Gay And Lesbian

The story of gay politics in the 1990s has been, in large part, a tiresome Oedipal drama. Parent-ally alienated gays have acted out their unresolved adolescent rebellions in public. It wasn't always so. Once upon a time, the gay rights movement was about rights, not arrested development. As Martin Duberman related in his social history "Stonewall" (1993, Plume, $14.95), the movement began in 1969 when a group of queers in Greenwich Village fought back for the first time as police raided one of their bars, the Stonewall Inn. Before Stonewall, gay life had been a clandestine affair involving constant police harassment and even frequent arrests of bar patrons.

No one can say for sure how it started, but dollar bills with the words "gay money" or a pink triangle stamped on them are surfacing around the country, including in Baltimore.The stamping is being done by gay men and women who want to prove a point. And the practice appears to be growing like the national deficit."The purpose is to show the amount of money that gay consumers spend," says Richard, who declined to give his last name.Richard doesn't want his full identity known -- not because he is gay, but because it is illegal to deface money.

Beginning next week, Baltimore gays and lesbians will be able to pick up one book and flip through listings of businesses that either are gay-owned or court homosexual consumers.The Baltimore/Washington Gay and Lesbian Community Yellow Pages has about 400 advertisers, is free to consumers and will be available at selected area businesses."We've got everything from woodworking, yoga lessons, yachting, music, skin care, to health professionals listed," said Sharon Alt, co-owner of the Atlanta-based Chapter 2 Publishing Co. Inc. "It's not just a bar guide.

Every year on July 4th, Americans celebrate the signing of a document that declared the equality of all people. How sadly ironic that a Catonsville organization has brusquely denied a request by a gay and lesbian veterans group to march in the local Fourth of July parade. The action prompted Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-7th, to cancel his plans to take part in the parade, for which we commend him.The Catonsville Celebrations Committee, the organizers of the event, explained the decision by saying the presence of the Gay and Lesbian Veterans of Maryland could threaten the safety of spectators and other participants.

Mayor Martin O'Malley has agreed to restore funding to the city's Community Relations Commission, which handles civil rights complaints and had been slated for deep cuts in the mayor's budget for next year. At a meeting this week with gay and lesbian community leaders -- who had heavily lobbied the mayor to restore CRC's funding -- O'Malley said he planned to cut about $100,000, much less than first proposed. Last month, the mayor had proposed a 26 percent cut to the anti-discrimination agency's budg- et, from $949,485 to $704,618, triggering concerns among some city officials and minority groups, particularly the gay community.

The winter's chill that marred relations between Mayor Martin O'Malley and his supporters in the gay community was all but forgotten in yesterday's bright sunshine at Druid Hill Park, where cheers and applause greeted the mayor at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore's annual Pride Festival. O'Malley took the festival stage to announce the creation of a Gay and Lesbian Task Force, made up of eight community activists and representatives of every city agency. The task force will meet four times a year to help frame city policy on issues raised by gay and lesbian activists, O'Malley said, and it will also serve "a trouble-shooting function" to prevent misunderstandings between the gay community and City Hall.

Baltimore area school officials and the National Education Association quashed rumors and a possible controversy yesterday by denying plans to celebrate Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual History Month in October.A survey of Baltimore area school systems shows they have no plans to celebrate despite assertions from a conservative women's group that the NEA called on teachers to observe the event.Parents prompted by a mailing from Concerned Women for America and by radio talk shows have been calling some area school systems asking whether plans have been made to observe the month.

The Gay and Lesbian Veterans of Maryland won't be the only people noticeably absent from the Catonsville July Fourth parade.Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a 7th District Democrat, has decided not to march in the parade as a result of the Catonsville Celebration Committee's decision to exclude the gay and lesbian group from the festivities."

The Gay and Lesbian Veterans of Maryland won't be the only people absent from the Catonsville July Fourth parade.Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a 7th District Democrat, has decided not to march in the parade as a result of the Catonsville Celebration Committee's decision to exclude the gay and lesbian group from the festivities."

BOB HATTOY, 56 Gay, lesbian advocate Bob Hattoy, an advocate for gay and lesbian issues who accused former President George H.W. Bush of doing nothing about AIDS during a speech at the Democratic National Convention, has died in Sacramento, Calif., of the disease. In 1992, just after learning he had AIDS, Mr. Hattoy delivered the DNC speech. "I don't want to die," he said. "But I don't want to live in an America where the president sees me as an enemy. I can face dying because of a disease, but not because of politics."