INSPIRATIONS.

All of us look to role models from the past to guide and energize the work we do, whether it's fighting for gay rights or fighting to get a lesbian love story made into a movie, Here, a number of lesbian and gay activists and artists talk about the people who most inspired them.

ACTIVISTS & LEADERS

A. CORNELIUS BAKER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WHITMAN-WALKER CLINIC

A. Cornelius Baker has always considered his grandmother Fannie his primary source of inspiration. "She's just carried a lot of strength and dignity throughout her life," says Baker, executive director of the Washington, D.C.--based Whitman-Walker Clinic. "She has always influenced me to be clear and focused [and] taught me to just be proud of myself." But outside his family, Baker cites Winston Churchill as a lifelong role model. "He [was] just so valiant," says Baker, who admires Churchill's "staunchness," "never-give-up attitude," and "eloquence in the face of what was sheer terror." "There was nothing but certainty in his mind that the [Allies] would prevail. It's his type of mentality--strength, staunchness--that we must have if we are going to prevail against HIV [and] the hateful prejudice that still exists against gay and lesbian people in the world,"

--Sarah Wildman

CRAIG BOWMAN EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL YOUTH ADVOCACY COALITION 

Many individuals have motivated Craig Bowman, executive director of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition, but he says he is most inspired by the courageous youth activists he comes across each day. These are "youths who have found their voice for the first time and who are using it to make a difference in their own life, in the lives of their families, their community, their friends," Bowman says. They "are inspiring because they have found a way to be themselves and to do that in a world that doesn't necessarily want them to be who they are."

--S.W.

MATT COLES EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE ACLU'S LESBIAN AND GAY RIGHTS PROJECT

The night before Martin Luther King Jr, was assassinated in 1968, he spoke to striking garbage collectors in Memphis, Tenn., promising justice. King also spoke to and inspired then-16-year-old Matt Coles, who watched the speech on TV that night,

Ten years later Coles, who is now executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, worked alongside another inspiration, Harvey Milk, "He had a belief," Coles says of Milk, "that if you were trying to do good and you stuck at it, anything was possible." Even more important, Coles adds, "before I worked with him, I was much more hemmed in by believing that you had to work through existing structures." But Coles says his biggest inspiration is his father. He "taught me and showed me by example," Coles says, that "good people couldn't stand by if anyone in society was being treated unfairly. It was part of your obligation as a decent human being to do something about injustice."

--S.W.

HARRY HAY COFOUNDER, THE MATTACHINE SOCIETY AND THE RADICAL FAERIES 

When Harry Hay used the organizing and teaching skills he honed in the labor movement to found the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles in 1950, he established the foundation for what would become a vibrant gay activist movement. Born in 1912, Hay was an adolescent when he discovered the book The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Transitional Types of Men and Women by Edward Carpenter. "Before me, there were no role models," Hay says. "But when I saw that book in 1923, it was a marvelous day. That book made me want to go to England to meet the author, and it made me want to go look for my people."

--Sue Rochman

MARTY PFEIFFER FOUNDER, THE GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANCE AT McKINLEY HIGH SCHOOL, BATON ROUGE, LA.

When Marty Pfeiffer came out in 1998, a new world of activism opened up to him. Soon afterward Pfeiffer started a gay-straight alliance at his high school. "Kevin Jennings [executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network] taught me a lot about activism," Pfeiffer says, Closer to home, gay couple Tim Vining and Stephen Donahue, who help run a Baton Rouge gay community group, have had the greatest impact on his life to date. "They were the people who taught me that I could be who I was and have a life that was fulfilling," Pfeiffer says.

--S.R.

SUSAN LOVE BREAST CANCER ACTIVIST

Breast cancer activist (and self-described lesbian, feminist, and woman surgeon) Susan Love, MD, has always thought of Eleanor Roosevelt and "how much she was able to really accomplish in changing the world in terms of social welfare" as her ideal, But Love says it is the "women with breast cancer" she has seen in her practice in whom she finds a constant source of inspiration,

--S.W.

DONNA RED WING DIRECTOR, THE GILL FOUNDATION'S OUTGIVING PROJECT

Donna Red Wing will never forget that Saturday in 1964 when a chance meeting with Abbie Hoffman made her an activist. Red Wing, then 14, was waiting for a bus in her hometown of Worcester, Mass. Suddenly, she says, "I saw these cool, really edgy-looking people marching down Main Street. I must have looked like I wanted to be part of it because when they went by, Abbie Hoffman grabbed my arm, said, `Come with us!' and pulled me into their `Ban the Bomb' march. "That moment," she says, "was the beginning of a story that hasn't ended yet."

--S.R.

GERRIE SCHIPSKE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS, LONG BEACH, CALIF.

When John F. Kennedy arrived at the Los Angeles International Airport during his 1960 presidential campaign, Gerrie Schipske and her parents were there to cheer him on. For Schipske, who was 10 years old at the time, watching Kennedy was more than just seeing a presidential candidate, It was witnessing possibility. "As a Catholic, it was so exciting to see this man who would become the first Catholic to be elected to the presidency," says Schipske, now a Democratic congressional candidate. "When I was a child," she says, "being Catholic [and running for office] was like running for public office now and being openly gay."

--S.R.

OFELIA VIRTUCIO COORDINATOR, AQUA 25, A GAY YOUTH PROGRAM AT THE ASIAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER WELLNESS CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO

Ofelia Virtucio's need to find other gay and lesbian Asian-Pacific Islander young people brought her to the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center and its gay youth program, Aqua 25. It was there, she says, "that I met the young people who inspired me to do the work that I do," While "drawing my strength" from these other youths, Virtucio says, she learned "the ropes of being queer and Asian at the same time" from Trinity Ordona, who was the first inspirational Filipina lesbian activist she met. "Trinity taught me about activism, about relationships--and she's played a really big part in helping me identify my own API queer identity," Virtucio says.

--S.R.

RIKI WlLCHINS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GENDERPAC

"When I look at the past, I'm particularly inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and the group of activists that surrounded him," says gender activist Riki Wilchins, director of GenderPAC. "I'm also inspired by [the] anonymous people who rode on the freedom marches and worked on voting rights in the Deep South."

Today, Wilchins says that she draws strength from queer youths. "I'm struck by the vitality that they bring to a gender rights movement--an innate grasp that gender rights are not only a transgender issue." One young woman wrote to Wilchins offering to drop out of school "on the spot" to work for GenderPAC in Washington, D.C. Her words now hang above Wilchins's desk as a source of daily encouragement,

--S.W.

ARTISTS & ENTERTAINERS

CHRISTOPHER BRAM AUTHOR, FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN

"Twenty-two years ago, when he was the editor of Christopher Street magazine, Patrick Merla published an unsolicited short story by an unknown kid from Virginia, He gave me my first big break--and not just as a writer but as a gay writer. I've written as a gay man ever since," says Christopher Bram, author of seven books, including Father of Frankenstein (the basis of the film Gods and Monsters) and the recently published The Notorious Dr. August,

"In his years at Christopher Street, then the New York Native, Merla introduced scores of young writers to print, including Douglas Sadownick (Sex Between Men), Sarah Schulman (Rat Bohemia), and Ed Sikov (On Sunset Boulevard. The Life and Times of Billy Wilder). He worked with established authors as well, the brand names of gay lit--Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Samuel Delany--yet when he put together his wonderful anthology, Boys Like Us: Gay Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories, he pursued not just the famous but a whole new set of fresh voices--Alex Chee, Rodney Christopher, and William Sterling Walker.

"Editors are the chameleons of literature: They are invisible if they do their job right. As anyone who's ever met or worked with Merla will attest, he is not invisible in person. Yet his personality never shows on the page. The work he's edited has nothing in common except high quality and the secret fact that it has become better while passing through his hands,

"Merla is currently the editor of The James White Review. He continues to publish younger writers but does not forget the old. Recent issues were devoted to the fiction of James Purdy and the poetry of the late Tim Dlugos. For over 25 years now, Merla has been adding the new to the old, assembling a pyramid of books that should enable us to see the future more clearly, Gay life would be a different, smaller, flatter place without him."

--Michael Giltz

CHERYL DUNYE FILMMAKER, THE WATERMELON WOMAN

"Michelle Parkerson is a trailblazer for a lot of people. She's a D.C.-based documentary-fictional filmmaker and an out African-American lesbian," says Cheryl Dunye, who goes into production this summer on her second feature, Stranger Inside, "Michelle invented the politics that I believe in for filmmaking and set me up to become who I am, not just as a filmmaker but as an African-American woman, She's done pieces on drag kings, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and recently, poet Audre Lorde.

"I first saw her work when I was an undergrad at Temple University back in the mid '80s, I thought, Wow, this woman is onto something. I was just figuring out how to make work, but she was actually speaking the words with her work that I wanted to speak. She rose above queer politics and lesbian-gay politics by being out back in the early '70s and making documentaries about the subjects she wanted to make when no one was doing it or funding it. I always consider her [opinion] a litmus test on my work."

--M.G.

PAULA VOGEL PLAYWRIGHT, HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE 

"In 1969, as a freshman at Bryn Mawr College, I met Prof. Adrienne Lockhart. She was an extraordinary woman--the most popular teacher on campus; her classes were always filled," remembers Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel. "[Lockhart] did many things--she drove a truck across Australia in the summer, she was the female judo champion of Australia, and her classes were standing room only. She also encouraged us to ask questions, to love W.H. Auden poems. She cooked curry dinners for freshmen. And she told me to take my writing seriously. She told me I was meant to be a playwright. And I believed her.

"But most important, gently, quietly she let me know that she was gay by introducing me to her lover, another intense and brilliant woman, when I was 19. I was grappling with the torments of lesbian sexual identity at the end of the '60s. When I saw the way these two college professors looked at each other across the room, the floor opened under my feet. I repeated it as a mantra in the years ahead: `Adrienne Lockhart, this brilliant, beautiful woman, is a lesbian!' That quiet courage, that role-modeling for me--one could teach, one could write, one could drive trucks and compete and be admired and giving and be a lesbian--gave me an example to follow. I entered graduate school in 1974, determined to teach, the year that she succumbed to breast cancer."

--M.G.

RITA MAE BROWN AUTHOR, RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE

"My inspiration was Aristophanes, The quality of his work, the outrageousness of it, made me realize that true comedy is much more difficult and glorious to do than tragedy. And that was the path I wanted to follow," says Brown, who has had 24 books published since her saucy lesbian debut novel, Rubyfruit Jungle, in 1973. "As for gay influences," says Brown, "there weren't any. Not that I knew. Not at that time. The only lesbian I knew was Sappho. Nobody was out, so why bother with trying to find a model? You just had to go do what you had to do. And I wanted to write, so that's where my energies went.

"Rubyfruit Jungle was the only book I could write at that time. That's where my skill level was. And I was very young--I was 27. I don't remember how long it took me to write. I remember it took the summer, maybe four months. I just remember wishing I had air-conditioning."

--Anne Stockwell

MARCUS HU COFOUNDER, STRAND RELEASING

"Back in the '70s and '80s there were few out Asian men," says Marcus Hu, cofounder of Strand Releasing, which since 1989 has been a leader in distributing gay and lesbian independent films. "I remember being in high school and flipping channels on the TV, and I saw this handsome Asian man, Arthur Dong, who identified himself as gay. He was attractive, and even though I hadn't seen his films, I sought them out and was totally in awe of him. Arthur has become both a friend and a colleague. He gave me the inspiration to do what I wanted to do, which was pursue film and not be afraid or ashamed of what I am--a film nerd.

"But my mentor is definitely Gregg Araki, another Asian role model, who was gay back when we first met but is now decidedly straight. Gregg taught me everything I know about no-budget filmmaking; he hooked me up with the Sundance Institute; he taught me and legions of other filmmakers how to get things done cheaply and efficiently. Most of all he is completely a filmmaker in the real sense: He is capable of writing, directing, shooting, and editing his work. I am eternally grateful to Gregg."

--M.G.

ROSS BLECKNER PAINTER

"Unfortunately for many gay people, there really was no one," says painter Ross Bleckner, "Gay men from previous generations never thought of it as their responsibility to create role models of themselves to make it easier for younger gay people,

"The historical figures who were known to be gay weren't much comfort either, You couldn't glean who they were as political and social entities through their sexuality, It was hinted at, but you had to read between the lines, And reading between the lines is discouraging. That's the social model most gay people had to deal with. Hopefully, the generation that is established now will feel the responsibility to be out so that younger gay people don't have to do that anymore,"

--M.G.

TODD OLDHAM FASHION DESIGNER

"The directors John Waters and Gus Van Sant have been really important to me," says designer and director Todd Oldham, who's working on a script he plans to shoot next year. "I saw [Waters's] Female Trouble in a movie theater in Dallas, and my jaw was on my lap the entire time. It inspired the first five years of my design career. And Van Sant's Mala Noche is so beautiful, so pretty--it's a fairy tale brought to life, in an intriguing way." Oldham particularly admires how both directors tackle gay subject matter without being boxed in by it. "The gay parts are just included," says Oldham. "The movies are never defined by them."

--M.G.