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 Appalachia," Mother Jones, July/Aug 1999, p. 36. In Aug. 1999 I visited Blair, W. Va. myself and found that one could see very little of the mines from the public roads the wander the canyon streams. I drove up to the Buffalo Creek mine and found the view of the pit blocked; instead the company displayed a reclaimed area replete with deer, ponds, and birds. From the air (a Comair prop plane) the mine appears similar in size to the iron range mines in northern Minnesota. But the rumor that W. Va, is becoming part of the great plains is totally unfounded!

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 West Va. and eastern Kentucky. The semantics has to do with the words “waste” and “fill.” I visited the Bryce Mountain area in 1999. It is not easy to see the mines or overburden from public highways, as they mostly wander in valleys. The area around Mt. Storm W. Va. (farther north) seems to have been greatly reclaimed since the early 1970s. 

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 SW VA  towns is not Clinchwood, but Clintwood. There is also a town of Clinchco.

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, Nov. 22, 2005. The “decadent middle class” in America can’t do this work. 

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," March 7, 1967, with Mike Wallace. It was horrible.

1a.  In August 1970 I drove about 30 miles from Princeton, NJ to Morrisville, Pa. to watch belatedly the Panavision film Boys in the Band, based on the play by Mart Crowley.  Even then I was thinking about it.  I remember the lines about “gay corpse” and “you will always be homosexual.”   Years later Crowley would express “regret” for writing the play.  By 1988 we had the long film of Harvey Fierstein’s play, Torch Song Trilogy, which really works better on stage for me.

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 ABC "Good Morning America," October 1, 1999, there was a psychological discussion of depression and the will to "dispute catastrophic thought." A psychologically healthy individual doesn't put all of his eggs in one basket. Yet, this goes against the cultural bias that a stable life-long marriage should be one of life's fundamental attainments, because of the unquestionable need for people to prove to themselves that they are valued unconditionally. Rosenfels would often claim that the "emptiness" of pursuing socially supported goals would lead to depression (as in the Dreamworks 1999 American Beauty).

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, Sept. 19, 1995. (Ted Kaczynski). "Luddite" philosophy regards the dependence upon functions (provided by others) that one cannot control as undermining individuality. But curiously, modern individualism is reasonable because there is some stability in the organized (hopefully as privately owned as possible) provision of adaptive needs.

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 (South Beach diet and Atkins diet) and “carbs.” Seriously, though, there is plenty of evidence that those who each much less as adults may live much longer. The self-discipline that it takes to do this is related to marriage and family in complicated ways. Some people have more motive for self-discipline when they marry, but others expand. The epidemic of obesity (and insulin insensitivity) suggests a breakdown in self-discipline.  Rob Stein, “Low-Calorie Diet May Lengthen Life: Regimen Reduces Risk of Diseases Associated with Agin,” Washington Post, Apr. 20, 2004. Of course, these conversations at the Center precede AIDS by about eight years.  

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, June 1, 1987).

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 Ch. 3 P 97. More comments on polarity: Indeed, men used to identify with the notion of providing a higher standard of living for their children than that enjoyed by themselves (or by other peoples' children).

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 America (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 225. (Presents Consciousness I, II, III).

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, Oct. 22, 2001.

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 April 18, 2004. He argues for switching to hybrid cars and building up an infrastructure for other fuels. He thinks that private companies are already quietly working on this.

James Jordan and James R. Powell add to this debate with the op-ed “After the Oil Runs Out,” The Washington Post, June 6, 2004, p. B7, in which the inflection point “Hubbert’s Peak” is discussed.

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, May 31, 2004, proposes a “terrorist protection tax” to cut consumption, expand oil reserves and encourage alternative sources. The is grave risks that terrorists will disrupt production or shipping with large and unconventional attacks in the Middle East, or even that the current Saudi regime could fail. Of course, right now many “working Americans” (like taxi drivers) are stuck with the higher driving costs. At the end of May, 2004, Al Qaeda attempted to disrupt Saudi promises to increase oil production by kidnapping attacks in Khobar

26e  Neil Henderson, Justin Blum, “’Oil Shock’ Has Some Economists Worried,” The Washington Post, Aug. 20, 2004, discusses the speculative oil futures market with vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks on oil fields in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, reported threats against oil tankers in shipping lanes, financial problems with Russia’s largest oil company, and potential political instability in Venezuela and even Nigeria.  Furthermore, Iran might reduce or embargo production in response to American attempts to stop it from developing nuclear weapons.

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 Dec. 10, 2004, ABC “World News Tonight” presented 17-year-old high school senior Aaron Goldin (San Diego, CA) and his $100000 scholarship-winning project and patented “gyroscope” invention to make electricity from ocean tides. Now these schemes (involving the ocean) have been proposed for years but never been found economically feasible by utilities. Maybe four years of partial differential equations in the right school (MIT maybe?) will give Goldin a way to make this work in the real world of engineering. One person’s idea can still make a real difference to a whole civilization.

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, Aug. 16, 2005, p. A15.

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 (New York, Ballantine, 1974 (with a chapter "The New Poor").

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 (Washington) made predictions of outright gasoline rationing in public statements in February 1974.  (He might have supported the sticker-days-of-week-can-drive system.)  Jackson was a Democrat known to be vitriolically anti-gay (“I’m not going to codify into law” protection for gays, etc…), seemed to be a real believer in social engineering, especially around energy and environment issues. One can imagine how his “Democrat” ideas could have differentially affected gays and lesbians.  (I was none too comfortable in 1976 with what Carter might do.)

29d  Brazil has taken draconian steps against an electricity shortage due to drought, and refused to build more power plants.  It will turn off electricity for businesses and individuals who fail to reduce consumption by 20% in a specified period.  Not a market solution. 

29e  New York City wrestled with financial crisis and the threat of default in 1975, eventually leading to the infamous New York Post headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead” regarding a request for federal loan guarantees to President Gerald Ford. But the crisis led right-wing diatribes to preach that city dwellers were parasites and that the only economic security was in small-town or rural living and physical self-sufficiency.  My perception, having just moved to the City to “come out” and become whole sexually, was that I needed the City and the proximity of a sheltered community to ease my transition. The idea that civil breakdown could occur led me to write a letter to city council suggesting that a wage garnishment tax on higher incomes earned in the City might be appropriate to prevent default and disorder. I was not a libertarian then. Think today about how we would pay for the enormous cost of terrorism and war. 

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 MCC Dallas (next section) congregational meeting that the church organize car pools, and the motion died for lack of second! The City of Dallas actually did a telephone survey of residents of what services to cut back, such as park lawn-mowing, during the shortages!

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 IBM and EDS would enforce notoriously strict dress codes on programmers, so that customers didn't perceive them as effete or "above" everyone else, and less constrained by customer sensitivities. Univac was not as strict, although as a Univac employee in the 1970's I resisted Univac management's prodding to get me to spend more of my own money on fashionable suits.

32 Another example of high-tech employment dangers was documented on NBC "Dateline," Apr. 18, 1997, with a report on cancer in "clean room" workers making microchips; apparently their uncomfortable bunny suits may not protect them sufficiently from toxic chemicals. We constantly find examples of how our high living standards do involve some risk from people who do our "dirty" work.

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 New York City after returning from a week long trip to Seattle.

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, May 5, 1997, distinguishes between the somewhat open faith of most mainstream religions and the authoritarian, group-mindset character of cults.

42a Ch. 3, P 109, pr. 2. Some historians believe that Rev. Troy Perry and his infant MCC helped to set the psychological climate that made Stonewall possible just a year or so after MCC's founding. But one could even argue, as we saw in the previous chapter, that the Vietnam war indirectly helped gays benefit from the 60’s civil rights movement.

42b  At the Republican Convention, in his acceptance speech on August 3, 2000, presidential candidate and nominee George W. Bush announced that he practiced “toleration” because of his religious faith, not in spite of it.  Again, what does it mean to say that you will “tolerate” homosexuals?

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 Kansas in 2000. Now, if you allow an allegorical interpretation of Genesis in which days map to geological epochs, “creation science” could make some sense, since evidence shows that many animal species appeared and flourished rather suddenly. But the demand for literal interpretation, for honoring “inerrancy” of the Bible, seems to me to set up a situation where one will deny scientific evidence if one does not like the religious, political or “moral” consequences of the evidence.  We could make similar arguments about the “debate” over whether HIV causes AIDS, or even over homosexuality and biology (interpreted either way).  It does come down to the “philosophy of science.” 

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 2 PM on Sundays in some cities), there may be less pressure on religious people.  It’s possible to propose similar arguments that pornography actually contributes to a culture which will discriminate against religious people.        

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, Metropolitan Community Church and other gay Christian groups have published their own interpretations of controversial Biblical passages (“clobber passages”). The History Channel ran a special on sexual issues in the Bible in late 2003. Although the Bible never mentions lesbianism, the HC program interpreted the specific passages (such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis) as referring to male homosexual behavior. However, the context usually refers to protecting the identity of the Jewish people, its ability to procreate and populate an area, and abstinence from narcissistic idol worship. Ancient cultures often used arranged marriages and saw sexual morality as important to preserving familial property rights. Nevertheless, the Bible seems to recognize that long term same-sex relationships (bordering on eroticism) can have special but incidental significance to a culture (such as David and Jonathan).

46 Visiting pastor David Day gave some stirring sermons at the Dallas Metropolitan Community Church in 1981, starting with "the biggest sin was wanting the knowledge of good and evil," followed by "ET Phone Home" and "It's Friday but Sunday is Coming."

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 Buena Vista Pictures, 1949.

48 Ted Koppel's "ABC Nightline," on Nov. 29, 1996, portrayed an African American man in Richmond, Va. who had done just that.

48a  During the week of May 20-24 2002, Ted Koppel provided a series “A Matter of Choice?” on ABC “Nightline,” focusing on Roanoke, Va., which had had a major shooting in a gay bar. The series culminated in a “town hall” debate Friday night. One of the guests was an older gay man who had once, as a district attorney, prosecuted sodomy law cases. Here is what I sent to ABC in response:

 
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
America (and of the Jews) by Islamic religious extremists parallels hatred of gays by some "Christian" extremists. To someone like me, this is SO obvious.

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 Dec 13 2002 issue of Lavender contains the article, “By Guess and By God: How Do GLBT Muslims Reconcile Faith and Sexual Identity?” by Mecca Bos-Williams, with a discussion of Al-Fatiha, an organization that servers Muslims who are GLBT.  There has been an increase in GLBT Muslims in many cities in recent years, especially immigrated from Southeast Asia or Indonesia as well as Somalia or the Sudan, and there are also many Muslims (including GLBT) with European backgrounds in the Bay Area. Before 9-11, I personally found that most Americans from a Muslim background, as in the workplace, shared essentially the same cultural values as other mainstream Americans.

48d  ABC “Nightline” on July 25, 2003 provided an account of gay catholic priests who come out, particularly Father Raymond Schaeffer, who discussed his sexual orientation in a homily to his parish in Jeffersonville, IN after first mentioning it in a parish newsletter before going off on a retreat. He would not discuss his own private conduct, in relation to his vows of celibacy, but he emphasized the difference between identity and conduct, and his issue was identity. His own life story sounded rather intricate and large in scale.

 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, Dec. 12, 2006, p A1, discusses Evangelicals Concerned, and mentions some personalities, such as Justin Lee. It also mentions (and shows a photograph of) a stable male couple, Martin Fowler and Clyde Zuber, who lead a Bible study group in the North Carolina home. I knew them when I lived in Dallas and attended some of their Evangelicals Concerned sessions in their mid-Cities home in the mid 1980s.  There was a teacher in the group who would have to be satisfied with “I have gay friends,” a kind of “don’t ask don’t tell” idea for teachers. (My blogspot article is Is there a don’t ask don’t tell de facto policy for teachers?). For one session Ralph Blair actually attended and mentioned Paul Rosenfels and the Ninth Street Center in New York, which he credited for keeping gay men in monogamous relationships and in a safer situation with respect to potential HIV exposure. 

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 Minneapolis on June 22, 2003, Rev. Mel White (as a guest speaker) said, “The church is the source of misinformation about gays… The debate is over, the vedict is in.”  This, shortly after an Episcopal Diocese in Newark, N.J.. passed on an opportunity to elect an openly gay bishop Canon Gene Robinson, already provisionally elected bishop of New Hampshire by the people in his diocese. 

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 New England and with indirect links to pornography; however, websites often have indirect or secondary links to objectionable content that they are unaware of.  The Church voted at the same conference to allow individual congregations to bless same-sex unions (reversing an initial vote not to allow these). There are calls for a worldwide meeting in London in October to discuss these resolutions. 

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, Oct. 28, 2003.

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, 10/5/2003). The largest church in UFMCC, the Dallas church (which I attended in the 1980s) and its Cathedral of Hope split off from MCC in the summer of 2003 partly due to procedural difficulties in the denomination’s handling of certain accusations by one member.

Progressive writer E. J. Dionne, Jr., in a syndicated column “Taking Satan Seriously,” October 28, 2003, writes “… it is very hard for many religious people to buy into the liberal consensus—to put their religious convictions on the shelf when asked—to embrace a system in which ‘truth’ and ‘error’ get equal time and equal rights.”

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 Ch. 3, P. 117, pr. 1. Until mid 1982, the new syndrome was actually called "GRID," "Gay-related immune deficiency." The acronym AIDS was supposedly developed at a CDC meeting and public education forum in Dallas (arranged by the Oak Lawn Counseling Center ¾ I attended it and met James Curran myself) in late 1982.

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 Feb 11, 2005, that a previously unknown “superstrain” of HIV (“anti-retroviral-resistant HIV or 3-DCR HIV has been reported in New York City with a man who became infected shortly after unprotected sex with a few men in October 2004. By definition, a resistant strain resists three of the four classes of drugs used to treat HIV. The story (“Vicious New AIDS Strain: World’s First Case of Drug-Resistant Strain Found Here”) is by Frank Lombardi and is at http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/280163p-240060c.html   The Reuters story is http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=564&e=1&u=/nm/20050212/ts_nm/health_hiv_dc  In April 2005 there were reports that the pathology might have been explained by usual reactions of this particular patient.

55c  The AP (Mike Stobbe) reported on Nov. 10 2006 that the average person diagnosed now as HIV+ can expect to live 24 years with a total cost of $600000. In 1993 the expectancy for an asymptomatic person was 7 years.

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  ABC Primetime Live “Out of Control” on Aug. 24, 2006 presents AIDS in African Americans. The program present unprotected anal sex in prison, the refusal of prisons to provide condoms, the fact that black men get out and infect female partners. This way the heterosexual black community seems to have much higher HIV than heterosexual whites. Black gay men are much more likely to be closeted and have female partners, and “be on the DL” or “be on the down low.” The late Peter Jennings participates in this program.  The program maintains that in America there are 100 black women for every 85 black men.

 

58c  On September 21, 2006 the CDC proposed universal testing of Americans between ages of 13-64 for HIV, quite a reversal from earlier times. There are more details at this blogspot link (mine). 

 

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, Dec. 10, 2006, gives the progressive policies at CRS (Catholic Relief Services) as an example. 

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 Feb 3, 2006 Reuters provided a story about a fossilized ice man from 3300 BC in the Alps who may have been ostracized because of a genetic condition that made him unable to provide mobile sperm and therefore father children. Children was all one had to live for in earlier societies.

60 On May 6, 1983, JAMA had run an editorial by Anthony Fauci speculating about household transmission; this claim was quickly recanted. (JAMA is officially known as the Journal of the American Medical Association.)

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, June 11, 2000, p. A12, there is discussion a finding by the South African Human Rights Commission that denying men the capability to give blood because of sexual orientation alone is unconstitutional (the S.A. Constitution was adopted in 1996). Blood banks have been refusing to comply. There are many questions: Is blood donation a “right” or “obligation”; does male homosexual anal sex play the role of HIV transmission in Africa that it does in the Western World; how reliable is a negative test, concerning the window of infection and the hidden infection issues?    

 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, WRC-980, Dec. 4, 1995

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,” December 28, 2003. They report that in Africa HIV is six times as prevalent in teenage girls as boys, because the virus apparently transmits more easily to younger women, and young women often have intimate relations with older men (the “sugar daddy” syndrome, or the “sexual princess” syndrome described by George Gilder). Green is the author of Rethinking AIDS Prevention.

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," March 14, 1997). (see 67a).

67a  On Feb. 2, 2000 the federal government ordered blood banks not to accept blood donations for anyone who had stayed in the United Kingdom for six months or more, from 1980-1996, on the theory that the "prion" (a protein which starts a domino chain of allotropic changes along nerve cells) might be blood-borne, even if it is known to be spread by eating "infected" meat or by pituitary hormone shots or cornea transplants.  Is this "behavior related"?

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 STD’s. Diseases spread by tissue contact rather than blood may be more relatively spread in both directions heterosexually. HPV (Human Papilloma Virus) for example, may, with a few strains, lead to cervical cancer or possibly other tumors.  All of this fires the debate over sexual education and STD prevention instruction in public schools, with conservatives often insisting upon an “abstinence until [legal] marriage” message  (a self-serving circularity) as the only instruction that should be permissible, at least with taxpayer funds. And believe it or not, some people today (2001) still get fired over the belief that AIDS is spread by casual contact (subjunctive mood!).  Still, it is appropriate to remain concerned that new diseases spread by sexual contact and having an insidious character could be identified in the future. 

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, April 20, 2003, “Viral Terrors” Fighting SARS cam impinge civil liberties as much as countering Al Qaeda does—and that’s O.K.” by Abraham Varghese (director of Center of Medical Humanities and Ethics and the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio), argues for accepting quarantines. “We are privileged to live in a free society where we have privacy (but not anonymity) and freedom to travel. But SARS may change that; highly contagious diseases pit individual rights against public-health imperative…The virus that causes SARS has no political agenda, no jingoist banner to wave, and has not read John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty…The temporary loss of liberty that might come with quarantine for SARS, while painful, is a pill that I would find easier to swallow.”

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 Ch. 3 P 121 fn 68. According to an ABC '20-20' report on June 30, 1999, women are 8 times as likely to become infected by HIV from unprotected heterosexual vaginal intercourse as are men. There are about 140,000 women in the U.S. (mid 1999) with CDC-defined AIDS (HIV infection and T4 counts < 200). About 15,000 women become infected a year. The same report emphasized that protease inhibitor treatment still tends to lose its effectiveness after about two years and in some patients has horrendous side effects (53 pills a day!) (see fn 81). One woman with AIDS said, "God did not intend us to be self-sufficient." (see fn 42).

68b  Some people do seem to have natural resistance to HIV infection. An AP story on March 10, 2005 “Medieval Plague May Explain Resistance to HIV” asserts that repeated epidemics of certain hemorrhagic fevers that struck Europe during the Middle Ages made about 10% of Europeans resistant. It is not clear if these fevers were related to diseases known today (Lassa, Marburg, Ebola) or are related to “shepherd’s hook” filioviruses.

 69 Amanda Benttett and Anita Sharpe, "AIDS Fight is Skewed by Federal Campaign Exaggerating Risks," The Wall Street Journal, May 1, 1996.

70 Luis Soto-Ramirez et al, "HIV-1 Langerhans' Cell Tropism Associated with Heterosexual Transmission of HIV," Science, Mar 1, 1996, p. 1291. There are also Langerhans cells associated with hair follicles.

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, March 16, 2000.   Besides new intellectual property law controversies over whether genes can be “patented,” there is now important information that some people have a mutation in their CCR5, associated with chemokines, chemicals which the HIV must use as it enters the T-Helper cell as a “Trojan horse,” and this mutation seems to make them immune to known varieties of HIV (although it sounds like drug-resistant strains of HIV could “learn” to overcome this mutation).

71 Nov. 10, 1996.

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-III, as it was called then) had been officially discovered by independent work by the CDC and French researchers.  Later, there would be international legal battles over “credit” for discovering the virus.     

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 April 19, 2004, in which a female HIV-positive physician and acupuncturist (infected by accidental blood exposure treating a patient in Africa) has her status publicized by Delia, the daughter of the physician (Andy Brown) whom she is dating. The townspeople threaten to sue her and her partner (Harry Abbott), and then withdraw after calming down, and then the malpractice insurance company cancels Dr. Abbott’s policy!  The program claims that she did not have to disclose her HIV+ status to patients, which is probably correct. The legal status of HIV-positive doctors and surgeons (including those who perform invasive procedures) remains a bit debatable. HIV positive doctors still lose their practices and jobs. Here are some references: (Note especially the piece for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund by Catherine Hanssens).

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 Texas sodomy law was laid out in bill 21.38 (to replace 21.06) and was introduced by Bill Ceverha from Amarillo, TX. (The text is at http://www.doaskdotell.com/content/append.htm ). In early 2005 a civil trial that named Bill Ceverha as a defendant in Tom DeLay’s spending corporate campaign funds for a 2002 GOP takeover of the Texas legislature

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 April 28, 2000, on the weekend of the Millennium March on Washington, the Clinton administration called the AIDS epidemic in the underdeveloped world (including India and Russia as well as Africa) a national security threat, since many countries (esp. Russia, eventually) could become more unstable politically.  Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) scoffed at the idea, as he pointed out to the timing of the remark.  Yet, the religious right could argue that gays are themselves indirectly a national security threat, through this string-thread of reasoning.   

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," Aug 17, 1997, 47% if the gay men it surveyed reported unsafe sex during the past year. But clusters of HIV spread almost entirely by heterosexual sex are growing, as a recent situation (1997) started among over 100 high school teens by a drug user in upstate New York. The latest reports show HIV infection rising again among younger men in large cities (not in smaller cities). Runaway gay teens, expelled by parents, and engaging in prostitution to survive on the streets, probably account for much of the new infections (ABC "20-20" September 13, 1999).

78b.  In 1999, new HIV infection in San Francisco rose sharply, supposedly tagging 1 in 25 gay men in one year.  Some estimates claim that 25%-30% of gay men in San Francisco are infected (but this may be exaggerated).  This was covered by CNN Reports July 7, 2000. At the same time, China, fearing cultural modernization and perhaps AIDS, is often aggressively pursuing gays, according to CNN.  The CDC reports that in 1999 40,000 Americans became HIV+,  and that 16,000 died fro, HIV-related disease. A study of 3,400 young gay men nationwide found 7.2% infected, with 12.2% in New York City and 8.3% in Los Angeles.  80% of those infected were unaware of their status.  2-4% of Americans (including heterosexuals) practice high-risk unprotected sex with multiple partners. (Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2000).

78c  A CDC study 1998-2000 found that 12.3% of gay and bisexual men ages 23-29 in Baltimore, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Seattle were HIV positive. The infection rathes were 7% for whites, 15% for Hispanics, and 30% for blacks.  29% of these men did not know that they were positive. (New York Times, Associate Press, and Glenn Howatt from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Feb. 6, 2001).  The overall rate by city ranged from 4.8% in Seattle to 18% in Dallas, which had been hit very hard earlier in the late 1980’s. Gay men now account for 40% of new AIDS cases (as defined to be practically equivalent to HIV infection), and women comprise 30%. Minnesota had 436 new cases of HIV infection in 2000, and outright disease may not be quite as common in the Twin Cities as in other metropolitan areas.  

78d  May 31, 2001, the CDC announced a new study in which 4.5% of gay men 23-29 were becoming infected with HIV per year in several large cities.  The rate for African-Americans was much later. Some criticized the study because it focused on men in bars or other presumably more sexual settings.  More men are starting protease inhibitors early.  Some patients have no side effects, but a few (or maybe more than a few) develop visible and rapid abdominal weight gain and other have frequent vomiting, osteoporosis, neuropathy, and diabetes. One report says “the medications seem to cause an inexplicable loss of body fat from the face and extremities, accompanied by grotesquely large deposits of fat on stomachs and upper backs”—a condition called lipo-dystrophy or “protease paunch.”  Some reports claim that up to 80% of persons on these medications develop this side effect, severely disturbing the body image (a comment previously made about Kaposi’s sarcoma).  It is possible that it may be lessened by testosterones. I have seen a few of these cases myself (as in the bars or other gay events  but not in anything like the widespread volume of these reports.  Again, the drugs develop resistance in a few years, although combination regimens may eventually work much longer.  The picture for long term management of HIV disease as a chronic disease is unclear, even if the deaths from opportunistic infections seem now to be much more under control.  

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 February 6, 2003 Rolling Stone there is the disturbing (if exaggerated) story by Gregory A. Freeman, “In Search of Death: To bug chasers, HIV isn’t a ruthless killer. It’s a gift—the most beautiful a man can willingly receive—spread through a secret breeding ground.”

78g  Christopher Lisotta has an article “Resistant Skin Malady Hits L.A. Gay Men” in PlanetOut.com and Gay.com pn January 27, 2003, with a speculation that the antibiotic resistant infection may be related to frottage at disco, although this would affect straight clubs as well; it is unclear whether this is related to immune suppression related to HIV. See http://www.planetout.com/pno/news/article.html?2003/01/27/1

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, Oct 17, 2003).

79h Mike Stobbe, the Associate Press, printed in The Washington Post, “HIV Infection Rate Decreasing in Blacks,” Nov. 18, 2005, reports that HIV infection in blacks has dropped about 5 percent a year since 2001. It is still proportionally 8 times as high for blacks as whites. Heterosexual transmission dropped 4% since 2001, where as in gay men it increased 8% betweeh 2003 and 2004 after remaining level from 2001 to 2003.

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, Nov. 10, 1996, p. 52. Also, "The End of AIDS," Newsweek, Dec. 2, 1996 ¾ a tremendous turnaround from the April, 1993 issue called "Epidemic" that announced :"the public health threat of the century," p 81. See also Christine Gorman, The Disease Detective, Time (Man of the Year), p. 56ff, Dec. 30, 1996. Combination protease inhibitors given very early after exposure might eradicate the virus. Were patients so treated to reinfect themselves through sexual activity, however, they might abet even more drug-resistant strains of HIV. There is optimism that newer combination drugs might be able to eradicate all HIV virus, even from the brain and lymph nodes, in about three years. In February, 2001, Thibotec (of Rockville, Md.) reported a new protease inhibitor that may be more effective against resistance development.  

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 DNA polymerase scans or P24 core antigen.

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, Sept. 4 2003).

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 Washington DC in 2007. It appears that in the long run the bans do not drive away business, but it is reported that adult gay men smoke at twice the rate of the national average. I personally doubt this from observation, and smoking is not nearly as omnipresent in gay bars and dance floors now (2006) as it was in, say, the late 1970s. See the story by Lou Chibbaro in Jan. 6, 2006 The Washington Blade at http://www.washingtonblade.com/2006/1-6/news/localnews/smoke-ban.cfm  Smoking was allowed and a real problem in social centers thirty years ago.

 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 Washington Blade, Oct. 18, 1996, p. 14. A more recent account of the ex-gay movement appeared in the March 7, 1997 Washington Blade.

84a Ch. 3 P 133, fn 84. A Minneapolis television station actually runs a paid ad from an ex-gay group offering a web site and 800 number recruiting gays to "give up the gay lifestyle." It's ironic that the ex-gay group name "Love and Action" follows Rosenfels's polarities.

84b  Tony Kennedy, “Ex-gays talk of homosexuality cure,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, Aug. 13, 2000, p. B1, reports a gathering on ex-gay reparative therapy, “Love Won Out” sponsored by Focus on the Family, at a Missouri Synod Lutheran church (Northern Heights) in Arden Hills, Mn on Aug 12. I was at the “counter protest” led by Out Front Minnesota, and I was surprised by the size of the turnout, reportedly over 1000. Symposium speakers included such notorious figures as John Paulk and Joseph Nicolosi. Speakers reported tended to emphasize conventional ideas such as the Oedipus Complex and in getting “pre-homosexual” boys to take up more manly responsibilities (such as in Growing Up Straight, discussed in Chapter 1).  I doubt that the 1000 attendees were gays seeking change; rather they seemed like straight people with a morbid fascination with a topic and a need for collective ratification for their own lives, which they do not see as choices either.

HRC (Human Rights Campaign) handed out a booklet, Finally Free: Personal Stories: How Love and Self-Acceptance Saved Us from “Ex-Gay” Ministries.” Some of the people (Christopher Camp and Scott Mendelez) I actually know from the 1990’s in Washington.  One of the stories claims that Love and Action actually ran boarding houses for its “clients.”  Another story accounts aversion therapy with electric shocks that actually left burn marks on the person’s arms.

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 Minneapolis “Ballet of the Dolls.”   The ballet depicts victims of AIDS as looking rather like concentration camp victims, in a physical prison with real bars, wearing skin-colored hairnets, some of the dancers totally shaved.  The athletic and professional demands of the dancing profession were well dramatized by Columbia’s Center Stage (2000).  

84d.  On May 9, 2001 Robert L. Spitzer from Columbia University announced, at a New Orleans meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, presented a study of telephone interviews of 200 people, from whom 66% of gay men and 44% of  lesbians apparently “changed” sexual orientation.  However there were serious questions about the credibility of the sample, many of whom had come from religious or ex-gay programs. Spitzer had actually spearheaded the 1973 decision of the APA to remove homosexuality as a listed mental disorder (too late for me!). 

84e  In speaking in a debate to the University of Minnesota Campus Libertarians about gay marriage in December 2001, Libertarian candidate Bob Odden pointed out that a category of persons “homosexuals” was not part of speech until late 19th Century Germany.  As Boswell had pointed out, same-sex love and intimacy had been accepted as “normal” in some ancient cultures (most obviously Greece) and native tribes.

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, June 29, 2005, http://www.washingtonblade.com/2005/7-29/news/national/ex-gay.cfm gave a graphic account of a meeting near Asheville, NC. For example, Jerry Falwell said “parents must intervene. Allowing a teen to be gay is as dangerous as allowing a son or daughter to play on the interstate”, he said. Or, “Men are ready for marriage when their desire to be protected becomes a desire to protect,” Frank Worthen said. “A man should also have three years of celibacy,” he added, “and have been free of pornography and masturbation for some time.”

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 HRC (Joe Solomonese) and Dr. Warren Throckmorton who has produce a film “I Do Exist” which purportedly deals with “change” to the extent that some homosexuals do marry and have kids.  Throckmorton admitted a wide variety of results with ex-gay attempts.

84i  Sandra G. Boodman, “Vowing to Set the World Straight,” presented a story with several articles about the resurgence of reparative therapy in the August 16, 2005 The Washington Post.  Included are (1) the story of Nicholas Cavnar, who had been married for 26 years in an attempt to be heterosexual; the story of Richard A. Cohen, “A Conversion Therapist’s Unusual Odyssey.” The main story reports of some studies, as by Robert Spitzer, who took 16 months to recruit 200 people for treatment, with some “success” but many of these people had religious motivation. There is also NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, cofounded by Joseph Nicolosi (who is credited with the term “reparative therapy”).  About one third of patients treated at the “Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic” are “converted”, about one third reduce their involvement in homosexuality, and about one-third have little change. Incredibly, reparative therapy is sometimes covered by insurance (“a sexual disorder, not otherwise specified”). Again, why is this such a big deal for people? It seems to me that, in a society that is increasingly interconnected, what we considered “private lives” in the 70s and 80s are viewed as having more of an effect on others, and there is moral debate about underlying responsibility to meet the needs of others. Heterosexual courtship, marriage, and parenting is the most natural way to establish a connection to meeting the needs of others, and homosexual values now are sometimes seen as contempt for some kinds of other people. Times change.

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 Vatican statements about homosexuality since the 1980s (and reinforced on the new partial “ban” on gay seminary students). As I had noted in my Introduction, there is a contention of fundamental character development failure, even if biologically influenced. There is the idea that every person needs to learn to reach beyond taking care of himself out to other people “as people” when developing psychosexually, and out of this normal heterosexuality and the ability to maintain lifelong sexual interest in just one partner is supposed to emerge. (Again, call it “aesthetic realism”), as well as a healthful approach to conventional academic and economic advancement in the workplace. Social injustice is seen as an overinvestment in selfishness at a personal level.  Of course, the most common manifestation occurs in the heterosexual world when men bear children and do not take responsibility for them, or use the patriarchal family as a means of self-aggrandizement when the men should remain other-centered and focused on becoming providers and protectors. The non-child-bearing kind, however, is seen as guilty of the same sin, as rejecting responsibility for or accountability to others in exchange for fantasy. Accountability to others (and family responsibility, whether or not one has his own children) becomes a prerequisite for personal freedom in this view, almost as if it could be scored. Less “competitive” men are expected to set aside their concerns for themselves as a demonstration for the need for God, and still maintain accountability to others the same way as “normal” men. The inability of many men to cope with the demands of family is seen as a result of others cheating the system, and of failing to accept sexuality and marriage as a “common element” resource. Therefore the refusal of “inverts” to play along and accept the “obligations” of masculinity becomes a threat to “normal” men who experience social supports and family loyalty as an integrated part of sexual experience. This was the old fashioned view in the 1950s that almost nobody could articulate cleanly. A modern individualist would see this, vulnerability to the personal choices of others, as admitting personal weakness, but that is only after sexuality becomes “privatized.” But modern individualism is willing to leave weaker individuals behind and yank out the social customs and oblications that would protect them within the family.       

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 MCC the next day and eventually became a successful actor.

F88 Chandler Burr, A Separate Creation (New York: Hyperion, 1996). Burr shows there is more discordance among identical twins in left-handedness or juvenile diabetes than in homosexual orientation. Major studies have included LeVay's about brain structure, and, more important, Hamer's National Cancer Institute study showing statistical correlations in region XQ28 of the X-chromosome among gay brothers. See Science, vol. 251: p.321; Guiod Pincheira's "Genes and Sex" in The World and I, Nov., 1996, p. 178. There is other opposition. See Ruth Hubbard's Exploding the Gay Gene Myth. (Boston: Beacon, Press, 1993). Furthermore, Madeleine Nash's Special Report "Fertile Minds," Time, Feb. 3, 1997 suggests that "imprinting" on neural electrical circuits in the developing fetal and child brain can have an enormous effect on behavior and character; if applied to sexual orientation, this means that nurture and biology (though not genetics) are concomitant. Burr covers transsexualism, but its relationship to homosexuality in these biological theories is obscure at best. Rosenfels used to insist that most transvestites (to be distinguished from transsexuals) are straight. Trans-gendered people (by identification or behavior) really comprise a true minority.

88a Ch. 3 P 135, fn 88: Dr. Charles Socarides still insists that 25% of homosexual patients that he treats can "change" who they are, and that 84% "improve." The American Psychological Association has adopted a resolution that psychologists should tell gay patients that homosexuality is normal. Julia Dunn, "Psychologists are told to tell gays they don't need fixing," The Washington Times, Aug. 15, 1997.

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, June 23, 1998, p. 30.

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, September 27, 1999, p. 50. Does this contest my paradigm of absolute accountability of the individual for the self?

88d  On March 31, 2000, on “Good Morning America,” ABC interviewed the author (Marc Breedlove, from Cal-Berkeley) of a Nature article on new studies that show that prenatal hormones may affect sexual orientation of both men and women.  Relative finger length may correlate to sexual orientation, as (for men) does having older brothers.  In men, more obvious secondary sexual characteristics (like voice pitch or chest hair) seem to have no apparent correlation. But ironically, being exposed to more androgens at certain points in gestation seem to correlate with later male homosexuality.  Does it matter?

88e  Randolph E. Schmid of the AP provides a story on May 10, 2005 about a study produced by the National Academy of Sciences that shows that the brain responses of gay men are similar to women after olfactory exposure to certain chemicals, which may be like pheromones for other mammals. Both respond (in regions near the hypothalamus) to some substances related to testosterone and not to some substances related to estrogens (which straight men respond to). The study was presented by Sandra Witelson at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON. A major contributor was Dr. Ivanka Savic at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Nicholas Wade wrote this up as a news story, “For Gay Men, Different Scent of Attraction,” in The New York Times, May 10, 2005. The NYT story reports a concordance (based on the work of Simon LeVay, back to 1991) of homosexual orientation of 52% in identical twins v. 22% in fraternal twins. A “gay gene” could make sense in evolutionary terms if it made women more fertile (or enabled a specific pregnancy) even if the offspring produced fewer children of their own. Steve Pinker provided an op-ed on this “Sniffing Out the Gay Gene” in The New York Times, May 17, 2005.

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, Nov. 17, 1996.

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 First Baptist Church in Dallas in the Autumn of 1980.

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, Feb. 15, 1993.

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, 415-392-4400).

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,” March 15, 2002.

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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