Badpuppy Gay Today

Monday, 21 April 1997

With a heartening Saturday afternoon turnout 2,000 strong, Greenville's lesbians, gay men and their friends challenged the city's leaders, both religious and political, to recognize them as a living, self-respecting part of the larger South Carolinian community. The demonstration, spirited, earnest, and proud, gave yet more evidence of a growing gay self-esteem pouring impressively onto city streets in rural areas of the South, a willingness to make what is for many a heroic stand for the right to be themselves in LesBiGay America.

The demonstration was occasioned in part as a response to last year's Greenville County Council resolution, a condemnation of same-sex-affection as incompatible with community values.

Gay and lesbian college students smiling; various churches proclaiming the need for inclusion; and female couples wheeling child-filled strollers all took part in the march, which moved with what one observer called "a wondrous dignity" along Main Street to City Hall Plaza. Most of the marchers were dressed in an ordinary fashion. There was an occasional cross-dresser. Police were present in significant numbers to maintain proper decorum between marchers and fundamentalist hecklers. One protester's sign read, "No Special Rights for Sodomites," but the gay marchers messages were less angry with such signs as "My Spiritual Values Include Tolerance."

Kerry Lobel, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force told the crowd, "I hope your governor who is golfing today can hear us loud and clear. We want equality, nothing more, nothing less." One speaker after another, including Lobel, criticized Governor Beasley because of his plans to attend an April 26 weekend rally of seething anti-gay religious forces.

Tony Snell, co-chair of the South Carolina Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement, urged the Greenville County Council to think twice about its exclusion of so many citizens, and he petitioned the Governor to cancel his forthcoming participation in next weekend's congregation of religious zealots, a "rally of bigotry."

Lottie Gibson, the singular County Councilwoman who had voted against the anti-gay stance taken by her Council colleagues, attended the march and told listeners that the occasion reminded her of the black civil rights marches she's been attending since the 1960's.

Hecklers from Citizens for Traditional Family Values put an estimated 5,000 signs in suburban neighborhoods surrounding Greenville, urging neighbors to support "family values and not homosexual values." The fundamentalist/evangelical-based group also distributed 200,000 pamphlets attacking "the gay agenda."

One personage who "loved others more than he loved himself" held up a sign at the marchers, reading "Clean Up America. Kill Yourself!" A woman from Taylor told reporters she only wanted the gays and lesbians to know that "there is an answer to their sin, and that is Jesus."