REPRINTED FROM THE OCT. 1-7 L.A. WEEKLY

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        WE'RE HERE, WE'RE QUEER, WE'RE FINISHED -- MAYBE
        Queer Nation's (possible) demise reflects the
        turmoil within the gay movement in the Clinton
        era.
                By Doug Sadownick
 
     On September 15, an anonymously sent fax from Queer Nation/L.A. was
sent to media outlets and activists declaring that the "in your face"
militant group had disbanded: "We're here, we're Queer, we're fabulous,
we're finished."  The announcement, which quoted popular-song lyrics but
listed no specific reason for the group's demise, stunned activists.
"Although I didn't agree with its anti-leadership rhetoric," says Torie
Osborn, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,
"Queer Nation forced us to deal with issues relating to gender, violence and
visibility that pushed our movement forward."
        Since its inception in 1990, Queer Nation "bashed back" against
homophobic attitudes with a certain panache -- using phone zaps (overloading
offices of anti-gay politicians and others with phone calls), unruly
demonstrations, and pointed slogans to promote queer visibility.  The group,
far more anarchistic than ever ACT UP, spearheaded the 1991 L.A. street
protests when Governor Pete Wilson vetoed gay civil-rights legislation; more
recently, Queer Nation attracted headlines with its Oscars action,
protesting homophobia in Hollywood.  Almost more important, though, Queer
Nation served as a model of queer values in the mainstream gay community,
against which it often battled.
        News of Queer Nation's demise, however, may be exaggerated.
According to Wayne Karr, a veteran Queer National, the fax was sent by an
activist peeved at having to give over the Queer Nation fax machine to the
lesbian direct-action group Puss-n-Boots.  "There's never been an agreed-
upon ending of Queer Nation," contends Karr.  "We've been on hiatus, but the
core people are consistently active."  Adds Judy Sisneros, a member of Queer
Nation, ACT UP and Puss-n-Boots, "Queer Nation is not an organization, but
an entire community.  One person doesn't have the authority to say it's
dead."
        But Sisneros believes that Queer Nation's day in the sun is over.
"It became clear during the Oscars action that just seven people were doing
all the work."  In addition, she adds, sexism forced the most active women
to split off to form Puss-N-Boots.  Karr concedes that "Queer Nation served
an important purpose, but now may be too general.  Queers are going to focus
on more specific projects, like monitoring the right wing, or zapping
Hollywood."
        For some activists, the waning influence of Queer Nation is a direct
result of a movement in convulsions now that the immediate threat of the
Reagan-Bush era has ended.  Ironically, never has gay and lesbian power been
so influential, or so tenuous.
        Clinton's embrace of gay issues and the grassroots gay organizing
around his election established the gay community as a formidable voting
bloc with mainstream political muscle.  That historic moment was symbolized
by the hundreds of thousands who attended last April's March on Washington
for Gay and Lesbian and Bi Equal Rights.  The national media not only
covered the march but did so favorably, augmenting the strides the movement
seemed to be making.
        But profound setbacks in recent months have shaken the gay
movement's confidence in itself, proving it has to do more than raise money
for candidates (an unprecedented $3 million went to Clinton alone) and show
up at festive marches.  On the national front, Clinton's failure to lift the
ban on gays serving in the military -- and the movement's failure to either
disengage itself from a losing battle or organize more effectively against
the right wing to win the battle -- has sapped crucial resources and damaged
expectations.  In addition, the appointment of less-than-radical Kristine
Gebbie to the office of AIDS czar angered AIDS activists who expected more
aggressive politics from the new president.
        Nationally, the movement is contending with the resignation of the
Task Force's charismatic Osborn just six months into her job as executive
director.  (Previously, Osborn headed L.A.'s Gay and Lesbian Community
Services Center.)  In addition, ACT UP chapters are dwindling from
exhaustion and the death of members.  Theresa Mendoza, a Chicana who attends
Queer Nation meetings, sees the upheaval in the grassroots as part of the
failure of the mostly white gay movement to galvanize people outside its
usual constituencies.  "We've failed to address the larger issues of racism
and health care," she says.  "And with Papa Clinton in the White House,
white gay people have gotten apathetic."
        Others see opportunity in all the tumult.  "This is an incredible
time of flux and internal eruptions," says Osborn.  "The politics of protest
formed during a genocide are going to, by necessity, change when you have a
friend in the White House, albeit one who is capable of betraying you."  She
calls this rocky period "Stonewall II" and adds that gays are experiencing
"a cataclysm of visibility" in which old-guard AND cutting-edge
organizations alike are struggling to respond to transformed political
environments.  "ACT UP/D.C. may have ended," she says, "but look at ACT
UP/Houston, which just started and is flourishing, or the rise of gay campus
groups."
        On the one hand, as Osborn puts it, the right wing has never been
more organized on a city-by-city level; on the other, thousands of queers
are coming out of the closet and calling the Task Force looking for ways to
respond.  "The core lesson of the military defeat," she says, "is that while
the gay movement has visibility, we have no political power, no strategic
plan and no real decentralized grassroots organizing."  The movement, Osborn
adds, requires retooling because the opportunities are so enormous.  "The
preconditions for change exist, but the movement organizations are outdated."
        Which is precisely why, she says, she is leaving the Task Force: to
help create the systems that would translate momentum into organizing
philosophies and then into action.  She plans to write a book and become a
free-lance movement management consultant.
 
        Osborn's resignation points up the growing rift that exists in the
gay movement between unpaid street activists and the growing cadre of gay-
movement professionals.  Washington, D.C.'s Michael Petrelis, one of the
most relentlessly outspoken militants of the movement and a co-founder of
ACT UP/D.C., Queer Nation/D.C. and a dozen other projects, says, "We were
promised a dyke diva, and the diva didn't deliver."
        Osborn says, "I found myself in an executive-director position in an
organization that was growing so fast it dragged me inside.  I was hired at
the Task Force last September before I knew Clinton was going to win and
change the world.  I'm willing to change with the world."
        Even the traditional divisions are undergoing change -- in part
because so many veteran street activists now occupy positions of influence.
Roland Palencia is a case in point.  He co-founded VIVA, a gay and lesbian
Latino arts organization, and Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos; he now works
as vice president and chief of operations of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
"Never before in human history," he argues, "have gays and lesbians made
livings on a full-time basis by contributing to their own movement,
controlling how millions of AIDS dollars are spent, concentrating
information in the gay community."  Palencia foresees painful sacrifices --
"the burnout of the non-paid volunteer activist" -- and maintains that a
system must be put in place to foster dialogue and financial support between
volunteer leaders and the grassroots establishment.  ("We were getting
national coverage for our Oscars action," says Queer National Judy Sisneros,
"and we had $25 in the bank.")
        On September 7, D.C.'s Petrelis announced the formation of Gay and
Lesbian Americans, a coalition of grassroots leaders demanding an improved
dialogue between volunteer activists and gay professionals.  Gay and Lesbian
Americans is taking on the traditional national organizations with a highly
publicized campaign that criticizes the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF) --
the D.C.-based gay-advocacy group that took a leading role during the
military controversy -- for ignoring activists' demands that the group
provide a partnership with other gays.  "If HRCF held public forums," argues
Petrelis, "we wouldn't have to take out ads in gay papers to get its
attention."
        Petrelis' hybrid activism offers a taste of what's to come -- if the
gay movement can survive its current state of exhaustion and confusion.
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