Where in the world is Erica Martinez?
Mr. Ohio Gay Pride on Politics, Stonewall and Cleveland Pride

No one has seen Cleveland’s premier drag queen for over a year! Never fear — Erica’s alter ego, Paco Martinez, is here. And Mr. Ohio Gay Pride 2008 is just as politically aware, pissed off about gay Republicans, and passionate about community involvement and self-respect. To help celebrate Pride month, which includes the Cleveland Pride celebration this Saturday, June 21 at Voinovich Park, long-time LGBT ally and Cool Cleveland contributor Dana Aritonovich sat down with the effusive and enthusiastic Paco for a long afternoon chat in his cozy, family photo-covered Cleveland home. And after only a few short minutes of off-the-record gossip, Paco jumped right into politics, Stonewall and Cleveland Pride, no questions asked:

Paco Martinez: I listen to these Republican radio stations, and it’s so funny because they’re always like, “If you only knew what gay people did behind closed doors…” I love these straight people: “Oh, my life’s gonna fall apart if [gays] get married!” What does it concern you? If your neighbors are gay and they’re married, don’t talk to ’em, you know? Respect them. It confuses me. What does it bother you so much? Oh, and then they always say, “Marriage is sacred, marriage is sacred.” If marriage is so sacred, then why, every time I turn around, another straight couple’s getting divorced? Mind your own business, as long as you do not hurt children, and you do not hurt animals, and as long as you’re consenting adults, what you do behind closed doors is nobody’s business but your own. Everybody wants to get into everybody else’s business instead of worrying about their own business. That’s a big problem.

And you know, just like this election, the thing that really upsets me is the gay Republican. [The Human Rights Campaign] asked every candidate from the Democrats to the Republicans to speak on Logo, do you remember that?

Cool Cleveland: Mmmm-hmmm.

Not one Republican could come on and say, “I don’t agree with gay life. I don’t agree with gay marriage. But I’m here to listen to what your views are.” They didn’t even acknowledge us, like we didn’t even exist. [John] McCain has made it clear: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I think that policy should stay, I don’t think they should be openly gay in the military.” But yet you can go in the military and fight for this country and be killed, but you have to hide who you are. And McCain wants to keep that. Just like with gay marriage. McCain says, “I don’t care if you guys have a ceremony, but it’s not gonna be legal.” If McCain gets in there, McCain is going to appoint those strict, conservative judges. He has said it over and over again.

I have looked up every YouTube that he has been on... and I’ve studied what he is about, and he is not for gay people. So how can you be a gay man or a gay woman and say “I’m a Republican”? This gay man said to me, “Well, you know, it’s not all about gay issues.” I said, “You’re absolutely right.” Are there some things with the Republicans I agree with? Yes there are. [Are] there some things with Democrats I don’t agree? Yes there are. But this is my life, this is who I am. I am a gay man, I have been out of the closet for 21 years, and why do I want a president that doesn’t want me to have any rights, doesn’t respect me as a human being? Why do we have gay people running around the community saying “I’m a Republican”? I mean, to me, it’s ridiculous, it’s absolutely ridiculous, that you’re running around, “Oh, I’m voting for McCain, I’m a gay Republican. It’s the economy, that’s what it’s about, not all gay rights.” But this is who you are! But yet those same gay Republicans wanna have the right to walk into a gay bar, and wanna be able to go and have a drink and be whoever they wanna be. But you know, if the Republicans had their way…there would be no gay bars, there would be no gay events, there would never be gay marriage. Just like in California [which recently legalized same-sex marriage], one gay Republican said to me, “Well, you know, it’s for the people to vote on.” No it’s not! It should just be legal! We should have the same right to marry.

[I think] if they left slavery up to the people, we would still have slavery! Sometimes the government does have to step in and decide what is right and what is constitutional. That what the government is there for, to do what the people can’t do for themselves.

Right, and so, the California judges said gay marriage is fine. You know what? This country could make so much more money off the gay marriages and the divorces and the attorneys!

McCain is another George Bush! McCain’s gonna get into the White House and do everything just like George Bush. McCain is a warmonger, he is about war. And he said we could be there another hundred years. We went over there and killed innocent people.

4,000 of our people have been killed—they’re kids, like 19 and 20 year old kids. You wanna keep killing our children? Our children are dying, for what?

For what?

So we can pay five dollars for a gallon of gas? So you can say, “Oh, we’re looking for Osama.” Like you don’t know where he is?!

That’s why I think it’s so important that the community comes together for [Barack] Obama, and I think the gay community can really come together for him. I’m a big Hillary Clinton fan — very big Hillary Clinton fan — and I hope he picks her on this ticket, which I don’t think he’s going to. Obama wants change, and Obama believes in our community, too, and that’s a very important thing. Obama believes that gays should have rights, and yes, there’s more to the election than gay issues, I understand that. But I cannot press that lever for a man who does not believe that I should have rights as a human being, that I don’t exist... But yet gay men and women wanna run around saying “I’m a Republican! I’m a Republican!” Give me a break! Give me a break. And it angers me.

It’s the Republican party that wants to scream “family values, family values”, but every time you turn around the Republicans are in some kind of sex scandals, and a lot of times they’re in sex scandals with men. And it’s funny because, Ted Haggard, who was a preacher, he was President Bush’s right-hand man, fighting against gay rights, and for five years he was hiring a male prostitute and doing drugs! But yet wanted to take rights away—it’s hypocrisy. Jimmy Swaggart’s another big Republican who is against gays. But yet you’re a man who’s gotten caught with a prostitute... now how many other times were you cheating on your wife with prostitutes and we don’t know? Look at Larry Craig. He’s in the bathroom tapping his foot, trying to pick up another man. You don’t have to agree with who I am, but don’t be a hypocrite, and just don’t bother with me.

Everybody’s too quick to judge everybody, and everybody wants to get in everyone’s business, and a big part of that is the religious right. The evangelicals have wrapped themselves around the Republican party. I believe in my heart the reason Bush got elected is cuz Bush was talking about family values and gays. I’m a gay man — I don’t have family values? I have a lover, we have a home, we have our dog, I have a daughter, I’m close to my parents, I go out once in awhile, I respect people. I have family values! I respect my neighbors — I get along with every one of my neighbors. I have family values. If you go up my stairs, all the way down my hallway and my living room is nothing but family pictures from top to bottom, my whole family, because I’m close to my family. I don’t have family values because I’m gay? You know, it’s ridiculous.

There is a war out there with the religious right and the Republican party that wants to take everything away from us. We have to come together and educate our friends, educate our families. The Gay People’s Chronicle is my favorite [newspaper]. I always tell people, “Please pick up a Gay People’s Chronicle and read it!” It is so educational, it tells you so much of what is going on in this community. I open up one every Friday — when they come in I can’t wait to get ‘em! — I find out new and different things that are going on. We have got to educate ourselves. The young generation is so different compared to when I came out and the generation before me. Everybody wants to go out and have a cocktail and have fun and do whatever they want to do, but they’ve got to realize they have to fight for that right, because there’s people that wanna take those rights away from us.

I’ve personally been an Independent since 1996, but for local and state things I vote for Democrats — I voted for Strickland because he’s awesome and he’s so pro-gay.

Did you see when he was elected? He did a speech and his wife goes, “Honey, there’s HRC!” I love her! I’m so impressed with her; fantastic woman. How much respect I have for her—and I have for him. Incredible, and a great man. I love Dennis Kucinich! I wish I could meet him; fantastic man. I wanna really give a shout out to him; we’re really lucky to have him and Strickland. What a great man. I basically want to say, as a citizen of Ohio, and as a gay man, that I appreciate that we have people like Ted Strickland and his wife, and people like Dennis Kucinich, that we’re very lucky to have people like that who care about us and who have a voice, and that their work doesn’t go unnoticed.

And they’re not afraid to say the word “gay” in public.

Right. I’m very proud of them, and very proud that we have them here in Ohio. And I just think that we need to embrace these people, and people like you who aren’t gay, but who are supportive of our community and consider us as human beings, and they care enough to have a voice for us. I salute them and I thank them.

Gay history has come in waves. It’s kinda open for a while, and then all of a sudden somebody cracks down. Then they all kinda come together when there’s a common enemy, and that happened after Stonewall (click here). People don’t even know why June is Pride month! They don’t even know what Stonewall was. Eventually the lesbians went more the direction of the women’s movement, and the gay men were controlling the gay movement. And then Anita Bryant — “We’re not buying Florida orange juice anymore! We’re all gonna come together again because we all hate Anita Bryant and she hates us.” And then the men and women started separating again after a while, and then AIDS happened, and they all came together again. It seems that when there’s a common enemy, everybody can get together, but then something always happens and they start going their separate ways again.

You’re so right.

It’s very frustrating watching this divide. Looking at the community in Cleveland, it’s always been separated. It seems like the older gay people are more segregated than the younger gay people.

I find that with so many young kids that are so scared and they live a lie that they even commit suicide, or they become drug addicts, or they marry women and lie to their wives and cheat on them with men all the time. That’s not fair to a woman, but they do it because they feel society pushes them that that’s the thing to do. We are different, we’re not all made the same way—we have different hair colors, different eyes, different nationalities, different skin color. But you know, just like Reverend Martin Luther King said, I have a dream that we all come together as one. And I’ve really learned a lot about Reverend Martin Luther King and his wife. His wife did an interview for Advocate magazine, and she had said in there that, “My husband believed there should be no discrimination against anybody, even gay people.” How can I not respect a man like that who fought for rights?

And that’s why, as a gay man and as Mr. Ohio, and as Paco Martinez and Erica Martinez, if I can speak at every show, and one person listens to me, and I can make a difference in one person’s life that that person will go home and talk to their family member, or talk to a person that’s struggling, and say, “Hey, we need to fight for our rights.” If every one show one person says, “I’m gonna pick up a Gay People’s Chronicle and I’m gonna learn what’s going on, and I wanna be a part of this community,” my job has succeeded. And if there’s 150 people there and they get sick of hearing me, cuz sometimes they go, “Oh, there he goes again about politics and gay rights and gay marriage!”—I love our people, I love the gay community, and I want to see us come together.

When I die and I’m gone, I wanna know that the next generation — it’s gonna be easy for them, that’s who you are, it is what it is. And just like with transgender people, I do believe there are people who are just born the wrong sex. But they have to be happy. You have to make yourself happy. As long as you don’t hurt anybody, as I always say, then what’s wrong with being happy and being who you are? Yes, you may lose friends, and you may lose family members, but you can be who you are and be proud of yourself. You’re not gonna have somebody behind you saying “You’re wrong! You’re wrong! You’re wrong!” for who you are — you were born that way, and that’s who you are. And that’s why I love that song “We Are Family” cuz I think it’s so important that we have made that like our song—we are family.

I think it’s so important in the gay community that we have the older gay men and women as mother and father figures for gay kids who are coming out, that they have somebody they can look up to and say, “Look at that lesbian couple right there: they’ve been together for 25 years, they have a beautiful home, they’re raising a little girl, they have a dog, and they have a nice house.” Like I always say, there’s nothin’ a lesbian can’t do! We need positive role models.

I love my community, I love this community, and I believe in us, and until the day I die, I will do whatever I can do to help with the gay community and to help young gays and lesbians coming out of the closet, and transgendered and bisexual people. I will always do whatever I can because I believe that’s what God put me on this Earth for, I believe that!

That’s how I feel about myself also.

And we love you, women like you, we love you and respect you, and are glad that we have people who aren’t gay who are in our community to help fight for our rights. That’s very important that we have people like you, and men and women that say, “Hey, I’m not gay, but I have gay friends and I’m gonna fight for gay rights,” that’s very important, and it means a lot. We love you for that!

Thank you! You needed white people in the civil rights movement. It wasn’t just about black people’s rights at all, because the black civil rights movement led to the gay movement, the women’s movement, the Latino movement, you know, handicapped people. Martin Luther King’s closest ally was a gay man, Bayard Rustin. Given the choice between him using his skills—because the gay movement was in its infancy at the time, but there were a couple groups—he decided instead of focusing on one small group that was silent — the gay community was still very silent — he thought that the best thing he could do to get his message out there was to be part of Martin Luther King’s movement because he knew that was all-encompassing. And when there was a threat to expose Rustin’s homosexuality King distanced himself from him, but Rustin also understood that that was what was necessary to keep the movement going without distraction. How noble! I can’t even imagine anyone doing that today. These days it’s not about how are we all going to accomplish something together? It’s all about me. How do you think we can get these young gay people involved in their community and feel like it’s gonna make a difference? How do you get to them to feel like it’s a big deal and that it’s important that we pass down our knowledge and our experience to them? Why should they take that torch?

The thing is just word of mouth, just keep talking and talking and talking, and hopefully one day they’ll listen. And keep writing articles, and keep encouraging people to read the Gay People’s Chronicle, and keep pushing them and talking to them. I feel that I have a voice because I’ve been Erica Martinez for 21 years, I’ve been Paco Martinez for the past couple years. I’m going to use my voice, and like I said, whether people get sick of hearing it, maybe one of those young kids will listen, and then they’ll tell their friend. So every show I do, I will always talk about gay rights, I will always talk about the election, I will always talk about coming together as one because that is what I do and will continue to do, and hopefully people will listen. I don’t care who gets sick of it! I’ve been in shows where people’ve walked out and said, “Oh, there goes Erica again — or Paco again — runnin’ her mouth, I’m so sick of hearin’ it.” But then there’s also a few people that sit up and they listen, and they walk up to me and they go, “You know, it really makes sense what you said, I never really thought how important this next election is. I’m gonna tell my parents about that!”

A lot of the young gay community take for granted [that] it’s so easy to walk into a bar, pay your money, and have a drink, and be able to kiss another man and walk around the bar holding his hand—

And you’re not gonna get raided.

There was a time they beat you up when they walked into bars—

That’s what happened at Stonewall!

People didn’t realize how important Stonewall was—the drag queens and the lesbians—

Because that was not the first time that kinda thing happened, but they just got sick of it that day, and they just started throwing rocks, and like, “We’re not gonna take this shit any more!” And I don’t know if it’s gonna have to take something like that again. Like I said, there’s gotta be some major event or person who brings everybody together, and that’s horrible. It’s only when something bad happens, and it’s not just the gay community. Why can’t you always be so passionate about this? Why do you have to wait until something is painful for you to try to do something about it? Young people have not been through that struggle, and I don’t think they appreciate what they have now.

When I came out in 1987, I came out to a bar in Lorain, and it was so different from Lorain to Cleveland. When I started doing shows 21 years ago, it was funny because the lesbians and the transgendered and the gay guys, everybody—we were such a close family. It was a home bar. I didn’t think that the lesbians went one way and the gay men went one way. And then when I came to Cleveland I saw all this segregating, and I was like, “Oh my God!”

There was a lesbian couple that were that were best friends with my lover and me, we hung out with them all the time, we did everything together! We just all came together. We did shows together; we didn’t have separate nights for drag queens, separate nights for kings. We had nothing like that! We all did shows together. And then I came to Cleveland when I started performing more—

Culture shock!

I’m like, “What is going on here?” There is so much discrimination and so much gay bashing that we have to look out for each other and we’ve got to come together.

So do you think being gay is who you are in total, or do you think it’s just a part of who you are? Should people be more open? I have friends who are open at work and some who are not. Some who hide who they are when they’re at work because they know they’re gonna get discriminated against, and some people are just like, “Well, you know what? I don’t feel like I have to talk about it, but if they ask me I won’t deny it.”

I don’t think enough gay people speak out about who they are, and they keep so much closeted and so much quiet. If more people would speak out, it would make things easier for the gay community. As long as you’re not gonna lose your job—I understand, especially in Ohio, that they can fire you for being gay. I do think that if it’s not gonna endanger your life or your home, then you need to speak up for who you are, you have to. Because the more people speak out, they stand up and they stand together. Be who you are.

As my mother said to me one time, she said, “When you first came out, you shoved it down my throat.” I said, “Mom, it wasn’t that I wanted to shove it down your throat, I wanted you to realize that this is who I am, and I’m proud of who I am. And I wanted you to know that.” 21 years later, she’s completely cool with it. When I won Mr. Ohio, it was amazing, because after 21 years, my mother came to a nightclub to see me in a show. My grandmother used to go to all my shows, my Italian grandma! She was at Numbers and Euphoria. She was my best friend, she was my life. Back in like ’93, ’94, I was like on a winning streak, I had won like ten pageants in a row. When I would win flowers I always won roses, and so she’d hang ‘em on the back porch and dry ‘em out. She’d always wanna save my flowers, and she’d put my crowns on and stuff. And she was always very proud of me. Well, I had won this big bouquet of roses—must’ve been a couple of dozen—and her sister lived two blocks away from her, and she wanted to take the roses to give to her sister to put in her garden by her statue of Mary and everything. So she went walking over there to give her the flowers. I see her storming down the street and she said, “She got mad at me and told me I have no right to accept what you do and everything! I said, ‘That’s my grandson! I love what he does, he’s an entertainer!’ How dare she!” But she was so proud. She kept a picture of Erica in her wallet.

That’s making me cry! That’s so awesome.

Me too. She was so proud of me, and she didn’t care. She took it to heart, because that’s her grandson, and she loved me. She would never let somebody put me down for being gay, it was amazing. This was a little Italian woman who accepted me for who I am and who loved me. And my friends would come over and she’d talk to my friends, and she’d cook for them. She’d go to the pageants and she’d go to the shows, and she’d help sew my hem on my dresses. How lucky I was. Even that little old woman made a difference, and she would tell somebody, “Hey, this is who my grandson is and I’m proud of him.”

We all come together for family dinners, me and my lover go [my parents’ house] every Saturday for dinner. We always do things as a family. I mean, that’s amazing! And then I have my sister—my sister was the first person I told I was gay. She was in sixth grade and I told her, and she’s like, “Oh, that’s cool!” And my sister has been so accepting. All these years later we are so close that she will stand up for gay rights, because she had a brother who confided in her all those years ago. And now me and her are so close—it’s so funny, because if someone says something about gay people she’ll go off the hook.

That’s the best way to be an activist—you don’t have to go to marches and rallies and Pride. Every day, talk to people you know about these issues. If you’re an ally, if you have a brother or sister who’s gay, if you’re gay — just one-on-one contact. You don’t have to go to big demonstrations. It’s one-on-one, that’s the way you make change; you have to convince one person. I’ve been talking about these issues since the first gay friend I had... So, what would you like to see happen in the next five years in the LGBT community in Cleveland?

[For] us [to] unite together more, come together more. I wanna see people have more of a voice. I wanna see ore articles and more stuff on the news on gay issues. I want them to talk to their councilmen, to the mayors. I want our voices to be heard more. The more voices that we have here in Cleveland, the more that we come together as one — we need to stop this segregating. You have one night that’s hip-hop night, you have one night that’s lesbian night —and why? I don’t want to see that we have separate nights like that. We are so discriminated against for being gay. Why are we segregating amongst our own community? We should come together and fight together as one and show them that we are strong! “You can discriminate against us but we are all together as one.” That’s what I wanna see happen.

Awesome.

And we need to thank the bar owners of Ohio, who have these nightclubs for us to have a place for us to come and be who we are. I wanna put a shout out to Jeff from Argos, an incredible man who’s been very good to me, and Jimmy and Tom who used to own the Cage who were incredible to me. We have these bar owners that have kept these bars open—Tim has been in Lorain for over 20 years.

And always be good to animals! And I always say, always be good to the older generation, to the elderly people, there’s a lot to learn from the elderly people. And respect your neighbors.

Don’t ever be ashamed of who you are. I always say, be proud of who you are, it doesn’t matter who you are. As long as you’re a good person and you treat people well. Respect your neighbors, respect people, respect kids, respect children, and stop road rage! We all don’t have to agree with each other, but if we just respect each other, how much life would be easier? And to the gay community: get out and read the Gay People’s Chronicle and educate yourself, and never stop educating yourself. And always be an older brother or sister to help a younger gay person who’s coming out, always be that voice, always be that inspiration, and be a good role model for them.

For the people who aren’t gay, and who have gay friends or have gay kids, you know, teach the young generation, teach your nieces and nephews and your grandchildren it’s okay to see Uncle Tom and Uncle Bob together, they have a home together, always teach them so it can make this world a better place to live.

Paco will be at the Cleveland Pride festival this Saturday, June 21 at noon, speaking at the rally held right before the festival starts at Voinovich Park at the northern most end of East Ninth St. Visit Pride online at http://www.clevelandpride.org. And witness the triumphant return of Erica Martinez on Saturday, July 12 at Tim’s Place in Lorain (2223 Broadway)! Learn more about Erica (and Paco) at the MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/ediva87.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Dana Aritonovich mrsgrohl1ATyahoo.com
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