Secrecy, Dark Rooms, and Patrtic Drag Queens: A Gay Night Out Mosw

This is an terview wh Don Sclair, one of the foundg members of the Northwt Gay People's Alliance. They brought a natnal gay rights anizatn and held a weekend nference 1976.

NWGPA was not a stunt anizatn on the UI mp, and th was not subject to the whims of the UI stunt body like the Gay Alliance was at WSU, but bee this anizatn existed a llege town was impossible to draw clear divisns between the two.

One of the most important thgs to e out of the early NWGPA was a lol documentary tled Sweet Land of Liberty: Mosw/Pullman Gay Communy which aired April 1976 on KUID-TV. The half-hour program foced around the liv of several gays and lbians Mosw and Pullman and featured terviews wh Pron, Rishlg, Nielsen, WSU stunt David Bliss, and many others.

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In the film, gays and lbians laid out the many stggl they faced the area, om Mosw landlords who refed to renew the leas of upl after fdg out they were gay, to the basic ncerns about tax, health re, marriage, and employment equi that gay people faced all around the untry.

The climax of this anti-gay mpaign was when someone fired a shotgun at the doors of the Mosw Grace Baptist Church, whose Reverend Melv Frank was an outspoken opponent of gay equaly. Frank appears the documentary and do not blame gay people for the attack which jured nobody but did e property damage, notg that uld have been done by someone tryg to rile up anti-gay sentiment.

RSIA'S LARGT GAY NIGHTCLUB STRIV TO BE A HAVEN DPE HORRIFIC ATTACKS

In one voiceover, Kirk reads out negative quot om some letters to the edor om the lol newspaper, the Daily Idahoan, cludg one that lled on gay people to be kept ernment mps. All the negativy which gays and lbians exprs the film make the public criqu of the movie all the more nfg om a morn perspective.

Many the public plaed that Sweet Land of Liberty had ma the regn appear open and tolerant of homosexualy.

Part of this was bee many gays and lbians the film did talk about fdg some happs the regn.

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Buyg to narrativ about g out, Kirk openly qutns whether the rints of the Paloe would be react wh tolerance if some of the succsful gay people town fally me out of the closet. Apparently, the suatn that Mosw and Pullman might, possibly, tolerate some gay people, was too much for those rints who exprsed fears that gays would now see the cy as iendly and want to move to the regn en masse. This is an terview wh Vicki Rishlg, one of the foundg members of the Northwt Gay People's Alliance.

Dpe threats of censorship and the homophobia which seemed to rpond to all public acts for gay equaly durg the 1970s, Sweet Land of Liberty remaed an tnal tool and a ttament to ral gay experience Mosw Idaho. Inditive of this succs was a December 1976 Argont multi-page feature tled “The Gay Liftyle. Bliss wrote an acpanyg article that explaed why he felt gays and lbians experience prejudice.

MOSW GAY MAP

Lastly, the paper clud a statement om NWGPA that explaed the history of the group and s goals of helpg gay people, tg society, and anizg polilly. The anizatn provid a list of books that people uld nsult to learn about homosexualy, cludg Bailey’s Homosexualy and the Wtern Christian Tradn, Bevoir’s The Send Sex, and Marce’s Eros & Civilizatn.

NWGPA and WSU’s Gay People’s Alliance published a monthly newsletter lled Update for Actn, late tled, Paloe Gay News. NWGPA meetgs were attend by 40-45 people and anizers did their bt to balance the anizatn’s polil activi wh the social needs of ral lbian and gay people. NWGPA, and s later eratn the Inland Northwt Gay People’s Alliance which lasted to the 1990s, never succeed gettg the state to add non-discrimatn ordanc.

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By makg gay and lbian issu public—whether through letters to the paper or lol TV documentari—NWGPA ma clear that queer people exist ral areas. This was perhaps bt summed a 1977 letter to the Argont by Liz Olds tled “Gay…and Proud of It. ” Olds wrote: I stand wh all gay people everywhere, and we stand together bee we have a right to.

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