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Gay Peoples Chronicle

April 1986

gay peoples

CHRONICLE

Publisher

Cleveland Gay Peoples Press, Inc. A Non-Profit Corporation

AN OPEN LETTER TO WM. F. BUCKLEY,

wear Mr. Buckley:

In your March 18 article in the New York Times you claim that you can convincingly crystallize the thoughts chasing around in the minds of, first, those whose concern with AIDS victims is based primarily on a concern for them and for the maintenance of the most rigid standards of civil liberties and personal privacy, and, second, those whose anxiety to protect the public impels them to give subordinate attention to the civil amenities of those who suffer from AIDS and primary attention safety of those who do not."

to the

"Convincingly"? Come off it, Bill. Homophobes are most dangerous when they are being polite. We really prefer you when you call us faggots and are not pretending to be anything but homophobic. When you write about us as thinking, feeling humans we wonder just what is up your sleeve.

But our mistrust of you on any civil rights issue extends beyond your homophobia. At the beginning of your career, you eagerly beat the tom-toms for the sickening corruption of the American political process represented by Joseph R. McCarthy. Did you ever wonder about his sexual orientation? But then you probably don't know that people who hate their own homosexuality are often the most vicious homophobes of all.)

Like the rest of your kind, you hate our visibility. You write, sarcastically, that we are dislodging the straight-laced from mummified positions they inherited through eclectic superstitions ranging from Bible's to Freud's."

Not "eclectic superstitions," Bill. It's the gender ideology inherent in Western civilization, and all hangs together beautifully. The Bible strikes us as a book written by and for "real" men. Some of our brothers and sisters within the community disagree with this view, so we won't press it. The Bible is interpreted through a

of gender ideology. But even so, we can live very comfortably with anything Christ said about us. Even if we think gender ideology skewed Freud's analysis of homosexuality we can also live with his statements about us. it was his followers who perverted Freudianism.

Trying to speak for us, you describe AIDS as our curse. No, Bill. That's the word you homophobes use. We don't.

You presume--and it is indeed a presumption--to state our position. You can't bring it off. What's really curious is your statement that we would not put it in words quite so "jut-jawed" as yours. Oh yes, we would. We do. You haven't listened to us.

second school--epitomized by you-"argues that AIDS is potentially the most serious epidemic to have shown its face in this century.

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Well now, that's real change. Only a few years ago your school was blandly advocating letting AIDS run its course. Even DOW your representatives in the federal administration and in Congress are fighting to restrict funding for AIDS research.

But with further reading we see it isn't a change. Your word "potential" should have tipped us off. AIDS will become seriif it spreads beyond gay people. As the Economist passage you quote put it, that would indeed be a catastrophe.

Your school's concern for the national health takes odd forms. You don't try to learn more about AIDS; you try to restrict gay people. As part of the population that

JR.

has been stricken by AIDS, we hope it does not spread. Here, we are very different from you homophobes who made no attempt to hide your glee when AIDS first appeared among us. If it should spread, your school will be reaping the wind you sowed when you blocked funding for AIDS research. But we would take no pleasure in that result.

This is another diffeence between gay people and homophobes. We had to deal with AIDS largely on our own, with no help from your kind. We did so. When threatened, your school immediately looks for a scapegoat. And for the past seven centuries you've blamed us for anything from drought to earthquakes; and now, AIDS.

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You demand, as a "utilitarian imperative, that all persons who test positive for HTLV-3 should be identified. It's obvious from the context of your argument that you know a positive test is not equivalent to having AIDS, yet you write as though these states are identical: a good technique for working up public hysteria.

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Then we have your curious demand "to require of anyone who seeks a marriage license that he present himself not only with Wassermann test but also an AIDS test." Are you unaware that women can give AIDS to men? Or are you suppressing their role because you really want to institute measures against gay men. You demand that any woman who marries such a man must agree to be sterilized. Why? To protect the children, of course. The time-hallowed charge that we are a threat to children is not original with you, of course. It was Anita Bryant's battlecry

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You argue that "the evidence is not completely in as to the communicability of the disease... The moment has not yet come when men and women of science are unanimously agreed that AIDS cannot be casually transmitted." Again, Bill, come off it: That moment as you know, will never come. If you hate gay people, you can always convince yourself that any kind of lie is moral behavior. People of "science" are not yet unanimously agreed that race does not deermine intelligence. But our society has moved on, using the evidence available and ignoring the racists. Why not use the same procedure with AIDS?

So, we come to the crux of your argument. Everyone "with AIDS"--by which you mean who tests positive for HTLV-3--should be tattooed on the upper arm and on the buttocks.

This is empirical? Look, Bill, in anal intercourse the receptor is the person potentially most at risk. He may not even see the insertor's ass. What practical advantage would your plan offer? Obviously none. If you have an insatiable desire to brand men on the ass, you could find some willing partners without changing the law. You conclude by likening this technique to the scarlet letter formerly used to identify adulterers. We can think of other parallels, much closer in time and intrinsic nature. And here we always thought Gore Vidal's calling you a Nazi was hyperbole.

What interested us--what indeed let us read you with enjoyment--was precisely that we have heard it all before. Bill, you're banal: an Anita Bryant with upperclass aspirations, a Paul Cameron with intellectual pretensions.

God knws the Kennedy's had their faults, but at least they projected class.

*The March 30 Plain Dealer ran an abridgment of Buckley's article.

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