Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 11:25:50 -0500
From: WRITERPOOL@aol.com
To: gapool@ucs.indiana.edu
Subject: Bloomington News
A Bloomington Retrospective, or Postcards From the Edge
by Gary Pool
Looking back on the old year, from the perspective of two months into the new, the single event that sticks out in my mind as a symbolic frame of reference, a defining moment, if you will, for Bloomington's GLB community occurred in January of 1995.
It was the seating of Republican John Hostettler as our 8th District Representative in the U.S. House. There is hardly a more pro "traditional family values," nor a more rabidly anti-gay, member to be found among all those bumptious "freshmen" congressmen we heard so much about throughout '95. It will be recalled that Mr. Hostettler went out of his way, last fall, to lead a very mean spirited attack on domestic partners benefits for District of Columbia employees. This cheap shot, legislative assault easily succeeded in the eradication of the program, even though the benefits package did not consume a single dime of federal money. He also opposed increased funding for AIDS education and was a key supporter of attempts to curtail federal programs that provide assistance to Americans living with HIV/AIDS.
Meanwhile, as Mr. Hostettler was busy in Washington, tirelessly doing everything he could to cut funding for federal AIDS programs across the board, back in his home district, and throughout the nation, the epidemic raged on, claiming scores of young lives each day.
Among those whose passing was particularly poignant for the Bloomington community were Jay Sprinkle, who died on April 26th, and Scott Burress, who was gone but a scant two months later. This is certainly not to say that Jay's and Scott's deaths were any more tragic or important than any of the countless others who succumbed to AIDS last year. It was just that so many Bloomingtonians, gay and straight alike, knew them so well and bore witness to their long, arduous struggle with this insidiously evil plague.
Perhaps in a somewhat more propitious vein, the Office of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Student Services at Indiana University completed its first full year of operation as an official university agency. The growth of the office was nothing short of phenomenal, according to Coordinator Doug Bauder. "A number of people asked me if things slowed down for us this summer," Doug said, in September. "They certainly did not!" The number of inquiries and referrals increased from 90, the first month, to over 500 monthly at present. The office's homepage on the World Wide Web averages 2,500 "visits" per month. Unfortunately, however, due to a deal struck by the university, in order to placate another tin-pot politician, Republican State Representative Woody Burton, the GLB office is prohibited from using any so-called "public monies" (I.e. tax dollars, since, as everyone knows, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered folk don't pay taxes, right?) to support its budget. As a result, the office is constantly beset with financial difficulties, and may have to curtail some of its activities in 1996 as a result.
The most conspicuous bright spot, on this otherwise rather dismal landscape, exists fifty miles to the so@ast of Bloomington, in the little town of Seymour. It is there that Rhea and Butch Murray live. The courage of these two exceptional people in speaking out forcefully in support of their gay son (within a community whose hostility toward gays and lesbians far exceeds most of our abilities to imagine) is a beacon in a long, dark night of intolerant hatred. As Rhea said, in her remarks at the opening of the "Love Makes a Family" photo exhibit at the I.U. Center for Excellence in Education in early November,"I had been taught that being gay was unnatural, but what could be more unnatural than a mother who rejects her own child?"
Rhea and her son, Bruce, went off to Washington in December because they wanted to have an opportunity to talk to the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee that was holding its so called "Parental Involvement and Social Issues in Education" hearings.Rhea and Bruce wanted to tell the congressmen what life was like for gay and lesbian teens in a savagely homophobic society, how humiliation and physical violence lay in wait for gay kids down every high-school corridor in the nation. But the committee's chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, refused to let them testify, being more interested in the lies and half-truths that the friends and fellow travelers of religious extremist Rev. Lou Sheldon had to say.
Eventually the Murray's painful truths will be told, though. Rhea is writing a book about her own coming out as the mother of a gay child, and ABC News has taken a very keen interest in the story.
GLB Student Support Services at I.U. Is getting its fund-raising act together. The office will survive, with or without the "public" money to which it is every bit as entitled as any other facility operated by a state-funded university.
Jay and Scott? What of them, and the legions of others who have suffered and died so needlessly from AIDS? They will live on in the hearts and minds of all of us who love them and keep their memory alive by defending the rights of people living with AIDS everywhere with intelligence, compassion and diligence until HIV and all its attendant evils are banished from the planet.
As for Mr. Hostettler -- well, you know, we've kind of got into the habit of holding congressional elections every couple of years around here. Young John (who has lately taken to not announcing his so-called "town meetings" to the general public in the hope his opposition won't show up) might just be looking for another job, come January, 1997.
Woody Burton? Maybe we shouldn't hope for too much. After all, this is still Indiana.