SEPTEMBER 1976

young men are encouraged to spend a short period of time usually early in life, as a monk, after which they return to nonreligious pursuits.

Finally there are gay apologists who, fearing gay chauvinism, would deny that there is or has been an appreciable number of homosexuals in the arts. Straights, wishing to wrest art from the stigma of homosexuality would do the

same.

Although in the cases of many individual artists, we cannot confirm sexual orientation, if we totaled the life experiences, aesthetic subtleties and blatancies of leading literati, we would find them only too suggestive of homosexual affinities.

was gay. In any case, Tennessee Williams, self-admittedly homosexual, but whose collective works appear to be predominantly straight (to assure their "universality"), is generally acclaimed as the LEADING American dramatist. As Karla Jay asserted in her opening address to the recent Kent Gay Liberation Front Conference, EVERY WOMAN OF NOTE IN ART AND LETTERS HAS BEEN A LESBIAN. These include Mary Wallstone Craff, George Sand, Jeanette Foster, Amy Brooks, and Natalie Barney, Renee Vivian etc.

So ashamed have we been over the past two millenia of our homosexuality, our mouths stuffed with humble pie and our own feet, that we let perish the thought that we may actually be The observation that ancient the bearers of civilization. So Greece was dominated by antithetical has been Our homosexual athletics, militarism, identity to our biological and theatre, sculpture and especially! historic role in human society

HIGH GEAR

Page 15

IMAGINE walking thru a garden and finding the colors

all of a sudden seem to come alive and dance. WELL..

it's here.

THE

DISCO

AMERICAN

ROMANTICIZED TEUTONIC FEMALE COMBATANTS

philosophy has become cliche. Inspite of the severe Christian repression of overt gay expression, we are fortunate to be left with enough fragmentary evidence to indicate that not only was there a sizable number of European homosexual artists, but that the TOWERING figures of Western culture were gay. Da Vinci and Michaelangelo, considered by some scholars to have been gay were not just Italian artists, they were the BEST Italian artists. Chopin and Tchaikovsky, both thought to have been gay, were respectively the FOREMOST Polish and Russian composers. The much-heralded homoemotional relationship betweeen Geothe and Schiller was one

between the GREATEST German poets.

Shakespeare was more than a bisexual Elizabethan dramatist, he was and remains the SUPREME dramatist and poet of the English language. If Tennessee Williams had lived during the Elizabethan period, he would probably not have been as generous as Shakespeare in leaving behind homosexual sonnets and we would likely be considered full of crap for speculating that he

that it is at once too humiliating and awesome a realization that we have played host to incredible ever-changing masses of straight parasites!

Nature is remarkably senstive. to characteristics including common patterns of behavior which are irrelevant to survival goals. Useless traits and manifestations are quickly purged, even from small societies or races within a species. A consistent biological feature such as homosexuality could hardly persist, especially among distantly related genera unless it were an integral survival mechanism. Homosexuality certainly interferes with reproduction by some individuals. Meddling with reproduction is a definite natural

"no'no," unless such interference possesses dynamic and overwhelming benefit for the persistence of a group of animals.

Through our by now wellentrenched gay media we have been telling ourselves repeatedly that we are both natural and "normal." Perhaps now we should consider the question: Is gay, perhaps, better than normal?

29100160sm namun

in akron.o. the wait is over

RAadvertising

19 101 Sigh signis & folqxe ne