Subject: PITCH WEEKLY (KC): LESBIGAYS AWARENESS WEEK IN LAWRENCE, KANSAS
From: Kevyn Jacobs <[email-masked]>
To: "Kansas Queer News [KQN]" <[email-masked]>
Cc: GLB-NEWS <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 20:39:54 -0500 (CDT)

FROM PITCH WEEKLY
(METRO KC AREA WEEKLY)
APRIL 13 - APRIL 19, 1995
=========================

SEARCHING FOR JUSTICE, ENDURING THE HATE

by Hugh Curran

LesBiGay Awareness Week In Lawrence highlights the struggle and diversity
of lesbians, gays and bisexuals.

Lesbian Wanda Henson described the December night in 1993 when her
daughter warned that a group of men was coming to kill her and her partner
in the feminist camp the two had built in rural Mississippi. The decision
had been made, unofficially, following a town meeting in nearby Ovett on
how best to drive the women from their land.

Henson, who prides herself on her strength and sturdy Southern heritage,
paused momentarily before her audience in KU's Kansas Union Ballroom but
lost the struggle against her tears.

"One man stood up at the meeting and said, 'We made a mistake 30 years
ago, and today it's time to put on the white sheets,'" Henson said
sobbing. Y came from a family who is on that side. I watched the hatred of
my father and uncles. I told my daughter that night, 'If I thought these
men would do anything to take me from you, I'd leave this land. But this
isn't about us. It's about justice. They have taken our liberty, and we will
stand up and fight to get it back."

Justice, equality and the diversity of lesbians, gays and bisexuals were
the central themes of the April 2-8 LesBiGay Awareness Week in Lawrence.
The annual event, organized by the University of Kansas' student group
LesBiGay Services, featured workshops and lectures from national figures
such as Olympic diver Greg Louganis and Michelangelo Signorile. Events
included a lunchtime drag show on the KU campus, a Pride March through
downtown Lawrence and a Saturday night Queer Prom, titled, "The Prom You
Never Had."

In its tenth year, Awareness Week is one of the largest gay, lesbian ant
bisexual gatherings in the Midwest, drawing thousands of participants from
as far away as Los Angeles and New York, said Bill Friend, head of the
week's organizing committee.

"We wanted to do something really big this year to celebrate LesBiGay
Services 25th anniversary," Friend said. The 150 member gay student group
is the third oldest in the nation. Organized shortly after the Stonewall
riots in New York, the group originally called itself the Gay Liberation
Front. The university was forced to acknowledge the organization after
losing legal battles in the early '70s.

Friend said KU is a much warmer place hr the gay community today, with
one-third of the week's funding coming from the student senate. Other
university groups helped fund specific events, such as the KU Swimming and
Diving group donating funds to help bring Louganis and a sorority donating
tickets to his speech.

Louganis, who weeks earlier had made headlines hr coming out and
discussing his HIV status during an interview with Barbara Walters, was
the single biggest draw of the week.  More than 800 attended his speech
where he discussed his decision to come out, and the pain and
discrimination he experienced in the world of diving while closeted.

In a surprise announcement while introducing Louganis, Eric Moore,
director of LesBiGay Services, announced that he had discovered he was HIV
positive three weeks earlier. He said he had decided to step down from his
post out of concern for his health.

Besides Louganis, the other speakers for Awareness Week were:

*Brenda and Wanda Henson, founders of Camp Sister Spirit in Mississippi.
The two became a national story and were featured on Oprah Winfrey after
their feminist retreat was targeted by local residents and the state's
Christian Right. Following threats and harassment ranging from dead animal
left on their driveway to stolen mail, gunshots and intruders, U.S.
Justice Department negotiators went to the area but they were rejected by
the group that heads the opposition towards the camp, Mississippi For
Family Values. The two women lectured on their experience and held a
workshop on community activism.

*Bisexual activist and author Lani Ka'ahumanu, who organized the Bay Area
Bisexual Network, held workshops on bisexual issues and how to eroticize
safe sex. She was recognized by Ms. magazine for her Safer Sex Sluts
program.

*Civil rights activist Tim Wise, who worked to defeat former KKK member
David Duke's political campaign in Louisiana. Wise held workshops on
political organizing and combating intolerance and gave a lecture on "The
Political Assault on Minorities in America."

*Outing advocate Signorile, author of "Queer in America: Sex, Media and
the Closets of Power."  A former editor for the now- defunct "OutWeek" and
currently a columnist for "Out" magazine, Signorile outed
multi-millionaire Malcolm Forbes. During Awareness Week, he held a
workshop on activism and the media and lectured on "Journalism, Mass Media
and the Closet."

It was the lecture by Wanda and Brenda Henson, who have chosen the same
surname, that launched the week's activities. They listed over 100
incidents of harassment from neighbors and townspeople since building
their camp the summer of 1993.

"There's a bus that goes by everyday and he the driver would slow down and
honk his horn," Wanda Henson said. "The kids would then lean out the
windows screaming 'Faggots, faggots!' We wondered when they were going to
get it right. Finally, one day a little boy in the middle of the bus
started screaming Dykes! Dykes!' So we cheered him. Here was his adult bus
driver teaching these children to hate."

The 120-acre camp has been unable to get supplies such as hay and wood
after companies that deliver such goods have either refused to sell to the
camp or were harassed after doing so.

"When a group of drunken armed men entered the camp one night, Wanda
Henson said a group of lesbians attending a weekend conference there
surrounded the men and talked them into giving up their guns.

Henson said the local sheriff refused to follow-up on cases of trespassing
and once served a warrant on the camp so that he and his deputies could
search for two missing children who later turned up unharmed.

When FBI agents based in Mississippi arrived following complaints by the
women, they were little better than the local police, Brenda Henson said.

"They kept asking about our 'lesbian compound,'" Brenda Henson said. "This
was right after Waco, so we asked them to please call it what it is - a
camp that focuses on 21 different issues, not just lesbian issues. Their
next sentence was, 'So in your compound...'"

Local politicians also were of little help. The area's Democratic
congressman attended an event to raise funds for a legal fight to remove
the women from their land.

The Hensons said the Justice Department is looking into their case, but
that gays and lesbians are not mentioned in civil rights laws. "They told
us that there just isn't anything to protect gays and lesbians, and that's
why we need to be included in anti-discrimination laws and language,"
Brenda Henson said.

The women face a legal challenge later this month from five neighbors who
have filed a nuisance complaint against them. "One woman's complaint is
based on the fact that she has short hair and is single and worries that
when they 'come to kill the lesbians' she'll be mistaken for one of us,"
Brenda Henson said.

Henson said lesbians and gays face the same kind of hatred around the
country, but in different forms. "In the South, we tell each other we hate
each other," Henson said. "Up here you just don't talk about it.
Historically, change has always started in the South because we talk about
our hatreds."

Awareness week organizer Friend agreed, saying progress for the gay
community will begin to come from outside the gay meccas of LA, New York
and San Francisco.  "If you put something like (Awareness Week) on in New
York, you wouldn't even have to advertise it and you'd get tons of
people," Friend said . "We had to reach out to gay groups in eight
surrounding states. That's the kind of networking we need to push in more
areas."

Manhattan-based Signorile agreed."We're not going to progress with just
New York, LA and San Francisco," Signorile said in an interview with
"Pitch Weekly." "I think those (places) are where the organized movements
needed to start. Those are places where people go to feel more confident,
they're where the political power is concentrated, but we're going to need
a grassroots movement in every state, city and town."

Signorile was the grand marshall for Saturday morning's pride march
through downtown Lawrence that attracted more than 200 people as well as
anti-gay activist Fred Phelps, a Topeka, KS, minister.

Phelps and 18 supporters, including two children, stood across from the
gathering parade holding signs that said, "Get back in the closet," "No
Fags in Heaven" and "Two Gay Rights: AIDS and Hell." Helping to lead the
parade was a contingent of drag queens holding a bright pink sign reading,
"Fred Phelps' Fan Club."

Scattered throughout the parade were signs hr the group Simply Equal,
whose members support including sexual orientation in Lawrence's human
rights ordinance. The issue will be debated later this year.