Franklin Kameny discusses GLAA's origins
(photo by Brian Mahoney)

GLAA 25th Anniversary

The Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington held its 25th Anniversary party on Tuesday, April 16, 1996 at the Charles Sumner School, 17th and M Streets, NW. Guests enjoyed champagne, hors d'oeuvres, and a slice of anniversary cake cut by veteran GLAA member and legendary activist Franklin Kameny. Among the guests were former Human Rights Campaign Fund Executive Director Tim McFeeley, and two White House staffers: Eric Fanning, Associate Director for Political Affairs, and Paul Yandura, Assistant to Marsha Scott, Deputy Assistant to the President for Political Affairs.

Also present to congratulate the non-partisan group on its silver anniversary were former DC Councilmember and Republican mayoral candidate Carol Schwartz, Mary Jane De Frank of ACLU/National Capital Area, Carl Schmid of the Capital Area Log Cabin Club, Jeff Coudriet of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, Dr. Pat Hawkins and Dr. Robert Ray of Whitman-Walker Clinic, and Wanda Alston of the DC Coalition of Black Lesbians, Gay Men and Bisexuals.

President Rick Rosendall (GLAA's 21st) announced the launching of GLAA's new world wide web site, and distributed printed copies of it. Dr. Kameny then gave a brief "capsule history" of GLAA, which was founded on April 20, 1971, in the aftermath of Kameny's race for DC's Delegate to Congress (which, while unsuccessful, received enough support to demonstrate the political strength of the gay community).

Tim McMullen presents Council proclamation
on behalf of Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans
(photo by Brian Mahoney)

Tim McMullen of Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans' office (Evans was stuck in bad weather in Minnesota) presented a proclamation from the Council declaring April 16 "GLAA Day in the District of Columbia" (it should be noted that another councilmember who took the lead in obtaining the proclamation was Ward 4 Councilmember Charlene Drew Jarvis, who also could not be present).

Mayoral greetings were brought by Ms. Ayo Bryant, Director of the Mayor's Office of Diversity and Special Services. Cartwright Moore of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton's staff read congratulatory remarks that the Congresswoman had read into the Congressional Record that day. Kerry Lobel, Deputy Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, brought greetings from NGLTF.

Cartwright Moore reads Congresswoman Norton's remarks from
the Congressional Record as Rick Rosendall looks on.
(photo by Brian Mahoney)

At the conclusion of his remarks, Rick Rosendall raised a toast to the seven former presidents of GLAA who have died: Mel Boozer, Bill Bricker, Bob Johnson, Mayo Lee, Steve Smith, Cade Ware, and Jim Zais. After paying tribute to them and to other gay men and lesbians who have died, Rosendall then quoted the words used by President Clinton about the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and his colleagues who were killed on a mission to Bosnia: "Their day on earth was far too short... But we must remember that what they did while the sun was out will live with us forever."

Special thanks to all of GLAA's anniversary benefactors, patrons, and sponsors, including the following:

Benefactor ($250)

Councilmember Jack Evans, Ward 2
Craig Howell
Paul Kuntzler and Steve Miller
Whitman-Walker Clinic

Patron ($100)

Barrett L. Brick
Michael P. Brinkman
Capital Area Log Cabin Club
Jeff Coudriet and Robert Richardson
Mindy A. Daniels and Donna Byers
Roger Doughty
Gertrude Stein Democratic Club
Paul Greenberg and Rick Billingsley
Human Rights Campaign
Rick Rosendall
Neal E. Sheldon

Sponsor ($50)

American Civil Liberties Union/National Capital Area
Ronald R. Collins
Arrington Dixon
Councilmember Kathy Patterson, Ward 3
Lillian and Carey Daniels
Bob Dardano
Alan Gambrell
Robert F. Miailovich
Daniel Najjar
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
Nancy Polikoff
Richard Rausch
Carol Schwartz
Ann C. Wilcox, Ward 2 Board of Education

Remarks on GLAA's 25th Anniversary

by Rick Rosendall
delivered at Charles Sumner School
Washington, DC
Tuesday, April 16, 1996

As I've struggled to get GLAA's new IBM Thinkpad configured successfully, I've thought of a recent IBM commercial, part of their international series with the slogan, "Solutions for a small planet." This one features the leader of an African male chamber chorus telling his men that they have the wrong note, and then he hears the right note coming from a nearby computer that a little girl is playing on, and he goes over to her and she shows him the music program that she is using. And the chorus leader is as delighted as the little girl with the discovery.

Well, that man is not an actor, he is in fact the leader of one of the world's most renowned vocal ensembles. He is none other than Joseph Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and he and his colleagues have gone from Apartheid to Paul Simon's Graceland to IBM commercials. In fact, they are in town this month at the Kennedy Center. And through it all, from then till now, they have remained confident and joyous and unaccountably magnanimous.

Similarly, what impresses me most about Frank Kameny, and did 25 years ago when I saw him on television during his campaign, is the utter confidence and enthusiasm with which he plunges into battle. As he will tell you, he is not in the habit of losing his wars. And he is not about to let someone else dictate the terms of discussion or frame the public debate in a prejudicial way. He is fighting for full and equal citizenship -- "no more, but not one whit less."

Nelson Mandela writes, "I was born free -- free in every way that I could know. Free to run in the fields near my mother's hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village.... It was only when I began to learn that my boyhood freedom was an illusion, when I discovered as a young man that my freedom had already been taken from me, that I began to hunger for it...."

What makes Mandela one of the towering statesmen of our time is that his struggle for the freedom of his own people grew into a struggle for the freedom of all. In his words, "A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness." Mandela's words remind me of Dr. King's words to white ministers from his cell in the Birmingham City Jail, chiding them to stop hiding behind the safety of their stained glass windows and begin taking their faith seriously enough to act on it.

Mandela's personal testimony also reminds me of a day twenty-two years ago, when, during the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment hearings, a black congresswoman from Texas electrified the nation by giving her own testimony. If you are old enough, you will recall her description of how she had been left out of the original Constitution, how gradually over two centuries, through amendments and court rulings, she became included. And then she said, "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total." And she made it clear that she was not going to sit by and watch it being trampled. In that moment, Barbara Jordan held the lightning in her hand, and she became America. It was a transforming moment for our country.

We too have a personal stake in the Constitution, and through our work in GLAA we are, again in Dr. King's words, challenging our nation to live out the true meaning of its creed. You have heard some of the specific ways that we have done this, some of the victories that we have won. It is that act of challenging, that informed and persistent political engagement, that holds the key. We gain our freedom by asserting it. And the surest way to preserve the freedoms we have won is by exercising them -- in Bayard Rustin's words, moving from protest to politics.

Salman Rushdie has written: "'Our lives teach us who we are.' I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own ... then you might as well be dead."

At the bottom of GLAA's home page you will find a blue ribbon symbolizing the fight against censorship on the Internet; but far more important than that symbol is the fact that we are using the Internet as a tool in our struggle. Somewhere, a gay or lesbian teenager will be surfing the web -- maybe after figuring out how to disable their parents' anti-gay screening software -- and, in addition to all the horrible things that the smaller-government crowd is trying to protect us from (perversely enough by giving government more control over our lives) -- in addition to those horrible things, that teenager will come upon our web site, and will thereby encounter one more way out of isolation and helplessness and self-hatred. It is for that young citizen that we do our work.

To paraphrase Mandela: "We have taken a moment here to rest, ... to look back on the distance we have come. But we can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and we dare not linger, for our long walk is not yet ended."

Thank you.

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