columbus ohio community festival

Bet your shit together & plan on Joining in the festivities.

Booth forms available after April 16 at Tradewinds, Open Door Clinic & the Wesley Foundation.

You can sell your work at the Community Festival at the 16th ave mall June 1.23.

gay

artists and craftspeople welcome

Lavender Starship/Page 3/May 1973

MAKE NO MISTAKE!

(Reprinted from the LAVENDER PAGES, newsletter of the Cleveland Gay Activists Alliance.)

Let us make no mistake about our oppression: it is real, it is visible, it is demonstrable. In Ohio a homosexual is legitimate as an individual but illegitimate as a participant in a homosexual act. And every faggot and lesbian in this country survives solely by sufferance, not by law or even that cold state of grace known as tolerance. Our humanity is questioned, our choice of housing is circumscribed, our employment is tenuous, and our friendly neighborhood tavern is usually a mafioso-on-theJob training school for dumdum hoods. It is just such grievances as these which have sparked the revolutionary movements of history.

And, while we are lying on cur laurels, feeling safe and self-satisfied that we have accomplished some things, and we have rattled some chains and some people have listened, we are making some mistakes. In our apathy or whatever one wants to call it, we have somehow managed to nearly slide ourselves back into the closet. Our impact is deadened, we are going legitimate!

It is not enough to try to equate to someone why we are homosexual, to explain the difference between them and us, for while they may be mildly interested in being educated about such a taboo subject, they are not impressed. They are not impressed with the fact that while we are busy explaining ourselves, arguing philosophical viewpoints that the homosexual oppression does go on, that laws are being sunmoned up to keep us seperate

from them".

To borrow some words, "we are a revolutionary group of homosexual women and men formed with the realization that complete sexual liberation for all people cannot come about unless existing social institutions are abolished. We are going to be who we are. At that same time, we are creating new social forms and relations, that is, relations based upon sisterhood, cooperation, human love and uninhibited sexuality."--taken from a statement issued by the N.Y. CLF. I use that statement to explain just wait any gay revolutionary group is about. We have to be the ones to for the new social institutions, we cannot ask or educate, for we have no time, people have been trying that for years-generations. It is not our responsibility to educate the masses. We can guide them, we can help then when and if we have time. Put our task is more profound, the task of gathering together all the gays and offering to them a place to meet, to talk, to relate. We can snow them with selfpride by showing them that as a unified group of people, we can bring about the changes that will insure their rights. That is the responsibility of every member of any gay organization, to work their damnedest to bring together the homophile community, to make sure that there is a strong sisternood and brotherhood. To make sure that when a law needs to be changed we have the cooperation, the voices. "Them" have got to know that you do exist, that you are not just a statistic.

So come join us, join a real gay revolution!

Ann Weld-Harrington

LESBIAN/WOMAN

LESBIAN/WOMAN-Published by the Glide Foundation and Bantam Books, S.F. 1972 by Del Martin. and Phyllis Lyon.

LESBIAN/WOMAN is essentially a document of the struggles many Lesbians endure and eventually deal with. A triumph and experience to read, it brings to the reader a feeling of pride that at last someone with whom we can identify, has produced an honest and non-compromising book on the Lesbian issue.

The main emphasis of the book seems to be directed to the straight community, pointing out the gread diversity amongst the Lesbian subculture.

The women that Del and Phyllis write about are so но men who represent a cross section of any society. Some are secure with their identity while others are not, and some are the stereotypes

while others are not. The one problem that is unique with all of them is the one of not only being a woman, but of also having the added difficulty of being gay. The double oppression being emphasized. The ultimate focus is spent on belying the myths of the straight community about the Lesbian

Woman.

In discussing their own relationship of lasting durability and their "comingout" experiences as well as their eventual gravitation to the "Lesbian Liberation" movement, the reader draws much reinforcement from her own similarities with them and their "struggles". It reminds us of our own commitments to ourselves and our lifestyle.

The book, 310 pages long, gives a good history of the forming of the Daughters of Bilitis, but certainly does not emphasize the polCONTINUED ON PAGE 14