The Lesbian Issue Resurfaces

NOW President Patricia Ireland’s disclosure that she has a husband and a woman “companion” once again raises the issues of lesbian visibility within the group and its effect on NOW’s public image.

Combined with other forces--including the backlash against the women’s movement--the Ireland matter could hurt, says NOW’s organizing founder, Betty Friedan. As an analogy, she suggests, “You don’t see Bill Clinton bragging about adultery.”

Lesbian rights have been a controversial issue within NOW since the emergence of the gay-pride movement in the late ‘60s.

In “Moving the Mountain: The Women’s Movement in America Since 1960,” feminist historian Flora Davis points out that, until 1969, most lesbians in NOW had kept their sexual orientation secret and the majority of feminists were “straight.”

For a long time, Davis writes, NOW activists “failed to see the parallels between sexism and heterosexism (the assumption that only heterosexuality is ‘normal’).” As lesbians insisted that the movement recognize them, Davis writes, “fierce conflicts” arose. Some chapters did not want the fledgling movement associated with anything as controversial as homosexuality.

In 1971, the matter was officially resolved when the membership, at its national conference, voted for a resolution that spelled it out: Oppression of lesbians was a legitimate feminist concern.

“It makes me kind of sad,” says Davis now, “that (sexual orientation) still is an issue. I think it’s very clear that a lot of people opposed to the movement are delighted any time they can find an excuse to suggest that all feminists are lesbians.”

Although some NOW leaders insist the lesbian presence in the group is probably no greater than in the general population, it is a very visible one. The is-she-or-isn’t-she discussion of Ireland has triggered more speculation.

By the 1980s, at national conferences, some women could be seen snuggling and hand-holding during plenary sessions. Women-only dances featuring lesbian entertainers are a conference staple.

Friedan, who comes from Peoria, Ill., and describes herself as “pretty square,” has been accused of being anti-lesbian. She insists that she is no lesbian-basher and is “for everybody’s right to choose.”

But, she adds, she was never willing to allow lesbian issues to overshadow others. Once, she refused to wear a purple armband in support of NOW’s lesbian sisters during a march “because that wasn’t what the march was about.”

People have put different spins on Ireland’s statement that she has a husband in Florida and a woman “companion” in Washington. She declines to discuss her sexual orientation, dismissing as “inaccurate reporting” stories that say she has acknowledged being a lesbian.

If the overriding public perception is that the organization is headed by a lesbian, “I think it’s going to hurt NOW, but I don’t think it’s going to hurt the women’s movement,” says Gene Boyer, a NOW charter member and board member of its Legal Defense and Education Fund.

“If people are homophobic, they have other places to go, and they will go. Some call us the National Organization of Lesbian Women.”

Of Ireland’s disclosure, Boyer adds, “Even the lesbians didn’t like that (because of the ambiguity of what she said). She managed to disingratiate herself with both populations.”

(Ireland, however, says, “The membership as a whole didn’t have difficulty with the discussion.”)

Boyer says, “Early on, lesbians were coming out every 15 minutes, ad nauseam. “ Today, she says, they make up “the majority of the workers (in NOW). In 1975, there was a conscious decision that they were going to enter into the mainstream movement and capture its power.”

Muriel Fox, another founding NOW member, says: “Ireland is very much in tune, I believe, with what women in this country need. As far as her personal life, that’s her personal life.”

Harriett Woods, president of the National Women’s Political Caucus, says: “Within (Washington), it’s sort of gone as an issue. But in terms of how people see an organization like NOW, I guess it all becomes a part of it.”

Radical socialist feminist Merle Woo, who is a lesbian, thinks the issue of sexual orientation is important because it “gets tied up with reproductive freedom, the choice of what to do with one’s own body. It comes down to women choosing themselves first.”

She adds, “Those two issues (homosexuality/bisexuality and reproductive rights) become the weakest links in the women’s movement”--ones conservatives have effectively targeted.

Woo, who is active in Radical Women, says she hopes NOW will “wake up” and give higher priority to lesbian issues. In her view, NOW has put lesbian issues on the “back burner.”

But Toni Carabillo, a member of Los Angeles NOW and a lesbian, thinks the group is “very good” on lesbian issues, such as discrimination.

She is not worried about the effect of Ireland’s disclosure. “I might have been concerned at first, but . . . the fact is, no matter who is president, there’s always a segment that chooses to criticize her for real or imaginary sins. The irony is, we’ve had such conventional presidents and they’ve been called baby killers. . . .”

Ruth Mandel of the Center for American Woman and Politics hesitates to predict how Ireland’s statement will affect NOW’s image: “Maybe in the year when we’ve had the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas story and the Willie Kennedy Smith story, people have just had enough sex and it’s not that interesting anymore.”