Community divided over D. C. march
About 25 men and five women gathered July 18 to discuss plans for the proposed LGBT march on Washington, D.C., in October, and many attendees asserted that the local community should not support such an event.
“I just don’t think it’s a very practical thing to do,” said Maggie Childs of the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force, who went on to express doubt that the local effort would be inclusive enough of women.
Several others in attendance also raised the concern that the march was being staged without a significant trigger event and that a National Third World Lesbian Conference had already been scheduled in D.C. for the same weekend, whose supporters were planning to lobby Congress in support of a gay-rights bill.
Despite the concerns raised, the meeting resulted in the formation of an all-male 12-member local committee to provide support and advocacy for the march.
The march occurred Oct. 14, 1979, and drew nearly 100,000 people.
N.J. lesbian wins custody battle
A panel of a New Jersey state appeals court voted 2-1 to grant a lesbian custody of her two daughters on July 23.
The Gloucester County Super-ior Court gave the woman’s ex-husband — who contended that her lesbianism made her an “unfit” parent and embarrassed her children — custody of the kids in 1976. The appellate court, however, found that custody should not be dependant upon social norms.
“It may be that the community is intolerant of [the mother’s] differences and these girls may sometimes have to bear themselves with greater-than-ordinary fortitude, but this does not necessarily portend that their moral welfare or safeguard will be jeopardized,” the opinion stated.
The judges went on to write that living with their mother will prepare the children to face adversity and to understand that the “majority is not always correct in its moral judgments.”
Fed. probe ignores gay complaints
A lawsuit filed Aug. 13 by the U.S. Department of Justice against then-Mayor Frank Rizzo and other city and police officials that charged police brutality against minorities made no mention of anti-LGBT bias in the police force.
U.S. Attorney Peter Vaira said, “Blacks and Hispanics were the ones that most often received harsh treatment” by police, and that while he had heard of some instance of police brutality against LGBT people, “it wasn’t that significant.”
The U.S. Commission of Civil Rights held two days of hearings that spring to investigate police brutality, during which numerous LGBT leaders testified in regard to cases of raids at gay bars and bathhouses, illegal searches and seizes and indifference by police to LGBT crime victims.
Mary Ann Hoopes, legal counsel for the commission, said the agency had “no direct input” in the Justice Department suit.
— Jen Colletta