GAYS AT ODDS OVER 'Q-WORD' SOME HOMOSEXUALS PLAN PROTEST OF 'YEAR OF QUEER'
PARADE THEME
San Francisco Chronicle (SF) - MONDAY, June 7, 1993
By: David Tuller, Chronicle Staff Writer
Edition: FINAL  Section: News  Page: A17

TEXT:
Hundreds of thousands of people will march behind a banner proclaiming 1993
as "the year of the queer" at this month's Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day Parade
-- but some gays say they are so upset by the use of the 'q-word' that they
will carry protest signs or stay home altogether.

    For  months,  the  city's  gay and lesbian newspapers have been running
letters  denouncing  as  hurtful  and  insulting  the  decision  to include
"queer"  in  the  parade's official slogan. Although many find the phrase
delightfully  irreverent  and  to  the  point, others say that it sends the
wrong  message  to straight people who are just learning how to accept gays
as part of the country's cultural mix.

    "Among  ourselves  it's OK -- I have no problem with it at all", said
San  Francisco  resident  Steve  Newberger, an outreach worker for homeless
people  with AIDS. "But because it's a derogatory word, it doesn't promote
the cause or help educate the people we need to educate".

    The  controversy  over  the parade theme comes when the gay and lesbian
movement  is  at  a  crossroad.  In  the  past  year,  gay issues assumed a
prominent  place  in  the  presidential  campaign  and  have  dominated the
national news as never before.

    But as gays and lesbians gain greater mainstream acceptance, a division
in  strategy  has  emerged  between those who want to present themselves as
similar  to  heterosexuals and those who defiantly insist on their right to
be different. In many ways, say those on both sides of the issue, divergent
feelings about the word "queer" crystallize the conflict.

    "I  identify  as  queer because to me the word asserts that we are, in
fact,  a  people  with  a  culture  that  is separate and distinct from the
heterosexual  culture",  said  Masha  Gessen,  a San Francisco journalist.
"But  the  word  is an affront to people who have built their lives around
the idea that being gay is OK because they are just like everybody else".

    Parade  co-chair Ggreg Deborah Taylor said he is tired of the issue. He
wishes  people  would focus on more positive aspects of the $310,000 event,
such  as  the  fact that the organizers have put the parade back on a solid
financial footing.

    "In  San Francisco, we're so safe that we have a lot of time for navel
gazing", Taylor said. "We have real enemies and issues that should be our
real concern".

    The  parade  theme has resurrected an emotional debate that first swept
the  community  several years ago with the birth of the protest group Queer
Nation. The group represented a brash and rebellious attitude among younger
gays  and  lesbians  impatient with what they perceived to be their elders'
more cautious approach to gay rights issues.

    In  the  years since, the word "queer" has gained broad currency as a
term  that  includes  bisexuals, transvestites and transsexuals, as well as
gays  and  lesbians.  Many  gay  publications  routinely use the word. Some
groups,  such  as the Bay Area-based high-tech organization Digital Queers,
also have adopted it.

    Dave  Ford, a San Francisco publicist, said that the community's use of
the  word is an effort to defuse its power to hurt. "By making it our own,
we  are  disempowering  and subverting the epithet and taking away a weapon
from non-gay people", he said.

    Many of those who embrace the word are in their 20s and 30s. Many older
gays, however, say they find its resurgence particularly painful because it
was used to insult them so many times during their childhoods.

    "That word was used in such a vitriolic, poisonous way, and it is very
difficult for people to heal from those scars", said Wiggsy Sivertson, 57,
a  lesbian  activist  and  a  professor  of  sociology  at  San  Jose State
University.

    Although  Sivertson  finds the parade theme "disrespectful", she said
that fighting over the issue is "a waste of time". Members of the Gay and
Lesbian  Alliance Against Defamation, who are sponsoring a forum later this
month  to  discuss  the  word  "queer",  agree that the nasty tone of the
debate is counter-productive.

    "Rather  than  beat  each  other  up  over  this,  we  should  have  a
constructive debate and then move on", said Jessea Greenman of GLAAD.

    But  feelings  about the issue remain strong. Norm Nickens, an official
with San Francisco's retirement system, said he intends to stay home "with
a stack of books" and read in his back yard.

    "I  was  born in 1955, and in the course of my lifetime I've gone from
being  colored  to  Negro to black to African American, and I consider that
progress",  said Nickens. "But I do not consider going from fag to gay to
queer to be progress".

                Copyright 1993 The San Francisco Chronicle