LOS ANGELES––Hired
circa February 1, according to Last Chance for Animals executive director David
Meyer, program staffer Luke Montgomery was on the job a month before Washington
Times columnist John McCaslin noted his presence and his background; another
month passed before other activists called ANIMAL PEOPLE, accusing him
of trouble-making and asking, "Who is he?"
Gay activists
previously asked the same question. According to an October 6, 1995 posting by
commentator P. Del Grosso on a Gay:Stories:Gay Life World Wide Web site,
Montgomery "came to Washington D.C. a few years ago and made a big fuss
about changing his name to Sissyfag. He claimed to be an AIDS activist and
chased Bill Clinton around for not doing enough about AIDS." |
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Gannett News
Service archives confirm that Montgomery, as Luke Sissyfag, disrupted a speech
by Clinton in December 1993, three speeches by Health Secretary Donna Shalala in
early 1994, and an Easter service attended by the Clinton family in April 1994.
A USA Today profile published on February 14, 1994 said he was 20
years old, originally from Seattle, and had changed his name two years earlier.
Del Grosso accused him of working as "a hustler." |
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Luke Sissyfag
photographed in St. Louis, 1992. Photograph courtesy United in Anger |
Probing the
possibility that Sissyfag might actually be an agent provocateur, gay
activists had found evidence that as "Chad," still legally Luke
Montgomery, he had advertised his services as a "young bottom boy" in
the "Escorts/Phone Fantasy" sections of a local gay newspaper.
Sissyfag/ Montgomery subsequently announced he was running for mayor of
Washington D.C., but dropped out of the race and temporarily out of sight.
Next, Del Grosso charged, Montgomery unsuccessfully sought an acting career
in Hollywood, then "turned preppy-conservative and started screaming about
how gays should just shut up and assimilate. He even went on Donahue to push
this agenda. Phil Donahue asked Luke if he was just a little too young and
inexperienced to know what he was talking about."
Crusader, a
self-described "Palm Springs hellraiser and paralegal" who writes the "Crusader's
Corner" political column for Lifestyle magazine, reported in April
1996 that Montgomery "recently told Out magazine that he considers
himself 'unfortunately homosexual.' A portion of his comments: 'The gay identity
is manufactured out of insecurities and abnormalities. It has nothing more to
offer than AIDS, beer, and shallowness. Gays are out there spreading AIDS and it
makes me sick and sad beyond belief.'"
Said Meyer, "I was aware
of Luke's background before we hired him. I had known him as a local animal
rescuer for about a year. Luke is an exemplary worker, has credibility as
someone who worked to get funding for AIDS-related research but is now opposed
to animal experimentation, has good media sense, and has already recommended
various beneficial changes in the LCI modus operandi."
Montgomery
himself, in a 20-minute monologue objecting to ANIMAL PEOPLE "prying
into my personal life," said he wouldn't apologize for having been
flamboyant (which no one asked him to apologize for), never responded to
questions about his interest in animals, mentioned animals only as part of the
title of Last Chance for Animals, and concluded that he wouldn't "make a
statement to you and your pissy little rag." Opined Crusader, "He's
an oxymoron." |
The Windsome Register
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`"The Windsome
Register is the title of a register of reputable animal protection organizations
worldwide," former Royal SPCA and International Fund for Animal Welfare
executive Edward Seymour-Rouse wrote on May 15 to about 500 selected recipients.
"This Register is being set up at the request of a donor to ensure
that his already considerable donations to animal protection go to those
projects 'that are concerned with the largest number of animals who have
suffered the most,' backed by the most efficient and effective organizations."
The ANIMAL PEOPLE fax was soon humming with inquiries, as no one
had ever heard of a "Windsome Register," the letter was mailed from
England but gave as return address a post office box in Balboa Island,
California, there was no fax or telephone number listed, and there was no
Seymour-Rouse in any U.S. or British telephone directory. The accompanying
four-page questionaire solicited essentially the same data as IRS Form 990, plus
further particulars.
There was speculation that IFAW founder Brian Davies
might be involved, just retired from the IFAW board to focus on political work
(page 12), but Davies has nothing to do with it, Seymour-Rouse told ANIMAL
PEOPLE, when we located him at his English home. Apologizing for confusion
caused by his use of the word "register," which in the U.S. implies a
published reference but in England means a personal address book, Seymour-Rouse
explained that all data received would be kept strictly confidential, and that
the questionaire was actually a sort of grant application form.
Seymour-Rouse
said he represented some "intensely wealthy people," who have become
disillusioned with the top-heavy economic structure of many animal protection
organizations. The purpose of the Windsome Register, he indicated, will be to
fund projects by smaller organizations on either a matching basis or on a
contractual basis, paying one third of each grant amount up front, a third when
the project is half completed, and a third when the project is done. |
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Going to the dogs
Margie
Richardson, 76, wife of the late Leon D. Richardson, on April 21
asked the Hong Kong High Court to set aside a will leaving more than $12
million to the Royal SPCA, whose annual budget is about $60 million.
Leaving Mrs. Richardson in 1994, after 40 years, coincidental with the death of
his poodle, Leon Richardson gave her $3 million, then rewrote his will, a 1991
draft of which purportedly left her everything, just nine days before his May
1995 death at age 77 from a heart attack. The RSPCA legacy was the biggest share
of an estate worth about $30 million. |
| The London Times
remembered Leon Richardson, a U.S. citizen, as “a dog-lover and financial
commentator who had survived kidnapping, atomic bomb tests and corruption
charges.” Abducted in Guatemala in 1981, Richardson was entombed for 100
days underground. The London Daily Telegraph added that Richardson “wrote
regularly in the American Kennel Club magazine, as a particularly
enthusiastic supporter of the Newfoundland breed.” Richardson’s last
letters “showed quite clearly this poor man to have been lonely, paranoid
and delusional at the end of 1994 and the beginning of 1995,” John
Scott QC told the court, as counsel for Mrs. Richardson. |
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Animated
gif courtesy the Spot |
The American
Kennel Club board of directors on May 13 formally reversed a plan to
relocate from New York City to Durham, North Carolina, announced in October
1995. The purebred dog registry now occupying leased space in nearby Raleigh
will stay there, but a 100-acre tract in south Durham that was to become the
office site is to be sold.
AKC president Alfred L. Cheaure
in an April 10 memo to 520 AKC delegates acknowledged receipt of “a request
for certain records from the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York,” 26
days after informing the delegates that a similar request had come from the New
York Attorney General’s Office. Cheaure said he didn’t know “the
complete nature, scope, or status” of the federal inquiry.
In an apparently similar crackdown, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
in late April filed 63 counts of fraud and two counts of forgery against
Trudy Mayne, who formerly ran Mainlyne Kennels in Stony Plain,
Alberta, for allegedly registering mixed-breed retrievers with the Canadian
Kennel Club as purebreds. Under RCMP scrutiny for at least the last
18 months of the four years she was in the dog business, Mayne relocated to
Ontario in early 1995. |
Say what?!
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| The Lettuce
Ladies,
from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, invited North
Carolina general assembly members to a May 8 vegetarian "pig-out" as
thanks for a moratorium on building hog barns. |
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However, PETA
spokesperson Michael McGraw said, "Invitations bearing a sexy
vegetarian wearing strategically placed lettuce leaves proved too racy" for
the assembly speaker, who barred their distribution.
The Louisiana state Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee in
April voted to terminate 60 state agencies mostly set up to promote commerce and
tourism, but spared the Pork Promotion Board and Fertilizer Commission; then
approved amending the state ethics code to allow elected officials to accept
hunting and fishing trips from lobbyists.
A cow going to slaughter in
Memphis "got loose, wandered through traffic, and eluded two cowboys on
their way to a rodeo, one of whom gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after
she was hit by a car," United Press International reported on April 25. The
cow died anyway.
An entity calling itself "The Animal Liberation
Front Truth Squad" on May 1 threatened to disrupt the "Animal
Rights '97" conference, scheduled for June 26-30 in Arlington, Virginia,
due to the inclusion of International Society for Animal Rights
executive director Susan Altieri as a speaker. If "all
association with ISAR" wasn't immediately ended, the anonymous "ALF
Truth Squad" communique stated, the group would not only disrupt the
conference but also release derogatory material about Altieri "to the media
and to groups such as Americans for Medical Progress, the Animal Industry
Foundation, and Putting People First." The allegations against
Altieri paralleled some made by former ISAR staffers Anthony McHugh and
Sylvie Pomicter, including in a lawsuit McHugh on March 24 filed against
Altieri (his aunt), ISAR president Henry Mark Holzer, ISAR founder Helen
Jones (ushered into retirement in January 1995 amid allegations of animal
collecting and fiscal impropriety), and Cindy McHugh (believed to be
McHugh's mother). |
