[Printout of Dallas Voice article about documentary Finding Our Voice] Page: 1 of 16
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Dallas Voice Viewpoints
Although there always seems to be a need for adult
leadership in the Boy Scouts, and it's something I would
gladly offer, they won't receive any form of support from
me as long as they feel discrimination has a place in their
organization.
Don Ritz, Dallas (Editor's Note: Ritz is a co-owner of
Dallas Voice.)
More on 'Finding Our Voice'
"Finding Our Voice" has received deserved praise for
recording and presenting the story of the struggle of gays
and lesbians in Dallas through the years. In attempting to
highlight some key issues and events that were omitted in
the documentary I do not mean in any way to detract
from the overwhelmingly positive achievement of the
hour-long program.
The main omission was the story of the campaign to end
police harassment in the bars. Young people today have
little idea of what it was like for us in the seventies and
earlier, when police sometimes in uniform and sometimes
in plain clothes would enter bars, arrest patrons at
random, haul them off to jail and charge them under
Section 2107 of the Penal Code with public lewdness.
Until 1980 few victims of false arrests - and there were
many - had the courage to go to trial and plead "Not
Guilty". To do so would have meant publicity and the
prospect of losing one's job.
I was the first Director on the Board of the then Dallas
Gay Political Caucus (DGPC) to oversee the Social
Justice Committee (SJC), which was formed specifically
to deal with the harassment problem. We went down to
the County Clerk's office and recorded data on all arrests
under the 2107 statute. But we also needed data on who
the arresting police officers were, because we suspected
that some were homophobes abusing the system.
However, the only people permitted to have access to this
information were attorneys and it was very risky for them
to have it known in the courts that they were passing on
this kind of information to us. One attorney began passing
on to me the names of arresting police officers almost on
the day that their arrests were made, and we began to
publicize their names in This Week In Texas and DGPC'sPage 6 of 13
http://www.dallasvoice.com/view.html
7/12/00
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[Printout of Dallas Voice article about documentary Finding Our Voice], article, July 12, 2000; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc947312/m1/1/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.