Diversity Rules Magazine

3 Diversity Rules Magazine January 2015 William Edward "Billy" Glover was born Sep- tember 16, 1932, in Shreveport, Louisiana. He became active in the movement to gain equal/ civil rights for homosexual/lgbt Americans in late 1959, with Mattachine and ONE. He co- founded the Homosexual Information Center in 1968. Not too long ago an issue and acts were important to our movement. I just found a part of a newsletter we did in 1990 in which a few people discussed the issue of "Outing." I think Bill Percy may have written a book about it. I don't remember the discussion taking place, but I gather some of the people involved were Harry Hay, Morris Kight, maybe Martin Bloch, Don Slater and others. I am sure Don wrote the newslet- ter. Considering how many people, including celebrities, are outing themselves every week, I doubt many young glbt people will understand that in the early days of the movement it was an "issue," since some of our main enemies were closet queens, and some people by the 60s felt it was ok to out people. From the portion of the newsletter I have found, all involved were morally opposed to outing people, even though the temptation to expose hypocrisy is strong-as in a sense it (mainly then) implied that being homo- sexual was bad-it would not make sense to "out" some- one for being something the public liked. I quote only Morris' final thought: "At a meeting of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center I once said that to force anyone out of the closet was an arrogant and hostile act, but that it was our duty as gay and lesbian liberationists to lubri- cate the hinges of the closets so well that people could come out on their own without noise or clatter. "I believed that then, and I believe that now. Outing is popular because the majority press has taken it up, and they've done so because it is embarrassing to us. In their homophobia they're having a wonderful time playing with our lives, forcing us to take sides. A final word about Signorile. He's following the Andy War- hol 15-minute fame philosophy. He's fomented out- ing to sell papers. But now he's gotten his 15 minutes so I think it's a debate we should get out of as fast as possible." While in a timeline of movement history, this issue is not important, it was a serious philosophical issue, which, like fear of sodomy laws, is no longer valid, thanks to the work of such people as held this discus- sion. (I personally like it because once again someone says the media is NOT giving us coverage to support us, but to exploit us. I am not sure what Signorile is do- ing today, but this is a dead issue. But who today is individually and collectively discussing serious issues of homosexuality?) Outing By Billy Glover Support Diversity Rules Magazine! www.diversityrulesmagazine.com

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