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July 22, 1983

Professor Louie Crew
[redacted]

Dear Louie,

I do indeed want to use your article, “Gays Knocking on the Church Door,” in the next issue of TGLTF News. I obviously should have written to say so long ago–as I should have long ago done the next issue. But it’s been a really wretched spring in Texas, and other things seemed more important, or at least urgent, than the News.

I don’t know how much national news it made, but the reaction of the conservatives to the Federal District Court striking down Texas sodomy laws last year was to try and reinstate them as a felony offense, rather than the misdemeanor they had called for during the last ten years. I’m also on the board of the state-wide lobbying group (Lesbian/Gay Rights Advocates) which hires a professional lobbyist, and she and our srong supporters in the state legislature told us that legislator after legislator laughed at the bill, said it was ridiculous and obviously unconstitutional and that if it were to get out of committee they would vote for it, because otherwise the folks back home would say that they supported gay rights. So our strategy was to organize a strong letter-writing campaign to the committee members and keep it bottled up. The campaign succeeded–in spite of Dallas Doctors Against AIDS and Dr. Paul Cameron and other assorted garbage–but I think only because the legislature adjourned before the other side really got its letter-writing organized.

I also got involved with handling the state-wide (now going nation-wide) tour of a faculty member at Texas Technological University, Dan Siminoski, who has filed with the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act for their records of surveillance of gay organizations. It’s going to be a real nationwide story eventually, but the FBI and Justice Department are dragging their feet and it isn’t yet, so the tour fell apart after all our work, but it will eventually happen. Anyway, there will be a story and updates in the News about that, too.

Anyway, I really want to thank you for the article, as well as generally, for what you are doing. It gets awfully tiresome at times to feel like one is running a city-wide and a fair share of a state-wide movement with one or two others, and it’s very consoling to know how many others are out there in other states being effective.

Sincerely,

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Edra Bogle