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Pen Points
Letters to Gay Today |
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Martina & Equal Donations
Her status as a celebrated wealthy spokesperson for the queer movement led me to search her name at a web site for Federal Election Commission (FEC) public records. To my small surprise, Navratilova has donated a sizable amount of cash, $11,250 to be precise, to candidates and committees, all heterosexual, stretching back to 1990. Why not hit a few balls of equal donations to lesbians and gays, I wondered. What reason was there behind her choice to refrain from contributing to open lesbian Rep. Tammy Baldwin's historic win of a Wisconsin Congressional seat last November?
To start, I sought out high-profile names and quickly learned how easy it was to search this electronic library. For example, actress Ellen Degeneres forked over $1,000 last spring to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and that was the extent of her federal largess. Degeneres's life-partner and fellow actress Anne Heche also gave $1,000 to Boxer, who has a solid pro-gay, abortion and AIDS voting record. The film world's Catherine Saalfield, a wealthy Manhattan heiress and documentary movie maker, also chose not to contribute to any lesbian or gay candidates. She has however coughed up $9,950 for heterosexual politicians since 1990. As you can see, practically everyone makes checks out rounded to the nearest ten. Breaking this rule consistently is legendary Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim with donations like $238 or $514. What show tune queen worth her tiara can't warble a few of this talented boy's tunes? Zillions? He gave zip to gay candidates. Where did he put some of his royalties? All of his donations, totaling $10,049, were directed to the ASCAP Legislative Fund for the Arts, a political action committee. On the plus side for lesbians who did contribute to a lesbian, or a long- rumored lesbian politician, there was author Rita Mae Brown. Her one rubyfruit donation was in 1997 for $250 to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-MD. Rest assured, Mikulski possesses a high rating from HRC for her votes on issues of importance to us. Only size queens will compare Brown's amount to Navratilova's much larger donations. In a sexual category all her own, singer Madonna Ciccone's sole political donation was a hefty $5,000 check to the Democratic National Committee. She's like a virgin when it comes to finding a living lesbian or gay candidate to financially endow. That could change, if celebrity donating to queer candidates becomes vogue. And the Big Mo's unique gal-pal from "A League of Their Own," talk show hostess Rosie O'Donnell, made two chunky donations. The first to a lesbian candidate, the second to a heterosexual woman. The lesbian recipient was military veteran Cammermeyer of Washington state. And Elizabeth Dole's exploratory committee for her presidential bid received $1,000. (OK, Cammermeyer we can all see. But Mrs. Dole? Hello? Is Rosie, gasp, a closet Log Cabin member?)
On the Republican side, we find Log Cabin executive director Richard Tafel failed to contribute to any of the handful of openly queer GOP congressional candidates since 1994. Tafel did donate $1,000 to Bob Dole's presidential bid in 1996, only to have the money eventually refunded by the candidate. In the end, Tafel bought himself millions of dollars of free publicity when Dole accepted, then rejected the Tafel check drawn on the Log Cabin account. While queers with wealth are free to pick and choose political candidates worthy of a personal donation, we should use online search engines and monitor contributions to homosexual and heterosexual federal candidates. The more informed we are as a community about the financing of political campaigns the better able we will be to play the game of big time politics. Check out www.tray.com/fecinfo and have some fun. Am I saying the only way for the rich or famous among us to aid queer candidates is to write big checks? No. Many of these people write smaller checks or appear at receptions for queer campaigns to raise money and get good press. They may also get their friends to write checks. There are plenty of avenues for them to help elect our candidates to national office. However, it is too bad when Navratilova makes her speech accepting HRC's prestigious award for equality she won't be able to say, "I like to be in Washington with a lesbian sitting where she belongs - in the House. Elected in part because of my donation to her." Maybe by the spring Navratilova will have written a check or two to the next crop of queer candidates. After all, it isn't just marches on, or dinners in, Washington we require for crucial aspects of our political equality, we must additionally have our own sitting in Congress every day of the week.
Michael Petrelis
Solution-Violence: A Theologian's Viewpoint As Jack Nichols writes: "Solution-Violence was hatched in pre-history—with, at one point, a growing need for warriors-- at the end of the hunting and gathering period. Women were thereafter confined to tending their domestic nests while men roamed afar, bonding as warriors." Indeed. Solution-Violence became institutionalized in the Babylonian myth of creation. Walter Wink, a liberal theologian, whose pamphlet on the Bible and Homosexuality is on our site ( www.bridges-across.org/ba/wink.htm ) writes of the Domination System and the Myth of Redemptive Violence. We have a summary and study guide to Wink's "The Powers that Be" on our site. This is Session 4, which begins with a wonderful quote from Maxwell Smart. Maggie Heineman Personal Page www.bridges-across.org/maggie/ |
Martina Navratilova: Doing enough for gay candidates? 
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