HIGH GEAR/DECEMBER 1977

Page 9

Paperbacks Reviewed

For years many publishing periods are slighted. Others are houses were reluctant to release manuscripts which had a gay theme. The reasons are unimportant. Realizing the significant dollars that are involved, they are making up for lost time and authors are accommodating their insatiable appetites. However, a lot of trash is coming to market. Reprinted below are excerpts from a review of a volume published by Thomas Crowell entitled Gay American History, Lesbian and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (690 pages $9.95 paperback). Don Slater of the Homosexual Information Center is the author of the review and you can obtain the unabridged review of Gay American History if you write us at High Gear.

In 1975 Arno Press reprinted a collection of 54 books and two periodicals dealing with homosexuality. The overall quality was highly uneven mixing many good titles with a lot of trash and the collection came under thoroughly justified , attack from persons familiar with the literature because of its serious gaps on the one hand and its inclusion of too much stuff of little significance on the other. Jonathan Katz, the editor, showed almost no awareness of the best works that deserved reprinting.

bunched together. The treatment of homosexual organizations and publications is unbalanced and trivial. A reader of the book will not get the impression that the phenomenal successes of the homosexual movement, from 1953 to 1969 in areas of sexual privacy, the right of association, civil service employment, security clearance, military service were the work of a fortuitous gathering of middle-class liberal Democrats and a few Republicans rather than radicals. A reader will not gather that the original Mattachine Foundation, which Mr. Katz focuses on extensively, was little more than a secret organization that failed to reach the general public with its message. The Mattachine Foundation was started by dilettante communists whose allegiance to Marxist doctrine gradually waned, and who were either silenced or pushed roughly out of the movement in 1953. Morever, the New Left that eventually emerged in 1969 to politicalize the movement has now become almost entirely establishment oriented.

Mr. Katz' concept of "Gay History" as an account of a special, definable group of people is questionable. Throughout the book he reiterates the standard cliches In his current effort to compile about "Gay people," and the a collection of documents on "Gay American experience." He "Lesbians and Gay Men in the refers to "homosexuals" as if U.S.A." Mr. Katz once again has they were a "social group" and failed to deal with the salient to the "existence of homosexissues of his subject. Moreover, uals as a people with our own he unfortunately manifests a history, traditions, and culture." political and cultural bias Before delivering this absurd toward the Left, and is fashionmessage Mr. Katz should pause ably self-lacerating as regards to consider another. In any the history of this "silent discussion of so-called gay minority."

The procedure he followed is reasonable enough. He spent months searching through public records, newspaper clippings, medical and legal journals, literary works, diaries, letters, and conducting interviews. He ended up with a lot of material, and then he didn't know what to do with it.

people in American history it is appropriate to define just what "Gay people" are. Mr. Katz seems unaware that there is serious controversy as to whether "Gay people" in any meaningful sense exist, not to mention a "Gay American experience," "tradition," or "culture." Mr. Katz entirely neglects the fundamental fact that most The book has a number of members of the medical profesother gaps. Ecclesiastical atsion now concede that it is imtitudes toward homosexual possible to define a person as practice go unnoticed. The Rev. homosexual as distinguished Robert Wood, who is from defining an activity as unquestionably a pioneer in homosexual meaning there is helping to relax these attitudes, no such thing as a collective is never mentioned. Several time homosexual identity. The book

NOT JUST FOR THE BIRDS

When scientists researched credulous," said Dr. George Santa Barbara Island off Califor. Hunt, Jr. "This sort of thing has nia to see why some seagulls not been found before (in wild parent better than others, and birds) and was clearly not what still others didn't parent at all, we anticipated." Hunt is a memthey had an amazing surprise. ber of the team from the UniverSome gulls are homosexual! sity of California at Irvine. Dr. The research team studied Donald Farmer, zoophysiology 1200 pairs of West coast gulls professor at the University of since 1974, and found that each Washington, commented, "This incident of homosexual behavior is the first case (among wild displayed on the island occurred birds) of homosexual pairs in between females and not males. which everything except OF ALL GULLS ON THE copulation is done as if they ISLAND, GAY AND STRAIGHT were normal pairs." The gulls FEMALES OUTNUMBERED "incubate eggs, defend territory, MALES. and one of the females behaves "We were absolutely in as if she were the male in court-

is therefore, in an important sense, superficial, and "Gay history" as Mr. Katz defines it will not tell us much about America or its people.

Yet the editor presents the collection as an ongoing document retrieval project aimed at giving the "gay segment of society an enhanced self-consciousness through the development of a sense of its past." But the documents are frequently unconvincing and ambiguous. It is often difficult to determine whether a writer is expressing conscious homosexual feelings or merely employing words of conventional friendship. Mr. Katz helps the reader along with his own interpretation of original meaning. The reader must thus decide how far

NEW

OR

to trust his judgement. Thomas HAIRCUTTING WAVING

Crowell apparently trusts it, and has asked Mr. Katz to do a sequel. Publishing in America is obviously on the decline.

0.0.90

SPRING'S HERE

Don Casablanca

Floating in the heavens as if aboard an electron journeying around our nucleus with Saturn, Mars and the other planets

in course about the Sun Here meeting as strangers in the twilight hours

reaching for the heavens as two celestial bodies

we lay between two worlds Then reaching out in love's embrace

We touch tenderly as our soul's take flight Sharing these dreams and fate as hearts slowly melt

and clouds give way to rainbows and sunsets

and nightingales sing songs of our joy.

ship behavior."

It was further discovered that some of the lesbian couples found in the study had relationships with each other that lasted for more than one breeding season. but take heart, gay males! Not too long ago at the Stanley Park Zoo. in Vancouver, British Columbia, some gay male ducks were found. As mentioned before, there was a shortage of the opposite sex here also.

(As first reported in Science, Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

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