Date: Sat, 19 Feb 1994 23:36:23 -0800 (PST)
From: Chris Hagin <chagin@netcom.com>
Subject: (fwd) Justice Joins In Anti-Gay Case (fwd)

	WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two Justice Department mediators are in a tiny
southern Mississippi town trying to calm tensions and avert
violence over a feminist camp run by two lesbians that has
neighbors, led by some clergymen, in an uproar.
	The dispute in Ovett, Miss., is the first case of anti-gay
harassment and threats tackled by Justice's Community Relations
Service. Attorney General Janet Reno overcame a legal obstacle to
order the service into the hamlet of 400 because, as she wrote a
gay-rights group, ``I consider the threat of violence in Ovett to
be real.''
	Reno's order was another sign of the administration's
sensitivity to gay issues. Earlier this week, President Clinton
wrote a letter opposing state and local referenda designed to block
gay civil rights.
	Last year, the Senate for the first time confirmed an openly gay
official, nominated by Clinton, for a senior position in the
Department of Housing and Urban Development. But Clinton angered
many gay activists by watering down his plan to end the ban on
homosexuals serving openly in the military.
	Last month, Reno ordered the FBI to investigate after Wanda
Henson, 39, and Brenda Henson, 48, who set up Camp Sister Spirit on
a 120-acre former pig farm, received a handwritten threat in the
mail. Mailing such a threat could be a federal offense. They also
have received threats by telephone and have locked the lavender
cattle gate at the camp entrance.
	The couple, who consider themselves married and share the same
last name, have 20 women in residence helping to rebuild the farm.
They want to hold workshops on sexual harassment and abuse and
women's legal rights.
	``The situation in Ovett has clearly been dangerous since the
time a dead dog was hung on the Hensons' mailbox and town meetings
were held denouncing the women and pledging to drive them from
town,'' said Peri Jude Radecic, director of the National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force, which first sought Reno's help in December.
	That month, 250 people attended a meeting in Ovett where
speakers expressed fear the lesbians would recruit their daughters
and denounced homosexuality. ``It's taught against in the
Scriptures,'' said Ray Thornton of the Baptist Ministry Association
of Mississippi.
	In January, 350 people gathered at a meeting organized by the
Rev. John Allen, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Richton, who
said, ``We are being invaded by activists with a radical agenda:
... people who are different and want to change our community.''
Donations were collected for a lawsuit aimed at closing the camp.
	Radecic applauded Reno on Friday for finding the justification
to use the Community Relations Service, which is authorized by law
to enter disputes based on race, color or national origin, but not
those arising from sexual orientation or religion.
	Reno signed an order Thursday limited strictly to the Ovett
case, transferring the legal authority of the Justice Department's
civil rights division to advise any citizen on any civil rights
topic to the Community Relations Service.
	Reno wrote Radecic, ``The intolerance and bigotry demonstrated
by some of the people of Ovett has no place in this country.''