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Title
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[Letter from Edra Bogle to Ken Adrian Cyr, January 31, 1982]
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Identifier
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MSS380_letter_19820131
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Type
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Letters
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Manuscripts
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Date
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1/31/1982
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Description
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Letter from Edra Bogle to Ken Adrian Cyr, the founder of the Texas Gay Conference. Bogle is concerned that the group is going to stagnate due to lack of board meetings and public outreach. Cyr was serving as moderator when Bogle wrote to him with her concerns. She believes that California and "the East" are making mistakes by asking for gay rights without also educating the public. She asks that Cyr act as the leader the believes he can be and reminds him that he "agreed to provide leadership" when he became moderator. Letter was CCd to John Sutton.
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Originally formed as the Texas Gay Task Force, the TGLTF was the first statewide gay/lesbian organization in Texas. Organized in 1973 for the purpose of planning annual conferences (until 1990), the TGLTF served as the parent organization for the Lesbian/Gay Democrats of Texas and the Lesbian/Gay Rights Advocates.
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Subject
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Texas Gay / Lesbian Task Force
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Bogle, Edra
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Cyr, Ken Adrian
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Sutton, John
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Format
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2 pgs.
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Language
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en
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Rights
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Materials may not be used without permission. For more information, contact us at (940) 898-3751 or womenshistory@twu.edu.
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Is Part Of
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Texas Gay / Lesbian Task Force Records, 1970s-1991.
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Accrual Method
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Gift
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Provenance
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Bogle, Edra
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extracted text
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[redacted]
January 31, 1982
Dear Adrian,
I am concerned that TGTF is apparently not going to do anything in 1981/82 that will add to the general cause of gay rights in Texas or cause people to want to join the organization. Reorganization is certainly necessary, but there will be no one there to fill old or new Board seats unless those of us who are presently on the Board are able to give a positive enough image of the group to make people want to get involved. The TGTF News should help but it can only report and encourage, and without a larger readership than our issues usually receive, that isn’t going to be very effective.
Specifically, I am wondering about three things. 1) What has happened to the ideas expressed at the Board meeting in Houston (I think by Ray HIll and George Barnhart, but I’m not sure) about using a van and going out to some of the smaller towns? I was hoping to hear that you had worked out some specific plans for this sort of thing, or at least to discuss such plans. 2) Should we not be formulating very specific plans for a membership drive? 3) I am very concerned about not really having a Board meeting in Austin. Since our early December meeting was primarily to write the Bylaws, that means we won’t get together again till late in March. Therefore we have lost the entire winter of 1982. If TGTF is to be taken seriously, this was the winter we needed to show that we have some reason for existence besides the Conference. I really meant what I said then, that if the only reason for TGTF is the Conference, why have an organization at all? And a publishing program, useful as I think it could be, can’t be run without members to support it.
I don’t want to seem overly critical; I know that we all have many demands on our time. But I want you to be a successful leader of TGTF, and for the organization to be successful. It’s needed; and I’d also like to show those people who thought it should be scrapped that it need not be, and those people who thought that KB&R were the only possible leaders that they are not.
But that means we have to have an active program, with real leadership and real thinking about the needs that are there at the present moment and the way in which TGTF might meet them. That is something that KB&R did, in planning the series of educational programs about getting involved in politics that led to the LGDT and the lobbying effort. It’s that kind of thinking ahead and leadership that I was expecting from you.
Of course, one person can’t do it alone. We needed to have something like a brain-storming session at the January meeting, I think, where we discussed and threw out or decided to explore or started tentative plans on any number of alternatives. I would Texas to become a sort of model for other states that have large small-town and rural populations as well as big cities, and for us to develop a way in which every gay person in the state can get involved and educated and in which we can avoid the errors I fear that California and the
East are making, in asking for rights without educating the straight community as to why we are entitled to them, and in presenting a very negative image at times. We never know when Austin-type resolutions can occur anywhere–we can’t keep putting off doing anything year after year, and especially not with TGTF’s current image.
I’m sending a copy of this to John Sutton, since he’s been involved in all this even longer than I have, and he’s the only surviving Board member besides myself who was there on July 26, 1980. And because at the moment I’m not really sure I want to go to El Paso or keep working as hard as I have for the last two years. The organization is going to die unless we have a real program of action. When you became moderator, you agreed to provide leadership. I don’t know you well, but your foresight in starting the conferences and the organization seems to say that you have that leadership ability. Please think about it, and what we can do now to make this a viable organization.
Sincerely,
Edra [signature]
cc: John Sutton
[handwritten in ink at the bottom of the second page]
Also, have you kept in touch with San Antonio and encouraged Michael to get us a Bd [sic] member? How about a note now saying you were sorry not to see him–or them–represented this weekend?
