Subject: =>Revise<=ROBERTS' RULES: 3STEPS
From: "Shelly Roberts" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 07:20:46 +0000

Editors:  Please exchange the paragraph in A Simple Three Point Plan 
that begins 1. with the one below. Thankyou.

Shelly.

=============>

ROBERTS' RULES
by Shelly Roberts

A SIMPLE THREE POINT PLAN.

1.  Join a national group.  Get involved as little or as big as you
want, but send the membership money to HRC or NGLTF or Lambda Legal
Defense Fund. Or the National Center for Lesbian Rights.  Or any one
that suits your beliefs and attitudes.  It takes money to get that
one more senator to vote Yea on the Employment Non-Discrimination
Act.  It takes a bankroll to get dumb DOMA rescinded.  These groups
are doing your national work on your behalf. They belong on your
support list.

From: "Shelly Roberts" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 14:17:59 +0000
Subject: ROBERTS' RULES: 3STEPS

ROBERTS' RULES
by Shelly Roberts

A SIMPLE THREE POINT PLAN.

There's good news.  And - no surprise - there's bad.

The good news?  The Miami Gay and Lesbian Center has closed due to
lack of sufficient support.  It seems that we've become so
mainstream and blas=E9 about our community-ness, that we're spending
our time and money on our other interests.  

Looks like, now, if we want, as out gay and lesbian people, to join
the Peony Society, or the Harley Guild, we don't divert our efforts
into the Rainbow Flower, or Lavender Spokes Clubs any more.  We just
arrive in the bigger arenas, announce our interests, in the course
of conversation talk about our partners with their proper pronouns,
and act as though anyone who didn't think that was another bit of
everyday information clearly was from the planet Duh.

So that's good.

However... the bad news is: The Miami Gay and Lesbian Center has
closed due to lack of sufficient support. And G/L centers, which we
all worked so hard for, held so many car washes, and bake sales for,
are disappearing everywhere for lack of support.

For those of you who have successfully completed the transition from
Queer to Social Butterfly, from Invert to Extrovert, from Homosexual
to Homosapien, bravae! It's what we've all been working for. To get
from the side to the main stream. 

And, after fighting so hard, it's understandable that holding narrow
focus forever can be just the teensiest bit tedious. Same old
twenty-seven faces showing up at every event.  Same old accomplished
agenda.  Where's the new?  The exciting? 

Except for one tiny little detail.  We aren't done yet.  Our
children are still killing themselves.  Our timid are being
intimidated. Many of our smaller towns are still masquerading illegal
religio-social agendas into statute, still feeling themselves
justified shouting our names as epethets and blasphemies. 

So abandoning our safe houses so soon could end up in worse agony
for our come-latelies 

Now maybe trying to buy a building in declining times is an exercise
in myopic management.  Maybe planning to rent out half the space to
other need-to-have groups, or joining them in civic sponsored
locations might be a smarter scheme.  But, on the other hand,
by-passing the local efforts altogether because you got what you
needed, isn't exactly the way to insure your security for the long
term.  

Nor is abandoning the national fight.  Pledges are down. 
Memberships are down.  Volunteer and time commitments are down.
Because everyone believes that someone else is taking care of it. 
And besides, we're pretty much done, right?  Wrong.

I'd like humbly to suggest a new spectrum of rainbow resolution for
your already over-burdened budget allocations.  A tri-pronged yearly
pledge to see that, not just our centers, but our hard-won
accomplishments can stick around:

1.  Join a national group.  Get involved as little or as big as you
want, but send the membership money to HRC or NGLTF.  It takes money
to get that one more senator to vote Yea on the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act.  It takes a bankroll to get dumb DOMA
rescinded.  These groups are doing your national work on your behalf.

2.  Do exactly the same thing on your own local level.  If it is
your community center you want to pay homage or dues to, do it. Or
the Leatherperson's League. Or the Vanilla Lesbian Club. You don't
have to go to a meeting, stuff an envelope, or show up at the picnic.
 You do need to make and keep a commitment to yourself and your
neighbors to keep your local alive.

3. Support your local or regional g/l/b/t archives.  Where I live,
it's the Stonewall Library and Archives that holds onto our heritage
in the South. Everything from buttons and bumperstickers to early
underground books and secret newsletters. Make certain that your
closet cleaning doesn't all go into the garage sale, but into our
own archives for our descendants. To help them understand what our
lives were like.  The Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York. The
Gerber/Hart Library and Archives. The James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian
Center and Collections in San Francisco. The  June L. Mazer Lesbian
Collection in West Hollywood. The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives
in Toronto. No matter your particular bent, these institutions are
serving you. Send them stuff, and stuff checks into envelopes.

Take your donation allocation  and divide it into three.  And send it.
Three simple covenants that insure that the rest of the work will get
finished. One national. One local. One library. 

Three simple steps to keep up the good work.

There, now how hard was that?

________________________
(C) 1996. Shelly Roberts. All rights reserved.
May be reprinted only in its entirety with written permission.

Shelly Robertsthe author of the #1 best-selling
Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Living. Spinsters Ink.