Subject: Man Sues OCA for being labeled homosexual
From: [email-masked] (Robert Hansen)
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 16:41:34 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.motss

(reprinted from The Oregonian - without permission - 11/4/93)

FAMILY, FRIENDS TELL OF PAIN FROM HOMOSEXUAL LABEL

* Lon Mabon tells a trial of a $500,000 defamation suit that it was a simple 
mistake *

EUGENE - Lon Mabon, head of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, testified Tuesday 
that it was a simple mistake when he labeled the head of Springfield's Human 
Rights Commission a practicing homosexual.

But George Wickizer's wife, friends and acquaintances told a Lane County 
jury that they and others assumed the statement meant Wickizer.  The 
resulting harassment and snubs have changed his life, they said.

When Mabon made the statement at an October 1991 news conference, Wickizer, 
who is heterosexual, had been the only man ever to head the human rights 
panel.  He had resigned two months earlier.

He is suing the OCA and its officials for $500,000, claiming the defamed him 
with the label.

Mabon acknowledged Tuesday that he read the statement when the OCA began its 
first Oregon anti-gay-rights initiative measure campaign in Springfield.  
But he said he meant to refer to another man whom he mistakenly thought had 
been appointed to the commission.

The group sent a second news release the same day but did not call a second 
news conference to correct the error, Mabon said.

"We felt at the time that it was a simple statement that could be easily 
corrected," he said.

Wickizer's wife, Sylvia, said the mistake was a disaster that's changed her 
husband from a warm, outgoing family man into a distant, cold one.

They received dozens of harassing telephone calls, passing motorists shouted 
insults and people they know well have ignored them in public, even 
recently, she said.

Their youngest son has been called names at school, she said, and their 
marriage has suffered.

Her husband has withdrawn from their social life and their sex life, she 
said.  "He just told me he was sorry for the way things were, but he just 
couldn't even stand the word 'sex,'" she said.

Friends and acquaintances told the jury Tuesday that people they knew 
assumed George Wickizer was homosexcual because of reports on the news 
conference.

A year after Mabon made the statement, a co-worker asked, in front of 
others, if Wickizer was gay, said Brian J. Byrne, a director of the credit 
union Wickizer manages.

  ROBERT HANSEN - Oregon Health Sciences University - Portland, Oregon USA
                                   - - - -
       "I was born with my mother's features and my father's fixtures"
                    Sister Paula, transsexual evangelist