Cancel DMN subscriptions
The policy of the Dallas Morning News, which excludes same-sex marriage announcements while printing “traditional” marriage announcements, is discrimination, pure and simple. I just cancelled my subscription to the News, as I do not want my money supporting such discrimination. I urge other News subscribers to do the same, telling the News the reason for your cancellation.
Joe Ball, via e-mail
Saving Easter in the Park
Over 20 years ago, Oak Lawn was different. Known for our gays residents, artists and bohemians, Oak Lawn was a destination and a diamond in the conservative rough that was Dallas, Texas. People traveled miles for the safety, solace and solidarity provided just entering Oak Lawn’s boundaries. Events dotted the year. Obviously they were heavy on the gay side but they also were heavy with people that loved and didn’t judge us.
Easter in the Park was one of those events, and it was the most diverse of them all. Even the Dallas Symphony showed us the love by spending a cherished religious holiday with the scourge of the Christian community — we, the lowly homosexuals, and our proud brethren.
Fast forward to 2011. Those people we sought refuge from, that always showed us fear and contempt, infiltrated Easter in the Park and took our tradition away from us. The event was to be moved and made more “family friendly.”
I guess no one told them we were family already and our traditions bind us.
Gentrification is the same dance in any country and in any city. Bohemians, artists and gay people move to architecturally rich but neglected parts of town and make lemons into lemonade. Transformative magic happens, property values go up, tourism increases and good press abounds.
Then waves of yuppies come, each being a little less tolerant than their predecessor. They do not share the live-and-let-live mentality that allowed the first batch to come in the first place. They demand chain establishments and upscale amenties and folks with the income to afford them.
Long ago created to protect Oak Lawn’s character and history, the Oak Lawn Committee abandoned that mission ages ago. The last bit of history they let be destroyed were all the apartments that fell between Wycliff, Douglas, Rawlins and Hall. What were once charming duplexes and apartments are now what John Waters might call a “communist day care center.”
The committee is chock full of developers, and their last decade seems to have been dedicated to the three-story rectangle and the wonders it bestows on mankind. If you are unable to reside in one of these for $300,000, $400,000 or $500,000, then pity you, please leave. Be careful Oak Cliff. You’re next.
It isn’t just developers’ fault. The block on Cedar Springs where JR.’s resides used to be a historic collection of quaint storefronts that mirrored across the street. Now a collection of cavernous cinderblock buildings house our bars. They are so large and impersonal, they require a few hundred people to achieve the intimacy 50 used to provide. If we lose Easter in the Park, then we lose a piece of ourselves and where we came from. Those that fought for where we are today would be mortified. I hear them turning in their graves.
I intend to show up in Lee Park on Easter and have a contest with myself to see how gay I can look for the family-friendly crowd. When it comes to respect, I give what I get.
Michael Amonett, via e-mail
Tell TCA what you think
Please call the Turtle Creek Association and Cathy Golden at 214-526-2800 and voice your opposition to the hijacking of the Easter in the Park event, done apparently to exclude gays this year, which was thwarted only by heavy arm-twisting. Read the press; join the Facebook fan page and, most importantly, show up! Ms. Golden can have her own “family-friendly” Creek Craze on April 17 if she wants. I was born into a family and have a family of choice and consider myself friendly. Doesn’t that make me “family-friendly”? Perhaps not in Ms. Golden’s “hetero-Republican-marriage-and-two-kids” world, but the world has changed a lot. I remember when Lee Park was a cruise spot with a popular tee room; it was all some people had. I personally think it’s fantastic that youth today have no clue what a cruise park or a tee room is. There are real role models to aspire to today and real, healthy community events —including Easter in the Park.
This is really quite typical of how things tend to operate. We move in to an area, organization or event and make it fabulous — and then get run off. I will oppose any change that Ms. Golden wishes to bring that would take us all back to the “golden days” when gays were marginalized on a grand scale, forced into the bushes, darkened cruise spots and closets. Change is coming folks; change is here. We’re here; we’re queer; get over it! Oh and one more thing: Thank God for drag queens and trannies. If it were not for them, we as the gay community would not exist. Look back on Stonewall and remember; we must never forget to honor the bravest amongst ourselves. I stand in awe of people who are just who they are and live life day after day against threats of violence, hatred, homophobia, misogyny (which is where I personally believe that homophobia has it’s real origin), and just live out loud!
Daniel Shipman, via Instant Tea
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition March 18, 2011.
Re: Michael Amonett’s “Saving Easter in The Park”
Michael, I don’t know if you will win the “most gay” contest (So much competition!!!), but you do win BEST LETTER! Your comments were spot-on. Called several of my friends to make sure they caught your response to the Easter “cloning” by TCA! Thank you!!!
Re: Daniel Shipman’s “Tell TCA What You Think”
I love your reminding us that the real action at Stonewall in 1969 began when a cop tried to push a trannie into a paddy wagon. And she hit him. With her purse.
Phyllis, how right you are. Sounds as if it’s just glorification of the facts, but it all started when a cop pushed a transvestite and she turned and hit him on the head with her purse. Pennies and bottles began to fly after that and the rest is HERstory, HIStory, and OURstory it is the truth of our birth. It was another woman was being taken to a paddy wagon that called us to action that night; no one knows her name but she gave birth to us all. She is only described as “a dyke—stone butch”, while being beaten on the head by a cop with a bully club for asking that her handcuffs be loosened, she screamed at the crowd, “Why don’t you guys do something?” It is her loan voice that still echoes through time to us today, sometimes softly, sometimes loudly asking, “Why don’t you guys do something?” I couldn’t be there that night of June 27, 1969 in New York’s Greenwich Village, I was’t alive, but on Easter I will answer her call by showing up. I encourage everyone to do the same. I will be there looking as gay as possible, just like Michael, and will silently answer her question by doing what we do best – being ourselves – being the kind, loving, compassionate, affectionate and always resilient people we are.
@Joe Ball: cancelling a DMN subscription will have little effect. Mainstream print media operations (i. e. magazines and newspapers) typically derive very little of their income from subscriptions. Their bread and butter is display advertising. If you really want to hit them in the pocketbook, then keep your subscription and instead take your issues to the DMN’s advertisers. They’re the ones who pay the bills, and the people who make all those ludicrous decisions you refer to in your letter.