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By Jerry Juszczyk

Four members of the Italian. gay organization FUORI (Fronte Unitario Omossessuale Revoluzionario Italiano) are planning to sue Pope Paul VI for $250,000 after he condemned homosexual behavior. According to Boston's Gay Community news, the four people accuse the Pontiff of "using slanderous and spiteful expressions" against gay: people in his response to French writer Roger Peyrefitte's article in Tempo which claimed the Pope had had an affair with a young actor while he was Archbishop of Milan. The suit charges that the Pope's statement "wounded thepersonal reputations and dignity of the undersigned who are homosexual."...

Rep. Bella Abzug of New York, one of the co-sponsors of the national Gay Rights bill in Washington, has announced her candidacy to run against New York Senator James Buckley in next fall's election...

Nuntius tells us that Patti Smith may play the role of Janis Joplin in an upcoming movie.... An American distributor is handling David Bowie's first, film, The Man Who Fell to Earth. The flick is scheduled for Cleveland in mid-summer...

Those planning vacations might consider going to New York for the 7th Annual Gay Pride March to be held on June 27. Gay celebrations are being planned continuously from June 27 to July 11. Housing inforImation may be obtained by calling the N.Y. Gay Switchboard, 1-212-924-4036 or the N.Y. Lesbian Switchboard at 1212-741-2610...

So goes gold medalist's John, Curry's coming out story as reported in GPU News: When reporters noted the figure skater's "un-masculine" style and finally asked, "Don't you keep getting asked if you're gay?," the British star responded, "I am." Having broken the biggest taboo in sports, he was deluged by members of the international press except, interestingly, for American reporters. He told them that one of the reasons skilled skaters fell down so frequently was that coaches. to skate in forced them presumably masculine appearing styles that weren't true to their natures.

Curry said that he had been physically beaten by his former coach in an effort to force him to skate in a "masculine" manner. Curry is now being coached in Colorado by the same man who trains Dorothy Hammel, but the American press continues to talk only about Ms. Hammel and ignores Curry....Wonder why?....

The Supreme Court refused to re-hear arguments on their recent ruling which grants/ states the right to legislate antisodomy laws...

In a

feature article

on

professional musclemen in: Rolling Stone, one such sportsman commented,

covet

"Homosexuals bodybuilders; but bodybuilders aren't homosexuals. The women they marry all have big boobs. You go to Arnold's parties, you see girls with big breasts." (?)...

Chicago Gay Life reports New York producer Joseph Papp has asked feminist actress Glenda Jackson to star as Hamlet in London this summer. Papp believes that Hamlet was actually born female but was treated as a male in preparation for someday mounting the Denmark's

throne

as

monarch...Also, actress Karen Black filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court to halt Sherwin Tilton from showing a student film in which Black appears as a homosexual man...

British psychiatrist Jane Gomez in a new book entitled, "How Not to Die Young" claims too much sleep can shorten your life, and sex can make a woman live longer. But a man, may as well get up and take a brisk five-mile walk. According to Ms. Gomez, love-making offers that much exercise value and is tranquilizing as well. It' also "stimulates the glands that keep women youthful." Male glands, however, just don't respond to treatment...?...

For years now, it has been commonplace for European soccer sportsmen to embrace and even kiss each other when one of their teammates scored a goal. Now this behavior has come under sharp attack from England's Football Association which fears that Britain's reputation as "a nation of firmlipped untouchables" threatened. Thus, in response, the E.F.A. has drafted on-thefield standards for its soccer

is

HIGH GEAR

June 1976

ODDS AND

players to downplay "demonstrations of pleasure." The London Press said that this practice was "something the British footballer learned from the foreigner,"....Oh, come now...

New York's Gay Scene reports that in Stockholm, film director Joern Donner said he will go ahead with a controversial film on the sex life of Jesus despite massive objections by Swedish churchmen. Previous attempts by other directors to produce the film in Denmark and France floundered due to fierce church opposition. The script by Danish author Jens Joergen Thorsen depicts Jesus in various heterosexual and homosexual activities...

Quotable Quote: Anthropologist Margaret Mead: "Homosexuality is a perfectly good choice for some. I think extreme heterosexuality is a perversion."... According to a report the delivered May 13 to American Psychiatric Association, political leaders and corporate executives often seeking "kinky" sex make up 60% of the clientele of high priced prostitutes. Drs. Samuel S. Janus and Barbara Bess of N.Y. Medical College said public figures seek frequently flagellation while they are held in bondage, and indulge in fetishism, exhibition, and voyeurism. The psychiatry professors who interviewed 42 "call girls" and 10 "madames" said the news should not be surprising because unusual sexual habits have been characteristic of major public figures since ancient times. Their report said, "A special group of prostitutes, the hetairae, were the aristocrats of prostitution and were the companions of influential and political Greek men such as Pericles, Alexander the Great, Socrates, and Plato.".

a

Lucy Ansilt sanogas

TV Tidbits: On a recent CBS 60 Minutes segment, a truckstop hooker observed, "A surprising number of wildcat truckers are bisexual, not so much because they dislike women, as because it's an easier way to have another warm body close by."

On May 20th's Dinah Shore show, comedian Rich Little, dressed as the NBC peacock declared, "I should become a flag for a sissy country."....Cute, Dick....

are

Victims of sexism?...Women who are overweight or unattractive by male standards discriminated against when applying for clerical jobs, say two college professors who recently

performed a study of hiring practices in Cleveland. Cleveland magazine reported that Dr. Lucille Wright and Otto Santos Jr. said 100 per cent of the personnel directors who participated in their study chose on first impression the most attractive applicants...

Amherst became the first town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the thirtyfirst municipality in the nation to pass a gay rights ordinance....

From a N.Y. Times interview, Chris Sarandon who played a transsexual in Dog Afternoon: "I just refuse to play roles in a cliched way. I refused to make. Leon the transsexual into some sort of screaming queen, because I knew it would just reinforce everything people think drag queens are like.".... To prepare for the part of the transsexual, Sarandon says he had dinner one night with two drag queens, listened to several tapes that were made of the real transsexual the character was based on, plucked his eyebrows, grew and painted his fingernails, and wore women's clothes around his home in Westchester County......

Ensign Vernon Berg III who was to be discharged from the Navy on account of his homosexuality on May 28 was granted a stay the next day by Federal District Judge Edward Corcoran of the District of Columbia. The stay will allow a hearing on the issue before Judge Gerhard Gesell. Berg contends that insufficient review has been provided for his case and that there have been flagrant denial of due process and impermissible command influence......

Lily Tomlin has been named the host of an NBC late night special for August, based on the format of People magazine.....

London's Gay Times reports that the United States Embassy in London has refused a visitor's visa to a Birmingham man because he was thought to be homosexual....

The Barb tells us that in a syndicated article, Johnny Mathis has denied that he is a homosexual and has stated that he would like to become a father; but he is too old fashioned to have children out of wedlock......

Another Quotable Quote from Anglican clergyman, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, England: "Society is sick not because we make love too much but because we love and make love too little."

wear

A Detroit truck driver undergoing a sex change from male to female said he will file a sex discrimination suit against the Wayne County Road Commission after being suspended for refusing to a man's uniform. Sharon (Steven) Swank began the sex change process last August and asked in October to have his name changed on the employment form. But commission officials say they still consider Swank a man and barred him from his job May 26 when he refused to wear the regulation male uniform. Officials said he was wearing a bare-midriff halter.....

comes

were

Some startling news from Joseph DeMarco, editor of the Philadelphia Gayzette. In an editorial, DeMarco said Thomas Jefferson, founding father, inventor, entrepreneur, and SLAVE holder who wrote the Declaration of Independence and said that all men created equal and were endowed with certain rights "that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" proposed a law for his time that would cover homosexuals: "The for penalty homosexual behavior, proposed by Mr. Jefferson, was castration for male homosexuals, and for female homosexuals, the piercing of the nose cartilage with a large hole.".....Happy 200th birthday, Amerika. Our people will not forget.....

The Local Beat......Cleveland Women's Counseling needs women to volunteer their ser-