Continued from Page 2

ings, develop synthetic romances to "pass," to build up great bases of shame and self-doubt. Any number of coping mechanisms many helpful, many harmful are mobilized against this relentless conspiracy to crush our emerging gay spirit.

The fact that we simply survive this stage should be a point of great pride. That no small number of gay teens forge against the current and track down every positive, validating resource they can to nurture their secret is a remarkable accomplishment. That more and more young people are accepting themselves and accessing the growing store of lesbian-gay youth support services and tools is all the more reason for celebration.

Consenting adults

The years following high school are often liberating ones for gays and lesbians. We are now more independent to challenge the forces that play such repressive roles in our lives: biological family, institutional religion, childhood peers, the neighborhood...

But imagine having to re-evaluate every traditional source of identity and purpose you know in order to claim your right to a loving relationship and physical pleasure or just a simple date. It seems ridiculous. Western civilization, for all its faults, has at least recognized romance and sexuality as worthy causes for some time now.

Yet gays and lesbians must grapple with incredible philosophical examination and creativity to restore romantic self-respect and sexual integrity. Years of identity-formation within a lesbiangay-negative environment wreaks considerable havoc and an embittered world view.

But even in this we can be prouddoubly proud. First, proud of whatever new inner journeys we risk to rediscover the innate decency and beauty of our hearts: whether through books, hotlines, support groups, spiritual renewal, lesbian and gay friends, therapy, community social outlets or the guidance and patience of loving partners. And second, proud of all these resources we've created for ourselves: from self-help coming-out services to attractive community businesses, from lesbian-gay newspapers to annual Pride fairs and festivals.

We are continually overcoming overwhelming odds through extraordinary personal courage and collective determination to uncloset our lives and reclaim a loving world.

Building new families

Despite the claims of the religious right, it is not homosexuality which destroys families, but homophobia; not "non-traditional couples" (a little historical illiteracy here), but ideologies which strive to create a kind of class system for relationships.

It is estimated the 50 percent of adult gay men and lesbians are permanently estranged from their biological families. This indicates an emotional arrested development in American homes which should alarm us all.

But though gays and lesbians continue striving to rebuild the bridges to their families of origin (the most popular pamphlets in the resource rack at the Center remain literature to help parents understand), we have also forged new families for ourselves with lovers, lesbian-gay friends and heterosexual men and women in our lives more accepting than our real family.

We have claimed our right to parenthood and nurturing, exploring numerous avenues to pass to the next generations our care and unique perspectives. We've developed our own rituals and prompted study of our emotional attachments, less dictated and constricted by gender role-playing and economic inequality.

We have discovered and, in turn, demanded that society recognize that gayness and lesbianism is a familial identity, not simply genital traffic. And in that discovery, not only bring a radical enrichment to our personal lives, but to all of society's ability to understand how true families bond and build commitment.

Taking pride and taking power

Finally, every member of the lesbiangay community can take pride in the amazing strides we have taken to empower ourselves in our towns, in our states, in our country.

We have divested ourselves of many archaic and unsupportable statutes which criminalized and victimized us. We have sought successful redress in innumerable courts against individuals or institutions which sought to deprive us of our basic rights or simple integritymost recently in the Ohio Supreme Court's recognition of a gay right to adoption.

We have equally freed ourselves of unsubstantiated scientific claims of psychological/hormonal/societal dysfunction. We have spearheaded or played major roles in studies and surveys that have proven classifications of gays and lesbians as mentally imbalanced, physically impaired, socially

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July, 1990 maladapted, or criminally inclined, to have no foundation in fact.

We have rolled up our academic sleeves in the history department and rendered visible again our ancestors in every known time and culture.

We have attended to health and men-

tal health concerns in our communitysuch as the considerable challenge of alcoholism in a community where bars play such pivotal coming-out roles and responded with lesbian-gay-specific healing and recovery programs.

We have been confronted with the catastrophic epidemic of AIDS-a devastating viral infection that has now killed more members of our community than all Americans lost in Vietnam-and not only have we responded with a national network of courageous and committed HIV service organizations, an exquisite mechanism for processing our communal devastation and grief (the Names Project Quilt), but we have also turned around and confronted a federal government and medical community fundamentally ill-equipped to handle catastrophic illness of this magnitude.

Community Research Initiatives and ACT UP-style activist groups are forcing extensive re-examination of national health care policy and the systematic

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

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changes they're effecting will reverberate through the lives of all Americans facing life-threatening illness.

Pride as a right

Heterosexuals take it for granted that the right to love and pursue happiness through relationships is an automatic given in modern-day life. It is, in fact, held to be the primary social foundation of present-day society.

Gays and lesbians discover at the youngest, most impressionable age, that even this rightto express affection and yearn for it to be returned can be

denied, derided and distorted beyond recognition for no other reason than majority fear.

What we celebrate with nationwide lesbian-gay pride festivals each year is our individual and community's triumph over hate and persecution. What we demand is the return of our and every living person's birthright: to hold another being freely, to be held without

fear. ▼

Aubrey Wertheim is director of services of the Lesbian-Gay Community Service Center. This article was written for the June 17 edition of the Plain Dealer, and is reprinted with permission.

Gay ROTC man can keep tuition

In a decision released on May 18, the United States Army has rescinded its demand that James Holobaugh repay a $25,000 ROTC scholarship. Holobaugh, who was graduated in May from Washington University in St. Louis, had been disenrolled from ROTC and asked to repay the scholarship after he told an ROTC instructor that he was gay. Although withdrawing its repayment recommendation, the Army decision discharges Holobaugh from ROTC and denies him his commission.

"We've won an important battle in the long war to overturn the military's ban on lesbians and gay men," said Holobaugh's attorney, ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project staff counsel William B. Rubenstein. "The victory is significant because it shows that there are limits to the military's mean-spiritedness."

"While I am pleased I will not have to repay the money, I am terribly disappointed that the Army has not seen fit to grant me a commission and to allow me to serve my country," said Holobaugh. "My case only serves to underscore the wastefulness of the military's ban on lesbians and gay men. I intend to continue to pursue my commission and to continue my efforts to have the military abandon a policy that is rooted in ignorance and prejudice."

Holobaugh was the recipient of a

highly competitive four-year Army ROTC scholarship. He was rated one of the top performers in his ROTC class, and was selected by the Army to be in a nationwide advertising campaign soliciting students for ROTC. Nonetheless, when Holobaugh came out during his senior year of college, the Army began disenrollment proceedings against him.

In January, 1990, the Army ruled that there was no evidence that Holobaugh's coming out amounted to an attempt to deceive them, yet the Army recommended not only that Holobaugh be disenrolled but also that he be ordered to reimburse the military in full for his scholarship.

Rubenstein noted that "The Army's retreat in this case was the product of pressure generated by several dozen members of Congress, led by Rep. Gerry Studds, D-Mass, and by a number of universities, including Washington University."

Studds and 23 other members of Congress wrote a letter to the Army on Holobaugh's behalf, as did Washington University provost Edward Macias. Macias' letter criticized the Army's policy as being "clearly inconsistent with the non-discriminatory values of this, and I should think virtually all) univer sities."

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