by Mitzel

Common

sense

Are all homosexuals created equal? Or are some queers more equal than others? And if so, more equal to what? To middleclass straight people? This "issue" is causing some consternation in the more conservative sections of our communitythough, quite frankly, I'm getting as sick of "issues" as I am already of "lifestyles."

Their concern appears to be: What to do about the Bad Gays? They themselves are, of course, the Good Gays, and their interests seem to be directed more at placating worried straights, and making sure the Bad Gays "clean up their act," than working to build a strong and encompassing gay community.

Good Gays often give into panic. Should police and politicians in any area launch a raid on homosexuals-with the capitalist press tailing right behind ready to exploit homophobia with lurid headlines and inaccurate reporting the Good Gays are quick to accept the police/ press lies and dump on gay brothers and si-

sters.

tured as an extremely small minority within the gay community (and) that the guilty parties (should be) brought to trial and dealt with accordingly" (italics added).

ITEM 1: Immediately after the first "sex ring" involving gay men was "discovered" here in the Boston area last December (police have "revealed" at least a half dozen more "sex rings" since then), lesbian State Rep. Elaine Noble, now à candidate for U.S. Senate, appeared on a New England network TV talk show, "Good Day." While chatting with the zombie MC, Elaine said: "John, I really feel that the children of the country are our most valuable and most vulnerable asset and I was supportive of (D.A.) Garrett Byrne in looking at the ring that was going on, and I told him that I would offer my support and my help in any way I could... the general public should realize that there are many of us who feel that we have a vested interest in making sure that those people who manipulate children are pic-

GAYS! TO

ARMS!

Once Mother Noble laid down the line for Good Gays, it was not surprising to see-

ITEM 2: Charles Wright, a local gay man, writing to the Boston Globe: "The gay people of Boston as a whole, law abiding citizens... wish to emphasize that the majority of the gay community does not condone actions of the real perverts, and we are glad the law was carried out and will be carried out to its fullest extent. It is one thing to be gay, but totally another to be sick like these men and we hope that sensible people will not link us to this travesty."

Good Gay apologiae gather steam with-

victims for "presenting a bad image," "spoiling it for the rest of us, etc.

ITEM 4: Kevin Fallon of WaterIville, N.Y., wrote to Boston's Gay Community News (GCN) to com-. plain that the Bad Gays who were entrapped at the Boston Public Library (all 105 of them) had made things uncomfortable for him. "I cannot bring myself to excuse the actions of gay men who are outwardly promiscuous at places such as a public library. Their indiscretion is damaging to other gays who wish to lead normal and socially acceptable lives... It is my opinion that a protest against police raids implicitly condones the actions of gay people involved. It does not aid the achievement of gay rights. We must protest the actions of a minority. It has always been my view that it is not straight people who substantially hinder our progress, it is a group

ITEM 3: Joe Leo, editor of Esplanade, wrote: "As for the gay community, the exposure of a group of pesons lacking in moral consciousness should be taken as a warning against embracing people who use labels to gain social or sexual advantage. Selfproclaimed homosexuality in no way obviates the necessity for adhering to moral, legal or socially acceptable standards of behavior... Our goal of social assimilation and acceptance is obviously best served through those who show a willingness to be judged in terms of reasonable human behavior... our only approach to this abhorrent incident must be a universal condemnation of those involved and a disavowel of the role of sexuality in their behavior" (italics added).

Good Gays always believe straights before they'll believe other homosexuals. Good Gays are eager to affiliate with straight institutions before coming to the aid of the gay victims of those straight institutions. Some Good Gays then go on to blame the gay

Shafer 78

Views & opinions

GAY NEWS-August 1978-15

cial behavior have fueled the fires of those who would subject us to a present day holocaust... We must not

within our own community" (italics added). A letter-writer like this one makes me wonder if COINTERPRO has really ended.only appear better than (straights),

ITEM 5 takes the histrionics of Good Gay reaction to its highest contradiction-worthy of an oily Jesuit. Mr. John Fitzgerald, Jr., of Boston wrote GCN: "In the past year, my dissatisfaction with the gay movement has increased to the point that I have little time to be upset by straight society (!!!). I am very dissatisfied with the malcontent selfappointed spokespeople (who ?) of the gay movement who have, in the name of equal rights, managed to begin the destruction of the gay community. As it stands now, I would probably vote against gay rights if it were on the ballot..." Again, blaming the oppressed for their oppression, a standard feature of our liberal society and the selfrighteous Good Gays.

ITEM 6 is a recent column, "On the Right," by Thomas Edwards in the San Francisco. Sentinel. Good Gay Edwards writes: "It is time that we homosexuals prepare ourselves for a series of 'setbacks,' the blame for which, in part, we must bear ... Drag queens, radical gays, and those who comport themselves in anti-so-.

we must conduct ourselves better than they do... I maintain we must be a good deal more conservative in our diligence than we have been. Seeing drag, leather, levi and other radical gay freaks could, and has turned many non-gay citizens against us."

The sad thing about the Good Gays is their false consciousness, which is virtually theological; no amount of evidence of the real condition of homosexual oppression can sway them from their comfy liberal fallaciousness. They live in a pretty little bubble, certain they, with acts all scrubbed and cleaned-up, possess that highly-coveted Straight Seal of Approval. Which they do not. The knock will come at their door, too, in the middle of the night when it is. convenient to some D.A., police chief, politician, etc. To the straight world, we are all just "fuckin' queers," i.e., Bad Gays. Gay people have no future in proving to straights how "acceptable" we are. Our future lies only with each other.

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A call for direct action

by Scott Tucker

I'm one person, not a committee: that's part of the point of this call. Take responsibility: if not you, who? If not now, when? All gay people must fight direct threats made against us by reactionaries. But all gay people means each gay person. And fighting reaction means knowing the real enemy.

Anita Bryant is only one of several figureheads of the reaction; but she is almost the single lightning-rod for gay anger. At gay rallies we feature her on posters and banners, and of all names, it is hers we chant most often. The media is only too eager to reinforce Bryant as a symbol. The real world must shrink to fit "the news." Then Walter Cronkite says smugly, "And that's the way it is."

That's rarely the way it is. As Adrienne Rich made clear at last year's New York Lesbian Pride Rally, the attack being waged against homosexuality is in great part "a scapegoat to divert attention from racism, poverty, unemployment, and utter, obscene corruption in public life." Rich also made clear that, though Bryant alone does damage, it is the system of sexism working behind and funding her that is the true danger, and that system is dominated by men. Gay men have certain privileges in that system; by and large, we have regarded sexism as a woman's issue. To this extent we oppress; and since straight men regard us as second-class men, as half-women, as "effeminate," this oppression works back to us.

can romp each weekend at gay playgrounds like Fire Island, others of us can't afford drinks at the local bar; if we are women or black we often hear this: "Another ID, please." While some of us make love on Bill Blass sheets, others of us are raped by straight men in jail cells. Our world may be too good to be true, too good for our own good: who knows when the reaction will knock even on our brass-knockered portals at The Pines? If we are not angry fighters, as well as proud lovers, then our joy is shallow, our sensibility is cheap and cruel.

"Only connect," E.M. Forster wrote. Always and clearly connect! The women's movement has connected more deeply and consis-tently than the male movement. At the recent gay march and rally in New York, an angry Latin woman took the mike and spoke forcefully of racism and sexism within the gay movement. Shortly after, three white gay males, the music and comedy group Gotham, took the stage. One said: "We aren't fighters, we aren't angry. We're full of joy and we want to spread our sensibility." Cheers for Gotham! But chances to connect were lost. While some of us

At the time of Dade County, Philadelphia talk-show host Joel Spivak hosted a TV talk on gay rights. The speakers were a white gay Episcopal priest and a straight black fundamentalist minister. The audience consisted mainly of black fundamentalists and white, gays. What color, what contrast, what spectacle! At one point I rose in rage and said that gay rights should cease being treated as a religious issue: the Bible is not Law, we should separate Church and State... "and my parting shot to the fag-baiting black minister was: "As for effeminacy, that's a red herring, and you know it!" I delivered this in my butchest basso profundo and John Wayne stance.

ners. We're different: we grew up both gay and straight, and to varying degrees each of us moves in two worlds. Moving in two worlds goes deep in our minds and hearts. And we speak nonsense when we tell the world we influence only those already gay to be gay. It's a pacifying truth to say people should freely be what they are; but people are what they are in a world. We want that world to be more free and various, and that will change people. Our "virus" is contagious: a life fully and freely lived does indeed exert influence on others. Reactionaries have good reason to fear that their kids. will become strangers.

I now think it's urgent to put Church and State out of business, to offer liberating alternatives to both and all authoritarian structures. And I now think that effeminacy is a lovely lavender herring swimming in revolutionary currents. We should not let any priest or politician make us disown or apologize for our "masculine" sisters, our "effeminate" brothers, our diversity, our selves. The strong message of moderate gays to reaction has been, "We're just like you, only different." The moderate message has also been, "You have nothing to fear on behalf of your kids: we just want everyone to be free to be what they are."

But the reaction is right, and gay moderates are wrong. It's quite usual for reactionaries to identify the real issues clearly, and for moderates to obscure them. We don't just have different bed-part-

To quote Elizabeth Fee, a feminist and historian of science and medicine: "Two possible responses seem to be available for the gay movement: the first is that homosexuality can be dissociated from the threat of anarchic sexuality and sex-role confusion and thus become assimilated into the dominant heterosexual culture without too much disruption. For this to occur, homosexuals would have to disassociate themselves from transvestism, transsexualism and from many of the more colorful aspects of gay culture. They would also have to disassociate themselves from feminism or any other revolutionary ideology, instead to emphasize their community of interest with the respectable heterosexual males and the power elite. Whether such tactics could be successful is at present difficult to determine, but the indications are that our society might find such a compromise acceptable.

"The second possibility is the more radical one, and is identified with many politically conscious lesbians and with an increasing number of homosexual men. This involves accepting and embracing the socially threatening ideas which the heterosexual establishment has always attributed to homosexuals: that homosexuality does indeed threaten the nuclear family and the sexual respectability which it implies, that it does threaten and will eventually de-

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