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FOR GAY CATHOLICS

... and non catholics too

DIGNITY-CLEVELAND

P.O. BOX 18479 CLEVELAND, OHIO 44118

791-0942

INTEGRITY

GAY EPISCOPALIANS

and our Friends

1st & 3rd Thursday -8 PM

trinity cathedral chapter room

2021 euclid ave

Phone 771--3630

AKRON 867 -3354

$6.75

Weekdays 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.: Locker $2, Room $4.25 Mon. & Wed., Youth Nights (25 & Under): Locker $2, Room

Regular Weekend Rates: Locker $4, Room $6.25

HIGH GEAR/JULY 1978

"Decal" ration of Independence

The Lambda Decal features the international symbol for gay rights, sexual liberation, justice and enlightenment. The threecolor decals are ideal for any glass application. Write the LaBelle Company, 948 Brittain Road, Akron, OH 44305. Enclose $1 for decals, instructions and a printed history of the Lambda symbol.

$4.25

CLUB COLUMBUS

1575 EAST LIVINGSTON AVENUE

COLUMBUS, OHIO 614 252-2474

HAYLOF

JOIN

US FOR A DRINK AFTER 'KENLEY'

77 N. ADAMS

AKRON, OHIO

(ONE BLOCK EAST OF CITY HOSPITAL)

434-9794

A DISTURBED PEACE

By Brian McNaught

Our allies, the sex educators, are now telling their audiences that a man who has one sexual encounter after another with women doesn't love women; he hates them, for if you love something, they reason, you don't use it carelessly and then discard it. They are saying that "machismo" is another word for rape, because one of the apparent trappings of caricatured "masculinity" is dispassionate force. Moreover, they are insisting that the advertisements we see on television, in magazines and on billboards which depict scantily-clad women and men are not sexual; they're anti-sexual.

The basic premise is that sex is not and should never be portrayed as the perpetual pursuit of the multiple, simultaneous orgasm with another "body," but rather, sexuality is one of the wonderful, fun-filled ways we have available to us to express care and concern. Above all, they say, sexual expression demands responsibility.

While gay men and lesbians, are certainly going through their own sexual metamorphosis insofar as we are only now beginning to discover from experience and from each other what homosexual love is, we nonetheless share with heterosexuals the same socioreligious and economic roots and therefore share generally the same attitudes toward sex. Despite our many advances, We also frequently share the same distorted understandings of masculinity and femininity; the same adoration of youth and beauty. Perhaps then, we ought to consider what we are communicating to each other with our advertisements, language and our mannerisms. Is our message sexual or antisexual?

our

When I hear heterosexuals decry the psychological effects of the "lay'em and leave 'em" syndrome, I think about the stories I hear from friends who have vacationed on Fire Island or in Provincetown and the frustration they felt when the person they met on the beach got up out of bed after reaching orgasm, showered, dressed and began his search for another "close encounter." Although my friends knew that they might never again see the people they had sex with during that time, they nevertheless felt cheap, lonely and used.

When I hear the sex educators decry machismo,, I ponder the new growth of leather flight jackets, short hair, mustaches and faded blue jeans in the gay male community and I worry about what is happening to our self-concept. I see fewer smiles and more pocket handkerchiefs in the bars these days and wonder what its saying about care and concern.

The "I Like the Box" cigarette advertisements of the straight world certainly have their counterparts in gay publications. It is difficult to find a service for rug cleaning or real estate today in some magazines and newspapers without starting at Jack Wrangler's pectorials. I like Jack Wrangler's pectorals but I feel somehow that someone is attempting to capitalize upon sexual frustrations in order to sell me insurance. Wrangler is presented as a piece of flesh to a buying public which is allegedly only interested in flesh.

My problem with all of my own examples is that I like to fantasize about one sexual encounter after another with the Colt models. I like machismo and own my own flight jacket, occasional mustache and faded jeans. I enjoy paging through a magazine and seeing one hunky number after another. That's what scares me and confuses me.

Deep down inside I believe that sex is most beautiful when it expresses love, whether it be for the special "other" in one's life or for the many specia! others in one's life. I know too that being raised in an Irish Catholic environment has done bad things to my concept of sex, self, the world, sin and guilt. Yet, even aware of that, I think that I am being equally manipulated by the "image makers" in the gay community.

The gorgeous bodies which constantly dominate our more popular publications have made 93 percent of the gay men in this country feel inadequate about their own bodies. Now, I made up that statistic but I would bet my collection of Mandates that I'm right. Even people who have every reason to be proud of their physiques are intimidated by the fantasies of others. What is worse, I would wager that the majority of people who are involved in gay relationships are dissatisfied with the body of their lovers. That's not healthy.

I think we have all been coopted. Despite our protest that we are unique and that we have something new to say to the world, I think we are responding to heterosexuals like welltrained lab rats. We decry the way they objectify women and put them in the role of sex object but we turn around and do the same to ourselves. They tell

us we are not real men and real women, so we men dress up in all the costumes we have seen in John Wayne movies. They tell us that we are human garbage and we respond by using each other and then throwing each other away.

I think we have something unique to say to heterosexuals about sex and love and mental health but we seem to be taking more steps backward than we do forward. In honesty, I am, at this moment, less concerned

about what gifts we have to offer the world than I am about what this whole process is doing to me as a person. Sometimes it really scares me.