Jim Andris, Facebook

Larry Eggleston (Missouri Gay Caucus)

Carol Cureton’s Introduction

It is my pleasure to bring you our first speaker for this evening, the Executive Director of the Missouri Gay Caucus, Mr. Larry Eggleston.

Larry Eggleston’s Remarks

We got a tradition going, ‘cause the last time I was here, so was Troy, so it was a joint appearance twice in a row. Pretty good company. I’m kind of wearing three hats tonight, so you get all three of them. Number one, our best news from Columbia, my home base, I was a charter member of Gay Lib there, going back to ’71, an Executive Board member and plaintiff in a long, long-standing law suit against the University, which, if anybody here doesn’t know, we won! [Applause. The decision had come down the day before, June 8, 1977 from the United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit: 558 F. 2d 848 - Gay Lib v. University of Missouri.] [10 seconds of applause] First gay rights victory in this state. [?] It’s the first victory we’ve had in a hell of a long time. But the ordinance plainly said that it infringed with our rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly to refuse recognition to Gay Lib [the student group], and they had to recognize us. [?] So mind made up, fight is over.

[So, left Gay Lib (?) Let go.] Let me talk about MGC [Missouri Gay Caucus] for a little while here. We’re very new. We only really got organized last November. We immediately got faced with a couple of big projects. But we encompass almost every gay group in the state, every MCC in the state, and include organized groups not only here, in Columbia, in Joplin, in Kansas City. We’ve had three things we’ve worked on in addition to coordination and commuication [?] Number one was the [?] The second one we worked on was the [?],and as of right now we’ve [?] visited every one of the House of Representatives with a hand-signed letter from MGC, so at least they know we’re here. They all know we’re here, the Governor [Joseph Teasdale] even answered my letters a couple of times. Didn’t say much. He declined to come to our last state-wide meeting, but at least he answers. He knows how to do some things.

Well, what happened on that is, this is like a final result, is that the old sodomy law’s going to be thrown out as of a year from this fall and now if you do anything at all, it’s sexual misconduct, it’s a misdemeanor, you get six month to two years in the state pen.  It’s an improvement. People would like to get it all the way down to nothing, but at least it’s better.

One other thing we just did for gay people was the rape-test [parity?] law. As of yesterday,  the final road block against that was removed by a vote in the Senate. So the old bit about rape victims having to testify about past history and so on is no longer law in Missouri. [?]

So we’re working on a lot of things again.  We did our fund-raisers [?] last April.
[Several garbled sentences on the above topic .]

Incidentally, in light of Dade County, I got a communication Tuesday night from Miami. And their intention, if anyone hasn’t heard this, is to keep the coalition together, keep the unity, and word was as of Tuesday night, and their intention was, even with this vote, work hard for the endorsed candidates, work for people who for the next couple of elections, it’ll take about two more elections [garbled conclusion ] [applause] I don’t think we can do much less here, it’s gonna work together and we can raise all kinds of hell for the right reasons here.

The third path that I’m on is a very new one, but a joyous one. We started formally emphasizing the groundwork for creating an MCC Columbia this week, well, last week.  The media’s been publicizing it, we’ve got our first handful of committed members, we have a home, they’ve replaced the old services, and we have a continually interested media, all the way across the board, radio, TV, press, we even had some minister down there last week, local trippin’, he said, no, looks like it’s gonna go to heaven. [?] [laughter] The publisher of the Tribune which has had a circulation of 60,000 or 70,000 wrote a nice little editorial which said if that was what heaven was like, we would want to go there. We’ve got force prayer, we have a few seats, we’ve got the media’s blessing and some of the power people in town, so … Last time I was here, Troy was here, telling you people to make MCC, in the next couple of years you’ll be coming round to FDR Church in Columbia. I think that’s the proudest hat that I’m wearing. [?]

Transcribed by Jim Andris August 8, 2017 from a copy of a tape made of the event provided by John Hilgeman.