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May 25, 1982

Dr. Raymond Sears
President, Denton Chapter
American Civil Liberties Union
[redacted]

Dear Dr. Sears:

We are writing you to ask if the Denton Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union would be willing to co-sponsor a party the evening of June 21 with the Gay/Lesbian Association of Denton and the National Gay Task Force.

The Guests of Honor will be Lucia Valeska, Executive Director of the National Gay Task Force (the largest gay rights organization in the country) and Dr. William Beauchamp, Co-Chair of the NGTF Board of Directors. Now residing in New York, Ms. Valeska has taught sociology and is working on a doctorate at the University of New Mexico where she helped organize the Women’s Center and the women’s studies programs. Since assuming her present post two years ago, she has testified before congressional committees and the Democratic National Platform committee, and traveled extensively for NGTF and gay rights in general. Bill Beauchamp is Associate Professor of French at Southern Methodist University; holds a doctorate in French from Columbia University; has published one book and numerous articles and reviews in the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Saturday Review, French Review, Romanic Review, and Centrum; and is currently a member of the Dallas Mayor’s Commission for the Employment of the Handicapped.

The party will be held at the home of Dr. Edra Bogle, [address redacted]. The admission will be $10; a cash bar will also raise money. We hope to attract as large as possible a share of the liberal Denton community. The invitations will carry the statement: “Attendance at this function does not imply sexual oritentation but is a matter of concern for basic human rights.” A brief biography of Valeska Beauchamp will accompany the printed invitation.

We are seeking the co-sponsorship of the local ACLUin this because we wish to attract as many people as possible, and we believe that such co-sponsorship would help us immensely in doing so, for the following reasons.

One of our goals for the party is to attract a number of the closeted gay community–professional men and women whou would never dare attend a regular GLAD meeting, many of whom have few if any friends that they can be honest with, people who live lives of constant wariness changing at times to outright panic at the thought of their sexual oritentation being discovered. Ironically, many people know about some of them, but even when these men and women realize that people know, they figure they will be accepted only as long as they hide, fear, and never consider they have any civil rights, let alone assert them.