24 in Congress back gay bill

By Joe Stewart

WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

WASHINGTON The federal gay-rights bill was reintroduced March 25 with the announcement that 24 members of Congress have now placed their names among the sponsors.

Bruce Voeller of New York, director of the National Gay Task Force, said a drive would begin immediately to recruit Senate authors, naming 14 senators who are being approached.

Originally introduced Jan. 17 as H.R. 166 by Rep. Bella Abzug, D-N.Y., and four others, the House bill would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to forbid discrimination on the basis of "affectional or sexual preference." The new bill is identical, except for its number (H.R. 5452) and the 19 new cosponsors.

Among the new names is that of Rep. Donald M. Fraser, D-Minn., who has introduced a slightly different bill of his own, which would also outlaw discrimination on marital status.

Ohio court kills anti-drag law

COLUMBUS, Ohio The Ohio Supreme Court has struck down a Columbus city ordinance and others like it across the state which forbids cross-dressing.

Such laws are unconstitutional when "considered in the light of contemporary dress habits," the high court ruled in a 7-to-0 decision.

The case was an appeal from the $25 fine meted out to John Terry Rogers, a pre-operative transsexual, who was arrested on April 21, 1973, for wearing a curly wig, a flowered blouse, pullover sweater, a bra and bellbottoms (which police called palazzo pants). The arresting officer noted that Rogers was "very feminine in speech and movements", which he said influenced his decision to arrest.

Max Kravitz, a Public Defender's office lawyer who now teaches at Capital University Law School, took the case to the Supreme Cou t because he said police

Sahl exposes his homophobia

LOS ANGELES – Mort Sahi, the acrid iconociast of a comedian from the late 1950s who had been making a comeback, revealed himself as a virulent fag-hater in a television broadcast taped March 19.

Before the reaction was over, Sahl's employers at KCOP-TV, where he cohosts a talk show, had to undergo a 24-hour sit-in, apologize profusely and schedule one, perhaps two, gay rebuttals.

It was Sahl himself who jumped on the gay topic March 19, during a sagging discussion with three women guests on the show. When one of the women mentioned · gays, Sahl cried, "They're scavengers!.. Beneath the earth...They're your enemy...a destructive force. They despise you (women) because you have the real thing."

Parries by Sahl's guests and cohost Pamela Mason did no good, and Sahl continued his attack for the rest of the show.

Later a tape of the show was screened by 20 gays and KCOP management, who agreed to invite Lesbians Sally Stewart and Sharon Cornelison; the Rev. Robert Sirico of Metropolitan Community Church and Morris Kight of the Gay Community Services Center to a March 25 taping with Sahl and a new cohost, who warmly welcomed the gay guests.

Sahl was sullen during the gays' discussion, kept changing the subject and finally stormed off the set, proclaiming: "I won't have this kind of bullshit on my show!"

That show was aired — a day late, and with apologies: from KCOP broadcast both before and after the Sah! show. Winning that concession took a 24-hour sit-in, on Sahl's sound stage, by a group of 30 that dwindled to 13 before it was over. KCOP also agreed to discuss a separate broadcast on Lesbian/feminism in the future.

regularly use such laws to harass male transvestites and transsexuals.

Kravitz won one victory at once. The City Council repealed the ordinance against appearing in public “in a state of nudity or in a dress not belonging to his or her sex," effective Jan. 1, 1974.

But Kravitz pressed on, knowing there were similar ordinances still effective in Mansfield, Cleveland and other Ohio cities. He also wanted to get at least one cross-dressing decision on the law books as a precedent, somewhere in the country. (The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the Houston cross-dressing ordinance in April 1974.)

The Ohio court declared that the 14th Amendment requirement of due process of law is violated by an ordinance which is so vague that "men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application...

"This is of special significance in relation to the ordinance here, which makes criminal, activities which by modern standards are normally innocent."

In his lega! brief, Kravitz cited a department-store ad for "men's pantyhose," and the wearing of unisex clothing, hot pants, extreme mini-skirts and skin-tight clothing as examples of apparel which the Columbus law cast into doubt.

Kravitz said he is having some difficulty reaching another pre-operative transsexual whose appeal he is handling — Joesph Zanders, whose doctor told him to dress, act and work as a woman several years ago, as an early stage of sex-change therapy.

Zanders won a municipal judge's decision in 1970 that police cannot arrest a transsexual for cross-dressing, after the judge found Zanders "nad a constitutional right to follow the prescription of his doctor, as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of the community," Kravitz said. "As far as I know, it's the only legal decision on transsexuals in the country."

The police kept harassing him, so Kravitz is seeking to appeal the latest convictions, too.

"He's something of a standard-bearer, you know, the lawyer said. "I don't know if he's had silicone breast injections or not, but he's got quite a set. He'll walk down the street topless, or in a really sheer see-through, and well, it stops quite a few cars. Of course, the police can't arrest him for that because he's a male."

ABC-TV to look at sex

NEW YORK The ABC-TV network will broadcast two 30-minute documentaries on human sexuality on its Saturday afternoon "Discovery" series May 11 and 18.

Narrated by Frank Reynolds, they will focus on the Program in Human Sexuality of the University of Minnesota Medical School, and support for the program by the 2.4-million-member American Lutheran Church. The first segment will look at the entire program. The May 18 episode will focus on how the program treats gay concerns; one of the senior staff members at the Minneapolis sexuality program is the Rev. Tom H. Maurer, a gay United Church of Christ minister.

Both bills have been referred to the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on constitutional rights and civil rights, headed by Rep. Don Edwards, D-Calif.

Voeller and Abzug said a flood of letters to Edwards will be necessary to get the bill scheduled for hearings, given the imposing number of other civil-liberties bills before Edwards' panel.

"And we're going to have to rely on local gay people and local gay organizations to carry the ball in recruiting new House sponsors," Voeller said, indicating that a letter campaign will be urged in a major mailing from his New York office to gay groups soon.

The two were joined at the press conference March 25-Michelangelo's 500th birthday by two other sponsors, Reps. Edward I. Koch, D-N.Y., and Paul N. McCloskey Jr., R-Calif., along with Nathalie Rockhill of the gay task force, Dr. Franklin Kameny of Washington, an ACLU official and about 75 gay spectators.

Also present was Karen DeCrow, president of the National Organization for Women, who said the bill poses "more than a civil-rights issue...Gender-should have absolutely no relationship to one's life...Anatomy is not destiny."

Dr. Fred Strassburger of the American Psychological Association said, "To the extent we've been responsible for oppression, it's time we make amends by working for passage of this bill.”

Herbert Gant of the American Psychiatric Association appeared, to read a letter from President John P. Spiegel, M.D., which said, "Some have feared that homosexuai teachers might affect the sexual orientation of their students. There is no evidence to support this thesis, nor is there any evidence to believe that seduction of a student by a homosexual teacher is any more likely to occur than a heterosexual seduction...Discrimination is morally wrong (and) results in a`tremendous waste of our human resources."

Methodist bishops say no to gays

MINNEAPOLIS The Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church declared unanimously and without debate April 1 that they "do not advocate or support ordination for practicing homosexuals."

The gay ordination issue is the hottest one going in the 10.3-million-member church. At its quadrennial convention in Portland, Ore., in 1976, the gay ordination question will come up, at the request of the church's Council on Youth Ministry, which supports it.

The Council of Bishops, whose positions do not bind on the convention, said it supports the statement adopted by the Atlanta convention in 1972 – that gays are people of "sacred worth" entitled to full civil rights, but homosexual acts are "incompatible with Christian teaching."

While the bishops' statement referred to new ordinations, some observers saw in it a reluctance to get into the question of gay men and women who are ⚫ already ministers.

As Robert Thornburg, associate general secretary of the church's Ordained Ministry Division, put it in March, "There have always been homosexuals in the ministry. The key word in the discussion is 'self-proclaimed."""

Thornburg said he has received more mail on this topic than any other, since the division issued an anti-ordination statement Feb. 21 largely for the purpose, he explained to a reporter, of keeping the church from jumping on either right-wing or left-wing bandwagons.

City hires Lesbian

SAN FRANCISCO Jo Daly, a politically active Lesbian, has been hired for an $8,500-a-year job by the city's Human Rights Commission staff. She will be working to educate employers, landlords and other potential discriminators about gays in the federally-funded position.

National News, and feature articles reprinted by permission of CONTACT, Houston. Local news and editorials are written by The HIGH GEAR Staff. HIGH GEAR is not copyrighted. However, all reprints from HIGH GEAR, that have been reprinted from CONTACT, Houston, require written permission from CONTACT, Houston.