Out in the Mountains

 

Torie Osborn on "The Flowering of the Gay and Lesbian Movement"

Torie Osborn, Executive Director of
the Gay and Lesbian Community Services
Center in Losa Angeles, the largest gay and
lesbian organization in the country, re-
turned to Vermont on March 8 and 9.
Osborn was here to participate in an “Ac-
tivist Exchange Weekend” at Middlebury
College. During the weekend she led a
workshop on “The Lesbian and Gay Move-
ment in the 1990’s and Beyond.”

Osborn lived in Vermont from 1971-
1976, first as a student at Middlebury Col-
lege, then as a graduate student at UVM,
and later as an English instructor at UVM
and at Adirondack Community College.

After leaving Vermont, Osborn de-
voted most of her energy to women’s
music. She was business manager of Red-
wood Records when it was run as a lesbian-
feminist collective. Between 1978 and
1986 she produced 25 rallies and concerts;
co-founded the West Coast Music Festival
with Robin Tyler; and worked as a financial
and management consultant for many
women's music artists, labels, and distribu-
tion companies.

The AIDS holocaust propelled her
back into the gay and lesbian movement in
the 1980s. In 1988 she was named Execu-
tive Director of the GLCSC, the first

woman to hold that post in the organiza-
tion’s twenty-year history. These days,
Osbom’s primary concerns are AIDS ad-
vocacy and promoting leadership develop-
ment and training within the gay and les-
bian community.

"This remarkable thing has been hap-
pening in the ‘80s," Osborn pointed out in
her talk, " which is that gay men and lesbi-
ans have really started to work together,
started to like each other, started to learn
from each other, started to develop much
more family loyalty, if you will — the kind
of real, united community that we used to
talk about in the ‘70s but which was simply
non-existent, except for very small pock-
ets. The great irony of the AIDS epidemic,
the grief and personal issues aside, is that it
has also led to this emotional and political
unity. It has unified various ethnic and
racial groups within the gay and lesbian
community. It has created this truly co-
gender movement, which makes us much
more powerful. I would rather it had never
happened. I would rather that we were still
in our separate tracks hating each other than
have this happen. But at least there has been
this positive outcome.

"In my opinion, the lesbian and gay
movement is really the most flourishing,

vital movement

Get ready for

today. It’s really
phenomenal. John
D’Emilio, a won-
derful gay histo-

 

rian, estimates
that there are
probably 20,000

A Benefit for Vermont AIDS organizations

gay and lesbian
organizations in
this country-

self-defined or-

   

(photo courtesy ofthe Middlebury Campus)

ganizations, whether it’s the gay running
club, sports organizations, whether it’s the
bars, the political clubs, whether it’s Lesbi-
ans for Lipstick——and there were two
twenty years ago. So there is this vitality
that’s happening. It’s happening on cam-
puses, it’s happening in cities, it’s happen-
ing in small towns.

"The major political issue that we face
as lesbians and gay men is the closet. The
vast majority of gay men and lesbians are
not out of the closet. They may be out to
themselves or out to their family, but
they’re not out at work. The closet is the
institution that stands between us and free-
dom. It’s the centerpiece of our organizing
task. And it is a qualitatively different issue
for the gay and lesbian civil rights struggle
than for anyone else because of the objec-
tive invisibility that it creates. And the fact

that there is such an illusion, andl mean to

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