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AKBON
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SPRINGFIELD. OHIO OPEN 5:00 PM 'til 2:30 Daily except Sunday
MLL
METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY
CHURCH
P.O. BOX 563 AKRON, OHIO 44309
836-3930
"A Christian Church with a Special Outreach to the Gay Community" Services: 7:30 PM Sunday at
3300 Morewood Road (across from Summit Mall)
Rev. Karen J. Wheeler Rev. A. S. Umbertino
Co-Pastors
HIGH GEAR/SEPTEMBER 1978
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GEAR Foundation Registration for Membership
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MATLOVICH VS. USAF
By Ricki Wilson
Sergeant Matlovich vs. the U.S. Air Force aired on NBC-TV Monday, August 21 at 9 p.m. It was a fairly undistinguishable affair, except that it had as its theme a homosexual's encounter with the military establishment. For the uninitiated, Leonard Matlovich is a 12-year veteran of the USAF, with several medals to his name, including the Purple Heart and three tours of duty in 'Nam. Following through on his personal convictions, he challenged the USAF's regulations against homosex als by sending a letter to the Secretary of Defense stating that he was gay. A military court was convened; being homosexual, his constitutional rights went out the window, and he was summarily mustered out of the service. Matlovich was given the final indignity of a less-than-honorable discharge because of his homosexuality.
What is it like to dedicate your life to serving your country, to go to war three times, and to be told you are no longer fit to serve because you like men and they like you? Unfortunately, the movie never tells us.
The movie leaves me wondering about so much: what it was like for him, the media coverage, telling the nation he was gay, telling the service he had dedicated his life to that he was gay and he wanted to continue to serve them. Someone observed during the war that "America is eating her young."
It is doing the same with the homosexuals!
The movie is fraught with the kind of cliched flashbacks that we had come to expect from regular studio productions. They are not even the quality of Kung Fu, techniques that are years old. Instead, we are treated to the same old studio garbage; no color, no pace, all camera shots dead-on from the front. Strangely enough, the one new twist was an original music score, but in entered and exited with uncanny precision at times when you would have preferred silence. When Matlovich is sucking on the barrel of a shotgun, having been rebuffed by his only friend when he comes out to him, we are treated to a bass, drums and flute soloette that is strictly amateur night. Anyone who has seen "The Devil in Miss Jones" knows just how effective jazz can be in interpreting suicide, but these people apparently never did their homework. Fred Silverman, late of ABC-TV and now with the loser's loser, NBC, has said that the networks have gone to the same old production well once too often. The stories change, but somehow they all seem the same. Like Neil Diamond doing movies!
What did I like? Well, believe it not, there was plenty. There is a scene where Leonard tells his father that he is gay that is so moving that I hopped up after the movie and called my father (long-distance in Wichita, Kansas) to tell him I was gay. The power of television, folks! And Brad Dourif as the brooding,
NUMBERS...
By Darrell Mansarde
Don Embinder, publisher of Blueboy, has released another slick gay male-oriented magazine. This one is a noholds-barred approach to male nudes. If Blueboy didn't have enough of what you wanted to see, try Numbers.
The title Numbers comes from the fact that the central feature of the magazine is the classified advertising, each ad being identified by its own serial number. It's rather like a male-order catalog. To simplify things, the ads are divided into what each state and/or country is offering for that month! (In the special Fall edition, there are ads for Canada, Mexico, the Virgin Islands and Colombia -besides the fifty states!)
And now the best part... the pictures. To show us that he's not stealing our $3.00, Embinder's plan unravels fast. Upon opening the magazine, one is confronted on the inside cover with a teaser A young hunk almost entirely exposed. Don't worry, though, on turning the page again, the reader is confronted with stark reality! Who
would think it could be so beautiful! About a third of the magazine is pictures. Believe me, it is almost more than one can bear ...
To give a palpitating heart a break, Numbers is interspersed with the usual advertising and (in this issue) three articles. The
advertising is sparse ex-
ceedingly so. Again, the Fall
special edition of eighty pages
contains only 19 pages of advertising. Mighty slim. No ad is less than half a page. Saves clutter and puts the available space to its best use!
The articles were interesting. The first, a fictional titled "Take the Train" and subtitled "Boxcar Named Desire," was replete with sex scenes. As if the pictures weren't enough, this one's stuff that fantasies are made of. The second was much more serious. The author told of how he is able not only to survive but also to grow in a lover relationship. In doing so, he also describes the path he followed in getting to that point. The third piece, rather farcical, relates how one gay male macho stud feels in being treated like a sex object, and what he consequently does
mercurial Sgt. Matlovich is intensely appealing. He underplays a part that cries out for schmaltz, and lets us see a sensitive, tormented, vulnerable human being. The amazing thing is that all of us seem to go through a period of self-hate, and after you come out you ask yourself, "Why did I do it to myself?" Matlovich goes through it too; unfortunately we get to see too little of him, and the other characters are mostly cardboard cut-outs, through which Dourif weaves. There is one gay disco scene where a female singer turns out to be male, that has to rank as one of the first non-comedy (a la Uncle Miltie) treatments of drag on TV. To those of us "Rocky Horror" afficionados it is a small step, but a step indeed. I was somewhat surprised that NBC didn't warn the kiddies away from the screen between commercials as they sometimes do.
At any rate, we are on the small screen. Thanks to one Leonard Matlovich we have come out to several million more Americans. I appreciate that his homosexuality was neither played up nor played down, that he was both saint and sinner and that there was a minimum of stereotyping. This is an unexpected boon from a medium that often cast us as "them degenerates over there." If_it draws a large share of the audience, look for us to become the new commodity; if we can bring in the housewife market and sell 'em soap, we'll start getting some long-overdue coverage.
about it. This one's good for a laugh or two.
In all, if men are your turn-on, and you want a magazine far superior to the gutter trash usually available to gay men, try Numbers. My appetite was satisfied. And then some ....
RESTSTOP
HARASSMENT
According to many unofficial reports and one case at least of a very real beating, the Highway Patrol are using their usual election year strong-arm tactics at the reststops along Interstate 77 north and south of Akron. If you are a regular at any of these ares, please BEWARE! There are continued reports of patrol harassment of reststop cruisers.
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