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Michael Jones (born 1964) is a music talent manager, producer, director, and author. From 1984-1988, he was a controversial activist credited with enabling the gay and lesbian community of Indianapolis to become more active and visible. His active period in Indiana was short, but in that time he was deeply involved in helping Ryan White and working to advance the rights of gays and lesbians. The controversy around him was centered on his brash and sometimes self-aggrandizing style. ==History== Michael Everett Jones was born on September 24, 1964 in Indianapolis, Indiana, the only child of Everett Jones, Jr., a real estate broker, and Marlene Jean Hider Jones, a bookkeeper. Just 19 years later, he would become an outspoken proponent of gay and lesbian rights at the state then national level. On Friday, June 26, 1984, Jones had been socializing with friends on Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis. The area was well known as a gathering place for young gay males and had become a target for police activity. That Friday night, two plainclothes Indianapolis Police Department officers approached Jones, questioned him, frisked him and one groped his genitals. They left, telling Jones and his friends to move on. Jones would later write about his experience for the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. "I was searched and had my ID checked by two unidentified officers Police Department's Tactical Unit,” he wrote. “ After having had received 23 complaints, including mine, within just a few weeks, the ICLU moved to the center of attention, speaking out against this harassment of gays." 〔Jones, Michael. "Gay Harassment Prompts ICLU Task Force" (Unknown date). ''ICLU Newsletter'', p. 1.〕 Instead of moving on, an outraged Jones went to the local media. His contention that police were targeting gays unfairly resonated with many throughout the city’s gay and lesbian community. Police had already been caught videotaping gays and lesbians a year earlier. The news sparked weekly Friday night protests, called “Gay Knights on the Circle” at the landmark, beginning July 22, 1984.〔”Gay Knights on the Circle” (September 1984). ''The Works'', p. 6.〕 The protests were organized by two of the gay community’s best-known leaders: Stan Berg, owner of the Body Works, a gay bathhouse in Indianapolis and publisher of the city’s only gay publication, ''The Works''; and Kathy Sarris, who presided over a gay rights organization called Justice. Their relationship with Jones was cautious at best, given that he was politically ambitious and threatened the established order. In fact, they would not even mention Jones by name in those early days and ''The Works'' would not print his name until October 1984. The protests culminated on the evening of Friday, August 31, 1984 when hundreds of gay men and lesbians gathered in a final demonstration. Despite multiple death threats including threats of sniper fire, Dr. Bruce Voeller, then president of the Mariposa Foundation and former director of the National Gay Task Force, delivered a speech to the crowd, as did other prominent leaders. Jones, however, stole the spotlight with a fiery speech that brought the crowd into a near frenzy. “It was like the entire city just stopped for his speech,” one man told The Indianapolis Star. “You didn’t hear any cars, no people, just Michael’s voice reverberating off the buildings. It was thrilling and eerie at the same time.” One afternoon, while waiting to tape an interview at the local CBS affiliate, Jones was approached by Michael Gradison, executive director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, the state’s ACLU chapter. Gradison asked Jones if he would be interested in spearheading a statewide effort focusing on gay and lesbian rights. Jones took the opportunity and created the Gay and Lesbian Rights Task Force of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. Jones formed the Task Force on July 28, 1984.〔”ICLU Forms Task Force” (October 1984). The Gay News-Telegraph, p. 1.〕 This move on the ICLU’s part seemed to only strain the relationship between the organization and the city’s gay leadership. Shortly after the creation of the Task Force, Berg and Sarris met with ICLU leaders. The previous year, the ICLU had reached an agreement with the Indianapolis Police Department to establish restrictions on the Department’s videotaping of gays and others, but had not included any of the gay leadership. Stan Berg wrote a brief story in ''The Works'' aptly titled, “ICLU and Gay Leaders Agree to Disagree.” 〔”ICLU and Gay Leaders Agree to Disagree” (September 1984). ''The Works'', p. 9.〕 Over the course of the next two years, Jones would criss-cross the state delivering speeches about gay rights and giving interviews to local media. In 1986, at the American Civil Liberties Union’s annual conference in Boulder, Colorado, Jones isolated himself in his room and after an entire night, he emerged with a draft policy on non-discrimination against people with AIDS and HTLV-III (the first name for HIV) and a resolution opposing mandatory AIDS testing. Both policies were adopted virtually unchanged. This conference was also attended by another person who would have a major leadership role in gay and lesbian politics, Urvashi Vaid. She and Jones met at a party in Boulder and spent most of their evening forging ideas about the future of the movement. Vaid would later become executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Michael Jones (activist)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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