibility to protect its citizens, all of its citizens."
Opponents argued the law would create separate
classes of people that would be treated differently,
violating the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.
"I would remove the entire hate-crimes law
because I think everybody should be treated equally,"
said Rep. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs.
But victims of certain bias-motivated crimes are not
treated equally, Larson ceantered. For example, a
person who throws a brick with a hateful message
attached through a Black person’s window can be
punished moreharshly under current law than a person
who does the same to a Gay person’ s window, he said.
Proponents said the bill properly focused on the
motivation of the criminal, rather than characteristics
of the victim. For example, said Deputy Denver District
Attorney Everett Engstrom, a person who kills
could be prosecuted for murder, for manslaughter or
for criminally negligent homi’cide based on his or her
state of mind.
"Hate crimes are different from ordinary crimes.
They are intended to send a message, to victimize the
individual and the entire commttnity they belong to,"
said Pat Steadman, representing Equal .Rights Colorado.
"The harm.from a hate crime .is larger than the
harm tojustan individual." Evan Zuckerman, assistant
director of the Anti-Defamation League’s mountain
states region, said the bill was necessary to protect
groups of people who are being victimized based on
certain characteristics. "We shouldn’ t let another year
¯ Some Vermonters Want
to Repeal Civil Unions
¯
MONTPELIER, Vt.(AP) -The HouseJudiciary Com-
." mittee voted to continue working on a bill that could
¯¯ eventually lead to arepeal of civil unions. The committee
is one vote shy of an outfight repeal of the law that
¯ grants the rights, benefits and responsibilities of mar-
. riage to same-sex couples.
But committee members who support repeal agreed
: to continue working on a bill that would offer an
¯ alternative to civil unions because it may provide their
¯ only opportunity to have an up-or-down vote on repeal
: on the House floor. Reciprocal partnerships are a
." concept conceived by Judiciary Committee Chair-
" woman Peg Flory that would repeal civil unions and
¯ offer suchpartnerships to all couples who are currently ¯
prohibited from marrying under state law. That in-
" eludes same-sex couples, whowonmarriagerights and
_" benefits through civil unions, as wall as blood rela-
¯ tives. Flory’ s goal with her billis to expand thenumber
¯" ofcouples who could qualify forbenefits withoutusing
¯ sexual orientation as the criterion for obtaining them.
¯ Some opponents of civil unions don’t like the strat-
¯ egy of supporting Flory’ s bill solely as a parliamentary ¯
maneuver. The Rev. David Stertzbach of the Vermont
¯ Defense of Marriage Committee wrote to legislators
¯ late last week warning them that such a strategy was ¯
unacceptable to his group. Stertzbach’s group was
¯ active in the elections last year.
"We believe Vermonters deserve (an) honest,
straightforward vote on the repeal of civil unions in
committee and on the House floor without any unprin-
¯ cipled votes for reciprocal benefits for homosexuals
¯ even as a parliamentary maneuver," he wrote. "It
would sadden me to report to voters that any conservative
voted for reciprocal benefits."
Among the issues with Flory’ s bill that trouble civil
unions opponents is that it would require them to
support a bill that would grant rights to Gay and
¯ Lesbian couples. ’’This bill further diminishes marriage,"
Haas told his committee.
¯ Still, repeal supporters on the Judiciary.’ Commi ttee
do not believe they have much choice if they want to
¯ force a vote. Rep. Harvey Otterman, R-Topsham, said
¯ he did not like to see a bill "bottled up in committee,"
so he would support Flory’s bill and then make a
judgment later on whether to vote for repeal if such a
¯ proposal were made on the floor. ’Tmgoing to reserve
the right to vote asI see fit," Otterman said.
i NY Housing Case May
¯ Impact Civil Rights Laws
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Lawyers for Yeshiva University
on defended its refusal to allow Gay couples to
share student apartments, a policy two Lesbian students
contend discriminated against them on the basis
of sexual orientation and marital status.
Yeshiva lawyer Mark Jacoby told the state’ s highest.
court that the university was well within its .rights to
restrict use of the university-owned housing to single
students-or married graduate students - but to deny
unmarried heterosexual or homosexual couples the use
of those apartments.
"Look, we have a limited amount of student housing
available," Jacoby told the Court of Appeals, conveying
the rea,~oning of university officials. ’’We’ve acquired
this to accommodate-students. We can accommodate
students themselves. We’re prepared to accommodate
spouses and children of students and facilitate
their education. But we’ re not going to open the
door and (accommodate) everybody who wants to
bring in a buddy, or a friend, or a partner."
The lawyer arguing on behalf of the two Lesbian
studeats for the American Civil Liberties Union’s
Lesbian & Gay Rights Project, James Esseks, countered
that Yeshiva’ s housing policy had a "disparate
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Call for meeting times and place:
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SinceNew Yorklaw prohibits all-male or all-female
couples from getting mamed, allowing only married
couples to share housing means Gay couples are unfairly
barred from possibly sharing in the benefit of the
cheap apartments. "This case is not about securing
marriage for same-sex couples or creating new laws -
it’ s about enforcing laws that prohibit discrimination
against those who can’t get married," Esseks said.
Both state and local anti-discrimination laws mayhave
been violated by Yeshiva’s policies, Esseks said.
Thechallenge against Yeshiva’ s policy was brought
by two students, Sara Levin and Maggie Jones, after
their requests to live with their partners were rejected.
Both Levin and Jones were offered university-owned
housing for themselves alone. Both are students at the
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which is affifiated
with Yeshiva.
Two lower state courts have nded for Yeshiva’ s
no-unmarried-couple housing policy. The Court of
Appeals is likely to hand down a written ruling in the
ease by early summer.
. Several groups filedfriend-of-the-court briefs in the
¯ case, including theAssociation ofthe Bar ofNew York
City, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund
and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Those briefs argue that civil rights protections for
many kinds of minority groups could be weakened by
upholding Yeshiva’ s housing policies. New York state
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer also filed a brief before
the court critical of Yeshiva’ s housing policy.
Wesleyan U. Hires Gay
Studies Professor
MIDDLETOWN, Conn. (AP) - Following the lead of
Yale, Wesleyan University will appoint a full-time
professor to teach Gay and Lesbian studies. The position
Is expected to be filled wilhin a year, and the
professor will begin teaching in the fall semester 2002,
Justin Harmon, a school spokesman said.
The new position will be among 20 the university
has created during thepast couple of years in an effort
to expand its curriculum, Harmon Said. University
officials said the new professor will help develop a
Gay and Lesbian studies curriculum.
The lack of Gay studies courses at Wesleyan has
drawn protests from students and faculty in recent
years. Wesleyan has offered one such course per year.
"I’m delighted that we’re having this position here,"
said Henry Abelove, one of the professors who has
taught Gay studies course. "This will add substantially
to the queer studies courses we can offer here."
Abelove said the new professor probably will be
expected to teach two courses per semester, like other
professors at Wesleyan.
Earlier this month, Yale University accepted a $1
million donation from the family of Larry Kramer to
help fund the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and
Gay Studies at Yale.
That decision ended four years of debate about
Kramer’s desire to fund a Gay and Lesbian studies
program at. Yale. Kramer,an outspoken activist for
AIDS awareness and Gay issues, initially wanted to
give Yale $5 million to hire a full-time professor in the
field. Yale rejected that offer because the university
thought Gay studies was too narrow a field for a
permanent professorship. In response, Kramer had
accused the university of being homophobic.
Members of Wesleyan’ s Queer Alliance, a group of
Lesbian and Gay students, pushed hard earlier in the
spring to get the position at their school approved. In
March, the alliance held a "kiss-in" demonstration in
front of the admissions office. The demonstration
coincided with a meeting of the university’s trustees.
"We’re really pleased, although I’m almost surprised,"
said junior Phil Gentry, an alliance leader.
"We tried to be optimistic, but at the same time this
same proposal was turned down before..."
New ACLU Leader
Hispanic + Openly Gay
: NEW YORK (AP) - A New York public interest
¯ attorney was named Tuesday to lead the American
Civil Liberties Union, becoming the first Hispanic and
: openly Gay man to do so. Anthony D. Romero, 35,
¯ currently serves as a director of the Ford Foundation’ s
¯ program for human rights and international cooperation,
overseeing $90 million in grants.
¯ As the ACLU’ s executive director, he said will work
to make the civil rights organization more prominent
¯ in local communities. He said theACLU will continue
to focus on defending religious liberty, reproductive
¯ freedom andtherights ofwomen, minorities and Gays.
"’I hope to beginmy tenure as the 1eader of thi s vitally
important organization by sparking a new dialogue
¯
about the bedrock values ofAmerican democracy," he
: said, adding his goal is to "promote a new generation
of committed civil libertarians and civil rights activ-
¯ ists.’"
¯ The Bronx-born Romero is a graduate of Stanford
: Law School and Princeton University. ACLU Presi-
¯ dent Nadine Strossen called Romero "an idealist, bold ¯
and creative in his vision and strategy but skeptical and
¯ realistic in his tactics." Romero will take over in
¯ September for Ira Glasser, Who is retiring after 23
¯ years in the post.
Conservative Extremists
Stall Anti-Bullying Bill
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - A bill designed to stop
bullying in schools has stalled in the Legislature amid
opposition from Christian conservatives who say it is
really a Gay-rights measure. Under the measure, school
¯
districts would have to write policies against bullying
: and train employees and volunteers to stop harass-
~ ment. Teachers,police, Gov. Gary Lockeand Attorney
¯ General ChristineGregoire saidthe legislationis needed ¯ to protect picked-on kids.
¯ But the state’ s chapter ofthe Christian Coalition said
: it couldbe seen as trying to prevent some students from
¯ condemning homosexuality. Rick Forcier, director of
: the Christian Coalition of Washington, said the mea-
: sure could lead to homosexual sensitivity training in
: schools. "We don’ t want to see kids beat up on and we
¯ would like to see the rules that are already in place
¯ enforced," he said. "But I think this one went well
¯ beyond what we think is necessary."
The measure passed the Senate but never made it to
: a vote in the House Education Committee in the
¯ regular session that ended April 22. The governor has
¯ listed, it on his agenda for the 30-day special legislative
¯ sessxon now under way.
Georgia County Adds
Partner Benefits
¯
DECATUR, Ga. (AP) - DeKalb County commission-
" ers have approved providing domestic 15artners of Gay
county employees with medical, dental and life insur-
¯ ance benefits. The measure, approved by a 6-1 vote at
¯ the end of April, makes the suburban Atlanta county
: the first in Georgia to offer such benefits to employees.
¯ County officials estimate that about 70 employees -
¯ 1% of the total - will seek the benefits, which would cost thecounty about $200,000 out of abenefits budget
¯ about $39 million a year. The city of Atlanta has been
the only local government in Georgia with a domestic
partner package.
¯ The private sector has been quicker to provide such
¯ benefits, said Harry Knox, director of the Gay civil
¯ rights group, the Georgia Equality Project. Four of the
state’ s largest employers- BellSouth, DeltaAir Lines,
¯ Atlanta Gas Light and Coca-Cola - have done so,
¯ Knox said.
Vaccine Research
Maybe Overlooked
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) - Developing a
vaccine to prevent AIDS should be given
top priority in the fight against the deadly
virus sweeping Africa, aleading epidemiologist
said. Efforts to develop a vaccine
risked getting overlooked in the push to
raise money to fight AIDS, said Seth
Berkley, president oftheNew York-based
International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
However, key decisions on whether to
pursue vaccine "candidates" currently in
human trials may need to be made as early
as 2002, he said.
Berkley spoke recently on the sidelines
ofa two-day AfricanAIDS summit hosted
by Nigeria and the Organization of African
Unity. There, African lcaders signed a
declaration calling on members to aim at
spending 15% of their national budgets on
health programs, including a significant
proportion on AIDS andto provide cheap
and effective drugs to treat those infected.
The Vaccine Initiative- a private, nonprofitorgani7ationfundedbygovernments,
foundations and private enterprise - has
raised more than $300 million to assist
vaccine research and create systems for
distributing them in the developing world.
Yet Berkley estimates that the project
would require at least double that figure to
give research bodies "a chance" of developing
vaccines by 2007.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annanalso
announced efforts to create a global ’~ar
chest" worth $7 billion to $10 billion to
fight AIDS. It was unclear how much
would be devoted to vaccine research,
Otherobservers said vaccine trials could
be "fast-tracked" in about half the time or
less if funding in the billions was made
available.
Billions of dollars have gone into the
developmentofeffectiveAIDS treatments,
but vaccine research has received relatively
little funding. Pharmaceutical cornpatties
have viewed it as unprofitable, and~
most AIDS activists have focused their
efforts on finding a cure.
U.S. governmentfunding ofHIV-AIDS
research last year.topped $2billion, with
about $250 million going toward vaccine
research. Therestwent toward developing
drugs to treat those with the disease.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
andWestern countries such as Canadaand
the Netherlands have also provided millions
of dollars for vaccine research.
Nancy Powell,head of the U.S. delegation
to the African summit, said Friday
that PresidentBush’ s administrationwould
spend $2.5 billion on HIV-AIDS research
this year, including $480 million for "international
HIV/AIDS assistance." Shedid
not give a further breakdown. ’q’he Bush
administration is Africa’s partner in this
effort. The United States has been the
world leader in research and assistance to
" batde these diseases," Powell said.
Researching and testing an AIDS vaccine
is only the first part of the problem,
Berkley said. Getting it to those who need
it most is another challenge. Vaccines developed
for other diseases ordinarily take
15 years or more before they are affordable
in poor countries.
The Vaccine Initiative hopes that pri;
vate Firms involved in the production of
: the vaccines will offer them at cut-rate
: prices in poorer countries. "Extraordinar-
¯ ilycomplexplanning is required," Berkley
: said. "Establishingnew production capac-
¯ ity alone normally requires 4-5 years."
i Debt Relief for Poor-
Urged to Fight AIDS
¯ NEWYORK (AP) -The debt owed by the
¯
world’ s poorest countries is a major bar-
: rier to fighting the AIDS pandemic and
¯ should be canceled immediately, activists
¯ urged.
¯ The plea came as the World Bank and
¯ The International Monetary Fund, which
¯ hold the majority of the debt, held their
¯ spring meeting in Washington. The inter-
" nadonal lending organizations have ajoint
¯ program to reduce debt but have so far
¯ declined to wipe the slates clean.
: "It is morally reprehensible fo( the de-
: veloped world to condnue to demand re-
- payment when we have a crisis on the
¯ continent of Mrica," said Njongonkulu
¯ Ndugane, Archbishop of Cape Town,
: South Africa. "One hundred percent can-
: cellation is nonnegotiable."
¯ Sub-Saharan African countries spend
$13.3.billionon debt repayment each year
i but need $15 billion to stop the spread of
: HIV/AIDS, according to the Global AIDS
¯ Alliance: Zambia, for example, has an
. annual debt service of $174 million, with
: $90 million of that going to the World
¯ BankandlMF. The country’ s health bud-
¯ get is $76 million.
¯ Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Harvard
: University, said that canceling debt will
¯ give countries even more money to.fight
: the disease that is ravishing the continent.
: AIDS has killed about 22 million people
¯ globally, including 17million in sub~Sa-
¯ haran Africa.
: Twoseparateinitiatives wereintroduced
: in theCongress this weekwhichcall onthe
: IMF and the World Bank to eliminate
:
debt. Onebill introducedby Reps. Maxine
Waters, a California Democrat, and Speni
eer Bachus, an Alabama Repubfican, Calls
: for 100% debt relief for the world’s poor-
: est countries. The bill introduced by Bar-
. bara I.~e, a California Democrat, calls for
¯ debt relief for countries heavily affected
¯ byHIV/AIDS.
: Bono, the lead singer of the Irish rock
: band U2, said that part of the problem is
¯ that Americans don~t understand how .the
: debt is devastating the poorest countries.
: Heplans to try to raise awareness tocreate
; political pressure. -
: The World Bank have a program cal!ed
¯ the HIPC Initiative to stem debt. Accord,
¯ ing to a World Bank report, the 22 coun-
¯ tries receiving somerelief have seen debt
¯ payments go from 3.7% to 2.1% of gross
domestic product. Actifists say the reduc-
: lions are negligible, especially consider-
" ing the AIDS crisis. Indeed, pharmaceuti-
: cal-compaules have drastically’reduced
¯ theprice ofAIDSmedications with at Ieast
¯ two films sellingmedicine at cost. Still,
¯ they are deemed to expensive.
¯ "HIV/AIDS is worse than the bubonic
¯ plague," said Lee. ’q~he money used for
¯ debt service could be used for education,
research, a health care delivery system...
: It could go a long way to turning the
¯ situation around."
Power
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!
!
!
The Tulsa City County
Library System
is proud to
Embrace-Diversity
honoring Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered
Oklahomans with the following events:
Saturday, June 2. 2pro. Maxwell Park Library
"Coming Out in Tulsa Area High Schools"
Dr. Doug Gronberg, English teacher at Booker T. Washington High School,
moderates a pane! discussion by high school students in Gay/Straight Alliances.
Monday, June 4. 7pm. Central Library
"Council Oak Men’ s Chorale"
Monday, June 4. 7pm. Helmerich Library
"Family Law Issues Affecting the Gay Community"
Panel discussion with Linda Lacey, TU.College of Law, moderating.
Thursday, June 7. 7pm. Central Library
"Diversity Film Festival"
Harvey Fierstein and Matthew Broderick star in "Torch Song Trilogy."
Saturday, June 9. 12 Noon. Central Library
"Diversity. Film Festival’"
"Out of the Past" documents the struggles of Kelli Peterson, who started a Gay/
Straight alliance in her Salt Lake City school in 1996.
Thursday,,, June 142 7pm. Central Library
Diversity Film Festival"
"Trevor": Winner of the 1994 Academy Award for best live-action short.
"If These Walls Could Talk": Stories about Lesbian couples in three decades.
"Bubbeh Lee an~d Me"= A Gay man’ s Visit with his 87 year old grandmother.
t~ook Discussion: Deliver Us From Evie’
Thmsday, June 21.~lpm. Broken Arrow Library
Book Discussion:"Fried Green Tomatoes"
Thursday, June 21. 7pro. Brookside Library
:AIDS Memorial Quilt Project
Vale Bode, director of Education and Outreach for the Tulsa Area chapter of
the NAMES project, discusses the AIDS Memorial Quilt
¯Please call 596-7977 or your local branch library if you have questions or
need more information. Please plan to attend.
"If we could stop the residual replication,
what wouldbe the persistence of the reservoir?"
Ho asks. His team has started a new
experiment, code numbered 377, to f’md
o u t
They have come up with a new four"
drug combination, a kind of super-
HAART, that they believe is more powerful
than the standard variety. About 30
patients are taking the drugs. The goal is to
stop the low-level circulation of their virus,
which in turn shOuld shut off the
supply of newly infected memory cells.
Ifit works,Hobelieves it couldwipeout
the body’s HIV-infected memory T cells
in three to four years. "No one would say
that once we get rid of this reservoir, we
have a cure," says Ho. "We have confronted
a difficult problem, but there may
be others."
Among the biggest of these is the worry
that infected memory T cells are not the
body’s onlylongdived reservoir.of HIV.
The virus may linger as well in other
places that are hard to check or lie beyond
thereach ofAIDS drugs, such as the brain,
bone marrow and testes.
"It will be a daunting task to eliminate
those unknown viral reservoirs, even with
much more potent drugs that might come
outin the near future," says Dr. Tae-Wook
Chun of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases.
This is why Chun and many AIDS re,
searchers now believe the best defense
against HIV may ultimately be the body’ s
own. These doctors wouldlike to teach the
immune.system to control HIV, so people
can stop taking AIDS drugs, which have
unpleasant and unhealthy side effects.
No one can say whether this is even
possible. But they already can envision a
strategy: Shut down viral replication with
standard drugs. Then give vac,ines and
otherboosters thatwill inteusffy thebody’ s
natural - and up to now, failed - surveillance
against HIV.
In time, they say, the immune system
might learn to do the entirejob alone. But
all bf this is unproven theory, just fike the
idea of viral eradication was five years
ago.
a global strategy can be developed to help
fight the disease.
"What I propose is a Global Fund, dedieatedto
the battle against HIV, AIDS and
other diseases. Clearly, it must be organized
in a way that corresponds to the
needs ofthe affected countries andpeople,"
Annan said. "Each country or community
receiving support from the fund would
have to show that it is actually bringing
results to those most at risk."
Annan said there are still many legal and
administrative matters to be settled before
the fund is established. He would not say
how much the U.S. government should
contribute but urged involvement.
"I hope that the U.S. government would
join in making funds available andjoining
: the fight against the disease," Annan said.
¯¯ "It would be presumptuous of me to say
how much the U.S. should pay. I hope,
: considering the size of the government,
¯ that it would be substantial."
: Annan’s appeal comes on the heels of a
: speech to leaders gathered at the Mrican
¯ Summlt on HIV, AIDS and other infec-
: tious diseases. There, he outlined his.ob-
: jectives andurgedMrieangovernments to
¯ take the lead in mobilizing resources.
¯ Paul DiDonato, executive director of
: Funders Concerned About AIDS, a New
: York-based organization, said he was
~ pleased with Annan’s remarks. ’q’he fact
¯ that thereis this level of leadership talking ¯
about theissueis encouraging," DiDonato
¯ said. "A year ago, U.S. leaders were not
: giving speeches aboutAIDS;now they are
¯ talking about it."
¯ MaybeI’mNOTmoreattractive with vaginal
itch. Dam! I was hoping something
¯ would help!
In the past month I’ve learned who my
real friends are: those who stick with you
: even when you’re scratching your crotch
: on a public street. OK, so that was my
¯ roommate, and he does need me to paymy
: half of the rent.
: But my friend Lindsey, who lives in a
¯ garrett apartment similar to that in "La
: Boheme", has stuck withme. Shejust tells
¯ me to shut up when I talk about "the itch."
: So I do it several times,just to piss her off.
, My friend Jim even slept with me when
’¯ he" visited. He didn’t have any fear that
he’ d get it. WeP, dull! Of course not! And
: the next possible Ms. Right hasn’trun
¯ away -yet. I’ve also had several-more
¯ women contact me through the Intemet. ¯
So there’s something to say about these
:. "women’ s thi"ngs," a’fter all. I’ vemet other
¯ women, kept my roommate/friend;from
¯ throwing me out, slept with a man (Jim!),
: and even had sex while keeping m~ pants
¯ on.
¯ OK, boys. You can come backnowA’m
: f’mishedtaikinn about"theitch." Youwon’ t
: have to endur~ this next time, I promise.
: My rooinmate’s cowering in the corner,
: though. Why? After screaming at him,
¯ I’ve just decided the topic ofmy next
: column - Multiple PMS Disorder and the
: Women Who Have Long, Drawn,Out,
¯ Heavy, Gushing, Extremely Bloody Peri-
: otis. See ya then!
¯" Since no anti-Gay language was used,
Tulsa Police could not even informally
¯" classify this as ahate crime but Dept. Chief
Busby did say that Tulsa Police would
¯ start using tht~parkinglot outside the Cen-
: ter when they stop to write their reports in
: between responding to crimes. TOHR
: vohmteers hopethat themore visible pres-
¯ ence may" deter more crime.
," TOHR is also soliciting donations to
¯ pay for the door glass repair. Some dona- ¯
dons have been received but more are
". needed. AlsoTOHRhas now negotiated a
compromise with the Center’s landlord
¯ for a sign. see TOHR, p.9
by Jim Christjohn, entertainment editor
The new singles from the Stevie Nicks
album, "Planets of the Universe", "Everyday",
and "TooFarFromTexas" are climbing
the charts, althoughyouwouldn’ tknow
it around here: Dallas stations are playing
the hell out of "Planets...", but in Tulsa
radio stations didn’ t evenl~tw that Stevie
was releasing a new album.
May lst, in spiteof
the fact it’ s been in the
trademagazines for several
months now, and
she’s been popping ~p
all over the.. place. It S
.w0nderful:~01ivein such "
~in~?,rmed t0wn:~~.
-APis~rently, the radio
stations are about three
years behind the rest of
the country. I think they
should read the Gay paper
intown, so they can
keep up with what’s
going on. (editor’s note:
at least with Stevie
Nicks.t)
The new disc is killer, and even if you
aren’t a Stevie Fan, I think you’ll like it.
Amazingly, when I went to Target to nab
the official release, the bin was empty! A
friend of mine said with some surprise,
"Look! I guess you aren’t the only Stevie
fan here!" I did find one, but I thought the
comment was humorous.
Nicks said she will begin a U.S. tour on
June 29. The Dallas stop i.s August 3rd.
Plans for a new Fleetwood Mac album are
going ahead around September without
Christine McVie, though they have her
blessing.
One of Celebrity Attractions best offerings,
"Red White and Tuna" explodes
into townMay 8-13 at the PAC, 596-7111.
It promise to be an evening of fun and
frolic with the residents of Tuna, Texas -
all played~by Joe Sears and Jaston Williams.
If you were unfortunate enough to
have missed "Greater Tuna", and "A Tuna
Christmas", here’s your chance to catch
up with these hilarious folks. These performances
sell out fast, so grab those tickets
now! You won’t regret it.
Sometimes, something comes across
your desk for review that is simply unbelievable.
Watching. it is like watching a
train wreck: you hate yourself for it, you
don’ t want to look, but you just have to.
"West Hollywood Stories" is one of those
things. A two-set video series of a Gay
soap opera out of and set in LA,its tag line
is ’’These are the Gays of our lives."
As one can imagine, this sets it up as a
comedy. Except it’ s not. It’s a wretched
affair, with acting talent culled from the
bottom of the pool, and videography designed
to make any amateur look good.
Production values? I’m hard pressed to
find any. It looks like some high school
kids got together and tried to make a "Gay
Bitch Project."
Think "Queer as Folk" (QAF) done really
badly with people who can’ t act. Yep,
it’s pretty bad. in fact, I was thinking,
"With Queer as Folk, why even’do this?"
Joe Sears as Aunt Pearl Burras
¯¯ All I can guess is that this was donebefore
the QAF series at a time when any funding
: would have come out of pocket and any
¯ actors would be people with no experi- ¯
ence. It does provide laughs, but all unin-
¯ tentional.
¯ And it’ s kind of an embarrassed laugh,
such as one might make at a train wreck to
cover up one’s horror.
The premise is a good
idea: AGay soap. Thank
Gods it’s being done
wall on QAF. Anyone
who bitches about anything
on that show
should be forced to sit
through "WeHo Stories."
Obviously, I can’t
recommend spending
any money on this, and
I really hoped it would
live up to its billing as a
comedy spoof of soaps.
All Icansayis,this soap
don’t clean. Or even
make suds.
The "Queer as Folk"
soundtrack is out, and in both British and
American versions. The British has two
: versions: A "highlights disc, and an ex-
¯ panded import disc. Both covers are the
same, it’ s only when you look at the back
¯ - one has around 15 tracks, the other, 35 or
¯ so. The American only has one out thus
¯ far, andit’s pretty cool forboppin’ around.
After 7 years in this town, I’d never
¯ madeitto theGflcreaseMuseum.Afriend
¯ from CA came to visit, andI was showing
him the sights, and we stopped there, al-
¯ most as an afterthought. Wow! I had no
¯ idea... I thought it would be like the
¯ Philbrook, which I always thought of as a ¯
poor excuse for a museum - pretty house,
¯
but not much to it.
¯ Gilcrease was amazing, especially since
¯ my ~’riend was of Native American de-
" scent. He did make one commentthat was
¯ reallythought-provoking: in the lowerlev-
¯ els are hundreds of NA artifacts, from
¯ peace pipes to clothing to head dresses to
: utensils and sacred objects.
¯ At one point, we stopped in front of a
series of clothing articles, one with what
¯ looked like a bullet hole through it in the
: center of the chest, with blood around it.
¯ My friend said, "this is like visiting
¯ Auschwitz. And ten to one these items
¯ were not given to the museum by the
original owners."
¯ Point well made, in fact, many of the
¯ objects would have been buried with the
¯ owner had they been given proper burial.
¯ In many cases, I doubt also that the owner
: had any say in he matter.
Yet another thing I learned was that
pipes, as sacred objects, should never be
¯ shown assembled unless for the purpose
¯ intended - to carry prayers to the spirits. ¯
Cody said that museums who are respect-
" ful and do their research display the pipes
¯ in separate pieces. The Gilcrease displays
¯ were in such a manner. ¯
¯ Philbrook, in constrast, displayed pipes
assembled, an insult to the people from
¯ whom the pipes were taken.
Oklahoma NAR~L invites you to our
~ $35 per person
Timothy W. Daniel
Attorney at Law
An Attorney who will fight for justice
& equality for Gays & Lesbians
Domestic Partnership Planningl
Personal Injury, Criminal Law & Bankruptcy
1-800-742-9468 or 918-352-9504
128 East Broadway, Drumright, Oklahoma
Weekend and evening appointments are available.
o
ooooo000.
Kelly Kirby, CPA, PC
Certified-Public Accountant
a professional corporation
Lesbians and Gay men face many special
tax situations whether single or as couples.
Electronic filing is available for faster refunds.
747-5466
4021 South Harvard Avenue, Suite210, Tulsa 74135
by Barry Hensley
Tulsa City-County Library
This year, the Tulsa City-County Library
is making a coordinated effort to
provide a variety of Diversity programmingacross
TulsaCounty during themonth
of June. Please make plans to attendsome
of these programs. A good attendance at
these programs, and positive feedback,
will ensure continued library programming
dedicated to GLBT issues. The library
will also haveabooth, as usual, at the
Diversity celebration at Veteran’ s Park on
Saturday, June 9.
Library programs for June include:
Saturday, June 2. 2pm.
Maxwell Park Library
"Coming OutinTulsaAreaHigh Schools"
Dr. Doug Gronberg, English teacher at
BookerT. WashingtonHigh School, moderates
a panel discussion by high school
students in the Tulsa area Gay/Straight
Alliances.
Monday, June 4. 7pm.
Central Library
"Council Oak Men’s Chorale"
Join us for a celebration of sound as an
ensemble from the Chorale performs a.
variety of vocal selections.
Monday, June 4. 7pm.
Helmerich Library
"Family Law Issues
Affecting the Gay Community’"
Discussion will center around the legal
. rights of same-sex couples, adoption issues
and access to artificial-reproduction
teclinology. Linda Lacey, professor, University
ofTulsa College ofLaw, will moderate.
Thursday, June 7. 7pro.
Central Library
"Diversity Film Festival"
Harvey Fierstein andMatthew Broderick
star in "Torch Song Trilogy," which was
adapted from the Tony Award winning
Broadway hit. The musical numbers are a
hoot, and Anne Bancroft chews the scenery
nicely.
Saturday, June 9. 12 Noon.
Central Library
"Diversity Film Festival"
"Outofthe Past" documents the struggles
of Ke]li Peterson, who started a Gay/
Straight alliance in her Salt Lake City
school in 1996. Her fight became a statewidebattle
that broughtnational attention.
Thursday, June 14. 7pm.
Central Library
"Diversity Film Festival"
"Trevor": Winner of the 1994 Academy
Award for best live action short. This
highly acclaimed, touching, funny film
addresses issues of sexual identity and
compassion.
"If These Walls Could Talk": Trio of
stories about Lesbian couples in three different
decades.
"Bubbeh Lee and Me": Documents a
Gayman’ s visitwithhis 87 year oldgrandmother
in a Florida retirement commu-
Tuesday, June 19. 2pm.
West Regional Library
BookDiscussion: "Deliver Us Frown Ev:
¯ This bookbe M. E. Kerr tells the ste~’;
: 16 year old Parr Burma,an and his fa
: who face some difficult times when ;,:,
¯ spreads around their small Missouri
: that his older sister is a Lesbian, after
: leaves the family farm to live with the
¯¯ daughter of the town’ s banker.
Thursday, June 21. lpm.
Broken Arrow Library
Book Discussion:
"Fried Green Tomatoes"
This Fannie Flagg hit mixes direct and
empowering confrontations with racism,
sexism and ageism with the colorful and
endearing language of the Depression-era
South.
Thursday, June 21. 7pm.
Brookside Library
AIDS Memorial Quilt Project
Vale Bode, director of Education and
Outreach for the Tulsa Area chapter of the
NAMES project, discusses the AIDS
morial Quilt.
Please call 596-7977 or yourlocal branch
library if you have questions or need more
information. Please plan to attend.
Council Oak Men’s
Concert May 11-13
Join the Council Oak Men’s Chorale
(COMC) as it sings the works of musical
pioneers in its concert "American Dreamers"
at Philbrook’ s Wilson Hall, May 11-
13. Performances are on Friday and Saturday
at 8 PM a~,d a matinee on Sunday,
Mother’s Day, at 3 PM. Tickets are $15
For more information, call 748-3888.
Three composers explore three centuries
of the American quest for freedom.
Randall Thompson, Aaron Copland and
Stephen Sondheim, have created works
inspired by the ideals, hopes and dreams of
a nation and its people.
COMC was recently honored to sing the
national anthemat the Tulsa Driller’ s home
game opener on Easter Sunday. America’ s
favorite pastime was introduced by a rousing
rendition of the Star Spangled Banner
performed by COMC’ s 25-male voices.
Formoreinformation about Tulsa’ s premier
Gay men’ s chorus visit:
www.counciloak.org
While it will only have abbreviations,
TOHR and LGBT for Tulsa Oklahomans
for Human Rights and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
andTransgendered, Gatewoodnotes
- it will have "lots of rainbows all over it."
Funds are needed to pay for the new sign
as well. ~
Gatewood adds that through the efforts
of Anna Dodwell, aka, Dyke Divine,
KHITS, 106.9 FM will be airing interviews
with la Dyke herself, TOHR,
PFLAG, Tulsa CARES, and HOPE, probably
on the week beginning June 4th.
Volunteers and sponsors are still needed
for the Gala dinner and the Festival, so for
more information, call 743-4297.
home. Sean was tough and
built like a fireplug. Hehad
just returned home after
serving several years in the
Marines. He spoke animat-
.edly aboutguns, and sports,
and arm-wrestling. (He
beat me.) "Okay, enough
already!" I thought. I attributed
Sean’ s hyper-masculine
pose to the fact that
we were, at the time, sitting
in Hula’s, Waikiki’s
foremost gay bar. Sean,
poor boy, was still edgy
about his sexuality.
But something more vital
was at stake, Hater discovered.
I had occasion
once to catch Sean naked.
Nervous, blushing, and
ashamed he explained he
by Lamont Lindstrom, Ph.D. however, the chimps have us humans beat.
I met Scan one summer in Honolulu. Because of this, perhaps, these organs are
Like many local guys, his ancestry was " less charged in popular culture. Fewer
assorted-alittlebitHawaiian and the rest " men lose sleep over marbles instead of
Asian and European- a mixture reflecting " tennis balls. Fewer scams promise testicle
,,
the history of his island enlargement.
. . . Humans, unllhe When it comes to mea-
+ most mammals, have
suring humans, sampling
and data collection have
lost the haeeulum - a long been problematic.
hone within the penis
Still, it’s established that
the average length of an
- for unhnow’n erect human penis is beevolutionary
reasons. tween five and six inches.
An informative website,
Nonetheless, amon~ The Definitive Penis Size
primates at least,
Survey ("http://
www.connection.com/
humans are the man. -dickie/result.html"),
We are lar~er than
records a somewhat longer
average but its sample is
chimpanzees. And self-selected and no doubt
mighty ~orillas -
composed of those more
inclined to boast.
despite their hulh - So how did humans get
sport penises of Sean’s
so large, ethologically
speaking? Students of evoslze:
just over one inch lution generally fall back
had inherited the family lon~ when erect..."
on two explanations to accurse.
I looked down and count for sexual dimorthere
it was: The smallest human penis I phism such as penis size. Men perhaps
had ever seen. Scan, when excited on a engaged in competitive penile display to
good day, was perhaps an inch and a half threaten and cow one another, thus to
in length. "" establish dominance within a group.
SusanBordo,thefeminist scholar,pokes Thanks to higher status, men with longer
intoAmericanequataonsofmenwiththeir penises had more children. Or. perhaps
penises inThe Male Body: A New Look at long peruses instead resulted trom sexual
Men in Public and in Private (1999). She
selection. Women sought out better-enexplores
the effects of popnlar imagery on doWed men to increase their own sexual
our feelings about our bodies and our- pleasure.
selves. Bordo, previously, had written However the human pems evolved,
about the impact of media depictions of people in many societies celebrate its size.
female beauty on women’ s perceptions of They associate bigness with potency, autheir
bodies. American women suffer a thority, and manliness. In many of the
sort of collective "body image distortion’! island cultures of the Southwestern Pasyndrome.
Themajorityoverestimateshow cific, for example, men traditionally
much space the body takes up. Women flaunted artificially enlarged penises. On
believe, often incorrectly, that they are too Talma, where I once lived, some men still
fat. wrap and expand the penis with plant
Bordo suggests that men suffer a paral- fibers and leaves and cinch this upright to
lel body distortion syndrome. Men tend to a belt around the waist. They appear to
underestimate our penises. We believe we have permanent erections. Farther to the
’ h ° are too small. We aren t fat enoug , as it west, in the central highlands of New
were. In some cases - Sean’ s perhaps- we " Guinea, men stick their penises into dried
are right. In others, however, men put " gourds of various shapes. The most strikthemselves
in comparative disadvantage
¯ ing are three or four feet long, which are
vis-a-vis the rare, or imagined, colossal againtiedupright.Thesedongatedgourds
penises celebrated in popular culture (not
" make much more. splendid display than
tomention in thousands of immodest per- " just bailing up socks in ones underwear.
sonal ads). Enough of us suffer "shower
¯ But cnlmral celebration of male size is
syndrome" or "locker room phobia" to
" neither inevitable nor obligatory. Anyone
eb_rich dozens of dubious penis enlarge- " - who has peeked under those grape leaves
ment schemes.
¯ that the Victorians stuck onto Roman and
We might turn to my physical anthro-
Greek statuary will have noted marble
pologistcolleagues for eulighteument. The " members of only modest measure. Modhumanpenisisabitofamystery,
notleast " eration in all things governed classical
because scientists (male, mostly) haven’ t : aesthetics. A large penis then was the sign
directed much attention to this touchy ob- ¯ of wild animal, not civilized human.
ject. Humans,unlikemostmammals,have : This all would be cold comfort to Sean.
lost the baeeulum - abone within the penis " A shortcoming in one area blinded him to
-forunknownevolutionaryreasons-None- " the beauty of his body (although it did
theless, among primates at least, humans " make him into an excellent arm wrestler).
are theman. Wearelarger thanchimpan- : Sean could be, at least, king among the
zees. And mighty gorilla,s - despite their " gorillas.
bulk - sport penises of Sean’s size: just ¯ Lamont Lindstrom teaches anthropolover
oneinchlong whenerect. Withtestes, : ogy at the University of Tulsa.
Want to save
Money and
Help Build a
Community
Center?
Switch to
Rainbow
Communications
Long Distance and More,
10% of Revenues Will
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for Human Rights
Capital Campaign and
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For more
information,
call 665-3401
or evenings
at da.7-8602.
Tulsa’s only
professional
body-piercing
IGTA member
.Call 341.6866
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ToHrsfor rnore information.
’TULSA COUNTY
DEMOCRATIC
PARTY
Country Club Barbering
Custom Styling for Men & Women
David Kauskey
3310 E. 51st, 747-0236, Tues.-Fri., 8-5:30, Sat. 8-Spm
by Karin Gregory
OK, boys - you might want to leave the
room for this one. It’s grrl talk. And no, I
DON’T mean Melissa Etheridge supposedly
leading every single actress in Hollywood
down the Lesbian path of corruption.
By the way, has Nicole Kidmanmade
that list yet? Sorry, silly indulgences.
However, boys, you may want to stay if
you now have, have ever had, or will have
in the future, a Lesbian roommate. You
might learn something. Granted, something
you don’ t want to learn, but I can tell
you that my roommate has a whole new
perspective on women’s biological problems--
his headis now firmly entrenchedin
the sand!
Yes, grrls, I’m talkingabout that lovely
problem called the vaginal infection. By
now, the men have dropped their papers,
screaming as they run to the kitchen to find
the fork that will poke out their eyes, thus
hopefully getting rid of the images swidxng
in their heads: So, let’s talk, shall we?
How do these things get started, is what
I want to know. How is it that you feel fine
one day, then wake up the next in burning,
itching agony? OK, so I’d fallen off the
diet/exercise wagon my roommate and I
started. I wasn’t drinking enough water;
wasfftexercising as much as he (wall,
he’s 24 for God’s sake!); and I wasn’t
eating right. Hey, maybe I DO know how
it got started!
My roommate did well with it the first
few days. I detailed, moment by moment,
how the "fire down below" felt, all the
while standing in front of him scratching
like a straight man with jock itch. My
roommate’s friends were OK with it for
awhile also, until I kept scratching like a
straight man in front of them, too. We
don’t get many guests anymore. And he
gave me advice about the various creams
and lotions I was using. His advice was not
to use more than one. I’d been using four
¯ or five at a time. I went to bed every night
¯¯ wet, and not in the good way.
Then came the "Hostess Cupcake" pc-
¯ riod. Have you ever used Mycelex 3, or
¯" Gynelotromin cream? They give you a
¯ tube of got with three long tampon-look-
. ing sticks. You pour the got into the stick
¯ and then lie down, inserting the stick. It
¯ sounds gross. The application is another
¯ story, however. All right, I guess I really
: DIDN’T read in the instructions that I was
¯ to masturbate while putting in the stick,
¯ but it didn’t say I couldn’t. A grrl has to
¯ have some fun! They also tell you to only
use it for three nights. They know it’s
¯ addictive, I suppose. I got up after awhile
¯ (afteracigarette, actually!),andannounced
¯ to my roommate that I was now a Hostess
~ cupcake. After shouling, "Oh...My...God!"
¯ and shoving out his friend, who was
¯ screaming, "Oh, the horror!", he slammed ¯
his door and didn’t open it until I left for
¯ work the next morning.
I finally went to the doctor at my
" roommate’s pleading. This was an inter-
" esting situation. The nurse, who under-
. stands about vaginal things, asked if I used
¯ any birth control. "No," was myreply. She
¯ wroteit down and said nothing more about
¯ it. My doctor had a medical student in that
¯ day--a dentis!! He asked me about the last
time I had sex. No, he didn’ t want details,
¯ just an approximate. He started to talk
: about condoms when I stopped him, say-
. ing that I’ d had sex with three people in the
¯
last year - "One was a man; they usually
¯ aren’t." To which he quickly said, "OK,"
¯ and moved on.
¯ Then they all (nurse, medical student,
¯
doctor) converged in the tiny examination
¯ room while I spread my legs for all to see.
¯ I asked if they’d like to invite anyone else ¯
in as long as I was in this position. I’ve
¯ always found I have more audience mem-
¯ bets when I’m,in the stirrups than when i
have my mouth open for the doctor. And
¯
I’m told I have pretty teeth! I received my
¯ applause and was able to dress, when the
¯ doctor came in to ask why I didn’t use
¯ condoms. "I don’t have sex with men",
: was my reply. Geez, how many times do I
¯ have to come out at my doctor’s office
: before they get a clue?
¯ Have you ever noticed how things begin
¯
happemng when you’re at your worst?
: You always meet someone you haven’t
¯ seen in years when you wear your old ¯
clothes, your cap to hide the hair you
didn’t wash that day, or when you’re unshaven
(for those intimate old friends!).
Somehow, even on the Internet, you seem
more attractive when you have your period
or when you have, as I did, a vaginal
itch. She began emailing me, and I was
struck with this feeling of awe that FINALLY
I’d be meeting someone from
Fort Worth (instead of talking to someone
from Corpus Christi or Kansas) at the
same time I had "this problem." Meet her
I did, and we talked for several hours
before we came back to my place. No, this
was at her request. Granted, she didn’t
have to twist this horny Lesbian’ s ann, but
I didn’t mind her twisting other things.
I know several women who are embarrassed
to be naked in front of their husbands.
I’ ve always had the opposite problem
withmy bed partners, and this day was
certainly One ofthe worst days to be dressed
in front of her while I had a close-up of her
beauty - VERY close up! So I lay there
wearing my big pants (pants with no restrictions
like jeans have), and felt very
strange to be wearing most of my clothes.
After all, I didn’ t want the next possible
Ms. Right to get any kind of disease, even
though I’d already been to the doctor and
found that it was a simple bacterial infection
taken care of with medicati< a (unfortunately,
NOT the Mycelex 3 !). Now that
[ think of it, even though the infection is
gone, she hasn’ t suggested we come back
to my place anymore.
see Raging, p. 7
Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights
presents
Dive’rsity
rati
.Saturday, June.2, 2001
TOHR Follies 2001
"From Here to Eternity"
Avondale Studio & Theatre (the old Delaware Playhouse)
1511 So. Delaware Ave., 8pro
Reception immediately following.
Tickets: $15.00, At the Door:.-$20.00
The Pride Store @ Tulsa GLBT
Community Center; 2114 S Memorial
or’by calling 918.743.4297 or toll
free (outside Tulsa) at 866.335.9074
Sunday, June 3, 2001
Tulsa Interfaith Service
Sponsored by TU BLGT Alliance, Sharp Chapel, TU, 3pm
Monday, June 4, 2001
Council Oak Men’s Chorale Concert
Presented by Tulsa City/County Library
"Diversity in Song"
Aaronson Auditorium; Central Librarym 3rd & Denver, 7pm
Monday, June 4, 2001
Family Law Panel
Presented by Tulsa City/Coullty Library
TU Law Professor Linda Lacey& an expert panel
Helmefich Library, 91st and Yale, 7pm
Tuesday, June 5, 2001
Art Exhibit: "Embracing Art"
All Souls Unitarian Church, 2952 S. PeofiaAvenue, 6-gpm
Thursday, June 7~ 2001
GLBT Film Festival
Sponsored by Tulsa City/County Library
AaronsoriAuditofium, Central Library, 3rd and Denver, 7pro
Friday, June 8, 2001
TOHR Diversity Gala
Benefiting TOHR and Diversity Celebration 2001
"Death. Be Not Proud" Parents of Hate Crime Victims:
Speakers and Parade Grand Marshalls:
Gabi Clayton, Olympia, WA,
Dorothy Hajdys Holman, Chicago~ Don Sinclair,
Houston, TX, Carolyn Wagner, Fayetteville, AR
"Community Hero" Awards presentation honoring
those in the local GLBT community.
Tulsa Country Club, 701 N. Yukon Dr., 7pm, reception &
silent auction, 8pro dinner, $100/ea. $1,000 table of eight.
Sponsorships available. Reserved seating available by calling
918.743.4297 or 866.335.9074
Saturday, June 9, 2001
The Pride Parade
Cherry Street (15th Street) to Boston Avenue to
18th Street to Veterans Park
Starts at 3pro, Float/marchers begin assembling at lpm.
No entries after 2:45pm.
Featuririg:Entfies from across the region
Community Heroes, Oklahoma’s largest Pride Flag
Diversity Festival
Sponsored by: Bud Light & Eastern Oklahoma Beverages
Veterans’ Park, 1875 So. Boulder Ave., 3pm
Featuring Entertainment, Speakers, and more.
Sunday, June 10, 2001
Women’s Tea Dance
Women only dance, DJ, and live entertainment by Melanie
Fry, pipe &cigar patio, unplugged music circle, and more.
Greenwood Cultural Center, 322 N. Greenwood, 3-Tpm
Alienates Gay Supporters
TULSA (TFN) - For an agency which was founded in
largemeasur¢byTUl~’ s Gay commtmity-the~ommunity
firstandmost~by_theHIV/AIDSpandemic,
it seems a mighty dumb move. Why would Tulsa
C.A.R.E.S., formerly knownas theHIV Resource Consordum,
not to~members ofTulsa" s Gay commuuity,
some of whom had been significant donors, to it,
annual fundraising event, the Red Ribbon Ball? This is
thequesfionwhichanumberof individualswereasking
themselves and their friends after they were not invited
to the April 28 event held at the Williams Center.
While none of the individuals were willing to be
publically critical of an agency whosemission they still
support, several noted that they had gifts of $500 and
more to the fundraising event in recent years, and were
quite surprised not even to receive an invitation. One
noted that even former Tulsa CARES,.board president,
Nancy McDonald, see CARES?, p.2
World Leader Speaks on
Fight against AIDS
PHILADEI ~PHIA (AP) - To wage an effective global
campaign against AIDS, $7 billion to $10 billion a year
is needed from both governments and philanthropists,
U.N. Secretary-General KofiAnnan said. Current spending
on AIDS research and prevention measures in
developing countries is about $1 billion a year, Annan
said at a cxmference last month.
"The world has the resources to defeat this epidemic
if it really wants to," he said. "But at present, there’ s a
lot of confusion abouthow the money should be raised,
where it should be directed and who can ensure that it’ s
well spent."
In his remarks tomore than 2,000 philanthropists and
business leaders during the 52nd annual conference for
the Council onFoundations,Annan called on the public
and private organizations to work together to fight the
spread of HIV and AIDS.
"We are not spending anywhere near what is needed
to fight AIDS," Annan said. "It is not a choice between
prevention and medicine. We need both."
Aunan said national leaders and community grOups
must workto supportthoseliving withAIDS and to help
educate others about the disease. He said the United
Nations must coordinate the batdc against the disease.
His goal is thatby the time delegates meet onJune 25 for
a session on HIV and AIDS, see Global, p. 3
DIRECTORY
EDITORIAL
US & WORLD NEWS
HEALTH NEWS
P. 2
P. 3
P. 4
P. 6
Z ENTERTAINMENT + MORE P. 8
GAY STUDIES/RAGING LESBIAN P. 10/11
Serving Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual + Transgendered Tulsans, Our Families + Friends
¯ Tulsa Receives $50,000 GLBT
:Funding Challenge Grant
¯ TULSA (1TN) - Tulsa is just one of four US commnnities to
: receive a $50,000 challenge grantfrom the National I_~sbian and
¯¯ Gay Community Funding Parmership (NLGCFP) through the
Tulsa Community Foundation.
: The grant specifically targets Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
¯ Transgendered (LGBT)issues and requires matching funds from
¯ Tulsa to be raised. Longtime activist, local PFLAG founder and
: former national PFLAG president;Nancy McDonald wrote the
¯ proposal according to Janice Nicklas, who said she assisted with
¯ the project.
¯ The funds ifmatched locally will be distributed on the basis of
: a"needs assessment" done by a local steering committee. There
: is an initial grant of $7,500 to help prepare the needs assesment.
¯ According to NancyCMnnin~hamofNLGCFP,letters of support
: were received from Sanford Cardin, director of the Schnstermau
: Foundation and ScottZarrow, a member of a prominentbusiness
: family known for its charitable work..
: Per Nicklas, the grant application proposed a parmership
betweensomeofthefollowing organizations: TulsaOklahomann
i for Human Rights (TOHR), Parents, Families and Friends of
i Lesbians and Gays 0aFLAG), Tulsa Public Schools, Youth
_- Services of Tulsa, the YWCA, Tulsa Area United Way and
¯ others. It is anticipated that the effort to create a permanent
". community center might benefit from this grant.
: TheTulsa Community Foundation is less than a few years old
¯ and was founded by oilmanand Bank of Oklahoma majority
¯ shareholder, George Kaiser. When Kaiser started the Founda-
: lion, he responded in an interview with TFN, that his intention
: was that the organization address the needs of Tulsa’ s LGBT
: community, specifically saying that he Supported civil rights for
¯ Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals.
: However, there may be issues with the board ofdirectors ofthe
: TulsaCommtmity Foundation. Although this grant was awarded
~ several months ago, Foundation staff, requested that TFN not
¯ report this information first for a month, see $, p. 3
¯ NGLTF LeaderToledo Resigns
¯ WASHINGTON, D.C. April 20, 2001 - Elizabeth Toledo, ex-
~ ecutive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,
: announced that she has chosen not to renew her contract and is
¯ resigning her position effective May 18.
: "It has been a distinct honor to work at NGLTF and with such
¯ atalented and passionate staff," said Toledo. "I’m confident that
¯ theTask Force will continue to provide progressiveleadership to ¯
the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender movement."
¯" Toledo,anexperieneed organizer, was namedexecutive directorin
April 2000. Underher leadership, theTask Force solidified
¯ its progressive voice on a wide range of issues, expanded its
¯" training and organizing on behalf of the LGBT movement, and
¯ continued topublish cutting-edge research throughits think tank,
¯ the NGLTF Policy Institute. A thoughtful and articulate leader,
." Toledo regularly appeared in the national media and maintained
¯" a high profile of speaking engagements.
¯ Key highlights of Toledo’ s tenure at NGLTF include:
- Establishing NGLTF as a nonpartisan authority on GLBT
¯ electoral issues by providing data and analysis on the GLB vote,
¯ issuing detailed reports on presidential and vice presidential
¯ candidates, convening"What’ s At Stake" forums inkey electoral
¯ states, and maintaining the acclaimed Elections 2000 website.
: -Publishing three important Policy Institute reports:
: "Transgender Equality: A Handbook for Activists and Policy
¯ Makers;....Outing Age: Public Policy Issue Affecting Gay, ¯
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Elderly;" and "Redistrict-
: ing: A Strategy Memo."
- Serving as a watchdog to the Bush White House, including
launchinga"WWatch" web site, organizing against certainBush
: cabinet nominees, and issuing reports on Bushfs proposed gov-
¯ emment-funded religion initiative, the tax plan, and school
¯¯ vouchers, and,
¯ - Establishing a diverse and skilled seniormanagement team to lead NGLTF, improving its financial condition, and imple-
’ menting an innovative and effective membership campaign.
~ Jerry Clark, Co-Chair of the NGLTF Board of Directors said,
¯ see NGLTF, p. 2
¯ not everyone has given up -
HIV’s Ability to Hide
Thwarts Hope for Cure
By Daniel Q. Haney, AP Medical Editor
Will AIDS ever be cured?
The latest research on the resourceful AIDS virus
that causes the disease suggests a disheartening answer:
Probably not.
Just a few years ago, even some of the most soberminded
researchers wondered if the end of AIDS
might be near. Perhaps the pills that miraculously
changed H.IV from a death sentence to a chronic
infection would go the final step, they thought, eventually
curing the infection by purging every trace of
the virus from the human body.
Such talk quickly faded. The new drug cocktails,
amazing as they were, could not get rid of the virus.
Evenifall signs ofit vanished for years, HIV was still
lurking somewhere. Inevitably it roared back by the
billions as soon as people stopped taking their medi-
Ever since that realization sank in, finding HIV’s
hiding places has been the goal of a small group of
researchers. What they have learned is one of the
biggest disappointments in AIDS research.
The fact that HIV is an insidious and resourceful
parasiteis hardly a surprise. After all,AIDS researchgas
already understand in lavish detail how HIV
latches onto human blood cells, how it oozes inside
and kills them. They know the significance of every
bump and crevice on the surface of the virus and how
these shield it fr6m destruction.
But no basic AIDS discovery in recent times has
proved so disturbing as the way HIV burrows in for
the long haul. It has shifted the ultimate goal ofAIDS
treatment toward something less ambitious. Since
eradicating HIV now seems so unlikely - although
see HIV, p. 3
: TOHR + Pride 2001
¯ TULSA - Tulsa Oldahomans for Human Rights
~ (TOHR) will feature at its May meeting, Julie Sum-
" mers and Roxann Moeller from the Tulsa Mental
¯ Health Association to make a presentation about the ¯ mental health issues for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
~ and Transgender communities on Tuesday, May 8th.
¯ at 7:30pro at the Tulsa GLBT Community Center,
: 2114 South Memorial.
¯ Theresa Bamardfrom American Express Financial
¯ Services will also give a short overview of three
¯ upcoming f’mancial planning seminars designed fo]
: our commumty to be held during the month of May.
: .Organizers also will provide updated information
¯ on this years Pride events from Tulsa City/Count)
Library programs to ongoing fundraisingfor aperma-
: nent community center location.
¯ On May 9th at the Center at 7pro, City of Tulsa
¯ Human Rights Dept. staff will hold a foetus group te
: help identify LGBT community issues.
¯ And a number of benefits are ongoing to support
the Parade and Festival. Renegades will host one on
: May 5th as well as another on May 18 featuring a
: farewell performance from Kansas City dancer Doug
¯ Boyce, a great Tulsa favorite.
¯ Also, TOHR reports that more than 30 Cherry St.
¯ and Boston Ave. (SoBo) businesses have signed a
¯" letter of supportfor the Parade which will gofrom15th
near Utica to Boston to 18th and Veterans Park.
¯ At the park, during the Festival after the Parade, ¯ organizers are promising great entertainment, including
"men, women and drag queens."
Greg Gatewood, spokesperson for TOHR board
¯ president, Kerry Lewis, confirmed arumor ofvandal-
, ism at the Center last month. A box of glass jars as
: well as a brick was thrown through the front doors. In
¯ a bizarre touch, a "serenity" prayer was left at the
¯ scene, see TOHR, p. 7
Tulsa Clubs & Restaurants
*Bmnboo Lounge, 7204 E. Pine
*CW’s, 1737 S. MemOrial
*Play-Mot, 424 S. Memorial
Polo Grill, 2038 Utica Square
*Renegades/Rainbow Room, 1649 S. Main
*St. Michael’s Alley Restaurant, 3324-L E. 31st
*Schatzi’s, 2619 S. Memorial
*The Star, 1565 Sheridan
*TNT’s, 2114 S. Memorial
*Tool Box II, 1338 E. 3rd
*Vortex, 2182 S. Sheridan
*The Yellow Brick Road Pub, 2630 E. 15th
832-1269
610-5323
838-9792
744-4280
585-3405
745-9998
280-1316
834-4234
660-0856
584-1308
835:2376
749-1563
Tulsa Businesses, Services, & Professionals
Assoc. in Med. & Mental Health, 2325 S. Harvard -743-1000
Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 8620 E. 71 250-5034
Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 5231 E. 41 665-4580
Body Piercing by Nicole, 2722 E. 15
*Borders Books & Music, 2740 E. 21
*Borders Books & Music, 8015 S. Yale
Brookside Jewelry, 4649 S. Peoria
*CD Warehouse, 3807c S. Peoria
*Cheap Thrills, 2640 E 1 lth
Cherry St. Psychotherapy, 1515 S. Lewis
712-1122
712-9955
494-2665
743-5272
746-0313
295-5868
581-0902, 743-4117
Community Cleaning; Kerby Baker 622-0700
Tim Daniel, Attorney 352-9504, 800-742-9468
*Deco to Disco, 3212 E. 15th
Doghouse on Brookside, 3311 S. Peoria
*Elite Books & Videos, 821 S. Sheridan
Encompass Travel, 13161H N. Memorial
Ross Edward Salon
Events Unlimited, 507 S. Main
Floral Design Studio, 3404 S. Peoria
Four Star Import Automotive, 99~.6 E. 55th PI.
Cathy Furlong, Ph.D., 1980 Utica Sq. Med. Ctr.
Gay & Lesbian Affordable Daycare
*Gloria Jean’s Gourmet Coffee, 1758 E. 21st
Leanne M. Gross, Insurance & financial planning
Mark T. Hamby, Attorney
*Sandra J. Hill, MS, Psychotherapy, 2865 E. Skelly
*International Tours
Jacox Animal Clinic, 2732 E. 15th
*Jared’ s Antiques, 1602 E. 15th
David Kauskey, Country Club Barbering
The Keepers, Housekeeping & Gardening
*Ken’s Flowers, 1635 E. 15
Kelly Kirby, CPA, 4021 S. Harvard, #210
*Living ArtSpace, 308 South Kenosha
*Midtown Theater, 319 E. 3rd
lVlingo Valley Flowers, 9720c E. 31
*Moha~vk Music, 6157 E 51 Place
Puppy Pause II, 1060 S. Mingo
*The Pride Store
Rainbowz on the River B+B, POB 696, 74101
Richard’ s Carpet Cleaning
Teri Schutt, Ellen & Co.
Paul Tay, Car Salesman
*Tulsa Comedy Club, 6906 S. Lewis
Venus Salon, 1247 S.Harvard
Fred Welch, LCSW, Counseling
*Wherehouse Music, 5150 S. Sheridan
*Whittier News Stand, 1 N. Lewis
749-3620 "
744-5556 "
838-8503
369-8555
584-0337, 712-9379
592-0460
744-9595
. .o-0880
628-3709
808-8026
742-1460
459-9349
744-7440
745-1111
341-6866
712-2750
582-3018
747-0236
582-8460
599-8070
747-5466
585-1234
584-3112
663-5934
664-2951
838-7626
743-4297
747-5932
834-0617
834-7921, 748-0224
260-7829
481-0558
835-5563
743-1733
665-2222
592-0767
www.gaytulsa.org - website for TulsaGays &Lesbians
Tulsa Agencies, Churches, Schools & Universities
AIDS Walk Tulsa, POB 4337, 74101 579-9593
¯ 918.583.1248, fax: 583.4615
FOB 4140. Tulsa. OK 74159. e-mail: TulsaNews@earthlink.net
¯
~ublisher + Editor: Tom Neal
¯
Writers + contributors: James Christjohn, Karin Gregory, Barry
¯ Hensley, J.-P. Legrandbouche. Lament Lindstrom Esther
Rothblum, Mary Schepers, Hughston Walkinshaw
¯
Member of The Associated Press
: Issued around the 1 st of each month, the entire contents of this
¯ publication are protected by US copyright 2001 by Tulsa
Family News and may not be reproduced either in whole or in
part without written permission from the publisher. Publication
of a name or photo does not indicate a person’s sexual
orientation. Correspondence is assumed to be for publication
unless otherwise noted, must be signed & becomes the sole
property of Tulsa Family News. Each reader is entitled to 4
copies of each edition at distribution points.
Additional copies are available by calling 583-1248.
All Souls Unitarian Church, 2952 S. Peoria
Black & White. Inc. POB 14001, Tulsa 74159
Bless The Lord at All Times Christian Center. 2207 E. 6
B/L/G/T Alliance, Univ. of Tulsa United Min. Ctr.
Chamber of Commerce Bldg., 616 S. Boston
*Chapman Student Ctr., University of Tulsa, 5th P1.
Church of the Restoration UU, 1314 N.Greenwood
*Commlmity of Hope Church, 2545 S. Yale
*Community Unitarian-Universalist Congregation
Council Oak Men’ s Chorale
*Delaware Playhouse, 1511 S. Delaware
*Democratic Headquarters, 3930 E. 31 742-2457
Dignity/Integrity of Tulsa- Lesbian & Gay Catholics &
Episcopalians, POB 701475, 74170-1475 355-3140
*Fellowship Congreg. Church, 2900 S. Harvard 747-7777
*-7tee SpiritWomen’s Center, call forlocation&info: 587-4669
Friend For A Friend, POB 52344, 74152 747-6827
Friends in Unity Social Org., POB 8542, 74101 582-0438
*Tulsa C.A.R.E.S., 3507 E. Admiral 834-4194
834-8378
224-4754
838-1715
748-3111
365-5658
HOPE, HIV Outreach, Prevention, Education
*HouseoftheHoly SpiritMinstries,1517 S. Memorial
*MCC United, 1623 N; Maplewood
NAMES Project, 3507 E. Admiral PI.
NOW, Nat’l Org. for Women, POB 14068, 74159
OK Spokes Club (bicycling), POB 9165, 74157
*OSU-TUlsa
PFLAG, POB 52800, 74152
*Planned Parenthood, 1007 S. Peoria -
Prime-Timers, P.O. Box 52118, 74152
R.A.I.N., Regional AIDS Interfaith Network
*Red Rock Mental Center, 1724 E. 8
St. Aidan’ s Episcopal Church, 4045 N. Cincimmti
749-4901
587-7674
7494195
584-2325
425-7882
St. Dunstan’ s Episcopal, 5635 E. 71st 492-7140
*St. Jerome’ s Parish Church, 205 W. King 582-3088
Soulforce-OK, Rt.4,#3534, Stigler74462 587-3248,452-2761
*Tulsa Area United Way, 1430 S. Boulder 583-7171
*TNAAPP (Native American men), Indian Health Care 582-7225
Tulsa County Health Department, 4616 E. 15 5954105
Confidential HIV Testing - by appt. on Thursdays only
TulsaOkla. for Human Rights, GayComm. Center 743-4297
TUL-PAC, PositiveAdvocacy Coalition,POB2687,Tulsa 74101
T.U.L.S.A. Tulsa Uniform/Leather Seekers Assoc. 298-0827
*Tulsa City Hall, Ground Floor Vestibule
*Tulsa Community College Campuses
*Tulsa Gay Community Center, 21st &Memorial
Unity Church ofCliffstianity,3355 S. Jamestown
BARTLESVILLE
Barflesville Public Library, 600 S. Johnstone
TAHLEQOAH
Stonewall League, call for information:
Tahlequah Unitarian-Universalist Church
Green Country AIDS Coalition, POB 1570
¯ EUREKA SPRINGS, ARKANSAS
¯ Autumn Breeze Restaurant, Hwy. 23 501-253-7734
" Jim & Brent’ s Bistro, 173 S. Main 501-253-7457
501-253-6807
743-2363 " DeVito’ s Restaurant, 5 Center St.
587-7314 Emerald Rainbow, 45 &l/2 Spring St. 501-253-5445
583-7815 " MCC of the Living Spring
501:253-9337
583-9780 " Geek to Go!,~ PC Specialist, POB 429
501-253-2776
585-1201 " Old Jailhouse Lodging, 15 Montgomery
501-253-5332
& Florence ¯ Positive Idea Marketing Plans 501-624-6646
587-1314 : White Light, 1 Center St.
501-253-4074
747-6300 " JOPLIN, MISSOURI
749-0595 " Spirit of Christ MCC, 2639 E. 32, Ste. U134 417-623-4696
748-3888 ¯
712-1511 " *iswherey°ucanfindTFN’N°tallareGay’°wnedbutallareGay’friendly"
743-4297
749-8833
918-337-5353
918456-7900
918-456-7900
918-453-9360
wasn’t even invited though she attended the
event regardless. And according to a Tulsa
CARES staff member, even Janice Nicklas
of the Tulsa Area United Way associated
Community Service Council,who is easily
one of Tulsa longest and most ardent
fundraisers for HIV/AIDS care and prevention,
had to ask for an invitation.
While a tiny handful of prominent Gays
did attend the event, even those were reported
to be concerned, and in one case,
furious, at the absenceof former donors.
TulsaCARES boardpresidentShannon Hall
expressed great concern about the perception
of exclusion of Gay supporters.
Hall explained that the event orgamzing
was different from prior years and that the
invitations were extended to those on a list
which local decorator and longtime AIDS
~undraiser, Charles Faudree provided. Hall
suggested that the agency failed to see that
their former list of event supporters and the
Faudree list were "merged." Hall went out
of his way to take responsibility as board
president for the negative result.
However, others, while giving Hall full
credibility for his effort, wondered, about
just how accidental the exclusion was, citing
the impression that over time, as Tulsa
CARES has drawnmore"mainstream" funding
and support, the agency has been perceived
as distancing itself from its Gay
origins. This allegation has been made both
by donors and clients.
Regardless of the hurt feelings, alienated
former donors, and ill will which most
fundraising groups seek to avoid, word is
that this year’ s Red Ribbon Ball was a great
success, raising over $100,000 from attendees
characterized as "straight, rich people."
Some who spoke with TFN, just said that
while they support the fight against HIV/
AIDS even when support for that effort is
waning, they wonder if other groups may be
more appreciative of their support.
Editor’s note: in t,~e past, Tulsa Family
News hasprovided news coverageforTulsa
CARES but has also donated advertisements
both to support Tulsa CARES’ Red
Ribbon Galaandto Faudree’ sHopeCandlelightTour.
While the exclusion ofGaypeople
an d media may have been accidental, TFN
urges Tulsa CARES director and staff to
offer letter of apology. We’ ll sure print it.
"It is with great sadness and regret that we
accept Elizabeth’s resignation. She made
significant strides for the Task Force. We
thankherforheraccomplishments and dedication
during the last year, and we are confident
that she will continue to be a voice of
progressive leadership in the movement."
Toledo cited family responsibilities, in
particular, the poor health of her mother and
the heavy travel demands of her position as
reasons for her resignation.
many contend the next best thing will be
somehow limning the body to control the
virus, to help patients live with HIV instead
of getting rid of it.
Many of the insights come from the
work of Dr. Robert Siliciano of Johns
Hopkins University, who regularly tests
the blood of about 50 Baltimore AIDS
patients, measuring the virus’ s persistence
despite the best treatments. "What HIV
has done is tap into the most fundamental
aspect of.theimmune systern,andthat is its
immunological memory," he says. "It’s
the lJerfect mechanism for the virus to
ensure its survival."
Perfect because the virus lies silent inside
cells that are programmed to do nothing
but sit and wait. They are calledresting
memory T cells. Their only job is to store
arecord ofthe germs they encounter, keeping
the body prepared for the next time it
sees them.
These cells literally are the immune
system’s memory, so they must survive
for a long time. Otherwise we would catch
the same diseases over and over. HIV lies
inside these sleeping cells, dormant but
dangerous. Siliciano believes this means
HIV infection will last a lifetime.
The memory cells do die off, but ever so
slowly. At the rate he sees in his Baltimore
patients, it will take 73 years for them to go
away completely. He cannot imagine a
way to speed up the process, certainly not
with the drugs now available or with anything
else on the horizon.
This latently infected reservoir, as scientists
call it, is the single biggest obstacle
to getting rid of AIDS. "It’ s the thing that
keeps us from curing this," says Dr. Roger
Pomerantz of Thomas Jefferson University
in Philadelphia.
None of this was obvious in 1996, the
dawn of the modern age of AIDS treatment.
Doctors watched AIDS patients literally
get up from their death beds after
taking the newly available drug combinations.
Anything seemed possible.
Dr. David Ho of the Aaron Diamond
AIDS Research Center in New York City
cautiously speculated about eradicating
HIV. If the drugs stopped the virus from
infecting more blood cells, then the ones
already loaded with virus would eventually
die off naturally, leaving the body
virus free. Perhaps this would take two or
three years, he thought.
Butin late 1997, another discoverymade
that seem lmlikely. Silieiano and two other
teams independently found the virus insidememory
T cells. They checked people
who had seemed to be free of virus for two
years. Every time, they found fully potent
copies of virus inside their memory cells.
No one tmderstood then how long these
cells would stay alive, although it was
assumedit wouldalmostcertainlybemore
than a couple of years. "It was a sobering
realization about the recalciliant nature of
this reservoir," remembers Dr. Anthony
Fauci, head of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The next obvious approach was to try to
destroy these Trojan horses. Fauci’ s team
tried to "flush out the reservoir," as they
put it. The idea: Intermittently feed the
bodyinterleukin-2, agrowthhormone that
would make these dormant memory cells
awaken and then die.
¯
Theexperiment seemed to go well. Doc-
¯ tors biopsied patents’ lymph nodes and
¯¯ found nothing. They grew hundreds of
millions of their cells in cultures. Still
¯ nothing. Finally they stoppedall treatment
¯ and waited. Within three or four weeks,
¯ they had their answer. The virus came ¯
back in every single patient.
¯ "We are not going to be eliminating this
reservoir," Fauci now says. "Whether you
¯ can measureit or not doesn’t seem to have
¯
a significant impact on the clinically rd-
¯ evant phenomenon of what happens when
¯ you stop the drug." ¯
Nevertheless, scientists have learned
¯
much about how the virus hides. HIV’s
¯ primary target in the body is a kind of
¯ white blood cell known as a cd4 T helper ¯
cell. The virus infects them, hijacks their
¯
machinery so they manufacture more vi-
¯ ms, then kills them.
¯ After they get infected, though, a few of
these helper cells become memory cells.
: HIV has already stitched its genes into the
cells’ genetic code in preparation formak-
¯ ingmore virus. But nothing happens. The ¯
cells go to sleep, virusand all.
¯ All of this happens within the first days
¯ of an HIV infection, even before the body
¯ begins to make antibodies against the vi-
¯
ms. The number of cells involved is rela-
¯ tively small, perhaps 1 million scattered
¯ throughtheblood stream, thelymph glands
¯ and perhaps elsewhere.
Normally, the body kills HIV-infected
: cells. But it misses these, because they
~"’look perfectly normal. ’q’he only difference
between a latenfly infected cell and
its uninfected counterparts is a little bit of
HIV DNA," says Si!ician0. This silnilarity
also makes the infected cells almost impossible
to kill with any kind of targeted
drugs. There is simply no easy way to sort
out the good from the bad.
Siliciano has been counting these cells
in his Baltimore volunteers for five years.
The number he finds in their bodies now
"is essentially exactly the same as they
started with."
Why do they die off so slowly, if at all?
There are two leading theories: Their longevity
reflects the basic biology ofmemory
T cells, or their supply is constantly replenished.
Siliciano favors the first theory. Immunological
memory lasts forever. This is
why ~rmeone who catches measles in
childhood will remain immune to the disease
into old age. Memory cells may die
over time, "but they also make replacements
by cell division. And every time a
memory cell divides, it faithfully reproduces
the HIV that is stitched into its
genes.
However, the Diamond Center’s Ho
¯ prefers the second theory. Actually,
¯ memory cells are mucJa shorter lived, he
¯ believes. But their supply is constantly
¯
being renewed by a continuing cycle of
¯ low-level infection.
¯ The standard drug regimens -what doc- ¯
tors call highly active antiretroviral therapy,
¯
or HAART - can reduce viral levels by
¯ 10,000fold. Butperhaps they do not completely
stop the virus from infecting fresh
¯: T cells. Some of these go on to become
¯
infected memory cells. Thus, however
¯ quickly these memory cells die, they are
¯ replaced by more. see HIV, p. 7
by Matthew W. Holloway
Marriage is an amorphous institution,
changing in response to the demands of
society. Marriage, in some form or another,
has existed in every society throughout
the history of man.
In addition, marriage is
not a purely Christian
concept Marriage is
largely a product of our
society and has not always
had to do with religion.
What relationships are
considered a marriage?
How do we decide
what relationships to call a
marriage? Does a couple
really need a governmentissued
license to be "marfled"?
These questions have
aroused many debates
through the years. Does
society decide if people are
mamed? Or is it to be left
up to the people involved
in the union?
What of polygamous and incestuous
marriages? They have been ridiculed and
defamed in many societies. There are reasons
why polygamous and incestuous relationships
do not benefit society. In some
ways, they can actually harm a society,
depending on the context in which they are
found. This is because of the biological
problems involved in these unions. The
government has shown sufficient reason
to deny these marriages. This is one of the
reasons that their employment has been
limited, even in those societies which see
them as a viable alteruative.
And when we look at redefining marriage,
where do same-sex relationships fit
into the picture? When we look at the
required criteria of a marriage, we will see
that homosexual marriages fulfill all of
them, as well as many of die non-essential
characteristics.
There, what basis does the United States
Government have in denying marriage
licenses to homosexual couples? Absolutely
none.
If the American Government is "of the
people, by the people, and for the people"
then why are these marriages not recognized?
There is no question that homosexuals
are in every way equal citizens of
the United States. The American Government
has in place safeguards against a
conceptknownas "tyranny ofthe masses".
This is a relatively new problem, as it is
found exclusively in one of the newest
forms of government, the republic. It occurs
when the population of the nation gets
so large that any minority group trying to
be heard is drowned out by the din of all of
the other minority groups, clamoring for
their own representation in the elected
assembly.
And the United States elected assembly,
the Congress, is one of the smallest in the
world. This makes it very hard for any
minority group to receive adequate representation
in this nation. One of the major
safeguards against"tyranny ofthemasses"
in this nation is the Supreme Court. One of
its major duties is to protect the Bill of
Rights and to apply the Constitution to the
¯ cases which are presented o :~
With the very conservative ~z
¯
court at this time, there is ~~,~
; reaching a feasible conclusion to
¯ bate over homosexual marriage.
Homosexuals have been
"... when we look at
redefining marriage, "
where do same-sex
relationships
fit into the picture?
When we look at the
required criteria d a
marriage, we will see
that homosexual
marriages fulfill all of
them, as well as many of
the non-essentlal
characteristics.. 7
traditionally discriminated
against for years. This is a
fact. The new laws prohibiting
homosexual couples
from being considered the
exact equals of heterosexual
couples are simply
hate-based legislation.
That anyone could use
our governmental system
to promote hate or defame
any minority group is atrociously
unethical. The
United States Government
has not shown any promotion
of the public good at
all in prohibiting homosexual
marriage, and neither
has any one of our
fifty states.
Therefore, they are
¯ overstepping their boundaries in even pro-
¯ posing legislation such as the Knight Ini- ¯
tiative. In addition, the Supreme Court
¯ must step in to protect the minority from
tyranny. This is the only viable solution to
¯ thecontroversy which shakes ournation to
¯
its very foundations. The fight of the ho-
¯ mosexuals in the United States parallels
¯ that of the African-Americans of the
: 1960’s.
¯ The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 encountered
strong resistance, but eventual! y the
leaders of this nation realized that African-
Americans are citizens, with the samerights
" as any other citizeu of the United States.
¯ Be they black, white, Hispanic, Asian,
straight, Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, male,
¯
female, mentally challenged, handicapped,
or any other nlinority, everyone, every
citizen, every child of the United States of
America and the world deserves a voice
¯
and a positive rol~ model. Can we not give
¯ them this in the new nfille~mium? Let there
¯ be no more Columbines. The world is tired
¯ of hate.
¯ Matthew W. Holloway waJ a recepient
ofa TOHR 2000 Community Hero award
and was afounder ofa Gay/Straighl Alliance
at one of Tulsa’s high schools. This
fall he will be attending Tulsa Community
College, majoring in English.
The same request was made again a month
later. No official explanatio~l was provided
by Foundation staff.for the delay in
accepting the grant.
However, an examination of the membership
of the board of trustees of the Foundation
shows at least three, members with
documented records of engaging in anti-
Gay discrimination or supporting organizations
which engage in discrimination:
Tulsa World pubhsher Bob Lorton, Tulsa
Area United Way executive director
Kathleen Coin and one other.
At press time, no word had been received
about when or whether TulsaCommtmity
Foundation will accept the grant.
Alabama House
Addresses Hate Crimes
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - The Alabama House
voted 45-42 last month to include sexual orientation in
a state law that provides additional penalties for hate
crimes. The vote sent the bill sponsored by Rep. Alvin
Holmes, D-Montgomery, to the Senate, where it died
last year.
Holmes said the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Alabama
supports the legislation.
Reps. Allen Sanderson, Arthur Payne, andDuWayne
Bridges, were among opponents who .said the bill
would increase penalties for crimes against a special
group of people. "We are trying to create a special
privileged class, Gays and Lesbians," Payne said. "If
anyone commits a crime against a Gay or Lesbian they
are going to be punished to a greater degree than if
against another group."
But Holmes said "everybody is covered" under the
hate crime law. "Why shouldn’ t they be ~overed under
it?"he said. Alabamalaw already mandates minimum
prison terms that felons must serve for crimes motivated
b_y race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity
or physical or mental disability.
Colorado House Kills
Hate-Crimes Amendment
DENVER (AP) - For the eighth time in 10 years, abill
has been killed that would have expanded Colorado’ s
hate-crimes law to incl~ade crimes based on a victim’ s
sexual orientation.
The House State, Veterans and Military Affairs
Committee voted 6-5 against Senate Bill 75. which
had passed the Senate on a 20-15"vote. The bill would
have broadened ethnic intimidation laws that levy
tougher penalties for crimes motivated by the victim’ s
race, national origin or religion to include crimes
motivated by the victim’s real or perceived sexual
orientation, gender identity, age and mental or physical
disability.
Sponsor Rep. Mark Larson, R-Cortez, trying to
counter the traditional arguments, said the proposal
would not create special rights for certain groups of
people, nor would it attempt to restrict free-speech
rights. "We are not nmning a government based on our
ownnarrow view oflife,"he said. "Itis the Legislature’ s
responsibility to protect its citizens, all of its citizens."
Opponents argued the law would create separate
classes of people that would be treated differently,
violating the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.
"I would remove the entire hate-crimes law
because I think everybody should be treated equally,"
said Rep. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs.
But victims of certain bias-motivated crimes are not
treated equally, Larson ceantered. For example, a
person who throws a brick with a hateful message
attached through a Black person’s window can be
punished moreharshly under current law than a person
who does the same to a Gay person’ s window, he said.
Proponents said the bill properly focused on the
motivation of the criminal, rather than characteristics
of the victim. For example, said Deputy Denver District
Attorney Everett Engstrom, a person who kills
could be prosecuted for murder, for manslaughter or
for criminally negligent homi’cide based on his or her
state of mind.
"Hate crimes are different from ordinary crimes.
They are intended to send a message, to victimize the
individual and the entire commttnity they belong to,"
said Pat Steadman, representing Equal .Rights Colorado.
"The harm.from a hate crime .is larger than the
harm tojustan individual." Evan Zuckerman, assistant
director of the Anti-Defamation League’s mountain
states region, said the bill was necessary to protect
groups of people who are being victimized based on
certain characteristics. "We shouldn’ t let another year
¯ Some Vermonters Want
to Repeal Civil Unions
¯
MONTPELIER, Vt.(AP) -The HouseJudiciary Com-
." mittee voted to continue working on a bill that could
¯¯ eventually lead to arepeal of civil unions. The committee
is one vote shy of an outfight repeal of the law that
¯ grants the rights, benefits and responsibilities of mar-
. riage to same-sex couples.
But committee members who support repeal agreed
: to continue working on a bill that would offer an
¯ alternative to civil unions because it may provide their
¯ only opportunity to have an up-or-down vote on repeal
: on the House floor. Reciprocal partnerships are a
." concept conceived by Judiciary Committee Chair-
" woman Peg Flory that would repeal civil unions and
¯ offer suchpartnerships to all couples who are currently ¯
prohibited from marrying under state law. That in-
" eludes same-sex couples, whowonmarriagerights and
_" benefits through civil unions, as wall as blood rela-
¯ tives. Flory’ s goal with her billis to expand thenumber
¯" ofcouples who could qualify forbenefits withoutusing
¯ sexual orientation as the criterion for obtaining them.
¯ Some opponents of civil unions don’t like the strat-
¯ egy of supporting Flory’ s bill solely as a parliamentary ¯
maneuver. The Rev. David Stertzbach of the Vermont
¯ Defense of Marriage Committee wrote to legislators
¯ late last week warning them that such a strategy was ¯
unacceptable to his group. Stertzbach’s group was
¯ active in the elections last year.
"We believe Vermonters deserve (an) honest,
straightforward vote on the repeal of civil unions in
committee and on the House floor without any unprin-
¯ cipled votes for reciprocal benefits for homosexuals
¯ even as a parliamentary maneuver," he wrote. "It
would sadden me to report to voters that any conservative
voted for reciprocal benefits."
Among the issues with Flory’ s bill that trouble civil
unions opponents is that it would require them to
support a bill that would grant rights to Gay and
¯ Lesbian couples. ’’This bill further diminishes marriage,"
Haas told his committee.
¯ Still, repeal supporters on the Judiciary.’ Commi ttee
do not believe they have much choice if they want to
¯ force a vote. Rep. Harvey Otterman, R-Topsham, said
¯ he did not like to see a bill "bottled up in committee,"
so he would support Flory’s bill and then make a
judgment later on whether to vote for repeal if such a
¯ proposal were made on the floor. ’Tmgoing to reserve
the right to vote asI see fit," Otterman said.
i NY Housing Case May
¯ Impact Civil Rights Laws
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Lawyers for Yeshiva University
on defended its refusal to allow Gay couples to
share student apartments, a policy two Lesbian students
contend discriminated against them on the basis
of sexual orientation and marital status.
Yeshiva lawyer Mark Jacoby told the state’ s highest.
court that the university was well within its .rights to
restrict use of the university-owned housing to single
students-or married graduate students - but to deny
unmarried heterosexual or homosexual couples the use
of those apartments.
"Look, we have a limited amount of student housing
available," Jacoby told the Court of Appeals, conveying
the rea,~oning of university officials. ’’We’ve acquired
this to accommodate-students. We can accommodate
students themselves. We’re prepared to accommodate
spouses and children of students and facilitate
their education. But we’ re not going to open the
door and (accommodate) everybody who wants to
bring in a buddy, or a friend, or a partner."
The lawyer arguing on behalf of the two Lesbian
studeats for the American Civil Liberties Union’s
Lesbian & Gay Rights Project, James Esseks, countered
that Yeshiva’ s housing policy had a "disparate
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Young Adult Support Group
Outreach Program Thurs. Nights
Meet Others in a Safe Enviroment
Call for meeting times and place:
918-584-2325
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9413 E. 31st St., Tulsa 74145
918-663-5934, fax: 663-5834, 800-~.aA-5934
Family Owned & Operated
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Child, Family, Individual & Couple Psychotherapy
(918) 743-c 559¯
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The Pride Store
21st Street & Memorial
Tulsa Gay Community Services Center
743-GAYS (743-4297)
6-9 pm, Sunday - Friday
12-9 pm, Saturday, all sales benefit the Center
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SinceNew Yorklaw prohibits all-male or all-female
couples from getting mamed, allowing only married
couples to share housing means Gay couples are unfairly
barred from possibly sharing in the benefit of the
cheap apartments. "This case is not about securing
marriage for same-sex couples or creating new laws -
it’ s about enforcing laws that prohibit discrimination
against those who can’t get married," Esseks said.
Both state and local anti-discrimination laws mayhave
been violated by Yeshiva’s policies, Esseks said.
Thechallenge against Yeshiva’ s policy was brought
by two students, Sara Levin and Maggie Jones, after
their requests to live with their partners were rejected.
Both Levin and Jones were offered university-owned
housing for themselves alone. Both are students at the
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which is affifiated
with Yeshiva.
Two lower state courts have nded for Yeshiva’ s
no-unmarried-couple housing policy. The Court of
Appeals is likely to hand down a written ruling in the
ease by early summer.
. Several groups filedfriend-of-the-court briefs in the
¯ case, including theAssociation ofthe Bar ofNew York
City, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund
and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Those briefs argue that civil rights protections for
many kinds of minority groups could be weakened by
upholding Yeshiva’ s housing policies. New York state
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer also filed a brief before
the court critical of Yeshiva’ s housing policy.
Wesleyan U. Hires Gay
Studies Professor
MIDDLETOWN, Conn. (AP) - Following the lead of
Yale, Wesleyan University will appoint a full-time
professor to teach Gay and Lesbian studies. The position
Is expected to be filled wilhin a year, and the
professor will begin teaching in the fall semester 2002,
Justin Harmon, a school spokesman said.
The new position will be among 20 the university
has created during thepast couple of years in an effort
to expand its curriculum, Harmon Said. University
officials said the new professor will help develop a
Gay and Lesbian studies curriculum.
The lack of Gay studies courses at Wesleyan has
drawn protests from students and faculty in recent
years. Wesleyan has offered one such course per year.
"I’m delighted that we’re having this position here,"
said Henry Abelove, one of the professors who has
taught Gay studies course. "This will add substantially
to the queer studies courses we can offer here."
Abelove said the new professor probably will be
expected to teach two courses per semester, like other
professors at Wesleyan.
Earlier this month, Yale University accepted a $1
million donation from the family of Larry Kramer to
help fund the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and
Gay Studies at Yale.
That decision ended four years of debate about
Kramer’s desire to fund a Gay and Lesbian studies
program at. Yale. Kramer,an outspoken activist for
AIDS awareness and Gay issues, initially wanted to
give Yale $5 million to hire a full-time professor in the
field. Yale rejected that offer because the university
thought Gay studies was too narrow a field for a
permanent professorship. In response, Kramer had
accused the university of being homophobic.
Members of Wesleyan’ s Queer Alliance, a group of
Lesbian and Gay students, pushed hard earlier in the
spring to get the position at their school approved. In
March, the alliance held a "kiss-in" demonstration in
front of the admissions office. The demonstration
coincided with a meeting of the university’s trustees.
"We’re really pleased, although I’m almost surprised,"
said junior Phil Gentry, an alliance leader.
"We tried to be optimistic, but at the same time this
same proposal was turned down before..."
New ACLU Leader
Hispanic + Openly Gay
: NEW YORK (AP) - A New York public interest
¯ attorney was named Tuesday to lead the American
Civil Liberties Union, becoming the first Hispanic and
: openly Gay man to do so. Anthony D. Romero, 35,
¯ currently serves as a director of the Ford Foundation’ s
¯ program for human rights and international cooperation,
overseeing $90 million in grants.
¯ As the ACLU’ s executive director, he said will work
to make the civil rights organization more prominent
¯ in local communities. He said theACLU will continue
to focus on defending religious liberty, reproductive
¯ freedom andtherights ofwomen, minorities and Gays.
"’I hope to beginmy tenure as the 1eader of thi s vitally
important organization by sparking a new dialogue
¯
about the bedrock values ofAmerican democracy," he
: said, adding his goal is to "promote a new generation
of committed civil libertarians and civil rights activ-
¯ ists.’"
¯ The Bronx-born Romero is a graduate of Stanford
: Law School and Princeton University. ACLU Presi-
¯ dent Nadine Strossen called Romero "an idealist, bold ¯
and creative in his vision and strategy but skeptical and
¯ realistic in his tactics." Romero will take over in
¯ September for Ira Glasser, Who is retiring after 23
¯ years in the post.
Conservative Extremists
Stall Anti-Bullying Bill
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - A bill designed to stop
bullying in schools has stalled in the Legislature amid
opposition from Christian conservatives who say it is
really a Gay-rights measure. Under the measure, school
¯
districts would have to write policies against bullying
: and train employees and volunteers to stop harass-
~ ment. Teachers,police, Gov. Gary Lockeand Attorney
¯ General ChristineGregoire saidthe legislationis needed ¯ to protect picked-on kids.
¯ But the state’ s chapter ofthe Christian Coalition said
: it couldbe seen as trying to prevent some students from
¯ condemning homosexuality. Rick Forcier, director of
: the Christian Coalition of Washington, said the mea-
: sure could lead to homosexual sensitivity training in
: schools. "We don’ t want to see kids beat up on and we
¯ would like to see the rules that are already in place
¯ enforced," he said. "But I think this one went well
¯ beyond what we think is necessary."
The measure passed the Senate but never made it to
: a vote in the House Education Committee in the
¯ regular session that ended April 22. The governor has
¯ listed, it on his agenda for the 30-day special legislative
¯ sessxon now under way.
Georgia County Adds
Partner Benefits
¯
DECATUR, Ga. (AP) - DeKalb County commission-
" ers have approved providing domestic 15artners of Gay
county employees with medical, dental and life insur-
¯ ance benefits. The measure, approved by a 6-1 vote at
¯ the end of April, makes the suburban Atlanta county
: the first in Georgia to offer such benefits to employees.
¯ County officials estimate that about 70 employees -
¯ 1% of the total - will seek the benefits, which would cost thecounty about $200,000 out of abenefits budget
¯ about $39 million a year. The city of Atlanta has been
the only local government in Georgia with a domestic
partner package.
¯ The private sector has been quicker to provide such
¯ benefits, said Harry Knox, director of the Gay civil
¯ rights group, the Georgia Equality Project. Four of the
state’ s largest employers- BellSouth, DeltaAir Lines,
¯ Atlanta Gas Light and Coca-Cola - have done so,
¯ Knox said.
Vaccine Research
Maybe Overlooked
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) - Developing a
vaccine to prevent AIDS should be given
top priority in the fight against the deadly
virus sweeping Africa, aleading epidemiologist
said. Efforts to develop a vaccine
risked getting overlooked in the push to
raise money to fight AIDS, said Seth
Berkley, president oftheNew York-based
International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
However, key decisions on whether to
pursue vaccine "candidates" currently in
human trials may need to be made as early
as 2002, he said.
Berkley spoke recently on the sidelines
ofa two-day AfricanAIDS summit hosted
by Nigeria and the Organization of African
Unity. There, African lcaders signed a
declaration calling on members to aim at
spending 15% of their national budgets on
health programs, including a significant
proportion on AIDS andto provide cheap
and effective drugs to treat those infected.
The Vaccine Initiative- a private, nonprofitorgani7ationfundedbygovernments,
foundations and private enterprise - has
raised more than $300 million to assist
vaccine research and create systems for
distributing them in the developing world.
Yet Berkley estimates that the project
would require at least double that figure to
give research bodies "a chance" of developing
vaccines by 2007.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annanalso
announced efforts to create a global ’~ar
chest" worth $7 billion to $10 billion to
fight AIDS. It was unclear how much
would be devoted to vaccine research,
Otherobservers said vaccine trials could
be "fast-tracked" in about half the time or
less if funding in the billions was made
available.
Billions of dollars have gone into the
developmentofeffectiveAIDS treatments,
but vaccine research has received relatively
little funding. Pharmaceutical cornpatties
have viewed it as unprofitable, and~
most AIDS activists have focused their
efforts on finding a cure.
U.S. governmentfunding ofHIV-AIDS
research last year.topped $2billion, with
about $250 million going toward vaccine
research. Therestwent toward developing
drugs to treat those with the disease.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
andWestern countries such as Canadaand
the Netherlands have also provided millions
of dollars for vaccine research.
Nancy Powell,head of the U.S. delegation
to the African summit, said Friday
that PresidentBush’ s administrationwould
spend $2.5 billion on HIV-AIDS research
this year, including $480 million for "international
HIV/AIDS assistance." Shedid
not give a further breakdown. ’q’he Bush
administration is Africa’s partner in this
effort. The United States has been the
world leader in research and assistance to
" batde these diseases," Powell said.
Researching and testing an AIDS vaccine
is only the first part of the problem,
Berkley said. Getting it to those who need
it most is another challenge. Vaccines developed
for other diseases ordinarily take
15 years or more before they are affordable
in poor countries.
The Vaccine Initiative hopes that pri;
vate Firms involved in the production of
: the vaccines will offer them at cut-rate
: prices in poorer countries. "Extraordinar-
¯ ilycomplexplanning is required," Berkley
: said. "Establishingnew production capac-
¯ ity alone normally requires 4-5 years."
i Debt Relief for Poor-
Urged to Fight AIDS
¯ NEWYORK (AP) -The debt owed by the
¯
world’ s poorest countries is a major bar-
: rier to fighting the AIDS pandemic and
¯ should be canceled immediately, activists
¯ urged.
¯ The plea came as the World Bank and
¯ The International Monetary Fund, which
¯ hold the majority of the debt, held their
¯ spring meeting in Washington. The inter-
" nadonal lending organizations have ajoint
¯ program to reduce debt but have so far
¯ declined to wipe the slates clean.
: "It is morally reprehensible fo( the de-
: veloped world to condnue to demand re-
- payment when we have a crisis on the
¯ continent of Mrica," said Njongonkulu
¯ Ndugane, Archbishop of Cape Town,
: South Africa. "One hundred percent can-
: cellation is nonnegotiable."
¯ Sub-Saharan African countries spend
$13.3.billionon debt repayment each year
i but need $15 billion to stop the spread of
: HIV/AIDS, according to the Global AIDS
¯ Alliance: Zambia, for example, has an
. annual debt service of $174 million, with
: $90 million of that going to the World
¯ BankandlMF. The country’ s health bud-
¯ get is $76 million.
¯ Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Harvard
: University, said that canceling debt will
¯ give countries even more money to.fight
: the disease that is ravishing the continent.
: AIDS has killed about 22 million people
¯ globally, including 17million in sub~Sa-
¯ haran Africa.
: Twoseparateinitiatives wereintroduced
: in theCongress this weekwhichcall onthe
: IMF and the World Bank to eliminate
:
debt. Onebill introducedby Reps. Maxine
Waters, a California Democrat, and Speni
eer Bachus, an Alabama Repubfican, Calls
: for 100% debt relief for the world’s poor-
: est countries. The bill introduced by Bar-
. bara I.~e, a California Democrat, calls for
¯ debt relief for countries heavily affected
¯ byHIV/AIDS.
: Bono, the lead singer of the Irish rock
: band U2, said that part of the problem is
¯ that Americans don~t understand how .the
: debt is devastating the poorest countries.
: Heplans to try to raise awareness tocreate
; political pressure. -
: The World Bank have a program cal!ed
¯ the HIPC Initiative to stem debt. Accord,
¯ ing to a World Bank report, the 22 coun-
¯ tries receiving somerelief have seen debt
¯ payments go from 3.7% to 2.1% of gross
domestic product. Actifists say the reduc-
: lions are negligible, especially consider-
" ing the AIDS crisis. Indeed, pharmaceuti-
: cal-compaules have drastically’reduced
¯ theprice ofAIDSmedications with at Ieast
¯ two films sellingmedicine at cost. Still,
¯ they are deemed to expensive.
¯ "HIV/AIDS is worse than the bubonic
¯ plague," said Lee. ’q~he money used for
¯ debt service could be used for education,
research, a health care delivery system...
: It could go a long way to turning the
¯ situation around."
Power
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!
!
!
The Tulsa City County
Library System
is proud to
Embrace-Diversity
honoring Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered
Oklahomans with the following events:
Saturday, June 2. 2pro. Maxwell Park Library
"Coming Out in Tulsa Area High Schools"
Dr. Doug Gronberg, English teacher at Booker T. Washington High School,
moderates a pane! discussion by high school students in Gay/Straight Alliances.
Monday, June 4. 7pm. Central Library
"Council Oak Men’ s Chorale"
Monday, June 4. 7pm. Helmerich Library
"Family Law Issues Affecting the Gay Community"
Panel discussion with Linda Lacey, TU.College of Law, moderating.
Thursday, June 7. 7pm. Central Library
"Diversity Film Festival"
Harvey Fierstein and Matthew Broderick star in "Torch Song Trilogy."
Saturday, June 9. 12 Noon. Central Library
"Diversity. Film Festival’"
"Out of the Past" documents the struggles of Kelli Peterson, who started a Gay/
Straight alliance in her Salt Lake City school in 1996.
Thursday,,, June 142 7pm. Central Library
Diversity Film Festival"
"Trevor": Winner of the 1994 Academy Award for best live-action short.
"If These Walls Could Talk": Stories about Lesbian couples in three decades.
"Bubbeh Lee an~d Me"= A Gay man’ s Visit with his 87 year old grandmother.
t~ook Discussion: Deliver Us From Evie’
Thmsday, June 21.~lpm. Broken Arrow Library
Book Discussion:"Fried Green Tomatoes"
Thursday, June 21. 7pro. Brookside Library
:AIDS Memorial Quilt Project
Vale Bode, director of Education and Outreach for the Tulsa Area chapter of
the NAMES project, discusses the AIDS Memorial Quilt
¯Please call 596-7977 or your local branch library if you have questions or
need more information. Please plan to attend.
"If we could stop the residual replication,
what wouldbe the persistence of the reservoir?"
Ho asks. His team has started a new
experiment, code numbered 377, to f’md
o u t
They have come up with a new four"
drug combination, a kind of super-
HAART, that they believe is more powerful
than the standard variety. About 30
patients are taking the drugs. The goal is to
stop the low-level circulation of their virus,
which in turn shOuld shut off the
supply of newly infected memory cells.
Ifit works,Hobelieves it couldwipeout
the body’s HIV-infected memory T cells
in three to four years. "No one would say
that once we get rid of this reservoir, we
have a cure," says Ho. "We have confronted
a difficult problem, but there may
be others."
Among the biggest of these is the worry
that infected memory T cells are not the
body’s onlylongdived reservoir.of HIV.
The virus may linger as well in other
places that are hard to check or lie beyond
thereach ofAIDS drugs, such as the brain,
bone marrow and testes.
"It will be a daunting task to eliminate
those unknown viral reservoirs, even with
much more potent drugs that might come
outin the near future," says Dr. Tae-Wook
Chun of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases.
This is why Chun and many AIDS re,
searchers now believe the best defense
against HIV may ultimately be the body’ s
own. These doctors wouldlike to teach the
immune.system to control HIV, so people
can stop taking AIDS drugs, which have
unpleasant and unhealthy side effects.
No one can say whether this is even
possible. But they already can envision a
strategy: Shut down viral replication with
standard drugs. Then give vac,ines and
otherboosters thatwill inteusffy thebody’ s
natural - and up to now, failed - surveillance
against HIV.
In time, they say, the immune system
might learn to do the entirejob alone. But
all bf this is unproven theory, just fike the
idea of viral eradication was five years
ago.
a global strategy can be developed to help
fight the disease.
"What I propose is a Global Fund, dedieatedto
the battle against HIV, AIDS and
other diseases. Clearly, it must be organized
in a way that corresponds to the
needs ofthe affected countries andpeople,"
Annan said. "Each country or community
receiving support from the fund would
have to show that it is actually bringing
results to those most at risk."
Annan said there are still many legal and
administrative matters to be settled before
the fund is established. He would not say
how much the U.S. government should
contribute but urged involvement.
"I hope that the U.S. government would
join in making funds available andjoining
: the fight against the disease," Annan said.
¯¯ "It would be presumptuous of me to say
how much the U.S. should pay. I hope,
: considering the size of the government,
¯ that it would be substantial."
: Annan’s appeal comes on the heels of a
: speech to leaders gathered at the Mrican
¯ Summlt on HIV, AIDS and other infec-
: tious diseases. There, he outlined his.ob-
: jectives andurgedMrieangovernments to
¯ take the lead in mobilizing resources.
¯ Paul DiDonato, executive director of
: Funders Concerned About AIDS, a New
: York-based organization, said he was
~ pleased with Annan’s remarks. ’q’he fact
¯ that thereis this level of leadership talking ¯
about theissueis encouraging," DiDonato
¯ said. "A year ago, U.S. leaders were not
: giving speeches aboutAIDS;now they are
¯ talking about it."
¯ MaybeI’mNOTmoreattractive with vaginal
itch. Dam! I was hoping something
¯ would help!
In the past month I’ve learned who my
real friends are: those who stick with you
: even when you’re scratching your crotch
: on a public street. OK, so that was my
¯ roommate, and he does need me to paymy
: half of the rent.
: But my friend Lindsey, who lives in a
¯ garrett apartment similar to that in "La
: Boheme", has stuck withme. Shejust tells
¯ me to shut up when I talk about "the itch."
: So I do it several times,just to piss her off.
, My friend Jim even slept with me when
’¯ he" visited. He didn’t have any fear that
he’ d get it. WeP, dull! Of course not! And
: the next possible Ms. Right hasn’trun
¯ away -yet. I’ve also had several-more
¯ women contact me through the Intemet. ¯
So there’s something to say about these
:. "women’ s thi"ngs," a’fter all. I’ vemet other
¯ women, kept my roommate/friend;from
¯ throwing me out, slept with a man (Jim!),
: and even had sex while keeping m~ pants
¯ on.
¯ OK, boys. You can come backnowA’m
: f’mishedtaikinn about"theitch." Youwon’ t
: have to endur~ this next time, I promise.
: My rooinmate’s cowering in the corner,
: though. Why? After screaming at him,
¯ I’ve just decided the topic ofmy next
: column - Multiple PMS Disorder and the
: Women Who Have Long, Drawn,Out,
¯ Heavy, Gushing, Extremely Bloody Peri-
: otis. See ya then!
¯" Since no anti-Gay language was used,
Tulsa Police could not even informally
¯" classify this as ahate crime but Dept. Chief
Busby did say that Tulsa Police would
¯ start using tht~parkinglot outside the Cen-
: ter when they stop to write their reports in
: between responding to crimes. TOHR
: vohmteers hopethat themore visible pres-
¯ ence may" deter more crime.
," TOHR is also soliciting donations to
¯ pay for the door glass repair. Some dona- ¯
dons have been received but more are
". needed. AlsoTOHRhas now negotiated a
compromise with the Center’s landlord
¯ for a sign. see TOHR, p.9
by Jim Christjohn, entertainment editor
The new singles from the Stevie Nicks
album, "Planets of the Universe", "Everyday",
and "TooFarFromTexas" are climbing
the charts, althoughyouwouldn’ tknow
it around here: Dallas stations are playing
the hell out of "Planets...", but in Tulsa
radio stations didn’ t evenl~tw that Stevie
was releasing a new album.
May lst, in spiteof
the fact it’ s been in the
trademagazines for several
months now, and
she’s been popping ~p
all over the.. place. It S
.w0nderful:~01ivein such "
~in~?,rmed t0wn:~~.
-APis~rently, the radio
stations are about three
years behind the rest of
the country. I think they
should read the Gay paper
intown, so they can
keep up with what’s
going on. (editor’s note:
at least with Stevie
Nicks.t)
The new disc is killer, and even if you
aren’t a Stevie Fan, I think you’ll like it.
Amazingly, when I went to Target to nab
the official release, the bin was empty! A
friend of mine said with some surprise,
"Look! I guess you aren’t the only Stevie
fan here!" I did find one, but I thought the
comment was humorous.
Nicks said she will begin a U.S. tour on
June 29. The Dallas stop i.s August 3rd.
Plans for a new Fleetwood Mac album are
going ahead around September without
Christine McVie, though they have her
blessing.
One of Celebrity Attractions best offerings,
"Red White and Tuna" explodes
into townMay 8-13 at the PAC, 596-7111.
It promise to be an evening of fun and
frolic with the residents of Tuna, Texas -
all played~by Joe Sears and Jaston Williams.
If you were unfortunate enough to
have missed "Greater Tuna", and "A Tuna
Christmas", here’s your chance to catch
up with these hilarious folks. These performances
sell out fast, so grab those tickets
now! You won’t regret it.
Sometimes, something comes across
your desk for review that is simply unbelievable.
Watching. it is like watching a
train wreck: you hate yourself for it, you
don’ t want to look, but you just have to.
"West Hollywood Stories" is one of those
things. A two-set video series of a Gay
soap opera out of and set in LA,its tag line
is ’’These are the Gays of our lives."
As one can imagine, this sets it up as a
comedy. Except it’ s not. It’s a wretched
affair, with acting talent culled from the
bottom of the pool, and videography designed
to make any amateur look good.
Production values? I’m hard pressed to
find any. It looks like some high school
kids got together and tried to make a "Gay
Bitch Project."
Think "Queer as Folk" (QAF) done really
badly with people who can’ t act. Yep,
it’s pretty bad. in fact, I was thinking,
"With Queer as Folk, why even’do this?"
Joe Sears as Aunt Pearl Burras
¯¯ All I can guess is that this was donebefore
the QAF series at a time when any funding
: would have come out of pocket and any
¯ actors would be people with no experi- ¯
ence. It does provide laughs, but all unin-
¯ tentional.
¯ And it’ s kind of an embarrassed laugh,
such as one might make at a train wreck to
cover up one’s horror.
The premise is a good
idea: AGay soap. Thank
Gods it’s being done
wall on QAF. Anyone
who bitches about anything
on that show
should be forced to sit
through "WeHo Stories."
Obviously, I can’t
recommend spending
any money on this, and
I really hoped it would
live up to its billing as a
comedy spoof of soaps.
All Icansayis,this soap
don’t clean. Or even
make suds.
The "Queer as Folk"
soundtrack is out, and in both British and
American versions. The British has two
: versions: A "highlights disc, and an ex-
¯ panded import disc. Both covers are the
same, it’ s only when you look at the back
¯ - one has around 15 tracks, the other, 35 or
¯ so. The American only has one out thus
¯ far, andit’s pretty cool forboppin’ around.
After 7 years in this town, I’d never
¯ madeitto theGflcreaseMuseum.Afriend
¯ from CA came to visit, andI was showing
him the sights, and we stopped there, al-
¯ most as an afterthought. Wow! I had no
¯ idea... I thought it would be like the
¯ Philbrook, which I always thought of as a ¯
poor excuse for a museum - pretty house,
¯
but not much to it.
¯ Gilcrease was amazing, especially since
¯ my ~’riend was of Native American de-
" scent. He did make one commentthat was
¯ reallythought-provoking: in the lowerlev-
¯ els are hundreds of NA artifacts, from
¯ peace pipes to clothing to head dresses to
: utensils and sacred objects.
¯ At one point, we stopped in front of a
series of clothing articles, one with what
¯ looked like a bullet hole through it in the
: center of the chest, with blood around it.
¯ My friend said, "this is like visiting
¯ Auschwitz. And ten to one these items
¯ were not given to the museum by the
original owners."
¯ Point well made, in fact, many of the
¯ objects would have been buried with the
¯ owner had they been given proper burial.
¯ In many cases, I doubt also that the owner
: had any say in he matter.
Yet another thing I learned was that
pipes, as sacred objects, should never be
¯ shown assembled unless for the purpose
¯ intended - to carry prayers to the spirits. ¯
Cody said that museums who are respect-
" ful and do their research display the pipes
¯ in separate pieces. The Gilcrease displays
¯ were in such a manner. ¯
¯ Philbrook, in constrast, displayed pipes
assembled, an insult to the people from
¯ whom the pipes were taken.
Oklahoma NAR~L invites you to our
~ $35 per person
Timothy W. Daniel
Attorney at Law
An Attorney who will fight for justice
& equality for Gays & Lesbians
Domestic Partnership Planningl
Personal Injury, Criminal Law & Bankruptcy
1-800-742-9468 or 918-352-9504
128 East Broadway, Drumright, Oklahoma
Weekend and evening appointments are available.
o
ooooo000.
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Certified-Public Accountant
a professional corporation
Lesbians and Gay men face many special
tax situations whether single or as couples.
Electronic filing is available for faster refunds.
747-5466
4021 South Harvard Avenue, Suite210, Tulsa 74135
by Barry Hensley
Tulsa City-County Library
This year, the Tulsa City-County Library
is making a coordinated effort to
provide a variety of Diversity programmingacross
TulsaCounty during themonth
of June. Please make plans to attendsome
of these programs. A good attendance at
these programs, and positive feedback,
will ensure continued library programming
dedicated to GLBT issues. The library
will also haveabooth, as usual, at the
Diversity celebration at Veteran’ s Park on
Saturday, June 9.
Library programs for June include:
Saturday, June 2. 2pm.
Maxwell Park Library
"Coming OutinTulsaAreaHigh Schools"
Dr. Doug Gronberg, English teacher at
BookerT. WashingtonHigh School, moderates
a panel discussion by high school
students in the Tulsa area Gay/Straight
Alliances.
Monday, June 4. 7pm.
Central Library
"Council Oak Men’s Chorale"
Join us for a celebration of sound as an
ensemble from the Chorale performs a.
variety of vocal selections.
Monday, June 4. 7pm.
Helmerich Library
"Family Law Issues
Affecting the Gay Community’"
Discussion will center around the legal
. rights of same-sex couples, adoption issues
and access to artificial-reproduction
teclinology. Linda Lacey, professor, University
ofTulsa College ofLaw, will moderate.
Thursday, June 7. 7pro.
Central Library
"Diversity Film Festival"
Harvey Fierstein andMatthew Broderick
star in "Torch Song Trilogy," which was
adapted from the Tony Award winning
Broadway hit. The musical numbers are a
hoot, and Anne Bancroft chews the scenery
nicely.
Saturday, June 9. 12 Noon.
Central Library
"Diversity Film Festival"
"Outofthe Past" documents the struggles
of Ke]li Peterson, who started a Gay/
Straight alliance in her Salt Lake City
school in 1996. Her fight became a statewidebattle
that broughtnational attention.
Thursday, June 14. 7pm.
Central Library
"Diversity Film Festival"
"Trevor": Winner of the 1994 Academy
Award for best live action short. This
highly acclaimed, touching, funny film
addresses issues of sexual identity and
compassion.
"If These Walls Could Talk": Trio of
stories about Lesbian couples in three different
decades.
"Bubbeh Lee and Me": Documents a
Gayman’ s visitwithhis 87 year oldgrandmother
in a Florida retirement commu-
Tuesday, June 19. 2pm.
West Regional Library
BookDiscussion: "Deliver Us Frown Ev:
¯ This bookbe M. E. Kerr tells the ste~’;
: 16 year old Parr Burma,an and his fa
: who face some difficult times when ;,:,
¯ spreads around their small Missouri
: that his older sister is a Lesbian, after
: leaves the family farm to live with the
¯¯ daughter of the town’ s banker.
Thursday, June 21. lpm.
Broken Arrow Library
Book Discussion:
"Fried Green Tomatoes"
This Fannie Flagg hit mixes direct and
empowering confrontations with racism,
sexism and ageism with the colorful and
endearing language of the Depression-era
South.
Thursday, June 21. 7pm.
Brookside Library
AIDS Memorial Quilt Project
Vale Bode, director of Education and
Outreach for the Tulsa Area chapter of the
NAMES project, discusses the AIDS
morial Quilt.
Please call 596-7977 or yourlocal branch
library if you have questions or need more
information. Please plan to attend.
Council Oak Men’s
Concert May 11-13
Join the Council Oak Men’s Chorale
(COMC) as it sings the works of musical
pioneers in its concert "American Dreamers"
at Philbrook’ s Wilson Hall, May 11-
13. Performances are on Friday and Saturday
at 8 PM a~,d a matinee on Sunday,
Mother’s Day, at 3 PM. Tickets are $15
For more information, call 748-3888.
Three composers explore three centuries
of the American quest for freedom.
Randall Thompson, Aaron Copland and
Stephen Sondheim, have created works
inspired by the ideals, hopes and dreams of
a nation and its people.
COMC was recently honored to sing the
national anthemat the Tulsa Driller’ s home
game opener on Easter Sunday. America’ s
favorite pastime was introduced by a rousing
rendition of the Star Spangled Banner
performed by COMC’ s 25-male voices.
Formoreinformation about Tulsa’ s premier
Gay men’ s chorus visit:
www.counciloak.org
While it will only have abbreviations,
TOHR and LGBT for Tulsa Oklahomans
for Human Rights and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
andTransgendered, Gatewoodnotes
- it will have "lots of rainbows all over it."
Funds are needed to pay for the new sign
as well. ~
Gatewood adds that through the efforts
of Anna Dodwell, aka, Dyke Divine,
KHITS, 106.9 FM will be airing interviews
with la Dyke herself, TOHR,
PFLAG, Tulsa CARES, and HOPE, probably
on the week beginning June 4th.
Volunteers and sponsors are still needed
for the Gala dinner and the Festival, so for
more information, call 743-4297.
home. Sean was tough and
built like a fireplug. Hehad
just returned home after
serving several years in the
Marines. He spoke animat-
.edly aboutguns, and sports,
and arm-wrestling. (He
beat me.) "Okay, enough
already!" I thought. I attributed
Sean’ s hyper-masculine
pose to the fact that
we were, at the time, sitting
in Hula’s, Waikiki’s
foremost gay bar. Sean,
poor boy, was still edgy
about his sexuality.
But something more vital
was at stake, Hater discovered.
I had occasion
once to catch Sean naked.
Nervous, blushing, and
ashamed he explained he
by Lamont Lindstrom, Ph.D. however, the chimps have us humans beat.
I met Scan one summer in Honolulu. Because of this, perhaps, these organs are
Like many local guys, his ancestry was " less charged in popular culture. Fewer
assorted-alittlebitHawaiian and the rest " men lose sleep over marbles instead of
Asian and European- a mixture reflecting " tennis balls. Fewer scams promise testicle
,,
the history of his island enlargement.
. . . Humans, unllhe When it comes to mea-
+ most mammals, have
suring humans, sampling
and data collection have
lost the haeeulum - a long been problematic.
hone within the penis
Still, it’s established that
the average length of an
- for unhnow’n erect human penis is beevolutionary
reasons. tween five and six inches.
An informative website,
Nonetheless, amon~ The Definitive Penis Size
primates at least,
Survey ("http://
www.connection.com/
humans are the man. -dickie/result.html"),
We are lar~er than
records a somewhat longer
average but its sample is
chimpanzees. And self-selected and no doubt
mighty ~orillas -
composed of those more
inclined to boast.
despite their hulh - So how did humans get
sport penises of Sean’s
so large, ethologically
speaking? Students of evoslze:
just over one inch lution generally fall back
had inherited the family lon~ when erect..."
on two explanations to accurse.
I looked down and count for sexual dimorthere
it was: The smallest human penis I phism such as penis size. Men perhaps
had ever seen. Scan, when excited on a engaged in competitive penile display to
good day, was perhaps an inch and a half threaten and cow one another, thus to
in length. "" establish dominance within a group.
SusanBordo,thefeminist scholar,pokes Thanks to higher status, men with longer
intoAmericanequataonsofmenwiththeir penises had more children. Or. perhaps
penises inThe Male Body: A New Look at long peruses instead resulted trom sexual
Men in Public and in Private (1999). She
selection. Women sought out better-enexplores
the effects of popnlar imagery on doWed men to increase their own sexual
our feelings about our bodies and our- pleasure.
selves. Bordo, previously, had written However the human pems evolved,
about the impact of media depictions of people in many societies celebrate its size.
female beauty on women’ s perceptions of They associate bigness with potency, autheir
bodies. American women suffer a thority, and manliness. In many of the
sort of collective "body image distortion’! island cultures of the Southwestern Pasyndrome.
Themajorityoverestimateshow cific, for example, men traditionally
much space the body takes up. Women flaunted artificially enlarged penises. On
believe, often incorrectly, that they are too Talma, where I once lived, some men still
fat. wrap and expand the penis with plant
Bordo suggests that men suffer a paral- fibers and leaves and cinch this upright to
lel body distortion syndrome. Men tend to a belt around the waist. They appear to
underestimate our penises. We believe we have permanent erections. Farther to the
’ h ° are too small. We aren t fat enoug , as it west, in the central highlands of New
were. In some cases - Sean’ s perhaps- we " Guinea, men stick their penises into dried
are right. In others, however, men put " gourds of various shapes. The most strikthemselves
in comparative disadvantage
¯ ing are three or four feet long, which are
vis-a-vis the rare, or imagined, colossal againtiedupright.Thesedongatedgourds
penises celebrated in popular culture (not
" make much more. splendid display than
tomention in thousands of immodest per- " just bailing up socks in ones underwear.
sonal ads). Enough of us suffer "shower
¯ But cnlmral celebration of male size is
syndrome" or "locker room phobia" to
" neither inevitable nor obligatory. Anyone
eb_rich dozens of dubious penis enlarge- " - who has peeked under those grape leaves
ment schemes.
¯ that the Victorians stuck onto Roman and
We might turn to my physical anthro-
Greek statuary will have noted marble
pologistcolleagues for eulighteument. The " members of only modest measure. Modhumanpenisisabitofamystery,
notleast " eration in all things governed classical
because scientists (male, mostly) haven’ t : aesthetics. A large penis then was the sign
directed much attention to this touchy ob- ¯ of wild animal, not civilized human.
ject. Humans,unlikemostmammals,have : This all would be cold comfort to Sean.
lost the baeeulum - abone within the penis " A shortcoming in one area blinded him to
-forunknownevolutionaryreasons-None- " the beauty of his body (although it did
theless, among primates at least, humans " make him into an excellent arm wrestler).
are theman. Wearelarger thanchimpan- : Sean could be, at least, king among the
zees. And mighty gorilla,s - despite their " gorillas.
bulk - sport penises of Sean’s size: just ¯ Lamont Lindstrom teaches anthropolover
oneinchlong whenerect. Withtestes, : ogy at the University of Tulsa.
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’TULSA COUNTY
DEMOCRATIC
PARTY
Country Club Barbering
Custom Styling for Men & Women
David Kauskey
3310 E. 51st, 747-0236, Tues.-Fri., 8-5:30, Sat. 8-Spm
by Karin Gregory
OK, boys - you might want to leave the
room for this one. It’s grrl talk. And no, I
DON’T mean Melissa Etheridge supposedly
leading every single actress in Hollywood
down the Lesbian path of corruption.
By the way, has Nicole Kidmanmade
that list yet? Sorry, silly indulgences.
However, boys, you may want to stay if
you now have, have ever had, or will have
in the future, a Lesbian roommate. You
might learn something. Granted, something
you don’ t want to learn, but I can tell
you that my roommate has a whole new
perspective on women’s biological problems--
his headis now firmly entrenchedin
the sand!
Yes, grrls, I’m talkingabout that lovely
problem called the vaginal infection. By
now, the men have dropped their papers,
screaming as they run to the kitchen to find
the fork that will poke out their eyes, thus
hopefully getting rid of the images swidxng
in their heads: So, let’s talk, shall we?
How do these things get started, is what
I want to know. How is it that you feel fine
one day, then wake up the next in burning,
itching agony? OK, so I’d fallen off the
diet/exercise wagon my roommate and I
started. I wasn’t drinking enough water;
wasfftexercising as much as he (wall,
he’s 24 for God’s sake!); and I wasn’t
eating right. Hey, maybe I DO know how
it got started!
My roommate did well with it the first
few days. I detailed, moment by moment,
how the "fire down below" felt, all the
while standing in front of him scratching
like a straight man with jock itch. My
roommate’s friends were OK with it for
awhile also, until I kept scratching like a
straight man in front of them, too. We
don’t get many guests anymore. And he
gave me advice about the various creams
and lotions I was using. His advice was not
to use more than one. I’d been using four
¯ or five at a time. I went to bed every night
¯¯ wet, and not in the good way.
Then came the "Hostess Cupcake" pc-
¯ riod. Have you ever used Mycelex 3, or
¯" Gynelotromin cream? They give you a
¯ tube of got with three long tampon-look-
. ing sticks. You pour the got into the stick
¯ and then lie down, inserting the stick. It
¯ sounds gross. The application is another
¯ story, however. All right, I guess I really
: DIDN’T read in the instructions that I was
¯ to masturbate while putting in the stick,
¯ but it didn’t say I couldn’t. A grrl has to
¯ have some fun! They also tell you to only
use it for three nights. They know it’s
¯ addictive, I suppose. I got up after awhile
¯ (afteracigarette, actually!),andannounced
¯ to my roommate that I was now a Hostess
~ cupcake. After shouling, "Oh...My...God!"
¯ and shoving out his friend, who was
¯ screaming, "Oh, the horror!", he slammed ¯
his door and didn’t open it until I left for
¯ work the next morning.
I finally went to the doctor at my
" roommate’s pleading. This was an inter-
" esting situation. The nurse, who under-
. stands about vaginal things, asked if I used
¯ any birth control. "No," was myreply. She
¯ wroteit down and said nothing more about
¯ it. My doctor had a medical student in that
¯ day--a dentis!! He asked me about the last
time I had sex. No, he didn’ t want details,
¯ just an approximate. He started to talk
: about condoms when I stopped him, say-
. ing that I’ d had sex with three people in the
¯
last year - "One was a man; they usually
¯ aren’t." To which he quickly said, "OK,"
¯ and moved on.
¯ Then they all (nurse, medical student,
¯
doctor) converged in the tiny examination
¯ room while I spread my legs for all to see.
¯ I asked if they’d like to invite anyone else ¯
in as long as I was in this position. I’ve
¯ always found I have more audience mem-
¯ bets when I’m,in the stirrups than when i
have my mouth open for the doctor. And
¯
I’m told I have pretty teeth! I received my
¯ applause and was able to dress, when the
¯ doctor came in to ask why I didn’t use
¯ condoms. "I don’t have sex with men",
: was my reply. Geez, how many times do I
¯ have to come out at my doctor’s office
: before they get a clue?
¯ Have you ever noticed how things begin
¯
happemng when you’re at your worst?
: You always meet someone you haven’t
¯ seen in years when you wear your old ¯
clothes, your cap to hide the hair you
didn’t wash that day, or when you’re unshaven
(for those intimate old friends!).
Somehow, even on the Internet, you seem
more attractive when you have your period
or when you have, as I did, a vaginal
itch. She began emailing me, and I was
struck with this feeling of awe that FINALLY
I’d be meeting someone from
Fort Worth (instead of talking to someone
from Corpus Christi or Kansas) at the
same time I had "this problem." Meet her
I did, and we talked for several hours
before we came back to my place. No, this
was at her request. Granted, she didn’t
have to twist this horny Lesbian’ s ann, but
I didn’t mind her twisting other things.
I know several women who are embarrassed
to be naked in front of their husbands.
I’ ve always had the opposite problem
withmy bed partners, and this day was
certainly One ofthe worst days to be dressed
in front of her while I had a close-up of her
beauty - VERY close up! So I lay there
wearing my big pants (pants with no restrictions
like jeans have), and felt very
strange to be wearing most of my clothes.
After all, I didn’ t want the next possible
Ms. Right to get any kind of disease, even
though I’d already been to the doctor and
found that it was a simple bacterial infection
taken care of with medicati< a (unfortunately,
NOT the Mycelex 3 !). Now that
[ think of it, even though the infection is
gone, she hasn’ t suggested we come back
to my place anymore.
see Raging, p. 7
Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights
presents
Dive’rsity
rati
.Saturday, June.2, 2001
TOHR Follies 2001
"From Here to Eternity"
Avondale Studio & Theatre (the old Delaware Playhouse)
1511 So. Delaware Ave., 8pro
Reception immediately following.
Tickets: $15.00, At the Door:.-$20.00
The Pride Store @ Tulsa GLBT
Community Center; 2114 S Memorial
or’by calling 918.743.4297 or toll
free (outside Tulsa) at 866.335.9074
Sunday, June 3, 2001
Tulsa Interfaith Service
Sponsored by TU BLGT Alliance, Sharp Chapel, TU, 3pm
Monday, June 4, 2001
Council Oak Men’s Chorale Concert
Presented by Tulsa City/County Library
"Diversity in Song"
Aaronson Auditorium; Central Librarym 3rd & Denver, 7pm
Monday, June 4, 2001
Family Law Panel
Presented by Tulsa City/Coullty Library
TU Law Professor Linda Lacey& an expert panel
Helmefich Library, 91st and Yale, 7pm
Tuesday, June 5, 2001
Art Exhibit: "Embracing Art"
All Souls Unitarian Church, 2952 S. PeofiaAvenue, 6-gpm
Thursday, June 7~ 2001
GLBT Film Festival
Sponsored by Tulsa City/County Library
AaronsoriAuditofium, Central Library, 3rd and Denver, 7pro
Friday, June 8, 2001
TOHR Diversity Gala
Benefiting TOHR and Diversity Celebration 2001
"Death. Be Not Proud" Parents of Hate Crime Victims:
Speakers and Parade Grand Marshalls:
Gabi Clayton, Olympia, WA,
Dorothy Hajdys Holman, Chicago~ Don Sinclair,
Houston, TX, Carolyn Wagner, Fayetteville, AR
"Community Hero" Awards presentation honoring
those in the local GLBT community.
Tulsa Country Club, 701 N. Yukon Dr., 7pm, reception &
silent auction, 8pro dinner, $100/ea. $1,000 table of eight.
Sponsorships available. Reserved seating available by calling
918.743.4297 or 866.335.9074
Saturday, June 9, 2001
The Pride Parade
Cherry Street (15th Street) to Boston Avenue to
18th Street to Veterans Park
Starts at 3pro, Float/marchers begin assembling at lpm.
No entries after 2:45pm.
Featuririg:Entfies from across the region
Community Heroes, Oklahoma’s largest Pride Flag
Diversity Festival
Sponsored by: Bud Light & Eastern Oklahoma Beverages
Veterans’ Park, 1875 So. Boulder Ave., 3pm
Featuring Entertainment, Speakers, and more.
Sunday, June 10, 2001
Women’s Tea Dance
Women only dance, DJ, and live entertainment by Melanie
Fry, pipe &cigar patio, unplugged music circle, and more.
Greenwood Cultural Center, 322 N. Greenwood, 3-Tpm
Original Format
newspaper
periodical
periodical
Files
Citation
Tulsa Family News, “[2001] Tulsa Family News, May 2001; Volume 8, Issue 5,” OKEQ History Project, accessed April 19, 2024, https://history.okeq.org/items/show/612.