From: rlm@surfcty.com (Robert McMillin)
Newsgroups: ca.politics
Subject: Speaking ill
Keywords: AIDS gay HIV
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 93 08:09:43 PST
Distribution: ca
Organization: Surf City Software, Orange, Calfornia - DUDE!

mike@gordian.com writes:

> In article <BVLZwB2w165w@surfcty.com>, rlm@surfcty.com (Robert McMillin) writes:
> > mike@gordian.com (Michael A. Thomas) writes:
> > Of course!  (By the way, there are some feminist theorists who agree
> > with that sentiment for other reasons...) As an aside, I tend to think
> > that there's something to the recent studies showing a (admittedly, at
> > this time, nebulous) link between gayness and biology.  I don't believe
> > that the people at the Human Genome Project will one day leap out of
> > their chairs because they've discovered the sequence that causes
> > homosexuality, but I do think they will find genes that push people one
> > way or the other.  The religious right will be in for a shock: God made
> > gay men, for the writing is on the DNA!
> 
>   And then we can [have?] tests. Wonderful.

If the search and seizure clauses in the constitution were taken
seriously, this wouldn't be an issue.

> > Actually, the authors of Gay Liberation as a political movement stamped
> > it from much the same mold as Marxism.  Tolerance for other ideas was
> > not one of the hallmarks of either Marxism (especially as Stalin viewed
> > it) or of Gay Liberation, as Larry Kramer discovered.  Numerous public
> > health officials found out just how intolerant Gay Liberation
> > politicians could be when these officials just mentioned -- privately --
> > the idea that it might be a good idea to shut down bath houses after
> > they had been shown to be the root of the AIDS problem in large cities.
> > Gay Liberationists simply could not find "monogamy" in their
> > dictionaries.  Belatedly, they did -- after thousands had died.  But, I
> > still see much of that kind of thinking in the "Safer Sex Guide".
> 
>   I think that part of your problem is that you are trying to find
> a monolithic entity which is the "Gay Liberation political movement".
> There isn't one.

Let me clear the air here: I do not believe in a monolithic Gay
Liberation movement.  There is simply no way that such a movement could
speak for every homosexual person, just as Jesse Jackson (or Louis
Farrakhan, etc.) could speak for every black person.  I know gays from
many different ends of the political spectrum -- liberal Democrats,
centrist Republicans, and third party adherents.  However, I do believe
that based on their actions, a large number of gays agreed with the
stances of Gay Liberation.  Many of these are now dead.  To that end, it
matters little whether gays led their leaders or the leaders led gay
followers.

> If you think that gay people were listening to their
> fearless leaders for validation or something like that, you are
> seriously deluded.

I strongly disagree with this statement, however.  In the early days,
politically influential gay men -- who ran the 100 million dollar a year
bath house industry -- worked to prevent health officials from shutting
them down.  These bath house owners didn't have to work very hard,
either, for the mere mention of the political clout that the Castro had
at the time was enough to scare off the timid appointees running SF's
public health agency.  If, as you say, gays were NOT listening to their
leaders for validation, then they surely agreed with them when they said
that "fucking like bunnies" was a political right.

San Francisco, and the Castro district in particular, became in the
1970's a gay haven.  People came there from everywhere, many looking for
respite from a world that denounced and in many cases, despised them for
their gayness.  In San Francisco, it was possible to be gay and to be
accepted.  To say that those people were not looking for validation is
ridiculous; to say that they avoided the common currency of validation,
in those days, promiscuous sex, flies in the face of the facts.  Similar
situations occured in New York, and to some degree, in Los Angeles.  Of
course, these men could have simply decided not to be promiscuous -- and
certainly, some did.  But the majority who went to the bath houses
continued until they died, or the houses were effectively shut down.

> The only real upshot of Stonewall was that
> at *last* gay people were freer to go and fuck like bunnies 
> just like the het community.

Just a minute!  The 'het community' never set itself up with organized
sexual encounter places to the magnitude of that which gay men did, and
never adopted promiscuity as a fundamental right. Even Randy Shilts
commented on how the lack of women as a moderating influence added to
the frenetic pace at which men went from partner to partner.

> There was no social bulwark which
> ordained proper behavior; indeed most gay people shunned het
> social mores as symbols of their long oppression.  What got 
> picked up by default were the "progressive" values of the
> 60's which, quite simply, were expedient. The other prevelent
> view was sort of typified by the "republican" social prudes.
> That was hardly likely to be taken seriously.
> 
>   This is not a conspiracy or an organized movement with leaders
> or anything of the sort. If it was anything it was an *explosion*,
> a riot, simultaneous convergence of millions of people who had
> just *had* it and were thumbing there nose at anybody who would
> get in their way. One giant "Fuck you". This has many of the 
> same qualities of teenagers testing out their own efficacy.
> You wish they wouldn't, but how else are they to learn.

Other commentators have noted the element of teen-age rebellion in the
Gay Liberation movement.  Apparently, gay men learned by dying.

>   Just out of curiosity, do you find anything redeeming that
> can out of the sexaul revolution in the 60's and 70's? Promiscuity
> was not the only thing you know.

A few things: I think the general relaxation of social mores was a good
thing.  I have strong libertarian leanings, and so cannot see clear to
wasting public monies policing people's bedrooms.  I do have problems
with some of the ways that socialism has gotten tangled up in the
sexual changes -- the "I'm not getting married, I'm gonna have a baby,
and the state's gonna pay for it" attitude evinced by a number of young
women.  It's quite one thing to be rich and keep a baby from an
unintended pregancy, and quite another thing to be poor.  Certain of the
old mores -- no sex before marriage, particularly -- were really
practical ways before the advent of reliable birth control to prevent
the anarchy that uncontrollable adolescent males present to society.
Monogamy is a practical answer to horrific STD's.  That this latter is
part of the Christion moral code whose practitioners frequently condemn
homosexuality does not make them any less desirable for gays -- or
straights.

> > Sorry, but I believe in the First Amendment, even so far as to let my
> > critics have their day, and even to letting people who have "demeaning,
> > obnoxious, hateful" things to say.  Who knows but that I may someday be
> > viewed as saying things that others may describe thus, and find myself
> > censored.
> 
>   Not really my point. The point was that providing information, much
> like giving someone liberty is not tantamount to sanctioning all possible
> uses of that liberty/information.

Here's what I originally wrote, followed by what you said:

> > That is to say, do what you like,
> > with as many people as you like, and don't let the facts confuse you;
> > anyone saying differently is trying to restrict you politically.  Now,
> > of course, the author wishes to have it both ways: that is, to appear to
> > be doing something about AIDS by recommending people use barriers, while
> > at the same time suggesting that the old orgiastic order can continue.
>
>   Just like allowing people freedom of speech to giving a free moral
> check to say any demeaning, obnoxious, hateful oratory? I don't buy
> that. Freedom to act does not imply anything about the morality of
> how one acts.

Re-reading this, I think I misinterpreted what you originally wrote.
Here's what I should have written: Morality doesn't enter the equation;
statistics do.  Multiple partner sex, even using barriers, is still an
accident waiting to happen.

> > Possible, but again: where is the money coming from?  And why go to a
> > hooker if not for insertive sex?  I find it hard to believe that a john
> > would go to a hooker for just a hand job or a bondage fantasy (though I
> > don't believe it beyond the realm of possibility).
> 
>   Heh. But that was the point of the report, right? If you take
> these precautions and only do these safe(r) activities, even a 
> visit to a prostitute could be safe(r). I think that was the
> only point of the report. If you consider this advice in terms
> of multiple partners, this becomes far more understandable and
> believable.

Remember, the report mentioned "sex for money", not visiting a
prostitute.  First of all, the risks involved in the activities
mentioned are higher, and I believe, understated for political reasons,
than the authors are willing to let on.  Second, it doesn't negate the
problems encountered on the hooking side of the equasion.

> > Heterosexual men are, in general, at a much lower risk for contracting
> > AIDS (and HIV) than homosexual men.  The blood isn't there in the vagina
> > -- unless something's wrong with the woman's health.  AIDS has been
> > around for over ten years.  If there were large increases in HIV
> > infection, it would have shown up already.
> 
>   Wasn't it you who was all worked up about risks even if they
> were orders of magnitude less? You seem to be contradicting yourself. 

Not really.  Heterosexual AIDS continues to be a red herring issued by
people with a specific axe to grind -- researchers who need dollars, and
absolutely cannot let on that AIDS in fact is largely a disease confined
to gay men, IV drug users, some blood products users, and
third-worlders. If straight people are going to get the disease any day
now (which they have been for years), they won't question all the
dollars spent on it.  The people issuing this "Safer Sex Guide" also,
it seems, have a specific axe to grind -- a politically motivated return
to unsafe practices, or failing that, to practices that appear to
sacrifice little other than the use of condoms.