WHAT A DIFFERENCE A GAY MAKES

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A GAY MAKES

March 16-22

U.S.: Grammy Award-winner Donna Summer makes her Carnegie Hall debut in a concert to benefit the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and Fight Against AIDS. * Chasing Amy, about a man falling in love with a lesbian, wins a Spirit Award for best supporting actor (Jason Lee) and best screenplay (Kevin Smith). * In California, an opinion by Chief Justice Ronald George says that the Boy Scouts are not a business covered by state anti-discrimination laws and can exclude gays and boys who don’t believe in God. * A Salt Lake City high school club, the East High Gay/Straight Alliance, files a lawsuit charging the Salt Lake City Board of Education with discrimination for banning the group and not other student groups. * Thailand: Activists denounce a government-backed plan to set up a 10,000-bed AIDS colony at a Buddhist monastery in LopBuri because it would separate PWAs from society.

1993

U.S.: More than 200 protesters are arrested while demonstrating against the exclusion of the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization from the St Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City. * At a Republican banquet in McLean Va., Oliver L. North and others make derogatory remarks about ‘fags’ and ‘soul brothers,’ causing a storm of controversy. * Detroit City Council joins more than two dozen other cities, in boycotting Colorado over the passage of Amendment 2. * William Percy, co-author of Shattering The Conspiracy Of Silence, a book about ‘outing,’ offers $10,000 to the first person who successfully outs a high-ranking military official, a Catholic Church member, or a Supreme Court Justice. * Norway: Gay and AIDS activists protest a proposed law that would allow the Government to place HIV infected people in internment.

1988

U.S.: Edmund White: ‘I’ve lost over 20 friends (to AIDS). I’ve seen a world vanish—a culture that has been oppressed in one generation, liberated in the next, and wiped out in the next.’ * Ireland: The Irish Congress of Trade Unions publishes Lesbians and Gay Rights in the Workplace-Guidelines for Negotiations.

1983

U.S.: San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein issues an executive order that allows gay city employees to take bereavement leave if a lover dies. * Southern Living magazine profiles the little town of Gay, in Georgia, ‘a place where the past gives life to the future.’ Formerly a booming cotton and farm town, Gay had fallen into disrepair, until ‘antique dealers found Gay and refurbished the old brick stores.’ Now visitors stroll along Gay’s main street inspecting the offerings of its six antique shops.’ * Britain: Only three weeks after the death of British traitor Donald Maclean in Moscow, Anthony Blunt, the ‘fourth man’ in a ring of Cambridge-educated aristocrats who spied for the Soviets, dies at age 75. Both Maclean and Blunt were gay.