How dirty is Playboy’s money? Each month the nation’s leading magazine for young heterosexual men who haven’t quite grown up yet celebrates the ancient art of public dishabille. But does this ritual make the magazine essentially silly or essentially malign?
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The need for “Die Queer” is compelling. The journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics recently reported on a survey that found 30 percent of gay males 21 or younger saying they’d attempted suicide. These are the desperate youths Kendall most wanted to reach. But donations to IGLTF, which in addition to its educational programs maintains a lobbyist in Springfield, are not tax deductible. Kendall beat the bushes looking for financial backing before the Playboy Foundation–which has supported gay causes for two decades–agreed to print the poster gratis (at a cost that came to $3,184).
About 1,900 posters were printed up last spring, most of them intended for the CTA’s buses, trains, and platforms. But if you looked closely at the lower left corner, you would have seen the tiny legend “Printing donated by the Playboy Foundation.” In June IGLTF elected a new, younger, more enlightened board of directors, who slammed the door on this trafficking with the devil by voting on September 7 not to mount the posters but to destroy them.
“They sure are,” said Kendall.
A letter came to Wilson from Tim Drake. He’s a longtime IGLTF member who’d been cochair of the board of directors when Kendall arranged the Playboy funding early this year. Drake had seen no problem with it.
But director Mary Roberts responded, “We must feel free to speak our position without our voices and our speech being chilled by the presence of outside factors.”
IGLTF leaders are worried that having been burned once, the CTA will summarily reject “Die Queer” as public-service advertising. Then IGLTF would have to buy space, which means it would have to raise money from somewhere–which it now is in no position to do.
