Page 4 HIGH GEAR MARCH 1981

Sex club wins right to operate

SAN FRANCISCO (IGNA) For perhaps the first time in history, a gay men's sex club has received the right to operate because a major city's Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to overrule the Planning Commission.

Although both supporters and opponents spent most of their time talking about the zoning permit and costs of repairs, the underlying issue was "the ghost of gay sex," as stated by Jaguar Bookstore manager Konstantine Berlandt.

The issue eventually erupted after a four-and one-half-hour delay in considering the item on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' agenda.

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The bookstore and the private membership club behind and above it have been a fixture in the heavily gay Castro area for ten vears, but rent increases forced the owner, Ron Ernst, to move across the street in 1978. Ironically, it was the late Supervisor Harvey Milk who introduced legislation to the Board to curtail second-story business growth in the rapidly expanding area. The Jaguar got caught in the transition.

Owner Ernst expected his bus iness to be "grandfathered," that is, allowed to remain since it had

been in operation before the change in the zoning code, according to Ron Huberman, an activist conversant with the zoning issues.

Opposition testimony came from three women and one man who live near the bookstore. Dorice Murphy told the Board that it was "not a moral issue. It is a planning and zoning issue only."

Gay Roche, another opponent, spoke against the increase "in traffic, congestion, and rowdyism" in the area because of the sex club's presence.

The sole man to speak against the club said that he had gay friends and objected to being labelled "homophobic" because of his opposition. He added that he knew some gay people who likewise objected to the club's being on their street, but he said they feared to speak out lest they be harassed.

The manager of the Jaguar later identified this spokesman as a card-carrying member of the sex club. "Evidently a spy," the manager said.

Proponents of the club spoke of the need for recreational sex as against violence and of the happiness that derives for the 10,000 or more members of the Jaguar from it presence.

Mikael Itkin, a gay minister, urged the Board of Supervisors to approve the permit of the club as a sign that the "fascism of the Moral Majority, which is neither moral nor the majority, will be stopped."

The elderly mother of the bookstore owner at one point stood up to verify that the club is

not noisy since she lives directly over it in her third-floor apartment.

Supervisor Harry Britt, identifying himself as gay, spoke passionately of the importance of the Jaguard Bookstore as a symbol of gay freedom. He defended the sex club as a "place you go when you're lonely, a place you go when you need the support that you cannot find anywhere else in the United States."

His vehement criticism of the three women who have fought for several years against the Jaguar drew fire from Quentin Kopp, a conservative Supervisor, who stood and said, "I have rarely heard the kind of unprincipled

attack on three San Francisco women that I just heard."

Members of the audience hooted, and later Kopp, who courted the gay vote when he ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1980, asked that a letter of apology be sent to the three women opponents. A majority of the Board (7-3, one absent) approved.

The vote, on January 21, on the club's permit came after a week's delay and after attempts by some Supervisors to delay it yet again.

About 1500 supporters, some of them wearing red carnations, sat throughout the long session to speak on behalf of the club. But debate was limited to fewer

than half a dozen on either side, to reduce repetition.

The Jaguar Bookstore agreed that it would add additional resi-dential space on the third floor to replace space lost to the club on the second floor, if permissible by zoning codes, and that owner Ernst would not sell the club to anyone else, the latter paving the way for future controversies if he should wish to change his business.

In the final tally, Supervisors Kopp, Wendy Nelder, and Lee Dolson were the only votes in opposition.

The bookstore sex club held a small party in celebration after the Board's decision.

Documentary entered in festival

MONTE CARLO-(IGNA) The sensationalized CBS News report "Gay Power, Gay Politics" has been submitted as one of the network's two news programs in the Monte Carlo International Television Festivai.

Despite a partial cerisure by the independent National News Council, which found the documentary distorted in its emphasis on public sex, the producers of the program, Grace Diekhaus and George Crile, have chosen to enter the show in television's most distinguished competition.

According to television columnist Terrence O'Flaherty in the San Francisco Chronicle, a

CBS official said that no CBS official was consulted about the

submission.

The entry of the program stands as a deliberate rebuff to the city of San Francisco and the National News Council, which has no legal power to enforce its

censure.

The major distortion of the program, according to most critics, is that it implies that any city government that makes an attempt to integrate its gay minority into the mainstream of the community will encourage public sex, child molestation, and S&M.

CBS made an on-the-air apol-

ogy about the inaccuracies in "Gay Power, Gay Politics." But the submission of the documentary, coupled with an earlier showing of it on Japanese television, indicates that CBS does not regret its attempt to convey a false image of the homosexual world.

According to O'Flaherty, the rules of the Monte Carlo Festival require that documentaries be submitted as originally aired. If this is done, it would thus be "a breach of CBS's own network

i widards. If it has been altered, it will not meet the qualifications of the festival committee."

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