The Band Gets Bigger

Far from driving America's homosexuals back into the closet, Anita Bryant has lured them out onto the streets. Less than three weeks after Bryant and her supporters persuaded Dade County, Fla., voters to repeal the local gay civil rights ordinance (TIME, June 20), demonstrators marched last weekend in at least eight U.S. cities to protest that decision. In New York, some 50,000 gays and nonhomosexual sympathizers crammed Fifth Avenue sidewalk to sidewalk for almost 1 1/2 miles. In San Francisco, the West Coast's gay capital, 125,000 turned out. Because previous San Francisco parades had been marked by lots of exhibitionism, gay leaders this time asked for--and, almost without exception, got--restraint in clothes and behavior. With record gay participation in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle as well, the weekend marked the biggest nationwide protest demonstration since the days of the antiwar movement.

Flurry of Firings. Though the parades reflect growing solidarity among gays, the increasing militancy is undoubtedly offensive to many "straights" and could produce a backlash among them. Bruce Voeller, co-executive director of the National Gay Task Force, concedes that there has been a "flurry of firings" of homosexuals in Dade County and that at least one state legislature --Oklahoma's--has passed a resolution endorsing Bryant's position. But in Illinois a similar motion was withdrawn after being sarcastically attacked by a number of legislators. Said Representative Harold D. Byers: "Next we'll be passing a resolution congratulating the Nazis who want to march through Skokie [a Chicago suburb]." In Massachusetts the first state law prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals is expected to pass the house after summer recess; it passed in the senate last month by one vote. Next week homosexual leaders will meet in Washington with representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters and the women's liberation movement. Among other things, homosexuals plan to lobby against Senate approval of a bill passed by the House last week that would deny gays federal legal aid funds. To the movement's leaders, such muted approaches are clearly preferable to taunting chants of "Two, four, six, eight; being gay beats being straight."

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