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HIGH GEAR

APRIL 1976

ΚΕΙ

KENT KENT KENT KENT KENT KENT KENT KEI

Photos by Al Morrill

KENT

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KENT In what has become an annual rite of spring, the Kent Gay Liberation Front. Conference this year provided impetus to a Gay Movement which is at a critical crossroad in its development. Sporting over 100 active participants, the conference began Friday evening, April 2 with an address on gay culture by Carla Jay and Alan Young, editors of Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation and After You're Out. The Past

Alan Young: "For the past two hundred years Western culture has been defined by straight white males. They have deprived gay people (among others) the right of historical acknowledgement of their own customs and habits. This is significant. We cannot be a people without a culture. In the past, gay males have had only a list of names to relate to

Shakespeare, Michelangelo, etc. though we now know that many court jesters, troubadours, and theatre people of medieval Europe had ties to each other which had nothing to do with the class structure of that time."

"At the turn of the century in England, there was a community of sorts involving Oscar Wilde, Edward Carpenter, and E.M. Forester (Maurice, 1913) which lent itself not only to a high quality of literature, but to political activism as well."

Carla Jay: "The problem in the study of lesbian culture is more acute than that of gay males. Lesbian culture is not only invisible; but has also been destroyed. Since the Justinian Codes, the persecution of witches was often that of lesbians; interestingly, witchcraft is characterized by a matriarchal structure around the

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goddess Diana, an image which is no doubt threatening to the male god of Judeo-Christian heritage."

"Any major woman author or painter of the recent past has been a lesbian Mary Wallstone Craff, George Sand, Jeanette Foster, Amy Brooks, and Natalie Barney and Renee Vivian (both incidentally, from Ohio). Living. in Paris most of her life, Renee Vivian was a pagan who denied Christianity and often wore togas of the 5th century B.C. as a symbol to the return of the matriarchal society."

"Part of the male sub-culture has been comprised of camp and star worship (ie., Judy Garland). As women, we have been unable to develop such cohesive units because: 1) we've never had money to follow stars and 2) we've never had cultural heroines. There have been few women we've even known about to establish an identity with."

Today's Culture

Alan Young: "The American cultural mainstream clusters around the nuclear family of Judeo-Christianity and the competitive ethic of capitalism. Gay people don't duplicate the family and by their very existence represent action in rebellion."

"The J-C culture has heightened social inhibitions and made Western people extraordinarily homophobic. Instead of soaping up each other's backs in a spirit of cooperation, straight men can only snap towels at each other in an aggressive, affrontive way."

"What the Gay Movement must now do is maintain its openness and honesty. The closet is a form of hypocrisy. It

perpetuates the presumption that everyone is heterosexual. We need to find outlets for Ourselves to build a contemporary gay culture that will stand the test of time. Theatre like "The Chorus Line" in N.Y. and novels like Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man continue to show developing gay male consciousness We must remember that culture and politics are indistinguishable."

Carla Jay: "Lesbian culture is a new culture; created by us, for our conception, to Our standards. A culture we can control is more important than any legislature gains we can make. It's interesting how classical symphonies. are centered around the male orgasm. The music builds to one major climax and then it's all

Alan Young

over. Contemporary lesbian music, like Meg Christian and Chris Williamson, on the other hand, is 30 orgasms. It goes up

Dayton on The Move

Dayton is on the move. On Wednesday March 24, about 56 people boarded a bus and invaded the Badlands in Cincinnati. According to Willie, owner of the Stage Door in Dayton and sponsor of the trip, "We rocked

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Cincinnati; it will never be the. same!" Future plans for these roving Daytonites call for chartering a bus to Columbus and a summer picnic for seven to nine thousand. Some big plans from Dayton!

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