The sermon on this audio cassette is titled, Homosexuality and the Bible, delivered at the Metropolitan Community Church - Las Vegas by guest Rev. Frank Murr of the Metropolitan Community Church - Santa Barbara, CA. The introduction is by MCCLV Worship Coordinator Michael "Mike" Chavez. The tape was recorded by Christie Young.
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Side A) MCCLV introduces "Michael and Paulette" who present their "On Course" program titled, Putting Your Love on Course. The introduction is by MCCLV Rev. Wes McPherson. The program includes mention of prison ministry at Jean, NV, and individual testimonials about the success of the On Course program in people's lives. Side B) A worship service with entertainment at the Desert Community Church, ca. 1984, with no further identification. Desert Community Church was a "welcoming" [i.e., queer-friendly] congregation.
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Nevada State Assembly Bill 311, introduced by Assemblyman David Parks in 1999 and subsequently passed, was Nevada's version of the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act [ENDA]. A rally was held on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on March 21, 1999 in support of the bill. Speakers at the rally included David Parks; Dr. Reva Anderson, the African American executive director of the LGBTQ Center of Southern Nevada; and Jane Heenan who spoke on behalf of the transgender community. This audio tape contains a short interview conducted by journalist Michael "Mike" Spadoni with Parks and Anderson which was later broadcast on the radio. Photographs of this rally and of Spadoni conducting his interview may be found in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections Department in photograph collection no. 00263 [McBride Collection], photograph nos. 3215-3247. For a narrative history of AB 311, see Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, by Dennis McBride [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016], pp. 168-169,267-271, 276, and 279. Also see Dennis McBride journal entry for a description of the rally.
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This is an interview of David Parks conducted by Dennis McBride for an article he wrote about Parks' terming out of the Nevada state legislature in 2020. “Senator David Parks, Champion of Equality, Ends 24 Yrs. in Legislature,” was published in the Las Vegas Spectrum, November 2020, pp. 32-35.
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This interview was conducted by Ron Lawrence with former queer LDS member Jayce Cox [1975-2013]. The interview was recorded for an article Lawrence wrote titled, "Aversion Therapy: Torture at BYU" [Las Vegas Bugle, May 12a, 2000, cover and pp. 14-17]. Jayce's testimony was also published in "Sexuality May Be Pre-Determined by Genetics," by Ron Lawrence [Las Vegas Bugle, July 20, 2001, p. 35]; and in Wilhemina Parsons' column, "Counseling Center Rumors and News," which noted that MTV was filming a segment on Jayce Cox's experience, and that the Las Vegas media "may finally be picking it up" [Las Vegas Bugle, July 20, 2001, pp. 42-43]. Cox was also quoted from this interview in Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, by Dennis McBride [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016], pp. 106-107.
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Recording of a lecture by noted anthropologist Walter Lee Williams given at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, titled, "American Indian Societies and Sexual Variance," in which he focused on "those [Native American] societies that do not have a homophobic response to same-sex relationships." The lecture was taped as part of a recorded letter to Christie Young by an unnamed correspondent. Williams, after his retirement in 2013, was arrested and convicted in 2014 for "illicit sexual contact with boys aged 14 to 16 in the Philippines." Sentenced to five years in prison he was released in 2017. Information on Williams' career and arrest, together with correspondence to/from Dennis McBride--who brought Williams into the Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas as a volunteer while Williams was living in a halfway house in Las Vegas--may be found in MS-01099 [McBride's personal papers] deposited in the Special Collections Department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Box 12, folders 12-14.
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Eddie Anderson was an outspoken and iconoclastic radio commentator in Reno, NV in the 1980s and '90s, who covered liberal politics and issues in his call-in program, Radio Free Reno. The program recorded here was broadcast on October 22, 1990, and includes a lengthy biography of conservative activist Janine Hansen of Nevada's Independent American Party; a short interview with then-Nevada State Senator Randolph Townsend; commentary on Question 7, Nevada's pro-abortion initiative petition legislation; pungent comments on Nevada's U. S. Representative Barbara Vucanovich; and comments suggesting that Jesus Christ was gay. It was at the end of this broadcast, captured on this tape, that "Pro-Life" Andy Anderson [Charles F. Anderson (1927-2011)], a notorious religious bigot and anti-abortion crusader who drove a Volkswagen around northern Nevada with a big fetus on the roof to emphasize his point, broke into the studio while Anderson was still on-air and assaulted him for his comments on Jesus. Andy Anderson and Eddie Anderson [no relation] had been acquainted since the early 1970s when both were janitors at St. Mary's Regional Medical Center. Andy Anderson was found guilty of battery in March 1991 and sentenced to community service. See "Abortion Foe Punches Reno Talk Show Host" [Reno Gazette-Journal, October 23, 1990, 1B]; "Pro-Life Andy Anderson Turns Himself In, But Cops Won't Take Him" [Reno Gazette-Journal, November 10, 1990, 1B]; and "Abortion Foe Guilty in Attack" [Reno Gazette-Journal, March 23, 1991, 1A]. Eddie Anderson's description of the attack may be found on pp. 144-145 of his oral history deposited in the Special Collections Department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas [HQ75.4 A54 2000]. Also see Anderson's manuscript collection in Special Collections [MS-00457].
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This is a video recording [in two parts] of the 3rd Annual Big Horn Rodeo in Las Vegas, held March 6-8, 1998. For a history of the gay rodeo in Nevada, see Out of the Neon Closet: Queer Community in the Silver State, by Dennis McBride [North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016], pp. 196-204. [Part 1: 00:00:00 - 01:30:22; Part 2: 00:00:00 - 01:29:22]
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Titled, The Rhetoric of Intolerance: An Open-Letter Video to Pat Robertson from Dr. Mel White, this video provides a point-by-point destruction of Robertson's homophobic social and religious paradigm. Throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, Pat Robertson--founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network [CBN], Regent University, and the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, and one of the loudest voices in the Religious Right--spread a relentlessly homophobic message through his television program, The 700 Club. Mel White, a closeted gay man who ghost wrote autobiographies for such homophobic Christian fundamentalists as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, came out in 1994 and became an outspoken queer activist associated with the Metropolitan Community Church. For documentary materials associated with The Rhetoric of Intolerance ..., see MS-00802, box 8 ["Discrimination - The Rhetoric of Intolerance"] in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Special Collections Department. [00:00:00 - 00:30:03]
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