Dateline

Corporate America courting gay men

NEW YORK-Corporate America is beginning to court gay male consumers across the United States.

Business Weekly magazine reports that recent income studies have shown that gays control at least 19 per cent of spendable income in the U.S.

The magazine says that as a result, more and more brand-name companies are promoting their goods and services in gay men's publications. Among the companies, according to Business Week, are such firms as Budget Rent-A-Car and Coors beer. In addition, companies such as Levi Strauss and Warner Brothers are also monitoring the gay community for

clues to marketable fashion and music trends. Business Week quotes Kim Cortright of the Golden Gate Business Association in San Francisco as saying that one sign of growing big business interest in the gay dollar is the fact that increasing numbers of companies are requesting the gay business group's mailing lists.

According to George Terzian, a lawyer with the Greater Gotham Business Council in New York City, "It is becoming more apparent to the straight community that there is a lot of buying power among gays." (ZNS)

Men may soon go the way of the Edsel

NEW YORK-Several radical biologists have reportedly come to the conclusion that the human male will soon be "technically expendable."

Author Howard Rheingold, writing in Oui magazine, says that experiments on rats and salamanders indicate that scientists are close to the point of developing techniques whereby a woman can become pregnant and have a child without any biological assistance from a male.

Rheingold adds that some researchers have linked certain "androgens"-the hormones that give a fetus its male identity-to aggression.

He says that some experimental biologists believe it may someday be beneficial to "promote a more peaceful humanity" by altering these male hormonal effects prior to birth or, at least, before the onset of puberty. (ZNS)

A rose by any other name would smell...

BERKELEY, CA-Garlic eaters, take heart!

A Berkeley-based organization for garlic lovers says it will begin a nationwide campaign to combat the American prejudice against garlic.

The group says that most people in the United States don't use the herb because of its smell, which the organization claims is not a bad smell, but just a garlic smell.

The group-which says it has 1500 members na-

Columbia bans baby formula ads

BOGOTA, COLUMBIA-The government of Columbia has banned the Nestle Corporation and all other baby formula companies from advertising for bottlefeeding in hospitals and health centers in that country.

The Ministry of Health, in a recent resolution, has ordered hospitals and clinics or health centers to stop putting up advertisements which discourage breastfeeding or tend to emphasize the bottle in preference

Bring back the Earth Shoe

RALEIGH, NC-A North Carolina foot specialist says that women's high-heeled shoes should be outlawed.

Dr. Richard Lotwin reports he has treated so many female patients with problems caused by high-heeled shoes that "it almost seems like the show industry is in cahoots with medicine to keep those things around." The doctor claims that the angle of the shoes forces women to walk awkwardly and unnaturally, promot-

tionwide-reports it will launch a campaign to convince people that they should begin to love the smell of garlic because of its many health-giving qualities. The group, incidentally, calls itself the "Lovers of the Stinking Rose Society." referring to the similarity of shapes-but not smell-between the garlic and the rose plant.

Its motto? "Fight mouthwash.-Eat garlic." (ZNS)

to the breast.

The move comes in the wake of an increasing number of protests from Third World countries about the ad campaigns conducted by Nestle and other corporations which manufacture baby formula.

The critics charge that babies of Third World mothers often die of malnutrition because the mothers cannot afford to buy the proper amounts of formula to keep their babies healthy. (ZNS)

ing a variety of back, leg and toe ailments. Lotwin warns that women diabetics can develop gangrene from wearing high heels, adding that he has actually been forced to amputate legs because of problems aggravated by the heels.

Lotwin says high-heeled shoes were "probably created by some male as a semi-bondage type of thing." (ZNS)

They're bugging Navy ships-with live bugs

BLACKSBURG, VA-Scientists at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute have received permissionwould you believe-to release thousands of live cockroaches aboard Navy ships.

But it's all for a good cause. The roaches being turned loose are sterilized males; and when these

males breed with the female roaches already infesting the ships, it is believed that they will produce infertile eggs.

If they do the job aboard the ships, sterilized roaches may be pressed into service in homes, businesses and restaurants. (ZNS)

It takes more than sugar and spice

NEW YORK-A new study has found that mothers complications during pregnancy.

who were given sex hormones during pregnancy Dr. Ehrhardt says that the personalities of the eightgave birth to children who later developed "feminineto-14-year-olds in the study were compared to a conoriented" personalities.

According to the study by Columbia University psychiatrist Dr. Anke Ehrhardt, the boys who were born were "less stereotypically masculine and the girls more feminine."

The mothers of the children had been given the female hormones estrogen and progesterone for minor GAY NEWS-Sept. 21, 1979

trol group of similar aged children from mothers who had not been given hormones. Both the boys and the girls in the hormone group, the doctor says, seemed to be more "feminine" in personality than their counterparts in the control group. (ZNS)

Political club opposes

Askew nomination

by Bill Calaman

WASHINGTON, DC-The Gertrude Stein Democratic Club here has gone on record opposing the U.S. Senate's confirmation of former Florida Governor Reubin Askew as special representative for trade negotiations.

The club passed a resolution on Aug. 20 opposing the confirmation "because of his (Askew's) role in the Dade County (Florida) campaing of the spring of 1977 which repealed that county's human rights ordinance protecting its homosexual citizens from discrimination."

The resolution further pointed out that Askew was the only Democratic governor to ignore the party's stand as adopted by the Dade County Democratic Committee which supoorted the ordinance.

Observers feel that the club's resolution is likely to have little, if any, effect on Askew's confirmation hearings, which were scheduled to begin Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.

"We expect Askew to be confirmed." said Tom Bastow, presi-

dent of the club. "I think the message we want to leave is that we expect to be respected by the politicians."

Bastow said he would be testifying before the finance committee this week. Gay activists in Philadelphia and Houston have also issued statements opposing Askew's confirmation.

Askew's confirmation, nevertheless, is considered virtually assured, since his nomination by President Carter has caused only a minimum of public dissent.

"I think it's important that special interest groups let the committee know how they feel." a committee source said. "(But) I don't think his (Askew's) position (on gay rights) is going to be considered by the senators.

Askew made headlines in 1977 when he supported Anita Bryant's effort to repeal the Dade County's gay rights ordinance. At the time he said he would not want a homosexual teaching his children in school and he would not accept the presence of a homosexual on his executive staff.

Evangelist censored by N.Y. TV station

by Bill Calaman

NEW YORKFundamentalist evangelist James Robison has once again had his anti-gay remarks stopped by the media.

Robison, whose weekly gospel. television show was taken off the air in Dallas after he attacked gay rights on his Feb. 25 show, had part of another program censored Aug. 12 by WOR-TV, channel 9 in New York.

The Aug. 12 show, titled "Satan's Subtle Attacks on the Church," was bleeped for approximately 10 seconds during which Robison was apparently condemning churches for ordaining gays into the ministry.

"I alerted his (Robison's) people that when he starts doing his own editorials instead of (preaching) the gospel that (he would be censored)," said WOR General Manager Robert Fennimore.

Fennimore said he did not know of any more "bleeping" incidents

since the Aug. 12 show. but added that if such attacks continue Robison would be taken off the air permanently.

The Gay Activist Alliance of New York is taking credit for bringing Robison's anti-gay bias to the attention of WOR. An Alliance press release claimed to have "put the breaks on the atrocious hate campaign of James Robison in the metropolitan area...

Mike Huckavee, director of communications for the James Robison Evangelist Association in Fort Worth, Texas, said he was unaware of WOR's action. "I really can't comment on it because this is the first I've heard of it." Huckavee told the Gay News.

Robison was taken off the air by WFAA-TV in Dallas for making anti-gay remarks. He was later allowed back on the air with the condition that WFAA could preview his programs.

TV evangelist James Robison

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