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Growth changing gay rights groups
By Nancy Feigenbaum
Sta ff Writer
year after the U.S. Su
preme Court opened the doors
of Texas A&M to Gay Student
Services, 10 years after GSS was
founded, the gav community
continues to operate with a pe
culiar combination of activism
and secrecy.
GSS helps with Gayline, runs
a roommate service and invites
speakers like Dr. Donna Daven
port of Student Counseling to
address the group.
It also quietly “recommends”
(rather than endorses) a candi
date for student body president
and plans a packed Gay Week
schedule with almost no ad
vance publicity.
Like any minority group, GSS
has two roles. One is to turn in
ward and provide a safe haven
for the members of its commu
nity. The other is to reach out
and establish its place on cam
pus.
GSS is having its fair share of
trouble with both.
“It’s been normal to lose fly
ers at a higher rate than other
groups do," savs Marco Roberts,
president of GSS. .
M he group has put up
flyers at 11 p.m. only to find
them gone in an hour — all of
them.
“It was beginning to cost us
an enormous amount of mon
ey," Roberts savs.
Finally GSS organized a pa
trol of several people armed
with walkie-talkies and a cam
era to walk around campus af
ter posters were distributed.
They have done this three times
so far, Roberts says, and the
problem has eased since then.
The group’s posters also have
been vandalized. On one poster
“Womens' Rap Group" became
“Women's Rape Group” and
“Gay Student Services” became
“Gay Stud Vices.”
Mf GSS has trouble get
ting its service messages
through on campus, it has the
opposite problem with political
candidates. The group recom
mends Brett Shine for student
body president, but both Shine
and Roberts fear the effect of
publicizing the recommenda
tion.
Roberts is afraid that if pub
licity hurts Shine’s chances in
the election it will discourage
remembers when Shine cam
paigned at the dormitory in
1985.
“He definitely was anti-gay,"
savs Tom Tagliabue.
Shine says he “can’t condone'’
the gay lifestyle but says his at
titude towards gay rights
changed in the last year and he
supports the right of GSS to par
ticipate on campus.
Other candidates for student
body president say they did not
seek a GSS recommendation, ei
ther because of the group’s
small size or simply because
thev were not seeking endorse
which outlaws homosexual ac
tivity.
.liGA’s president did not
want to be interviewed but an
other member agreed to speak
on the condition that her pen
name, Kate Weaver, be used.
Weaver, who left GSS to join
LGA, says the main problem
was GSS’s refusal to use the
word “lesbian” in its name.
“Men and women are very
different,” she says. “We don’t
feel that we’re the same lifestyle
at all.”
Weaver says that GSS seemed
anti-woman and anti-feminist.
Women were discouraged from
contributing anything that
wasn’t strictly about homosex
uality to the group’s newsletter,
Weaver says.
Roberts sees the difference in
the groups as “pro-unity versus
pro-representation. ”
The 1985 recognition of GSS has freed the
gay community to concentrate on other is
sues. In the process, the dual role of GSS as
a service organization and a political or
ganization produced an actual split.
future candidates from seeking
a GSS backing.
At the same time, though, he
hopes publicity will encourage
liberal voters on campus to fol
low GSS’s lead and create a
stronger voting block to attract
politicians.
“The fact that we endorsed a
candidate last year (Mike Cook)
and he managed to come in
second place at least proved
that we’re not that much a lia
bility^,” he says.
The question is, will liberal
groups be willing to follow the
man Roberts has picked?
GSS was approached bv more
than one student body presi
dential candidate. At a March
26 meeting candidate Jim
Cleary told the group he is
proud of the student senate res
olution admitting recognition
of GSS. Cleary voted in favor of
the resolution.
Shine says he did not.
A student who was a Davis
Gary Hall floor representative
ments of any kind. Gay rights,
themselves, were not men
tioned as a reason.
oberts expects a block
vote of 100-200, although the
group has a membership of 40.
At the March 26 meeting Rob
erts asked members of GSS to
spread the word during the
Tuesday gathering at The
Crossing, a gay bar.
The 1985 recognition of GSS
has freed the gay community to
concentrate on other issues. In
the process, the dual role of GSS
as a service organization and a
political organization produced
an actual split.
In the Fall 1985 semester a
new group was formed. Les-
bian-Gav Activists is so young
it’s difficult to characterize.
The group has somewhere be
tween eight and 12 members
and is currently involved in
raising money to repeal Section
21.06, a Texas criminal statute
However, members of both
groups say that despite their
differences thev get along and
often work together. Graduate
student Ramsey Sealy, a mem
ber of both GSS and LGA, savs
there has been no split in the
gay community, but the two
groups serve different purposes.
LGA members characterize
their group as the more politi
cal of the two.
ealy says the creation
of LGA was a natural out
growth of the recognition of
GSS.
“After GSS was recognized, 1 ’
Sealy says, “the next step was to
have a political organization
that dealt with gay issues.”
The conservative atmosphere
at A&=M has had two effects on
gays, he savs. It can cause them
to be “more closet}?’ or get
them more politically involved.
Most people come under the
first category, he says, though
some have had both reactions.