CONSOLIDATED FOOTNOTES FOR DADT
CHAPTER 3 (“My Second Coming: 1973-1992”)
Chapter 3 (Note 1
corresponds to Note 68 in the endnotes of the iUniverse version; add 67 to get
iUniverse endnote number)
0 Pg 82. See Maryanne Vollers, "Razing
Joby Warrick provides The Washington Post
with a series “The Fine Print: A Word Accelerates Mountaintop Mining: Applalachia is Paying Price for White House Change”
regarding strip mining and “mountaintop removal,” especially in southern
Or see Erik Reece, “Death of a Mountain: Radical Strip Mining and the Leveling of Appalachia,” Harpers, April 2005. Strip mining has come to have all the functionality of “all that body shaving.” A website for this problem is http://www.stopmountaintopremoval.org Another site is http://www.ilovemountains.org and it offers two videos on mountaintop removal (“Kilowatt Our”), review here.
0 Pg 82, pr. 5. The left-wing proposal to limit incomes to a set amount per year certainly reflects a belief that middle-class well-paid "professionals" get what they have with unfair exploitation of people who started farther back in line and do their dirty work (today, migrant workers and illegal aliens). Indeed, the student deferments discussed in Chapter 2 reflect a presumption, weakening quickly during the 1970's, that somehow smarter people deserved a more privileged position. This whole deservedness paradigm would, over time, encourage companies to work their professionals very hard, and contribute to the belief (now implied by federal labor law) that salaried exempt professionals should not be paid overtime or get comp time (unless they're willing to form and join unions!) It would also make older, less nimble professionals vulnerable during corporate downsizings. See note 31 in this chapter and note 137 in Chapter 5. Perhaps the indignation of the youthful radical "left" during this period had reached its zenith in Maoist China in the 1960's with the "Cultural Revolution," in which intellectuals were shipped to the countryside for forced hard labor. (Yet People's Party congressional candidate Jim Klimaski once told me that the Chinese [and not the "Evil Empire" of the Soviets] had, for his way of thinking, developed the proper paradigm for social justice.)
0 Before note 1. The correct spelling for
one of these
0 Before note 1. Regarding lettuce
boycotts. See the story Sonya Geis, “Shortage of
Immigrant Workers Alarms Growers in West: Stricter Border Control, Working
Conditions Cited as Fewer Mexicans Cross for Harvest,” The Washington Post,
1 Edward Alwood, Straight News: Gays,
Lesbians, and the News Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996),
p. 69 describes the CBS special "The
Homosexuals,"
1a. In August 1970 I drove about 30
miles from
2 As recorded by an NIH social worker in my medical files, Sept. 1962.
3 Published by Libra in 1972; Republished by The Ninth Street Center in 1986.
4 Psychological polarity theories have been published in Germany, by various psychologists associated with the Humboldt Society of Mannheim. Other writers include Carl Jung, Geoffrey Sainsbury and Alan Watts.
4a It might be interesting to compare Rosenfels's writing style also to the "notorious" 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. A libertarian graduate student friend of mine recommended that I read The Gay Science (the name is a misnomer by today's standards, and not a pun), 1882, translated by Walter Kaufmann (Vintage). Indeed, Nietzsche seems to be aiming for an intellectual control of self-concept (not exactly the "superman" of popular lore, including the notes on me by my NIH psychiatrists discussed in Chapter 1). He writes in numbered aphorisms or sidebars (somewhat as does Rosenfels), and the little sections seem to be attempts to present condensed views of his grand philosophy. He particularly hits hard the issue of intellectual honesty, truthfulness (how some people will self-indulge in self-handicapping behavior to invent "the Truth"), the deceptiveness of virtue (where one's altruism is exploited by others and not necessarily for one's own benefit). He seems to explore polarities, but isn't quite ready to allow gender bending within polarities. He also infuses a lot of sectional political problems from his own 19th Century Europe and Germany. Kaufmann gives him credit for a lot more organization and "symphonic thought" than is apparent to me.
5 Andrew Sullivan, editor, Same-Sex Marriage, Pro and Con: A Reader (New York: Vintage, 1997), Plato, "The Speech of Aristophanes," p. 5.
5a, Y1 The chat in the talk groups was often “earthy” in language but rarely in bad taste, given the context.
6 Dean Hannotte, "Rosenfelsian Semantics," lecture notes for Ninth Street Center Study Group, New York, 1986.
6a The “Ninth Street Center Handbook” is available at http://eserver.org/gender/rosenfels/Handbook.htm
7 James Hillman, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling (New York: Random House, 1996).
8 Dean Hannotte, We Knew Paul, (New York: Ninth Street Center, 1991), Introduction p. 16.
8a Ch.3 P 89 pr. 2 Other psychological growth primitives include selectivity and withdrawal.
8b Ch 3, P 91, pr. 1: Men would generally feel a tension or pull between loyalty to "family' as their motive to live, and personal goals and ambitions as usually expressed in the workplace.
8d Some Center students warn about making too much of the “mathematical coordinates” terms (masculine v feminine, objective v subjective) as dogmatic classifications of people, but I think they are helpful in understanding what makes people tick (me, especially), particularly when people insist on following their own goals, or are willing to take up the objectives of others and remain loyal to them. Loyalty would be a good concept to develop here. Many people believe (without question) that personal goals are worthless until they can meet the needs of specific others (especially blood “family first”). Such beliefs seem hardwired into some people.
8c. On
9 John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 23, p. 46.
10 Some Center people used to refer to Richard Nixon as a "subjective feminine."
10a Benito Mussolini once said, “The masses must obey. They cannot afford to waste time searching for truth!”
11 The Ninth Street Center Journal, published from 1973 until 1991.
11a. But in March 2002 passages on the “Nixon tapes” disparaging homosexuality were made public. Nixon complained that Archie Bunker, of all television characters(!), was promoting homosexuality, and that Aristotle and Socrates were homosexuals and that these philosophers had somehow led to the decline of Greek society!! Then he made a loose connection to sexual immorality and vulnerability to communism, the old Cold War paranoia. But he never made a public attempt to go after homosexuals systematically, and the lot of gays slowly improved during his years. Stonewall occurred near the beginning (although remember that the FBI sex up David Mixner with a fake lover, as detailed in Stranger Among Friends).
12 Feminine-subjective and masculine-objectives are "unbalanced"; other two combinations are "balanced."
12a Ch 3, P 92, pr. 1 : Paul also developed the concept of "dimensionality," with the opposites of stoicism and hedonism. The underlying point is that one does not grow until one is dissatisfied with the substance of ordinary relations ¾ even intimate ones ¾ of others, in a "flatlander" view. Three-dimensionality appreciates moral ambiguity whereas two-dimensionality is often incapable of seeing beyond immediate gratification, adversialism, and "what's in it for me." The opposing view is, of course, that one needs real family commitments to others to develop "depth."
Paul also appreciated the value in being alone for periods of time.
13 "Industrial Society and its Future," The Washington
Post,
But the viewpoint of various counselors at the Ninth Street Center would have been that over-involvement with the outside world and, for instance, with politics or "debate" about social issues, may just express a "defense" for someone who does not want to react in a "creative" manner for his or her own immediate world (which he should choose carefully, though).
The September 2001 issue of Popular Science contains a chilling piece (by Jim Wilson and Edwin Herder) about the “E-bomb” or Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb, which could severely damage a large geographical area’s electronic infrastructure. Wilson claims that a terrorist or rogue state could build one for $400 and create enormous disruption. In the worst scenarios, civilization could be set back 200 years! To me, this is important psychologically because the “information age” (encompassing personal mobility) has facilitated the kind of (hopefully balanced) individualism that makes a libertarian approach to many human rights issues (including gay issues) sensible. Without technology, people would be thrown back to earlier notions of family, religion, and power structures,
13a. Alston Chase, “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber,” The Atlantic Monthly, June 2000. This is a particularly chilling article about a “Manchurian Candidate” program at Harvard started in 1959 by Nery A. Miller to try to model the thought processes of gifted college students. Students were subjected to all kinds of questionnaires and “oral-exam” style debates on philosophy while wired up to electrocardiographs and the like. It seems that some of the experiments were rather intimidating and invasive, like the “tribunals” at William in Mary that I describe in my DADT Chapter 1, and that there was an attempt by government to study the thought paradigms of college students, also like the NIH study which I underwent, also in Chapter 1. All of this comports with some rather suspicious circumstances surrounding my own expulsion and certain incidents in my military service (Chapter 2). Apparently, in the wake of the development of nuclear weapons at the end of WWII, intellectuals began to develop a pessimistic view of reliance upon reason. To quote Chase, “absolute reason leads to absolute despair.” Not so with objectivism; I know this all too well.
The “Manifesto” is available on the Internet, for example, at http://www.thecourier.com/manifest.htm Ted Kaczynski (Theodore) is documented on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber
By giving a link to an online copy, I guess I violate his Luddite philosophy of not using modern technology.
13b As for being a “health nut,” of
course we can laugh at all the attention today to the diets (
14 Martin Hoffman, The Gay World: Male Homosexuality and the Social Creation of Evil (New York: Bantam, 1968). Hoffman describes pretty well the old-fashioned ideas of Freud, as exploited later by Bieber and Socarides.
14a, Y2 Again, the effort that I put into having an official event of “sexual fulfillment” detracted from a lot of things, including career advancement and being more attentive to the real needs of other people.
15 M. Scott Peck MD, The Road Less Traveled (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979).
16 In a critical scene in Making Love (1982), the wife of the gay physician, after he "come out" to her, cries about his thinking he could fake a whole lifetime without "passion."
17 In the Hitchcock 1958 masterpiece, Vertigo, the whole plot is built around the retired police detective's falling in love with his own female fantasy.
18 For another account of the Center and other gay groups during this
time, see Ian Young, The Stonewall Experiment: A
Gay Psychohistory (London: Cassell Wellington,
1995). Rosenfels's work was discussed from time to
time by writers such as John Hudson (Gay Magazine, 1974) D.F. Lawden (Psychoenergetics:
The Journal of Psychophysical Systems, Vol. 4, #1m 1981), Judy Chicurel (Gay Magazine, 1983), Jay Bolcik (New York Native,
18a There has recently arisen a new group, “Manifest Love,” with chapters around the country. Dave Nimmins presented it to an audience in Minneapolis (sponsored by the Minnesota AIDS Project and PrideAlive) in late 2000. He made many interesting points to counter convention ideas that gays are “narcissistic.” Researcher Susan Folkman had found that 54% of all gay men in a number of major cities had given care-giving outside of the nuclear family (in the wake of the AIDS crisis). More than half volunteer and more than half give to gay organizations. So there is a tremendous potential for altruism. But the Manifest Love philosophy indeed seems very steeped in communitarianism, “loving everybody,” and rejecting the importance of personal selectivity (unlike the emphasis at the Ninth Street Center). The “moral” claims of social conservatives, after all, seem rooted in the ability to make commitments that one can not easily and legally break (military service, marriage, parenting), and communitarianism can by many people be practiced as a matter of personal utility. But not by everyone. This all sounds like the psychological equivalent of general relativity.
Nimmins points out a curious correspondence between the gay community today and the Mormon community of the 19th Century, ironically because that Mormon manhood, as opposite of homosexuality as possible particularly when it practiced heterosexual polygamy, helped make the Mormons social and legal outcasts and a “minority.” Under legal pressure, the Mormon church had to give up this practice a century ago. In 1982, I visited two of the splinter groups in Independence, Mo. (the Reorganized Church and the Temple Lot) that had formed over this issue.
19 Published by Quadrangle in 1973.
20 Published by Pelican Books (Louisiana) in 1986.
20a Ch 3, P 97, pr. 1: Another one of George Gilder's arguments is that, at least from the point of view of "collective" morality, most men should make more money than most women ¾ indeed because this gives otherwise vulnerable men a "purpose." This reminds one about Southern Baptist Convention statements about the roles of husband and wife in marriage (that wives submit graciously to husbands, based on Biblical passages that even maintain, similarly, that slaves submit to masters: that is, you start out where you are!)
21 Patricia Cayo Sexton, The Feminized Male: Classrooms, White Collars and the Decline of Manliness (New York, Vintage, 1969).
Aybrey P. Andelin, Men of Steel and Velvet (New York: Bantam, 1982).
22 Published by Simon & Schuster (New York: 1993).
23 Farrell, op cit., p 355; compare to Reich's levels of Consciousness (subsequent note).
24 Jonathan Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attack of Free Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 159.
25 Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation (New York, Broadway, 1997, p 34.
25a
25b "Masculinity" indeed experiences a double twist in our culture. We used to expect young men to risk their lives out of ignorance of the consequences of their own recklessness. Then, in the workplace, we want them to use their "masculinity" to peddle other people's products and ideas. They are supposed to experience a sense of "power" in their salesmanship or superficial supervision. They often don't see how their power gets channeled into false submissiveness.
25c The ultimate insult used to be "I like you as a person, but..."
25d Skin color is, after all, a simple biological adaptation. In tropical climates, dark and thick skin absorbs ultraviolet light and avoids sunburn, dehydration, and skin cancers. In northern climates with less food supply, light skin allows more vitamin D to be absorbed.
25e The human being, after all, has made a biological adaptation just to be "smart." Brain tissue requires more energy, so there is less available for other organs and muscle tissue.
26 Theodore Reich, The Greening of
My own sentiment is that "meritocracy" ¾ and the resulting pecking order or food chain ¾ is not such a bad thing. Before everyone gasps at this, I insist that "power" or "status" or "recognition" or "authority" in a social structure should be deserved, and that is the $64,000 Question, to establish who is deserving by his or her own efforts (including responsibilities for taking care of others).
26a. The oil price issue has been a
yo-yo, starting with the Arab oil embargo “to get the price up” after the Yom
Kippur war of 1973 (I first heard about it as I walked into the Ninth Street
Center that October Saturday night after a day of hiking around Delaware Water
Gap!), then the second shortage during the Iran hostage crisis. When OPEC
increased production in the mid 1980s, a recession in the Texas oil industry
and real estate would follow! But in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s 2001 attacks, the politics of the Middle East
brings up the oil weapon again, and some commentators now believe that a crude
oil shortage in the relatively near future is a real possibility as this time
we could really run out. See Kenneth S. Deffeyes,
“Another Wold at the Door: Wordlwide
oil production is about to peak, and a Mideast conflict could disrupt supply. Whay aren’t we preparing now?” The American Prospect,
26b David Goodstein, author of Out of Gas: The End of
the Age of Oil, from the California Institute of Technology warns that the
worldwide production of oil will peak out before 2010, and then decline. This
was a report on CNN on
James Jordan and James R. Powell add to this debate with the op-ed “After
the Oil Runs Out,” The Washington Post,
The Economist (May 29, 2004) weighs in with “Special Report: Saudi Arabia and Oil: Terrorists are now targeting Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure. How bad could things get?”
Simmons, Matthew. Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy was published by Wiley in 2005.
26c But M. A. Adelman of M.I.T. pooh-pooh’s all this in “The Real Oil Problem,” in Regulation: The Cato Review of Business and Government (Spring, 2004). Adelman claims that the apparent shortage is a contrivance of OPEC and that the government should use its Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
26d Gary S. Becker, “Let’s Make Gasoline Prices Even Higher,” Business
Week,
26e Neil Henderson, Justin Blum, “’Oil Shock’ Has Some
Economists Worried,” The Washington Post,
26f Paul Roberts, “Over a Barrel: Experts say we’re about to run out of oil. But we’re nowhere near having another technology to take it’s place,” Mother Jones, Nov. 2004, discusses fuel cells and hybrids, solar add-ons, and the possibility of new plant ethanol-like fules.
26g. Nevertheless, there are always innovations. On
26h The state of the art on energy supplies information now seems to be the article by Michael Parfit and Sarah Leen, “Powering the Future,” National Geographic, Aug. 2005.
26i Famous conservative William F.
Buckley. Jr. (of National Review fame) proposes a scheme of gasoline
rationing given the 2005 run up on the price of crude oil. He wants a
“voucher-based gasoline distribution program” where vouchers and debit cards
would be used to purchase part of someone else’s ration. The column was
“Looking Ahead: Oil,” in The Washington Times,
27 Rev. Larry Uhrig, advertisement in The Washington Blade, sometime in 1990.
28 Remember, Scarlet O'Hara's friends in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind complained they would be left as "old maids."
28a The 1950 World Book Encyclopedia (I even remember the visit to our home by the salesman when I was severn years old) sometimes has some pretty silly stuff about this. On page 400 of A, in the article about “Arithmetic,” there are illustrations that say “Housewives use arithmetic to plan household budgets wisely.” “Salesgirls must record the amounts and totals of the articles customers purchase.” “Careful housewives check over the items and totals on grocery bills.” Of course, the division of labor (that was supposed to support and commit heterosexuality) seemed necessary in that era, as post-war and “pre-Betty Friedan” technological and labor-saving innovation were just taking off even during the Truman years. But the heterosexual values also reinforced distinctions between social (and racial) classes. By the way, that version of the World Book has the best state topographical maps (with elevations coded by garish colors, ranging from deep green for sea level to red for the highest mountains) ever drawn.
Betty Friedan’s book was called The Feminine Mystique, and it was reissued in 2001 by Norton with an introduction by Anna Quindlen. (There was also a book in the early 1970s called The Gay Mystique by Peter Fisher,)
29 In 1979, National Car Rental denied me a credit card, partly because (at the time) I rented my residence.
29a Ch 3, P 100, pr. 1. See Paul and Anne Ehrlich, The
End of Affluence (
29b I could ask whether Nixon was within his constitutional powers as president when he closed gas stations on Sundays (or earlier, imposed wage and price controls). Of course, we might have been getting off easy. Many European countries started gasoline rationing at the beginning of 1974, not lifted until summer.
29c In fact, Sen. Henry Jackson (
29d
29e
29f For a sobering account of the possibilities for disruption of the oil markets in a post 9-11 world, read Robert Baer’s “The Fall of the House of Saud” in The Atlantic Monthly, May 2003.
30 But in 1979 I once made a motion at an
30a Ch 3, P 100, pr. 3: Ah, but in those days of growing Levittown's (with all of their initial racial segregation), the point of home ownership was a stable castle in which to raise one's kids and give them a better life than you had. The downside was first, keeping de facto segregation. (In fact, the first suburban developments after WWII would not sell to African Americans at all.) The idea of making money with other people's money on real estate (a Ponzi scheme??) came later, during the 70's, as individualism began to rise.
31 Companies like
32 Another example of high-tech employment dangers was documented on
NBC "Dateline,"
33 John Molloy, Dress for Success (New York: Warner, 1975, 1988).
33a Ch 3, P. 104, pr. 1: for information on how the African-American community perceives discrimination's affect on minority children and young people, visit a site run by Real Nathaniel Harwell, McCoy Enterprises, http://www.execpc.com/~conduit/ENTER.HTML.
33b Ch 3, P 104, pr. 2 (end of section 04B) The riots after the Rodney King verdict, and the defense manipulation of race to get O.J. Simpson acquitted shows this point clearly. Marcia Clark claims that Proposition 209 (ending most affirmative action in California) would not have been voted in were it not for the Simpson verdict. Marcia Clark, Without a Doubt (New York: Viking, 1997). Marcia, I love your indictment of Johnny Cochrane on p. 482 (yes, Marcia, you're protected by the opinion rule).
33c (last para. Of sect. 04B) Michael Lerner, in The Politics of Meaning (Addison-Wesley, 1996) suggests that (White) racist attitudes, and defensive beliefs among African-Americans are exacerbated by a misplaced idea of meritocracy in our society, and Lerner analyzes affirmative action in view of his idea of misplaced selfishness. Deborah Watts, in 101 Ways You Know You’re ‘black’ in Corporate America,(Wtts-Five, 1998) reports that African-Americans are constantly targets of statements that are harmless when taken literally but which betray an undertone of intentional insult (like the rebuke I once got for a 10-cent tip). I have heard Watts speak. There is a column,, “For Brothers Only,” in Ebony, for example “Nothing Wrong with Doing Better” (Sept. 2000, Kevin Chappell) that addresses the idea of African-American self-concept in the context of outside world expectations.
34 Dan Fry, To Men of Earth (Portland, Ore., Merlin Publishing, 1973).
34a Here are the links
to Understanding archives, including an article that I wrote for them in 1977
on “personal responsibility.” The article was typed on and old-fashioned
typewriter (dating to 1961, with chemistry keys) and published in May 1978. It
showed up in my mailbox in
35 I sometimes heard mention of Heaven's Gate cult founders "Bo" and "Peep" but I do not recall meeting them at these conventions.
36 Jeffrey Mishlove, The Roots of Consciousness (New York: Random House, 1976).
37 In fact, there is plenty of evidence that nuclear power poses average citizens to less risk than fossil fuels, or even than radon in many homes. Some infrastructural items are safer in collectively controlled and regulated (even though privately) hands (Chernobyl notwithstanding).
37a The nuclear power issue reminds me how anyone can become passionate on one issue and believe it to be the world's most important. Barbara Charles saw nuclear power the way I see the military gay ban. I never saw, in her documents, and evidence that nuclear power posed unmanageable risks. Of course, this was 1978, before Three Mile Island. I suppose nuclear power poses a question, "do we trust civilization?"
37b The nuclear power plant visit may have been as remarkable as my submarine visit eleven years later.
37c People with well-developed convictions need to find forums to make their views heard and public. This is true even when they may be motivated by less than satisfying interpersonal lives.
38 Rosenfels, op. cit., p. 115.
39 Under the karma concept, a person can reap the rewards or penalties for his conduct even within the same lifetime.
40 Richard Kieninger, The Ultimate Frontier (Stelle, 1970).
41 Russ Baker, "Clash of the Titans: Scientology v. Germany," George, April 1997, p. 94. Other self-development groups have included Est and Experience Weekends.
42 Jean Elshtain, "The Hard
Questions" Heaven Can Wait," The New Republic,
42a Ch. 3, P 109, pr. 2. Some historians believe that Rev. Troy Perry
and his infant
42b At the Republican Convention, in
his acceptance speech on
42c Some
people see a test of religious faith in creationism, or “creation science”;
sometimes this has become politicized in school systems, as in a referendum in
42d The “religious right” is quite fond of its pet issues, such
as prayer in school and the official drumming out of religion from public
life. But it may have a point. Let’s say that a Christian refuses to work
on Sunday, or a Jew on Saturday, even to the point of refusing on-call or
overtime. This may be his right legally. Other less religious workers may
not even ask for similar exemptions, given the competitive situation in the
workplace. But then, the religious person will feel that he/she is
vulnerable to discrimination and will “look bad.” If “blue laws” are on
the books (remember that in the 50s Sunday doubleheaders couldn’t start until
43 Molly T. Marshall, "Exercising Liberty of Conscience: Freedom of Private Interpretation," to be published in 1997 in an anthology Baptists in the Balance: The Tension between Freedom and Responsibility, compiled by Everett Goodwin (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1997).
44 One gay acquaintance, after losing a teaching job in New York, actually spent a weekend camp trying out for a teaching job with the Unification Church; he talked about hours of "group singing." He may have been looking for an army as an employer of last resort.
45 Boswell, op. cit. describes how the intolerance for gays did not develop until the 12th Century under the authoritarian theology of Aquinas.
45a Of course,
46 Visiting pastor David Day gave some stirring sermons at the
46a. The Lutheran publication, Forward in Christ, available at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Mn, carries (January 2001) a curious article by Eric S. Hartzell, “Resolution to Know Nothing” – “to know nothing but Jesus and his crucifixion is difficult.” This states a rather curious paradox about faith and individualism.
47
48 Ted Koppel's "
48a During the week of
There was a lot of emphasis in your show on whether homosexuality is
"chosen" and on the assertion that no rational person would
"choose" to be gay. And, frankly, most of the
"conservative" reaction seemed to be based on a particular interpretation
of religion, especially Christianity.
I think there is a view that one can "choose" to come out and live a
so-called "gay lifestyle," and the primary motivation would seem to
be a kind of differential self-expression and a desire to distinguish oneself.
I certainly relate to that. Indeed, some younger gays in more tolerant
communities and homes do very well (as the Justin Taylor character in
"Queer as Folk"). This brings us to what really makes many people
uncomfortable about homosexuality. That is, the idea that gays are kind of
"cheating" society by not reproducing and having responsibility to
support others besides themselves, and that gays are changing the
"rules" by which individuals and families compete.
In that regard, the issues of gay marriage, gay adoption (as with Rosie
O'Donnell) and even gays in the military ("don't ask don't tell") as
well as gays in mainstream ministries (where churches effectively use the same
policies as the military) become important. Gays say that they want these kinds
of responsibilities, and "conservatives" impose circular reasoning to
deny them. Homosexuality, by definition, they say, must be just an exercise in
not growing up, in juvenile narcissism.
But if that is so, it can be true of religious practice, too. Religion can be a
way to escape real interaction with others in a psychosexually mature way, and
to impose values on others. It can come to the same thing.
And since 9-11 we have learned a strange parallel: hatred of
The religious side to the argument seemed to reflect the idea of many
people to maintain a personal confidence in what they see as a literal
interpretation of their faith (whether the fundamentalism is Christian, Jewish
or Islamic), sometimes without a lot of awareness of the secular psychological
underpinnings (in gender roles). Yet they seem more focused upon homosexuality
than on other religious edicts.
The Ninth Street Center, recall, had seemed to celebrate the idea that
one could “choose” to experience homosexuality.
48b Martin Olasky,
trying to argue against comparing radical Islam (which he says recognizes only
temporary truces) with conservative Christianity, writes in “The Greatest Spin
Ever Told, World, May/June 2002, “Only once before in recent decades has
the cultural left so astoundingly turned defeat into victory. Look at the 1980s
rebound of the gay movement following the onslaught of AIDS. The disease spread
because of reckless sexual behavior that, rationally, would have led to a
reappraisal of such behavior and a realization that something about
homosexuality is fundamentally wrong. But the news was spun, and gays came out
as an oppressed minority deserving sympathy , rather
than as a people who were oppressing themselves and needed to change their
ways.”
48c The
48d
The issue of priests (in any denomination) “coming out” should not be confused with the visible and now widely litigated problem of abuse of minors by priests, a problem which seems partly related by the Catholic ban on heterosexual marriage for priests (a rather curious and ironic opposite to the military ban on gays) and the notion that the priesthood is a safe haven for men who are disinclined to participate in the activities of biological family and lineage.
49 NIV Bible, Matthew 19:4-6.
50 The term "evangelical" emphasizes salvation through grace and unshaken belief that Christ is the risen Son of God. Often, it also emphasizes witnessing to others about one's conversion or "born again" experience. It does not imply fundamentalism or homophobia.
50a Neela
Banerjee, “Gay and Evangelical, Seeking Paths of
Acceptance,” The New York Times,
51 Peter Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (New York: William Morrow, 1996). Gomes provides a lot of commentary on Boswell's historical research on religion and homosexuality.
51a In a sermon at All God’s Children Metropolitan Community Church
in
In August 2003 the Episcopal Church USA ratified his election in a
controversial and heavily media covered series events, including two separate
votes and last minute allegations of improper conduct that proved unfounded.
One of the allegations included connections with a website, outright.org, set up to help gay youth in
A similar story of Anita C. Hill and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America is told by the film THIS Obedience.
The United Methodist Church apparently plans to try Rev. Karen Dammann of the First United Methodist Church of Ellensburg,
WA for violating the denomination’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding
homosexual conduct by clergy. She had informed the denomination in 2001 that
she was living in a “partnered, covenanted homosexual relationship.” (Alan
Cooperman, “Church Trial Likely for Gay Minister; Methodists’ Top Court
Overrules Decision on Allowing Practicing Lesbian in Clergy,” The Washington
Post,
When the United Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches applied for
membership in the National Council of Churches, it was asked to withdraw
because of the fear that even a vote (let alone acceptance) could drive members
out of the council (sermon at MCCNOVA,
Progressive writer E. J. Dionne, Jr., in a syndicated column “Taking Satan
Seriously,”
In late Feb 2005, the Anglican Consulate (an international body meeting in Northern Ireland) asked the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church in Canada to leave the body because of the elevation of the gay bishop from New Hampshire and because of the Canadian diocese’s support of same-sex marriage.
52 Everett C. Goodwin et al, op. cit.
53 Randy Shilts, And The Band Played On: People, Politics, and the AIDS Epidemic (New York: Penguin, 1987-1988).
53a This is a good spot to mention Larry Kramer and his play, The Normal Heart. Kramer (as early as 1982) was instrumental in setting up the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City, and similar organizations (like Whitman Walker Clinic in Washington, the Oak Law Counseling Center in Dallas, and the Minnesota AIDS Project in Minneapolis, to name a few), would be developed in all major cities. Kramer also founded Act Up (in response to what was perceived as the Reagan administration’s anemic response), and became radlicalized into believing that bombastic, high-volume demonstrations and protests were as important as “reason.” At one point Act Up TP-ed Jesse Helms’s home.
Kramer used to describe AIDS as “reverse Darwinism” in which less attractive people gay men (like me) because they had trouble finding sexual partners. Likewise, the draft sometimes had a reverse Darwinian effect, as men were excluded from being drafted for medical unfitness.
54 Hepatitis C now rivals Hepatitis B for causing chronic illness and liver cancer, and its transmission is not fully understood. While blood-borne, it has not particularly targeted the gay male community. Ironically, there are recent reports that a possibly harmless virus “Hepatitis G” may actually inhibit the progress of HIV infection.
54a
55 By 1994, the "gay male" percentage of new cases had dropped to 58%. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) now defines "AIDS" as HIV seropositivity with a T helper count < 200. By 1993, over 1,000,000 persons were HIV positive, with 350,000 deaths. The average lifetime cost in caring for HIV disease is $60,000; this will go up as patients live longer and new drugs are developed, but may come down as technology improves. See James Patterson and Peter Kim, The Second American Revolution (New York: William Morrow, 1994), pp. 201-204. At the end of 1999, the CDC estimates that there are 33 million people in the world infected with HIV, and about 900,000 in North America.
55a I will provide here what The Citizens’ Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development, Montgomery County. MD, repeats from the CDC: “…according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ‘Among young men 13-24 years, 49 percent of all AIDS cases reported in 2000 were among men who have sex with men’ and ‘9 percent were among young men infected heterosexually.’” Among infected males, this statistic actually shows a slow but inevitable increase in heterosexual transmission (relative to homosexual transmission) in the United States (as compared to Africa) over the years. This was reported in a Letter to the Editor, “Risky Business,” The Washington Times. February 8. 2005, p. A16. This letter seemed to be aimed at the idea of promoting in the public schools the possibility that homosexuals can choose to “change.” Of course, however, many individuals manage lifestyles with increased risks well on their own; what happens to those who can’t?
55b The New York Daily News reported, on
55c The AP (Mike Stobbe)
reported on
56 HTLV-1 can cause immature T-helper (T-4) cells to proliferate malignantly; HIV causes T-helper populations to shrink and eventually vanish.
57 Since I was a rather sickly child, my father once said, incorrectly, "birds don't get sick from germs!"
57a Another suggestion in the early days of the epidemic was that gay men practice "age segregation" in choosing sexual partners, to prevent the infection from spreading to younger men. Now, even today, AIDS organizations (like Minnesota PrideAlive) sponsor outings and chats or talk groups for younger men, not so much for segregation as to strengthen their social ties and improve behaviors (and remain HIV negative as much as possible). Still, my mother once criticized me for even choosing "friendship" with men substantially younger, as if there were something seedy about it. Should older gay men be expected to keep to themselves? (That sometimes seems to be the behavior in some trendy bars today).
58 Their (“Dallas Doctors Against AIDS”, March 1984) letter called me a "thinking member of my community" but then went on to gross comparisons of rectal mucosa and vaginal linings, and then explicit discussions of how gay men allegedly exchange urine and fecal matter.
58a Also, see Camille Williams, “Why the Law Should Discourage Some Sexual Practices,” The World and I, June 2004, p. 249. I respond to this at http://www.doaskdotell.com/lawrence.htm
58b
58c
On
58d Amy Joyce, “Life at Work: On the Job
with HIV: Many Employers Still Lack Policies On AIDS Prevention and Care,” The Washington Post, Business, F1,
59 But they could have said the same thing about women (including lesbians) who don't have children or have them later, since they have higher risks of breast cancer. "What You Need to Know About Cancer," Scientific American, Sep. 1996, p. 127. A Danish study published in Epidemiology in early 2001 indicated that having multiple children early in adulthood also significantly further reduces breast cancer risk. Other studies show that breast-feeding also reduces breast cancer risk. One can start to make natural-law “health” arguments against abstaining from procreative sex!
59a According to the CDC, gay men apparently have shorter lifespans (58 years) compared to heterosexual men (76), a fact which could be interesting in the privatization of social security debate. Besides HIV, a major factor would be the lack of biological family support for caretaking and medical checkups during the senior years (years of “senior moments”).
59b Again, the “religious right” was trying to argue that male homosexual practice is, even from a philosophical base as well as customary mechanics, intrinsically dangerous to its practitioners and to society as a whole.
59c The Michigan legislature in April 2004 proposed a bill allowing health care providers to refuse care (including prescriptions) and insurers to refuse coverage based on “conscientious objection” (recalling the concept for the draft) as long as not based on discrimination against a protected class (which in Michigan did not include sexual orientation for this purpose.) Medical societies have said that this provision would violate the Hippocratic oath. The WB show Everwood has gone in this direction in episodes dealing with prescribing anti-depressants and contraceptives.
59d There is a medical study suggesting that women who have never breast fed (that would mean women who have never borne children and women who have abstained from heterosexual intercourse) may have a higher risk of (adult onset, type II) diabetes. Linsdey Tanner, AP medical writer, “Nursing May Prevent Moms’ Diabetes,” at http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BREAST_FEEDING_DIABETES?SITE=CAVIC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
59e On
60 On
Ch 3 P 120, fn 61. Gene Antonio updated his "findings" with AIDS: Rage and Reality (Dallas: Anchor, 1993).
According to the Red Cross, only about 5% of all adults actually donate blood regularly
60a. In Henri E. Cauvin, “South Africa In
Quandary: Should Gays Donate Blood,” The New York Times,
61 James Mckeever, The AIDS Plague (Medford, Oregon: Omega, 1986). McKeever plays games with the idea that AIDS is a plague sent from God. Another right-wing book is Gene Antonio's The AIDS Cover-Up (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986).
62 Gabe Mirkin, M.D., Talk Radio,
63 As have some other forms of hepatitis and even squamous cell carcinoma of the anus. Breast and ovarian cancers occur with some increased frequency in older women who have never had children or had them later; so the religious "right," when it chooses, can make a health issue of women who won't submit to men!
64 John and Pat Caldwell, "The African AIDS Epidemic," Scientific American, March, 1996, p. 62. The lack of male circumcision seems to encourage heterosexual spread.
64a Edward Green and John Berman have a detailed column, “Liaisons
fueling AIDS in Africa,”
64b The film The Origins of AIDS (dir. Peter Chappell and Catherine Peix, Canada and France, 2003, 91 min) presents the theory that the mass polio vaccines, with an experimental vaccine made from monkeys in African in the 1950s could have set up the epidemic if the simian virus crossed species. I will try to see the film as soon as it is available.
65 Good Housekeeping, March, 1996.
66 Condoms are notoriously ineffective in preventing venereal warts.
67 Laurie Garrett, The Coming
Plague, Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance (New York: Farrar,
Straus, and Giroux, 1994). Ebola is, despite the rumors, still spread only by
direct blood contact; but caring for an Ebola patient is much, much more
dangerous than buddying for HIV. Mad cow could be
spread by bone fertilizer! (NBC "Dateline,"
67a On
The furor over “mad cow” disease in Europe deserves comparative comment. NBC “Dateline” had reported in March 1997 that it could be spread in cattle feed by bone meal. Later developments suggest that it is spread when central nervous system tissue of infected animals is introduced into cattle feed. This would agree with earlier findings about diseases like “kuru” as reported in the 1980s (as on a PBS broadcast in 1985) as being spread among primitive tribes by cannibalism, or “classical CJD (Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease) (http://members.aol.com/larmstr853/cjdvoice/facts.htm) being spread by cornea transplants or pituitary hormone extracts. It is likely that infected meat actually must contain tiny amounts of certain kinds of organ tissue. There has been some suggestion that the more recent and “unnatural” practice of “animal canniabism” (even among different livestock species) in European or British feedlots has contributed to the recent outbreak in humans in Britain. It is terrifying that a long-incubation, incapacitating and deadly disease like this could be spread by food, but there is no real evidence that it is spread by food handlers or even other person-to-person transmission (including sexual). Even so, blood banks are refusing blood from persons with extensive travel in Europe or even the U.K. Mad cow has sometimes been called “variant Cruetzfeldt Jakob Disease” and is a form of “bovine spongiform encephalopathy.”
One case of a Mad Cow infected cow was discovered in Alberta in Aug 2003 and then in Washington State in Dec 2003. Right now, it seems unlikely that there is any risk to the public here.
Here is a blogspot entry on kuru
and similar degenerative prion-related diseases: http://billboushkaint.blogspot.com/2007/01/scientists-develop-mad-cow-resistant.html
67b Of
course, we remember that Herpes was the great scare before AIDS (running around
the country to fundamentalist churches in 1983, Jerry Falwell
would potificate about “herpes and AIDS”) and there
are many other
67c In early 2003 a new epidemic of a casually transmissible flu-like disease, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), starting in Asia and moving over the world, brought up new questions about quarantine. In Hong Kong, a whole high-rise apartment building was quarantined. The disease appears to be caused by a coronavirus, and the mutation (jumping from pigs to humans) producing the severe viral pneumonia in some infected patients appears to be related to practices in agriculture in rural China. The symptoms remind one of the Spanish flu at the end of World War I, when people were not allowed in public places when they were coughing. Recall, also, the economic disruptions in Britain, at least, of livestock foot-and-mouth disease in early 2001, a number of months before 9-11, and the enormous attention this outbreak caused (apparently initially related to a Scottish restaurant violating health regulations). There are many ways (most of them non sexual) public health can be endangered.
The CDC has placed SARS on a list of infectious diseases where quarantine is possible even in this country. A few more authoritarian countries like Singapore have taken draconian measures to quarantine even those exposed to the virus in a workplace, although Singapore, at least, appears willing to reimburse those quarantines at least partially for lost wages.
In the New York Times Magazine,
What if it turns out that in developed countries, only a very small percentage of infected people die but others are carriers. Is this then like influenza, or must “healthy carriers” sacrifice their freedom to protect others? On the other hand, Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIH reports that SARS deaths in Asia and Toronto have clustered within families, and that suggests the possibility of super-deadly sub-strains of virus.
There are also some reports connecting SARS (in Asia) to sewage and possibly oral-fecal transmission, again a development that can have future political consequences within the gay community, although the changes in behavior since HIV should reduce the likelihood of this.
SARS apparently first jumped species to humans around November 2002, but did not become a visible public health problem until March 2003. But it could turn out that it has been around much longer.
67d The summer issue of Foreign Affairs discusses the possibility of a coming pandemic. See http://www.doaskdotell.com/controv/pandemic.htm
68 In June, 1985, a Life magazine issue featured the scare cover, "Now, No One Is Safe from AIDS." The debate over heterosexual AIDS certainly tracked the debate over the underlying moral acceptability of particularly male homosexuality ¾ or, perhaps, non-heterosexuality.
68a
68b Some people do seem to have
natural resistance to HIV infection. An AP story on
69 Amanda Benttett and Anita Sharpe,
"AIDS Fight is Skewed by Federal Campaign Exaggerating Risks," The
Wall Street Journal,
70 Luis Soto-Ramirez et al, "HIV-1 Langerhans'
Cell Tropism Associated with Heterosexual Transmission of HIV," Science,
70a Michael Waldholz, “Genes Are
Patentable; Less Clear Is if Finder Must Know Their Role; AIDS Discovery Spurs
Some to Challenge a Filing that Boosted HGS Stock; Why a Few Can Resist HIV,” The
Wall Street Journal,
71
72 Rep. 'B-1' Bob Dornan, Congress's incarnation of Paul Cameron, proposed giving the Surgeon General authority to close bath houses and require federal contact tracing.
73 Ronald Reagan, Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1981).
73a. Indeed, Terry Tebedo, the
partner of Bill Nelson, president of the Dallas Gay Alliance during the 1980’s,
once told me that he didn’t know what would happen in the Texas legislature,
given “the new information” that kept coming out all the time, especially
before the announcement by Margaret Heckler, the Secretary of Health and Human
Services, in April 1984 that the virus causing AIDS (HTLV-
74 In 1994, the Texas State Supreme Court refused to rule on the state sodomy law because there had been no prosecutions; in some other states, such as Kentucky, sodomy laws have been overturned as violations of a state's constitution or bill of rights.
75 The Kimberly Bergalis case, in which six patients of the same dentist all developed AIDS with the same substrain of HIV, was almost certainly caused by insufficiently autoclaved dental instruments, unless it was spread deliberately.
Some reports, however, suggest that dental extraction and some periodontal procedures could pose risk. There have been other scattered reports of patients infected (such as Belinda Mason). The political debate has been controversial. The CDC has suggested that infected providers with open wounds should not perform surgery or invasive procedures. There have been calls to ban HIV or other blood-borne infections from performing certain procedures, in both Senate and House. This has led to concerns that some physicians and dentists would refuse to treat certain patients. As of 2000, there still was no uniform policy. The University of Texas Health Science Center will not discriminate against infected students pursuing medical education, and will not allow physicians to refuse to treat certain patients. See http://www.uthscsa.edu/hop2000/8.1.1.pdf At least one major high school textbook, Biology: Visualizing Life, by George B. Johnson (1994, Holt) has a principled discussion of the controversy with critical thinking exercises for students on pp 364-365.
75a The WB drama program Everwood
aired an episode called “Sick” on
http://www.thebody.com/hanssens/rights.html
http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/InSite.jsp?page=au-00-00&doc=2098.40ef
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00014845.htm
http://www.aana.com/legal/legbrfs/1993/06lb93.asp
76 Chai Feldblum hypothesizes such an oath being required of Virginia law students in her paper "Sexual Orientation, Morality and the Law: Devlin Revisited," Georgetown University Law School and University of Pittsburgh Law Review, 1996.
76a The new 1983
77 Robert Gallo, Virus Hunting: AIDS, Cancer, and the Human Retroviruses (New York: New Republic Books, 1988). The argument is presented that the virus would have to change radically in character to become more contagious. HIV still is transmitted only by direct introduction into the bloodstream, through sexual contact, injection or needlestick, birth, possibly lactation and very intense oral sex. Transmission by infected lymphocytes (usually T-helper cells) appears more efficient than by raw virus. There is considerable concern that misuse of modern anti-retroviral drugs may encourage the development of resistant and just possibly more transmissible strains. See also notes 81, 83.
77a On
78 The dangerous, even lethal, forms of E-coli can probably be spread by food-handlers.
78a Ch. 3, P 126, pr. 2: According to "CNN Reports,"
78b. In 1999, new HIV infection in
78c A CDC study 1998-2000 found that
12.3% of gay and bisexual men ages 23-29 in
78d
78e. The Washington Monthly, Nov. 2001, as a sobering article by Andrew Webb, “When Rubbers Hit the Road: HIV Infection among gay men is on the rise. This time, it will take more than condoms to stop it.” He argues for monogamous morality, and for gays to be encouraged to adopt it.
78f In the
78g Christopher
Lisotta has an article “Resistant Skin Malady Hits
L.A. Gay Men” in PlanetOut.com and Gay.com pn
78h In 2003 at study by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
reported that, in a study of 2300 men in India, uncircumcised men were eight
times more likely than circumcised men to become infected with HIV. (Source, p 41, Washington Blade,
79h Mike Stobbe, the Associate Press,
printed in The Washington Post, “HIV Infection Rate Decreasing in
Blacks,”
79 Private letter to me from Nathan Fain, Gay Men's Health Crisis. Fain, in 1984, would be the first person to warn me, "the virus is mutating."
80 Generally, doctors and dentists are not required to take HIV tests. There was one dental office in Dallas in the 1980's that advertised the fact that the dentist and all employees had been tested!
81 Andrew Sullivan, "When Plagues End," The New York
Times Magazine,
81a Ch 3 P 127, fn 81: For discussion of long-term survival after HIV infection, see Stephen O'Brien and Michael; Dean, "In Search of AIDS-Resistant Genes," Scientific American, Sept. 1997, p. 44ff. At least one major Ph.D. dissertation is being written on long-term survival and stress. In September, 1997, a trial was proposed of a live, attenuated vaccine with at least fifty health care professionals as participants. I know of at least one HIV+ man who was still asymptomatic fourteen years after his lover's death in Texas.
See also the paper “Panel on Clinical Practices for the Treatment of HIV Infection: Guidelines for the Use of Antiretroviral Agents in HIV-Infected Adults and Adolescents,” Jan. 2000 (1-800-448-0440), at http://www.hivatis.org/.
But back in the 1980’s, the term “HIV disease” had indeed seemed politically charged. I’ll add, without much comment, that the theories that AIDS is not caused by HIV (even embraced by some libertarians) don’t work for me. HIV did not follow the epidemiology of scurvy.
81b In February 2002 the Associated Press reported a new Merck study of a “prime-boost” vaccine, effective in chimpanzees and apparently in humans, where HIV core protein genes are injected and “incubated” in human muscle cells, and reinforced with boosters. The expected result would be that if a person is infected, the virus may plateau at much lower levels, preventing overt disease. It is unclear whether such an subclinical infection would be transmissible sexually. It might take five years to determine the safety and effectiveness of such a vaccine.
For the story see http://www.planetout.com/pno/news/article.html?2002/02/26/4 Planet out home page is http://www.planetout.com/
The vaccine trial that I considered but turned down in 1988, the GP160 vaccine, would not have been effective but would have produced a positive HIV antibody test. At the time NIH warned volunteers that some employers might try to screen people for the virus and that vaccinated volunteers would test positive. Presumably that is true of most or all vaccines.
81c In September 2002 the Aaron Diamond Research Center announced preliminary results of a study of long term non-progressors with HIV infection (about 2% of those infected, perhaps more) whose T8 cells can apparently manufacture three “alpha defensins” proteins. They will be published in Science, Oct. 2002.
81d A study of a trial vaccine by VaxGen showed some success with African Americans and Asian Americans but not other groups. The sample sizes were statistically small and may not stand up to later trials.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/conditions/02/24/aids.vaccine/index.html
82 The typical "window" until sero-conversion
still seems to be about three months; a very small number of infected persons
may never develop a positive Elisa or Western Blot test, but will still show
infection with advanced techniques like
The blood virus-load is high for a brief period before antibody (although perhaps not antigen) can be detected. For years, the virus reproduces rapidly (and is resisted vigorously) inside the lymph nodes but is usually found in lower levels in circulating blood. Possibly it is less transmissible during this period. During end-stages, the circulating virus levels go back up as lymph nodes explode. See Time article mentioned above.
83 For example, Jeffrey Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), p. 69 claims that even apart from AIDS and even with monogamous partners, gay men live three decades less than "normal" married men. According to Satinover, AIDS shortens lifespans by only 7%. Hardly!! Notice the accidental irony in the title of Satinover's book. It is sold by the notoriously anti-gay Lambda Report, discussed in detail by Chris Boll and John Gallagher in Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990's (New York: Crown, 1996), pp. 219, 268. Cameron also used these obituary statistics, eventually to the embarrassment even of his religious clients.
But another explanation for shorter gay male life spans sometimes may include weaker family ties for elderly gay men, which otherwise would give them inventive (“the loving family”) to participate in aggressive preventative health care for typical diseases of aging.
83a Ch 3 P 128 - in general, if one takes the attitude that male homosexual activity jeopardizes societal safety in the health area and must be stamped out, we could say the same thing not just about nuclear weapons but about much of our industrial base and our consumer baser (personal autos)!
Moreaids contains some additional comments regarding Gabriel Rotello's concept of "sexual ecology" and AIDS.
Ch 3 P. 128, end of section 07, general comments:
My take, again, is that male homosexuality really is problematic for any society that does not enforce a strong ethic of personal (instead of group) accountability. On HIV research, we now know that most viral replication during the "latency period" occurs in the lymph nodes; when the lymph node capsules break down, virus is reintroduced into the blood stream and free virus levels increase as symptoms develop. Viral load is probably a better indication of prognosis than T-4 count.
The biggest public health concern with the use of protease inhibitors might be the development of resistant strains of HIV which are introduced to other persons by unsafe sex. Public health does indeed concern itself with the "group" consequences of individual behaviors that, considered singly, may seem innocuous; consider misuse of antibiotics.
83b As late as 2003 the U.S. State Department will not hire HIV+
individuals as foreign service officers. Lorenzo
Taylor has filed suit against the State Department on this matter after he was
turned down. The Department claims that HIV+ persons cannot be assigned to
countries with substandard medical care, so hiring HIV+ individuals would not
be fair to other employees. (Reuters,
83c Here is a place to mention another
health issue – cigarette smoking, and total smoking bans in bars across the
nation. A ban may take effect in
84 "Anti-Gay Group Counters PFLAG (Parents and Friends of
Lesbians and Gays): PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays) Launches to Dispel
'Pro-Homosexual' Viewpoints," The
84a
84b Tony Kennedy, “Ex-gays talk of homosexuality cure,”
Minneapolis Star Tribune,
84c AIDS has certainly inspired plenty
of art on its own, such as Myron Johnson’s choreographic essay “Hope,”
set mostly to Mozart’s Requiem, by the
84d. On
84e In speaking in a debate to the
84f. In October 2003 the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority raised eyebrows by accepting paid subway station ads from Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (pfox.org). But, then, this is free speech!
84g Eartha Jane Melzer,
“Scores seek help to be ex-gay: Inside look at Exodus Meeting,” The Washington
Blade,
84h CNN Reports presented a story (July 31, 2005) about
a camp in Tennessee called “Refuge” run by Love in Action, which parents pay
$4000 to send their kids to, supposedly to deal with homosexual desires. It
later presented a debate between
84i
Sandra G. Boodman, “Vowing to Set the
World Straight,” presented a story with several articles about the resurgence
of reparative therapy in the
84j Of course, there are a lot of Internet sites selling
materials trying to preach psychological purity – a willingness for a man to
become dedicated to providing for others as a precondition for experiencing his
own identity – ideas that go beyond the ex-gay movement as usually understood.
For example: , “Avenue”: http://www.avenueresource.com/ http://www.avenueresource.com/onlineorder.htm
84k
The “ex-gay” argument seems to be similar to a pattern of
reasoning evident in
85 In 1971, Irving Bieber had actually proposed using heterosexual pornography to "change" male homosexuals! The ex-gay movement loves the "change" metaphor; at least one child-molester bragged, before his execution, that he enjoyed doing evil and didn't want to "change." Why would someone have to change to stop enjoying hurting people?
86 "ENDA: Pro and Con," Congressional Quarterly, Nov. 1996, p. 285; K. Vickery "Fundamental Change: A Virginia 'Ex-Gay ' Minister Talks about his Transformation from 'Homosexual' to 'Saver of Souls' " Our Own Community Press, Richmond, Dec., 1996
87 One "trick" stole my wallet, one freebased in my bathroom
while I waited, and one jokingly confessed to a bombing; although I didn't
believe him, I was relieved that he disappeared. On the beat side, one took
communion at
F88
88a
There may be gene affecting dopamine receptors that makes some men more
likely to take risks and seek "novelty" (sometimes in reckless
behavior, whether promiscuity or bungee jumping) than others. These men are
probably more psychologically "masculine." See Dan Woog, "One on One," The Advocate,
88b Another source of disputative argument on the "choice" vs. biology question is Frank Aqueno's "Queer by Choice" (http://members.aol.com/QBCHOICE. Frank was also associated with the Ninth Street Center. Now, how often do we hear the innocuous argument from gay people that they wouldn't "choose" an orientation (or set of inclinations) which makes life (adaptively speaking) "harder"?
88c One would also want to look at pre-natal influences ("defeminizing" brain hormones, for example). Pre-natal
influences may have a big influence on the health and temperament of the future
adult. See Sharon Begley, "Shaped by Life in the Womb," Newsweek,
88d On
88e Randolph E. Schmid
of the AP provides a story on
89 This is an example of pleiotropy, in which a trait which generally increases reproduction or survival has artefactal side effects.
90 Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Demonic
Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (New York: Houghton Mifflin,
1996), reviewed by Daniel Pinchbeck in The Washington Post, Book World,
91 E.L. Patullo, "Straight Talk About Gays," Commentary, Dec. 1992, p 21.
92 So Rev. W. A. Criswell called gays in a vitriolic Sunday night
service at the
92a The Family Research Council, a conservative (??) group to be sure, still maintains that male homosexuality and male homosexual pedophilia often overlap: Timothy J. Dailey, Ph. D., writes “The Connection Between Homosexuality and Childhood Sexual Abuse,” in Vol. 15, “Family Policy,” “Homosexuality and Children,” at http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA03I35#top I suppose this gets into a “brother’s keeper” discussion.
93 P. Rogers, "How Many Gays?" Newsweek,
93a. There is a play by D. W. Jacobs, R.
Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe, almost in
line with Alexander Scriabin’s unfinished “Mystery.” It plays in late
2000 at the George Coates Performance Works in San Francisco,
94 I really ran into this when interviewing in Dallas in 1988 before deciding to come back East; only one "asked" directly if I was married, but my omission of family matters seemed to bother other interviewers.
95 M. Scott Peck, MD, op. cit.
95a Along the lines of this chapter would be an examination of the novel The Elementary Particles by French author Michel Houellebecq. This rather moralistic and visionary author seems to take the position that sexual freedom spoils itself by making sex an exercise in “market competition” in which only the strongest (“most beautiful”) survive. I’m reminded of the way Twin Cities “Miss Richfield” plays the “Newlywed Game” in which gay male, gay female and heterosexuals compete, with the gay couples often winning, and a favorite question is the meritocratic: “What matter most to your partner: Brains, Beauty, or Money”?
95b A counter to the above note would be examples of sympathy:
shave-a-thons where stars and others have their heads shaved in sympathy with
chemotherapy patients, as on “Good Morning America,”
95c There are often examples of “conservative politicians” who turn out to be closeted gays. In May 2005 the Spokane, WA newspaper The Spokesman-Review set up a sting on Gay.com where a computer geek posed as a male teenager on gay.com and got a response from the mayor Jim West, who had opposed gay rights publicly. See the newspaper story at http://www.spokesmanreview.com/jimwest/story.asp?ID=051205_mckenna Two young men claim that were offered good city jobs after meeting him in a gay chat room, an incident that recalls the paranoia of the 50s when people would claim that homosexuals would network each other into jobs to “control” the government (remember J. Edgar Hoover).
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