From: NGLTF@aol.com Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 17:24:50 -0400 Subject: South Dakota Dispatch #2 ************************************************* National Gay and Lesbian Task Force NEWS RELEASE Contact: Robert Bray (415) 552-6448 rbray@ngltf.org 2320 17th Street NW Washington, DC 20009 ************************************************** DISPATCH FROM GAY SOUTH DAKOTA, PART 2 FIRST EVER NATIONAL COMING OUT WEEK ATTRACTS HUNDREDS OF GAYS AND LESBIANS, SUPPORTERS [Note: The following report is by Robert Bray, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force field organizer. Bray is on a 10-day organizing and gay visibility tour of South Dakota and is filing reports over the internet during the tour. He is traveling with photojournalist Rick Gerhardt from San Francisco, plus local activist Barry Wick. Bray lives in San Francisco when not on the road.] BROOKINGS, S.D., Oct. 13, 1995...It started out with a gay photo op in front of Mt. Rushmore. It's traveled through the Badlands where it encountered a gay highway patrolman on a lonesome outback road. It's toured through campuses and small towns educating people. And it's garnered headlines and TV reports from Mud Butte to Turkey Ridge. It's the first ever National Coming Out Week (NCOW) visibility tour of South Dakota -- a queer prairie fire that's sweeping through 600-miles, at least five towns and touching thousands of local folks. And it's still flaming on. First stop of the tour was Rapid City. Earlier this year local homophobes in nearby Black Hawk protested the opening of a new gay bar. Black Hawk has been described as 200 churches and one gay bar. Fundamentalist preachers launched a campaign to rescind the bar's liquor license. Someone salted the parking lot with 50 pounds of nails. Noise complaints were filed on nights when the bar was closed. Bags of trash were dumped on the grounds then litter complaints were filed. Except they forgot to take their names off the envelopes found in the trash so the gays new who was doing it. Unfortunately, the ministers prevailed and the license was revoked. That meant one of South Dakota's two gay bars was closed and the nearest place for gays to gather openly was now 367 miles away in Sioux Falls. That infuriated Barry Wick. Wick, out gay native son of South Dakota, had had enough. His great grandfather was former governor of the state. His parents were longtime political players and community leaders. The Wicks had a history of fighting for what's right. And now Wick was going to do the same. He got on the phone and called around to a handful of gay friends. He held a potluck in his basement. He implored folks to come out and get involved. He proposed forming a new gay group. The reaction from gays? Silence. Suspicion. Retraction. They told Wick to keep quiet and don't make a fuss. They told him to not be so visible. The protected their closets out of fear and uncertainty. But Wick kept on. He fought through the legislature's attempt to ban the recognition of gay marriage last February. He reached out to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund for support and assistance. Both groups responded with staff support and resources. NGLTF arranged for a computer, software and new fax machine to be delivered to South Dakota. Wick built a database of more than 200 names. A new library with some 150 titles was created. The first ever South Dakota Gay/Lesbian Resource Guide was produced and distributed. A movement was being born where none existed before. And now, out here in the Badlands, Wick is now riding in an overstuffed Oldsmobile with me and Rick Gerhardt, national gay photojournalist, as we make our way from one end of the state to the other. I had helped Wick battle the anti-gay marriage bill and assisted the locals as they carefully planned this tour. Too bad I wasn't as careful about my driving. Sure enough, there in my rearview window on state road 44 in the middle of nowhere, was a cop with his lights flashing. I was getting pulled in the Badlands with a carload of queers. Wick reached for his gay buttons. I wondered how much the fine was going to be for doing 85 in a 55 zone. "May I see your license please," said the cop. "You were speeding. Please come back to my car while I check your license out." "So where you headed Mr. Bray?," said the cop. To Vermillion, I said. "What are you going there for?" To give a lecture. "What kind of lecture?" Uh, about...civil rights. "What kind of civil rights?" Civil rights for...uh...different kinds of people. He eyed me suspiciously. I wondered why I was suddenly going back into the closet during National Coming Out Week. "Say, you're from San Francisco," he said. "I've been there. I was a Marine stationed near there. That place is certainly diverse, isn't it?." "Diverse," I thought? What does this redneck cop know about diversity. Suddenly my gaydar went off. Might as well take the plunge. Look, I said. I hope this doesn't make a difference -- but I'm gay. This is National Coming Out Week. I'm on a visibility and organizing tour. That's why I'm going to Vermillion, to teach people about gays. And by the way, are you gay? Well, I was right. He responded affirmatively. The cop on the Badlands beat is gay! I told him about NCOW. I gave him the number of GOAL, the Gay Officers Action League. I left him my email for more information from NGLTF. And he let me go with a handshake, a smile and just a warning ticket. That's how it's been all along on this tour. Queers where you least expect them. In Gayville, S.D. (pop. 120), we stopped for an irresistible photo op. Outside of town in a huge cornfield is a billboard advertising the place. A bright rainbow frames the words, "Welcome to Gayville, Hay Capital of the World." We of course changed the "H" in Hay to a "G," climbed up on the billboard and struck a campy pose for Rick Gerhardt the photographer. Passengers in others cars stared in puzzlement. At least one honked, tentatively. In Vermillion, students, faculty and staff at the University of South Dakota hosted a welcoming NCOW prairie bonfire near the railroad tracks that deliver grain to the silo elevators. The next two days we gave "Gay 101" lectures to several classes, spoke at a blur of lunches, receptions and get-togethers, conducted numerous interviews, and conducted strategy sessions with student leaders such as David Nelson of the G/L/B Student Association. David told us that the state university system, luckily, has an anti-discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation. Still, it is very difficult to get students and even tenured faculty to come out. Nelson organized a candlelight vigil to honor gay and lesbian people and to reflect on the violence, fear and discrimination we must endure, especially in rural America. The vigil was the first ever outdoors public gay event held on campus, and the first time most of the attendees had ever participated in such an event, anywhere. One women came out that night as bisexual. Several other men and women took their first steps toward affirmation and liberation. And when the student newspaper didn't cover the events to our liking, unlike all the other media in the region, we organized a letters to the editor campaign on the spot. The media coverage in advance of our arrival in Brookings, the next stop and home of South Dakota State University, was even more pervasive. The student newspaper, the Collegian, had already done several articles, calendar listings and features. And we were delighted when we noticed a giant welcoming banner over the student union that we thought at first said, "Happy Homo Week at SD State!" Actually, it said "Happy Hobo Week" in honor of homecoming and the campus mascot, not us. Nonetheless, the local gay and lesbian leadership had prepared a non-stop schedule of classroom lectures, receptions, organizing meetings, NCOW information displays, and a faculty/staff briefing. The briefing drew almost 50 people, including Phil Plumert, city commissioner (his first ever gay constituent event; queers helped get him elected), Reverend Bob Alpers of the local United Church of Christ, and several other supportive people of faith. The classroom lectures were particularly provocative. Students, most from conservative South Dakota farm families, were asked to write their questions on note cards for us to answer. My questions included, "How does a gay person know when another person is gay -- is there something like gay radar or do you hit on straight people?" "What's gay sex like? How do you do it?" "Are you born gay?" "Have you ever been in a heterosexual relationship, and if so what did you not find attractive about women?" And finally, "Have you ever been the victim of physical violence due to your sexual orientation?" (The short versions of my answers: We use gaydar and it normally works. Our sex is full of passion, love, and eroticism, but sex is not all there is to us. Although nobody really knows for certain why we are gay, and we should not be discriminated against no matter how, I believe I was born to be queer. Yes, my girlfriend's name was Leigh and she was beautiful, but men were more beautiful for me. I've been gay bashed three times.) Three local activists stand out among South Dakotan gays for their courage. Cheryl Bixby moved here from Iowa about four years ago and is now the president of Sons and Daughters, the G/L/B/T student group on campus. She was the leader of the group as it was recently seated in the Student Senate following a close vote, which made big headlines. Then there's Lawrence Novotny, long-time gay figure and South Dakota native who remembers way back to the mid-1970's and the first clandestine meetings of gays on campus. And Rocky Gilbert, 60, economics and statistics professor who came out officially on local KELO-TV, the CBS affiliate, during NCOW. They are among the many that are trying to form a new and more compassionate community. They also fear a backlash, which is already happening. For example, Rev. Sam Crabtree of a local fundamentalist church fired off a letter to every member of the Student Senate protesting the seating of the "sodomite" group. He invoked all the propaganda of discredited and disbarred homophobic psychologist Paul Cameron, such as "79% of male homosexuals have frequented baths and have other anti-social problems," and "only 2% of homosexuals could be classified as monogamous," and "even though less than three percent of the U.S. population is homosexual, one third of all child molestations involve homosexual activity." Anti-gay letters from other students have appeared in the campus paper, including one from Dan King, radio/TV senior, who said, "I think we should organize a heterosexual group to balance things out. We could call it "Mothers Boys" or "Old-fashioned Lovers" or maybe even "Don't Feel Sorry for Me, I'm Straight." And one letter from Rebecca Ratliff, freshman/ undecided major, used all the radical right buzzwords, including "Homosexuals do not need special protection or privileges." Still, gay, lesbian, and bisexual folks are pressing forward. They are bravely facing down the fear and isolation of living in rural America and coming forward in ways that are rapidly altering their towns. They have set a new threshold of queer visibility and presence in the Mt. Rushmore state below which they can never fall again. Looking out over the surrounding countryside from the top of the school's bell tower, trees blazing in autumn colors and prairie brown from the harvest to the horizon, I couldn't help but feel that gays are creating real change in South Dakota. Next stop: Sioux Falls -- and more organizing, training and photo ops. NGLTF is the nation's oldest gay and lesbian civil rights and grassroots organizing group. In the last two and one-half years alone NGLTF's Field Organizers have traveled more than 100,000 miles to some 30 towns in 28 states and trained more than 5,000 activists. ### (For more information and to make contributions contact Barry Wick and Free Americans Creating Equal Status of South Dakota, Inc., at 605-343-5577, facessd@aol.com, 13121 South Creekview Road, Rapid City, SD, 57702. Contact NGLTF's Robert Bray at 415-552-6448, rbray@ngltf.org. Photojournalist Rick Gerhardt is documenting the tour. For photos, contact him at 415-824-5300.)