From: WAND_M@gold.colorado.edu
Subject: Gay group debuts with a 'coming out'
Followup-To: amend2-discuss@cs.colorado.edu
Originator: doherty@ucsu.Colorado.EDU
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 06:09:52 GMT

By Michael Booth
Denver Post Staff Writer
December 11, 1992

COLORADO SPRINGS - Looking down at a row of TV cameras and hundreds of 
spectators, Patricia Hewitt hesitated just a second before ripping a brown 
lunch bag off her head and announcing she is a lesbian.

But that one second spanned a huge gulf, between decades of private life as a 
homosexual craving anonymity, and the most public of lives as an activist whose 
sex life is discussed in cafes and office buildings across Colorado.

Hewitt, a 46-year-old software specialist with Digital Equipment Corp., came 
out as a lesbian at a dramatiac news conference in order "to let prople know 
who lesbian, gay and bisexual people really are," she said.

Organizers used the emotionally charged setting to launch Ground Zero, a 
Colorado Springs activist group that will speak for much of the gay and lesbian 
community in opposing what it calls "ethnic cleansing" by right-wing groups.

Ground Zero supports a boycott of Colorado over Amendment 2, and organizers 
urged boycotters to target their anger and action against Colorado Springs as 
"ground zero" for a growing anti-gay movement.

Spokeswoman Katherine Pease said Ground Zero also will host a national march 
on Colorado Springs in the spring.  Colorado for Family Values is based in 
Colorado Springs, and surrounding El Paso County provided half of the 
100,000-vote margin that passed CFV's Amendment 2, which bans discrimination 
protections for gays.

Nearly a dozen other gays and lesbians wore paper bags over thaeir heads at 
yesterday's event, keeping them on in contrast to Hewitt's "coming out."

They said they would likely lose their jobs or housing if they revealed their 
homosexuality.

One man wearing a bag told the crowd his boss supported Amendment 2 because he 
didn't want gays or lesbians working for him.

"Well guess what?" the man said.  "He's had one working for him for the past 
eight years."

Hewitt said she and her partner have lived in Colorado Springs for 12 years.

"I have been an invisible lesbian for 20 years.  But I cannot remain invisible 
any longer.  Amendment 2 has taken away my basic civil rights," Hewitt said.

She said she believes Amendment 2 passed in part because the people who voted 
for it "did not know the people they were voting against," describing herself 
as a trusted homeowner in a middle-class neighborhood.

"I have to speak out for my gay, lesbian and bisexual sisters and brothers who 
work today as teachers, in health care and in the military, some of whom are in 
this room with their faces hidden."

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