Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 15:50:17 EST
From: gaynet@gallifrey.kent.edu
Reply-To: gaynet@gallifrey.kent.edu
Subject: GayNet Digest Volume 11 Issue 11
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.gaynet

In this issue:
                                Gay News
                             After the Ball

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Date: 23 Jan 93 14:49:54 EST
Subject: Gay News
From: An Anonymous Sender

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@IOSIX@#|x{2BFrom Washington Post Writers Group   01/22/93

AT LARGE COLUMN
By ELLEN GOODMAN

   BOSTON))If you want a hint of what the military is going to facewhen it lifts
 the ban on gays in the military, follow me. Come
onover here and reach into my mailbag.
   First, may I suggest that you put on a glove. Or grab a set oftongs. Some of
 the letters I've gotten about gays are too slimy
forthe naked touch.
   But put aside those wonderful missiles which come regularly toevery
 journalist from that far)flung family of
foul)mouthedmisanthropes who share the same name))Anonymous. There's still
 somepretty interesting reading. "Interesting" is
putting
it mildly, andneutrally.
   For openers, nine out of every 10 letters I received on thissubject when I
 last wrote about it came from men. Virtually all
ofthe
letters
from/ men were about/ men. Relatively few people who wrote aboutgay women
 worried that they would get too high but the legions
whoopposed gay men wanted to keep them from getting too close.
   The specter of showers and barracks came up so often in mycorrespondence that
 I suspect the Army spends more time in the
sackthan
in the trenches, more time under the water than under the gun.   A military man
 from Cape Coral, Fla., wrote, "This tells me as
astraight man showering in the barracks, that I have no choice butto expose
 myself to any gay men present."
   A man from Apache Junction, Ariz., who spent three yearsoverseas in World War
 II remembers sleeping 40 men to a barracks."Now
suppose," he writes, "that neighbor was a man with the sexualinclinations of a
 woman, i.e., a homosexual."
   Yet another man, this one from Tobyhanna, Pa., asked us to"imagine putting a
 homosexual in a community shower with 60 or
sonaked
men." Someone from Melbourne, Fla., used his imagination tosuggest that "it
 would be like putting a mouse in a cheese factoryor a
mosquito in a nudist colony."
   The fascinating thing to this))female))reader was that nearlyall the letter
 writers shared the same perspective: that
ofstraight
men worrying about being victims of sexual assault,harassment, lusting, or just
 plain ogling. This garden varietyhomophobia))fear
of
homosexuals))was fear of becoming the object ofunwanted sexual attention. Being
 the oglee instead of, say, theogler.
   It's the closest that most men may come, even in fantasy, toimagining the
 everyday real)life experiences of women. The
closestthey may come to imaging a trip past a construction site, unease ina
 fraternity house, fear that a date could become date
rape. Inshort, the closest men come to worrying about male sexualaggression.
 A writer from Idaho put it in this rather
charmingvernacular, "Some of the gays are not little pansy guys but bighulking
 guys and if a small man said no, what is to stop
him?"
   I am sure that gay men and women do make some wrong passes atMr. or Ms.
 Straight. I suspect this happens more often in
aTh)0*0*0*00Tcloseted atmosphere when communication is reduced to a
 secretivesystem of readings and misreadings.
   There are instances of assault and harassment by homosexuals.There are also
 daily assaults of homosexuals. Consider the
allegedgay)bashing)to)death of Seaman Allen Schindler a month after hetold the
 Navy he was gay.
   But))back to the barracks))if showers are such a charged venue,barracks such
 a threatening situation, how come the problem
hasn'talready wrecked morale and created dissension in the ranks? Howcome it's
 come up so rarely?
   After all, between 5 percent and 10 percent of the military isestimated to be
 gay right now. The lifting of the 10)year)old
banon
homosexuality would allow these men and women to acknowledgethat they are
 homosexual without being dismissed.
   It wouldn't mean that a straight man would be showering with agay for the
 first time. It might mean that he would know/ for
thefirst time.
   Finally, the military has every right to make rules about sexualbehavior.
 They can enforce any sort of sexual prohibition
oraggression, from a shipmate's "incest taboo" to harassment toogling in the
 shower. There is and should be a clear
distinctionbetween sexual behavior and sexual orientation. A differencebetween
 what we do and what we are.
   And by the way, dear writers, wouldn't it be something if themilitary finally
 cracked down on sexual misbehavior because
menwere
worrying about men?
Jury backs doctor who denied care to AIDS patient

By Anne Krueger
Copley News Service

   SAN DIEGO A Superior Court jury sided Friday (Jan. 22) with a
doctor who refused to treat the impotence of a homosexual San Diego
man infected with the AIDS virus because the doctor feared
successful treatment would pose a risk to public health.
   The jury decided by a 9-3 vote that urologist Howard Lowe's
refusal to treat Michael Petty did not violate the provisions of
San Diego's Human Dignity Ordinance. That 1990 city code bans
discrimination against homosexuals in employment, lending, housing
or business.    Lowe's attorney, Paul Pfingst, said the lawsuit was
the first court challenge of the anti-discrimination ordinance as
it applies to doctors.
   Lowe "believes that HIV-positive or AIDS patients who engage in
high-risk sexual activity present a risk to the public by
transmitting the disease," Pfingst said. "One of his duties as a
physician is to represent the public's interest as well as his
interest to his patients."
   Lowe referred questions about the case to Pfingst.
   Petty, 44, said he filed suit against Lowe because Lowe refused
to treat him for impotence even though he is HIV-positive.
   "It's abhorrent that the doctor can strip me of my rights and
responsibilities about my own life," Petty said.
   Petty, who testified that he has had a lifelong problem with
impotence, said that Lowe had agreed to treat him for the problem
in April 1991 by showing him how to inject his penis with a drug
that would help him maintain an erection.
   Petty said he was elated when an injection of the drug in Lowe's
office was successful.
   "It's the completion of a lifelong dream," Petty testified. "I
was euphoric. I was ecstatic. It was like a whole new adventure of
life."
   But the day before Petty was to return to Lowe's office for a
second injection, Petty testified, Lowe called and said there would
be no further treatments because the doctor feared he would be held
legally liable if Petty infected someone with AIDS after being
treated for the sexual problem.
   However, Lowe testified that he did not cite any legal liability
when he talked to Petty, and only expressed his concern that
treating Petty for impotence would contribute to the spread of the
AIDS virus, Pfingst said.
   Petty's lawyer, Lauri cq Stock, said Lowe made the decision not
to treat Petty without asking him about his sexual history or
contacting doctors treating his condition.
   Petty said he has had a monogamous relationship since 1985, and
said he was crushed by Lowe's decision.
   "It's my responsibility what I do with my body, not his," Petty
testified.
   Pfingst said Lowe did not need to ask Petty about his sexual
history because Petty planned to have sex while infected with the
AIDS virus and would have used hypodermic needles to inject
himself, making the needles positive for the AIDS virus.
   "What other sexual history do you want?" Pfingst said.
   Pfingst emphasized that Lowe has treated AIDS patients and said
Petty's case was the only time Lowe has ever denied care to someone
infected with the AIDS virus.
   Despite his fears of a public health risk, Pfingst said, Lowe
felt he had an obligation to his patient, and gave Petty the names
of two other doctors who could treat him for impotence.
   But Petty said he could not afford to be treated by those
doctors.    Petty, who ran a small pest-control business at the
time, testified that after Lowe refused to treat him, he went on a
binge of drinking alcohol and taking drugs. He said he had
previously had an alcohol problem for 15 years, but was sober at
the time he went to Lowe for treatment.
   Petty said he lost customers from his business as a result of
the drinking binge. He said he retired from the business in July
1992 because of his health.
   Petty's attorney sought $12,000 in monetary damages and $25,000
in general damages on his behalf, and the city ordinance allows for
those jury awards to be tripled. If the jury had found in Petty's
favor, jurors would have then been asked to award him unspecified
punitive damages.
   Jurors were asked to decide whether Lowe's action violated the
city's anti-gay discrimination ordinance. Pfingst said he argued
that the ordinance provides an exception when the public health is
threatened.
   He said that just as people who are infected with the AIDS virus
cannot donate blood to blood banks, Lowe's action was not
discrimination because it was necessary for the public health.
Petty, who was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1985, said he now suffers
from AIDS. He said he is reluctant to consider seeking a new trial
because of his physical condition.

------------------------------

From: Mark Hertzog <mwh8h@uva.pcmail.Virginia.EDU>
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 15:27:23 EST
Subject: After the Ball

Howdy!
     In reply to John Medlin, whose posts always are a pleasure to read, here
are some thoughts on "After the Ball" and the thinking behind it.
     In the first days of the gay movement, the predominant philosophy was
the one echoed in the book.  The "homophile" movement, as it then was called,
sought solely to end discrimination and witch hunts, on the grounds that we
can't help being what we are and that, other than our sexuality, we're just
like everyone else--that we want the good white-collar job, two cars and a
house in the 'burbs, and a nice monogamous marriage to the person of our
choice.
     The fundamental problem with this assimilationist view is that it
assumes nothing is wrong with society that a little understanding and
education will not cure.  It accepts that there is an "in" group, an
exclusive private club, called Decent Society, and then there are the various
"out" groups.  The homophile movement sought admission to Decent Society
without questioning the underlying premise that there are "right" people and
"wrong" people, or the basis for making these distinctions, or who gave the
self-appointed "right" people the omniscient power to judge who qualified.
     The dominant groups--the self-appointed "right" people--keep the
majority in this society under their thumb by dividing us into convenient
groups, each with a different set of (subordinate) privileges and social
disabilities, which they hope to put into conflict with each other in order
to maintain control.  So far they've succeeded beautifully.  There's abundant
racism, sexism, ageism, able-ism and bi-phobia in the l/g/b community, just
as there is rampant homophobia among women, people with disabilities, young
people, old people, and the racial, ethnic and religious minorities.  The
system is designed to play up these tension, not to reduce them, and for the
most part we queers who have refused to recognize women's struggle and black
struggle and the like as merely different components of a common struggle
have helped the dominant groups maintain their control.
     Straight, white, fully-abled men comprise perhaps one-third of the adult
population.  Add up the women and dispossessed minorities and you've got a
REAL majority--if we can ever get our act together.
     One big problem in our community, exacerbated by books like "After the
Ball" and groups like the Log Cabin Republicans and Gay Libertarians, is the
notion that there are "right" and "wrong" people within our community, and
that, to get into Decent Society, "decent" gayfolk must disassociate
themselves from "indecent" gayfolk--the drag queens, the dykes on bikes, the
transsexuals, the prostitutes, the pederasts and the polygamous.  The
"homophiles" reject the fundamental premise of gay liberation: that society
should embrace human diversity and bless any relationship based on mutual
consent and respect, which is the true meaning of "decency."
     They also offer no challenge to the huge number of ingrained ideas which
hold people down, including the idea that it's better to be straight than to
be gay or bi.  A convention of homophile organizations in 1965 debated
furiously for hours Frank Kameny's proposal that it publicly declare that
homosexuals were not mentally ill.  "After the Ball" gets a little bit past
that, but the underlying theme is "We're just like you except we're gay, and
that's not our fault."  It is fundamentally defensive.
     Our posture ought to be that to be lesbian, gay or bi is every bit as
good as being straight, that in fact we who are attracted to our own sex have
advantages over heterosexuals in outlook and designing fulfilling ways of
living, that we have much good to teach the het majority, and that, if people
wish to experiment with gay sex or gay lovers, or to "choose" to become
queer, society should welcome, validate and support those choices.  I myself
didn't choose to be queer--but if you did, more power to you!
     Further, it should be our position that this whole idea of standards for
admission to Decent Society is rubbish.
     One last note here: There is an argument that we must, or ought to, seek
to conform to the standards of a "common culture;" otherwise, there'd be
social chaos.  We have been utterly, systematically excluded from the
development of that "common culture," as were African Americans, indigenous
people and most women.  To call it a "common" culture, therefore, is
farcical.  Only when it embraces black lesbian group-married motorcycle
enthusiasts and absorbs their contributions as readily as it does those of
the Cleaver family will there be any semblance of a real common culture to
which we owe any allegiance or deference at all.
     Responsible replies are always welcome.

Peace,
Mark in Virginia
**************************************************************************
Mark Hertzog, Militant Homosexual Agitator
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the
oppressed."  --Steve Biko, 1971

------------------------------

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