Bay Windows - Local News, January 21, 1999
Scott A. Giordano, Bay Windows staff

Some activists suspect the religious Right is preparing to target city council, board of selectmen and school committee seats in that town or its surrounding areas that include Dover and Wellesley.

In addition, Bay Windows has uncovered evidence that the man behind that unprecedented local mailing may have a much broader agenda. Specifically, that man - J. Edward Pawlick of Sherborn - is the same one who began publishing a daily online conservative newspaper in October and one of several who targeted state legislative seats in the Nov. 3 general election.

Local gay activists who monitor the Right say Pawlick appears to be connected with national religious-Right organizations that have anti-gay agendas.

"It makes sense that people like the Pawlicks (J. Edward and his wife Sarah) are spinning off different smaller organizations that are working cooperatively with the larger organizations towards the same agenda, which is clearly anti-gay. ... This is something we started to see in Massachusetts a few years ago, but I think it's an ongoing effort that I expect we will continue to see," said Surina Khan, associate analyst for Political Research Associates (PRA), a Somerville-based organization that tracks the national religious Right.

Gay activists say Pawlick's most recent action - the distribution of his anti-gay "feature story" called "An Intelligent Discussion About Homosexuality ... Will Massachusetts Listen?" - is a red flag that the Right may be targeting seats in upcoming elections in the Sherborn area. "One effect of this kind of piece in circulation is to prime the pump so that voters who are sympathetic to it would be inclined to support candidates who echo those same themes in the piece. I would certainly anticipate seeing some local candidates with campaign rhetoric that reverberates with this piece," said Sue Hyde, a New England field organizer for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF). Similar anti-gay literature was distributed last November in South Portland, Maine, when that city had a gay-rights referendum on the ballot. With the absence of any gay-rights measures on the ballot in Massachusetts, Hyde said that's more reason to believe the Right is getting ready to target some local election races.

Pawlick's essay is sprinkled with the now-disproven research of discredited "sociologist" Paul Cameron, such as a claim that "30 percent of homosexual men will be dead before age 30 or they will be HIV positive," quotes from selected studies that lead one to believe gay people can convert to heterosexuality, and claims that "homosexual activists" are spreading hate and teaching their "lifestyle" to children. The booklet also features a reprint of a full-page newspaper ad published last summer in the New York Times, the Washington Post and U.S.A. Today that declares "homosexuals can change" and was co-sponsored by 16 national radical-Right organizations.

Gay residents of Sherborn are afraid of how people in their town will respond to Pawlick's literature. Mark O'Brien, an off-and-on Sherborn resident since 1976 who is currently living in the town, said most people there are "welcoming" of gay people, but he fears Pawlick's booklet may provoke homophobia. "I am concerned because some people may read it and say, Oh, gee, this is what gay people are really like.' ... Others who have a tendency to be violent may use this as a license to do harm [to gay people] because they see this and see these distortions and take it as truth," O'Brien said. "This is a well-organized and financed campaign against gay people. Right-wing groups are formulating this hatred and gay people have become the target."

Hyde fears the literature could be "very demoralizing" for youth who are questioning their sexuality - especially since many won't have easy access to counter-balancing information. "The problem with this kind of literature being dropped into people's households is that most people who are receiving this have not thought very much or read very much about homosexuality or gay people ... [and] what appears on television is quite different than what people tend to read or see in printed form, should it become available," Hyde said. "This kind of written material about gay people comes from the right-wing and is very anti-gay and defamatory and depicts gay people in the worse possible terms and light. I think this often surfaces anti-gay feelings in people who had no particular reason to be aware of their anti-gay feelings before," she added. "What is dangerous and scary about this dropping into [15,000] households is the idea that most people who receive it will not have read literature produced by gay people or straight allies. ... and many people who read this will think this is the truth about gay people." The literature didn't come in an envelope, O'Brien said, so anyone who sees it could read it.

Another Sherborn resident who received the booklet by mail is 36-year-old Carol Hamilton, a heterosexual mother of one-year-old and seven-year-old daughters.

"Luckily my children aren't likely to pick it out of the mail and read it, but I resent having it in my mail. I feel [Pawlick has] an agenda, and I'm not quite sure what prompted him to impose such inflammatory material on this town. It looks to me like he is trying to upset the applecart. The [gay] issue is not particularly germane to the politics in our town, so why he would choose to mail in our town is unknown to me unless he was trying to incite people," said Hamilton, a Sherborn resident of eight years. "It makes me feel even more frightened to know [Pawlick] is in my town because he must want to light a fire in this town and watch it burn in his own front yard," she added.

But O'Brien also hopes Pawlick will provoke discussion. "If there are people out there who feel this way, I think it's better to know they are out there and who they are so we can debate this," he said. And Hyde said activists can also be happy that the mailing contained no photographs. "I am glad to hear there are not photographs because when the right wing has chosen to use photographic images, the photos they choose are extremely inflammatory and ... they tend to choose images of some gay people that tend to be very unrepresentative," she said. Mr. Pawlick, an attorney, was unavailable for an in-depth interview at Bay Windows press time. He would only say by phone that he distributed the 15,000 copies in his home town to "test people's reactions." His wife, Sarah - identified in public campaign records as a homemaker - previously told Bay Windows she is an arch conservative who believes "homosexuals are breaking God's law."

Several other recent actions by Pawlick show he is becoming one of the Bay State's most vocal anti-gay activists. Pawlick's booklet comes months after Bay Windows first learned that several individuals, including the Pawlicks, contributed the maximum $500 allowed under Massachusetts state law to several candidates in the Nov. 3 general election and to a Wellesley-based Political Action Committee (PAC) tied with national and local religious-Right organizations and individuals that also contributed the maximum $500 to those candidates. At least two of the candidates supported by the Pawlicks and that PAC, the Massachusetts Independent Political Action Committee for Working Families (MIPACWF), won their election races: Democrat Brian Paul Golden of Allston and Republican Vinny deMacedo of Plymouth.

Pawlick also is the publisher of the Massachusetts News (MassNews), a conservative right-wing online newspaper he founded in October that is accessible at http://www.massnews.com.

Some gay activists suggest the Pawlicks are part of a larger orchestrated campaign designed to roll back gay civil rights in the Commonwealth. "I am only speculating that what Pawlick and others have accessed is that it's in their own best interest to begin their work in the areas in which they live," Hyde said. "I would describe the anti-gay right wing as an octopus with many, many tentacles, and one tentacle is in the Northeast. The evidence that there is a tentacle planted here is pretty clear." Khan added that "it's important to look at the Christian Right as a larger movement that is targeting the Northeast as an area where they would like to expand."

How to respond?

The gay activists are now faced with the dilemma of how to organize an effective response.

O'Brien said he and others in the town of Sherborn already have begun meeting to plan a response to the literature that has been distributed in their town.

"This is a wake-up call for us to become politically aware and work with political organizations and clergy in the state who are gay- and lesbian-supportive, and [to challenge] those who are not supportive. We need to contribute to organizations who will effectively challenge the Right and promote lesbian and gay issues, and [gay people need to] network with our heterosexual allies. ... Most of all, we need to vote," O'Brien said.

Hyde reiterated the importance of gay people working collaboratively, especially religious and political leaders. But she added that a third component is to have their say through the local media. "The local media really needs to be utilized by people to put out to as broad an audience as possible a different point of view," Hyde said. "We must give people, especially those who have read [Pawlick's literature,] an alternative point of view that comes from those working within the gay community."
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