Page 6 HIGH GEAR-FEBRUARY 1981

CEAR

OPINION

A Publication of the GEAR Foundation

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 5

1981 GEAR

HIGH GEAR is a publication of the Gay Educational and Awareness Resources (GEAR) Foundation of Cleveland, Ohio. It is distributed free of charge in any establishment and with any organization that will permit distribution. It is a non-profit, federally tax-exempt publication.

The presence of the name or picture or other representation of an organization, place of business or person(s) in HIGH GEAR is not necessarily indicative of the sexual orientation of such organizations or persons.

All contributions of written materials, art work or photography by members of the gay community are welcome. All materials submitted for publication are subject to editorilization. The return of materials submitted for publication, whether used by HIGH GEAR or not, cannot be guaranteed unless accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope.

ALL HIGH GEAR staff members are volunteers. Anyone interested in working on the staff of HIGH GEAR should inquire by calling (216) 621-3380 or by writing to HIGH GEAR, P.O. Box 6177, Cleveland, Ohio 44101.

Business or organizations wishing to advertise in HIGH GEAR may obtain advertising rate cards and other information by writing to the above address.

The deadline for HIGH GEAR publication is the 15th of the month for advertising and written material. News items accepted until the date of publication.

HIGH GEAR will not publish material deemed to be of a racist, sexist or pornographic nature. HIGH GEAR reserves the right to alter and/or edit material to conform to the above standards in the case of display advertising, after notifying the advertiser.

HIGH GEAR is copyrighted under federal law. Reproduction is granted to all other gay publications so long as credit is given to HIGH GEAR. ALL HIGH GEAR work is original unless otherwise noted.

EDITOR

ASSOCIATE EDITOR-NEWS

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ADVERTISING MANAGER ADVERTISING STAFF LAYOUT STAFF

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THE CALL AND POST

Carl Hammond Bill Suhay Bob Roehm Bob Kovach Jeff Wobbecke

Paul Charles Paul Zimmerman David Kellogg R. Woodward Win Weizer

Gordon Hathaway Dianne Fishman Barbara Lee Gail Burlee Marcia Perry Lori Cecelich Dan Kahn Tracey Ryan

Showing that you can hurt us would be no reason for our esteem to shrink or yours to swell. Human beings can be hurt by reptiles and insects.

Mailbag

To The Editor:

Being a gay parent, I read your December editorial and accompanying article Are Most Gays Parents with a great deal of interest since the topic of gays being parents is not often dealt with in gay literature or in general

publications.

I am not comfortable with your statement "most gays are parents." I prefer to look at the fact that "many parents are gay" and to think about the joys and problems of being a parent who is gay.

Just how large a group we are is hard to estimate due to the fact that many of us find the pressures too great, at this time anyway, to be open with a wife and family. Also many gay parents are reluctant to share the fact that they are fathers and mothers even with other gay people for fear of getting an adverse reaction.

I do not mean to belittle those of us who are not as open as others because I understand the pressures which are at force in our lives.

Most gay people feel the usual pressures asserted by society, church, employment, parents, etc., but there is an added, much heavier pressure on parents who are gay. I am speaking mainly of the potential loss of, or struggle for, our own child, for the right to be involved in his or her life.

There is a battle between the desire for openness, honesty, and acceptance and the desire to remain involved with our children and to work for their well-

being. This is a battle that is waged daily in the heads and hearts of many gay parents. Unfortunately this battle claims too many victims partly due to the fact that we have not been open enough with each other and supportive of each other.

Editorial

Puberty

Those moved by anti-gay prejudice tend to think and act with little insight and no sense of proportion.

Anti-gay intolerance, like most intolerance, has as one of its components the notion that if there are people you are not entirely comfortable with and you can show that they are not a great deal more virtuous than everybody else, you have automatically proved that they are much more evil.

Slaves to idle superstition, always eager to see something sinister in everything that gay men and women are doing, anti-gay types are always taking as evidence of some deep inward corruption those excesses and indiscretions of gay people caused by anger, momentary confusion, or high-spiritedness.

An open, widespread American gay liberation movement breathed its first breaths only within the past two decades. Due to unnatural growth suppressants in the environment, it underwent a fetal period extended to the grotesque length of over three hundred years. Born basically healthy, if somewhat benumbed, in the middle 1960s, and having managed to survive infancy and early childhood, despite unhealthy surroundings and occasional attemps at childstrangulation by pseudo-moralists, gay liberation in the United States has spent the past few years coping with problems of adolescence. During the past few years it has been going through an equivalent to what almost every human being goes through upon reaching puberty: You suddenly discover that you have new energies and new urges, and you are obliged to learn by your own experience how to handle them. Advice you get from others may be helpful in a number of situations, but basically you must move ahead by trial and error, making your own mistakes and seeing what you can learn from them.

Those in opposition to gay activism during the past few years have tended to think and act like the type of squeamish, morbid, and half-blind adult relative who would beat and maim young boys for no longer being able to sing soprano and who would beat and maim young girls for starting to menstruate.

The propaganda of anti-gay activities rests largely upon trying to pass off as a profound, fresh, and startling new insight their having observed that gay men and women are not entirely perfect. It is typical of anti-gay activists to assume that not being entirely perfect makes gay men and women altogether different from all other human beings.

In promoting their pet notions of human purity and perfection. anti-gay activist do humanity as big a favor as people who become hysterical whenever they see, smell, or touch dirty diapers and start to murder all of the infants that they can lay their hands on. R. Woodward

Writing for HIGH GEAR

Although HIGH GEAR welcomes written material from all members of the gay community, it is unable to use all of what it receives-basically for two reasons.

First of all, any publication has a limited amount of money and space to work with. Every page added always means a certain amount of added expense. Obliged to support itself and given to readers free, HIGH GEAR cannot regularly print more pages than are regularly paid for by revenues from the advertising that appears in it.

certain purpose--to contribute to the general well being of gay men Secondly, and just as importantly, HIGH GEAR was founded for a

and women.

HIGH GEAR exists to provide information and ideas that might help gay men and women find, establish, and maintain what are for them the healthiest kinds of self-reliance and self-respect.

No matter what good intentions the authors may have, the extensive use of contributions that are too personal, too self-indulgent, too empty, or too hastily or ineptly written would seriously damage HIGH GEAR's credibility. To function effectively, HIGH GEAR must continually earn and continually maintain the respect of its readers.

HIGH GEAR exists to serve the gay community in general, not to flatter, indulge, or humor the egos of any specific individuals. Like most publications of its kind, HIGH GEAR is understaffed, and it is an additional burden on people already working hard to try to deal with people who think that they can have the rewards of creativity without assuming the responsibilities.

It should always be kept in mind that the rejection of a piece of writing by HIGH GEAR is never meant to imply any personal rejection of the individual who wrote it. It is not that we love you any less; it is we cannot do a very good job if we allow ourselves to be led around just that when it is time to concentrate on putting the paper together, and ruled by personal considerations.

HIGH GEAR already receives more autobiographical material than it can possibly use. What it seldom receives enough of are locally written news stories and news features which are filled with signifiMy hope is that we gay fathers cant detail and carefully documented. Always welcome is essay material, concisely and cogently written, which presents specific ideas and specific suggestions clearly.

and mothers will be more open about our family ties and be supportive of each others efforts to find a comfortable situation

where we can handle the responself-sibilities of being good parents and enjoy the pleasures of raising our children so that they can grow up having a loving and (Continued on Page 9)

HIGH GEAR can be compared to a drug store. There is little harm done if those running the drug store allow some space for carrying candy and cigarettes, but any drug store that carried nothing else would be ridiculously inadequate.

Looking around, it is not hard to conclude that what the gay community needs is not more candy and cigarettes, but purgatives, vitamins, and non-addictive diet pills. R. Woodward