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By LEON STEVENS

Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show hit an all-time qualitative low last week when Snyder interviewed four selfstyled psychoanalysts who wondrously "cured" themselves and others of homosexuality. They purportedly managed this through a philosophy they called "aesthetic realism." The overly gleeful quartet defined "aesthetic realism" as "the objective appreciation of the aesthetic oneness of opposites." They claimed they had once been unhappy homosexuals but after they received the enlightenment of their teacher and mentor, Eli Segal, they lost all lust for men and became one hundred percent peterosexual. The four interviewees cited the cause of homosexuality as "contempt of women" and more specifically, "contempt of the world." They confessed that by erasing their "contempt of women" they gloriously metamorphosed into heterosexuals, got married, had plenty of children and have lived happily ever since.

They declined to use the words "gay" and "homosexual" and merely referred to homosexuality as "H." When asked about gays who do not want to changed into heterosexuals, they declared, "All homosexuals have a deep-seated desire to change."

HIGH GEAR

GO STRAIGHT?

One of the group recalled, "When I was a homosexual i felt cheap, very cheap, and I thought I was missing something. I didn't like myself and I didn't have any purpose." The four men also promoted "aesthetic realism" as a panacea for all of the ills of humanity.

Another continued, "I used to hate art, even great masterpieces, but when I came into contact with aesthetic realism, I learned to love and adore art."

Another of the guests joined in, "Even inflation will cease when people learn, to display good will through aesthetic realism."

The fourth alleged that of one hundred-ninety gay men who submitted to their treatment called "Consultations with Three," sixty completely recovered from their homosexuality. The four men euphorically proclaimed that their founder, Eli Segal, though little known today, would become "one of the greatest men who ever lived," and that gay activists refuse to convert to "aesthetic realism" only because they "enjoy hating the world and women."

Needless to say these zealots evoked more questions with their Hegelian mysticism than they answered. For example; why are many straight men who are "contemptuous of women" not gay? Are bisexuals only half as "con-

temptuous of women" as other gays? What happens to men who are "contemptuous" of other men? Do Michelangelo, Tchaikovsky and Truman Capote hate art?

Actually, Snyder's guests were illprepared for questioning and highly exaggerated their self-satisfaction. None of them indicated that they had, in fact, had any sexual contact with other men while they were "H." They did not document their converts, report their base of operations, nor recommend any relevant literature. They were cleverly vague both about their methods and their beliefs. It was clear that none of the "aesthetic realists" was familiar with gay life styles, and that they were really more contemptuous of their own homosexuality than they were of women (assuming they were (are) gay to begin with).

Most gays who watched this medicine show probably found it, at worst, insulting, and at best, hilarious, however, many closeted gays who are terrified of gay life styles about which they know little or nothing, are likely to seek relief from their paranoia through any contemporary Rasputin who offers

it.

Many gays who have been saturated with anti-"sissy" propaganda or who have been heavily indoctrinated with the

September, 1975

necessity to conform, might find their sexuality a traumatic dilemma the resolution of which is a life-ordeath issue. Such lost souls, in defiance of the new psychology,, are likely to resort to any glimmer of "hope" including aversion (shock) therapy, hypnosis, religion, magic, folk medicine or various gimmicks and hoaxes. False alternatives can only prolong the imagined calamity and unnecessary travail of desperate and unsuspecting closeted gays.

It is criminal of Snyder not to have featured a responsible representative of the New York gay community to refute the conjectures of his rather off-the-wall guests. (Instead, he spent twenty minutes that same evening in small talk with Norman Mailer). Snyder's: act may likely deteriorate into a televised National Inquirer, as do many radio talk-shows, exchanging sensationalism for ratings. How sad that just as the Gay Movement is beginning to make headway against two thousand years of medieval myths and legendry, it must now also battle side-show entrepreneurs.

Florida businessman runs for Miami Commission