5 May
1890 Ogden Standard Examiner Random
References page 4 Last evening about 7 o’clock Officer Sleeth arrested a man on
the charge of having flourished a pistol in one of the numerous saloons in this
city. It appears that the man is wanted on the charge of having entered a
number of tents at the power dam and stolen some pistols money and clothing
also for a crime against nature.
 |
| Joe Redburn |
1975 Elections of officers for Gay Community
Service Center took place. Articles of Incorporation drawn and committees
formed. The Gay Community Service Center
is established as Salt Lake City first Gay Community Center at 11 South 400
West SLC [building demolish]. Joe Redburn helped establish the center by securing
the former Taylor Restaurant and Grill south of The Sun Tavern as a meeting
place. The building had a coke machine, some couches and a reading room. The Gay Crisis Line was funded from profits
from the coke machine. Meetings held Mondays at 7 p.m. It establishes a
Gay-Crisis line 533-0927 which lasted over 25 years and was first listing in
Salt Lake telephone book using the word Gay as a help line. The Chair and
Acting Chair were lovers. Dorothy Makin had emigrated originally form England
and met Billie Hayes. in Salt Lake. They lived together for eight or nine years
and lived in South Salt Lake. Billie worked for the Board of Pardons. Gay
Community Service Board Members were: Chair and Acting Director Dorothy Makin;
Vice Chair and Assistant Acting Director Billie Hayes; Secretary Don S.;
Treasurer Katherine K., Committee Advisor Joe Redburn; Kip L. By-laws Ron Hunt;
Programs Social Alternative Director-,Herb Davis; Publications- Jim C. ; Public
Relations- Alan Blaich; Budget and Finance Virgil L. Hyder,; Grants and
Funding- Marty M.,;Gay Rights- Ken Kline; Procurement Terry J. Volunteer
Services-Dave B.
 |
| Weldon Young |
 |
| Carole Martindale |
1979 The 4th Coronation of the Imperial Court
of Utah was held with Weldon Young and Carole Martindale stepping down. Emperor
Gordon Steele IV and Empress IV Lois Lane [Tracy Ross] were elected as
officers. Joe Conti and Dusty LeManns were selected as Prince and Princess
Royale IV. The election that year was one of the most heated campaigns to
date. The Elected Emperor, Gordon Steel,
was allowed to purchase full size billboards throughout the city and because of
that, a campaign rule was added that there will be no campaigning outside of
the gay community and gay owned businesses due to unfair politics. The elected empress that year won by one vote
and three months into her reign...resigned...that was in
 |
| Gordon Steele |
August of 1979. In February 1980, when the membership of ICU
resigned and created the Royal Court of the Golden Spike Empire, former Prince
and Princess Royales IV were elevated to President and Vice President of the
new court. Joe Conti is officially recognized as Emperor IV and Dusty LeManns
is officially recognized as Empress IV of the Royal Court of the Golden Spike
Empire. Bill Lanning is recognized as Prince Royale IV and Donnie Marie is Princess
Royale IV. This official 4th Court was known as the The Silver & Crystal
Court. Much debate and turmoil occurred the year of the 4th reign and there
hasn't been that kind of dilemma in our court system since.
1988 Thursday- I am going crazy trying to
meet The Triangles deadlines before leaving for Denver next weekend for the Deseret and Mountain State Conference. I wrote my
history column on The Stonewall Rebellion. Journal of Ben Williams
1988 UTAHN CRITICIZES AIDS BROCHURE
FUNDING By JoAnn Jacobsen-Wells, Medical
Writer The new AIDS brochure published by the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services for distribution to 107 million American households may help
clear up misconceptions about the disease, but a local health official says the
$17 million the government spent to produce it could have been used more wisely
to fight the fatal disease. Some Utahns
also think the government should trash the eight-page pamphlet and let parents
teach their children about sex and sexually transmittable diseases. "We
could stop the AIDS epidemic if Americans would stop perverted sexual sodomy
acts," said Joy Beech of Families Alert. But many local medical and public
health organizations and AIDS victims are applauding the government's massive
effort to educate the public about the nationwide epidemic that continues to strike
Utahns. As of April 29, there have been 124 cases of AIDS diagnosed in Utah,
with 80 deaths. Homosexual men and intravenous drug users account for the
majority of cases. Dr. Harry Gibbons,
 |
| Harry Gibbons |
executive director of the Salt Lake
City-County Health Department, said the money spent on the pamphlet should have
gone to local health departments that are targeting their AIDS programs to such
high-risk groups. Congress mandated mailing the brochure,
 |
| Add caption |
"Understanding
AIDS," to every American household. The brochure, which presents the
essential facts about AIDS in direct, easy-to-understand language, should be in
the hands of Utahns by the first of July. It's the first time the federal
government has attempted to contact virtually every resident, directly by mail,
regarding a public health crisis. Gibbons said he hopes it's worth the effort -
that residents will indeed read the brochure. "There is still a great deal
of misinformation about AIDS. I would hope this would counter the garbage
distributed by Masters and Johnson, who did the public a great
disservice," he said. In March sexuality experts Dr. William Masters and
Virginia Johnson reported that heterosexual transmission of AIDS is far more
common than the federal government is willing to admit; that, in fact, the virus
can indeed be transmitted by touching the wrong person, sitting on the wrong
toilet seat or ordering the wrong food in the wrong restaurant. Gibbons hopes
the brochure will clear up such "gross misinformation." "I hope
people will read it. If parents will read the brochure as a good bedtime story
to their children, it will diminish AIDS hysteria," Gibbons said.
"But if they don't read it, a lot of trees have turned into paper for no
useful purpose." Referring to language in the brochure about transmission
of AIDS, HHS Secretary Otis R. Bowen said that to achieve its purpose,
"this brochure cannot mince words - and it doesn't." That isn't good
news to Utahns who don't want the pamphlet. "Utahns should be very, very
careful about what they let in their homes," said Beech. Her organization,
Families Alert, is dedicated to promoting traditional family values. "We are concerned because in the past he
has wanted to promote contraceptives to stop teen pregnancies," said
Beech, who's also a member of Concerned Women of America. "We know any
time we promote sex education and the giving away of contraceptives, teen
pregnancy has increased, as have sexually transmitted diseases.
1990 Saturday, Evergreen conference:
Homosexuals call the approach unscientific and potentially dangerous. GAY
COMMUNITY SPEAKS OUT AGAINST `REORIENTATION THERAPY' [DeseretNews] Therapy to
"heal" homosexuals and change their sexual orientation was criticized
Friday by members of the gay community. "Reorientation therapy is to psychiatry
.jpg) |
| Robert Austin |
what bloodletting is to the healing arts," charged Robert Austin, in
response to a conference sponsored by the Evergreen Foundation, a group of
"former gays and lesbians." This weekend's Evergreen conference,
titled "Developing a Healthy Male Identity," includes among its
speakers several local mental health workers and former gays from California.
Its main premise is that homosexuality is the result of a stunted emotional
development caused by poor bonding with a father or male peers. The group's
therapy consists of support groups, sports programs and other outlets for
"normal" male bonding. At a news conference to challenge the
Evergreen approach, Austin and other members of the Salt Lake and California
gay community called the reorientation therapy unscientific, unsound and
potentially dangerous. The therapy also came under fire from a local mental
health worker and a local clergyman who is the father of a gay man. The
Evergreen Foundation offers no scientific evidence of its claims, charged Marty
Beaudet,
 |
| Marty Beaudet |
director of a San Francisco AIDS project. Evergreen and its
therapists, he says, "rely solely upon testimonials which reflect the
"feelings of the moment' of the individual voicing them. Case histories
demonstrate that such feelings are likely to change again and again over a
person's lifetime." Beaudet said that reparative therapies that don't work
cause a sense of failure and disappointment. LaDonna Moore, a Salt Lake
clinical social worker, attacked the Evergreen approach as "over inclusive
and maligning enough (toward gays) to warrant outrage." The Utah Chapter
of the National Association of Social Workers, at Moore's urging, last week
turned down Evergreen's request to grant social workers continuing education
credit if they attended the conference. Utah social workers who try to change a
person's sexual orientation are "benevolent" but in "blatant
disregard" of the Social Workers Code of Ethics, which mandates promoting
conditions "that encourage respect for the diversity of cultures which
constitute the American society," Moore said. Mark Hansen, who described
himself as a gay, spoke against efforts at reorientation therapy. He said he
once tried to change his sexual orientation through therapy in which he was
told to put a bean in his shoe. "Every time I felt the bean, I was
supposed to say, "I am completely heterosexual,' " Hansen said. The
therapy did not work. "I am frightened by those who in the name of God
would force men and women to become other than they have been created by a
loving and redeeming God," said The Very Rev. William F. Maxwell of St.
Mark's Cathedral. (Deseret News)
 |
| Steve Oldroyd |
- “Steve
Oldroyd and Tony Feliz rode up with me to the U. of U. Business building for
the free public lecture sponsored by the Evergreen Foundation. The vermin
showed their true colors when they had earlier today by hosting a special, by
invitation only, conference for LDS Bishops and Stake Presidents. I heard that
Rocky O’Donovan was there protesting it. The Evergreen Foundation is
masquerading as a pseudo-scientific organization when in fact it’s just a front
for the Mormon Church's homophobic
 |
| Connell Rocky O'Donovan |
division of quack cures. Well, anyway at the U of U, I allowed my self
to be interviewed on the radio but would not go in front of the television
cameras because the longer I teach the more I could be recognized by some
homophobic parent of one of the children I have taught. That would be the end of my career as a
teacher. Liz Pitts, co-President of LGSU, brought a banner stating LGSU's
opposition to Evergreen and I helped her pound the stakes and poles into the
ground. Once inside the auditorium it was so fascist! I thought the brown
shirts were back! Evergreen people were
hassling even Mormon
 |
| Liz Pitts |
owned KSL saying that film crew was not allowed to film,
inside the conference, even though it was touted as a public meeting. Satu Servigna, editor of the Triangle, was
also told not to take pictures.
Evergreen was being all so secretive. I heard this one Evergreen official
say that “Evergreen was like AA” where confidentiality is honored but then I
asked him "Are you promoting your organization as a 12 step
program?" He just scowled at me and
backed away from that one. I sat next to Satu and she would
sneakily take
pictures of people on the stage and when she was confronted about why she was taking
pictures, I spoke up cheerfully, "Because she finds you oh so
cute!" The lecture Hall was packed
but I'd say 90 percent of the people there were from the Gay and Lesbian
Community. As the program began I leaned over and whispered to Satu,
"Promise me that you'll slap me if I go berserk." At one point Robert Austin had the gall to
say to me "be nice", and I replied firmly "NO!" I refuse to budge an inch against those who
would do irreplaceable harm to the Gay Community. Robert Austin
 |
| Robert Austin |
hasn't sat through years of
weekly meetings where Gay men poured out their hearts about how much damage had
been done to them by so called "nice people" with good intentions.
I've picked up the broken pieces and nurtured the walking wounded who have
taken a beating by buying into the garbage Evergreen is trying to sell. It’s spiritual poison. Let the anti-Gay forces retreat not I. Allan
Gundry, the Uriah Heep front man for the Mormon Church introduced Joe Dallas
and Jeff Konrad, and he clearly underscored the LDS influence in this farce.
Well because of the amount of Gay and Lesbian activists in the audience, I
really feel that we received a totally different presentation then the one that
would have presented to the closet cases and their fearful wives had we had not
all been there. To underscore how pathetic the whole conference was, I saw a
fellow in the audience who I had fucked with in 1986, who was even then trying
to get back into the Mormon Church. I'm sure that is his main motivation. Not
to be cured of his homosexuality but to be cured of that which he feels is
blocking his being fully accepted in the Mormon Church? Poor desperate people
driven to desperation by wicked religionists who have corrupted true religion
by trying to make a buck by feeding off of the shame they instill in people.
People who are trying to be different from whom God made us. These wicked people have even changed the
nature of God to fit their own image of a warrior heterosexual male. Joe
Dallas
was the first to speak and he is a Bible fundamentalist from Orange County,
California. Talk about your basic snake oil salesman. He let everyone know
right away that while he feels strongly that homosexuality is a sin and a
curable mental disorder, he respects Gay people! He was also very concerned with letting the
audience know how butch he was and that he was no Nelly faggot. (I think that was a back hand slam to Alan
Seegmiller who was very Nelly). The main speaker was Jeff Konrad, a very
handsome boy next door type man who came to Salt Lake to promote his book. (You could almost see him searching out the
faces of the handsome young men in the audience.) He said that when he was
young he was a little sissy boy who really just wanted to be manly. (Like Joe
Dallas I suppose! ha!) Interestingly, Konrad never could explain why he was
unhappy being Gay and to me the only time he seemed truly happy during the
entire presentation was when he was talking about how much he enjoyed Gay Love.
I imagine that he was a very sexually dysfunctional person because at one point
he mentioned that he found Gay Sex gratifying but not satisfying. Couldn't the
same be said about heterosex by a dysfunctional heterosexual? Finally the sponsor of the Conference,
Alan Seegmiller spoke. He was about as Nelly and queenie as they come. He wore a butterfly assessory on his belt and
minced across the stage. And he's curing
Gay men? What a joke. [1990 Journal of
Ben Williams]
 |
| John Crapeau |
1991 Sunday John Crapeau called and wanted to
make sure we were still going to Memory Grove for the memorial service for
Charlie Brown [Charles Altman], a musician hippy who tried to keep the
counterculture alive and well in Salt Lake City. At the park there were lots of
tie dyed and mellow people and a blue grass band played. Fuku [Jimmy Hamamoto]
joined us and I also saw Elbert Peck [Sunstone Magazine editor and former BYU
dormitory friend]. I visited with him some because
 |
| Elbert Peck |
I love to tease him. He’s a
tightly wound package that has a jewel inside. I asked him, “So when are you
and I going to have sex?” I wanted to shock him and I guess I did because he
was speechless and then gave me one of those “you poor blithering idiot looks”
but I don’t care. I love Elbert since I first saw him leaning on a cane his
freshman year at BYU and exclaiming Indeed Indeed. Wayne Elliot, this kid I knew from Layton was
the park and I was so sad to hear he was dying (living with) from AIDS. I gave
him a kiss to show him that he’s still loveable. The migrating butterflies were everywhere
today. Thousands of them just landing everywhere and you could just walk around
with them on your fingers. It was
magical and faerie-ish and I know Charlie must be loving it. There must have been 500 or more people in
the park celebrating the life of Charlie Brown. I saw little Daniel Terranova
again and he came up to give me a hug. He said his mother was having another
baby. Cool. After leaving the park about
4, I went to Affirmation and was surprised to find out that Beyond Stonewall
was suppose to have done a presentation on the retreat tonight. Kendra [Souter]
didn’t let me know so I was rather unprepared but was able to pull something
together. We talked about the need for “Gay space”. It was a small turn out anyway because the
Salt Lake Men’s Choir’s Spring Concert recital was tonight and pulled lots of
people away. I never attend the men’s choir performances since they won’t ever
consider becoming the Gay men’s choir. After Affirmation I hurried off to do a
program with Becky Moss and Debbie Rosenberg on Concerning Gays and Lesbians. We
only did one show and mainly on news from the Gay and Lesbian Community Council
of Utah. I talked to Becky about
submitting a proposal to have a Gay music program on KRCL. She said she would
help out. [1991 Journal of Ben Williams]
Lambda Lore: Butterflies and freedom by Ben Williams Utah used to have strange and wonderful
characters who, for no other reason than their eccentricity, made Salt Lake
City a more colorful place. I remember 35 years ago a young man who used to
parade around downtown in a silky red tights devil’s costume complete with cape
and pitchfork. He sported a Van Dyke goatee and had shaved his head bald except
for two sections he had butch-waxed into spiky horns. Once, while working at a
Mexican restaurant on the corner of Main Street and 400 South, I watched him
draw a huge pentagram on the sidewalk. Eventually the devil left Salt Lake
presumably for Georgia. Another character that was much beloved in
Utah’s counter culture was the hippie Charles Altman, better known as “Charlie
Brown,” the unofficial symbol of the Salt Lake’s youth movement and police
oppression. I remember first seeing him up at the
University of Utah in the 1970s when I managed the Huddle, a hamburger joint in
the Union Building. He was always being hassled for going barefoot. Charlie
Brown never wore shoes, even in winter, going everywhere in his bare, calloused
feet. People would say that after a winter snow, you knew where Charlie had
walked. Going barefoot got him arrested once at a hospital and he spent two
weeks in jail because he couldn’t afford bail. Another thing I remember about Charlie Brown
was that he always dressed in black, wore a black cape and a large homemade
ankh where, I heard, he stashed his dope. Other than that I don’t remember much
about the hippie except that he always seemed to attract a crowd at Reservoir
Park where he played the auto-harp and sang. For years I forgot about Charlie Brown, until
a faerie friend told me of a memorial service being held at Memory Grove for
him on May 5, 1991. We walked to the park and I was surprised to see hundreds
of people crowded below the foot bridge. There must have been 500 or more
mellow, tie-dye wearing people celebrating the life of Charlie Brown. Some were
milling around, listening to a blue grass band play, “Will the Circle Be
Unbroken?” while young and old chased migrating Monarch butterflies which were
everywhere. Thousands of them flitted about and you could just walk around with
them on your fingers. It was magical and fairy-like and I knew Charlie must
have loved it. I realized then that I really knew nothing of
this man for whom so many people came to celebrate his life. When I looked into
it, what I learned was an amazing story of the life of a man dedicated to
personal freedom, ecology and social justice. Charlie Brown was born Charles Edward Artman
in Iowa, 1939, the son of a Methodist Minister and army chaplain, with a talent
for music. When he was 21 he drifted to Salt Lake City because of friends, and
he fell in love with the Rocky Mountains. However Charlie soon left Utah for
Berkeley, California to attend school where, after discovering the university
was as oppressive to personal freedom as society was, he dropped out. I
discovered from reading about this period of history that Charlie has the
distinction of being considered Berkeley’s first hippie. While at Berkeley, Charlie also became a
social activist. He participated in the Free Speech Movement and also the May
1965 Filthy Speech Rally. There, he was arrested by campus police for
displaying the word ‘fuck’ on a sign. He was arrested again in 1966 at an
anti-war protest rally in New York City. As President Lyndon Johnson was stepping
out of his limousine Charlie unfurled a huge sign which read “Impeach Lyndon
Johnson.” A police officer took offense and after a scuffle Charlie Brown was
knocked to the ground and arrested. Charlie Brown had this psychedelic
spiritualism vibe about him. He became involved in Native American
philosophies, believing that he was a reincarnated Indian. He adopted an Indian
name of John Little Eagle, and started living in a tee-pee. This spirituality
made concerned with polluting mother earth long before it was fashionable.
Later he followed a 14-year-old guru who was said to be the living incarnation
of Krishna. He also had a very strong Christ Consciousness. Charlie eventually came back to the Rocky
Mountains to make music, get high and raise his consciousness in the Tetons.
Inspired by that majestic panorama, Charlie
Brown recorded an album called The
Teton Tea Party containing tracks of folk songs. The album is now part of the
Smithsonian folksong collection. Returning to Salt Lake City in the mid 1960s,
Charlie set up a tee-pee on University of Utah property. He was arrested. He
then moved to Reservoir Park where he smoked pot. He was arrested. Charlie
Brown was arrested 21 times, and while never found guilty, he spent much time
in jail because he lacked the means for bail. About that time, 1967, Charlie Brown started
the first large hippie commune in Salt Lake City on M Street, in a
“vine-covered adobe cabin.” It was referred to as a “secret Twilight Zone
corner of the Universe.” It was said that members of the commune sold flowers
for food and amazing things happened in that Summer of Love in Salt Lake City. The following year, in May 1968, Charlie
Brown, dressed in his cape and wearing his ankh, appeared before the Salt Lake
City Council to petition to hold a “Happening-Love-In” at Liberty Park. He
invited the council to come “fly kites, blow bubbles, and listen to rock bands
with the barefoot youth.” While they declined, they did permit him to hold the
festival. Shortly after the festival at Liberty Park,
Charlie was arrested at a sheriff blockade near Big Cottonwood Canyon. He was
stopped for not having a Utah driver’s license, not having Utah license plates
on his 1941 paneled truck and for vagrancy since he had no official residency.
He was taken to jail where they forcefully shaved his beard and cut his hair.
Later that year he filed the first of seven lawsuits against the Salt Lake
County Sheriff Department, the Salt Lake Police Department and the University
of Utah Security Department for harassment and violating his civil rights. In
1971 Federal Judge Ritter dismissed all his suits. Charlie Brown thus ran for a Salt Lake City
Commissioner seat in 1971. He ran on a platform of more bicycle lanes, cleaning
up air pollution in the city, higher pay for the police and ending vagrancy
laws. He didn’t win. Charlie Brown considered himself a “wandering
priest” once styling himself the “Grand Poo of the Temple of the Rainbow Path.”
He founded a hippie congregation called the Alameda Street Church which helped
feed hundreds of young street people and also started a drug rehabilitation
center. He lived in an old school bus decorated with
Christmas lights that he called the Yellow Submarine. He rode a bicycle as his
main means of transportation and lived on homemade peanut butter and Clinton
whole wheat bread. In his last six years Charlie Brown moved
back to Northern California after contracting hepatitis at one of the drug
rehabilitation clinics he worked at in Salt Lake City. In California he joined
the Mormon Church and died an Elder buried in White Temple Clothes in 1991. Charlie Brown was not gay that I know of but
he fought for and believed in personal freedom. Freedom from governmental
authorities interfering in how free people should be allowed to live their
lives. What a remarkable man and one that Salt Lake City will never see the
likes of again.
- Susan Wehrle – Thanx for the article on Charlie
Brown (C.E.Altman). He was a good friend of mine in the '60s. Was a pleasure to
read your posting, and quite accurate, true picture of the man. (Not gay, I
agree, but a strong Ally!)
- Charles Altman, a.k.a Charlie Brown was known as "The Wandering Holy Man". It was said that Jerry Garcia was referencing him as the subject of the Grateful Dead song, Cosmic Charlie.
1992- Kevin Lynn Truhlik, 32, passed away
from AIDS. Survived by: His companion,
Steve. Member of the Metropolitan Community Church
1992 Edward Allan Walker, age 40, died of
AIDS related complications Graphic designer. Obituary
1993-Wednesday- Mormon Apostle Boyd K. Packer
gave an address at a meeting of the All-Church coordinating Council and refered
to homosexuality as one on the three major social problems that represents a
danger to members. Elder Packer, 69, declared that dangers in retaining church
members' loyalty ``come from the Gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement
and the ever-present challenge from the so-called scholars or
intellectuals.''
1995- Funeral Director Charles Neil
Harris age 40, died after a very long and courageous battle with Burgess
Disease, AIDS and numerous physical impairments.
1999 The Utah Gay Latino Association
presented a Cinco de Mayo Potluck at the GLCCU Center
 |
| Kathy Worthington |
2003 Kathy Worthington Gay and Mormon or
formerly Mormon? There is a website,
about a year old, where you can post your story. The site is run by a gay former Mormon that I
know. You can also go to the site just
to read the stories, of course. gaymormonstories.com
• From
TBM to Gay Activist by Kathy Worthington
May 5, 2003 I was Mormon for just ten years, but they were important years; from the time I was seven
until I was seventeen. My parents
converted to the church in the 1950s and became TBMs: true believing Mormons.
I became an extremely religious young woman. Time
after time I gave talks in Sunday School or bore my testimony on Fast Sunday. When I was in high
school my life outside of school often revolved around the church. I was
President of my Mutual class, I went to summer camp and was a leader, I had a
book full of awards. I would have been the ideal young Mormon woman except that
I was poor and I wasn't beautiful or well-dressed. In the Magna-Hunter (Utah) community I was,
however, very much the young Mormon leader.
People around me KNEW that I would go far in the church. As far as a woman was allowed to go, that
is. During my last year of high school I
held the top post a young Mormon woman could hold: Secretary of the Seminary.
Then a couple of incidents forced me to see how racist the Mormons around me
were and how racist the church itself was. I had somehow managed to not turn
out racist myself, so I had a problem on my hands. Soon I learned that I didn't agree with
Mormon ideas about women any more than I agreed with the beliefs about
differences in skin color. My friends were the first to find out that I no
longer believed in the church and one of them decided it was his duty to tell
my parents, which he did the night of my 18th birthday. I ended up leaving home a month later because
life at home had become intolerable. My TBM father couldn't stand it that I no
longer believed in the church and he would start in on me from the moment I got
up in the morning. I wasn't budging on
the issue and neither was he, so one evening while everyone else was at MIA, I
packed my bags, called a cab and left. Thirty-five years have passed. My family is still TBM, those that are still
alive. My father was murdered, a brother
committed suicide in prison and another brother died of melanoma. Life has been a true soap opera at times. It
would take a book to tell all the stories. I've been completely non-religious
since 1969. In 1979 I formally resigned
from the church because I could no longer stand to be connected to it in any
way. The church had worked very hard to keep the Equal Rights Amendment from
being adopted and I was very much a feminist.
Need I say more? When someone
asked me if I was Mormon, I wanted to be able to simply say "No." In those years you couldn't just resign from
the church, though, you had to ask them to excommunicate you. I always thought there was something
intrinsically wrong with the church's refusal to let a person resign. Now I help people get their names removed
from the records of the church, which is what the church calls it. They don't actually remove your name from the
records, of course, they just stop considering you a member. See my website at:
http://www.MormonNoMore.com Because of the church's anti-gay crusades in
Hawaii, Alaska and California (New Jersey, Nevada . . . etc.), thousands of gay
people and many of their supporters have resigned from the church since
1999. It's always a pleasure to help
them and to give them support if the church decides to make the process
difficult or unpleasant. When I figured out that loving women was an option for
me (after years of no relationships at all), it was not difficult the way it
would have been if I'd still been a member of the church. Coming out and becoming
part of Salt Lake's gay community was a pretty smooth transition for me. I had discovered a whole new community and a
new way of life. I loved it. The hardest part of my coming out was my
oldest daughter's reaction. She was 14
and she grieved and was visibly distressed by the fact that I was gay, but she
eventually adjusted and got comfortable with it. A few years later Lucy came out herself. It turns out she'd had crushes on girls since
she was really small. Nowadays she is very healthy, happy and well-adjusted. In
1992 I met and fell in love with Sara Hamblin, the woman who has been my
partner for over eleven years.
Unfortunately, Sara has metastatic breast cancer, which means the cancer
has spread to other organs and is not curable.
Sara may live another year or two or three, (do I dare hope for more?)
but at some point the cancer will take her from me. Unless I get run over by a bus before she
dies, that is. You never know with these
things. We are living life as fully as
we can for as long as we can. Despite
the cancer, I am really glad to have had Sara in my life. I’ve been a gay
activist and an exmormon activist and Sara and I have been in the news a
lot. Do a web search with my name and
youll get an idea of what I’m talking about. It hasn’t been dull. Cancer
affects a lot of our lives, but we manage quiet times by the fire or on the
patio, too. I love Sara and she loves me
and we have two wonderful daughters, a beautiful home and two cats who keep us
entertained. Life is good. Kathy
Worthington
2004 Wednesday Subject: USHS at your
Service from Ben Williams “I know it's
just me- but it bugs me when perfectly good articles have the wrong date on an
event from our past. Once something gets written down- a wrong date has a way
of self perpetuating. A case in point was the fiasco of calling last year's
Pride Day the 20th anniversary of Pride when Gay Pride Day has been celebrated
in one form or another in Utah since 1974! What piqued me was that a good
article in the SL Metro about Quilts made the statement that the writer and his
partner viewed the AIDS Quilt in 1986. This would have been impossibility since
the quilt was first show in 1987 at the March on Washington and was not shown
in Utah until 1989. Utah is fortunate to have a Gay historical society and its
free! I would like to suggest that if anyone is writing an article on a
historical event who is not certain of the date, please take a moment to
contact the society and we will certainly do our best to get accurate and
credible information from our data base out to you in a timely manner.
Misinformation passed along just makes for poor journalism and questions are
credibility. Ben Williams USHS Director
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| Jane Briggeman |
2005 Jane Briggeman To: Utah_Stonewall_History- “I tried to join the Utah-Lesbians yahoo
message board, and was dumb founded when that Moderator rejected me as a
member...so thank you for allowing me to join the Utah Stonewall History
message board! jb ...I'm trying to find out what
older lesbians in SLC do; if they gather, etc. In Madison they had a women's
group called "Silvers." It would be nice if there was something like
that here. I tried the Sunday Coffee thing at the GLCC, and the women who
attended were less than inspiring...all they seemed to want to discuss were the
straight women they had bedded. Thanks but no thanks! So, there has to be some
way to find these gals and connect them--we all know they are out there,
somewhere. But thank you for your help...and have a GREAT evening! Jb
• 6
May 2005 From: "J.B." Subject:
Re: Thank You... To: "Ben Edgar Williams" Hi Ben...I owe you another Thank You. I
looked in your links and found out SLC had a Gay Magazine. So I added your link
as well as the SL Metro link to the following message board I created today.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/utah_silver_rainbows/ Initially I wanted the
message board to be for older gays and lesbians, but right away I was getting
older guys signing up who were looking for men barely out of their teens...so I
changed it to older lesbians only, sorry. But if an older group of guys gets a
message board started, maybe the two groups can meet up sometime for potlucks
or something. Anyway, thanks again...jb
Love Burlesque? My Book, "BURLESQUE: Legendary Stars of the
Stage," is available in Bookstores, Fall 2004. Ask for it by name! And
PLEASE, visit our web site at: www.burlesquehistory.com
 |
| Tip Your Hat |
2014 Tip Your Hat to Equality -Salt Lake Acting Company along with a few other
performing arts organizations in Utah have put together a series of four short
plays in honor of the Kitchen case, and as a fundraiser for Restore Our
Humanity.
Mark Lawrence -The Tip Your Hat for Equality event. I can't begin to express my gratitude and thanks. Bringing the incredible, talented and beautiful voices of the arts community to join with ours. An event I'll not forget, thank you so much SLAC and all who shared and participated. You are amazing people and you are the best there is.
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