FEATURES

HIGH GEAR/JUNE 1977

JJ'S DISCO on the strip

2402 St. Clair Cleveland Announcing Our

ST

ANNIVERSARY GELEBRATION

Wednesday June 29th

Buffet and Champagne Served

Sunday June 26

Treva & her Trevettes

Watch for Opening of the outside patio

And Gong Show

Contestants Apply At the bar

8:30 til 2:30/7 davs 566-9576

RADIO

FREE LAMBOA

10 PM MONDAYS

CLEVELAND

WURUW 191.1 FM

If you would like distribution of High Gear to your place of business, we'll be happy to get the papers to you. Advertising rate sheets are also available on request.

Please write High Gear, P.O. Box 6177, Cleveland, Ohio

*

O.G.R.C.

The Ohio Gay Rights Coalition Needs Your Help Now!

Send What you can to

OGRC, 354 Bratenahl Rd.

Bratenahl, Ohio 44108

Please make all checks payable

to either OGRC OR The Ohio Gay Rights Coalition

Name

Address

Confidentiality is Assured

Telephone (optional)...

HELP US MAKE OHIO A BETTER PLACE FOR ALL GAY PEOPLE!

enrichayyy commun Per 900 & linner a

or

wher

or

*

PAGE 22

HOMOAFFINITY

by Leon Stevens

Contrary to the popular misconception, sexual attraction is a biological mechanism which exists for its own sake. It has come to be adapted to animal reproduction, but is not identical with it. Instinctive affinity is a tool which, when subtle, helps to cement a society together. When intense and programmed for heterosex, it assists production.

re-

Homosexuals comprise a caste of individuals whose reservoir of intellect and leisure facilitate cultural development. Thus, "homosex" is a misnomer. We are not homo "sexual" but rather homo"affinal." We are attracted to people of our same sex merely to guarantee non-reproduction without jeopardizing intellectual mutuality. "Sex," to the extent that it connotes reproduction, is as irrelevant to us as feathers are to scales. "Sex" is a chemically-directed affinity with no particular biological allegiance. Production of eggs or sperm in us is vestigial. We experience meiosis (halving of our genital chromosomes) only because it creates less of a "hassle" for nature just as leaving nipples on males presents fewer problems for animal development. Consequently, the Gay Movement has been correct in resisting a sexual fefinition of "gay."

In determining whether historical figures were "gay," it is not necessary to secure evidence of homosexual liaison. If it can be established that a special, intimate, emotional relationship existed between at least two individuals of the same gender, then those people qualify as "gay." They do so because even if they were in fact heterosexual, the nature of their relationship is typical of homosexuals, and, in any case, gayrelevant.

Gayness is a biological-cultural tradition. A gay community or enclave within a larger society serves to enrich and sus-

tain that society. A gay contingent forms itself and functions in any social context regardless of how hostile it might be. In a gay-positive culture, as for example, classical Greece, gays formed visible concentrations in military, philosophical and artistic circles. In post-Byzantine Europe, gays who were forced into heterosexual lifestyles, either deliberately or unawares, disrupted their "unnatural" mode of existence. Shakespeare, for instance, abandoned his wife and children for twenty years, moving to London to associate with an all-male theartical company. George Sands left her husband but took her children on an Odyssey which involved a lengthy affair with a Parisian actress, culminating in her marriage to Chopin (said by many, including Sand's son, to have been a homosexual).

Of course, even if a homosexual makes no contribution whatsoever to society, it does not dismiss her/his being gay. Homosexuality is a tool used by nature to insure a cultural sector in a large, especially sedentary group. This does not preclude heterosexual participation in that sector nor does it promise full homosexual aesthetic productivity. Homophilia shared by the Sumerians, Chaldeans and Greeks may well have contributed to the rapid rise of those civilizations (the Egyptjans were homo-ambiguous). Whereas extreme homophobia might easily have retarded Israelite civilization. Hebrew tradition has it that Solomon's temple was built with unhewn fitted stones. Archaelogy has uncovered no significant sculpture, not even geometric carving, attributable to the tribal Hebrews.

Homosexuality is symbolic of a highly specialized social role. It is a product of higher mammalian evolution which could not anticipate localized homosapien intolerance but which functions in spite of it.

To date, the Gay Movement has stated merely that homosexuality exists and that it is good without offering POSITIVE specualtion as to WHY it exists. (Straights have plenty of negative speculation with audiences anxious to eat it up). It is not enough for us to observe that "gay is good." GAY IS BEST!

Support Our Advertisers. They Make HIGH GEAR

Happen