Lesbians Trying to Step Out of Closet, Into Politics

Early in her political career, Karen Clark recalled that she was often referred to as “an avowed lesbian.”

“I’ve never even had the opportunity to take any vows, at least not any legal ones,” said Clark, a fourth-term Minnesota state representative who was introduced Sunday at a conference of lesbian women at the Irvine Hilton as “the highest ranking elected official in this country who is an open lesbian.”

Clark was the keynote speaker at the California Lesbian Leadership Conference--a meeting of about 130 women who came from around the state to address the conference’s main theme of “putting lesbians in power.”

“Am I in heaven or is this really a roomful of lesbians?” asked Clark. “I believe we need lesbians working and leading on every front.”

The conference was sponsored by the Elections Committee of the County of Orange, a gay- and lesbian-oriented political action committee. The women, among them writers, attorneys, doctors, business owners and teachers, broke up into small groups to discuss issues of individual interest: There were workshops on political and legal issues, spirituality, social change through education and lesbians of color.

They agreed to investigate the possibility of forming their own political action committee (LES-PAC was the suggested name), and urged each other to run for elected office or actively support lesbian candidates and candidates sensitive to their concerns.

One theme that came up repeatedly in the workshops was the need for lesbians to be more open about who they are. “Be visible--that is the most important thing,” said Jinx Beers, publisher of the Lesbian News, a monthly newspaper. “As a lesbian who’s been out for 30 years--30 years!--I can tell you it’s not traumatic once you do it. I lost a job, and I got another one. I lost some friends, and I got a few others.”

While there were calls for more visibility, a few women complained that even the conference signs around the hotel were overly discreet in directing them to the ECCO conference rather than “The Lesbian Conference.”

To compensate, a woman taped a large cardboard sign that said “lesbian” to the lectern where Karen Clark delivered her lunchtime address.

Shay Bintliff, a doctor from Honolulu, said: “If there is one thing that I will take away from this conference, it’s the commitment to never let a moment pass when I can tell someone something meaningful about being a lesbian. . . . There are more issues we need to address than just lesbianism, but we’ll never get to them unless we get past that.”

Another issue of concern was that of domestic and “spousal” rights. In the workshop on political issues, the women discussed problems of obtaining custody of their children and equal recognition of lesbian relationships, in the workplace and in society at large.

“I want to be able to wander in South Coast Plaza past the china and pick out the pattern after two years of looking and kiss and giggle like everyone else,” said Pat Callahan, a staff research associate at UC Irvine and co-chair of ECCO. Affirming lesbian life styles “is why I got started in this,” she said.

Laurie McBride, who owns a typesetting business, traveled to Irvine from San Francisco to attend the conference. She is a member and former president of Bay Area Career Women, a group of about 1,200 lesbians that decided to stay out of partisan politics but is political and even “revolutionary” by its very nature, McBride said.

“We’ve got to put more party in our politics. To quote (anarchist) Emma Goldman, ‘If there’s no dancing at the revolution, I don’t want to come,’ ” McBride said.

Lesbians say they feel a double oppression of being female and homosexual. View, Page 1.