[Clipping: Building A Powerhouse: Fund-raising prowess, experienced leadership earn Dallas gays national clout] Part: 3 of 4

                                
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Sunday, July 11, 1993
Fund'raising prowess earns Dallas gays national clout
•I
City Council as an openly gay
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‘It’s almost like every
other successful endeavor
in Dallas. We have a
game plan, we have goals,
we have a time line, we
have milestones. It’s
really pretty managerial.”
— Louise Young,
gay rights advocate
Continued from Page 1A.
former president of the Dallas Gay
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on Texas’ 114-year-old sodomy law.
But what it is not is a community
whose tactics rely much on public
protests.
Bill Hunt, Mr. Monroe believes,
was one of Dallas’ last “angry
voices.” Until his death in January,
Mr. Hunt was one of the city’s most
outspoken AIDS activists.
“Bill Hunt,” Mr. Monroe says,
“was no pea under the mattress. He
was a big rock. When he died, the
last angry voice went with him.
“My view of Dallas is that people
take the status quo. Acting up and
protesting and demonstrating are
just not the Dallas way. It’s the same
in the gay community. There’s just
not that outcry of anger.”
But there has been desperation.
The foundations for the 1990s
power structure of gay Dallas were
laid in the 1970s. But it was the crisis
years of the 1980s that shaped today’s
community.
“AIDS, really, that’s what
happened,” Mr. Monroe says.
Many of gay Dallas’ male leaders
from the 1970s and 1980s are dead.
People like Bill Nelson, Bill Hunt and
Terry Tebedo.
Deb Elder, president of the Dallas
Gay and Lesbian Alliance, recalls
them all and sighs, “Some great
people have gone into the wind.”
But the Dallas gay community has
not only survived, it has thrived.
AIDS brought a sense of urgency to
Dallas that transformed the gay
power structure in three significant
ways:
■ The virus destroyed “the
closet” for many people, bringing
with it “a visibility and voice,” says
John Thomas, executive director of
the AIDS Resource Center.
■ As gay leaders became ill and
died, the doors opened for lesbians
such as marketer Susan Gore, who
describes the old power structure’s
reputation as “an old boys club for
gay white men.” Only last year, the
word “lesbian” was added to the
Dallas Gay Alliance, a sign of the
★
★
candidates stood on our issues —
nobody asked how they stood on our
issues,” recalls Louise Young, who
for 17 years has worked to build a
gay political power base in Dallas
and who was, in 1979, the first
woman to head the Dallas Gay
Alliance.
The 1978 election was the first
real effort to target gay and lesbian
voters. Mailing lists were collected,
and candidates were interviewed,
although few were interested in any
gay recommendations.
Then AIDS hit.
“For the first time, people in our
community could see the life and
death consequences that office
holders’ decisions had,” Ms. Young
says.
In 1985, and again in 1987, Bill
never know... who live in the sub-
urbs, have their careers and their so-
cial lives. You’ll never see them on
TV or quoted in the newspapers.”
But they, and other Dallas gays
and lesbians, raise a lot of money.
Last year’s Black Tie Dinner, at
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Harris, “you could be arrested for
touching somebody in a bar.
“We’ve gone from that to dancing
at the Anatole.”
But in that time, gays and lesbi-
ans have made Dallas’ conservatism
work for them.
“People call the Dallas area con-
growing inclusion of women.
■ And because early on, there
were no services for the sick and
dying, Mr. Waybourn says, that job
fell to the gay community by default.
“To do nothing,” he says, “was not
acceptable.
“AIDS showed us that we could
run our own organizations and raise
our own money and provide our own
services.”
“The influence of how we dealt
with AIDS over the last 10 years is
probably the key factor in Dallas
developing the type of influence and
ability and structure that it has,”
says Craig McDaniel, the first openly
gay member of the Dallas City
Council.
“Dallas has been recognized as
one of the centers in the country
that has emerged as helping itself.”
At first, the money came in $1
bills collected, Mr. Monroe says, by
drag queens in bars.
Today, a host of AIDS fund-raisers
are held in the city. In May, a seated
dinner at Stanley Korshak for 220
people, one-quarter of them gay or
lesbian, raised $16,500 for AIDS Arms
Inc. This year’s Life Walk —
sponsored by Oak Lawn Community
Services and the largest AIDS
services fund-raiser in Dallas — is
expected to surpass the $245,000 it
raised in 1992.
Bar scene
Long before AIDS forced the gay
community in Dallas into
organizing, politicking and fund
raising, the bars were where people
came together.
“Our culture is created in the
bars, and people forget that,” Mr.
Monroe says.
During World War II, the two gay
bars in Dallas were Club Reno,
across from where the Dallas Public
Library is today, and Lena’s Place.
There were a few tables where gay
men gathered in the back of the
Adolphus Hotel bar. Phil Johnson,
then a soldier in the Army,
remembers those years.
Twenty years later, on New Year’s
1965, Mr. Johnson and four friends
met at his North Dallas home and
formed their own gay social club,
“The Circle of Friends,” as an
alternative to the bars.
“We were not going to change
laws or start the revolution,” says
Mr. Johnson, curator of the Gay and
Lesbian Archives. His collection
documenting gay life dates to the
1920s and fills one room.
But they were there for the
Gay Alliance a lot more groups were
clamoring for a voice.
"That was the point.”
Refined tactics
Fund raising was also becoming
more sophisticated. The first Black
Tie Dinner — which today benefits
the Human Rights Campaign Fund
and local charities, including AIDS
organizations — was held in 1982.
The Dallas-Fort Worth Federal Club
began organizing in 1985.
“Why do so many people get
involved with the Dallas Crystal
Charity? They like to put on the dog.
The gay community does, too,” says
Candy Marcum, co-chairwoman of
the local Federal Club and a member
of the Human Rights Campaign
Fund’s board of governors.
“If you are a member of the D-FW
Federal Club, you are known as a
major donor. There’s a certain kind
of clout.
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Seelig, artistic director of the Turtle
Creek Chorale, carries a certain
Alliance, wanted to start the Gay and cachet into segments of Dallas not
Lesbian Victory Fund in
Washington, D.C., to raise money for
gay and lesbian political candidates,
he turned to his old friends in
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candidate.
“I think Bill Nelson
revolutionized the gay and lesbian
politics in this town,” Mr. Monroe
says. “He started speaking out on
what was going on. William
Waybourn polished that to the
penultimate. He knew what sold. By
the time I was president of the Dallas servative. It is,” Ms. Elder says. “But
the Dallas area seems to have been
rather effective. The fact that Wil-
liam Waybourn branched into a na-
tional group in Washington, D.C., is
something to look at.”
Ms. Young is describing political
success, but her words can be ap-
plied to many of gay Dallas’ suc-
cesses.
“It’s almost like every other suc-
cessful endeavor in Dallas. We have
a game plan, we have goals, we have
a time line, we have milestones.
"It’s really pretty managerial.”
Cooperation
The experience of AIDS Arms Inc.
is an example.
In 1986, when AIDS cases were
appearing in Dallas, AIDS Arms Inc.
was formed to prove that there
would be community cooperation if
the city was awarded a Robert Wood
Foundation grant. AIDS Arms Inc.’s
job is to link people with everything
“They’re a lot of people who you’d from medical to legal to housing
services.
Other cities such as San Francisco
and Chicago did not get the original
grants, says Rodney Holcomb, acting
executive director of AIDS Arms Inc.
But Dallas, which now has 60
affiliated agencies working with the
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A joint meeting of the board of di-
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Club’s parent organization, the
Human Rights Campaign Fund, will
coincide with the upcoming black tie
dinner.
“That, I think, is a sign of our rec-
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age,” says Gregory King of the
Human Rights Campaign Fund’s
Washington office.
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revolution’s birth in 1970. All 12 of
the original gay and lesbian
members of the Metropolitan
Community Church of Dallas
belonged to the Circle of Friends.
Many of Dallas’ gay leaders and
organizations emerged from that
congregation. Mr. Waybourn likens
the church to an incubator.
This month, the church
celebrates its 23rd birthday, making
it the oldest gay and lesbian
organization in the city.
First parade
Tlie first Gay Pride Parade was
held in downtown Dallas two years
later. By 1976, the predecessor of the
Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance —
the Dallas Gay Political Caucus —
formed. By the decade’s end, early
activists were trying to raise an
awareness about Texas’ sodomy law.
But Oak Lawn, already home to many
gays and lesbians, was politically
conservative and voted Republican.
“There was no publicity as to how which former presidential candidate group, did.
Even people otherwise willing to
attend ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to
Unleash Power) demonstrations
reflect gay Dallas’ conservatism.
“The concerns voiced in ACT-UP
meetings are, ‘Will the cameras be
there? Will the newspapers be there?
Will I have to say my name?’ ” says
Clint Packer with ACT-UP.
What is most telling about this
community is what is prized.
“(Dallas Mayor) Steve Bartlett
signed proclamations recognizing
various gay and lesbian leaders,” Ms.
Elder says. “I have one in my office.
It’s framed, with his signature.
“It’s slow progress that might not
be evident to someone not involved
in the movement.”
Mr. Monroe of the Foundation for
Human Understanding says: “For
years, we’ve been planting the seeds
for change.
“They are just now coming to
fruition.”
★
★
otherwise welcome to gays.
“He has access to people in Dallas
who would never talk to me,” Mr.
Waybourn says. “But,
philosophically, Tim Seelig and I
wouldn’t differ on anything.”
It is an organized community,
where thousands of candles have
already been purchased for a
candlelight response to the Texas
I (Military) Ban campaign, it relied on Supreme Court’s expected decision
Dallas. Not all the money for the Lift
the Ban campaign came from Dallas.
But without the 3,000 Dallas
members, “we wouldn’t be able to do
that,” says Mike Grossman, a Dallas
member of the fund’s national board
I of directors and governors.
Mr. Mixner, the California
activist credited with brokering the
national gay vote for Mr. Clinton,
puts it this way:
“Dallas is one of two or three of
the most powerful gay communities
I in the country... a very key ingred-
- lent in the emergence of the gay and
lesbian community nationally.”
The gay power structure is like
much of the city itself — conserva-
! tive. Black tie fund-raisers at hotels
such as the Loews Anatole, not angry
street protests, are also the way of
■ gay Dallas.
But despite the money and the in-
I fluence, fear persists.
‘ ‘The Dallas gay community is
j more closeted than other cities,” says
one businessman, who fears reper-
cussions if his colleagues find out
. that he is gay. “It may just be that we
• give money because we can’t be out. ”
Mr. Clinton’s presidential cam-
paign collected several hundred
j. thousand dollars from Dallas gays
1 and lesbians. Bob Krueger picked up
$75,000 from one Dallas “houseparty”
for his U.S. Senate campaign. Dianne
Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, the
U.S. senators from California, each
received $15,000 to $20,000 from pri-
vate fund-raisers during their 1992
campaigns.
Gay Dallas’ checkbook activism
doesn’t end with the political season.
In September, the gay community’s
12th annual Black Tie Dinner is ex-
pected to raise nearly $400,000 —
money that will benefit local chari-
ties, national lobbying efforts and
political candidates.
Money talks
Mr. Mixner speculates that the
amount of money raised in Dallas
may be the highest per capita 'of any
gay community in the country.
“It’s not what is just accomplished
for Dallas and Texas, but what has
been done to build the movement,”
says Peri Jude Radecic, deputy
director of public policy for the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
in Washington, D.C.
“Dallas,” she says, “is establishing
itself as a political powerhouse.”
The diversity of the gay and
lesbian community is one of its
strengths. Lori Palmer, until
recently a Dallas City Council
member whose district included a
large number of gays, says one of the
major achievements in the past
decade is the leadership that gays
and lesbians showed in fighting
AIDS, from fund raising to providing
services to educating local decision-
makers.
But their influence, Ms. Palmer
says, has a broader base: Most
j significant is the participation on
mainstream city and community
boards and commissions, as well as
professional and business
organizations.
“They’ve participated in a
number of important efforts in the
city besides AIDS and political
activism,” she says.
The strength of the community’s
organization was displayed during
the January 1992 Dallas City Council
hearing on the hiring of openly gay
or lesbian police officers.
“We met with some of our friends
on the City Council — Chris Luna
and Lori Palmer — and strategized
to see what to do behind the scenes,”
recalls Bruce Monroe, president of
the Foundation for Human
Understanding, the umbrella group
for the AIDS Resource Center, the
Nelson-Tebedo Community Clinic for
AIDS Research and the Gay and
Lesbian Community Center.
“We went to our organizations
and said, ‘Come hell or high water,
this is the day that we have to stand
up for our rights.’ ”
A core group stationed at City
Hall started a phone tree. Taking
shifts and ordering out for pizza,
they dialed for hours.
The council voted to maintain its
ban on gay and lesbian officers.
Nonetheless, Mr. Monroe says, that
was a significant day.
"There were people there who
have never done something like
that,” he says. “The average person
goes to work, gets paid, goes home
and lives with a lover.
“To see those people come down
was a momentous change.”
/ The Dallas gay community is the
kind of communitv where Timothy
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