Brudnoy's Complaint

Mad About Sex

BOSTON. The more conservative of Boston's two dailies is at the moment syndicating excerpts from the latest book by all those Wallace and Wallechinsky people, "The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People." We have been instructed, on page two, in the intricacies of Franklin Roosevelt's relations with Eleanor, Lucy (you goosy girl), and Missy, though there's not much on Missy. We have gone through the mill with Marilyn Monroe; today we have Clara Bow, of whom we learn: "Thus she set the pattern for most of her relationship with men.. She'd love them, but never enough to satisfy their egos. Director Victor Fleming was 20 years older than Clara and had vast prior experience with women, but neither fact helped him cope with her, especially when he learned that after they'd finish making love, she'd head off for a session with another, usually a younger man." So that's what it was all about. Tomorrow we are promised

James Dean. I can hardly wait.

And so it goes. On page two, "The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People," and on page 15, an ad for the new James Bond movie, "For Your Eyes Only," wherein the lady wearing the highup undies now has a pair of lowslung shorts, such that we no longer have an ad showing roger Moore aiming his pistol between the legs of a lady with cheeks, we now have Moore pointing his pistol through the legs of a lady wearing bloomers. On page 18 we have another of Patrick Buchanan's moralistic sneering columns. Chances are--I no longer can abide Buchanan enough to read the column--he's flung in a sentence or two doing his usual routine on sex.

This is today's Boston Herald American. In today's Boston Globe we learn about the new Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee bill. designed to encourage teenagers to practice "self-discipline and responsibility" in sexual matters. Seems that Senator Kennedy has

worked out a compromise with Senator Orrin Hatch and Sen. Jeremiah Denton, two of the more perfect God-fearing souls in Congress, of which quality our senior senator has rarely been accused, and between them, with a little help also from Senator Thomas Eagleton, who once had Senator George McGovern's support to the extent of 1000 percent, the congress now had before it a bill mouthing all the right platitudes and sufficiently mindful of offending no one that it amounts to nothing and will therefore be tremendously appealing to everybody, who can support it and know that it will do neither any harm nor any good.

Meanwhile, as the Boston Globe reminds us in its editorial, the idiotic "Family Protection Act" is getting another go-around on Capitol Hill. This is a proposal which intrudes so much into family life, all in the name of protecting family life, that the conservative cloumnist James Jackson Kilpatrick even took up arms against it several months ago.

Nonetheless, it is a key item in the New Right bag of tricks these days, and since it mouths the heavy words "the accelerated erosion of basic family values has been hastened by government intrusion and growing secular humanism," etcetera, etcetera, etcetera it has automatic support from all sorts of people who are conditioned by now to sit up and bark when the do-gooders of whatever persuasion lurch into sight.

Meanwhile, as tomorrow's papers will tell us-I write this some days before you'll read it, so you can test my prediction against the reality of the papers that by now will be awaiting the rubbish collector-Miss Brooke Shields, who is gorgeous and young and perceived to be sexy, has been kept from serving the cause of smokeless lungs, denied, to be precise, the opportunity to appear in a major anti-smoking ad campaign, presumably because she is too sexy to be a proper, um, role-model for her peers.

We are mad about sex and

madly caught up in going on about it. We are utterly inconsistent in our approach to it everybody decrying Sex In The Media but nobody turning off the set when the sexy programs come on; a fairly conservative daily newspaper (Hearst's, no less) reprinting the drivel from the. Wallace-Wallechinsky people on one page and censoring a mildly teasing movie ad on another; and on and on. We are up to here with the latest Hite Report, this on male sexuality, and just as up to here with hellfire and damnation sermons about the wages of (sexual) sin. Mr. Wildmon's battle of the saints against the television sinners heats up to the boycott list's announcement in a few days, and still we are never, evidently, to be permitted to spend a moment without thinking about sex. Might a moratorium on the matter be in order?

News

DIGNITY PUBLISHES MC NAUGHT WRITINGS (WASHINGTON)-Dignity, Inc., the national organization of gay and concerned Catholics, has announced the August 1 publication date for the collected writings of Brian McNaught. Entitled A DISTURBED PEACE-Selected Writings of an Irish Catholic Homosexual, the 136-page paperback brings together for the first time the best materials of the award-winning freelance writer.

Designated by Christopher Street magazine as "America's most prominent Catholic layman," McNaught has built a large audience among gay people and concerned Christians through his syndicated column and numerous articles in magazines, newspapers and books. A Disturbed Peace includes columns dealing with the pros and cons of "coming out," reconciling with one's family, making love last and the joys of being gay. Also included are his award-winning magazine article, his chapter on "Gay and Catholic" from Positively Gay and his highly acclaimed open letter to Anita Bryant.

j.j's joint

ท

Shikher

David is the personable new manager at the popular Boylston Street bar, Skippers. Drop by and say "hello."

"It's an exciting book," said Dignity President Frank Scheuren. "It's a great resource for people who are gay and struggling with particular issues of self-esteem and for persons interested in ministry with the gay community. Brian's a talented

THIS IS SHIRLEY MENEAR KNEE, REPORTING 'LIVE' FROM AN ACTUAL GAY BAR."

writer who captures in words the personal struggles of most gay men and women."

A Disturbed Peace can be purchased for $4.95 (plus $1.00 Postage) from Dignity, Inc., 1500 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Room 11 Washington, D.C. 20005.

"MAY I HAVE SOME VOLUTEERS TO BE INTERVIEWED."

4 Esplanade July 29, 1981

Photos by Paul McMahon

1981 "Waitress of the Year", Tex is back to work at Skippers after her recent illness.

MY FIRST QUESTION 'WASDo You THINK THAT GAYS ARE LESS AFRAID TO BE EXPOSED TO TODAY'S SOCIETY? MY NEXT QUESTION IS...