media in the public interest
Billboard Visibility Campaign Set by New Pink Paradigm
By John Zeh
Capital Coverage News Service
CINCINNATI -A new group of veteran gay activists has formed here to promote more gay visibility in the broader community via a media campaign using huge billboards to make Queen City and suburban gays more visible.
Calling itself "a queer social network for cultural change," Pink Paradigm will use the huge ads to get people to think about the old gay maxim, "We are everywhere."
Its credo is "to work for ourselves, and for our reality, change hearts and perceptions with visibility, address violence, energize our community, and have fun with the simplicity and creativeness of our message."
The group, announced its coming out March 10 after several weeks of planning, "We want to get folks used to regarding gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons as familiar faces in their common experience, " said facilitator Michael Blankenship.
"The billboard campaign is not tied to any specific political intention," the theatre professional and gay columnist for the weekly Everybody's News here said.
He and other organizers said the group would work closely with Stonewall Cincinnati's Political Action Committee in its effort now underway to repeal Issue 3. That charter amendment passed in 1993 bars municipal protections based on gay, lesbian, or bisexual "orientation, status, conduct, or relationship."
Some Paradigm participants had been critical of Stonewall for delayed action in the repeal effort, its conservative leanings, and failure to welcome out- front gay activists in the ill-fated effort to defeat Issue 3. They now plan to work together, said Steve Buescher, another co-founder who is webmaster at Rainbow Cincinnati gay website.
Pink Paradigm is organized as a social club, but not a tax-exempt organization or charity. It will utilize the regional GLBT social network "as a connecting point for the best creative minds to come together and devise ways of promoting queer visibility and influence," Blankenship said.
Fundraising for the Billboard Campaign is its first goal. "This may not be everybody's cup of tea," he said, "but we need people with something to offer who want to get involved to help."
The process of producing the billboards seeks to utilize the wealth of skills and talents available in the greater Cincinnati queer community to produce the greatest impact possible, said co-founder George Vanover, a long-time gay activist who co-owns Pink Pyramid bookstore downtown.
The billboard campaign's dominant themes will include family, fairness, work, and privacy.
Pink Paradigm is reaching out to recruit skills and contributions from photographers, models, designers, printers, and knowledgeable professionals. "We believe the most effective way to influence perceptions is to put a face on our community and touch our audience personally," said Blankenship.
He has lived here since 1986, when he came to work as a scene designer at the Playhouse in the Park, the city's major public theatre. "Something of a Renaissance homme terrible" is how Miami University philosophy professor Lee Horvitz described him in antenna arts magazine.
Blankenship has been a painter, designer, actor, director, teacher, writer, and producer. He also tacked up posters for his productions around town, wearing a rebel's leather jacket and jeans, and ready with a boisterous laugh.
"He is like the proverbial red head: fiery, restless -full of taut, creative impatience- always working and thinking," said Horvitz. "He brings to mind the French poet Rimbaud, who called for the "ordered disordering of the senses. He appears a person who always wants to push matters beyond the norm."
"I have a bit of a profile in this town," Blankenship smiled in reponse.
At Ensemble Theater Company, Blankenship helped stage one of the first artistic events not busted by city and county prosecutors and police - the controversial and highly praised "Poor Superman" in 1994 that "Time" named as one of the year's 10 best plays.
His ETC productions were boldly experimental. Visiting playwright Edward Albee "cast me as "a young troublemaker" in "Fragments," Blankenship laughed with self-recognition.
He was active in the late '80's campaign to prevent city police from closing down the exhibit of explicit photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe at the Contemporary Art Center here. "This was a big moment for me," he told Horvitz in July 1998.
Prosecution of the Mapplethorpe exhibit "was a personal affront, saying I as gay was obscene. What happened simply could not go unchallenged, deciding morality on gay content."
Blankenship helped organize street demonstrations, one of which featured a sign saying, "If You Give Artists Free Expression Soon Everyone Will Want It." He and over a hundred supporters took over downtown streets filled with cars carrying Reds baseball fans after a working--class jury acquitted the CAC and then director Dennis Barrie of obscenity. Police permitted the permit-less march.
His commitment deepened into AIDS issues, a human rights ordinance that included gays, and the "No On 3" campaign that resulted. But the local gay community's political infighting drove him away, reported antenna's Horvitz. "There was no attempt at dialog. I put all my activism into art (then)."
Now he's booking talent for Pink Paradigm's first fundraiser, a show at 10 pm, Friday, April 16 at the Pipeline bar, 241 West Court St. near City Hall. Additional information is available from Blankenship at 513/ 396-6738, Vanover at 513/ 621-7465, or the Rainbow Cincinnati website at www.GayCincinnati.com. People experienced with similar billboard campaigns elsewhere are needed.
