Newsgroups: bit.listserv.gaynet
Date:         Tue, 8 Sep 1992 16:17:02 EDT
From:         gaynet@GALLIFREY.KENT.EDU
Subject:      GayNet Digest Volume 6 Issue 14

In this issue:
                    GayNet Digest Volume 6 Issue 11
                           an ethics question

Please send messages for the entire list to gaynet@GALLIFREY.KENT.edu,
requests to be added or deleted to gaynet-request@GALLIFREY.KENT.EDU, and
personal replies directly to the other person, not the entire list.
Postings to GayNet are public communications.  If you must keep your
privacy, send your messages to gaynet-anonymous@GALLIFREY.KENT.EDU.

For those restricted to 8 characters for addresses, Requests can be sent
to GAYNETR@gallifry.kent.edu, and those who need to send anonymously may
send to GAYNETA@gallifry.kent.edu.  Please note the 8 character spelling of
GALLIFRY  (Gallifrey minus the E before the Y).

If you have problems any of these addresses, please contact me directly at:

perkins@ksuvxa.kent.edu (Internet)
ksuvxa::perkins (DECNET)
perkins@kentvms (BITNET/J-Net)

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

Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 11:06:03 -0700
From: jnrg@ocf.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Re: GayNet Digest Volume 6 Issue 11

>From: kathy.lessa@execnet.com (Kathy Lessa)
>Date: 6 Sep 92 (20:02)

>Personally, I have refused to support United Way for several years
>now.  And for that, I've gotten a *lot* of grief at my office,
>because my very conservative company pushes United Way participation
>like everyone else does.
>
>My reasons?  About five or six years ago, I was leafing through the
>"agency listings" for United Way, to decide where I wanted my all-but-
>forced-out-of-me payroll deduction contribution to go.
>
>Several things leapt out at me.  First, at least locally here in
>Dallas, the Boy Scouts receive almost three times as much funding as
>the Girl Scouts.  Second, the ONE local agency offering AIDS
>assistance and counseling at that time was rejected from listing as
>an official United Way Agency BECAUSE it also happened to be a
>gay-operated, gay-community counseling center.  You could still
>donate to it through United Way -- they just didn't make it very easy
>for you, by not providing those convenient 'designation codes' for
>it.  And third, because I guess in the place of the counseling
>center, they *did* provide designation codes for such meaningful,
>important agencies as the Catholic Youth Softball Association.
>
I also have noticed that in "liberal" and "progressive" San Francisco Bay
Area of
California, the United Way has considerably downplayed its support of
Planned
Parenthood.  I have read their "spin control" language on this and they
(UWBA)
actually say things like  "United Way does not pay for abortions" although
they still
actually do fund Planned Parenthood sotto voce.

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

Date:         Tue, 08 Sep 92 13:40:01 MST
From: "Gabriel (in New Mexico)" <G9348712@nmsuvm1.NMSU.Edu>
Subject:      an ethics question

Kai-Joachim Kamrath asks whether it is ethical to "de-cloak" the description
of a colleague's death, a death he is sure is due to Kaposi's Sarcoma (and
therefore AIDS).

I'm not going to give an answer to such a hard question, especially since KJK
is the one who will have to live with the consequences.  I cannot help but
remember, though, the time that a gay friend of mine was shot dead outside a
Phoenix bar (presumably by a fobe, since he had lived in PHX only a few weeks
and was not the type to make enemies with anyone).  I was shaken.  I wrote a
poem about it -- a poem which, of course, could not have been up to the
standard of the subject I was writing it about, but a poem anyway -- and I was
told NOT to use the victim's name, because his parents had not known that he
was gay, and they were still overcome with shame as well as grief.  I complied
with the request, but I experienced a tremendous amount of outrage over what
seemed almost a physical gag, and it has lasted a long time.

So, if you expose the truth, you will feel a lot of flak from others, and if
you don't you will feel lots of internalized anger.  One of those easy choices,
and I won't fault you however you choose.  (But you might want to be darn sure
that it IS KS before you say anything.)

By the way, my friend's name was Mani Tomas Lucas.  He was a Papagp Indian,
from Tucson.  He was both a poet and a dancer (in spite of the fact that his
roly-poly body was not the shape one would assume dancing required).
He died during the summer of 1978.

Gabriel (in New Mexico)

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

End of GayNet Digest
********************
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU