Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 22:41:12 -0700 (PDT) From: Rex Wockner Subject: AIDS GROUP DROPS 'GAY' FROM NAME Rex Wockner San Diego, California 92103 5 August 1995 Letter to the Editor (for publication) GCAPsule Gay Community AIDS Project P.O. Box 713 Champaign, IL 61824 Editor: I have just received your summer newsletter which announced you were preparing to drop the word "Gay" from GCAP's name and replace it with "Greater." I helped found GCAP and served, at various times, as board member, secretary, education chair, media coordinator, and a Speakers Bureau presenter. I am appalled at your baldly homophobic move. Gays are bursting out of the closet on TV, in the movies, in government, on the Champaign County Board; in short, everywhere, yet you are busy shoving the group I helped form back in the closet. Shame on you. Shame on you to the nth degree. The word "Gay" in GCAP's name never meant the organization existed only to serve gays. It merely meant GCAP came from the gay community, a fact which your neo- closetry can thankfully never erase. The most-common thing I did as a member of GCAP was serve heterosexuals -- I made an average of two Speakers Bureau presentations per week for over a year. Our name was never a problem for heterosexuals in the 80s. What the hell is going on in central Illinois in the 90s? Yes, I am shocked and disgusted. What's next? New York's "Greater" Men's Health Crisis? Why, I bet even the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force could access certain funds if it dropped the words "Gay" and "Lesbian" from its name. You are dreary and uninspired. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay. Rex Wockner San Diego Internet: rwockner@netcom.com cc: Outlines, Windy City Times, News-Gazette Internet cc: Gaynet, GLB-News, soc.motss, alt.politics.homosexuality