                            THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT  
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Monday, September 16, 1996            TAG: 9609160037
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER 
                                            LENGTH:  316 lines

CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: * CORRECTIONS A story in Monday's Metro News section about the 20th anniversary of Our Own Community Press made reference to another Hampton Roads-based newspaper serving the gay and lesbian community, Out & About. The story described the newspaper as being about half the size of Our Own. Out & About, which reports a statewide readership of about 60,000, publishes about 40 pages monthly compared to Our Own's 48 pages monthly. Correction published , Tuesday, September 17, 1996, p. A2 * IT'S THE ONE NEWSPAPER GAYS CAN CALL ``OUR OWN'' FOR 20 YEARS, IT'S BEEN A VOICE THAT WON'T BE SILENCED.

``Gay Weddings: Are They Holy Unions?''

It could be a headline from this newspaper. But it actually appeared a dozen years ago in Our Own Community Press, Virginia's - and one of the nation's - oldest continuously published gay and lesbian newspaper.

So it has been over the two decades that Our Own, first published in September 1976, has traced the evolution and lives of Hampton Roads' gay and lesbian community.

Anita Bryant and pride festivals. Child custody suits and poetry. Softball and ``don't ask, don't tell.'' Pat Robertson and his gay ghostwriter, Mel White. An at-large serial killer and, in the June 1982 edition: ``New `Gay Diseases' Affect Men.''

While mainstream media largely ignored what the medical community had uncovered, the Norfolk-based Our Own was among a handful of gay newspapers reporting on an emerging killer.

AIDS.

``During the early years of the AIDS crisis, when it was being ignored or covered only very briefly and with not much useful information, Our Own was an invaluable source of education and information,'' said Fred Osgood, one of the newspaper's seven founders.

Just as AIDS is not the definition of the gay community, however, neither is it the single focus of Our Own, which traces its start to one of the most basic purposes of a newspaper: serving as a community bulletin board.

The impetus, Osgood said, was the desire to promote a new organization, the Unitarian-Universalist Gay Caucus, a gay and lesbian social/service group. One of its first events was planned as a spaghetti dinner fund-raiser to benefit the launch of a telephone help line for the gay community.

Trouble was, how to get the word out? With certainty that no mainstream media would help, caucus members decided they needed a newspaper of their own: Our Own.

The first, single-page edition was modest. A hand-drawn nameplate and hand-penned headlines. Someone set narrow tabs on a typewriter and produced two columns about the caucus and the dinner. A campy ad for a brunch featured a man in bell-bottoms, displaying every stereotypical gay affectation, wearing a chef's hat and flipping a pancake.

A trip to the photocopy machine, and Our Own hit the streets - or, rather, the bars and clubs popular with the gay community.

Growth came quickly. Within a year the newsletter had evolved into a more traditional newspaper with four tabloid pages. It was still typed, but it had real headlines and photographs. The December 1977 edition trumpeted a successful fund-raiser to fight ``a disease that does not discriminate and affects people regardless of sex, class or sexual orientation.''

Those exact words have been used to describe AIDS in winning broader public support in the fight against that disease. But in 1977 they were intended to enlist the gay community in the struggle against muscular dystrophy.

Two members of the Old Dominion University Gay Alliance had entered the annual campus Dance-athon to benefit MD. The gay couple won, raising nearly $3,000 of the $18,000 given.

Their efforts went largely unnoticed, however. The student newspaper reported it. Mainstream media - television and two daily newspapers - covered the event but ignored the winners. In the past, winners had been featured.

It was Our Own's lead story.

In that respect, the newspaper's mission and purpose are unchanged.

``It's always been about visibility,'' said editor Kathleen Vickery. ``That's still our main focus. Trying to provide some sort of accurate representation of what it is like to be gay in this state.''

It isn't always easy.

``So many organizations think we're there to promote their agendas or needs,'' Vickery said. ``But we think it's important to provide somewhat unbiased coverage of issues.''

Today, Our Own is two 24-page sections with a circulation of 30,000, she said. It is still published monthly, but in color. And, unlike the early years, there are scores of paid advertisements, from bars to Realtors, lawyers to car dealers.

It is one of two monthly newspapers serving the local gay community. The other, Out & About, is also tabloid but about half the size of Our Own.

``The impact of Our Own has changed dramatically over the last 15 years,'' said Tom Long, past president of the Hampton Roads Lesbian and Gay Pride Coalition and a member of the Community Advisory Board of the Tidewater AIDS Crisis Taskforce.

``It's gone from being a paper that seemed to have a variety of purposes - trying to be all things to all people and not terribly well-written; very much an amateur operation - to becoming a very significant news and editorial voice for gay and lesbian people in Virginia.''

It's even left the mainstream media playing catch-up sometimes. For instance, it was Our Own that first reported in 1993 that $20,000 raised to support local AIDS organizations was apparently missing.

It turned out that a top official of the organization holding the funds had mismanaged them and used a small amount for himself. The man, David Gillooly, skipped town but was later arrested and found guilty.

A strong gay newspaper provides ``a visible, legitimate presence in the larger community,'' Long said. ``One of the chief ways that gay people begin to understand themselves, to come out and to learn about others like themselves, is through printed material: newspapers, books and magazines.''

For gay or lesbian youth, discovery of a gay-oriented publication is often the first self-affirming moment in dealing with the realization that one is homosexual.

``I remember how important it was for me back in the late '60s when I was coming out to even have fliers'' that affirmed there was a gay community, said Don Michaels, publisher of the 27-year-old Washington Blade, one of the nation's leading gay newspapers. ``That is bottom-line essential.''

Few gay newspapers survive more than a decade, however. There are only a handful, based in major urban centers like San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington, Michaels said.

In that respect, Our Own is in a class by itself.

``It's commendable that Our Own has been able to survive 20 years,'' Michaels said.

It hasn't been easy. Advertising - the paper's sole revenue source - has always been hard to get and keep, said Alicia Herr, who joined the paper in 1987 and has been publisher since 1990.

Only in recent years - as mainstream companies began to recognize the purchasing power of the gay community - has the advertising base expanded beyond gay-themed businesses and services.

And then there have been the efforts to silence the paper by limiting its distribution.

In 1978, Our Own fought to be distributed alongside other free publications at Norfolk's public libraries. It lost, and only a single copy is allowed. That copy is placed among the periodicals collections.

In 1980, Virginia Beach's city manager ordered Our Own out of libraries. With the help of the ACLU, the newspaper fought back. But when a judge would not grant a temporary injunction, and it looked as if a long and costly battle would follow, Our Own dropped its suit.

Virginia Beach officials sued the newspaper for attorneys' fees. The same judge tossed that suit out.

Today, the newspaper is more stable and has a wide distribution system. But while many things have changed, some remain the same. It still takes a lot of work to produce the paper - one reason it will remain a monthly, Herr said.

The core staff includes eight people backed by about 15 regular writers and contributors. On production weekends, its not unusual for the staff to work 36 hours without a break.

``Most of us work full-time jobs,'' Herr said. ``The editor is a single, lesbian mother going to school full-time and working two part-time jobs. It's amazing that we're able to, monthly, produce a 48-page publication. It's stupendous we've made it this far.''

Why does Herr do it?

She laughs as she repeats the question she said she has asked herself more than once.

``I'm approaching 50, and I'm tired,'' she said. ``But my heart keeps pumping to do it again and again.'' She's driven by equal parts of anger and hope.

``I'm still angry that, in the early '70s, I married a man right after college because I didn't know what else to do,'' she said. ``I knew I was different, but I had no support. And I will never let that happen to anybody else if I can help it. The gay press reaches so many young people and allows them to not have to make those life-denying decisions such as I made.''

On the hopeful side, she dreams of an America where gays and lesbians are afforded the same rights as other citizens. That is why, Herr said, in this military area, she has reported extensively on the issue of gays in the military.

``My partner is active-duty military, and we've cried many nights over that issue, gays in the military. It's very painful,'' Herr said. ``And I will be alive when that changes.''