Date: Wed, 31 Aug 94 12:11:44 EDT From: RAKNGLTF@aol.com NATIONAL GAY & LESBIAN TASK FORCE POLICY INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE Contact: Robert Bray, 415-552-6448; rfbngltf@aol.com BEYOND LON MABON: FIGHTING THE RIGHT IN OREGON, IDAHO AND ACROSS THE NATION NGLTF Focuses On Ballot Initiatives And Long-Term Movement Building Washington, D.C., August 31, 1994...As campaign battles heat up in Oregon and Idaho -- states with anti-gay initiatives -- the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) Fight the Right Project is gearing up for fierce fights against the Radical Right on Election Day this November and well after the last ballot has been counted. NGLTF Fight the Right Project is providing direct assistance to Save Our Communities PAC (SOC PAC) in Portland, Or., and the No on 1 campaign in Boise, Id., to help those states defeat anti-gay initiatives, and is organizing events later this year for long-term movement building. In Oregon, Lon Mabon, head of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, has successfully placed on the ballot a measure that local activists are calling, "Son of 9." The new measure, Proposition 13, or the Child Protection and Minority Status Act, is a "cleaned-up" version of 1992's defeated Measure 9. It would repeal existing gay rights laws, prohibit such laws in the future, and encourage discrimination based on sexual orientation. In Idaho, the Idaho Citizens Alliance has placed Proposition 1 on the ballot, which would, among other things, prevent the state from passing laws providing basic civil rights protections to homosexuals. The NGLTF Fight the Right Project has dispatched staff directly to the field to assist campaign officials. Project staffers are working with campaign activists to produce and execute media plans, refine campaign commercial "messages," and assist with rural organizing, campaign operations, coalition building and fundraising. But NGLTF is also focusing on organizing beyond the initiatives this November. Besides direct campaign assistance, the NGLTF Fight the Right Project has scheduled for this fall: -- Fight the Right Movement Building trainings in Hawaii, New Mexico, Nebraska and New England (Connecticut, Maine and New Hampshire), supported, in part, by grants from the Haymarket People's Fund and the Tides Foundation. NGLTF has already presented grassroots organizing trainings in some 20 states. Some of the trainings represent the first time gay/lesbian/ bisexual and transgender activists have gathered in states with only fledgling community groups. -- Three Fight the Right intensives at the 1994 NGLTF Creating Change conference in Dallas, Texas, Nov. 10-13; the day-long intensives -- Fighting the Right in Education, The 1994 Elections, and Organizing the Religious Community -- will combine with workshops on "Sexuality and the Right Wing," "Know Your Enemy," "People of Color Respond to the Right," "Fight the Right and the Media," "Legal Issues," and much more. -- The NGLTF Equality Statement Endorsement Project. The Project features endorsements by 100 of the nation's leading political, entertainment, progressive advocacy and other figures and groups who support civil rights protections and who have lended their names to coalition efforts against Radical Right anti-gay initiatives. "We must look at these battles as opportunities for long-term movement building," said NGLTF Fight the Right organizer Robert Bray. "Win or lose in November, we must be stronger in January 1995. The Right will continue to refine their tactics and come back again and again unless we have in place a strong grassroots force to repel them now and in the future." For more information on NGLTF Fight the Right grassroots trainings and the campaigns against anti-gay ballot measures, contact NGLTF Fight the Right's Robert Bray, (415)552-6448, rfbngltf@aol.com. For more information on the 1994 Creating Change conference, contact (202)332-6483, ext. 3304. The NGLTF Fight the Right Project was formed in 1992 in the wake of the Republican National Convention and that event's prime-time attacks on gays and lesbians. Since then, the project has helped local activists battle anti-gay initiatives and build a stronger, permanent grassroots movement. ###