A disturbed peace

JUNE 1980 HIGH GEAR PAGE 7

Considering the Advocate Experience

By Brian McNaught

When I think about EST, the highly-controversial "human potential" movement out of Cali-, förnia, I have flashes of hot tubs, Jonestown, Burt Reynold's smirk in Semi-Tough and pushy people. EST graduates generally seem to be as overly-enthusiastic as Born Again Christians. I don't have the most positive image, but I also don't have any first-hand knowledge of it. For that and other reasons, I was highly curious about a recent appearance of David Goodstein who came to town to talk about his version of EST, "The Advocate Experience." It is chic not to trust the colorful owner of the Advocate newspaper newspaper. In the past, various Movement people have felt the need to keep their eyes on him to make sure his motivies were "honorable." His Advocate Experience has generated its share of controversy; in fact, a friend of mine was fired by the Advocate allegedly for submitting a story which suggested David Goostein would one day lead his Advocate Experience "graduates" to Guyana.

Yet, in the last year, I have talked with three or four people who have taken the Advocate Experience and who loved it. "Worth every penny." they said. One man even insisted it was the second most important thing he had ever done for himself; the first being joing AA. At age 32,1 am beginning to feel the real need to sort out some of the con-

fusion which I experience as a result of the "30s crisis" and have of late been contemplating everything from learning the martial.

CBS

arts to letting go of Catholic guilt and buying myself a complete. body massage. Surely the Advocate Experience should be given

a chance to sell itself, I thought. Besides, I wanted to see what Goodstein was up to.

Having reluctantly paid my $5

program gets blasted

(Continued from page 3) party day. Parties are a departure from ordinary life. That's the reason they're parties.".

Condemned most vehemently by the show's various critics was Crile's use of children to get gut responses from viewers. Some critics suggested that Crile came very close to child abuse.

One such use of children involved the use of 8mm footage which the narrator claimed was footage shot from a great distance of public sexual activity in a local cruising area called Buena Vista Park. Two embarrassed pre-adolescent girls were obliged to describe for the camera having taken a short cut through the park and coming across two men having sex.

Calling the "home movie camera shots" of the park "laughably inconclusive" and so "irrelevent to the subject of the program that CBS should be ashamed." O'Flaherty in his TV review said that "the parents who allowed their children to be interviewed on camera in this sequence are beneath comment."

Gay San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt said that the use of the

Time Mag. vs. gays again

(Continued from page 6)

ers would share Galvin's enthusiasm, momentarily forgetting that those who are frustrated are not always ecstatic at hearing how happy and well adjusted

other people are.

The response from readers does not seem to have been as positive as expected, and Time evidently decided that gay men and women were not as "in" as it had supposed..

By October Time was far enough back into the closet that no coverage at all of the Gay

March on Washington was to be found in its pages.

In the March 24, 1980 issue of Time is now to be found an article entitled "The Gay World's Leather Fringe" which asks the question, "Do homosexual males consciously seek danger?"

Assuring us that "some patrons" of leather bars "do not seem ta-mind" William Friedkin's movie Cruising, the article quotes some unnamed individual. who worked on that movie as an extra as saying that the movie is really for the benefit of gays. It will, this unnamed individual says: make them examine "their. promiscuity, the areas they frequent, the type of sex they seek out."

Says this unnamed. extra, "The life we save may be our own." The article states that "homosexual homicides are frequent and often gruesome" (giving no data or opinions from any. police), and gives the reader many lurid details of what is

of consensual grossness." called the "post-midnight world

The last word is given to John Devere, the editor of Mandate, another Cruising extra. Devere

says that he is "conscious stricken," not because he took part in the movie, but because what the movie depicts is "is uncomfortably close to anyone who frequents the night world in any gay area."

is not Cruising, that the enemy is Devere tells us that the enemy "not outside." that the "heart of darkness is within after all."

children's reactions in this part of the program was "the sickest part of the whole show."

"When I was a kid, my mother told me to stay away from 'queers'," said Britt, "and I know what this does to the psyche of a child."

Another child sequence showed Halloween footage of a little girl looking frightened almost to tears, intercut with footage of drag queens on Castro Street. According to activist Gwen Craig, the girl was actually. filmed while watching a gay man being beaten by a gang of young straight men.

A great deal of controversy has centered around Crile's interview of someone named Mel Wald, who claimed to be a special sadomasochism advisor to the San Francisco Police Department. In a story in the April 24 issue of the San Francisco Examiner, Police Chief Cornelius Murphy denies that Wald is, has ever been, or is likely to ever be any such police consultant.

"Doesn't CBS ever check these things?" O'Flaherty asks in his review of the program.

The program did not mention that most of the S and M footage used in it was shot at the Chateau, a place frequented mostly by heterosexual couples.

After noting that the show contained no interviews with any lesbians, and that it made no mention of gay civil rights legislation or of discrimination against gays in jobs and housing, a news analysis in the May 29 issue of the Advocate gave a list. of what it regarded as being "startling" omissions in a story claiming to deal with the gay pól-

itical situation in San Francisco:

There were no statements by openly-gay elected official. Harry Britt, the city's only

There was no mention of the city's various gay political clubs"I'm saddened by that," he Democratic, Republican, Libersays.

Time Magazine has gone from Within the space of a year to teach the "straight" world to suggesting that gays have much hinting that so-called straights need have no sense of social responsibility towards gays at all. Insights about gays not having sold as well as Time had expected, it is now back to peddling anti-gay dirt.

tarian, etc.

There was no mention of the 1979 race for supervisor in District 5, where the gay community was divided and the issue of gay male sexuality openly debated.

Police Chief Cornelius Murphy.

There were no statements from

John J. O'Connor, the reviewer

from the New York Times, complained of the show's "underlining assumption...that the homo-

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sexual vote is monolithic. This is, an assumption insulting to any group."

The National Gay Task Force is collecting printed material about the program for a possible complaint of violations of the Fairness Doctrine to the National News Council.

Needed material includes copies of TV reviews in local media and reports of any incidents that can be firmly documented as being a direct result of this program, incidents such as political repercussions, increasing harassment, or changes in gay relations with the local police. Such material related to this program should be sent to the National Gay Task Force, 80 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1601, New York, NY 10011, Attention: Tom Burrows.

Individual letters of protest can be sent to: William Paley, Chairman of the Board, and Don O'Brien, Vice President for Program Practices and Standards, CBS Television, 51 W. 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019; Grace Diekhaus, Senior Producer, CBS News Magazine, 524 W. 57th Street, New York, NY 10019; and the Federal Communications Commission. 1919 M Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20554.

admission lee, I sat somewhat nervously in the seat to which I ⚫was directed by one of the smiling local "graduates." On stage. next to a teeming yase of scarlet gladioli and lush green leaves, stood an easeled sign which declared: "The purpose of The Advocate Experience is to transform the participants individual experience into richer contexts of health, love, happiness and full-expression thereby contributing to all being." Over and over again I read the statement, each time concentrating on a new word with the hope that suddenly it would all click. It didn't. I satisfied myself by noting "participants" needed an apostrophe.

Enthusiastic applause from different pockets of the 100 plus audience greeted Cheryl and Peter, our all-smiles hosts for the (Continued On Page 14)

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