Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 15:20:32 -0700 From: Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Subject: GLAADAlert 04.25.97 GLAADALERT April 25, 1997 The GLAADAlert is the weekly activation tool of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation contents 1. SPECIAL GLAADAlert UPDATE: Oprah Needs Emergency Support (Oprah Winfrey, talk show host) 2. Seattle Radio Personality Comes Out To Fight Job Discrimination (Mike Webb (radio personality), KIRO News Radio 710 (Seattle radio station)) 3. SNL Transgender Dad Attack No Laughing Matter (Norm McDonald (comedian), Saturday Night Live (television variety show)) 4. "2 DYKES" 2 B Banned (Virginia State Department of Motor Vehicles) 5. Scouts and Gallagher Dishonor Family Values (Boy Scouts of America (national youth organization), USA Today (newspaper)) 6. Retirement Life Plays the AIDS Blame Game (Retirement Life (magazine)) 7. GLAADAlert Follow-Up: Alabama UPI-Yi-Yi! (UPI (Newswire), ABC 33/40 (Birmingham, AL affiliate)) 8. GLAADAlert Media Round-Up: This Week Is Ellen-Tastic (Primetime Live (news program), Diane Sawyer (news personality), Ellen DeGeneres (actress), Deep Space 9 (science fiction program), Mad TV (television variety show), Oprah (television talk show)) 1. SPECIAL GLAADAlert UPDATE: Oprah Needs Emergency Support GLAAD has learned that Oprah Winfrey still needs your support! Over the past week, she has received an overwhelming amount of mail criticizing her for appearing on the history making coming out Ellen episode. Please let Oprah know how much you appreciate her history of strong support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Contact: Oprah Winfrey, Harpo Studios, 110 N. Carpenter Road, Chicago, Illinois 60607-2146, fax: 312.633.1976, email: oprah@aol.com. 2. Seattle Radio Personality Comes Out To Fight Job Discrimination While Ellen DeGeneres came out on the cover of Time, Seattle radio personality Mike Webb came out during an interview on his station, KIRO News Radio 710, to discuss job discrimination and the need for statewide protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. On April 11, Webb sued his former station, KWRM, on the grounds that he was fired because he is gay. Additionally, Washington Citizens Fairness/Hands Off Washington are sponsoring a drive to get onto ballot Initiative 677, which would prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. On April 24, during the Drake Collier Show, Webb talked about a host of issues, from the initiative and his case to the more general issues of being gay in the workplace, the experience of coming out and misconceptions about lesbians and gay men. According to Webb, the show received so many calls that a scheduled one-hour forum stretched into three hours of mostly supportive callers and discussion. "Out of those three hours, we probably only had four negative calls," said Webb. "It's been amazingly positive, especially with the number of parents and grandparents of gay people who just called up to tell me how happy they were that I was highlighting the issue." He said that the reason he came out for the show and is suing the former station is to make it easier for other radio and media professionals in the future. "I just want to have the right to do my job and be judged on my performance-without worrying about whether or not my sexual orientation is going to get me fired," Webb said in a conversation with GLAAD. "This is a way to put a human voice on something that might be scary to some people." Please commend KIRO for supporting its employee and the time that it dedicated to discussing an issue of critical importance to all people committed to fairness and equality. Contact: Tom Clendening, Program Manager, KIRO News Radio 710, 1820 Eastlake Ave., E. Seattle, WA 98102-3711, phone: (206) 726-5410, fax 726-5448, WWW: www.kiro710.com. 3. SNL Transgender Dad Attack No Laughing Matter The April 19 Saturday Night Live on NBC dismissed the validity of a transsexual father during Norm McDonald's Weekend Update. McDonald recounted the basics of a court battle between Sharon, a father who underwent a sex-change operation and in the process lost custody of her two sons. On March 11 the Missouri Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled to give the mother sole custody. The decision is currently under appeal. McDonald said, "Hmm...I wonder who's going to win this one, the mother of the two children or the guy who had his penis twisted into a fake vagina." By failing to recognize the struggle of a parent to reconnect with her children Saturday Night Live dehumanizes Sharon, mocking the transphobia she is confronting in her struggle to be a supportive parent. Transgender parents deserve to be judged by the same standards as any other parents, gay, bisexual or straight. The central issue should be love and the ability to care for children-not an abstract hostility towards non-conforming gender and sexual identities. Last year, McDonald made light of the bloody execution style murder of twenty year old transexual man Brandon Teena (see GLAAD's April 1996 Dispatch). Let Saturday Night Live know that its mocking of a transsexual father does a disservice to all parents and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Tell McDonald, SNL and Lorne Michaels that this type of transphobia needs to end. Contact: Lorne Michaels, Executive Producer, Saturday Night Live, NBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112-0002, fax: 212.664.7234, email: snl@nbc.com. 4. "2 DYKES" 2 B Banned A flurry of media has focused on two Virginia lesbians who have had the state bureaucracy descend upon them to snatch away their personalized license plate, which proudly reads, "2 DYKES." Alice Deighan and her partner Scout, who was one of the co-chairs of the 1993 March on Washington, have for the past two years used the specialized plate, but recently the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles canceled the plate after a motorist complained. The reason, according to a letter the couple received, stated that "this license plate was issued to you in error because it can be interpreted in a way which would make it obscene, profane or vulgar." The two women feel it is a direct affront on their sexual orientation, noting that, "What [the DMV] is objecting to is us proclaiming that we are lesbians." In addition to considering a court challenge, Deighan and Scout have also applied for an alternative plate which would read: "LESBIAN." Please contact the Virginia DMV and inform it that two lesbians wanting to publicly call themselves "2 DYKES" should be applauded, not termed "obscene." Contact: Richard Holcomb, Commissioner, Department of Motor Vehicles, P.O. Box 27412, Richmond, VA 23269, phone: 804.367.1341, fax: 804.367.1280. 5. Scouts and Gallagher Dishonor Family Values In the midst of newly fueled debates over providing public funding to the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) as it routinely bans gay scouts and leaders, regular USA Today contributor Maggie Gallagher attacked the Scouts in her April 22 column as being too liberal. "Boy Scouts have had to calmly endure calamity from some quarters, stigma from others (including the indignity of being banned from volunteering in national parks), a loss of income as several large corporations yanked funding, and a series of legal attacks by the ACLU and other all because the Boy Scouts refuse to admit homosexuals and atheists to the ranks," she writes. She notes the stance is based supposedly on being an organization that "stresses the values of the family." However, Gallagher laments the fact that the BSA recognizes as legitimate a variety of family forms beyond the nuclear model, including a single parent, stepparents and stepbrothers or sisters, foster parents and no parents. She claims this "game of 'let's pretend'...is a kind of coercive urge to make kids cover for adult irresponsibility by pretending it doesn't exist." While GLAAD and many others have criticized the Boy Scouts' discrimination against gay people, Gallagher first attacks civil rights advocates for challenging the Scouts for their intolerance, then strikes the organization from behind, attacking it as "anti-family" because it does not recognize the nuclear family as the sole correct model, assuming that any family not fitting this is a family borne of "adult irresponsibility." When she writes of the "indignity" of the BSA not being allowed to volunteer in national parks, she ignores the much more profound and dehumanizing indignity of not being allowed into the Scouts simply because of one's sexual orientation. Courts have ruled that the BSA has the right as a private organization to discriminate in membership. This does not mean that they are free of the consequences-sometimes very costly-that come with that decision. Finally, many nonnuclear families were planned and conceived to be that way in the first place, from single parent families to adoption to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender parented families. These alternative families, far from being irresponsible, have to jump many hurdles in order to gain the legal rights and privileges that a heterosexual nuclear family simply takes for granted. Please let USA Today know that Gallagher does a disservice not only to their board of contributors, but to all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people with her insensitive, poorly thought out and sweeping generalizations. Contact: Karen Jurgensen, Editorial Page Editor, USA Today, 1000 Wilson Boulvard, Arlington, VA 22229, fax: 703.247.6585, email: editor@usatoday.com. 6. Retirement Life Plays the AIDS Blame Game The April issue of Retirement Life, the magazine of the National Association of Retired Federal Employees (NARFE), features a column by the organization's vice president entitled, "Let's Make Alzheimer's A Politically Correct Cause," which makes the point that funding for research and care for people with Alzheimer's should be increased, but he does it at the cost of attacking people with AIDS. "Now political correctness is telling us what kind of human suffering is apparently okay," Al James Golato laments. He mentions the massive effort which activists, politicians and celebrities such as Liz Taylor have put forth to bring attention to AIDS, and says, "All of this is admirable, and I feel nothing but compassion for victims of AIDS." Unfortunately, he continues, "However, there are links between AIDS and lifestyle choices. Of course, not all AIDS victims have contracted the disease through lifestyle behavior. It should be pointed out that there is no linkage between Alzheimer's and lifestyle choices. People just get the disease." In conclusion, Golato says, "Let's take a page from the AIDS manual on how to make Alzheimer's a more politically correct cause." Clearly, Golato believes that people with Alzheimer's somehow deserve health care priority over those with AIDS because the Alzheimer's-afflicted are more "innocent." No one chooses to have AIDS, and his use of the terms "lifestyle choices" and "lifestyle behavior" implicitly mean "gay," which, by his connotation mean "less deserving." While Golato is right to look to the successes of grassroots and national AIDS efforts as a model to seek awareness and funding for Alzheimer's, his animosity towards people with AIDS sullies his central message. Write to Retirement Life and explain that Golato's anti-gay, anti-AIDS attack is unwarranted, misdirected and offensive. Contact: Carl Olson, Editor, Retirement Life, 10211 SW Barbur Boulevard #205-A, Portland, Oregon 97219, fax: 503.246.8234. 7. GLAADAlert Follow-Up: Alabama UPI-Yi-Yi! The April 21 United Press International (UPI) story about the ABC affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama banning the April 30 episode of Ellen and GLAAD and Birmingham Pride Alabama's (BPA) "Official Welcome Out Ellen Party" was chock full of misinformation, misquotes and irresponsible journalism. According to the article, "Gay rights activists in Birmingham are scrambling to arrange a satellite hook-up to view the episode, but have met with little success. Organizers say the show appears to be 'too hot to handle,' with the Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham withdrawing from a prior commitment to host a private showing." In reality, Boutwell Auditorium has given full support to the event and has never wavered. Additionally, according to Kevin Snow, BPA's media spokesperson, he never said anything like the show being too hot to handle. "Why would I say that?" asked Snow. "It's going to be the biggest lesbian and gay event Birmingham has ever seen." The UPI story also referred to Ellen Morgan's sexual orientation as "sexual preferences," and mentioned anti-gay ABC 33/40 station manager Jerry Heilman said he had, "no choice but to drop the episode, calling it inappropriate for children," but failed to articulate what specifically was inappropriate about a show with no sex, violence or profanity. To date, UPI has not issued a retraction, though after being contacted by GLAAD, it did do a more balanced story two days later. Let UPI know that sloppy journalism discredits the wire service, and that it should not only get the facts right, but should but should try to use language that is more accurate and fair towards issues of sexual orientation. Additionally, tell ABC 33/40 that their cowardice is both shameful and a denial of quality and precedent-setting programming to local viewers. To attend this exciting community event, tickets are now on sale for a suggested $5 donation through Ticketline at (800) 277-1700 or (205) 715-6000. Contact: Robin Beck, Editor-In-Chief, United Press International, 1400 "I" Street, Washington, DC 20005, fax: 202.898.8133; Jerry Heilman, President and General Manager, ABC-33/40-TV, P.O. Box 360039, Birmingham, AL 35236, phone: 205.403.3340--enter 7 and then 1; For more information about the Welcome Out Ellen Party, contact Alan Klein (GLAAD Communications Director) at 212.807.1700 or the BPA, Prideline: 205.254.9199. 8. GLAADAlert Media Round-Up: This Week Is Ellen-Tastic Unless you have been under a very large rock, you are well aware of the history-making April 30 coming out episode of ABC's Ellen and the "Come Out With Ellen" parties GLAAD is sponsoring is major cities around the country. The following are several other Ellen-inspired lesbian-themed shows leading up to the event: … After being moved from Primetime Live, the Diane Sawyer/Ellen DeGeneres coming out interview will be on 20/20 at 10:00 p.m. on April 25. … The syndicated program Deep Space 9 will re-air its famous "lesbian kiss" episode. … The April 26 edition of FOX's Mad TV will feature a sketch in which guest host Adam Arkin plays Lou Grant in the "lost episode" of Mary Tyler Moore, in which Mary Richards comes out as a lesbian. … The Oprah Winfrey where DeGeneres talks about coming out and the whole Ellen struggle will air April 30. The GLAADAlert is the weekly activation tool of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. GLAAD is the lesbian and gay news bureau and the only national lesbian and gay multimedia watchdog organization. GLAAD promotes fair, accurate and inclusive representation as a means of challenging all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation or identity. Contact GLAAD by e-mail at glaad@glaad.org or by phone at 213.658.6775 (Los Angeles), 212.807.1700 (New York), 202.986.1360 (Washington, DC) or 415.861.2244 (San Francisco). Report defamation in the media by calling GLAAD's Toll-Free AlertLine! 1-800-GAY-MEDIA (1-800-429-6334) Visit GLAAD's Web Site at http://www.glaad.org "GLAADAlert," "GLAAD" and "Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation" are registered trademarks of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Inc. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) glaad@glaad.org TO REPORT DEFAMATION IN THE MEDIA - Call GLAAD's Alertline at 1.800.GAY.MEDIA or go to the GLAAD Web Site at www.glaad.org and report through our Alertline Online. 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