Teminally Queer
Michelangelo Signorile
The Advocate   Issue #624  3.9.93	


	In January an unprecedented event took place in San Francisco 
during the computer-industry trade show Macworld Expo: A benefit was 
held for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force  (NGLTF), at which 400 
computer-industry queers from around the country turned out, bringing in 
$50,000 in cash as well as over $40,000 worth of software and hardware 
for the Washington, D.C. -based gay rights organization.

	Relatively unnoticed, this event none the less marked a turning 
point both for queers in the computer industry and for the gay and lesbian 
rights movement.  For the first time, the enormous skills an resources of 
the Silicon Valley were put toward queer activism, while NGLTF was 
brought into the digital age.

	In the future, your video display terminal will be a battleground. 
Your weapon will be a modem.  Your ammunition, electronic mail.  On 
computer bulletin-board services you will rally the troops. You'll drop in on 
electronic cafes, where dozens of queers will exchange information and 
instructions.  With  the push of a button you and thousands of others will 
launch fax zaps, mail zaps, and phone zaps, bombing your enemy with a 
continuous stream of raw data, printed messages, and recorded voices.  
Instantly, you take to task a newspaper that printed a homophobic article, 
a member of Congress who refused to sign on to  a pro-gay bill, a religious 
zealot who preaches hate from his pulpit, and a corporation that hasn't 
expanded its bereavement-leave policy.

	"When it comes to setting trends, queers are always at the 
vanguard," says Tom Rielly, director of strategic relations at Super Mac 
Technology, a maker of computer hardware.   "And the computer 
revolution is no  different."

	Rielly is a founder of Digital Queers, and industry wide group that 
hosted the NGLTF benefit.  At the trade show, Rielly and fellow Digital 
Queer Jeffrey Pitellkau, director of labs at MacUser magazine, went from 
booth to booth asking for donations. They brought along David Stewart, 
NGLTF operation manager.  "I can't describe what it was like to go to San 
Francisco and walk around and ask for stuff and have everyone say yes, "  
says Stewart.

	"We explained what Digital Queers was, and we explained what 
NGLTF was," note Pitellkau. "Nobody was put off that they were gay 
groups. People were  interested and excited about the fact that we were 
moving NGLTF over to the Macintosh system."

	Such a response should not be all that surprising.  A young industry 
based in progressive Northern California,  the personal-computer field is 
more enlightened than most industries.  It is a competitive industry that 
requires thinkers on the cutting edge, and may of its young executives 
realize that discrimination hampers attempts to bring in the best and the 
brightest.
  	
	Accordingly, queers are among the kinds of people who dominate 
the industry. Overlooked Opinions , the Chicago-based gay market-
research firm, estimates that there are ten times more gays and lesbians 
in Silicon Valley companies than in the fashion industry.  They are also 
more likely to be out of the closet, enjoying enlightened corporate policies 
such as those that ban sexual-orientation discrimination and extend 
benefits to domestic partners.

	When Boston-based Lotus, a software company, broke ground in 
1991 by becoming the first publicly traded company in America to offer 
domestic-partnership benefits, there was frenzy of interest both in the 
media and in the industry. "There were 80 inquires form other companies 
the first week, says Polly Laurlchild-Hertig, a senior administrative 
assistant at Lotus and one of three lesbians at the company who 
organized  the push for benefits.  "Since then there have been over 400 
inquires. " Many other companies have felt compelled to follow Lotus's 
lead.

	"It 's now about competition," says Jeff Bowles, a data-base 
engineer at ADK Ingres who organized for domestic -partnership benefits 
at his company. "Nobody wants to be beaten out by the other companies, 
especially since they're afraid that all of their talented lesbian and gay 
employees will leave to get better benefits elsewhere.

	Such policies will gradually influence all of corporate America. 
Meanwhile , high tech Queers, having spent the past several years 
organizing with in, are now directing their energy outward.

	The goal, says Rielly, is to empower the queer movement to 
disseminatevital information rapidly. He explains Digital Queers' Techno 
Queer Initiative: 
We're going to install NGLTF's software, train their staff and put NGLTF 
on-line--on a bulletin-board service. We'll connect the gay groups around 
the country-hundreds of them. The idea is to have gay individuals 
connected to gay groups and the groups connected together, all part of 
the one big online queer universe. It keeps the groups more in touch with 
their constituents. Right now most groups do monthly mailings, but in the 
future it will be done daily, hourly, even by the  minute. It will foster 
democracy and participation in political discussion."

	"The  Macworld benefit was the start of something big,"observes 
Elizabeth Birch, senior  litigation counsel worldwide for Apple Computer 
Inc.   Birch not only is the highest-ranking openly gay person at Apple but 
also became cochair of NGLTF in late 1992.  "A sort of progressive 
telecommunications movement is now forming, she says.  "We're moving 
en masse to the outside, to the world, equipping the activists who are out 
there working full-time , teaching them, helping them empowering them.  
When you have people with this took, there's no telling how fare you can 
go."