Pink fur flies as lesbigay alliances crack - Cape Times

Pink fur flies as lesbigay alliances crack
Ashley Smith
August 06 2002 at 09:20PM

Pink fur was sent flying on Tuesday when eight gay and lesbian organisations launched a blistering attack on the Gay and Lesbian Alliance (GLA), the "homosexual party" that claims it is the "political voice of lesbigay South Africa".

Those who have distanced themselves from the GLA in joint statement yesterday are: OUT Well-being of Pretoria, the Triangle Project of Cape Town, the Kwa-Zulu Natal Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality, the Gay Health Centre of Durban and the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project, Q-online, Womyn Magazine and Behind the Mask, all of Johannesburg.

But GLA media director David Baxter hit back at the alliance's detractors, collectively known as the equality project, calling them "Boswell Wilkie-style gay groupings" who had become "outdated".

Baxter claimed the GLA, a registered political party, had 112 000 members, while the organisations attacking them consisted of "office staff".

The GLA website, which included the gay version of a blacklist - the "pinklist", was launched on Tuesday.

Baxter confirmed that the organisation had approved 37 names for the list and that these included Western Cape Premier Marthinus van Schalkwyk, former state presidents PW Botha and FW De Klerk, ousted premier Peter Marais, Mutual and Federal and the Dutch Reformed and AGS churches.

GLA also claimed on Tuesday they had forced Marais into "exile".

The allegations levelled against GLA by the eight other gay and lesbian organisations included that:

"At this stage" they have no proven track record of representing the interests of the lesbian and gay community;

The "homosexual party" as it refers to itself, has "no record of political struggle for lesbian and gay equality and certainly do not have a record of activism for democracy in our country";

The GLA leadership had not in any way contributed to the campaigns for partnership rights in the workplace and in society.

Dawn Betteridge, director of Triangle Project, Cape Town said: "The GLA fails to understand that to win equality will take more than a factional and marginalised political party."

She said the GLA's attempts to form a so-called gay political party, were "misguided and against the interests of lesbian and gay people".

"The GLA cannot point to a single gain they have achieved for lesbian and gay people in South Africa. Rather, they have attempted to benefit from the reputation gained by our respective organisations. The GLA cannot claim support from any of the prominent lesbian or gay organisations in this country.

"We jointly dissociate ourselves from any statements made by the GLA and we place into absolute dispute that the GLA is the political voice of lesbigay South Africa."

Baxter said later: "The GLA is not striving for the support of any so-called prominent lesbigay organisations. We strive for individual votes at the ballot box. It now becomes more clear than ever that the panic buttons have started to shake the so-called equality project.

"Certainly they realise their time is running out. The GLA is in a better position to represent the aspiration of South Africa's lesbigay community," he said.

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