Dyketactics protest stops movie showing
Adapted from reporting by Denise Keiller, Mark Segal, Keith Clark and Bill Haught
After a two-day protest outside the Regency Theatre at 16th and Chestnut streets, Dyketactics successfully stopped what was meant to be a three-week run of a South American film that activists said glorified the abuse of women.
“Snuff” reached the United States in January 1976 with advertisements that called it “the film that could only be made in South America, where life is cheap,” and “the bloodiest thing that ever happened in front of a camera.” The film followed an unwitting woman being sexually abused, and then stabbed to death and dismembered.
Dyketactics, a group of lesbian activists, started protesting the Philadelphia screening on the morning of Feb. 4, an hour before the first showing, and stopped before midnight Feb. 5. Bob Levine, Regency manager, said the decision to pull the film was the result of the protest.
Fewer than 10 people saw the film in Philadelphia. Officials from Budco Theaters, which owned Regency, said they would relocate “Snuff” to the 61st Street Drive-In in Southwest Philadelphia. The officials received threatening calls about the relocation, but Dyketactics said that was not the work of its members. It’s unclear if the drive-in showing took place as planned.
Court dismisses suit to reverse antidiscrimination order
Adapted from reporting by PGN staff
Commonwealth Court dismissed a suit brought by a Pittsburgh businessman seeking to nullify Gov. Milton Shapp’s executive order barring state agencies from discriminating against gay people in employment.
The court unanimously rejected the suit but appeared sympathetic to the plaintiff’s antigay stance.
In his four-page opinion, Judge Roy Wilkinson Jr. drew a distinction between having a “sexual preference” and performing “deviate sexual intercourse.” Only the latter was illegal under state law in 1976, he said, noting the language in Shapp’s order prohibited discrimination only on the basis of one’s preference.
Wilkinson wrote that if sexual preference led to deviate intercourse, that individual “continues to be subject to the penalties of the law.”
Attorney Michael Hahalyak, representing the businessman Richard Robinson, indicated he would appeal the decision.
“Shapp is trying to foist his views upon the people,” Hahalyak said, “and his views are inconsistent with our beliefs and traditions.”
— compiled by Paige Cooperstein
