(Charles W. Socarides) Homosexuality - A Freedom T (B-Ok - Xyz)

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Homosexuality
A Freedom Too Far
A Psychoanalyst Answers
1000 Questions About Causes and Cure
and the Impact of the Gay Rights
Movement on American Society
Charles W. Socarides, M.D.

Copyright ©1995 by Charles W. Socarides and Adam Margrave Books
All Rights Reserved
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Note on confidentiality: All casework material in this book has

been carefully disguised to protect confidentiality. All names of
patients and subjects are fictitious. No person may be identified
from material presented herein.
Publisher's Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Socarides, Charles W. (1922 -
A Freedom Too Far
p. cm.
1. Homosexuality. 2. Homosexuality — causes and treatment.
1. Title [DNLM: 1. Gay liberation movement — United States.HQ76.8 U5.
2. Psychosexual development. WM615]
RC 558.H64 1995 616.85'834 — dc 20

ISBN 0-9646642-5-9
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-77106
1098765432
Second Printing
OTHER WORKS BY DR. SOCARIDES
The Overt Homosexual, Grune & Stratton, 1968.
(Also in paperback: Curtis Publishing Co., 1970.)
Beyond Sexual Freedom, Quadrangle, N.Y. Times Book Co.,

1975.
Homosexuality, Jason Aronson Inc., 1978.
On Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Observations (co-edited with

Dr. T. B. Karasu, International Universities Press, 1979.
The World of Emotions: Clinical Studies ofAffects and Their

Expression, International Universities Press, 1977.
The Preoedipal Origin and Psychoanalytic Therapy of Sexual

Perversions, International Universities Press, 1988.
The Homosexualities: Reality, Fantasy, and the Arts, (with

Dr. VamikD. Volkan), International Universities Press, 1991.
The Homosexualities and the Therapeutic Process, (with

Dr. Vamik D. Volkan), International Universities Press, 1992.
Work and Its Inhibitions: Psychoanalytic Essays, (with Dr. Selma

Kramer), International Universities Press, 1996. (In press.)
To my homosexual patients,
whose courage and endurance in the search
for self-knowledge have made this work possible

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: WITNESS 7
"We can manipulate, mismanage and denature
almost anything we put our minds to, and take
pleasure and pride in it."
CHAPTER ONE: DEFINITIONS 15

"Obligatory homosexuals hardly have any other
choice.They are not sexually aroused by, or attracted
to, women. Their activity is not a preference, but a
neurotic adaptation to unconscious fears."
CHAPTER TWO: HISTORY 39

"You say we're coming for your children, and you're
right. We are your queer children. God—your God —
made us that way. And there is nothing you can do
about it."
CHAPTER THREE: IDEOLOGY 61

"From the love that dare not speak its name to the love
that can't shut up— in barely twenty five years."
CHAPTER FOUR: ORIGINS 87

"Given a good father-son relationship, no boy develops
a homosexual pattern."
CHAPTER FIVE: TREATMENT 115

"Doctor, if I weren't in therapy, I'd be dead."
CHAPTER SK: PSYCHIATRY 157

"The psychiatrists were subjected to as shrewd a job of
hidden lobbying as you'd ever see in Washington."
6
CHAPTER SEVEN: MILITARY 183

'You'd think thathomosexual priests could control
themselves.But many of them can't. And if they can't
control themselves, what makes us think that gay
Marines can?"
*
CHAPTER EIGHT: AIDS 205

lam sick ofguys who moan that giving up careless sex
until this thing blows over is worse than death. How
can they value life so little?"
CHAPTER NINE: EDUCATION 241

"Bombarding students with misinformation and
disinformation and enticements to try same-sex sex
—
because they might like it well that's a form of sexual
subversion"
CHAPTER TEN: PARENTS 277

may help to realize that there are some terrible
"It
parents who don't have this problem, and some great

parents who do."
CHAPTER ELEVEN: SOCIETY 285

"Thisbreakdown of the family could only happen in a
society that seems to have decided, over the past 20
years, that dads were optional, single mothers were
chic, and recreational sex normal, even for children"
INDEX 313
INTRODUCTION:
WITNESS
'We can manipulate, mismanage and denature almost

anything we put our minds to, and take pleasure and
pride in it."
Some say gays were born that way. Some say homosexuality is a
choice. Few mention a third possibility —that homosexuality is
unconsciously determined in a child's early years, and that we have a

practical science that can grapple with those unconscious
beginnings. It is called psychoanalysis, and it is a science that can
bring freedom to the lives of many who are stuck in a place they
would not otherwise choose.
From the beginning of my practice in New York City, I have tried
to use my science —my psychoanalytic skills —to help hundreds of
homosexuals. I tell them, "We are all products of how we were treated
when we were very small. Whatever conflicts we have now took root
in the soil we were planted in long ago. But, unlike plants, we are not
stuck to those roots. We can move. We can change. Our often
tortured pasts need not be our destiny. Our capacity of healing and
repair is greater than we know."
I have spent most of my professional life, some 40 years, helping
homosexuals get on with that healing and repair, and, in many cases,
find happiness in marriage and a family. In doing this work it is —
8 A Freedom Too Far
partly like detective work and partly like gardening — I have come to
learn about the mysterious, but imperative, drives that force men and
women into same-sex sex (it is only one of a variety of sexual
deviations, sometimes called philias), and about the things a doctor
can do to help them overcome these drives. Out of this experience, I
have produced some 80 works on homosexuality, most of them in
learned journals, so that I can help other doctors deal with all the
thousands of men and women out there who are not happy with their
orientation and want to change. If they want to change, I am here to
say they can. For the past 20 years, this fact has been one of the
better-kept secrets in our society. I think it is time to let the secret out.
Why now? Because now, to me, homosexuality has become more
than one of the many psychological disorders that walk into my office
almost every day. Now homosexuals have co-opted the civil rights
movement in the U.S., and made same-sex sex into a kind of civil
liberty. Some lower courts and the mainstream mass media seem to
have endorsed this view in the name of tolerance: "Nice people," they
say, "good democratic people, do not discriminate against others
merely because they are different."
Yes. But we have to distinguish between tolerance and approval.
Because homosexuals are compelled by unconscious forces within
them, they have the right to do what they do with willing partners and
not be persecuted for it by members of the heterosexual majority
who should live and let live, in the spirit of tolerance that has made
this country great. But we have to avoid putting homosexuality on a
par with heterosexuality.
I know this is not a popular view. But in light of so much false
information and outright disinformation about homosexuality, I

must insist on it here, because this is my field of expertise. I can see
that many millions of people who never thought much about
homosexuality before are confused. I have been flooded with calls
from people asking basic questions. They ask, "What do homosexuals
want? What do homosexuals do? Why do they do it? How do
homosexuals differ from heterosexuals? Are they a special class of
people? Are their numbers growing? Have they been persecuted? Are
they better than heterosexuals? Or worse? Or just the same?"
Some of the calls have come from parents, suddenly told by their
children that, "Hey, mom, hey, dad, we're gay." Their initial reaction
was shock. Their second reaction was, "Was it something we did, or
didn't do?" Their third reaction was to phone me, to ask, "Is this
Witness 9
normal? Or a case of arrested development? Or what?"

Some calls have come from people in public life —from school
—
board members, legislators, and administrators who wanted to do
the right thing for society at large, and still be fair to gays and
lesbians. These people asked, "What, if anything, should society do
about homosexuals? Do homosexuals have a reasonable call on all
the civil rights that are now established by law for women and other
minorities? Are homosexuals to enjoy the benefits of affirmative
action programs? Should employers be forced to hire a certain
percentage of gays and lesbians? Or do they represent a threat to
society in general and to the institution of the family in particular?
Are they planning to seduce our youth? Is the AIDS plague a gay
disease? Are homosexuals a threat to public health?"
They had other questions: "Is society a threat to homosexuals? Do
homosexuals need special laws to protect them? Why do they want to
establish new laws giving same-sex marriages the same legal standing
as marriage between men and women? Should homosexuals be
allowed to adopt children? What kind of parents will they be? Do gay
or lesbian parents train their children to become homosexuals, too?
Do homosexuals belong in the military? And, if they do, what kind of
legitimacy will that give homosexuals in every other public arena?"
I have tried to answer people's questions as simply as I could. But
the questions keep coming, especially from the press. And so, after a
lifetime of writing mostly for members of my own profession, I have
book that brings everything together in a familiar, question-
written a
and-answer format. In this I had a model, Galileo's Dialogue on the
World's Great Systems. Galileo didn't invent this form. Plato, for one,
used it to great effect a long time before Galileo. But Galileo used it
because he wanted to get his ideas across to the people at large, in the
vernacular Italian, rather than to members of his own scientific
community, who then published their work in Latin.
Because I have chosen, with the help of a prominent journalist, to
write in the vernacular, I must caution my readers: some of my
statements may come across as shocking, or crude, or too graphic
even pornographic. I can only say that these words derive from the
subject matter itself; they are not meant to tititillate, or amuse, or
promote prejudice or bias. I hope, further, that my writing in the
vernacular does not betray the precisions that my colleagues and I
have achieved through our practical and theoretical research in the
field of psychoanalysis. In this text I have, of course, disguised the
10 A Freedom Too Far
identities of my patients, who have given me permission to use
certain accounts of a highly personal nature that would be otherwise
confidential.
I should also add that I have not come to my opinions by reason of
my expertise in psychoanalysis alone. In this book, I will be wearing
two hats: one, as a clinician who has spent his entire career treating
emotional disorders of all kinds, and two, as a kind of social critic who
has spent more than four decades trying to apply my psychoanalytic
knowledge problems of society.
to the
As a social critic dealing with the societal ramifications of
homosexuality, I have had to consult with experts in other fields,
authorities in anthropology and sociology and political science and
wisdom helps inform my insights, as, I hope, my wisdom
ethics. Their
helps inform theirs, because American society needs as much
wisdom as it can muster here. For homosexuality and the way this —
—
nation chooses to deal with it is also an ethical and political
question that will call upon the collective wisdom of many regarding
the general and specific ends of human sexuality.
What is sex for? Until this century, the question hardly ever arose.
Everyone knew that sex was for making babies. With the coming of
certain revolutionary technologies — I am thinking of all the mass
media, as well as the invention of various birth control devices,
—
including the pill sex has become infinitely complicated, and
fraught with ambiguity, as we head into a new century that can only
become increasingly complex, and, alas, more confusing than ever.
A contemporary French philosopher sums up our confusion
about love and sex: "When two beings embrace, they don't know
what they are doing, they don't know what they want, they don't
know what they are looking for, they don't know what they are
finding." This philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, noted that men and women
might find the meaning of sex embedded in ancient myths, but he
was somewhat skeptical about that, because, he said, sex is
primordial, pre-linguistic, infra-linguistic, para-linguistic, super-
linguistic. "It mobilizes language, true," wrote Ricoeur, "but it
it, pulverizes it into a murmur,
crosses, jostles, sublimates, stupefies
an invocation. Sexuality demediatizes language; it is Eros and not
Logos."
In trying, now, to write about the meaning of sexuality, therefore,
I realize I am entering into murky territory. In fact, I may be a fool
rushing in where angels fear to tread. Gore Vidal, the author, who is
Witness 11
no fool,and who has had few unpublished thoughts about any

subject at all during his long life in letters, has chosen to have no
thoughts about the meaning of sex. He wrote in 1960, "Sex is. Sex
gives no meaning to anything in life but itself." Vidal was also an
agnostic about homosexuality. In 1985, he wrote, "There is no such
thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only
homo- or heterosexual acts.... What anyone does with a willing
partner is of no social or cosmic significance."
But I must rush in, because I believe human sexuality does have a
social and at least a global, if not cosmic, significance that is now
under assault. This is something that the human race has long taken
for granted: men and women mate with one another, and they have
children, and this phenomenon is what keeps humanity going,
generation after generation.
moment in history, however, what was long
At this particular
taken for granted hascome under significant challenge. A new sexual
liberation has become inextricably bound to the concept of freedom.
This sounds good. Most enlightened people would wish for true
sexual freedom, for themselves as individuals, and for society as a
whole. As human beings, we all deserve a sexual bill of rights granting
us the inalienable right to sexual expression and satisfaction in
accordance with our needs and desires in the context of joy, love and
tenderness, and not subject to unreasoned taboos and the sometimes
ignorant voices of authority.
Ask average people how they feel about homosexuality and many
of them will say, "Why not? As long as nobody is hurt, then what
harm?" They are aware of rapidly changing sexual codes, but their
lives are rarely touched by these new ways. Or so they think. But
changes in sexual behavior do not long remain merely interesting
items in the news. Now, it seems that homosexuality has also
become a social movement, even a fashionable pose. And that means
trouble ahead, mainly for our children, and their children, who look
for guidance from their elders on how to use the great gift of sex, but
are being told, instead, by some moderns that, in sexual matters,
"anything goes." Already, an effort to educate the children of New
York's public schools toward greater tolerance of gays and lesbians
(which I applaud) has led to outright approval of the freedom to enjoy
same-sex sex (which I do not applaud).
For the past several years, some very chic people from the straight
—
world have been attempting to copy gay ways of being much as they
copied black fashions in the 1960s. In 1993, Gentlemen's Quarterly

published a cover story on 'The Straight Queer" detailing how —
"many prominent heterosexuals are aping the gay sensibility as a
kind of grand fashion." A figure from New York's drag scene became a
fixture in The New York Times "Style" section. New York magazine ran
a cover story called "Lesbian Chic." A straight rock musician named
Kurt Cobain admitted he was "definitely gay in spirit" some months
before he took his own Barbra Streisand and Elizabeth Taylor
life.
became active in gay causes. A good many college students were

pretending to be gay. In November 1993, Newsweek reported that "at
high schools around the country, multiculturalism has begun to
embrace multisexualism. With or without official blessing, student
gay organizations have cropped up in Chicago, Berkeley, Miami,
Minneapolis, New York. In Massachusetts alone, more than a
hundred public and private schools have such groups, including
George Bush's alma mater, Andover."
All of this in the name of freedom. But we have to look more
closely at this freedom. Freedom for what? Freedom from what? Does
this freedom bring real happiness and enrichment, or only easy
answers and empty promises? Is any form of sexual behavior as good
as any other? Are we better off if we are free of responsibility and free
from the constraints of tradition? Can we say, "The family is not
working, let's try no family?" Can we say, "Man-woman sex isn't
satisfying, let's try same-sex sex?" Can we say, "Tradition isn't
working, let's try non-tradition?" Can we "The world's basic
say,
design is all wrong, let's turn the design upside down?"
As Midge Decter, a renowned editor and keen reporter, has said,
"We did not create the universe. Nor is it ours to recreate by fiat.
When a society engages, as our does at the moment, in supporting
the idea that there is a moral equivalence between heterosexuality
and homosexuality—you have it your way and I'll have it mine it is —
not supporting the virtue of tolerance but rather opening the way for
an inversion of reality itself. What it really means is that we are as a
culture being asked to eradicate the core idea of human existence,
that we call off the central requirement of life itself. For life requires of
men and women precisely that they accommodate to one another's
natures, that they sink their individual selves in a union that will be
greater than the sum of its separate parts, and in so doing get on with
the business of submitting to the future."
This Introduction is not the place to get into a lengthy discussion
Witness 13
about the nature of nature. In the past century, we have seen a

multitude of technological advances that have helped us harness
nature and control the environment around us. We have built dams
and levees, for example, to protect us from raging floods, and we have
seeded clouds to bring on the rain. We have developed vaccines
against malaria and smallpox and polio and extended life spans
across the world with the invention of penicillin and a multitude of
antibiotics. We have even begun to understand the genetic codes
inside our own bodies and change blueprints of disease that we once
considered innate and therefore immutable. I am all for these
alterations of nature, because they extend life and make it more
livable.
But this redrawing of the male-female design is a different kind of
engineering altogether, one that doesn't extend life, or make it more
only barren. It is a mind game that dares to exempt
fruitful,
humankind from the sexual bi-polarity that runs up the entire ladder
of earthly being. It is the same kind of hubris that has marked the
deadly history of the 20th Century. We dare to say we know best? Just
exactly why we think we know best is hard to fathom in a century
marked by social engineers in possession of mad solutions —from
Karl Marx's solution of the economic problems of mankind, to
Hitler's Final Solution of Nazi Germany's "Jewish problem," to Pres.
Truman's atomic re-solution of World War II. As the development of
nuclear weapons (and all the environmental after-effects of their
production) has demonstrated over the past half-century, we can
manipulate, mismanage and denature almost anything we put our
minds to, and take pleasure and pride in it.
The time has come for someone to call this sexual re-formation
into question, and try to de-code the clever rationalizations worked
out by gay and lesbian politicians to lessen their own psychic pain. If
there's one thing I know as a psychoanalyst, I know this: people don't
get to the bottom of their pain by lying about it, to themselves or to
—
the world much less by creating what a critic of the movement calls
"an upside down moral universe, which is just another way of saying
a general, community- wide dementia."
If it takes a fool to rush in and do this job —
well, so be it. My hope
is that I can put some of the popular nonsense to rest, and offer an
informed defense for good, old-fashioned sex between men and

women, and for the old-fashioned loving family. The homosexual
rights movement claims a freedom to alter that basic design, to assert
that forms of sexual relations are equal and indistinguishable. But
all
this freedom,I submit, is not ours to fulfill. It is a freedom that goes
too far, because it undoes us all. It is a freedom that seeks to overturn

not only the history of the human race, but to subvert its future as
—
well a freedom that dares to re-form the most basic institution of
society, the nuclear family, an institution that is written in our
natures, and evolved over eons.
s *
CHAPTER ONE:
DEFINITIONS
&
"Obligatory homosexuals hardly have any other choice.
They are not sexually aroused by, or attracted to, women.
Their activity is not a preference, but a neurotic
adaptation to unconscious fears.
What is homosexuality?
Same-sex sex. As an historical fact, we think men and women had
same-sex sex dating back to antiquity. But no one attempted to see
same-sex sex as a condition or state of being that described a
particular class of persons until the term Homosexualitat first
appeared in German in 1869, then made its way into English two
decades later.
Who coined he term?

KM. Benkert, writing in Germany under the pseudonym of Kertbeny.
Carl Westphal, a professor of psychiatry in Berlin, published the first
case history of a homosexual. His patient happened to be a woman

living with what he called "contrary sexual feeling." In the years that
followed, Dr. Westphal went on to study more than 200 cases of men
and women who were into same-sex sex.
Now what do you mean by same-sex sex?

To start out simply, it is men having sex with other men. Or women
having sex with other women.
You say "simply. " Is same-sex sex more complicated than this?
Yes, and we should probably come back to this later. But the
it is,
sexual landscape does get cluttered by those who are caught up in

sexual ambiguity. A piece by Kate Bornstein in the Spring 1993 issue
of a magazine out of San Francisco called 10 Percent describes her
named Catherine who is undergoing a sex
relationship with a lesbian
change; she will soon be known as David. What makes things even
more confusing is that Ms. Bornstein was once a man. She now
describes herself as "a bisexual heterosexual lesbian gay male
woman who is in a committed relationship with a lesbian
transsexual
man named David." In her article, Ms. Bornstein says that "woman is
a social construct" which, in turn, means to her that there's "nothing
essential about being a woman."
Uh, yes, maybe we'd better come back to this later. First things first.
How do men have sex with men?
Holding hands, kissing, cuddling, giving each other massages,
whatever brings on erotic feelings and leads to orgasm. Same-sex sex
is a kind of substitute, or simulation, for sex between men and
women.
In this simulation, does one of the partners always take the part of
the woman, and the other the man?
No. Sometimes, they switch roles. Sometimes, they do each other

simultaneously.
Why do they do that?

They say it feels good.
What feels good?

The orgasm, the release. For obligatory homosexuals, the orgasm
releases a special tension, or anxiety.
What are "obligatory" homosexuals?
Homosexuals who engage in same-sex sex because they hardly have

any other choice. They are not sexually aroused by, or attracted to,
women. Their activity is not a preference, but a neurotic adaptation
Definitions 17
to unconscious fears. And so, for the most part, I would go along with
the insistence of gay activists who maintain that their lifestyle is more
"orientation" than "preference."
But why does this orientation drive them to other men?
Their unconscious fears are fears of women. But, such is the power of
the sex drive, that they are driven to men who will provide an
approximation of women, so they can attain some kind of orgastic
release. Sometimes, however, the mechanisms get very complicated. I
had one patient who saw same-sex partners as both male and
his
female. "When I'm attracted to a man," he said, "I suddenly feel very
small and weak, like I am five years old. Like, I see him as daddy. But I
don't really like the feel of a man's beard. A man has to be soft and
have some feminine qualities. In that way, I feel like I can have a love
relationship with someone who can be both mother and father to me.
That can make me truly happy, like I am sort of re- united with both
my mother and my father."
"Sort of re-united?" What does that mean?
The mechanism behind this drive is deeply buried inside obligatory
homosexuals, under a maze of rationalizations calculated to justify
their actual avoidance of the opposite sex.
What kind of rationalizations?

The major rationalization is that they were "born that way."
And how do they know this?

The false evidence is that they had an early interest in same- sex sex.
In a way, it is easier for them to say, "This is just the way we are." And
much, much easier when they read news stories about "new,
homosexual tendencies are "in
scientific discoveries" indicating that
their genes" or "in theirhypothalamus." In fact, most obligatory
homosexuals simply don't know that something went wrong in their
earliest years. As a result, they fear women, they feel there's
something lacking in their manhood, and they go looking for that
manhood, compulsively, in other men.
Are there homosexuals who are not driven to this activity by some
compulsion?
Yes. Some men and women engage in same-sex sex out of simple
utility, and, searching for variational experience, by choice. They're
not homosexuals at all, although they are sometimes referred to as
optional homosexuals. According to results of the National Health
and Social Life Survey, presented to the American Association for the
Advancement of Science in February 1995, only half of the men in the
survey who had same-sex sex since they turned 18 considered
themselves to be homosexual or bisexual. Prison inmates are a good
example of the optional homosexual. They have no one of the
opposite sex available. So they indulge in same-sex sex, as the French
say, faut de mieux, for want of something better. Some young men do
it to advance their careers. Some actors, for example. They have made
it into the movies by going to bed with directors or producers who
prefer same- sex sex.
Would you include bisexuals in this class?

Some bisexuals are really obligatory homosexuals who have
overcome their fear of women enough to attempt to have sex with
them. They get little or no pleasure in this; their real thrills come from
having sex with other men. But there are other bisexuals whom I put
in the category of optional homosexuals —men who can, and do, go
both ways. There's something different about them, too, but it
doesn't seem that they're caught up in any kind of compulsion.
Often, they're the kind who use people for their own ends, then cast
them loose —which is one definition of a sociopath. But they're not
true obligatory homosexuals. Freud talked about "constitutional
bisexuals." But 25 years after he borrowed that concept "from
biology," Freud wrote, "The concept of bisexuality is still very
obscure...if we assume it to be a fact that each individual has both
male and female desires which need satisfaction in their sexual life."
In this matter, I am afraid that Freud never got beyond his
assumptions, which I think were mistaken.
So there are two kinds of homosexuals, obligatory and optional

homosexuals? Those who indulge in same-sex sex because they're
compelled to do so, and those go for same-sex sex because they
consciously elect it?
Those compelled are in the grip of unconscious forces and early-life

traumas over which they have no control. The others do have control;
they get into same-sex sex because they like it. Both types, however,
can be seduced into same-sex sex. According to one study of
Definitions 19
homosexual men done in 1990, some 37 percent of them were

seduced into same-sex sex at by an uncle, or someone
an early age,
much seduced
older. Or, in the case of lesbians, by an older woman.
Childhood sexual seductions are an obvious cause of homosexuality.
When these seductions give pleasure and comfort, the same-sex sex
can become addictive, especially when it overtakes someone caught
up in a traumatic family situation. The sex so quick and easy can— —
help relieve a person's anxiety. Thus, it becomes a kind of habit. Like
any habit, smoking for instance, it is acquired by repeated acts. And,
like smoking, it is a habit that can be hard to kick. That's the way it is
with addictions that give great pleasure. Dr. Alfred Kinsey believed
that a good many men of his acquaintance were stuck in same-sex sex
because that was the first sex they'd experienced as children or
adolescents. They grew to like it. For them, homosexuality is a true
"preference." But they could change their orientation rather easily if —
they wanted to.
How do you describe obligatory homosexuals?

Obligatory homosexuals are caught up in intense needs, entirely
unconscious, to find their masculinity.
How are these homosexuals differentfrom heterosexuals?

The most obvious way is this: obligatory homosexuals have sex with
other men, repeatedly and out of some inner compulsion. It is not a
matter of preference at all. They have no choice in the matter. They
can't help themselves. Some of them may need sex as much as the
—
average human needs air or water to breathe and survive.
Couldn't we say that normal, red-blooded heterosexual males have

the same inner compulsions? Aren't they driven to have sex too, but f
with women?
Yes.When a man makes a sexual move toward a woman, he's
approaching her in his identity as a man, seeking to complement his
maleness by joining it to a woman's femaleness in the act of coitus.
With that, he feels more than fulfilled. He vicariously enjoys her
femininity while he holds intact within himself a sense of his own
masculinity. The homosexual, on the other hand, approaches another
man with a deficient sense of his masculinity, or an undue sense of
his femininity, and tries to fill up the void within himself by taking in
the masculinity of another man. But after this homosexual
intercourse, he's never filled. He always wants more. After

heterosexual intercourse, healthy heterosexual males are satisfied.
They may want two or three or more times with their woman.
to do it
But they won't go out immediately and look for two or three or more
other women.
Wilt Chamberlain, the famous basketball star, once claimed he'd

had sex with 20,000 women.
If that's true, I'd say that he has the same kind of high anxiety that I've
found inmany homosexuals. This is not normal behavior. It is more
typical of someone who is trying to prove something to himself about
his masculinity. Mr. Chamberlain might consider checking out what
causes these imperative needs, which, apparently, can only be
satiated by repeated sex.
Do many homosexuals have this kind ofanxiety?

Yes. The homosexuals I have treated — the ones who can't help
themselves —
are caught up in this anxiety, one that can only be
relieved by repeated sex with a variety of other men. Other studies
confirm my own patient-findings. Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg did
a celebrated study in 1978 of more than a thousand gay men. They
reported that 28 percent of their sample had had more than 1,000
partners, and only three percent of them had had ten or fewer
partners. have had patients who leave my office in upper
I
Manhattan, then stop at a gay bar on the way home so they can have
sex with a man. Sometimes, they will stop at three or four subway
bathrooms, otherwise known as tearooms, and have sex with three or
four consecutive partners in an effort to relieve their anxiety.
With men they know?

No. I'm not talking about personal, loving relationships here. Most
often, it's just anonymous sex they want. So anonymous that some
gay bars have "glory holes" drilled, at various heights, in the toilet
partitions. The man who wants this kind of anonymous sex goes into
a and knocks on the wall. If he's lucky, someone on the other
stall
side of the wall will stick his penis through the hole. That's one reason
why so many health problems began to emerge among men in the
gay community during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Why then?
Definitions 21
Once they decriminalized sodomy in a number of our most populous

states, including New York, Illinois, and California, we saw a
proliferation of gay bath houses.
Would you like to see sodomy criminalized?

It's still against the law in almost half the states in the U.S. I don't
know how often the law's enforced in those places, or under what
circumstances. But law has an educative function. Decriminalize
anything —such as the use of crack cocaine—and you may be saying
it's okay. There's a popular cliche that "you can't legislate morality."
But, asTy and Jeannette Beeson of The Lambda Report have pointed
out, "We not only can legislate morality, we must. Liberals do it all the
time. Observe them as they muster moral arguments in favor of
... ...
gun control or the environment." There's an ongoing debate on this

question. And good people on both sides of the debate. But I don't
see much debate going on right now about sodomy.
What are gay bathhouses?

Places where gays around wearing nothing but a towel, drink, take
sit
drugs, and have one-on-one sex in darkened little cubicles, or orgies

in large rooms.
Is that what went on in the gay bath houses?
There was a great deal of same-sex anonymous. Randy

sex, often
Shilts, the writer from San Francisco, described the bath house
culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s quite objectively, but quite
vividly. He said people didn't go there to bath, but to have sex, "and
you wouldn't even have to see who you had sex with." In San
Francisco, there was one bathhouse called The Cornhole Club,
another called The Glory Hole, and another known as The Bulldog
Baths, decorated to look like a two-story prison, with real cells and
real bars on the cells. Shilts called the bathhouse scene a "sexual
Disneyland" in his book, And The Band Played On. HBO made the
book into a movie.
That was a story about the beginning ofAIDS?

Right. And though he was gay himself, made it pretty clear that
Shilts,
he was disturbed about all the promiscuity of these years. Some gays,
he reported, would have dozens of sexual encounters in a single
evening.
Dozens? Can a man have sex dozens of times in one night?

No, not normally. But same-sex sex doesn't have to mean that a man
will have dozens of orgasms. He could, of course, be sodomized a
dozen times by a dozen different individuals. But I've had some
patients who don't need such primitive fixes. Sometimes conquest is
enough. Some of them have told me about their "cruising" in a gay
bar, or in a gay neighborhood, like the West Village in New York,
where the principal object is simply to catch the eye of another gay,
and effect some kind of emotional surrender.
In this case, what does surrender mean?

One my patients once told me, "The look in the eye of a man who
of
has indicated that he wants me—that's a triumph." got the same I
story from a number of my other patients.
Just being wanted? That's enough?
Such an encounter may be enough to alleviate the anxiety an

obligatory homosexual feels. I call it "a narcissistic restoration of the
self."
Narcissistic?
Many gays are in love with an image of themselves. You remember

the myth of Narcissus? He fell in love with his own reflection in the
pond. From that myth, we've adopted the term narcissism. It means
—
being in love with yourself or with your own image to the —
exclusion of any other consideration.Now many homosexuals are in
search of some image of themselves, and seek out other men
ideal
who can supply what they think they are lacking. They feel imperfect.
They search for others who can make up for that imperfection.
So, getting —
back to cruising narcissistic gays (or lesbians) get some
kind of pleasure out offinding others "across a crowded room' who
1
indicate by a look, or a gesture, that they wouldn 't mind having sex?
Yes. But that isn't all they do. The conquest that begins with a look
will generally end up in the bedroom. Or in the bushes.
But some gays insist they do not go out cruising.

Then I'd have to take them at their word. On the other hand, some
gays —and I'm not only talking about my patients now, I think this is
Definitions 23
true of a majority of gay males —they say they're always looking for
action.
And what about the other end, the primitive end of the spectrum?
Well, that calls for something more physical sometimes even —

—
perverse extremes. Some homosexuals like to be whipped or
—
beaten what they call "rough trade." It is just one more example of
what I call the tyranny of gay sex. Obligatory homosexuals are always
on the lookout for something new, some new orgastic pleasure that
can fill up the void that is inside them. That's why many in the gay
community have tried to intensify their sexual experience with drugs.
But I knew some heteros in the 1 960s who were doing this, too.
I'm sure you did. But that doesn't make it normal or, much less,—
something that society wants to encourage. That 1995 study that I
have just mentioned, the National Health and Social Science Survey,
revealed essentially no difference between active homosexuals and
heterosexual men in the frequency of sex. Based on my own clinical
experience, I have to challenge that finding. Homosexual men are far
more promiscuous than their counterparts in the heterosexual world.
But if straight males are as sexually active as gays, then I'd say they,
too, are deviant. Straights as well as gays can deviate from norms
established by society for centuries. That has been part of what we
called "the sexual revolution." Those who joined that revolution had a
new norm: sex-in-itself was a good-in-itself.
Sex-in-itself?
Impersonal sex, sex for the sake of sex, which was expressed in a
saying that became popular in the 1960s, "If it feels good, do it." As
the sexual revolution warmed up in the 1960s, the sex-in-itself crowd

started with amyl nitrate, or "poppers." Poppers came in glass vials.
You broke them open just as you were ready to come; the amyl nitrate
created an extra "rush" and prolonged orgasm. Then it was grass,
then hash, then a more potent form of hash called Thai stick, and
then speed and then LSD. They pulled back from LSD when they
found that some of their people were launching themselves out of
fifth-story windows, thinking they could defy the laws of gravity.
(They didn't break the law of gravity; the law of gravity broke them.)
Then they turned to cocaine, which was also supposed to intensify
the sexual experience.
You're a physician as well as a psychoanalyst What do doctors think
of anal sex?
It's a great way to kill yourself. In fact, extreme forms of it cause
bleeding lacerations of the intestine and tearing of the sphincter
muscle and the anal mucosa. Sometimes the anal sex reaches all the
way up into the sigmoid colon, which can lead to a fatal infection of
the peritoneum. Doctors who
deal with AIDS patients say that these
internal wounds enormous opportunity for the entrance
also provide
and spread of the AIDS virus and other infections.
So why do some homosexuals engage in this kind of dangerous

activity?
It them psychic pleasure, a kind of relief. When

gives Silverstein and
White, authors of a book called The Joy of Gay Sex., talk about the
after-feeling of "great tranquillity," I have to think of it as some kind
of fix.
Like that of a heroin addict?

Yes.
And, after the fix, how long does the relief last?
Unfortunately, the relief is only a temporary one. Like heroin addicts
in need of periodic fixes, they always seem to need more. There's a
sub-culture inside the gay culture called SM. Sado-masochism.
To what end?
These men are in a good deal of psychic pain, connected to their
perverse and compulsive needs, and that lasts until they're
penetrated, or punished. The physical pain seems to drive away the
psychic pain —for a time. And that's why we call it a pathology.
You mean a sickness?

Yes. You're physically sick when one part or another of your body fails
You could have a sore knee, or an infected eye. That's
to function.
usually accompanied by some pain. But I'm not talking about a
physical sickness. I'm talking about psychic pain, pain in the soul.
The soul? That's an old-fashioned word.

Yes, it is. But that's how we translate the Greek word psyche: soul.
This is what psych -ologists and psych-iatrists deal with —the soul, or,
Definitions 25
as we say, man's spirit.
What word do you use for those who don 't believe they have a soul?
Everything about them that isn't "body." Their thoughts. And their
feelings —which are triggered by their thoughts.
And what's sick about a homosexuals thoughts and feelings?
After sex,an obligatory homosexual is tortured with doubts and fears
and guilts about himself. He has very little concern for the other. He's
all wrapped up in himself. And, shortly after he's relieved his anxieties
with his orgastic release, he soon finds that he's anxious again. He's
in pain. He may want to shoot himself. Or join a religious order. By
contrast, a heterosexual, after he's had sex, is bright eyed and bushy
tailed. He feels good. He can say, "I am me, John, a man with a penis.
I can use it to make my woman laugh with pleasure and cry out in
ecstasy."
So, in homosexual sex, what's really going on?

The same-sex partners feel pleasure in their orgastic release. But it's
very transitory, very temporary. It goes away so quickly that they

often need to do again and again, and often with a succession of
it
other men. This what most marks homosexuality as abnormal

is —
freezing of behavior into patterns that do not change. It's the
automatic repetition that makes it pathological. This may be the most
basic lesson that psychoanalysts have learned about human conduct.
But we do not look upon a single act as neurotic —only if it is the
product of processes that predetermine a tendency to automatic
repetition. German doctors could easily ignore an isolated act on the
principle, einmal ist keinmal. "Once is nothing."
Isthat all that goes on in the same-sex sex of an obligatory

—
homosexual automatic repetition?
I have also found a great deal of aggression. Aggressive fantasies
during sex.
Can we talk about women having sex with women? Are they violent,
too?
Women arouse one kisses, and they come

another with touches and
to climax, generally, by a mutual stimulation of the nipples and the
clitoris, sometimes with their fingers, sometimes with their mouths.
Some lesbians are very good at this. They maintain that they, being
women, know how to satisfy another woman better than any man
can. Obviously, since women don't have penises, they may insert
their fingers — or a penis-shaped rod called a dildo — into their
partner's vagina and imitate the action of a man's penis.
So it's fake sex again ?

Well, the orgasms are real orgasms, accompanied by all the usual
shudderings and contractions and involuntary muscle spasms, the
result of an increased flow of blood to the genital area. There's just no
possibility of any biological reproduction, because there's no union,
in same- sex sex, of sperm and egg.
Isn't that what sex is all about —biological reproduction?

Well, that's generally true in the animal world, where sex is always
procreative. A mare isn't ready to take a stallion until she is in heat
her egg ready to receive the implantation of the stallion's sperm. In
humans, over a half million years of evolution, sex has come to have
other uses. Men and women have sex for a variety of other reasons
that have nothing to do with making babies.
Like what?
Power plays a bigger role than we usually care to consider. But
pleasure has always been at the heart of the exercise. The physical
and psychological pleasure, the ecstasy, that occurs when a man and
a woman come together in total intimacy.
Where does procreation come in?

Most of us do not think much about that aspect when we're having
sex. That's why we call the act of intercourse "making love" and not
"making babies." It's obvious that nature designed us this way,
generously coating the act of reproduction with the most intense
pleasure we can have, to insure the survival of the species and the
future evolution of life.
Is this making love an instinctive thing in men and women?

My colleagues and I believe that the search for erotic pleasure is
instinctive. The direct impact of hormones upon the brain is the

physiological basis of erotic arousal. Most of us interpret this as an
instinctual drive for sexual expression. We all have that. But the ways
Definitions 27
in which that drive is played out are not instinctive, but, rather,
learned behaviors. Men and women do not get together because of
some "chromosomal tagging."
Whoa. Chromosomal tagging?

The sexual impulse doesn't come from the chromosomes, and it isn't
our chromosomes that help us decide what kind of sex we like. That
decision come from the part of our brain called the human cortex,
which is the repository of our feelings, memories, dreams and
dreads —as well as our reason. At the deepest level of instinct, there's
nothing in the male blueprint that says he can only get sexual
pleasure with a woman, and nothing in the female blueprint that says
she can only get pleasure from a man. He can come in his own hand,
or in a sheep, or in the mouth of another man, or in his anus. She can
—
come under the stimulus of a fingernail or a feather.
So, men and women aren't born heterosexuals?

You just asked the $64,000 question. So, hold on. If I can borrow a
phrase from a classic Hollywood movie, "All About Eve," you're in for
a bumpy ride. No, men and women aren't born homosexuals. Neither
heterosexuality nor homosexuality are in the genes. These
orientations come about in the process called growing up with a
sense of self- identity, or gender-identity. In a normal family, boys and
girls come to their identities as boys or girls very quickly. That seems
—
to be nature's design after centuries of evolution. Their anatomies
tell them something of the human biological design. Boys and girls
quickly learn that when, in a few years, they become men and
women, they will not only fit together in a wondrous and exciting
—
way. They may also generate babies roughly half of whom will turn
out to be boy-babies and half girl-babies. (That, too, ought to tell us
something about nature's design.) And then, their families and their
friends tell them something of the human social design; their boy-
ness or their girl-ness is reinforced by cultural indoctrination and
environmental expectations. Those expectations begin first in the
nuclear family unit. Then they're fostered by the institurions of
society, by customs and laws. And also by the songs they sing. Most
popular songs are love songs. And by the stories they're told. In our
society, the storytelling functions have been taken over by the mass
media, by the movies, by television. Many of those stories are love
stories. The media keep telling them over and over —
because that's
what most people want.
Why? Why do people love love stories?

By the time they're watching TV, they've already been programmed.
Whether they know it or not, they're fascinated with a plan in which
they themselves will probably play a role. The plan is called survival
of the species. They see the design everywhere in plant life, in sea —
creatures, in the birds of the air, in the insect world, in the animals of
the forest and plain. Whatever else and can become,
it is, this male-
female polarity is aimed at procreation. If you do enough to tamper
with that bi-polar reality, the human species will become extinct.
Is there any danger of that? Could homosexuality lead to the death of

the human race?
Taken to its limit, it could.
You mean if every man started making it only with men, and every
woman only with other women?
Obviously.
But why does anyone think such a situation would ever come about?
I don't really think it ever will. I find it hard to believe that a current
socio-politicalmovement, predicated on the notion that any form of
sexual behavior is as good as another, can un-do thousands of years
of evolutionary selection and programming. Man is not only a sexual

animal, but a care-bonding, group-bonding, and child-rearing
animal. The male-female design is taught to the child from birth and
culturally ingrained through the basic unit of society, the family. This
sex design is anatomically determined, asit derives from cells which
in the evolutionary scale underwent changes into organ systems and

finally into individuals reciprocally adapted to each other, who form
families.
But who knows what will happen? This is an age of great marvels.
We have been to the moon....
We have also invented the hydrogen bomb, and produced more than
20,000 nuclear warheads for remote delivery anywhere in the world.
Only a few of them, indiscriminately launched, could wipe out most
of the life on the planet. Never underestimate the ability of men to
screw things up. I can imagine a scenario in which a society could
r
Definitions 29
become mainly homosexual.
How?
Imagine a society beset by divorce — one in which little boys with
loving fathers in the home are in a tiny minority. Imagine further a
which same-sex sex has attained a certain status a general
society in —
agreement that same-sex sex is not only good, but maybe even
preferable to the old fashioned kind. Now also imagine a society in
which there are absolutely no economic or social incentives for a man
to marry and have children —
one in which he can live a more affluent,
more exciting life, free of responsibilities, no kids to feed or buy
clothes for, no need for a home with a yard, no need to get saddled
with a big mortgage, or, if so, maybe a mortgage that he can share
with another man who earns as much or more than he does, a guy
who wants sex as often as he does, and is never never beset by the
anxieties that overcome a woman suffering from pre-menstrual
syndrome or post-partum depression or a host of other female
disorders.
I don't have to imagine such a society.

Right. You see that society today, right here in "the Cadillac U.S.A." I
borrow the phrase from the Engineer in the Broadway musical, "Miss
Saigon." It was part of his Utopian dream: if he could only go to the
U.S.A!
Let me get this straight You're saying that, aside from the obligatory
homosexuals who have no control over their sexual orientation,
there's a sizable segment of the homosexual population for whom
same-sex sex is a definite choice?
Yes. In the summer of 1993, according to a piece this past summer in
The Washington homosexuality and bisexuality has suddenly
Post,
—
become fashionable this among the high school and junior high
school set. The kids are now sporting pink ribbons, kiss members of
the same sex in the hallways, and tell reporters, "Everyone is bisexual,
if you ask me." Adrian Barnard, an 18-year-old from suburban
Virginia, told The Washington Post, "Someone asked me what my

sexual orientation was, and I found myself rather unable to tell them.
I had just gone along assuming that I'm heterosexual. Then I sat
down to think about it and I realized that I could go either way."
But the gay activists insist they were "born that way. " And that
nobody would choose to be homosexual in our "homophobic society.

It looks like that view is now out of date. Some of our high school kids
are showing us that fashion is beginning to rule here, as in so many
other things in our other-directed society. And it isn't only happening

among teenagers. In certain U.S. colleges, a substantial number of
young women are experimenting with lesbianism as a political act.
So you're saying that the numbers of those who in the U.S. who call
themselves gay may be growing?
a movement, isn't it? One that promotes itself with gay magazines
It's
and gay films and gay theater and gay literature and gay parades for
gay pride that boast endorsement by official bodies like the Los
Angeles City Council? A movement with an ideology being developed
on the nation's most prestigious campuses, one that says not only
that gay is good, but that gay is better?
/ don 't know. Is that what the ideology says?
I quote one editorial in a gay publication, dated May 1991, headlined

"Making the Whole World Gay." The writer says that "anyone who
embraces homosexuality in himself or herself and in others as a joy to
be celebrated is a gay person. Our work will only be finished when we
can say that the whole world is gay." As early as 1982, a gay author
named Dennis Airman was reporting with approval that the country's
militant gays were already making progress toward that goal, a
process he called The Homosexualization ofAmerica in a book by the
same name. Altman cited certain early signs of success. More and
more people, he said, were thinking like gays, more and more people
were acting like gays.
Thinking like gays?

Altman said that society in general, like the gay community, was
forsaking "traditional canons of sexual and familial morality."
And more people are acting like gays?

Altman noted that "more people are behaving in the way traditionally
ascribed to homosexuals."
Specifically how?
Heterosexuals, he said, were now beginning "to engage in numbers of

short-lived sexual adventures either in place of or alongside long-
Definitions 31
term relationships." He talked about the development of

"heterosexual equivalents of gay saunas." The best known of these
was Plato's Retreat in New York City, which Altman noted had
"inherited the premises of the Continental Baths," once a well-known
gay hangout. The emergence of the swinging singles scene was one
more Altman that "promiscuity and 'impersonal
proof, suggesting to
sex' are determined more by social possibilities than by inherent
differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals, or even
between men and women."
When did he write this?

In 1982.
Then the nation woke up to AIDS, and that was the end of Plato 's
Retreat and the swinging singles scene.
More or less the end. But it was not the end of the homosexual
revolution. I think Altman was prophetic. If anything, gays have a
greater impact on American culture today than they did in 1982. You
see that impact in fashion, the arts, publishing, the theater, the
movies, television, in our nation's trendiest newspapers and
magazines, in academe. I have it on reliable authority that a goodly
percentage of Washington bureaucrats are gays and lesbians. There's
a gay and lesbian caucus in Congress. The gay agenda is in good
and powerful hands. —
What else is on the gay agenda ?
I could cite all the articles in the gay press extolling what they call the
glories of "men have one such article from
loving boys loving men." I
The Body Politic, a gay journal out of Toronto that tells the story,
among others, of a nice elementary school teacher named Simon who
has taught in four different schools in ten years and "has formed
sexual, loving relationships withboys in each of those four schools
and in each of the service organizations of which he is a member,
including Big Brothers." The author of the article, Gerald Hannon,
said he has envied Simon's "easy rapport" with the boys he's had
affairs with. What does Simon do with his boys? Simon says, "We go
camping, we go downtown, we go to the Arcade, we go to the movies,
for rides on our bikes, we buy records and come home and listen, we
bowl, we watch TV, we fuck. Actually, I've only really bum-fucked two
kids. I just want to liberate my kids a little bit and help them find their
own sexual direction."
How many other Simons are out there?

Who knows? Files from the Boy Scouts of America tell us that, in a
twenty year period from 1971 to 1991, some 1,800 scoutmasters
suspected of molesting boys were removed from their posts. Some of
these men were convicted *and sent to prison. Others simply moved
off and became scoutmasters elsewhere. On the other hand, there's a
national organization promoting what they call "intergenerational
sex." It's called the North American Man/Boy Love Association. Ask
them how many members they have. And there's an international
organization called the Ren6 Guyon Society, which proposes the
abolition of all sex laws, particularly those banning sex between
adults and children. Their motto is, "Sex before eight, or it's too late."
Some of the Guyon Society's literature recommends anal sex for
children as young as four. One of their brochures says, "At age 4, and
sometimes sooner, both male and female children want, can easily
hold after massage, andwill be allowed to have a teenager or older
male's condom-covered penis in their anus."
And this is what some homosexuals do?

Writer Hannon apparently had no trouble finding others like Simon.
He interviewed an affluent, handsome man in his thirties named
Peter who had "a special interest in unwanted or unloved boys, the
boys from homes where the father is dead or has deserted." Peter told
Hannon that his sexual needswere very simple. "I don't very often
fuck somebody, though I once in a while. Most of the time it
like it
would be mutual masturbation, with some sucking. I prefer to be

sucked...." Peter preferred boys from 12 to 14, but said he was willing
to experiment. He had a little friend of seven who liked to suck him
off, and he once had sex with an old man at the beach. Was there ever
a time when he wished he hadn't been a boy-lover? Hannon was

impressed with Peter's simple answer: "No. I'm crazy about lobster
and there was never was a time when I wished I didn't like lobster.
Why would one wish not to like something one likes?"
He sounds very bland about this, very matter-of-fact.
He sounds like he's concerned about nothing else except his own
needs. But I dare say that a good many gays would not approve of
Peter.
Definitions 33
You think this was a bona fide interview? It sounds like something
concocted by an agent provocateur.
No. It's legitimate. Harmon's article has been anthologized in a book
called Flaunting It! published in Toronto by the Pink Triangle Press in
1982. It was a piece that drew a good deal of mail at the offices of The
Body Politic. Some criticized the editors for even printing it; they said
that move would only draw fire from the law. It did. Authorities
raided the editorial offices of The Body Politic, confiscated its mailing
lists, and put its editors on trial (twice) for using the mails to
distribute immoral, indecent and scurrilous literature. The

magazine's editors were acquitted (twice). They were obviously
pleased with the notoriety that came along with the legal fees, and
they seemed proud of themselves for raising "important sexual
political issues" that are still relevant today.
Isn't this "men-loving-boys" businessjust a stereotype?

Those trying to normalize homosexuality often use the word,
"stereotype," these days. They use the word to wave off any challenge
at allabout the kinkier proclivities of those involved in same-sex sex.
But you find pedophilia and ephebophilia more than just a rare
if
event among homosexuals, then it's not a stereotype, is it? The fact is
that some homosexuals do go after boys, and they make open
advocacy about it. Peter Melzer, a veteran physics teacher at the
Bronx High School of Science in New York City has been a longtime
leader in the North American Man-Boy Love Association. According
to The New York Times, "issues of the group's newsletter, with Mr.
Melzer's name on the masthead as officer or editor, have included
articles on seducing young boys." Some leaders in the gay rights
movement don't deny this is part of the gay scene. Theoretically, they
can't even condemn it. If they hold that same-sex sex—of any kind
is legitimate, then they really have to endorse the repeal of laws that
prevent men from loving boys that love them. And how dare anyone
say that men like Peter Melzer shouldn't be teaching in the school
systems?
That's part of the gay agenda, too, getting gays into the school
systems?
Take a look at some of their demands. During the April 1993 Gay and
Lesbian March on Washington, organizers of the event issued a
manifesto. Among other things, that declaration called for "full and
equal inclusion of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people

in the educational system."
"Transgendered?" Did they mean transsexuals?

Yes.
Just exactly what are transsexuals?

Men and women who take hormones and/or have operations to
become members of the opposite sex.
Doctors can do that?

Under the early leadership of Dr. John Money, a psychologist at Johns
Hopkins University, they've been working on it. Donald Laub, a
surgeon at a sex-change center in Palo Alto, California, has done 600
sex-change operations since 1968. Amy Bloom did a fine, very
detailed report on Laub's work in the July 18, 1994, issue of The New
Yorker. But doctors can't make a woman into a man, or vice versa.
Some of their patients say they are women who feel trapped in a
man's body. Or men trapped in a woman's body. But analysis often
reveals thisis a very shallow description of the problem. The truth is
that most transsexuals have profound psychological disturbances.

I've published case studies of some of my transsexual patients. After
six months of analysis, I diagnosed one of them, a would-be
transsexual I call Victor-Valerie, as suffering from "a full-blown
paranoid schizophrenic psychosis with catatonic elements." This
diagnosis was later confirmed, independent of my findings, by Dr.
Harold Rosen, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who
put Victor- Valerie under hypnosis as part of a pre-surgical evaluation.
You can read all about him in my book, Beyond Sexual Freedom,
published in 1975.
Among your colleagues in medicine, are you in the minority here?

I was a real run on transsexual operations in the
don't think so. There
1960s and 1970s. But those operations have come under a cloud. Not
many of Dr. Money's associates are advocating them any more.
Why not?
For one thing, his former colleagues at Johns Hopkins frown on them.
Why is that?
DefinitionsS 35
Because they cannot have failed to note that many of these

operations failed to help people. I'm not sure if they understand why
these operations didn't help. But doctors with a psychoanalytic
background understand. I've dug up an old letter I received in 1969
from Dr. Robert Stoller, a psychoanalyst and professor at UCLA. He
told me that he'd seen a number of patients at the UCLA hospital,
very feminine little boys, who might have seemed candidates for
transsexual operations. "They seem to be that way," he said, "because
of a collection of forces, all psychological, which unhappily come
together in one family to make the little boy so feminine. We have no
evidence whatsoever that any special biological force is at work in
these children. I have felt... that it is the interpersonal, preoedipal,
intrafamilial conditions that produce transsexualism."
Preoedipal?
Just a psychiatric word. It means before the age of three.
Didn't Stoller give any credence to biological factors?

He talked about certain theories — that one "biological force" or
another (such as an altered gene) might cause this condition. But, he
said, the data he had "powerfully suggest" that these biological forces
"do not contribute specifically to such things as marked femininity in
males or masculinity in females, do not produce homosexuality, and
willnot play a part in treatment [like transsexual operations] aimed at
modifying aberrations in masculinity and femininity."
What about transvestites?

Not all transvestites are into same-sex sex. But there's a whole sub-set
—
of the gay culture that seems to be growing what they call "the drag
culture."
"Drag?"
Men dressing up like women. Sometimes, these men are not
homosexuals. The sailors in the Broadway musical, "South Pacific,"
who put on a show in grass skirts were very macho, crazy about
women. But often enough "drag" part of the "fun" of being gay.
is
There was once an annual party in San Francisco where all the gays
came dressed and made up to look like Carole Channing, layered with
bright red lipstick and wearing blonde, page boy wigs. According to a
1993 piece in The Los Angeles Reader, a hip alternate weekly, "Drag is
trendy, chic, —
and amusing it can be a lark or a political statement."
—
The article talked about "this year's success stories" "The Crying
Game," a movie about a love affair between an Irish revolutionary
and a gay black male transvestite that won a number of Academy
Award nominations, and RuPaul, a tall, stunning blonde dancer
(really an African-American male) who topped the dance charts with
"Super Model (You've Got To Work)." Fashion designers were using

men to model their women's collections. The members of Nirvana, a
male group, wore dresses in their "In Bloom" video. High school
seniors were opting to attend their proms in drag. On daytime TV talk
shows, we often met guests who were transsexuals.
What is latent homosexuality?

Latent homosexuals have same- sex sexual leanings or desires. These
leanings may be conscious or unconscious. Some latent homosexuals
may have homosexual dreams—with or without conscious denial of
their significance, and may live an entire lifetime without engaging in
same- sex sex. Others actually put their desires into action, generally
as a result of some severe stress in their lives.
Would these men also be able to have sex with women?

it very much, and could
Yes, but, often enough, they will not enjoy
even have homosexual fantasies while they are having sex with a
woman. These men are really caught up in an alternate form of
homosexuality and they are particularly vulnerable to current gay
entreaties that they "come out of the closet" —since, according to the
gay ideology, these urges are "completely normal" and "socially
acceptable in every way."
Would you advise latent homosexuals, then, to relax and enjoy same-
sex sex?
I'd advisethem to come in and see me, or one of my colleagues, and

get to the bottom of their problems. I have had a good number of
latent homosexuals as patients, and it doesn't take many hours of
therapy to bring them to some insight about themselves.
Some have suggested that much of the homophobia we see today

comes from men who are afraid they might be homosexuals.
Being afraid that you might have leanings toward same-sex sex—you
can't call that homophobia. Phobias are conditions that give rise to
Definitions 37
anxiety and fear out of all proportion to the situation in question. A

phobia is a symbol of other dangers that may be hidden behind the
overt fear. There is a normal fear of homosexuality in most people
who cherish their male or female identity. And the idea that they
could lose by engaging in same-sex sex is always a matter of some
it
concern. To be male or female in a functioning society produces great

pride and self esteem, the kind that keeps us healthy and functioning.
From birth to death, even in senescence, emotional breakdowns
occur when one's self identity is suddenly threatened.
But you see the word homophobia used so much these days,
particularly in gay publications, in the general press and even in
common parlance amongfriends.
There, homophobia is just a propaganda word that gay activists use
to ward off attack. It's an epithet, a scare word that activists use to
silence anyone who does not automatically accept the "normalcy" of
same-sex sex. They make it sound like a disease, and it's an effective
defense strategy. If leaders of the gay rights movement can put that
handle on anyone who has reasonable reservations about the gay
political agenda, then they will turn the tables on critics of the
movement.
What do you mean, "if?" Don tyou think they already have?
y
Yes, guess I do. The successful use of certain words, like

I
homophobia, to advance the gay activist propaganda machine, is a

triumph that many ad men would envy. But I think gay activists do
this quite unwittingly.
How does this happen?

The dynamics are clear. Once they realized, as little boys, that they
were different, and that they could expect a certain amount of
razzing,if not persecution, for being different, they learned to fear,
even hate, their tormentors. Then, such is our human propensity to

think good of ourselves, they rejected the notion that they could hate
anyone. "We don't hate the straight guys," they said. And they turned
it around, and settled on the notion that the straight guys hated them.
They projected their hatred on to the hetero world, and blamed the
hetero world for hating them.
And they called this hatred "homophobia?"

Exactly. They were, then, quite unable to see a larger truth: that, in
spite of the fact that a few of their more insensitive childhood
contemporaries did persecute them, the vast majority of the straight
world was mainly indifferent to homosexuals, and more than willing
to live and let live. But, at this point, the gay movement isn't satisfied
with "live and let live." This, is a serious mistake on the part of the gay
movement. They're stretching their recently and rightfully acquired
freedoms, such as the freedom from persecution, too far, and there
could be a tragic backlash from the very individuals who have been
taken in by the propaganda —that "gay is good."
How have they been able to do this?

Four ways.
1) Shame. They've shamed people with charges that they've suffered
from "discrimination." And people have been taken in by the

semantic confusion over the word "discrimination." A good many
newspaper editors, in fact, have become very undiscriminating in
their rush to dismiss anyone who says anything negative about the
gay liberation movement as "a homophobe."
2) Intimidation. Gay activists have succeeded in intimidating

reporters and editors with all manner of threats. Larry Kramer, the
founder of a gay activist group, once wrote to PBS Anchorman Robin
MacNeil, charging that the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour was pulling
punches in its reporting on AIDS and gay issues. Kramer sent copies
of the letter to more than 50 journalists.
3) A good many people (not

Ignorance. only news editors) simply do
not know what homosexuality is. And it seems that many of them
don't want to know.
4) Mob psychology. Certain arbiters of culture have been able to

drum in the idea that, "Hey, they're only people." But let's look at
some gay history, to see what can happen to many wonderful people
who get caught up in asking for a freedom too far.
CHAPTER TWO:
HISTORY
&
"You say we're coming for your children, and you're right.
—
We are your queer children. God your God made us —
that way. And there is nothing you can do about it.
Are homosexuals a special group?

Only when they band together. But their identity as a group didn't
—
really emerge until well, it's hard to say when. There's a gay
historian at Yale, who says that ancient Greece and Rome "did not, for
the most part, distinguish gay persons from other citizens." They
weren't singled out, he claims, until medieval Christian authorities
started persecuting minorities, including gays.
Well, when did gay communities begin to appear?

History is murky here.. Birds of a feather have always, it seems,
flocked together. But, judging from my browsing in the ever-growing
body of gay literature, I think we can say that, in modern history,
homosexual males first started gathering to meet one another in the
latter part of the 19th century, in Germany.
Why then?
Homosexuals began to have an awareness that there were others out
there like themselves. And perhaps that didn't happen until social
scientists began to take notice of them. You also have to remember
that the social sciences really didn't get a foothold in the academic
community until the latter half of the 19th century. Scientists always
had a penchant for classifying things, and giving them a scientific
—
name birds, flowers, fish, you name it. By extension, social scientists
thought they, too, needed to classify all kinds of social groupings
—
including homosexuals men who only had sex with other men,
women who only had sex with other women.
But weren 't the early Greeks — those in the very cradle of Western
civilization —devoted to same-sex sex?
No, they weren't. That's part of the common wisdom these days. But
it's not accurate to say "the Greeks were devoted to same-sex sex."
Some Greeks were into pederasty—that is, older men having sex with
—
young boys but Plato spoke for Greek society in general when he
condemned homosexual intercourse between adults in both the Laws
and in his Republic. In Book VII of the Laws, Plato condemns
homosexual intercourse because it can render men unfit for marriage
and because it is contrary to nature and a shameless indulgence. The
Laws recommends that homosexuality, like adultery, fornication and
the use of prostitutes, not be engaged in. And, engaged in, that
if it is
it be kept private, and that if it is discovered it be punished by
deprivation of civil rights. In the speeches of Phaedrus and others in

Plato's Symposium, Plato reports the praise of some for pederasty,
and the admiration of others for the valor of the Theban legion, all
300 members of which, purportedly, were paired off as homosexual
lovers until they were slaughtered by Philip of Macedon's forces at
the Battle of Chaeroneia. But that praise did not come from Plato.
But gays (and, increasingly, the so-called straight press) like to list all
these great historic figures who were homosexuals. Socrates,
Alexander the Great, Michelangelo.
Michelangelo! How does anybody know? There is no evidence that
Michelangelo was into same-sex sex. Irving Stone, an authority on
Michelangelo after he did the exhaustive research for his book, The
Agony and the Ecstasy, said that "in no place did we find a scintilla of
evidence to support the accusation that Michelangelo was a
homosexual.... There are a few people who
continue to perpetuate
the charge against Michelangelo, but they offer absolutely no proof
History 41
except the Arentino slander."
Who was Arentino?

A contemporary of Michelangelo. He was a notorious blackmailer.
But we do know from ancient manuscripts that some Greeks
practiced same-sex sex.
Yes. Plato wrote about men
having sex with young boys (but,
interestingly enough, not men having sex with men). As I just
about
said, he didn't approve either mode. On the other hand, the poetess
Sappho not only wrote love poems about same-sex sex among
women, she was reputed to be the leader of an entire island
populated only by women.
The island ofLesbos?

Yes. That's —
where we get the word "lesbian" to denote those women
who have women. And, by the way, we find lesbians
sex with other
today using the Greek letter lambda as a sign of same-sex orientation
by women. There's a national sorority called Lambda for lesbians —
only. And a gay legal group called the Lambda Legal Defense Fund.
Haven't homosexuals existed from the beginning of time?

We don't know "from the beginning of time." But I think it is fair to
say that there's something innate in men: men tend to seek pleasure
in genital sensations. Without any moderating influence by
civilization, they will seek any way at all to experience erection and
ejaculation. If they can't find a young woman, they will seek other
outlets.
You mean they will have sex with anything?

Yes, they will.
But if that propensity is natural, how can anyone call it deviant?

The need is natural. It's the object choice that is deviant.
Well, then, we're talking about an overlay of human culture here,

aren't we?
In a sense, yes. We've learned what works and what doesn't work.
We've found that the male-female design works. A date with Susie
feels good to Bill. If Susie is extra-willing, it feels very very good, to
both Bill and Susie. I don't think scientists have been able, yet, to
explain why it feels so good. Eduardo Weiss, an Italian psychoanalyst

and a contemporary of Freud, tried to explain the origins of ecstasy in
the male-female union, which, somehow, makes the man and the
woman each feel more whole. In her, he finds a sense of his
phenomenon of
completion. In him, she finds her completion. In this
human love, one plus one always equals more than two. But we don't
look to mathematicians to explain this. We've seen some interesting
attempts to express it in art. Storytellers and poets and lyricists from
every land on earth have best mirrored — I will not say "explained"
this ecstasy.
But you're saying that the human race has discovered, over time, that
the male-male design doesn't work in the same way?
Exactly. Same-sex sex doesn't work, not from the point of view of
society, starting with the human family, and not from a personal
point of view either. The sexual urge seeks expression. But when a
man finds it in another man, he is satisfied only for the moment.
That's why so many homosexuals end up with 5,000 partners. Which
leads to —
We're jumping ahead. When did organizations of homosexuals begin
to emerge in the U.S?
Ifyou're talking about an organization as such, we know that a
homosexual group got going in North America in 1924. It was called
the Society for Human Rights, and it was chartered in the State of
Illinois, to"promote and protect the interests of people who, by
reason of mental and physical abnormalities, are abused and
hindered in the legal pursuit of happiness which is guaranteed them
by the Declaration of Independence, and to combat the public
prejudices against them by dissemination of facts according to
modern science among intellectuals of mature age. The Society
stands for law and order; it is in harmony with any and all general
laws insofar as they protect the rights of others, and does in no
manner recommend any acts in violation of present laws nor
advocate any matter inimical to the public welfare." It was a bold and
correct step.
But surely there were informal groupings of male homosexuals before

1924.
Oh, yes. George Chauncey's work, Gay New York, gives a detailed
—
History 43
history of the "highly visible, remarkably complex,and continually

changing gay male world took shape in New York City... before World
War II." This book challenges what the author calls "three myths"
about the early history of gays in the U.S.
Myths?
Yes.One was the myth of isolation. According to Chauncey, there was
a myth that anti-gay hostility, not to mention a battery of laws
criminalizing same-sex sex, prevented the development of an
extensive gay culture. Chauncey says these laws were enforced
irregularly. "Indifference or curiosity —rather than hostility and fear
characterized many New Yorkers' response to the gay world for much
of the half-century before the war."
The second myth?

The myth of invisibility, which held that it was difficult for men
interested in same-sex sex to find other homosexuals.Not so, says
Chauncey. "New Yorkers viewed the gay subculture's most dramatic
manifestations as part of the spectacle that defined the distinctive
character of their city. Tourists visited the Bowery, the Village and
Harlem in part to view gay men's haunts."
And the third myth?

Again, I'llquote Chauncey. "The myth of internalization holds that
gay men uncritically internalized the dominant culture's view of them
as sick perverted and immoral, and that their self-hatred led them to
accept the policing of their lives rather than resist it."
And that wasn 't so ?

Chauncey says that "numerous" doctors in New York City "reported
their astonishment at discovering in their clinical interviews with
'inverts' that their subjects rejected the efforts of science, religion,
popular opinion, and the law to condemn them as moral
degenerates."
Was that true?

No one likes to think of himself as "a moral degenerate." So, I am sure
that men of that period rejected that term. When I started working
with homosexuals in the 1950s, I rejected it, too. My patients weren't
"moral degenerates." They were caught up in something, however,
that made them unhappy in their personal lives, and uneasy in

general society.
So what do you think ofChauncey's thesis?

He makes a good case. Almost from the very beginning, New York
City has had a certain tolerance of — anything and everything,
including what is now called "gay culture." But New York is not the
U.S., much less the world. If we're talking history here, we should talk
about a very interesting man named Henry Gerber of Chicago,
Illinois. He'd served with the U.S. Army of Occupation in Germany
after World War I, and had come in contact with some homosexuals
there. When he returned to Chicago, he tried to round up enough
people to form a club. He found a half dozen.
Why so few?
He said, "The average homosexual was ignorant concerning himself.
Others were fearful. Still others were frantic or depraved. Some were
blase." He cited one other problem: "Many homosexuals told me that
their search for forbidden fruit was the real spice of life."
Gerber wanted to make their lifestyle legal, and they wanted to be

naughty?
Exactly. And that has remained as a feature of some gay lifestyles,
even today.
What happened to Gerber's group?

One Sunday afternoon, without a warrant, the Chicago police raided
Gerber's rooming house, and brought him into court on the merest of
suspicions. He was convicted of nothing. But when his superiors at
the U.S. Post Office learned of his arrest, they had him dismissed for
"conduct unbecoming a postal worker." It was a travesty of justice.
What was Gerber's crime?

Just being different. There's always been a great deal of general
suspicion and hatred in this country against any peoples who are
somehow different. Other countries seem to pursue a policy of live-
and-let live. But not all countries. There is much more fear of
foreigners in Japan, for instance, than there is in the U.S.
So that ended Gerber's efforts to organize?

«
History 45
Organizationally, nothing really happened in the U.S. until the

Mattachine Society was founded for homosexual males in 1950 by a
man named Henry Hay.
Who was he?
Hay grew up in Los Angeles. In 1930, at the he was "brought
age of 17,
out" (that is, introduced to same-sex sex) in LA's Pershing Square by a

man named Champ Simmons who, it turned out, had been brought
out by one of the members of Henry Gerber's group in Chicago.
Simmons told Hay about Gerber's organizational efforts. The idea
sank into Hay's subconscious. Some 18 or 19 years later, he organized
a group of homosexuals from the University of Southern California
and from the University of California at Los Angeles. They called
themselves the International Bachelors Fraternal Orders for Peace
and Social Dignity.
What were the aims of this organization?

Itsmembers had seen a purge of homosexuals in the U.S. State
Department by the House Un-American Activities Committee. They
were afraid that the HUAC (or some other arm of the federal
government) would start coming after them. As Hay later said, "It was
obvious that [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy was setting up the pattern for a
—
new scapegoat, and it was going to be us Gays." His prospectus,
copyrighted on July 7, 1950, said his group would be "devoted to the
protection and improvement of Society's Androgynous Minority." A
mission statement ratified in July of 1951 said the purpose of the
Society was TO UNIFY, TO EDUCATE AND TO LEAD.
Lead toward what?

Hay's focus was, "Political action against discriminatory and
oppressive legislation." Hay, you see, was a real good Communist. He
thought in political terms. But he knew that it wouldn't help his
movement any if the public found out he was a Communist. So, in the
fall of 1951, he went to his Communist friends in Los Angeles and
recommended they expel him from the Party. They wouldn't expel
him. The word expulsion would dishonor his 18 years as a Party
member and 10 years as "a teacher and cultural innovator." They did
drop him, however, "as a security risk, but a lifelong friend of the
people." They did this to free him up, so he could put his entire
energies into his new cause.
The Mattachine Society?
Yes.Hay came up with that name in the spring of 1951. It was
borrowed from medieval France, where a secret fraternity of
unmarried townsmen known as the Societe Mattachine conducted
their masked dances and rituals during the Feast of Fools on the first
day of spring. Hay believed that these dance rituals were often
peasant protests against oppression. In an interview in the mid-1970s
with the gay historian Jonathan Katz, Hay "we took the
recalled that
name Mattachine because we felt that we 1950s Gays were also a
masked people, unknown and anonymous, who might become
engaged in morale building and helping ourselves and others,
through struggle, to move toward total redress and change."
Hay sounds like a guy who was just a little bit ahead of his time.
Yes, he was. And, to clear the decks for action, he divorced his wife
(who thought his activities in the new cause would be detrimental to
their two children) and he got his mother to become a member of the
Society's board of directors.
His mother?
Hay said his mother was "a very well-developed Edwardian lady. I
don't think the sexual part of it ever crossed her mind. Homosexuality
meant that I was in love with men, not with women. She had nothing
more than an understanding of [the word] 'homophile' don't you —
see? The sex part of it never occurred to her."
But, once begun, the Mattachine Society wasn't all that radical, was
it?
That's true. members wanted acceptance and full integration into

Its
American They could hardly achieve that with an ex-Communist

life.
occupying a prominent role in the Society. So Hay was shunted aside

to make room for less flamboyant leaders. Their new Mattachine
Society sought to dispel a common image of the homosexual as a
morally depraved pervert incapable of assuming any kind of
conventional role in society. Rather than challenge American values,
Mattachine's leaders said their goals were "compatible with
recognized institutions of a moral and civilized society with respect
for the sanctity of the home, church and state." The leaders
recognized the homosexual condition as a crippling one; they wanted
desperately to figure out what they could do about it. Ken Burns, the
History 47
board chairman of the Society, asserted in his keynote address at the

organization's 1956 convention that homosexuals were crying out for
assistance in controlling the social and family patterns that led to
their homosexuality.
By comparison to today's gay liberationists, then, they seem very

conservative.
Yes. Butyou have to realize that the 1950s was a conservative decade.
The editors of The Mattachine Review, for instance, proclaimed their
belief in "EVOLUTION NOT REVOLUTION." They welcomed
contributions from psychotherapists like Dr. Albert Ellis who believed
that homosexuality was reversible. Gradually, however, the magazine
began to reflect more militancy. Luther Allen, a frequent contributor,
rejected the view that homosexuality was a crippling condition. "Why
not regard homosexuality," he asked, "as merely a difference in the
direction of the sexual instinct? Why not view the heterosexual life as
the sexual superhighway, the homosexual as one of the by-roads of
love?" Allen wanted to challenge the view that sexuality took on its
primary significance because of its link to procreation. "This view,"

he said, "degrades human sexuality to the level of the stud farm." He
wrote this in 1955.
And then came the 1960s.

The Mattachine Society actually lasted until November 18, 1975,
when it declared bankruptcy at the U.S. Courthouse in Foley Square
in New York. The Society had a 92-cent balance in its account at the
—
Grove Street Branch of the Chemical Bank and it owed $8,710.91 to
24 separate creditors. A good journalist named Arthur Springer wrote
a sensitive obituary on Mattachine 's death in The Village Voice. He
quoted Alan Bowne, the last president, who said, "Mattachine served
its purpose. It's funny. It's really the end of an era."
And was it?

Yes. By then, the gay community had become much more militant
and younger gays were ready for something else more in keeping with
the times. In the 1960s, remember, people were cutting loose from
old, and unexamined, ideas. It was also a time when blacks and
women stopped asking for equal rights, and started demanding them
instead. So it wasn't long before homosexuals took on their own
militancy. If they wanted their rights, they had to seize power, too.
Contemporary American historians like to date the birth of their

political movement back to June 1969, when the New York City Police
Department raided a drag bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich
Village.
The Stonewall Inn.

Right. For years, the police had been harassing the homosexual
community in New York. On this particular night, at this particular
bar, the police —
wanted to stop the sale of liquor there it was after
legal —
closing time and a handful of the bar's rowdy patrons, most of
them socially outcast drag queens, refused to submit to a police raid.
The press called it a riot. In fact, the police raid was merely the excuse
that militants needed to create the disturbances and demonstrations
that would get the revolutionaries what revolutionaries always want:
an unseemly show of force by the cops, which usually triggers an
outpouring of public sympathy. The Stonewall Riots, of course, went
on for days, and became a turning point for homosexuals in New
York, and, soon, for homosexuals across the nation. Stonewall
became the defining symbol they needed. Enough was enough. A
—
movement was born to end past injustices against them, to stop the
official and unofficial violence.
Unofficial violence?
Homosexuals in America have had a terrible and unfair time of it. For
many, harassment started in school. Boys who were perceived as
"sissies" were taunted by their classmates, and sometimes beaten.
For kicks, teenage toughs would seek out homosexuals and beat them
up "to teach them a lesson."
What lesson?
Lord only knows. It's one of the things that is sick about humankind.
History has been marked by violence toward peoples who are
perceived as different. This goes all the way back to the dawn of
history, and it has been carried on by all manner of religious wars,
—
wars extending into our own time in northern Ireland, for instance,
and in Bosnia.
And official violence?

That came at the hands of cops —who said they were "only enforcing
the law."
f s -
History 49
What law?
For many years in America, same-sex sex —at least that particular
form of it called sodomy —was illegal.
What is sodomy?
Technically, it's anal intercourse.
And it was once illegal?

It still is in almost half the United States. Until 1981, sodomy was a
crime in New York. The movement that began with the Stonewall
Riots led to a challenge of that law and a decision in New York's
highest court. But anti-sodomy laws still exist in America, in 20 states.
And in the U.S. military. These laws are approved by the U.S.
still
Supreme Court. On June 30, 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld
sodomy statutes in the state of Georgia as applied to homosexuals.
Speaking for a majority of the court, Chief Justice Warren Burger
wrote in Bowers v. Hardwick, "To hold that the act of homosexual
sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to
cast aside millennia of moral teaching."
But surely there was no sodomy going on at the Stonewall Inn when
police raided the place in 1969?
Itwas a gay bar. What the cops saw when they entered the place were
just a lot of gay guys, some of them wearing dresses, standing around
after hours, drinking and laughing and telling stories. If the cops had
exercised common sense, they would have overlooked the liquor law
violation and put their blessing on the party. Under the First
Amendment, we Americans have what we call "the right of free
association." The government can't tell people of whatever shape,
size or color that they can't get together.
You sound sympathetic.

At the time, I had a number of homosexual patients. I was very much
—
aware of the hell they were going through simply because people
hated and feared them, and did them violence. One night in New
York, one of my patients was picked up by the police, after being
lured into a car by an undercover cop. They stamped the word
"DEGENERATE" on his file. To me, this was an outrage, and I helped
expunge it from his record. Fortunately, homosexuals could see a way
out, if they chose to follow the lead of some other downtrodden
groups in and Hispanics and women, who were

this country, blacks
organizing to resist all kinds of racial discrimination and even
violence. Given that model, you can understand why the "gay rights
movement" took the direction it did.
What's the difference between the words, "gay" and "homosexual?"

If you say you are "gay," you imply that you are part of a political
movement or a cause. Not everyone who is into same-sex sex is "gay."
The word homosexuality means, simply, "same-sex sexuality." The
word gay is now a political term. Which is why I have been initially
uncomfortable using the word gay.
You don 't like gay politics?

I guess I should make an early distinction here about where I stand. I
am for homosexuals. I care for them. I try to protect them, insofar as I
can. I advise and counsel them, and help them seek out the causes of
their pain. I have spent much of my professional life caring for these
patients. They have been dealt a particularly difficult hand to play.
They did not choose homosexuality. It was thrust upon them, in ways
they weren't aware of. From childhood, sometimes from early
childhood, they felt excluded. As they got older, they found they had a
hard time dealing with other young men; and they didn't know how
to behave with other young women. They often ended up feeling
isolated from everyone, full of guilt, shame and abandonment. And
this wasn't their fault.
Well, if they are they way they are, and it isn't their fault, why don't
you leave them alone?
Because they urgently seek my help to conquer something in
themselves that they do not understand. I've been trying to help them
bounce back from their abusive beginnings. I don't make exceptions
for my patients who are caught up in, and unhappy with, their
particular, homosexual adaptations to those abusive beginnings.
Early on, I found that I could help my homosexual patients
understand what happened to them, and help them break that
pattern. Once I learned what to do, I began to show others in my
profession how they could do the same.
You have this compassion toward homosexuals. But your critique of
the gay movement makes some think you're against gays.
—
History 51
No. I'm not against gays. They are worthy patients with whom I have
lived most of my clinical life. As a physician and a psychoanalyst, I
want desperately to help my gay patients live happy, productive lives
by getting rid of something they can't control. Working together, we
do the best we can to achieve that, in an atmosphere of mutual
respect. But, as a citizen and social critic, I can only deplore a
movement that promotes same-sex sex as a basic human freedom,
and mounts campaigns to propagandize the public with the notion
that same- sex sex is not only an acceptable lifestyle, but even a better
way of being.
Is that what they're doing?
Yes. And that's why it's important to makes some important

distinctions early on in our discussion. Apparently, organized gays
didn't see any way from persecuting them without, at
to stop people
the same time, attempting to establish same-sex sex as an acceptable
lifestyle. But that was going too far.
Why do you say, "going too far?"

Stopping persecution and violence against gays —against anyone in
fact —ought to be the first order of business in any civilized society.
But same-sex sex as an acceptable
billing lifestyle, indeed, a basic
human freedom
It's not a basic human freedom?

It's a Active freedom. Which is to say that it only looks like freedom.
But obligatory homosexuals aren't free. They're caught up in
compulsions they can't control. And their campaign for this fictive
freedom is hurting us all in ways we don't yet realize.
How is it hurting us?

Look, that's the point of this whole book. And I'd rather state my
conclusions toward the end of our discussion, after I've had a chance
to lay out my premises.
Okay. Back to our history. Has the word "gay" always been a political
term?
No. The first published use of the word in English goes back to 1935,
according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which cited its source as
an American glossary of "Underworld and Prison Slang." By the
1950s, homosexual men had begun using it as a code word. Then,

after the Stonewall Riots, activists —
adopted the word to combat
negative connotations of the word "homosexual."
Where did this usage of the word "gay" come from?

It dates all the way back to 16th century Paris, when the French word
gaie came to mean "wKore," then "a homosexual." One of my
patients traced the beginning of its use in English-speaking countries
to an old song by Noel Coward entitled, "There's Always Something
Fishy About the French."
A life of love is curious, but not injurious

ifyou are wise. For you get pleasure and leisure,
knowledge to treasure,
After the gay life dies.
I often wondered about the word "gay. " I know some gays who are
anything but gay.
The word gay is a calculated part of homosexual politics. It connotes
gladness, joy and merriment, but I believe it's a term that represents a
flight from the opposite sensations: sadness, misery and despair.
Listen to one of my patients, whom I'll call Roger, an Ivy League
graduate who was then an apprentice movie director. See how "gay"
he sounds: "My homosexual encounters occur when I am lonely or
fragmented or furious. At these times, I feel like I am coming apart.
But I am put back together when I see a man's penis. I can't help
myself. I go to public toilets, looking for sex. I wait on subway
—
platforms. I pick up anyone I can often the dirtiest, scruffiest
specimen I can find. I find this is taking more and more of my time. I
am getting more and more depressed and defeated and angry."
This isn't the picture Vm getting in the media today.
No, and I get a much grittier picture, sitting where I sit. Listen to
another of my patients, whom I call Paul: "When I get into sex with a
man, he must become extremely submissive, or else I feel like
strangling him and removing his genitals. I actually think I can pull
off his genitals, or bite them off, and enjoy his pain. Other times, I feel
like strangling my partner with my legs around his neck, so I can
watch the pain in his eyes as I choke him. I get a real charge out of
this. There are a lot of angry feelings in me. I'm usually nice to people,
but it's all an act. I feel like crying now, and it's awful. I guess I've
r
History 53
W
wanted to kill my mother
Why, then, use of the word, "gay?"

for a long time." Now I ask you, is this
In any movement, language is always an important weapon. Activists

bend language to move agendas, because they know that
their own
words influence perception, and perception influences public policy.
For example, in the early years of the civil rights movement, blacks
debated whether to say their goal was "integration" or
"desegregation." Some feared that "integration" was a concept that
was too scary for white people to handle. So they settled on "de-
segregation." Another example: those who pushed for legalization of
abortion in this country didn't bill themselves as "pro-abortion" but,
rather, "pro-choice." That took the focus off the fetus and shifted it to
a woman's freedom. Their opponents in the public arena tried to shift
the focus right back on the fetus (which they preferred calling "the
unborn child"). They called their effort a "Right to Life Movement."
Similarly, those who wanted to influence public policy regarding
those engaged in same-sex sex moved to drop "homosexual" and take
up the word "gay."
Was that move successful?

—
They succeeded in getting The New York Times I understand there
—
was quite an intramural fight over it to adopt the word "gay" when
referring to social and political issues, and "homosexual" when
referring to clinical or psychological issues. For gay activists, that was
progress. An editorial writer for a gay publication said he was proud
that the homosexual community could "force upon a homophobic
world the non-pejorative, now universally recognized word 'gay' to
describe our community." Another gay spokesman points up the
—
difference between "homosexual" and "gay" noting that "there is no
'homosexual' community, but there is a 'gay' community.
Homosexuality is a medical term for a sexual condition, where the
word gay indicates positive self-acceptance, the only attitude on
which community can be built." But Dennis Altman, the gay
contemporary historian, revealed the central thrust of the strategy
when he pointed out that general acceptance of the word gay helped
to take the public's attention away from what homosexuals do and
put the focus, instead, on what they are:
The greatest single victory of the gay movement over the past
decade [wrote Altman in 1982] has been to shift the debate
from behavior to identity, thus forcing opponents into a
position where they can be seen as attacking the civil rights of
homosexual citizens rather than attacking specific and (as
they see it) antisocial behavior.
How were the leaders of the gay rights movement able to achieve that
victory?
Well, they aped the arguments being put forward in the 1960s by
proponents of civil rights for mental patients, who went all the way
back toJohn Stuart Mill to find a political and philosophical rationale
to attack what they called "society's paternalism." In his famous
essay, "On Liberty," Mill asserted that "the only purpose for which
power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized
community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own
good, either physical or moral is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot
rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for
him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the
opinion of others to do so would be wise, or even right. These are
reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or
persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or
visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise."
So was Mill opposed to every instance in which a citizen is coerced by

law for his or her own good?
Not really. He also said, significantly, "This doctrine is meant to apply
only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties."
Which would exclude the mentally ill?

It did exclude them for many years,
according to the rationale of
parens patriae (the state as parent), which allowed the state to
commit mental patients "for their own good."
Then what happened?

In the 1960s and the 1970s, certain influential critics of psychiatry, led
by Thomas Szasz, and R.D. Laing, maintained that no one is mentally
ill, that madness does not exist, that reality is a matter of personal
choice, and that insanity is a political invention. All of a sudden,

psychiatrists were deemed incompetent to determine which human
beings were "in the maturity of their faculties." A second thesis
History 55
madness does not exist, or cannot be reliably identified,

followed: "If
then psychiatric treatment is always or almost always either
brainwashing or brain damaging." I pick up this formulation from
Alan A. Stone, a distinguished professor of psychiatry at the Harvard
Medical School, who wrote a history of the mentally ill and the civil
rights movement in the 1981 Handbook of American Psychiatry.
According to Dr. Stone, "These theses found intense support among
many young lawyers and civil libertarians. The civil rights of the
mentally ill and the mentally retarded were seen by them as the last
battlefield of the great war — for civil rights. Civil libertarians,
including the American Civil Liberties Union, began to challenge
every aspect of the legal status of the mentally ill, and the interface
between law and psychiatry took on a new political and
constitutional dimension as the sixties came to an end."
What does all this have to do with gay rights?

Gay activists began to take up the same arguments. So did a number
of gay rights psychiatrists within the American Psychiatric
Association.
And what did they do with these arguments?

Gay rights strategistsused them to establish the notion, now almost a
given in many parts of U.S. society today, that same-sex sex is "just an
alternate lifestyle." That was a clever political move, particularly in a
society that does not prize precision in language and is all too ready
to give away the store in the name of a spurious "democracy." And
then, playing on guarantees in the Bill of Rights of "equal protection
under the law," they pushed the idea that no citizen should be treated
differently than another because of membership in a group for any —
reason. Otherwise, they call it "discrimination." Most applications of
this concept have corrected an abuse barring people from jobs
because of their race, or their religion, or because they were women.
City fire departments, for example, routinely discriminated against
women—until litigation forced a change. In the hands of gay rights
been used, for example, to
lawyers, however, this legal concept has
common-sense in the arena of testing for AIDS.
scuttle every kind of
The major, looming legal question is this: do people who are
distinguished solely by reason of the fact that they mate with
members of their own sex come under the Constitutional guarantees
of "equal protection under the law?"
Why shouldn they come under that protection?

't
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution already gives equal

protection to everyone, since makes no exception for people of
it
different sexual orientations. But society can try to draw some kind of
lines when its various legal, civic and religious institutions are asked,
for example, to put their Jblessings on gay marriages. In a way, that's
"discrimination" of the very best kind. The word " discrimination"
comes from the Latin means knowing where to draw the
word that
line. Those who know how to draw the line and when can help — —
save our society from those who will not rest until no one knows how
—
to draw any lines at all between behaviors that hurt us or behaviors
that help us.
What behaviors hurt us?

In the present context, I would say all the deviant sexual behaviors
are hurtful — to the one who is caught up in them, almost always
against his own will, and sometimes hurtful to those who are
victimized by these deviant behaviors.
What sexual behaviors are deviant?

Look, before I answer that, I want to re-emphasize the fact that I am a
doctor and a psychoanalyst, not a moralist. So I am not imputing any

moral fault to any of this behavior. Preachers can do that, if they feel
they need to. And police officers and judges can levy their own moral
(or legal) judgments.
But just using the word "deviant" implies some negative moral
judgment
Some prefer using another term that is supposedly value-free: the
paraphilias, a Greek cognate meaning "alternate loves." Dr. John
Money has catalogued 40 of them in his book, Gay, Straight and In-
Between. But as anyone can see from Money's description of them,
the paraphilias have very little to do with "love." They range all the
way from autoassassinophilia, where one reaches orgasm by stage-
managing his own masochistic death (by strangulation, perhaps) to
telephonicophilia, where men (usually men) come to orgasm by
talking dirty on the telephone. Interestingly enough, Money notes
that every one of the philias demonstrate some kind of pathology —
except homosexuality, because, he mistakenly asserts, "it is beyond
the capability of the APA [the American Psychiatric Association] and
—
History 57
its committees to find a criterion" that will "separate non

pathological homosexuality from pathological homosexuality."
Butyou treat all of the paraphilias?

My job has been to treat people who are afflicted with these
—
compulsive addictions which seem driven by motivations that are a
mystery to those who have them. For more than 40 years, I have had
patients coming to me asking to be delivered from the pain of their
homosexual compulsions. Many of these men were and are
altogether estimable people, men who have made fine contributions
to their professions. They were honest enough to admit they wanted
to change a lifestyle that they considered deviant. As deviant as those
afflicted with other sexual inversions.
Such as?
Men who can't ejaculate unless they suddenly expose their genitals to
unsuspecting young women; the women respond with great fright,
and this reaction triggers an orgasm in the men exposing themselves.
They are called exhibitionists. Others who can't have orgasms unless
"
they're being whipped. They're into what they call "SM
sadomasochism. Others who find release while they watch others
havingsex. They are called voyeurs.
You mean voyeurs aren't simply "watchers?"

When we speak of sexual deviations, the term voyeurs refers to those
who actually have orgasms while they watch others.
Watch others having sex?

Sometimes. But not necessarily. Some voyeurs can have orgasms just
by watching a woman disrobe or watching her have a bowel
movement. The police have a word to describe them: "Peeping
Toms."
Why do they do this?

Well, nothing they choose to do. As a columnist writing in The
it's
New York Post once said so well, "A peeping Tom doesn't rationally
weigh all the sexual options available and then 'choose' voyeurism
the way one chooses chicken salad at a cafeteria. He feels driven to it
by his history and his upbringing... based upon largely unconscious

motivations, fears and needs." I couldn't have said it better myself.
The columnist's name is Mona Charen.
So, is all same-sex sex in the category of a sexual deviation?
Yes. But I haven't finished my list of deviations. There's another

deviation called fetishism: a fetishist can't get aroused unless he is in
possession of a non-sexual object which, to him, has erotic
significance. Male underwear, for example, or a piece of fur. There
was a notorious homosexual in Philadelphia who used to pay teenage
boys $5 apiece for their sweat socks and undershorts. If their drawers
were soiled, he would pay $15. When the police arrested him, they
collected his cache of socks and underwear. They filled 312 garbage
—
bags. This man his name was Ed Savitz and he died of AIDS
needed to have sex with teenage boys. Technically, he'd be called an
ephebophile, a lover of youths. Those who need to have sex with little
boys (or little girls) are termed pedophiles, lovers of children.
Are they really "lovers" of children?

Many pedophiles are weak, pathetic characters. They do not love
children. They use them to feel "alive," or for sexual satisfaction,
which can only be achieved in this way. But they come in all
gradations. Some pedophiles do find sexual arousal with little girls.
But that deviation is outside the scope of this discussion. Those who
focus on boys can be mild mannered types who are content merely to
play around with them, have them take their clothes off, photograph
them in the nude, then masturbate. Or even later, after the little boy
has gone home. Other pedophiles have far more intense needs. They
will seek out boys for anal intercourse.
What determines the degree of intense need?

That goes back to the degree of early psychic damage to begin with.
In some extreme cases, I've seen men who have to feed off boys, in a
kind of psychic vampirism. Fellating a little boy, for them, is like a
rejuvenating tonic.
These deviations seem to be on the increase.

Well, we're reading more and more stories in the press, at least. If we
are becoming a more deviant society, then I am disturbed, because
many of these deviations hurt other, innocent people. Some
pedophiles have actually killed their victims. The worse thing our
legal system can do is make these deviations legitimate. Laws have an
History 59
educative function. IfSupreme Court of the United States were to

the
legalize ephebophilia, for instance, which some members of the
homosexual community are pushing, then the highest court would be
telling people, "Look, there's nothing wrong with men loving boys."
(By loving, they mean having anal or oral sex.)
You prefer using the expressions "hurt us" and "help us" to words like
"vice" or "virtue?"
Yes. They add up to the same thing, but, as a doctor, not a moralist, I
feel more comfortable with "hurt us" and "help us." Not that I
disagree with people like Harry V. Jaffa, a fellow at the Center for the
Study of the Natural Law at the Claremont Institute in California, who
said so well in a recent letter to Commentary. "There can be no moral
education where there is no clear understanding of theground in
reason and nature for the distinction between virtue and vice.
Tolerance does not require of us that we cease to call things by their
right name." But I will leave it up to philosophers to use terms like
"virtue" or "vice."
You've compared the gay rights movement to the civil rights

movement Why?
Leaders of the gays rights movement have adopted many of the
methods of the civil rights movement. Some blacks do not like this a
bit. Lou Palmer, who is black and has a radio show on Chicago's
WVON, says, "A lot of blacks are upset that the feminist movement
has pimped off the black movement. Now here comes the gay
movement. Blacks resent it very much, because they do not see a
parallel."
Do you see a parallel?

No. But I can understand why gays want to draw one. The Rev. Lou
Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition, affiliated with
27,000 churches across the nation, says gays make the parallel
because "it may bring empathy from white men like me, who feel a
collective sense of guilt about the way blacks have been treated."
However some blacks feel about it, the strategy has worked. Tom
Stoddard, a gay rights lawyer, explained the strategy to The New York
Times in June 1993: "To a large degree we are bound together by our
opponents. Those who hate blacks hate gay people, hate Jews and
abuse women, and fighting on behalf of any of us will ultimately lead
to the liberation of all of us."
You're impressed with the gay rights movement

I was impressed with the fact that gays stood up for themselves and
said they weren't going to take it any more. I was impressed with the
words of a long-time writer for The Body Politic in Canada, Gerald
Hannon, written, I think, way back in 1971. He said, "I got hooked, I
guess, on empowerment, the transformation of The Helpless Queer
with no history and an unlikely future into Someone, into a group of
Someones, who uncovered a history, who found heroes, who grabbed
today and shook it till tomorrow fell out of its pocket and there was a
place there in it for us."
Very poetic. But did he use the word "queer?"

That was an old word that other people used to describe (and
marginalize) homosexuals. Since 1979, the movement has preferred,
instead, the term "gay," a word that one editorial writer for a gay
publication said did not carry "overtones of sin or sickness" (as the
word, "queer" a homosexual doesn't think of himself
did). Generally,
as gay until he makes an open profession of his condition which is a —

kind of rite of passage called "coming out."
"Coming out?" Out of what?

Out of the closet. It's a metaphor. Hidden homosexuality is "in the
closet." Gays now celebrate when celebrities tell the world they're
gay. Sometimes, militant gays will take it upon themselves to
announce that some celebrity or other is also gay. It's called "outing."
For the past few years, the gay press has been full of talk about outing.
One's position on outing supposedly divided the good guys from the
bad guys inside the movement. Some gay extremists say those who
come out have arrived. Those who don't are cowards and hypocrites,
and they should be exposed.
Who said that?

Michelangelo Signorile, once a columnist for The Advocate, has been
an exponent of outing. At a 1992 national convention of gay and
lesbian journalists in San Francisco, he said that he and his
colleagues were duty-bound to make "moral judgments" about men
and women who hide their homosexuality. He told The New York
Times that if they hold positions of public power, it is the duty of gay
History 61
journalists to identify them. "It is time," he said, "to develop new

ethics of reportage because the old ethics were created a long time
ago by straight, white men." After the Gulf War, Signorile outed the
Pentagon's principle press spokesman, Assistant Secretary of Defense
Pete Williams. In March 1995, a militant gay rights group in England
pressured David Hope, the bishop of London, to out himself —or else
they would do so themselves. The bishop refused, quite rightly, to do
that. He held a news conference to say that his own sexuality was
"ambiguous," that he had chosen to live "a single, celibate life," and
that calls for him to out himself were an intrusion on his privacy.
What did the gay activists have to gain by getting the bishop to out
himself?
Respectability perhaps, so they could say, "The bishop of London is
one of us." I'm not sure this would have clarified anything, however.
The story only confirms the fact that some gay activists will go to any
lengths to push their agenda.
Does every gay approve of outing?

Hardly. Some think it is a form of fratricide. Randy Shilts, another gay
journalist with considerably more stature than Signorile, said in 1991
that the gay movement "is predicated on the idea that being gay is
nothing to be ashamed and that outing "has

of," really twisted what
the gay movement is supposed to be all about."
So why do they do it?

Political reasons. For example, Congressman Barney Frank of
Massachusetts, a gay member of the U.S. House of Representatives,
once threatened to out any fellow legislator who voted in a manner
hostile to gay interests. A gay activist, William A. Percy, professor of
history at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, has offered a
$10,000 reward to anyone who first succeeds in outing a living
American Catholic cardinal, a sitting justice of the U.S. Supreme
Court, or a four-star officer on active duty in any branch of the U.S.
armed forces.
Who's Percy and what's his game?

He says he is a first cousin, three times removed, of General George
—
Armstrong Custer whatever that's supposed to mean. His point is
that the Roman Catholic Church, the U.S. Supreme Court and the
U.S. armed commanding heights of church and

forces "represent the
state in America, and all three of them are homophobic."
What would he do with that information?

Prof. Percy he says, "to silence homosexuals who
would use it,
persecute other homosexuals actively or by silently collaborating in

homophobic institutions." That's an interesting theory. I almost hope
—
someone will claim the $10,000 just to see how successful Percy
would be at "silencing" people who are already, presumably, very
silent — if, indeed, they even exist.
What do you think would happen?

Nothing. It might serve Percy right, to lose $10,000 (or more) on a
dopey theory. But never underestimate the courage of some gay

militants. Now it seems that they are outing some secret homosexuals
simply because they aren't militant enough. Their only crime is that
they aren't members of Queer Nation.
Some members of the gay community call themselves "queer?"

Yes. One of the most militant groups call themselves "Queer Nation."
In fact, Signorile entitled his book Queer in America: Sex. the Media
and the Closets of Power. I think these people who don't mind calling
themselves queer have the strongest sense of commitment to the
cause. They prefer same-sex sex and they're proud of it. So they can
afford to use even the once-hated term "queer." As in this direct
challenge to the religious right from Signorile: "You say we're coming
for your children, and you're right. We're coming for your queer
—
children. We are your queer children. God your God made us that —
way. And there is nothing you can do about it." They've also started to
call themselves "male faggots." These uses are pure irony. Not all of
us appreciate irony. But, over time, we'll get it. Especially as we come
to further understandings about gay ideology.
"
CHAPTER THREE:
IDEOLOGY
&
"From the love that dare not speak its name to the love
that can't shut up—in barely twenty five years.
What are the chief tenets of the gay and lesbian ideology?
I've been able to identify three principle elements:
1) That homosexuality is normal.
2) That homosexuality is not a pathological condition.
3) That homosexuality entitles gays and lesbians to preferred

social status.
Has the movement been able to sell those ideas?

Very well. They've already sold these ideas to the media, and in our
nation's schools.
How?
They used a specious argument by analogy: that they were part of a
downtrodden minority (which was partly true) and that, therefore,
they were entitled to all the special treatment we accord to others of
the downtrodden, like women and blacks (which didn't necessarily
follow). But Americans are uncomfortable with any kind of
discrimination (especially if it is discrimination against ten percent of

the population) and many of them bought the analogy. Selling it was
maybe the biggest public relations coup of all time.
How did they sell it?

They were given a head start when Dr. Alfred Kinsey published his
work on male sexuality back in 1948.
The study that concluded ten percent of all Americans were

homosexual?
The study did among other
that, things, yes. And that ten percent
figure not only became part of the national mythology. It also
contributed to the legitimation of same-sex sex. Dr. Kinsey used his
research to back up his testimony before California legislators as he
urged the de-criminalization of sodomy. If ten percent of the
population was into same-sex sex, it had a measure of normality.
How could the state make it a crime?
I don't follow the legal reasoning.
Well, neither do I, one of Shakespeare's characters has it, "The

but, as
law is if you could show that a significant
a ass." Kinsey said that
percentage of the population is homosexual, then homosexuality was
normal. And the legal people bought Kinsey's argument-by-statistics.
Though I think they'd have a hard time buying that reasoning if
someone cited current statistics on the increasing prevalence of
another form of sexually aberrant behavior, child abuse, including
incest, in the home.
You mean, by Kinsey's statistical logic, you could prove that incest is
normal?
Exactly. New studies on incest claim that 25 percent of young
all
women in this country have been sexually tampered with by their

own fathers. Here'sanother example. Consider a recent study of
American medical schools, published in August 1991 by the
California Medical Association. It found that 55 percent of 581
medical students polled in a random survey, including one-fourth of
the male students, reported some form of sexual harassment during
their training. Would those statistics make sexual harassment normal,
and, therefore, non-criminal?
But Kinsey's ten percentfigure turned out to he a mistake, didn't it?

Ideology 65
Yes, as we know now. The latest, most reliable report we have pegs
the homosexual population not at ten percent, but one percent.
According to funded by a U.S. government grant of $1.8 to
this study,
the Guttmacher Institute, 2.8 percent of the men surveyed had
engaged in same-sex sex and 1.1 percent said they considered
themselves exclusively homosexual.
Were you surprised by these results?

Not really. We had one clue in 1988, when the Department of Health
in New York City revised downward its estimate of the city's
homosexual population, from 500,000 down to 100,000 homosexual
males. They did this as part of their effort to track AIDS cases. They
just weren't finding nearly the numbers of gays in New York City, a
gay Mecca, that fit with the Kinsey projections. The Guttmacher study
released in 1993 only confirmed that.
Was this Guttmacher study a good one?

The The numbers came from a random national study of 3,321
best.
men between the ages of 20 and 39 who were guaranteed anonymity
in face-to-face interviews conducted in 1991 by the Battelle Human
Affairs Research Center of Seattle, Washington. The results were first
released in April 1993 and then published in October 1994.
How did the gay community react to that news?

It for gays. If you think you have a political movement
was bad news
withmaybe 15 or 20 million potential members and then suddenly
some sociologists tell you you only have one-tenth as many, you've
lost 90 percent of your power overnight. Many homosexuals,
political
of course, aren't political at all. They just want to be left alone. But, to
the political activists in the gay community, news about the one-
percent was a big blow. They were still "recovering" from the news
when, less than two weeks later, they arrived in the nation's capitol
for the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay & Bi Equal Rights
and Liberation. They'd been expecting a million gay and lesbian
—
demonstrators easy. They were zapped again when they were told
that the District's Park Police had estimated the crowd at 300,000.
That was another blow to the gay mythology.
The myth of the ten percent?

It was a very important belief. Of course, many gays had known for
some time was too high. But they found it

that the ten percent figure
tactically useful, and it helped them advance the ideology that —
same-sex sex is normal, or, at least, "a normal variation." Bruce
Voeller, a leading gay activist, admitted in a Kinsey Institute
publication in 1990, "The 10 percent figure is regularly utilized by
scholars, by the press, and in government statistics. As with so many
pieces of knowledge (and myth), repeated telling made it so
incredible as the notion was to the world when the Kinsey group first
put forth its data or decades later when the Gay Movement pressed
that data into public consciousness." Tom Stoddard, former head of
the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, told Newsweek magazine, "We used
that [10 percent] figure... to create an impression of our
numerousness."
But only one percent!

The number was consistent with the results of some other current
studies. A 1990-91 survey in France reported that 1.4 percent of men
and 0.4 percent of women had had same-sex sex in the five years
preceding the study. Exactly 0.7 percent of the men said they were
exclusively homosexual all their lives. A study in Great Britain
published in 1994 reported that 1.5 percent of the men had had
same-sex sex in the five years preceding the study. In Canada, a
nationwide cluster sample of 5,514 first year college students under
25 taken at random came up with 98 percent heterosexual, one
percent homosexual, one percent bisexual. Then there were the
results of exit-polling in the U.S. on election day in November 1992.
Some 2.5 percent of the voters said they were either gay or lesbian.
But 93 percent of the gays and lesbians turned out to vote, as opposed
to 50 percent of the population in general. So, if we now say that
about one percent of the U.S. population is into same-sex sex, that
sounds just about right.
How was that news reported?

Itmade page one of The New York Times and that was like throwing a
monkey wrench into the propaganda machine. One gay writer said,
"We were outraged. We knew we were bigger.... It was as if the words
'one-in-ten' were written in our hearts."
How did gay myth makers try to repair the damage?

The prize winning piece of spin control came from Dr. Richard A.
r
Ideology 67
Isay, a gay psychiatrist who is vice president of the National Lesbian

and Gay Health Foundation in New York. Isay's letter to The New
way researchers from the Battelle
York Times took issue with the
He criticized the researchers for
Center had conducted their study.
asking the interviewees whether they'd had same-sex sex, and
whether they considered themselves exclusively homosexual.
What other criteria could they use?

Isay argued that "it is not necessary to engage in sexual activity to be
homosexual." He suggested that maybe researchers should have
asked respondents if they ever had any homosexual fantasies. He said
that would be "a more reliable indicator of sexual orientation." But
no, that probably wouldn't work either because, as Isay said, "even
fantasy and desire may be repressed or denied." In fact, Isay argued
that there are vast numbers of men in the land who deny their
—
homosexual orientation adolescents who date girls because of
pressure from their peers or their parents, men who marry "to avoid
the stigma of being homosexual or because they are unable to
acknowledge that they are."
So what did the Guttmacher Institute's study mean to Isay?
He said he was "concerned that the 1 percent is a probable indicator

of just how small a percentage of homosexual men in our society are
able to claim their sexual orientation." You see here a neat expression
of the underlying ideology. Isay comes close to voicing every
homosexual's fantasy: "Everyone's gay. They just don't know it yet." I
understand now that in the gay community "everybody thinks" that

Magic lohnson, who came down with HIV, "probably had a
homosexual relationship or two or seven."
Isay was given space for his ideas in The New York Times. Is The
Times a part of the gay liberation movement?
It seems that The Times may be violating its own canons of objective
reporting almost every time it does a story on gays. For a time, The
New York Times had gay reporters doing slanted stories and damage
control on behalf of the movement. One of them, Jeff Schmalz, wrote
The Times' second day story on the Guttmacher findings which said,
in effect that the Guttmacher study must be wrong. He quoted one
gay spokesman who noted that the study concentrated on males
between 20 and 39. Many of these, he said, obviously didn't know
theirown orientation. The editorial page picked up the same theme:

the editorial said the study was off because so many of the
respondents didn't know they were gay, yet.
Well, how about that? Don't a lot of men come late to the discovery
that they prefer (or are compelled by) same-sex sex?
Not a them. John McNeill, a former Jesuit priest, says, "After

lot of
dealing with hundreds of gay people in in-depth psychotherapy and

doing short term counseling with several hundred others, I am now
aware that most gay men were aware of their sexual orientation at a
very early age... In fact, a large number were aware of their
orientation in early childhood." Exactly 89.5 percent of the
respondents in a study of 156 male couples by David McWhirter and
Andrew Mattison indicate that they had their first homosexual
experience before the age of 19. But some men do come out of the
closet during middle age, often when they've achieved considerable
financial success, and may even have started a family.
What's taken them so long?

They may have been plagued with certain homosexual fantasies and
by their homosexual dreams, with or without a conscious denial of
their significance. They may have lived much of their lives up to then
without actualizing their homosexual leanings. Some who are fully
aware of these leanings may abstain from same-sex sex. Some may
not. Many of these men, who cannot abstain totally, may go off once
or twice a year for same-sex sex binges, then return to their normal
lives until severe internal stress forces them off again for another
binge.
You use the word "binge. " They sound like alcoholics.
Some same-sex sex addicts are alcoholics, too. Homosexual males are
three times as likely to have alcohol or drug problems as the general
male population. Obligatory homosexuals are driven in a number of
ways. That's why I call them obligatory homosexuals.
These people seem to be leading very unhappy lives. Wouldn't they be

better offjust accepting their same-sex leanings?
That's what gay activists are telling them. They should come out of
the closet because, now, being gay, they say, "is completely normal
and socially acceptable" in every way. But it would make as much
Ideology 69
sense for counselors to tell a man who only gets drunk on weekends
to simply acknowledge the fact that he's a drunk, then relax and enjoy
himself every night of the week.
And what's wrong with that?

Well, there are consequences. Go to an AA meeting and listen to the
stories. Alcoholics have a way of losing their jobs, their families, their
homes, their health.
And you 're saying that same-sex sex has consequences, too ?
Exactly. It has personal consequences and societal consequences.

Homosexuals who are mustered out
in the Navy, for example, will get
if they cannot control their urges on duty. When married men come
—
out of the closet, they, too, lose their families often a major tragedy
for their wives and children. And I do not have to remind you that
many many gays are now HIV positive and/or dying of AIDS. That
impacts on society. The Rev. Enrique Rueda, a Catholic priest who
once did an impressive book on homosexuals, says, 'The homosexual
community is a reservoir of disease for the rest of society." At one
point in the history of AIDS, some gays had unwittingly infected a
majority of the nation's 20,000 hemophiliacs with HIV. As of July
1993, more than 2,700 U.S. hemophiliacs had full-blown AIDS.
How did that happen?

Hemophiliacs lack the proteins necessary for blood to clot. If they get
a minor cut, they can bleed to death. So they need to have periodic
injections of something called "clotting factor." This product is made
from the plasma of thousands of donors. But the blood used to make
the clotting factor was not screened for HIV until 1985, four years
after the AIDS plague began. During that period, a good many gays,
—
among others who were HIV, were giving or selling their blood. —
Let'sgo back to Dr. Kinsey's ten percent How could he he so far off
the mark? Did he just make an honest mistake?
Kinsey was a good scientist. He knew better. In his first work on male
sexuality published in 1948, he presented the results of interviews
with 5,300 white American males as somehow representative of the
general population. But his sampling techniques broke all the rules
for building a model of the U.S. population.Some of his subjects
were, literally, captive subjects; he found them in the nation's
prisons, where same-sex sex was (and is still) endemic. He found

other subjects in New York City's gay bars. He often gave lectures in
college classrooms, then asked for interview volunteers. There was
nothing random about this sample; these youngsters were self-
selected subjects, the kind of subjects that social scientists frown on,
because they skew the results of the work.
How would self-selection make a difference here?

Back when Kinsey did his study of the American
in the late 1940s,
male, when people were still reticent about sex, the half-dozen
members of a college class who'd volunteer to be interviewed by Dr.
Kinsey had to be the most adventuresome, and probably the most
sexually active, members of the class. They were hardly typical, hardly
in the middle on any conceivable scale of sexuality.
But why would Kinsey want to skew the results of his sample?
Dr. Kinsey had an open bias. He was promote the idea that
trying to
all societal distinctions between right and wrong sexual behavior
licit and illicit, normal and abnormal, acceptable and unacceptable
were artificial. In place of society's traditional norms, Kinsey offered

an easy liberation. A man's orgasm is something like truth, he said.
It's where you find it —
through masturbation, petting, intercourse
with a woman, or a man (inside whatever orifice feels good), or with a
little boy, or, even, a sheep. No right or wrong involved. These modes
If he could prove that they
of being simply were, like left-handedness.
were common, well, then they represented the discovery of a new
norm for mankind.
And why would he want to promote that idea?

Edward W. Eichel and Judith A. Reisman have suggested in their work
Kinsey, Sex and Fraud Huntington House, 1990) that
(Lafayette, LA:
—
Kinsey had a dark side to his genius that he himself was a pederast.
There is evidence, at least, in Kinsey' s own reports that he performed
(or at least supervised and condoned) experiments with male and
female infants and preadolescents that went beyond the ethical
boundaries of research with human subjects. He masturbated these
infants and children over and over again in an effort to prove that
even infants and children can have orgasms. Here is how Kinsey
described in his book on the human male a complete orgasm (except
for ejaculation) in a five-month-old male infant:
Ideology 71
A fretful baby quiets down under the initial sexual

stimulation, is distracted from other activities, begins
rhythmic pelvic thrusts,becomes tense as climax approaches,
is thrown into convulsive action, often with violent arm and
leg movements, sometimes with weeping at moments of

climax. After climax the child loses erection quickly and
subsides into the calm and peace that typically follows adult
orgasm.
What does this prove about Kinsey?

At the time, no one thought to ask Kinsey what he was doing,
masturbating a five-month-old baby. Nor did anyone challenge
Kinsey's report about one pre-adolescent child who "was observed to
experience 26 orgasms within 24 hours when sexually aroused." No
one asked, then, who was observing these 26 orgasms, or who was
involved in the sexual arousal. The event was, simply, part of the
Kinsey experimentation.
Did anyone ever challenge Kinsey on this?
Before Kinsey's death in 1956, the research community hadn't yet

worked out ethical rules that would, today, prohibit such
experiments. Needless to say, such experiments in 1993 would get
researchers arrested for sexual abuse, or pedophilia. But Kinsey got
away with them.
You're saying that Kinsey was a homosexual who wanted to

normalize his own deviance?
I can't prove that. I do know that Kinsey promoted bisexuality as a
normal way of being.
How did he do that?

According to what is now called "the Kinsey Scale," everyone's sexual
orientation fits into a seven-point scale that runs the spectrum from
exclusively heterosexual (zero), to exclusively homosexual (six).
Kinsey worked out that scale, incidentally, before he had done 95

percent of his research on the human male, and he borrowed the
notion that we are bisexual, inaccurately, from the field of
evolutionary biology and embryology.
Why do you say "inaccurately?"

You must remember that in the 19th century, biologists discovered in
human embryos gonadal material of both sexes. On this ground,

embryos were labeled, first, "hermaphroditic," then "bisexual." These
labels, unfortunately, stuck. Obviously, these terms far exceed their
structural and functional implications. These investigators were
cellular biologists, likely to define individuals solely by their gonadal
cells, and not, as we do today, by the reproductive system as a whole.
Within a few months, human embryos undergo stages of

development and gender. They develop male reproductive apparatus,
or female reproductive apparatus within a few weeks. It is a very big
illogical leap to say, therefore, that because we start out,
"embryonically the same," that we're all somewhat heterosexual
and somewhat homosexual, too. Long before we are born, we either
have a male reproductive apparatus, or a female reproductive
apparatus, or, in very rare cases, we are sexually defective. But even
sex defectives have a desire to be one thing or the other, either men or
women.
So Kinsey was wrong?

Yes. The wonder is borrowed from the
that people bought his notion,
embryologists, that we are, all of us, partly male and partly female,
and that, therefore, bisexuality would fit in the direct middle of his
sexuality scale. (I find it fascinating that Kinsey would balance
bisexuals in the direct middle of that scale. The exact middle is the
locus of virtue according to Aristotle.)
And how many people fit into Kinsey 's exact middle?
Using his own theoretical construct, Kinsey was able to prove, by

1948, that some 37 percent of the male population in America were
—
bisexuals because this cohort, nominally heterosexual, had "at least
some overt homosexual experience to the point of orgasm between
adolescence and old age."
Well, wouldn't this prove his point, that bisexual is a very normal
way to be?
Even assuming that his sample wasn't skewed (which it was), "some
overt homosexual experience" doesn't make a man a homosexual or a
bisexual. I think Kinsey knew that. So why did he make "some
homosexual experience" his criterion? Because I think he wanted to
widen the homosexual, or bisexual, universe.
r
Ideology 73
And why would he want to do that?

Ifyou've spent much time with homosexuals, or read much
homosexual literature, you'd know that they'd like to think that
everyone's a homosexual.
Sort of like, "Misery loves company?"

Well, they wouldn't call misery. But they do love company. And,
it
interestingly enough, thehomosexual community would even like to

include so called homophobes, who, they claim, are so afraid of their
own latent homosexuality that they have to attack it.
We were talking about the three planks in the gay ideology. How
about the second one, that homosexuality is not an illness. Who
pioneered that idea?
I think it was Dr. Frank Kameny, who is not a doctor or a psychiatrist,
but an astronomer from Washington, D.C. At least, it is Kameny who
takes credit for it. He says he was one of the first gays to see the need,
way back in 1962, to force the American Psychiatric Association to
take homosexuality off its list of disorders, a move that he claims he
led to a successful conclusion in 1973. That's when the APA decreed
that homosexuality was not a pathological disorder. Kameny
underlined the importance of the decision in an Op Ed piece in The
Washington Post in 1978. The psychiatrists in the APA, he said, "cured
us instantly and en masse." He was speaking ironically, of course,
admitting that he regretted having to appeal to the expertise of "the
high priests of the 20th century: the psychiatrists" because "their
views carry enormous weight, not only in shaping public opinion, but
also in more formalized areas such as law and government policy."
And what was Kameny 's position?

Kameny said that homosexuals had been "defined into sickness by a
mixture of moral, cultural, sociological and theological value
judgments, camouflaged in the language of science, but without any
of the substance of science."
Was that true? "Without any of the substance ofscience?"

No. Quite the contrary. TheAPA could only take the action it did by
disregarding and dismissing hundreds of psychiatric and
psychoanalytic research papers and reports that had been done on
homosexuality over the previous two decades including the report —
of the Committee on Cooperation with the Governmental Agencies of

the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry in 1955, the New York
Academy of Medicine Report in 1964, and the Task Force Report of
the New York County District Branch of the APA prepared in 1970-72
by an eleven-member group of psychiatric experts in this field. The
APA ignored the science, and, for reasons that were nothing but
political, "cured" homosexuality by fiat.
Why did the APA give in so easily?

The organization was under political assault by gay activists some of —
them members of the APA itself. It was easier for the leadership to
switch than fight.
These were doctors. By this action, weren't they turning their backs
on medicine itself?
Well, that was part of the problem. many doctors just didn't
I think
want to be bothered. Some of the psychiatrists who voted against our
position simply didn't know enough about homosexuality-as-
pathology, or were confused by the opinions of a few psychiatrists,
likeJudd Marmor of UCLA, who maintained that wanting same-sex
sex was perfectly normal. It was safer for them to say then that, since
"authorities in the field" were divided, they'd better not keep
affirming that same-sex sex represented a pathology in itself. That
way, they could tell themselves that the whole question was just up in
the air. And then maybe the gay activists demonstrating outside their
meetings would just go away.
What about those authorities on the other side?
We'll get into this later, when we

about the battle. But some of
talk
the psychiatrists saying homosexuality wasn't a disorder were
themselves gay.
But what about the ethical and societal considerations? Wasn't the
APA concerned what impact this move would have on society?
Well, Dr. Freud never hesitated to weigh in with his wise reflections
on ethics and society. One of his greatest essays, in fact, was
"Civilization and Its Discontents." In "The Three Essays on Sexuality,"
published in 1905, Freud wrote that "where inversion is not regarded
as a crime, it would be found that it answers fully the sexual
inclination of no small number of people." He then pointed out that
Ideology 75
"the authoritative prohibition of society" was the chief deterring

factor that prevented such a thingfrom happening. But modern U.S.
psychiatrists do not normally deal with such questions. Their
competence is the human psyche. Those waters are deep enough.
Why should they complicate their lives by trying to swim in waters
that are so much deeper, and probably full of sharks besides?
And so it became easier for psychiatrists to simply avoid saying that
anything was "wrong" about homosexuality ?

Saying something is wrong is a value judgment.
What's the matter with a value judgment?

To many academics, value judgments aren't scientific. Values get into
notions of goodness and evil, and no forward-thinking scholar would
want to be accused of making judgments about what is "good" or
"evil." That would take them into discussions about good and bad
behavior.
And what's the matter with that?

That's a no-no. That would make doctors into moralists.
/ don't understand. When a doctor says that smoking is bad for my

health, he's a moralist?
Iguess doctors who deal in lungs are exempt from the charge.
Everyone seems to agree that lung cancer is bad.
Well, how far can a doctor go here? What if a doctor puts a bumper
sticker on his Mercedes that says, "War is bad for children and all
other living things?"
That's a moral judgment. But it's probably one that most people
would tend to agree with. So a doctor can get away with it.
But doctors who say that homosexuality is bad for your health? They
can't get away with that?
That's the problem. Not everyone says that same-sex sex is a

pathology. My old antagonist, Dr. Robert Spitzer, says that "the
concept of disease or illness is made by men. It does not reflect any
intrinsic property in nature. All the variations in the human condition
that exist in nature, such as left-handedness, genius, tuberculosis,
schizophrenia, atherosclerosis and dwarfism, are, in a sense, equally
natural. It is man who, in his effort to improve the quality and length
of his life, has developed the concept of illness to identify those

conditions for which there exists a consensus that they are bad and
should be treated."
So, to Spitzer, things aren't good-for -you or bad-for-you in

themselves? Good-for-you and bad-for-you comes down to a
majority vote, or a consensus?
Apparently so.
And Spitzer says there's no longer any consensus about same-sex sex?
Right. As we've seen, there are increasingly vocal groups of gays who
say that "gay is good." Even some gay psychiatrists are saying that gay
is good.
But psychiatrists who say that gay is good —aren't they moralists,
too?
That's the anomaly. As human beings, I don't think we can get away
from making value judgments all the time, judgments that are not
based on a vote of the majority. At the very least, doctors can look at
—
certain behaviors and say they're hurtful in themselves. I think that
if we want to help people, we have to help them steer away from
behavior that hurts them.
On the other hand, there are mental health professionals who say
that therapy intended to steer gays away from same-sex sex is what
hurts them more than anything.
Yes. Beginning in the early 1960s, gay militants began to charge that
doctors like me were not only not helping with the problem. They
said we were the problem, even when we were attempting to help
patients who came to us in acute distress, asking for help. Richard
Isay wrote in 1992, "Efforts to change homosexuals to heterosexuals, I
believe, represent one of the most and frequent abuses of

flagrant
psychiatry in America today." Onecomparing gays to blacks,
writer,
charged that "psychiatric cures" were the equivalent of "white
supremacy." Gays, he said, would only be free when they, like blacks,
learned to accept their identities rather than seek freedom through
self denial.
And were still unhappy with their orientation, they weren't

if they
supposed to seek your help?
Exactly. In fact, Gerald Davison, president of the Association for the
Ideology 77
Advancement of Behavior Therapy, argued that it would be wrong for

a homosexual to seek help from a psychotherapist in changing his
sexual orientation. "Even if we could effect certain changes," he said
in a presidential address to his association in 1974, "there is still the
more important question of whether we should. I believe we should
not." He acknowledged that individual homosexuals might suffer in
this event, but that homosexuals would benefit as a class. Note well
what he was doing: he was giving priority to a political standard over

a medical standard. Many of his colleagues spoke out against him; he
was betraying his own (and their) profession. But, in the past ten
years, the situation has gotten worse. Today, gays who seek therapy
are branded as traitors to the movement.
Andyou're against the movementfor that reason?

I've always been in sympathy with some of the goals of the gay rights
movement. Discrimination hurts people, I don't care who they are.
But if someone comes to me in pain because he's caught up in same-
sex sex, I want to help him.
And you know that same-sex sex is a behavior that hurts him?
I don't know that going in. If I find I have a patient who isn't hurting,
then he hardly needs to keep seeing me. But why has he come to me
in the first place? I have to get to the bottom of that. I had a recent
patient who came to see me because his wife insisted he come. He
was planning to leave her for his boyfriend. There was nothing much
I could do for him. He wasn't in pain. He didn't want to change. He
didn't love his wife, and he was ecstatic about his new lover. Never
been happier in his life. On the other hand, if a priest came to me in
anguish because he couldn't help going after one of the boys in his
choir, I'd have to say that his acting on that impulse would hurt him.
Hurt him or hurt his standing in the priesthood?

f
Well, both. There are hundreds of priests in this country who have
been found abusing their altar boys. That's hurt them. And it's hurt
their priesthood.
In that case, wouldn't you be better advised to let their bishops

handle that?
Well, bishops all over the country are attempting to deal with priests
who are into same-sex sex. And many bishops are trying to help
priestswho are struggling with their sexual identities. But they do it in

theirown traditional ways, which may or may not work. I mean,
prayer may help, but it probably won't get to the core of the problem,
which may be tied up with why the guy entered the celibate
priesthood in the first place. That's where psychoanalysis comes in.
Have you had any priest-patients?

Yes. They came to me because they found they needed more than
prayer. They learned that not even an appeal to God could help them
stop their compulsive behavior. I had one priest-patient who used to
go off to The Netherlands on vacation and pay men to beat him up; it
was his way of dealing with his guilt. He finally came to me because
he thought that maybe psychoanalysis could help him get to the root
of his problem.
Could it? Did it?

Yes. Through therapy, we got to the root of his guilt. He developed a
lot of insight about himself, realized that he'd entered the priesthood
because he feared his sexuality, and thought he could handle it better
in the disciplined environment of his religious order. He eventually
left the priesthood. He's now happily married and practicing
psychotherapy today.
What if this priest had gone, instead, to a gay psychiatrist? How

would he have been treated?
The gay would have welcomed one more recruit to self-
psychiatrist
delusion. But he wouldn't have helped the man expunge his deepest
guilts. He would have still been tempted to go off and get beat up in
—
The Netherlands or someplace else. He might have been killed. This
is my biggest argument with the gay activists within the medical and
psychiatric profession today: they don't deal with what is, but with
the way they'd like things to be.
Are you thinking of any one in particular?

Ihave a number of them in mind. But I can't help telling the story
about one of them, a health commissioner in New York in the early
—
1970s, and a gay activist. One of my patients I call him Paul once —
phoned him to protest the distorted image that he was presenting to
the public-at-large about homosexuals.
/ don 't quite understand. Why did Paul call him?

Ideology 79
Paul had successfully made the move from homosexuality to

heterosexuality, and he was reading all this propaganda from this
doctor and his gay activists, pushing the idea that homosexuality was
just another legitimate lifestyle. Paul wanted him to know this was
"hurting a lot of homosexuals."
How was it hurting them?

He told him that organizations like the Gay Task Force were probably
keeping a good many homosexuals away from treatment. The doctor
started to get angry. "Treatment?" he said. "Treatment!" Paul said he
had been successfully treated for his homosexuality. The doctor said,
"There is no such thing."
And Paul knew from his own experience that there was such a thing?
Yes. After some time in therapy, Paul had kicked what he called his
sickness. He knew he'd been sick and now he was well. And here was
this doctor saying this was impossible. When Paul had first phoned, it
was Paul who was angry. Now, as this doctor's anger grew, Paul
became very calm. Paul told me later, "I realized I was talking to
somebody that was sick. As he got more and more upset, I realized
that he was losing his control, and then he finally hung up on me." It
was this same doctor who took an active role in getting
homosexuality removed from the APA's list of disorders in 1973.
Why did the leaders of the APA go along with that move?
Itwas a very cowardly thing to do, and it was a decision that is still
haunting us today. The decision has been cited thousands of times
over the past 20 years by those wishing to legitimize same- sex sex in
our schools and in a myriad other organizations, including the Boy
Scouts and the U.S. armed forces. And it provided some adolescents,
struggling with their homosexual urges, to take the leap into same-sex
sex, and, as a result, become infected with AIDS. My colleagues and I,
those of us who believe homosexuality is a disorder, have been all but

silenced. We've been threatened with ostracism by the psychiatric
leadership —for political, not scientific reasons. And some doctors
who don't know any better seem to have bought Isay's charge that
treating homosexuals is a psychiatric abuse.
And they're making that charge stick?

Right now, the American Psychoanalytic Association (not to be
confused with the American Psychiatric Association, most of whose

members are not analysts) is engaged in a fight with gay activists. For
years, homosexuals had not been admitted into psychoanalytic
training programs, without first analyzing their homosexuality and
getting rid of it. In 1991 and 1992, the Association passed resolutions
that deplored such discrimination, and urged that homosexuals be
given equal opportunity to become faculty members and training and
supervising analysts of the nation's psychoanalytic institutes. But that
didn't go far enough to suit the gay activists. Now the Gay and
Lesbian Caucus of the American Psychiatric Association is pressuring
the APA to brand as unethical any homosexual to
efforts to convert a
a heterosexual. A member of one psychoanalytic society was
threatened before he presented a paper on perversions. He was
warned that if homosexuality was identified as a perversion, the
meeting would be interrupted by force. In another open scientific
forum, a leading homosexual analyst stated that only a homosexual
analyst could treat a homosexual patient.
Are the psychoanalysts knuckling under to this kind ofpressure?

Iam pleasantly surprised to find a backlash building against this kind
of intimidation. Remember that analysts are different from
psychiatrists. Analysts will study the meaning of a piece of behavior
by delving into the hidden motivations behind enactments of any
kind. They do not accept excuses or rationalizations for various kinds
of behavior.
And regular psychiatrists do?

Sometimes, especially if they are gay psychiatrists. What is especially
troubling is this: that these gay psychiatrists are insisting that we
analysts also accept these excuses or rationalizations. But, on May 21,
1993, in San Francisco, the American Psychoanalytic Association
passed a resolution which had gone far
said, in effect, that the gays
enough. From now on, we said, we are going to insist that scientific
issues should be researched, discussed and debated in a scientific
atmosphere of free and open exploration. We will not put up with
threats to disrupt our scientific meetings or intimidate our clinical
researchers. We will treat homosexual patients who want treatment,
we continue to search for the origins of homosexuality, we will
will
publish our findings. Sexual politics will not stop us from trying to
understand human sexual behavior.
Ideology 81
But the sexual politics will go on anyway, won't they?

Well, if it's a fight, it's a fight. We just know now that we have to
summon up the courage to resist the intimidations of gay politicians.
We didn't do it Not enough of us anyway. In 1993, we insisted
in 1973.
that pressure groups should not try to tell researchers where their
inquiries should lead. Much less should gay activists tell an analyst
who is not gay that he cannot treat a homosexual who wants to
change his orientation.
Can we come back to theAPA later?

Yes. We should. There's a fascinating story to tell—how the American
Psychiatric Association let the gay activists engage in a campaign of
deceit.
Okay. What about the third tenet of the gay agenda — that
homosexuality entitles gays and lesbians to preferred social and even
legal status?
On the legal front, all the gay activists need to do is complete what
they've already started: get laws passed that will allow gays to sue for
their fair quota of hires at the local elementary school, junior college
or state university.
But what is "a fair quota?" Are gays ten percent of the national
population? Or one percent? Or something in between? Who's to say?
And if it is, say, two percent nationally, is it fair to apply that two
percent to a university town like Iowa City, or Austin, Texas. Or, on
the other hand, to Cambridge, Massachusetts?
Too many questions. In fact, gays already occupy a preferred status in

some university and seminary settings. I wonder if gays in general
(gay propagandists aside) actually want, or need the protection of
affirmative action. If you can believe the market research that is
commissioned by the editors of The Advocate, the nation's largest gay
publication, gays have an annual income of $62,000 nearly twice the —
national average.
that gay activists are really not looking for further legal
Is it possible
status,but social status? That they just want to be accepted in
American society?
Probably so. This is what's behind all these parades celebrating "gay
pride."
Well, what does acceptance mean to a gay activist?
I fear it means more than "equality." Sometimes I hear gay
liberationists saying that homosexuality and heterosexuality are
simply alternate lifestyles. And
that they put no particular value on
either one. Other times, I hear them putting homosexuality up and
heterosexuality down/ In fact, some gays have asked me what
justification I had for heterosexuality. Even some gay psychiatrists are
saying that gay is better —following the lead of Dr. Robert Seidenberg,
who wrote in 1973: "The homosexual culture is a valuable asset to
civilization. There is already an abundant supply of heterosexuals —as
our ecologists are warning perhaps too ample a supply. We may
us,
live to who renounce traditional family life, as
see the day when those
homosexuals have, will become the new ecological cult heroes."
That's quite an evolution, from lizards to lions in less than a

generation.
Isn't it though? Yale Kramer, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the

Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, put it another
way: "From the love that dare not speak name to the love that can't
its
shut up —in barely twenty Clinton may have led

five years." President
the way by putting some esteemed gays on his White House staff. And
the magazines and newspapers setting the trends in this country have
already put their mark of approval on this transformation. The New
Yorker doesn't miss an opportunity to run stories that pay great
respect to gay artists, gays in the military, gay writers. In June 1994,
The New Yorker put its blessing on gay marriage, by giving a male
couple and their two-groom wedding cake a place on its cover. But
The New Yorker isn't alone in its efforts to make homosexuality
acceptable, even lovable. Vanity Fair follows suit. So do The New York
Times and The Los Angeles Times. The point I am making is this: that
our culture critics have already dictated that gay is now "in." And I'm
saying that society will suffer for it. In fact, society is already suffering.
Well, if you say there's something wrong with it, gay activists like
Frank Kameny imposing your own "moral,
will just say you're
cultural, sociological and theological value judgments" on society.
I don't need to impose them. These value judgments have been

worked out by civilized men and women over the centuries. I just
want society to realize that people like Kameny are trying to repeal
them, all in the name of a Active freedom.
Ideology 83
Why do you say "fictive freedom?"

Freedom such a marvelous concept. Who can be against freedom?
is
This is why
the gay rights people use the word a great deal. But
freedom is often a delusion, leading to exactly the opposite of
freedom. That's when I call it "a fictive freedom."
What do you mean by "fictive?"
"Fictive" means made-up, fictitious, or imaginary, a product of

wishful thinking contrary to and flying in the face of reality's
demands. For example, an unconscious belief shared by many
homosexuals has it that certain women are endowed with a penis,
and that it grows in the place of the normal vagina. This is the
"Active-penis complex," which is treated in therapy. When gay rights
activists try to advance their fictive freedom, they opt to invert human
existence. Men and women mate with persons of the opposite sex,
and not with one another. This is a central requirement of the human
species itself, and, as I've said earlier, we shouldn't tamper with it. If
we do, we lay ourselves open to serious emotional and social
consequences.
How can you tell whatfreedoms are fictive?

Try to see where they lead. You want to accord gays the freedom to
promulgate their alternate lifestyle without any restraint? You must,
then, ask what follows upon that freedom. One man's freedom can be
another man's un-freedom. I found this story, for example, in The
New York Times on April 9, 1993, about a new trend: homosexuals
who fear getting AIDS are now looking for younger and younger boys,
on the presumption that a young man is less likely to be infected with
the HIV virus. At a conference convened by UNESCO in the spring of
1993 in Brussels, Belgium, researchers reported on a growing
international sex market in children because, as The New York Times
story reported, "clients see them as 'safer' and likely to be free of
AIDS." (In fact, the opposite may be true. According to Dr. Pers-Ander
Mardh, director of a World Health Organization center in Sweden,
"Both boys and girls are more vulnerable to infection because they
are prone to lesions and injuries in sexual intercourse.") The Times
cited a UNESCO estimate that two million persons are now working
as prostitutes in Thailand alone, and that 800,000 of them are
adolescents and young children. According to The Times, "Demand
for sex with young girls comes mainly from Asian tourists, demand
for young boys from Westerners. Another UNESCO report estimated
that more than 10,000 boys between 6 and 14 work as prostitutes in
Sri Lanka, serving mainly foreign men." These foreign men are
homosexuals.
So we're talking about an international problem?

Unfortunately. Some gays are affluent enough to travel for sex. There
are travel agencies specializing in sex tours who do a good deal of
marketing with gays in the U.S. The Advocate the most successful of
,
the gay national magazines, now features ads for tours to Thailand.
There is a Swiss network of airline-ticket agencies catering to
European pedophiles. And gays have their own Badaekers of sex the —
Spartacus International Gay Guide, which tells them what spas to visit
in their search for boys. But this is not new. American gays used to
prowl the Caribbean looking for sex with young men. When GRID
(Gay Related Immuno- deficiency Disease) made its first appearance
in the U.S. in the early 1980s, researchers were mystified by the high
incidence among Haitians.
GRID? Are you talking about AIDS?

Yes. But doctors first called GRID, because, at the beginning, the
it
vast majority of all those coming down with it were homosexuals. The
others were intravenous drug users (who were thought to have picked
up the mysterious malady from sharing needles with homosexual
males) and Haitians. Our public health physicians put Haitians in a
special category because the Haitians claimed they were neither
homosexuals nor intravenous drug users. That was true, as far it went.
They weren't homosexuals. (There was a joke going around the gay
community in New York at the time. Question: What's the worst thing
about getting AIDS? Answer: You have to break the news to mom that
you're Haitian.)
How did Haitians get on the public health list?

As it turned out, Haitians had been providing homosexuals with sex.
Haiti was then a favorite vacation stop for gay New Yorkers who paid
money to have anal sex with poor young Haitians. When the officials
at the Center of Disease Control realized this, they eliminated their
"Haitian" category. But their next move was astonishing. They moved
all those infected with AIDS of either Haitian or African origin into the
category, "heterosexual." A young man from Haiti who had been paid
Ideology 85
to have sex with a dozen men was automatically put into the
heterosexual category simply because of his origin. That doubled the
heterosexual category — from 2 to 4 percent — and helped fuel a
disinformation campaign in the nation's major media.
Disinformation campaign?
I should point out that it was part of the gay political agenda to
change the prevailing opinion in this country that "AIDS is a gay
disease." Well, the media bought into it. After the CDC threw Haitians
and Africans into the "hetero" category, thereby doubling the
number, U.S. News and World Report declared, "The disease of them
is suddenly the disease of us." Time said, "AIDS is a growing threat to
the heterosexual population." A cover story appeared in the Atlantic.

"Heterosexuals and AIDS: The Second Stage of the Epidemic."
Michael Fumento lays out the fallacious nature of these stories in his
book, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS.
So, despite new public acceptance ofsame-sex sex, you still say there's
something wrong with it?
Clearly, there is something wrong with the circuits of thought and
feeling in some homosexuals. Most men get great pleasure by making

love to their women. But homosexuals make love to women with
if they can do so at all, and, even then, they do it with
great difficulty,
very littleno pleasure. But such is the power of the male sex drive
or
that they must go looking for their orgasms elsewhere, using others to
lessen their own anxieties.
f
"
CHAPTER FOUR:
ORIGINS
a good father-son
''Given relationship, no boy develops a
homosexual pattern.
You said that's something's gone wrong in homosexuals, something

wrong with their circuits of thought and feeling. What's gone wrong?
Something frightened these people very early in life. Something went
wrong in their childhood, some disturbance in the formation of their
sexual identity. I also believe that most homosexuals have been
abused as infants, or in their early childhood.
How do you know this?

Through my own clinical practice. And by some recent studies. I'd
like to refer you to a recent report, for example, published in 1992 by
The Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect, by an impressive group of
seven experts in public health. From May 1989 through April 1990,
this group interviewed one thousand and one adult homosexual and
bisexual men attending sexually transmitted disease clinics around
the nation. They found that 37 percent of these men reported that
their first homosexual encounters were abusive.
What made them abusive?

1)The older person used force, 2) he resorted to anal sex when the
younger person was eleven years old or younger, or 3) there was an
age gap between the youngster and the older, more powerful person
of at least ten years.
What do you conclude from this study?

The authors confirmed what Freud had said years ago — that
homosexuality is caused by two an early disturbance in
factors: 1)
sexual identity formation, and 2) some form of childhood sexual
seduction.
Is this a pattern that you've found in your patients?

Yes. Some my patients have given me permission to discuss their
of
cases. I change their names here, and mask their identities. Nigel
will
was a successful banker who had a compulsion to perform oral sex

with strangers in public restrooms. It turned out that he was
introduced to fellatio by his older brother and his brother's chum
when he was ten years old. If he didn't do it, they'd beat him and lock
him in a bin. I had another patient, Norman, a promising scientist of
34, who, at the age of 11, crossed Europe on an extended journey by
rail with his family and an uncle. For a week, he shared a
compartment with his uncle, who introduced him to oral and anal
sex —with devastating consequences to his sexual development. I had
another patient, Kenneth, a 37-year-old physician, who was initiated
sexually at the age of ten by a Boy Scout counselor, who would sit by
his bed and stroke his penis through the blanket. The feelings were
pleasant; furthermore the episodes made him feel safe and secure,
and thus began a pattern he felt compelled to follow himself later in
life: the seduction of adolescents.
Did these patients become obligatory homosexuals?

homosexual leanings were reinforced when these seducers
Yes. Their
came along. But I have seen other patients, boys or young men, who
have been seduced or attacked by other, more powerful males; they
did not become homosexuals. They did not, because there was
nothing basically wrong with their circuits of thought and feeling
(due to a healthy family environment), as there is with obligatory
homosexuals.
Obligatory homosexuals were born that way?

"
Origins 89
I didn't say that. I most homosexuals have been abused as

said that
infants, or have been brought up in what I call a homosexogenic
family environment.
How do you know "most homosexuals?"

I guess should say most homosexuals known to me and to my
I
colleagues. But the psychiatric community, and most especially the

psychoanalytic community, is the only group that has studied
homosexuality scientifically —that is, in its causes. It is not science, or
only elementary science, to simply count the number of homosexuals
in a given population and then say, if the number is high enough,
"Well, this is a normal human variation." Until behavioral scientists

find out why people choose this variation (or have it thrust upon
them), they can claim no special insight. Much less can they offer any
expert guidance to the public, or to those who want to help make a
better world.
What aboutfemales who are into same-sex sex?

I don't want to talk here about the origins and treatment of
homosexual women. Maybe later. These issues get very complicated,
and I cannot do the subject justice without using a good deal of
psychoanalytic jargon, which tends to get very confusing for the
layman or laywoman. In general, let me just say that I know that some
lesbians got into same-sex sex because there was an early disturbance
of their gender identity. Other women seem to opt for same-sex sex
because they've been terribly disappointed by the men in their lives.
They end up hating men and seeking the physical warmth and
consolation of women like themselves. Life has to go on.
Kinsey says this only proves his point: that homosexuality is an

expression of capacities that are "basic in the human animal
The capacity to become ill is also basic in the human animal. And
when illness happens, we try to do something about the illness. If one
technique fails, we try another. Techniques that cannot work are
always pressed into service when normal ones fail. There was a run
on apricot pits a few years ago as a miracle cure for cancer. But such
techniques are not justified, only rationalized, by their own existence.
So you're saying the Greeks were wrong.
Why not? Civilization has advanced a little way since 5th century
Athens. In many African nations, they've institutionalized female

circumcision. That's an abuse. The fact that they've been doing it for
centuries, to keep their young women from enjoying sex too much,
doesn't make it okay. So far, in our country, we have frowned on
pederasty, as well as incest. Indeed, we criminalize "man-boy sex" as
a form of child abuse.
Okay. We were talking just now about obligatory homosexuals. Are

they, largely, the homosexuals who seek therapy?
Yes. They, and some whose homosexuality might not go all the
also
way back happened to them before the age of three.
to things that
Like my patients, Nigel, Norman and Kenneth, the ones I mentioned
earlier. The true, obligatory homosexuals are those who don't know
why they have this desire for same- sex sex. If they cannot remember
whether they were introduced to same-sex sex when they were ten
years old, for instance, like my patients, Nigel, Norman and Kenneth,
then I have to start doing some psychoanalytic detective work.
Well, why do some homosexuals come to you at all?

Some seek help because of a long-hidden wish or hope that they
—
might somehow want to love a woman after a long period of having
—
sex with other men and even start a family. Some come out of a
declared curiosity —
that something is troubling them and they think
it might be connected to their gay lifestyles. Others come knowing
they are not happy; they want to get out of what they know now is a
frantic compulsion —
or a lifestyle that they adopted out of
convenience, perhaps. In any event, compulsion or preference, it is a
pattern of living that brings on a pattern of dying from AIDS. —
Other than the fact that they're making it with other men, what
prompts them to think they even have a problem?
When, no matter what the origin of their condition, they're now
caught up in an unending search for sexual gratification with other
men. When that search comes to dominate their lives, so they can
hardly think of anything else except going out to rendezvous points
where they can find —
willing partners for nothing else but sex. When
they try to stop this frenetic behavior and then find that abstaining
brings on a host of psychosomatic symptoms.
You mean repression of the urge for same-sex sex can make a man
sick?
Origins 91
Yes. had a patient once, a successful dentist, whom I will call

I
George. He suffered from asthma and stomach ulcers and didn't

know why. It turned out that he had given up his same-sex sex
partners five years before, and that that's when he started having
asthma and ulcer attacks. One day, in a moment of weakness, he gave
in to the entreaties of a longtime patient, a homosexual, had sex with
him, and then found he was delivered from his asthma and ulcer
symptoms the very next day. Only then did he (and I) realize that his
abstaining from same-sex sex had placed unusual pressure on his
entire system. This is a well known process we call "dumping."
Suppression creates a kind of tension, which is unconsciously
transferred to the autonomic nervous system; it's a kind of an
overload.
So George was damned if he did and damned if he didn't?

Well, I realized this. So I him to leave off his same-
did not encourage
sex sex habits until we could get to the bottom of his problem. He
needed to analyze the meaning and function of his erotic needs
before he could give them up. He needed some insight.
Did he ever come to that insight?

Yes, he did, after about six months in therapy. I was very happy about
that. Needless to say, he was, too. He's happily married today, and the
father of two kids.
Was he a bona fide obligatory homosexual?

Yes,he was. He had had an overcontrolling mother, and a father who
was disengaged. I call such a father "abdicating" because he has, for—
various reasons, forfeited his rightful duty as a father. He gave his son
no real role model, and so, his son ended up looking for his
masculinity.
And when did he lose that masculinity?

He never really had it. Something went wrong in his early
development. He failed to see himself as fully male.
How did this happen?

In general, I'll tell you how it doesn't happen — first in the case of boys.
When boy-babies are born, they are so close to their mothers that
they feel a part of them. The boy-babies are part of an environment
that will either enrich or impede their development for all time. From
one-and-a-half to three years old, the boy baby will go through a
development phase, a program of physical and psychological steps.
Normally, each of the steps are tied together, in a process that we call
"growing up," and he will end up as a healthy young man. In that
process, he learns that he is not a part of his mother, but an individual
in his own right, a little man. It is somewhat like planting a sunflower
seed. Normally, I will see that seed break through the earth and
develop into a full-grown plant. Only if I plant it where it can get no
sunlight, or if I fail to water it, or if I step on it, will it become
dangerously deformed.
And you're saying that if a little

boy doesn't get the psychological
equivalent ofsunlight and water, he becomes a homosexual?
Not necessarily. Other pathological results could follow. Or, good
influences may later come to bear on his development. But the son
who does become an obligatory homosexual is the focal point of a
— —
particular pathology something that's gone wrong in the parental
combination. Not the overcontrolling mother alone. Not the
abdicating or hostile father alone. But a combination of the two that
makes him unable to assume his own gender-defined self-identity.
And some studies have found this is true even in the case of
homosexuals who seem to be well-adjusted and not in need of
psychiatric help. I would cite a very good piece of journalism done
some years ago by Midge Decter in Commentary. It was called "The
Boys at the Beach." After spending some vacation years on Fire
Island, where gay New Yorkers congregate during the summer, Ms.
Decter presented a telling journalistic picture of her gay male friends,
who seemed to be very normal on the surface. But, as it turned out,
her gays had close, dependent and hateful relationships with their
mothers. And they hardly ever mentioned their fathers. Mothers
would come to visit on Fire Island; fathers never.
I've seen some studies that indicate homosexuals were born that way.
Something about the size of their brains?
That's the myth, created out of a very tentative and very flawed study
reported in 1992 by Simon LeVay, a gay researcher at the Salk
Institute in San Diego.
What did LeVay discover?

Origins 93
He analyzed brain tissue from 43 cadavers (16 presumably straight

men, 6 straight women, and 19 gay men who had died of AIDS). He
found that one bundle of neurons in the third interstitial nucleus of
the anterior hypothalamus (in weight, about the size of a snowflake,
in volume, about the size of a grain of sand) was sometimes, though
not invariably, larger in heterosexual men than in homosexual men.
Or, rather, that the spacing of the cells in the heterosexuals was over a
larger area.
And that proved that gays are born that way?

Hardly. There were at least four things wrong with LeVay' s study.
LeVay offered no proof on which way the presumed causality might
run: did gay men have a smaller nucleus because they were gay, or
were they gay because they had a smaller nucleus? Nor could he rule
out the possibility that AIDS itself may have shrunk the nucleus in
question. A third difficulty with the LeVay study: there is no clear
evidence that these neurons in the hypothalamus have anything to do
with sexual orientation. A fourth difficulty is somewhat extrinsic, but
perhaps important: no one has yet been able to duplicate the LeVay
study—not even LeVay himself. Some of us are not even sure there is
"a third interstitial nucleus of the hypothalamus."
What about LeVay himself? He's forging ahead with further study,
right?
No, he's deserted his research and moved to West Hollywood, where
he is helping run a college called WHIGLE, the West Hollywood
Institute forGay and Lesbian Education. Newspaper stories about the
move suggested he would be spending much of his time in
fundraising. I saw a lune 1993 interview with LeVay in a Los Angeles
weekly indicating that LeVay had begun to waffle on what was already
a very tentative conclusion, that there's something in our brains that
grooves us from birth toward same-sex sex. He was still claiming that
"there is mechanism for everything we do. It happens because
a brain
of brain cells, synapses, electrical activity, and chemicals whether —
the original cause was a gene we inherited or the way our mothers
treated us as infants" But this isn't what LeVay was saying when he
first published his findings. Or maybe what the press thought he was
saying: that gays are born that way.
J don't understand. If LeVay was on to something with his scientific

research, why didn 't he stay with it?

I don't think he was I think he knew he had made as much of
serious.
a splash in 1992 as he was ever going to make with this particular
plunge in the pool. He succeeded in getting the press to create a new
kind of common wisdom: that gays are simply born that way.
But didn 't his report appear in a prestigious journal?

Yes. His findingswere reported in Science, which is a top scientific
journal. But publication was premature. The same editors have
published provocative, sexually charged studies in the recent past
that won wide news coverage and acceptance in the scientific
community before it was learned that those research efforts could not
be duplicated. And if they can't be duplicated, that means there was
something wrong with the research to begin with.
So why did the media give this research such credence?

Time, Newsweek and The New York Times are usually more skeptical
in their coverage of medical discoveries. Either the editors of these
esteemed publications were just plain lazy —or all too eager to write a
headline, "Are Gays Born That Way?"
Why do you say they were "all too eager?"

I think many well-meaning editors and reporters felt this was good
news for gays. As Natalie Angier wrote in The New York Times on
September 1, an inborn difference between gay and
1991, "...proof of
heterosexual men could provide further ammunition in the battle
against discrimination. If homosexuality were viewed legally as a
biological phenomenon, rather than a fuzzier matter of 'choice' or
'preference,' then gay people could no more rightfully be kept out of
the military, a housing complex or a teaching job than could, say,
blacks."
Then there was another "gay gene" study, published by Science on

July 16, 1993.
That was a piece of research by Dean Hamer and others at the
National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, funded by the
National Institute of Health. Another piece of pseudo-science,
not because
proving nothing. But, as usual, the press overplayed
it —
itprovided anything more promising than the LeVay study, but
because homosexuality was a hot news topic. The Wall Street
Origins 95
Journals headline was misleading: "Research Points Toward a Gay

Gene." So was the head in The New York Times: "Report Suggests
Homosexuality Is Linked to Genes."
What was the public reaction to this study?

One more addition to "the conventional wisdom" —which changes
every week, according to Newsweek magazine.
Who creates the conventional wisdom?

People who hardly ever read a newspaper story past the jump. They
read headlines. They don't bother reading about the intricacies of the
study, or what it set out to prove, and what it actually did prove.
Instead, they rely on the spin doctors — in this case, spin given by
decidedly self-interested groups. Indeed, a spokesman for the Human
Rights Campaign Fund in Washington, the nation's largest gay and
lesbian lobbying group, gave the Hamer study this interpretation as
reported in The New York Times: "We think this study increases our
...
understanding of the origins of sexual orientation, and at thesame

time we believe it will help increase public support for lesbian and
gay rights."
You agree?
Not with the first part. It doesn't increase our understanding of much,
certainly not of "the origins of sexual orientation." But the
spokesman's second assertion could well be right given the press —
play and the public's need for quick, easy and stupid answers. The
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force had another spin: they said that
this study "shows that homosexuality is a naturally occurring and
common variation among humans."
What's your answer to that?
I quote Charles Krauthammer: "So what? So is diabetes. So is
alcoholism. So is schizophrenia. Does that render any of these
conditions desirable or normal? Does it tell us anything at all about

how society ought to treat diabetics, alcoholics, and schizophrenics?
Science has nothing to say to either side of the gay rights debate. The
tolerance or discouragement of homosexuality is a question to be
decided according to what people believe about the value, the
morality, the chances for happiness of a homosexual life. The science
is irrelevant. So is this study."
Who is Krauthammer?
He's an uncommonly insightful critic, a psychiatrist himself and a
syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group.
But the Hamer study received a good deal ofpress attention.

In my opinion, the Hafmer study did not merit page one — unless
some Congressman had spoken up demanding to know why tax
dollars were being spent on a study by some gay staffer at the
National Institutes of Health. (Hamer is gay, but he asked the editors
of Science not to mention the fact because, he said, it wasn't relevant
Other members of the press also failed to find
to his findings.
Hamer's homosexual orientation worth reporting.)
What did Hamer's report really say?

1) That researchers were looking for a gay gene. 2) That they didn't
find one. 3) But they may have found a neighborhood where they can
keep on looking for one. 4) That not everyone who's gay has that
gene.
How did they arrive at those conclusions?

They recruited 40 homosexual brothers from two HIV clinics
pairs of
in Washington, D.C., took DNA samples from each of them, and tried
to see whether there were any stretches of DNA, or coding, they had
in common. Of the 40 pairs of brothers, they found that 33 pairs
shared a set of five "markers" located near the end of the long arm of
the X chromosome (which is always inherited from the mother) in a
region designated Xq28.
That was more than a coincidence?

It was according Hamer. But he doesn't explain why the other
to
seven pairs of gay brothers didn't share the same set of markers.
Furthermore, as Dr. Ruth Hubbard, professor emeritus of biology at
Harvard, has pointed out, "researchers did not do the obvious control
experiment of checking for the presence of these markers among
heterosexual brothers of the gay men they studied." In other words,
the markers may have nothing whatever to do with a homosexual
orientation.
Does that make Hamer's study invalid?

It's invalid until he does the control study. And even then, he would
Origins 97
be a long way from the end of his search for a gay gene.
How close has he come?

Well, Hamer admitted neighborhood is about four million
that the
bases, or DNA building blocks, long. It holds hundreds of genes, most
of them unidentified. It may take years to isolate the gene he is
looking for.
And, after that?

Then, he said, "we can find out where and when it is expressed and
how it ultimately contributes to the development of both homosexual
and heterosexual orientation."
You mean that this "gay gene" may contribute to the development of
both homosexual and heterosexual orientation? How then can he
say it's a gay gene?
He really can't. And he admitted it to The Times. "Sexual orientation,"
he said, "is too complex to be determined by a single gene."
Nevertheless, Time magazine cited "new findings" by Hamer and the
others suggesting that gays are born that way as one of the ten great
scientific happenings of 1993.
Were reports of these studies, by both LeVay and Hamer, really good
news for gays?
Not all gays cheered. After release of the LeVay study, one lesbian
observed that she feared gays and lesbians would now get "the kind
of pity given to schizophrenics, the mentally retarded, and other
people with damaged genes and faulty brain structure." There were
some gays (and bisexuals) who felt LeVay' s suggestions that there was
a hypothalamic connection to homosexuality could (if ever
corroborated) lead to a kind of "biological determinism" or a kind of
Hitlerian "genetic engineering." After the Hamer study, another gay
spokesman was quoted in The New York Times, saying,
"Intellectually, what do we gain by finding out there's a homosexual
gene? Nothing, except an attempt to identify those people who have
it and then open them up to all sorts of experimentation to change
them."
Was there any evidence that people wanted to do this?

Yes, Kay Diaz reported in Z Magazine, a political monthly, that some
prospective parents were now calling health clinics, wondering if they

had a test for "gayness." If their fetuses tested positive, they wanted to
abort them. Some screenwriter has already written a play that uses
this premise: parents find out that theirunborn child will be gay;
what do they do? an absurd premise, but one that will only help
It's
promulgate the implicit arguments that fuel (and fund) research like
LeVay's and Hamer's. Then there was a far-out suggestion from an
assistant to the president of the Salk Institute. He said that someone
wanting to turn a homosexual fetus into a heterosexual fetus could
"envision a transplant of additional cells into the hypothalamic area."
(He mis-read the study. LeVay didn't measure the cells' number or
density, only the spacing between them.)
Do you think the stories on the LeVay and Hamer studies proved that
the press had climbed on the gay bandwagon?
was already obvious. But I cite one story, "Homosexuality
Well, this
and Biology," in the March 1993 Atlantic, by a gay writer named
Chandler Burr. It was a slanted piece that gave undue credence to the
LeVay research, and devoted not one line to the findings of myself
and a host of other psychiatrists proving that obligatory
homosexuality is a developmental disorder, caused after birth and
before the age of three by something that's gone awry in the nuclear
family.
Should this writer have mentioned your work?

Apparently he thought I was worth a two-hour interview. But what I
told him didn't fit his (or his editors') pre-conceptions. He (or they)
left meout of his piece completely. I consider this dishonest
journalism. But it is because of stories like this that a good many
people of good will now believe that gays are born that way. I got a
letter recently from a young man in Oregon who told me that his
college chemistry teacher said in class the other day, "We don't know
—
what causes homosexuality except that gays were born that way."
No. I'm afraid we don Y know that.
Wasn 't there a twin study not long ago that suggests genes might play
a role in the development of homosexuality?
Dr. Michael Bailey, an assistant professor of psychiatry at
Northwestern University, and Dr. Richard Pillard, a professor of
psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, recruited male
Origins 99
homosexuals who had twin brothers and then classified the twin
pairs as either identical or fraternal. (Fraternal twins are developed
from two eggs, fertilized by different sperm, and thus no more alike
than any pair of siblings.) Of the 56 gay men with an identical twin, 52
percent had twin brothers who were also gay. Of the gay men with
fraternal twin brother s, only 22 percent were also homosexual.
Which proves what?

Nothing. The study by Bailey and Pillard (both of whom are gay
themselves) has been touted as "suggesting" that genes play an
important role in determining sexual orientation. This study, too, is
radically flawed on its own terms. The study didn't get into any other
factors, most notably social and environmental factors. Behavioral
studies of twins gain validity only by comparing the adult behavior of
twins reared in different environments. And the Bailey-Pillard study
didn't even look at environment. Furthermore, if genes made 53
percent of the identical twins gay, why didn't genes make the other 47
percent gay as well?
It looks like these researchers have an in-built bias to begin with:

they're gay, and so they're looking for some biological explanation of
why they are gay.
Well, that's reasonable enough. They're respected men of science.
Why shouldn't they try using their science to answer the most
fact, Bailey and Pillard wrote a piece
troubling question they have? In
on the Op Ed page of The New York Times that told the world just
exactly where they were coming from. "Homophobes," they wrote,
using their classic pejorative description for critics of their lifestyles,
"sometimes homosexuals by alleging

justify their prejudice against
—
that homosexuality is contagious that young homosexuals become
that way because of older homosexuals and that homosexuality is a
social corruption. Such beliefs form the core of the organized anti-
homosexual movement." And then they added: "If homosexuality is
largely innate, this would prove that these claims are groundless. " So
you can see what may be driving their research. I just worry if and
when researchers bend scientific rules, to make a case that might lead
—
to the legitimation of behavior that hurts them and society.
You think they are in anguish?

Either in anguish or denial. Life goes on, and man is nothing if not a
rationalizing animal.
So the mystery remains?

Well, this what bothers me about much of the press comment on
is
studies like this. They keep setting up a false dichotomy: are gays
born that way, or is it»a matter of choice? No one ever dares to
—
mention a third possibility that homosexuality is unconsciously
determined in a child's early years, and that we have a practical
science that deals with the unconscious. It is called psychoanalysis.
But what makes you think that homosexuality doesn't have a

biological basis?
Look, I have spent almost my entire professional life on the

psychodynamics of obligatory homosexuality. Homosexuals aren't
born that way. But the seeds of their orientation are sown in their
earliest years —
before the age of three. They don't remember what
happened to them. So I can understand why some of them might
assume, like those of them who are left-handed, that they were born
that way. But they weren't. They had smothering mothers and
abdicating fathers, and the normal processes of gender identification
went awry for them, soul and body. These are the conclusions of a
number of systematic, clinical studies comparing homosexuals and
heterosexuals, first reported in the psychoanalytic literature of the
1940s, and continuing on into the 1990s.
You sound pretty sure ofyourself.

Ihave a sureness about my views because they are reinforced by all
these other studies. Frank A. Beach, a biologist, a historian and an
ethnologist, did some amazing research, comparing humans to the
chimpanzee, studies showing that in vertebrates, sexual desires
— —
reside in the cerebral cortex in the brain and are stimulated by
hormonal processes. These messages are sent to genital structures in
both the male and the female, which lead to pleasurable sensations
producing 1) erection, 2) pelvic thrust, and 3) orgastic release. The
mode of discharge, in humans, is dictated by established patterns, by
childhood indoctrination, early sexual arousal, and the exciting
differences between the two sexes. It is the cerebral cortex the —
—
brain that plays the crucial role here, not our genes, or bumps on
our DNA. Furthermore, not only is the human cerebral cortex
responsible for the development of heterosexual patterns and the
"
Origins 101
associated cultural constructs that support them. It is also the unique

action of the cerebral cortex that allows humans to develop all the
sexual deviations, too, which always come about as partial, attempted
solutions to inner conflicts and roundabout forms of sexual release
that arise in the face of insurmountable fears that happen to some
unlucky few of us in early childhood.
And you 've seen this in your patients?

It isn't that hard to figure out.I have seen the pattern again and again
in my homosexual patients.So have a number of my colleagues. We

differ in minor ways when we try to describe the causes of obligatory
homosexuality. Some doctors, including Sigmund Freud, tended to
say the cause was something that went wrong between the ages of
three and seven. My contribution to the research places the origin
before the age of three. But we all conclude, as Dr. Irving Bieber, a
New York psychiatrist, concluded after personal interviews with 900
of his patients that "given a good father-son relationship, no boy
develops a homosexual pattern."
You agree with this?
I agree with this. I can say the same thing after sessions with more
than a thousand of my own patients. My homosexual patients did not

have good relationships with their fathers. They feared their fathers,
and they reported excessive fears of injury during childhood, often at
the hands of their fathers. Beneath this father-fear, most of them
were still terribly dependent on their mothers; down deep, they were
unduly attached to, and feared their mothers. And, by extension, they
tended to avoid and fear women, too.
Who make the most promising patients?

Those who are hurting the most. They're the ones most motivated to
get to the bottom of what ails them.
You can help them get to the bottom?

You used the right word: help. I don't cure anyone. They cure
themselves.
Cure? You can actually cure a homosexual? Define "cure.
I can help a homosexual become a normal heterosexual.
You can take a man who has to have sex with men and turn him
around so he likes to have sex with women?

Yes. I have done so many times.
How many times?

During an early, ten-year period from 1967 to 1977, 1 treated 45 overt
homosexuals. Some 34 of these patients were in long-term
psychoanalytic therapy more than a year. The average was three and
a half years, and these people saw me from three to five times a week.
The eleven others were in short-term analytic therapy; they saw me
over periods of six to seven months, two or three sessions a week. I
also had 18 latent homosexuals in full scale analysis during this

decade, to bring the total to 63.
And the results?

About 35 percent of the overt homosexuals I treated during this
period developed full heterosexual functioning and were able to love
their other-sex partners. (One of my patients was a young woman;
she is now happily married and the mother of two children.) Another
30 percent did not finish the treatment —for a variety of reasons. And
about 35 percent discontinued therapy.
Why did they discontinue?

Some simply had to move away because their jobs took them
elsewhere. Some ended treatment because of the fears that emerged
—
from their unconscious fears that were responsible for their
homosexual needs, and which they didn't have the courage to face,
and try to Some may have been simply reluctant to change
conquer.
their lifestyles. This is true of some alcoholics. If they give up
drinking, they have to start looking for a whole new set of friends.
Are you the only psychiatrist who's ever helped turn his patients
around?
Hardly. At first, the psychiatric profession didn't have much success
with homosexuals. But then, starting in the 1940s, Edmund Bergler, a
New York psychoanalyst, began helping some of his homosexual
patients.He published reports on his successful therapies in 1944 and
1959. So did a number of others: Gustav Bychowski in 1944, 1954 and
1956, Sandor Lorand in 1956, Albert Ellis in '56 and '59, Harry
Gershman in 1967, Samuel Hadden in 1958 and 1966, Lionel Ovesey
in 1969, Toby Bieber in 1971 —they all demonstrated the success of
s -
Origins 103
various therapies. There are now psychiatric institutes on both coasts

that help homosexual patients reverse their sexual pattern.
You mean with lobotomies and aversion therapies?

No. Those remedies were never anything but quackeries. Doctors
who tried them were only treating symptoms. They didn't get to the
root cause.
How do you get to the root cause?

Through a series of psychoanalytic sessions, helping patients come to
an intelligent insight into their own condition.
And these doctors and institutes you cite—do they cure everyone?
No. They are successful in at least a third of their attempts.
Why can't you geniuses help all of them?

I think we do help all of them. But, in the final analysis, not all of our
patients really have the strength to keep on resisting their long-
standing compulsions. Or, as I already said, they simply do not want
to give up some homosexuals, their lifestyles are
their lifestyle. In
intimately connected with their careers. Some 90 percent of the men
in New York's fashion world are homosexuals.
So you just let them go, sick and in despair?
No. Such patients have been helped in a variety of ways. Usually the
imperative need for same-sex sex has been considerably reduced.
They are no longer compelled by an imperative urge over which they
have no control. They will have some homosexual re-enactments, but
those usually occur when they are under severe stress, or when they
—
encounter disappointments in life which render them weak and
feeling bad about themselves. At those times, they may need a
narcissistic restoration of their self-esteem. For, as I have said,
homosexual enactments are an artificial means of restoring a kind of
pseudo-self esteem and are a compensation for deep feelings of
inferiority. It also them ward off multiple dangers: fears of
helps
separation, severe disapproval, abandonment, and castration
anxieties. Same-sex sex helps them. Temporarily.
Temporarily?
Well, this is a process that takes time. In time, however, they begin to
have some understanding of what's going on inside them. They come

to amore objective view of the causes of their disorder that they —
have been in search of their masculinity, and finding it through only
an approximation of the male-female design. They end up with a
greater feeling of pride and self-esteem. They no longer feel an
unconscious guilt when .they fall, again, into same-sex sex. Gradually,
they begin to feel more secure in their efforts to gain control of
themselves, even though some homosexual enactments are still
necessary, on occasion.
How did you fare with the treatment of latent homosexuals?

With the latent homosexuals, my colleagues and we who specialize I,
in these matters, are able to help many of them understand their

own, often confused, feelings, and go on functioning in happier,
more-well-adjusted ways.
What happened in your practice after 1977?

I never had an exclusively homosexual practice. I have always seen all
kinds of patients.
Did you give up on the gays?

No. Since 1977, have had more than 50 other overt homosexuals in
1
deep psychoanalysis, and I can report the same, basic success rate
about 35 percent.
But all the gay literature says there's no documented case ofa cure.
You mean all the gay propaganda. Gay activists don't want to hear
what I say. you about the interview I had with Chandler Burr,
I told
the writer for the Atlantic —
he pretended he'd never spoken to me.
—
He repeated the politically correct position that men are born gay
and there's nothing anyone can do about it. He wrote a dishonest
piece. But he's not the only one.
Who else?
Self-styled experts, some of them psychiatrists, perpetuate the lie,
that there's nothinganyone can do. Thus, Dr. Richard A. Friedman, a

New York psychiatrist, can have a letter to the editor of The New York
Times published on October 7, 1991 that is full of outright falsehood.
He writes that, "no single scientific study shows that any form of
psychotherapy can change sexual orientation." That's not true. Irving
Origins 105
Bieber and have published reams of documentation on the changes

I
we have brought about through psychotherapy. Dr. Friedman also

says, "Homosexuality is not an illness by any of the usual criteria in
medicine, such as increased risk of morbidity or mortality, painful
symptoms or social, interpersonal or occupational dysfunction as a
result of homosexuality itself." I have already given you the citations
on any number of studies indicating that homosexuals do, indeed,
show all of these signs.
Don 't a lot of other psychiatrists agree with Friedman?

Oh yes. Take Dr. Lawrence Hartmann, for example. He was the 1992
president of the American Psychiatric Association, and he was outed
at a American Psychiatric Association meeting in Washington, D.C.
He wrote in an APA newsletter: "I guess most American psychiatrists
in 1992 accept homosexuality as complex, compatible with excellent
mental health, not routinely a complaint, the object of much
prejudice...."
Why did he say, "I guess?"

Many of these so-called experts either don't know—or are themselves
gay, in which case they're just following the party line.
What party?
The gay and lesbian lobby. They have a political agenda. If they can
sell the propaganda —
that they're gay because they were born that
way and there's nothing anyone can do about it then they can —
appeal for all kinds of so-called special rights, preferential hiring,
quotas and the like, that blacks and other downtrodden minorities
now enjoy. Furthermore, if municipal employees in San Francisco
can say, "We can't help it if we're gay," then they can demand (and
get) health benefits and the like for their "significant others" —the
same-sex lovers that are equivalent spouses of their fellow
to the
workers. In September 1993, the State of New York
lifted a long-
standing ban on providing health insurance to the domestic partners
of homosexuals and unmarried heterosexuals.
What was behind that?

Gay politics. Gay rights people lobbied for this. Governor Cuomo
—
went along with it because it could help New York's Mayor Dinkins,
a fellow Democrat. Now, able to grant health benefits to city
employees, the mayor could energize gay and lesbians supporters in

his re-election campaign. The New York Times said that the move
"also may rally gay and lesbian support for Mr. Cuomo if he runs for
re-election next year."
Is that all gays want? Hiring quotas and health benefits?

Most people could accept that, if that's all they wanted. But I am
afraid they want to create a new, psycho -sexual institution, alongside
heterosexuality, even challenge it. They want society to sanction gay
and lesbian marriages, the right to raise children (whether the
children be their own biological offspring or their children by
adoption), full acceptance in their chosen churches or synagogues.
There's an element in the gay community seeking something they call
"pedophile rights." The International Lesbian and Gay Association,
for example, has been using its status in a key body of the United
Nations to advocate the abolition of all age-of-consent laws designed
to protect minors. The ILGA like to quote experts like Dr. John
Money: "If I were to see the case of a boy aged 10 or 11 who's
intensely attracted toward a man in his twenties or thirties, if the
relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally
mutual, then I would not call it pathological in any way." Some of the
more grandiose thinkers among them dream of making the whole
world gay. But I think most homosexuals will settle for acceptance by
their friends and families. They want to be seen as okay.
And they're not okay?

Yes, they are okay, many of them, in many ways. Many of them are
very good people, and some of them make great contributions to
society —as teachers, doctors,
artists, policemen, you name it. John
makes a big point of this. He quotes Carl

McNeill, the gay ex- Jesuit,
Gustav Jung to the effect that the homosexual is "surprisingly gifted
as a teacher because of his almost feminine insight and tact." He
quotes Helmut Theileke to the effect that the homosexual is gifted
with a remarkable "pedagogical eros, a heightened sense of
empathy." All this in support of his contention that homosexuals
have much to contribute.
Any more than women teachers have to contribute?
No. I think not. But it probably is true that homosexuals can help, as
McNeill says, "in guiding humanity to a deeper appreciation of
Origins 107
aesthetic values." But that's not because they are gay. Homosexuals
have no special entree to aesthetics. It's because they are human
beings. McNeill quotes a study by Dr. Mark Freedman claiming that
"homosexuals may be healthier than straights." Dr. Freedman's
homosexual subjects, he says, "tested superior to their heterosexual
counterparts in such psychological qualities as autonomy,
spontaneity, orientation toward the present, and increased sensitivity
to the value of the person." But I find that, in order to make their
case, both Dr. Freedman and Father McNeill have to resort to old
stereotypes of the macho, insensitive male. Maybe it's because
modern women have insisted on some radical changes in their men,
but those old stereotypes have been on their way out in America for at
least 20 years.
For example?
good example. The best known male
Well, television itself gives us a
role models in the history of television were the doctor heroes of
M*A*S*H. They were sensitive, spontaneous, autonomous all the —
—
good things cited by Dr. Freedman and more. Those men loved one
another, and audiences were very touched by that love, as people are
always touched by genuine affectivity among men. But Hawkeye
loved Captain B.J. Hunnicut, not his genitals. Hawkeye and B.J. were
not gay. And nobody ever suggested for a minute that Corporal
—
Klinger was gay even though he tried cross-dressing to get a medical
discharge.
Maybe M*A*S*H's writers were gay?

Ihave it on good authority that they weren't gay. Neither were
M*A*S*H's creators. You don't have to be gay to be a good writer.
Good writers come in all shapes and sizes and sexes and sexual
preferences. I know some stutterers who are damn fine writers. But
they're not good writers because they stutter.
Do you try to help stutterers?

In my medical practice, I try to help stutterers. But only if they ask for
it. I also try to help those homosexuals who want help. Those who
don't want that help are free to do their own thing.
But I hear that some gays resent what you call "help. " It implies
there's something wrong with them. You're branding them as basket
cases. And they don't think there's anything wrong with them —
except that society discriminates against them because you've

branded them.
In 1973, the Task Force on Homosexuality of the New York County
District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association said, "If all
discrimination and punitive persecutory measures against
—
homosexuals were stopped tomorrow as indeed they should be it —
still would not eliminate the inner conflicts, anxieties and frequent
depressions of the homosexual himself. Society at large does not

produce the homosexual condition, nor can it eradicate the inner
psychic pain inherent in it and the disturbed personal relations of
childhood which cause it."
Do gays hate women?

Some do. Some don't. Some gay men I know have great friendships
with women, because some women find gays are more sensitive than
their own husbands, interested in costume, design, art, theater,
dance, the movies, and all the gossip that goes with their interest in
these things. I don't like to generalize. But the obligatory, compulsive,
anxious homosexuals who come to my office seeking help have
woman problems that cause them pain. They have had smothering
mothers. They're probably still too dependent on those moms. And
they hate themselves for it, and their moms, too. They may extend
that hatred into fear of, and contempt for women.
But some gays affect a kind offemininity. They walk like women, talk
like women, even their gestures —
Yes, that's a stereotype that hassome foundation in reality. There are
some gays like that. They get that way because they identify with their
mothers. They assume her posture, her mannerisms, her body
movements, even her facial expressions. This is why some elementary
schoolteachers can say they can pick out the potential gays in their
fourth grade classes. But this isn't because the little boys were born
that way. I call it a "psychosomatic molding." Psychosomatically, they
have become shaped in the form of their mothers. Growing up this
way, some little boys have found themselves ashamed of their bodies,
awkward in athletics, and so struck by their own deficiencies that
they were overcome by powerful feelings of inferiority (as compared
to their more active classmates).
But I understand that there are many gays who don't fit that
Origins 109
stereotype at all.
Right. Manyobligatory homosexuals sense a defect in their

masculinity and take steps to correct that defect. They compensate by
being super-males. They go in for weight lifting, body building and
tanning themselves. In fact, the gays in Fire Island Pines used to make
a fetish of their dark and uniform suntans— and, according to Midge
Decter, they took special pains to wear tight pants without pockets,
and skimpy bathing suits that emphasized and drew attention to their
penises. They have another aching need: to fill up the emptiness they
feel inside; they want to be "more male still" —
and so, instead of
seeking a young woman they can be male with (which is a kind of
sharing, or giving), they seek to get more maleness by actually trying
to incorporate the body of a male partner.
Incorporate?
Literally, take in the other's body. Through their fingertips, in
massage, through their mouths, by kissing, or licking or sucking the
male partner. In rare occasions, drinking his urine. Or eating him.
Not literally, of course.

Yes, that too.
No.
Yes.Remember the case of Jeffrey Dahmer in Milwaukee? Doctors
can learn a great deal from extreme examples of pathology like
Dahmer's. He was a psychotic who also happened to be a
homosexual. In his compulsion to incorporate the bodies of other
men after same-sex sex, he ended up eating the body parts of his
murder victims.
This made him feel more male?

In his case, it kept him he preserved
tied to a piece of reality, at least;
his relationship to an object — so that he
part object, part person —
would not be completely lost in his psychosis. The payoff was illusory,
a kind of pseudo-strengthening.
And this was a consequence of his homosexuality?

Every homosexual who wants to incorporate the bodyof his male
lover is same mental mechanism: incorporation. Most
utilizing the
homosexuals are content to do this symbolically. Dahmer was
psychotic; he took his homosexual disorder beyond the limits.
Surely you're not suggesting that Jeffrey Dahmer is somehow typical

of all homosexuals?
No. A very small number of obligatory homosexuals are psychotic.
Most of them suffer from an arrest in their development, brought on
by early childhood conflicts. They're not psychotics. Some are
neurotics. And some suffer from a developmental disorder.
Meaning?
means is that their compulsions can cause them pain and
All that
make them very unhappy.
But many gays are going around these days saying they are all so
happy. Ann Landers, the columnist, printed a letter last year from
someone who said he was the 32-year-old chairman of a multi-
million, high-tech company, a gay who recently walked into the
ballroom of a Hilton hotel to attend a meeting of 200 professional
gays and lesbians. He couldn't believe his eyes: "If I hadn't known
where I was I would have sworn it was a meeting of the Chamber of
Commerce. We are your doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers, bus drivers,
waiters and florists. But best of all, we look, walk and talk like
everyone else."
So did Jeffrey Dahmer. After the police discovered several of his
victims — or parts of them at least — in his refrigerator, the news
stories quoted people who knew him. They all remarked on how
"normal" he was. Not even the two Milwaukee cops who were called
to investigate could see anything abnormal about him, except that he
was gay. And that wasn't against the law, was it? Mark this well:
appearing normal is perversion's calling card.
And this is why some homosexuals "look like everyone else?"
Homosexuality is an exquisitely designed symptom whose enactment

serves to neutralize anxieties relating to both parents. Neutralizing
this conflict allows for the growth of adaptive elements of the
personality. And so, the homosexual may have the appearance of not
being ill at all, except for the masquerade in his sexual life. Some of
the most disturbed homosexuals have no anxiety because of their
constant engagement in same-sex sex. When such enactments can no
longer neutralize their inner conflicts, however, they develop such as
anxiety, guilt, and paranoid feelings. Then they come in for therapy.
—
Origins 111
And what about optional homosexuals?

Their homosexuality tends not to be neurotic or psychotic at all
though optional homosexuals are, typically, notorious users. They

comfort themselves with the notion that their partners are also using
them —so they're even.
But this happens in straight society f too.
Of course it does. And in their mutual seduction games, these

homosexuals are simulating the male-female pattern in more ways
than just sex. One may be active, the other passive, one the giver of
power or riches, the other a receiver. And they can switch roles. I
think many optional homosexuals go the route of same-sex sex for
various utilitarian reasons. As for obligatory homosexuals, I think the
transactional elements are often the same with one important —
added element: among obligatory homosexuals, both partners are
intent on acquiring masculinity from each other. This is the irony and
the tragedy of the male homosexual, that, all unwitting, he is really
searching for his masculinity, lost through no fault of his own,
because of the way he was raised.
Are you saying there's an inherent selfishness in these homosexual

relationships?
Yes. Actually, there's some on in every homosexual

play-acting going
encounter. These homosexuals kid themselves and one another with
protestations of love and affection. Of course, they feel something for
their male lovers, maybe love as Balzac once described it: "...the
warmth of gratitude that all generous souls feel for the source of their
pleasures."
So "love, "for them, is a kind of illusion?

I think that most, if not all, homosexuals who say they are "in love"
are lying to themselves.Deep down, they harbor aggressive impulses
and even incestuous feelings toward their lovers, impulses and
feelings that often drive them to keep looking for other partners.
Hanging on to their old partners would mean recognizing (and
therefore trying to meet) their partners' needs, that is, really loving
them, in the sense that they are more interested in the welfare of the
other than they are interested in themselves.
So what are homosexuals thinking when they're involved in same-sex

sex?
This all depends on the state of their fixations. Narcissistic

homosexuals are trying to find a tranquil integrity of being through
the soothing experience of same-sex sex. These acts help them feel
more complete. But the emphasis is on themselves, not the other. As
one of my patients once told me, "The only thing I want is that I set
the time and I set the place, and my partners relate to me as much I
want them to, and I don't have to relate to them any more than I wish
to." This patient only wanted partners who were ready to comply on
his own terms, lend themselves to be manipulated, used, abused,
discarded, cherished, symbolically identified with, but never intrude
upon himself. They had to submit to his omnipotent control, supply
warmth and comfort.
As another of my
patients once told me, "I am trying to put
something right in myself, something I didn't get as a child." A lack of
emotional sustenance and depth in these patients makes for a deep
maladjustment throughout their lives and it seems to them that the
only remedy for this is to look for pleasurable excitements and thrills.
These feelings tell them that they have "found themselves" in a

reflection of their partners' responses. At these moments, they say
they feel truly alive.
Well what's wrong with that? Isn't this what boy-and-girl lovers say
when they're making love — that in these moments they feel
intensively alive?
Yes, but in same-sex lovers, this sense of being alive

very is
temporary. Their pleasure soon wears off and they end up "The like
—
Flying Dutchman" never finding a place where they can rest. They
are left helpless when their partners becomes unresponsive or
disappear, and the only remedy for them is an endless pursuit of new
partners. They are forced into this pattern because, unlike
heterosexuals, they do not possess any stable, gender-defined self
identity. They get a temporary sense of completeness from the sexual
responses of their male partners. In a sense, this is a deficiency
disease, which can only be remedied by expropriating the body and
genitals of other males.
But this "endless pursuit of new partners" could also apply to a good
many macho males, always in pursuit ofexciting new women.
Well, that, too, is a problem, but it isn't necessarily a life-long
problem. Sooner or later, a man realizes that recreational sex has
"
Origins 113
become a bore. He begins to ask himself what he really wants, and, if
he is lucky, he finds a woman who is endlessly exciting to him, the

kind of woman he wants to be the mother of his children.
But isn't that what some gays maintain they're doing, too, finding
same-sex partners who are "endlessly exciting" to them, partners who
can become lifetime companions? Dr. David McWhirter and Andrew
Mattison, who each hold clinical appointments at the school of
medicine at the University of California in San Diego, have done a
book about monogamous gay unions that reflect some of that ideal.
I'm glad you used the word, "ideal." In The Gay Couple, McWhirter, a
psychiatrist and Mattison, a Ph. D. in psychology, who have
themselves been a same-sex couple for more than 20 years, went out
looking for gay couples who were "living out their lives quietly and
productively in the mainstream of American life." In part, their study
was more propaganda than science: they said it was undertaken to
blast "many of the old myths about gay men and their relationships."
What myths?
These authors didn't specify what myths. Other gay authors have
listed them. lohn O'Neill said the male homosexual is "assumed to be
effeminate, artistically inclined, cowardly, unfaithful, promiscuous, a
hater of women, a child-molester, an active perverter of youth, etc."
McWhirter and Mattison were successful in debunking these myths?

Not when they focused on "unfaithful" and "promiscuous." They
found 156 couples "in loving relationships lasting from one to thirty-
seven years." They admitted that their sample was "neither large
enough, randomly selected nor geographically dispersed enough to
represent necessarily the majority of male couples." And they had to
report that of these 156 couples, most of whom had begun their
relationships "with implicit or explicit commitment to sexual
exclusivity," only seven couples "considered themselves to have been
consistently sexually monogamous throughout the years of their
relationship"and these seven had been together less than five years.
"Stated another way," the authors write, "all couples with a
relationship lasting more than five years have incorporated some
provision for outside sexual activity in their relationships
They used the word "monogamous?" That means "one-wife. "

Well, this is only one more indication of how difficult it is for
homosexuals each other without imitating the male-

to relate to
female design. But "monogamy," for most homosexuals, means "less
than five other partners." More importantly I think, McWhirter and
Mattison had to conclude from this finding that exclusivity could not
be an ideal for the male couple. "In fact," they said, "some couples
report that outside sexual contacts have contributed to the stability
and longevity of their relationships."
So fooling around is part ofan accepted pattern for the male couple?
Apparently so.
How is that compatible with calls in the gay community for more
responsible sexual behavior in light of the AIDS epidemic?
Not compatible atBut "responsible sexual behavior in light of the

all.
AIDS epidemic" doesn't only mean that homosexuals should avoid

multiple partners. A little-noted 1984 study in the Journal of the
American Medical Association indicates that sodomitic intercourse
with only one partner is also dangerous. The study's authors talk
about "sperm induced immune dysregulation." They say this
phenomenon "may predispose the anal- sperm- recipient males to ...
opportunistic infections and Kaposi's sarcoma." So just plain same-
sex anal sex with only one partner is also part of the nation's public
health problem. Add to that an increasing militancy on the part of
another group of homosexuals who call themselves bisexual men —
who have sex with women as well as men. Bisexuals get AIDS from
their male partners and then transmit it to their female partners. As a
result, the public health problem grows. According to figures released
in August 1994 by the World Health Organization, 17 million people
have contracted the AIDS virus since the epidemic began, and more
than 2 million people have developed full blown AIDS. According to
Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, director-general of the WHO, if present trends
continue, there will be 30 to 40 million infected with the AIDS virus by
the year 2000.
"
CHAPTER FIVE:
TREATMENT
&
"Doctor, if I weren't in therapy, Yd be dead.
How did you get into the business of treating homosexuals?

After medical school, was in psychiatric residency at the New York
I
State Psychiatric Institute and at the VA hospital in the Bronx. There, I

was referred by one of my teachers, Dr. Thomas Loftus, to a young
—
man in trouble. This young man he was 23 suffered from a —
number of neurotic symptoms: anxieties of all kinds, mysterious
falling attacks, hysterical crying periods, depressive episodes, and
urges to have sex with other men, urges which he fought but could
not control. He was an only child from an illustrious family, and I
—
took him on as a patient for $10 a visit because that was all he could
afford.
He came from a wealthy family but he could only afford $10 a visit?
f
He'd graduated from Harvard, but he'd dropped out of Yale Law
School. At the time, he had no real job, and his parents didn't approve
his going into analysis. They didn't want him to expose their family
secrets, not even to a doctor. So I saw him four times a week and,
together, we got to the root of his homosexuality. He had a very
successful analysis, dropped his interest in homosexuality, and went
on to have a family and a fine career in public life.
And all ofa sudden you had a new specialty.

I some panels on homosexuality at meetings of the American
got into
Psychoanalytic Association, became a panel reporter in 1960 and
1962. In the process of writing up the panels' reports, I began to
develop some expertise in the field. I gained my expertise by
following my scientific nose, caught up in the investigation of this
fascinating area of human behavior, the ineluctable problems of the
so-called sexual deviations. Soon, other doctors started sending me
patients — patients with various sexual deviations. So, in addition to
my regular psychoanalytic patients, I started seeing heterosexuals
with one or another of the philias. And homosexuals.
Do all homosexuals need psychotherapy?

No. There are a good many homosexuals who are content with the
way they are. They function know why they'd want
quite well. I don't
to go into psychotherapy. They wouldn't get much out of it.
Which homosexuals seek therapy?

Two basic types. One, those who want to love and be loved by a good
woman, and can't. Two, those who are close to despair about a way of
life that looks like a dead end. After a time, they realize they can no
longer deny the biological and social realities that surround them
the realization that men and women mate with the opposite sex, but
not with one another.
The first type —do they wantfamilies?

Oh yes. I think that's the long range goal for most of them. But, before
they can do that, they realize they have some repair work to do.
What needs fixing?

Something inside their engines of desire. On an intellectual level, they
know they want to love a woman. On the emotional side, however,
they don't feel any sexual desire for the women they encounter. Or
maybe they think they are turned on by a particular woman. Then,
when the time comes to deliver, they are unable to get, or keep, an
erection.
So it's a physical thing?

Treatment 117
When we're talking about this crazy thing called sex, nothing is
"strictly physical" The mind and the body work

or "strictly mental."
together. Others have said this before,and I agree: the primary sexual
organ is the brain. When the cortical brain gets programmed one way
in early childhood, a person can turn out to have an antipathy for the
opposite sex. Fortunately, it is possible in a great many cases to
program that brain in another way.
And that's what you call psychotherapy?

Yes.
And what about the second type ofpatient?

They're the ones who aren't specifically looking for a woman or a
wife. They just say the gay life isn't looking so gay anymore, and is
leading nowhere. Some of these people say they "can't go on like this
for much longer."
What are some of their typical symptoms?

They have this feeling that they just want to be alone, and don't much
like that feeling. Or they have out of body experiences, or fear they are
falling apart. Or, they look in the mirror and, instead of seeing their
own face, they see the face of awoman. Or, they may look in the
mirror and see some unpleasant creature, which is, to them, a
reflection of their most destructive selves. Or they may find
themselves caught up in severe mood swings— from exhilaration to
depression and back again —and experience frequent bursts of rage.
of these episodes could bring them to my office looking for
Any or all
They may have enough insight to realize that they only feel good
help.
when they are caught up in same- sex sex, only then that they feel
whole.
What's wrong with that? What's so bad aboutfeeling good?

They realize that there ought to be more to life than going out and
having same-sex sex. But when their need for same-sex sex becomes
increasingly insistent, even desperate, when these needs intrude into
every aspect of their lives, when they can hardly do their work, when
there is hardly anything else for them, it is then that they begin to
realize that something is wrong. They know they have this terrific
drive; but they cannot understand it, cannot control it.
But some homosexuals seem very much in control
Yes, some do. And they are not the ones likely to come looking for
help from psychotherapy. Some of them simply say that sex with men
makes them feel good.
How do you translate that?

In same-sex sex, they find a sense of self-esteem, and a pride
—
bordering on hubris which is a false over-estimation of themselves.
They almost worship their own compulsions. I cannot think of a
better historic example than the sexual orgies of ancient Rome.
Petronius writes about them in his Satyricon, describing the wild
excesses of Nero's court, including sodomy, which he looked upon as
an amusing sport. Those involved in the orgies did not care much
about their sexual partners —who were, after all, interchangeable.
What they focused on was theirown effortless sexual performances
and the high they felt in their own sexual discharge. They were in awe
of their own sexual drives. And the more they did the orgy scene, the
more powerful, even omnipotent, they felt. They told themselves that
this was what life was all about. What could be more fun? What could
be more natural?
And you're saying that modern homosexuals are caught up in much

the same thing?
Yes. And the more sophisticated among them have to tell themselves
that their scene is right and good and part of what it means to be free
in the gay nineties. I call it a kind of "idealization."
"Idealization?"
Well, if you're talking about a process, it is raising an instinctual

activity — like orgasm —to an exalted level. Or, if you're talking about
persons, then idealization is putting values and qualities on another
that they do not possess. This removes all flaws from the beloved
object, and, at least for the moment, keeps the subject in thrall.
But don 't heterosexuals do this, too? Isn 't this what lovers do?
Yes. But, if they do, then they're not being real. And they are headed
for a fall. There's another, allied process that homosexuals are
particularly prone to: grandiosity.
In this context what is grandiosity?

It's the feeling someone has when he feels omnipotent. It's all in his
Treatment 119
imagination. The grandness he derives from this conquest of other

men is altogether imaginary. This is not to say that he doesn't enjoy
"being king." At least until he butts up against reality.
Are you saying that homosexuals can kid themselves, hut only up to a
point?
Sooner or later, obligatory
Yes. Inevitably, certain realities set in.
homosexuals begin to realize that their freedoms are transitory. If
they have to keep engaging in ever-heightened sexual escapades in
order to reach their high, then they don't see it as freedom, but a kind
of slavery. The real difficulty here is that this is the one of the few
psychiatric conditions that do not cause pain. This one brings
pleasure. That's why homosexuals need to rationalize their deviance.
What do you mean, "rationalize?"
Finding high reasons for low behavior. Consider Andrew Sullivan, the
brilliant young editor of The New Republic, who is both a homosexual
and a Catholic. In a May 8, 1993, interview in America, the national
Jesuit weekly, Sullivan said he came about the
to a point in his life,
age of 23, when he realized that "all the constructs the church had
taught me about the inherent disorder [of same-sex sex] seemed so
self-evidently wrong." Soon after that, Sullivan said, "I allowed myself
to love someone." For the first time in his life, he said, "I felt, through
the experience of loving someone or being allowed to love someone,
an enormous sense of the presence of God.... I felt like I was made
whole."
This sense of wholeness? Is this a normal thing after same-sex sex?

Totally. It is the classic reaction. That's the great illusion. The
obligatory homosexual has these persistent feelings (they come and
they go) that he may be falling apart. The only way he can restore
himself (he thinks), is to have same-sex sex. Then he has to
rationalize, tell himself that he is now involved in a real committed,
faithful relationship. Andrew Sullivan goes so far as to tell the
interviewer for America that "being gay is not about sex as such.
Fundamentally, it's about one's core emotional identity. It's about
whom one loves ultimately and how they can make one whole as a
human being." In order to bring off that rationalization, Sullivan even
resorts to an argument from what he calls "natural law." He says, "I
believe God thinks there is a final end for me and others that is
related to our essence as images of God and as people who are called
to love ourselves and others. I am drawn, in the natural way I think
human beings are drawn, to love and care for another person. I agree
with the church's teachings about natural law in that regard. I think
we are called to commitment and to fidelity, and I see that all around
me in the gay world." •
Do you think he sees commitment and fidelity all around him in the
gay world?
Hardly. He's simply engaging in mental acrobatics. I am sure, if he
lives in the same world the rest of us are living in, that he sees quite
the opposite. Go to the gay bars, or read the gay press: everyone's out
looking for action. Read the recent outpouring of gay literature. Read
Tim and Pete, the 1994 novel by Richard Baker. Tim and Pete are most
decidedly not faithful to each other. They're always out looking for
action. See the movie, "Priest." The Irish screenwriter Jimmy
McGovern has written a very compassionate tale about a young priest
whose desires lead him to Liverpool's gay bars and a night of
unpriestly ecstasy in the arms of a man. But a vital piece of the story is
missing —that the priestis in the grip of emotions that he cannot
understand or control. The screenwriter skims over that. His story has
the audience concluding that everyone in Liverpool needs help
except the young priest. McGovern (and the audience) assume
there's nothing that can be done about the priest's imperative needs.
But that's the heart of the problem. He's a good man and he's caught
up in something over which he has no control.
Read The Culture of Desire, by Frank Browning, who is himself gay.

Browning's reportage about what goes in gay enclaves like Fire Island
Pines or in the shrubs and bushes near the windmill on the beach in
Golden Gate Park makes it very clear that "gays together" equals "sex
together." Browning calls it "sex for its own sake raw, naked, —
wanton sex." Commitment has nothing to do with anything. These
men meet in the woods; they do not even speak; they are in rut; they
go to it, hot and heavy. If Andrew Sullivan doesn't see this, I am afraid
he is simply rationalizing the whole thing —saying that same-sex sex
is a calling by God may be a delusion. But homosexuals cannot
sustain the delusion forever. Inevitably, they end up exhausted and
psychologically depleted by the effort.
Then what do they do?

Treatment 121
They become anxious and depressed. They attempt to lose

themselves in drugs or drink, or they just keep on making the rounds
at the sex clubs, and trying not to think that, if they keep it up, they
will soon catch AIDS. Or...
Or what?
Or they enter therapy.
You hope.
In fact, the few of us who are serious about helping homosexuals
change their orientation have far more work than we can handle. I've
spent much of my professional life trying to understand the
dynamics of all this. So have a small handful of other analysts. If we
can't, or won't, help apply our skills to the therapeutic work, then we
ought to give up. But we're not giving up. In fact, there's a desperate
need to train more analysts in this therapeutic work.
But isn't it true that you and you like-minded colleagues can only
treat a fraction of the homosexuals in the U.S?
Certainly. But if we know how to do so, then we're duty bound to tell
the world. The history of medicine is replete with stories about

pioneering physicians who were initially derided for their discoveries,
only to have them adopted by the entire profession. Some may deride
us for our efforts on behalf of so few, compared to the large number
of homosexuals who need our help. In time, however, there will be
more and more doctors attempting to help homosexuals get to the
bottom of the agony, sorrow, tragedy, fear and guilt that pervade
their lives, through therapy.
What kind of therapy?

Psychoanalysis. And that psychoanalysis has repercussions beyond
the individual analysis. In each long-term therapeutic encounter, we
gain more information and more insight. Then we can put that
knowledge to use in the cases of other patients. And bring further
insight to the rearing of children.
How does psychoanalysis proceed for the homosexual who comes

lookingfor your help?
It's something like detective work. Together, the patient and I try to
get to the root of the problem.
You don 'tfirst tell your client he has to stop having same-sex sex?
No. That would be treating the symptoms not the causes.
Psychoanalysts used to do this. Most of them do so no longer. We
realized that telling a patient to stop or restrict his same-sex sex was
like telling him to castrate himself. All that did was promote an
immense resistance in the patient and hostility to the analyst. The
patient really has to come to this phase of the treatment himself. It
has to be his idea. He will stop having same-sex sex when he gets to
the bottom of his gender-defined self-identity disturbance, and begin
to discover the unconscious motives behind his need for same-sex
sex.
And when does he get to the bottom of that problem?

When he understands what forces and childhood conflicts are
preventing him from seeing himself as a complete man. Once he
starts doing that, however, he will begin to have some heterosexual
fantasies, some heterosexual dreams. When I see that beginning to
happen, I applaud — figuratively, at least. I am something like a
cheerleader for him. Gradually, when he begins to have more of a
sense of himself, more self-esteem, he may feel less and less of a need
to engage in short-circuited attempts to find his manhood by taking
in another man's penis and personality in order to buttress and
reinforce what he begins to consider a formerly bankrupt self. But we
can't rush the process. He has to be ready. And he won't be ready
until we have had a chance to build a working alliance.
How would you characterize a good therapeutic, or working,

alliance?
We have to hit it off. We have to like each other enough so that real
communication can begin to take place. But this may not be an easy
thing to achieve. He's going to have some resistance. Due to life's
struggles, every patient wishes to present himself to the best
advantage. The homosexual patient is no exception. Like every
patient,he is in a kind of war. He has interests to protect, actions to
conceal, weaknesses to shield, thoughts and feelings and motives to
hide. He cannot go into a therapeutic situation unless he understands
that we therapists are part of a society of qualified practitioners,
professionals bound by traditional ethics, who will make him feel
comfortable. He will know that we do not want to compete with him,
but help him, and use his confidential communications only for his
Treatment 123
own benefit. Only then

he be willing to talk about his fears, his
will
shames and his secret yearnings. Even then, he will deceive himself.
He will automatically hide from his own self-awareness, and repress
things he cannot bring himself to admit. We can help him break
through this kind of resistance, and get to material he has been
hiding, often enough hiding from himself— so that, eventually, he can
figure out what's going on inside him, to discover how and why he
even got this way.
f
You don 't tell him he can t have sex?
If he goes out and has same-sex sex during this phase, it can be very
helpful to the therapeutic process. He goes for same-sex sex in order
to alleviate his anxiety. But then, that allows us to ask why he needed
to do this —to analyze the forces that drove his anxiety. And from this
analysis comes insight.
So he's the one in charge ofany changes?

Yes. In this, I am implicitly working to help him change, and he
knows I am offering him hope. If we are successful together, he will
be turning away from the relief he gets from same-sex sex, and no —
—
small thing for many homosexuals from those who have been his
same-sex sex buddies for all these years. If he dares tell them he's in
therapy, they won't approve. His being in therapy will most certainly
be a rebuke to them, and to the movement. He's been saying, with
them, that "Gay Is Beautiful." And now, all of a sudden, he's in
therapy?
How do your patients handle that?

In different ways. One of my patients, whom I call Paul, told me that
friends who heard the news that he was in therapy were very nasty to
him. But that only helped —
him stay with it the fact that they were, as
he said, "so bitchy about it. They said I'd go crazy if I tried." From
that, he concluded that "they were frightened to see that someone
was really trying to get out of it." Their fear told him to keep going in
therapy.
And did Paul stick with his therapy and get out of it?
Oh, yes. He's happily married now. He has three children.
When did he first know he could get out of it?

Shortly after he'd had his first sexual contact with a woman. He said
he enjoyed it his very first time. He told me, "I never thought I'd be
able to have sex with a woman. I thought I'd never be able to have an
erection with a woman." In his homosexual days, he said, he'd get
erections looking at men, but he could look at a woman "from now to
doomsday" and not become aroused.
And that changed in therapy?

It did. After he was in therapy for five months or so, he began to feel
some arousal looking at a woman, although he said it was "a different
kind of arousal."
How different?
Paul said that when he became excited by another man, it was very
quick, very serious, and "very heavy." He said the look that passed
between them was "a really hard look, a grabby kind of look."
Meaning?
As Paul said, "A tremendous burst of aggression... not love... a one-
sided deal for each person. You're involved with yourself and
satisfying your own needs basically. It's very selfish with
homosexuals. Each guy is out for what he wants to try to satisfy. It has
nothing whatever to do with the other person at all. It's a compulsive
kind of thing. It not a warm feeling. It's not a relaxed feeling. You
don't look at the other person with loving thoughts. You want to
conquer him."
You're talking about one man in therapy. What makes you so sure
that all homosexuals have the same dynamics?
I am not saying all homosexuals have the same dynamics. But "this
burst of aggression... not love" is true of many homosexuals.
You mean the ones you've seen in therapy? How can you generalize
from these individuals to others who never come near your office?
Two ways. One, from consulting with other therapists who treat
homosexuals, comparing notes with them. Two, from reading
accounts of themselves by homosexuals. Some of them are very
candid. I've already quoted some of Frank Browning. His account of
hissame-sex sex wanderings across America is revealing. I have
learned some things from homosexual playwrights. Tennessee
Treatment 125
Williams for one. Here's a character in his play, "Confessional,"

talking about his homosexuality:
There's a coarseness, a deadening coarseness, in the

experience of most homosexuals. The experiences are
quick,and hard, and brutal, and the pattern of them is
practically unchanging. Their act of love
is like the jabbing of
a hypodermic needle to which they're addicted but which is

more and more empty of real interest and surprise.
There's that note again: addiction.
Yes, it keeps coming up —

very often, by the way, in novels and plays
by homosexuals. This imperative need they have, to keep going out
looking for sex, seems to be the stuff of tragedy. There's a character in
Larry Kramer's play, "The Normal Heart," who says that you can't ask
gays not to have sex if "promiscuity is their political platform" and if
their way of connecting "has become an addiction."
Okay, you've said how you knew

therapy was working with Paul
When do you know the therapy is not working?
Well, it's not when my patient goes off on a same-sex sex binge.
That's okay. I expect that to happen. I know the therapy isn't working
when he comes back and just prattles on and on about these same-
sex sex encounters, without insight. I call this a therapeutic stalemate.
His endless recitations are getting us nowhere.
When do you know when you are getting somewhere?

When he can start telling me why he
goes into each same-sex sex
situation. We need to focus on the motivational context of each
—
individual sexual act at first, after its enactment, and, later in
therapy, even before its expression. For example, a patient may not
even be aware, at the outset, what is driving his imperative need for
sex with other men. He may consider this a normal, instinctual drive.
He is only half right. The instinct for sex is normal. But the sexual
object choice is not. This is a source of great confusion to

homosexuals, who only feel they are responding to their "normal sex
Andrew Sullivan would have it, "to God's natural law."
drives." Or, as
Ican understand how they can feel that way, if they're not aware of
the unconscious motivations that cause this drive to be so insistent.
And what is the unconscious motivation?

Two factors: 1) An obligatory homosexual has a deep fear of women,
fears of engulfment by his mother's body, and fears of incest. And 2)

he is searching for his lost masculinity. The first insight usually comes
before the second. But, when my patients realize that in their same-
sex sex adventures, they are looking for their identity as males, they
are stunned. "You mean," one of my patients said once, as if he'd just
had a special revelation, "I'm doing this because there's a guidance
system inside me that is looking for his manhood?" When I assured
—
him there was, he seemed to relax in the realization that what he
was doing wasn't so horrible then. A lot of his guilt and his shame
vanished when he had that insight. Then, in a ruminative mood, he
said, "You know, that was exactly what I remember from the last time
I had sex with a man. His whiskers. I don't remember him, his face, or
his features. It was the toughness of his beard against my skin that I
remember. In touch with his manhood, I became whole."
Is this a typical after-effect ofsame —sex seXf this feeling of wholeness?
Yes. For homosexuals same-sex sex restores their confidence in

themselves, alleviates whatever anxiety they may have had, and even
leads them to a feeling of omnipotence.
Well, if same-sex sex does that, why would any homosexual want to
stop having same-sex sex?
The very fact that he's in my office indicates that he's not happy with
his life-style. My job is to help him focus more directly on the source
of his unhappiness. And to show him
been victimized by
he's
unconscious conflicts, so that to make a choice.
he has been unable
—
Psychoanalysis gives him a chance to remain homosexual or
become heterosexual. It opens a door, a door that had been
previously clanged shut by childhood traumas.
How do you do this?

I try to remain neutral. I don't approve of his same-sex sex episodes.
And I condemn them either. I mostly just let him
don't talk. I hope he
can engage in what we call "free association."
"Free association?"
The free flow of thoughts, feelings, emotions, physical sensations,

and memories that arise in a patient when he's on the couch. It is as if
he's reading aloud to the analyst from a videotape being projected on
the video screen in his mind. As you might imagine, if the patient can
Treatment 127
proceed to tell me what he sees, without censoring himself too much,

his treatment will go faster. There's one factor working in our favor:
the conflicts which beset him have no inclination to remain silent. In
the psychoanalytic setting, they rise from the unconscious to the
surface,where we can examine them in the protective setting of the
consultation room.
Then what happens?

Together, we try to interpret what we see on the video screen. I also
try to help my patient remember his dreams. Dreams are often a key.
How are dreams a key?
Dreams give us a clue about his feelings toward his mother. Or his
father. Frequently enough, my patient will also find that when he
dreams of his same-sex partner, or partners, they are not nice dreams
at all. He may see the partner as hostile and aggressive, often see him
in the skin of a snake, for example, or a ferocious dog. Those dreams,
if he will only pay attention to them, provide some good clues about
his inner state. He may not want to even look at those clues, may try
to conceal dreams of this type from his therapist. In fact, he may try
to cover them up by concocting stories about how exalted he feels in
the very thought of his sexual partners. Eventually, he may
understand that these erotic feelings are an unconscious attempt to
neutralize the severely aggressive and destructive feelings he has
toward other men. At the beginning of his therapy, however, he may
insist that his erotic love for other men is genuine.
What do you do when you detect this kind of cover up?
It depends on the With one kind of patient, I can just say, "I
patient.
don't believe this." With another, I have to proceed gently. I may say
that his story is striking a false note, and urge him to "tell it like it is."
But this isn't an unusual thing in psychotherapy. It takes a while for
any patient (not only a homosexual patient) to finally realize he is just
wasting his time (and mine) by withholding important material. I can
even suggest that it takes courage for a man to tell someone, even his
doctor, about certain aspects of himself that he does not wish to face.
(In this strategy, I am, of course, suggesting that my patient will feel
better about himself if he can summon up this kind of courage.) If we
are lucky, he will come around, sooner or later, and just say, "Well,
doctor, I haven't been giving you the whole story. Here's the whole
story." Sometimes, a revelation comes when the patient gets into a

process that therapists call "transference."
"Transference?" Describe the process.
At certain moments in the therapeutic alliance, the patient will start

dealing with me as if Twere his mother, or his father, or some other
authority figure. Ideally, I will have done nothing to trigger this
moment. I am simply listening. And then, all of a sudden, the patient
will, for example, go into a rage at me. I know I have done nothing to
deserve this rage. I can only conclude that he is in a rage because he is
transferring the rage from his mother or his father or some other
significant authority figure in his past to me. When he does this, I can
stop him and say, "Hey, do you hear yourself?" If I am recording the
session (which only do rarely and always with my patient's
I
permission), I replay his own words for him on my tape

may even
recorder, so he can hear himself. If he can hear himself, really hear
himself, he may have arrived at some insight about his feelings
toward his mother, or his father. He may be able to say, "Aha!" That
could be a healing moment.
How does that new insight heal?

Well, let's say the patient remembers a long-repressed incident from
his early childhood. Maybe it is the time that his father found him on
the living room couch fondling his penis, went to the kitchen, got a
butcher knife and returned with a threat. "Keep doing that," the
father says, "and I'll cut it off." The patient may then be able to say,
"Aha! So that's one of the reasons why I do what I do. As a little boy, I
wasn't allowed by either my mother or my father to use my penis for
anything but pee pee. I wasn't allowed to take pleasure in my young
manhood. Maybe I thought that my father wanted to eliminate me as
a rival for the affections of my mother. And so, maybe I then withdrew
from the competition. I decided, caught up in my infantile fear, that I
wouldn't be like my dad at all. I'd be sexless. Or like a little girl. And
maybe that's why I am the way I am."
At that point, what do you do?

I draw him out. I ask him whether he is still afraid that his father will
cut his penis off. Get the picture: this patient may be 35 years old. His
father may be in a nursing home, or dead. Realistically, he has no
reason to fear his father now. So why doesn't he just slough off that
Treatment 129
him for all these years?

old fear that has possessed In other words,
why doesn't he grow up and realize that he has a lot of potential
choices in life?
Part ofgrowing up is coming to the conclusion that he has a penis?

Yes. Not only that he has a penis. He should also know that it is not
inferior to his father's, and that he can use it, eventually, to give
pleasure to those beguilingly different creatures we call women.
What will stop the patient from saying that he can also use it to give
pleasure to guys, to gay guys?
He can say it, because it is true. I try to make it clear to my patient

that his choosing a girl, or a guy, is simply learned behavior, and that
he wasn't born one way or another. Most men learned that having sex
with a woman is the normal form of sexual expression. They learned
that from the examples they saw around them: from their
heterosexual dads, uncles, the fathers of their school chums, from the
culture around them: from love songs, and love stories on TV, from
—
the movies, from locker room talk whatever. That was normal
learning.
So what do you say to someone who isn't turned on by some great

man-woman love story, someone who simply isn't attracted to
women—that he is the victim ofsome abnormal learning?
Yes. Exactly. Abnormal learning is a consequence of early childhood
conflicts that he cannot remember. To put it as simply as I can, very
early in life, he "learned" one way, rather than the other way.
According to the most recent surveys, about 97 to 98 percent of us
learn one way, one or two percent learns the other way. On statistics
alone, we ought to be able to say which way is more "normal."
What about that one or two percent? How is it that they learned
differently?
They are casualties on life's freeway. At the bottom of everything, they

are filled with anxiety. In their early childhood, they've been
victimized by misinformation, assaulted by over controlling mothers,
or ignored by abdicating fathers. They've suffered years of
intimidation, threats, beatings, sometimes even sexual abuse. The
result? Feelings of fear, rage and/or guilt. These feelings have
—
interfered with their adaptation to reality normal learning of their
gender-defined roles, of their sexual interest in the opposite sex. In a

move of mis-carried repair, pre-homosexual children may simply
renounce their interest in the opposite sex to escape the fears of early
childhood. Other factors can produce excess fears: early separation
from one parent, or both parents, divorce, physical traumas, illness of
one sort or another. In the therapeutic process, the homosexual
patient and I try to figure out what went wrong in his case. We don't
have to have a discussion about what's normal and what's abnormal.
The patient himself tells me he feels abnormal, and that his lifestyle is
hurting him, and that he'd like to change, if change is at all possible. I
have yet to see a heterosexual show up asking me to help him become
a homosexual. I have yet to see the worried parents of a heterosexual
come to me wondering what I can do to help their son become a
homosexual.
But some psychiatrists are telling their homosexual patients they're

okay.
Yes. Some of these psychiatrists tell their patients that they wouldn't
dream of tampering with their orientation. Same-sex sex, they say, is
not a form of psychopathology. It's as normal as apple pie. Or ice
cream. You're born, they say, with a taste for vanilla or chocolate. The
secret of living, then, is to go with the instinct. But you have to look at
the psychiatrists who say that. Some of them are gay. Does that tell
you something?
They're all gay?
I didn't say "all." I said "some." And then, some doctors who aren't
gay are just terribly uninformed. Either they haven't had
homosexuals in their practice, or they've bought the propaganda that
the gay community has been churning out for some time now. If they
are not psychoanalysts, they usually have not been trained to search
for unconscious motives behind the need for same-sex sex. For that
reason, they can be excused for their ignorance in this matter. But
they should remember that psychoanalysis came into vogue because
its practitioners were able to convince people that they were on to
—
something the discovery that much of what we do is rooted in
motivations that are completely unconscious.
But some gay writers have gone back into history.

Some gay writers have ransacked non-analytic literature, novels, even
Treatment 131
ancient documents to prove that same-sex sex is normal. They "find"
that theTheban legions were into same-sex sex, or St. Paul, or half the
Indian tribes of North America. Then they piece these "facts" together
and build a pro -homosexual or bisexual concept of nature, man and
society.
Some of their studies look pretty impressive.

Yes, if you don't look too closely. Some scholars have come up with
documentation indicating that in certain primitive tribes there was

some kind of ritualized fellatio between adult men and boys between
the ages of seven and twelve. These studies do not tell us whether a
piece of sexual behavior actually constitutes a sexual deviation. For
that, we would have to know what conscious, even unconscious,
motivations drove the behavior. And, so far, we haven't been able to
determine what the motivations were, except that they were a form of
ritualized homosexuality serving the needs of a particular culture at a
particular time and for a particular purpose. I suspect that this was
just a strategy devised by the elders to make sure they got sex on a
regular basis —and also to keep the boys submissive and at the service
of the elders in other ways. In any event, it was an abuse, and I don't
think that it's anything we'd want to emulate today.
Let's go back to the therapeutic process.

Well, —
we focus on two major areas 1) now and 2) then. One, I try to
help the patient understand his own internal state of being right now.
How he's feeling about his life today, what kind of dreams he is
having, what waking fantasies. Two, I make it possible for the
try to
patient to retrace his steps to that part of his life where his
development was thwarted or distorted by traumas he suffered in
infancy or in his childhood.
Give me an example.
Well, I have hundreds of stories that could illustrate the fact that so
many of my patients had over controlling, suffocating mothers. And
they feared their fathers. And they did not have an adequate oedipal
experience.
Oedipal experience? What is that?

It's a term that psychiatrists have been using ever since Freud. And it
doesn't help lay people because it presumes information they don't

have. It goes against the basic principle of all teaching: ignota per
nota. We get to the unknown through the known. And many moderns
have only a vague notion who Oedipus was, and they are confused
when they hear some psychiatrist talking about his complex.
So, tell me in terms I can understand. What is this oedipal

experience?
In simple terms, all it means is boy who is living in the

that a little
same household with a man and a woman who have a reasonably

stable, positive, loving relationship is forced to face the fact that his
mother and father form a single unit, and
he cannot replace his
that
father in his mother's eyes or have all and affection.
of her attention
Among other things, this experience provides the basis for a man's
eventual need to form a bond with a woman other than his mother.
It's also helpful if he finds his dad is something of a role model. It's
even better if both mom and dad really get along.

What if they fight all the time?
Very bad. Dysfunctional families can turn out gay and lesbian kids.
But not necessarily. I think of Tolstoy's remark that all happy families
are happy in the same way, but that unhappy families are each
unhappy in different ways. I know that some children just tend to give
up when they see their parents constantly fighting. I had one patient,
I call him Roger, who told me, "When I see people fighting, I feel all
the things I did when my father was fighting with my mother. It was a
sinking feeling of helplessness. wished they were hitting me rather
I
than hitting each other. I felt hate, shame, guilt, murder. I've had the
most murderous feelings toward myself and other because of my
childhood memories. At times, I'm engulfed by intense feelings of
loneliness, a sense of being terribly alone, and needing my father.
And that's when I need men, sexually."
It sounds like many ofyour patients miss theirfathers.

Yes. And that is true of my female, lesbian patients as well as of my
patients who men. Lesbians deny they can have any tender,
are
affectionate, loving feelings for men because they had traumatic
relationships with their own fathers. They needed their fathers' love,
and their fathers rejected them. At the same time, they may feel their
mothers hate them and wish to harm them. And, just as a male
homosexual is in constant search of his masculinity, lesbians are in
Treatment 133
search of their femininity. They can only achieve happiness with

other women. They enjoy the feeling of being held like a child,
sucking their partner's breast, and being soothed. They want food,
love, milk, breasts— they all go together. And they suffer from
conscious and unconscious feelings of inferiority. I had one patient,
whom I call Sarah, who told me, "I feel that I'm no damn good, and
never was, and that people have laughed at me all my life. I'm afraid
of kissing any of these girls. When I start to kiss them, I get terrified.
But when do kiss them, I suddenly get cold. I guess I'm afraid of
I
feeling too much, I get a feeling of great fright. It's not a fear of being
rejected, it's a wave of vulnerability. I'm afraid of the woman, I guess.
And isn't that strange that I should be? I'm supposed to be in love
with women."
And you say that your male patients come up with warm, but forlorn
feelings for theirfathers?
Yes. I see this all the time. I couldn't help but be struck with sadness
when I saw a PBS documentary on the playwright Larry
television
Kramer in late June of 1993. He
said he remembered his childhood as
being "incredibly miserable" because he was "shunted aside" by his
father, who resented his mother "making a sissy" out of young Larry.
"He did it quite often. It was like being punctured by a nail, over and
over again. But it didn't make me change. Our entire relationship, all
we did was scream at each other."
Didn't Kramer go into psychotherapy?

He says he did. I don't know what happened there. Maybe some good
things. But I suspect he didn't stick with it long enough to really learn
what was at the heart of his unhappiness. In a September 1993
interview in Playboy, he said, "If we had been allowed to get
married... there would be no AIDS cannon balling through America....
That's basically what bathhouses and bars were all about. We had no
other place where we could be ourselves I think a very good case
could be made that because of this, the straight world caused AIDS."
Was Kramer right?

No. Likeall of us, he cannot see his own problems as clearly as he can
see the problems of others. He could have known, should have

known, that a male homosexual's imperative, but unconscious, needs
drive him to seek out sex- in- itself, frequently, and with a good many
partners. As studies have shown, being in a gay marriage doesn't stem

that need. In fact, so-called monogamous gay couples admit they still
need to find sex partners outside the dyad. Often, that sex is
anonymous sex.
And what was Larry Kramer's need?

From what he said in that PBS documentary, I would say that what he
always wanted was the love of his father. Not being able to get that, he
went looking for it in other men. On the documentary, he said, "I've
always been looking for that love." And then he added
— it was a very —
poignant moment for me "Still am."
Why was that a poignant momentfor you?

Because Kramer is a very good man. He deserves better than he's
gotten out of life.But his search has been in vain because he was
looking in all the wrong places. For all of his warnings to others, the
man is HIV positive now and 60. 1 only hope he has time to finish the
novel he's been working on, about the history of AIDS in America. It
will tell the world a lot about what it meant to be a human being who
was caught up in this same-sex sex phenomenon of the late 20th
century. And I imagine that the pages of that novel will bring to
Kramer the love of many men. It may not be the kind of embodied
love that Kramer was looking for. He could only get that from a good
woman. But it will be the kind of affection that men can and do have
for one another, a love that is not predicated on penis or pects, but on
hearts and minds that resonate with shared feelings and ideas.
Did you ever have any patients like Kramer?

Let me share the ramblings of one of my patients, a man call I
Abraham. He was in a lifelong search for his father, whom his mother
divorced when little Abe was three, and never allowed to see his son.
Abraham said, "I don't hate my father at all. I hate her, but I don't
hate him. But they both hate me. One left me and the other never
paid any attention to me. He should have pulled her legs out and
shoved them down her throat. He should have killed her and taken
me with him. I can see his head, balding, if I imagine him. I don't like
the way he looks. He looks like me, and I'd like to look like him. I
wonder what his hands look like, what his chest looks like. I wonder
what it would be like to put my hands on his chest, or be kissed. I'm
getting dizzy now. I feel as if I'm floating away. He had nice blue eyes.
a
Treatment 135
I think she killed him. She made him drink. She cut his penis off, the
way she tried to cut mine off. I think the reason he left her was
because if he didn't he would have killed her. I'll kill her now." At this
point, Abraham broke down in tears. When he composed himself, he
said, "But he loved me."
It sounds like you are always probing, trying to see what kind of
family experiences your patients had as little girls and little boys.
Yes. The revealing moment in therapy, more often than not, comes
when my patients start telling me what kind of relationship existed
between theirmothers and their fathers, and how they reacted to that
relationship. Not only telling me how it was in the past, but also
coming to some insight about how those ancient figures were still
having a controlling, but up-to-now unconscious effect on their
actions in the present. Did they fear their fathers way back when, or
know that their mothers over- controlled them? More important: did
they still fear their fathers, and were their mothers still controlling
them, after all these years? If they came to the conclusion that their
moms were still "inside" them, then, at long last, they could start
making changes.
What kind ofchanges?

Some changes were pretty obvious. Often enough, my homosexual
patients would just stop seeing their mothers for a time. Or talking to
them on the phone. I didn't even have to suggest it. My patient, Paul,
told me about his mother not wanting him to come to
psychoanalysis, and his sudden realization that his therapy would
only work if and when he could make a real break from his mother.
He was, of course, coming late to a process that takes place
unconsciously in most young men before they are three years old —
process known as "separation-individuation." Now, after some time
in therapy, they come to see that one of the first things they must do
is break with their mothers. This break should not be construed,
necessarily, as a physical break (although this may happen later). It is
actually an and
intra-psychic separation so that one's needs, feelings
reactions are no longer dominated and controlled by the wish for
total approval from the mother, which the homosexual both desires
and fears. This psychic separation is a form of liberation which is vital
to his development of his masculine identity.
I feel that we should know more about Paul Let's go hack to the
beginning with this patient.
When Paul came to me, he was on the verge of a fine professional

27,
He'd been leading
career, attractive, vivacious, articulate, personable.
an active homosexual life since he was 18. But now he felt his life was
becoming futile. This was way back in the 1970s, so he was afraid of
the legal and social consequences if people should find out about
him. But he was also very unhappy with himself. He had all the usual
compulsions. Sometimes, right in the middle of the day, he'd go into
the subways, looking for sex. He said, "I felt like a nut." And the
compulsions were getting stronger. He couldn't even study in the
school library for more than an hour without being forced to go to the
bathroom looking for a homosexual fix.
Tell me about Pauls family.

Throughout childhood, he was dominated by his tyrannical,
overpowering and often cruel mother. She was in complete charge of
the family, and responsible for all the family decisions. His father was
a passive type, and he was afraid of his moody, irascible and
uncontrollable wife. She "never said anything nice" about him and
imprinted on Paul a total lack of respect for him. She not only
terrorized her husband; she terrorized Paul, too. She teased him,
ridiculed him, slapped him, clawed him. Whenever he tried to defend
himself, she would beat him to the ground, sit on him, scratch his
arms and face, hit him in the stomach. At age three and four, his
mother would force feed him if he did not "clean up his plate." On
two or three occasions, he vomited his food; she made him eat his
own vomit. Until young adulthood, he was still vomiting whenever he
became upset.
Up to the age of thirteen, Paul's mother often slept with him in the
same bed. She frequently disrobed in front of him. At other times,
half-dressed, she would walk around with her breasts exposed. In late
childhood and early adolescence, she would ask his opinion about
the shape and size of her breasts, and demand to know if he thought
she was attractive.
She minimizing their good

criticized all of his friends, especially girls,
qualities and pointing out all their weaknesses, failures, frailties and
unworthiness in an attempt to isolate him, and keep him for herself.
In this, she was pretty successful. Paul had found her "sexually
Treatment 137
stimulating," and, during analysis, he realized that he had wanted "to

have her sexually." He began to realize that when he had sex with a
man, "perhaps I am having sex with Mother."
Was that repugnant to Paul?
No. He said, "It's fantastic, what I want to feel. I want her...
but it's
and she wants me. She's always wanted me to see her that way, as a
sexual interest. I guess I've always wanted her body. That sounds
stupid when I say it. When I used to sleep next to her that's what I
wanted, and I would put my arms around her and sort of enfold
myself right into her. I didn't get an erection, but it seemed to me I
always went too far. I recall now that I used to have fantasies around
age twelve or thirteen, about putting my penis into my mother's
vagina with my arms around her. It wasn't like a lover, but like a
mother and son, and I'm getting pleasure out of it. And she's gloating
at me, she's enjoying it, too, and she has control and power over me."
How did Paul's mother feel when she found out Paul was a
homosexual?
She dismissed it as "unimportant." Later, Paul came to realize his
mother condoned his homosexuality because, that way, no woman
would take her son away from her. Some six months into analysis,
Paul would dream of his mother attempting to pull off his testicles or
his penis. As a result of his analysis, Paul was gradually able to
verbalize his long- repressed feelings toward his mother. "I hate my
mother so," he told me in one session. "I hate her for all she did to
me, her selfishness and everything being for her. I guess I've wanted
to kill her for a long time." I applauded his ability to verbalize in this
way. He said he had the feeling that I, his therapist, was creating "a
magnificent monster."
In this, it does sound like you were egging him on.

was part of my strategy in the therapy. I told Paul
Yes, in a sense, that
hisemerging ability to tolerate his aggressive feelings toward his
mother would free him from his hatred. But that hatred wouldn't go
away completely until he was able to move away from her.
You mean actually move out of her house?

Yes. At the beginning, it was that simple. One day, he just moved out
of her apartment and got a bachelor pad of his own. He didn't cut his
mother off completely, but he started seeing her less often, stopped
talking to her very frequently on the telephone. It was he who
determined where and when his meetings with her would take place.
He took control of the relationship — even though he still loved his
mother and had warm feelings toward her. Those moments, however,
were most dangerous for Paul. At those times, his mother would
make moves to get Paul back in her life, try to confide in him about
her problems, use him to help her manipulate others, protect her. But
Paul's resistance to those moves told me how much progress he was
making.
What other signs told you that?

Paul no longer dreamt that having sex with a would give his
girl
mother cancer or leukemia. Then he stopped home. After

living at
that, it wasn't long before Paul really realized that his mother had
never wanted him to have sex with a woman. She'd phone him at two
o'clock in the morning when he was living in his bachelor apartment,
demanding to know if a woman was there with him. "She never liked
my having intercourse with a woman," Paul told me. "I mean that was
just out of the question. It was obviously hard for her accept that. It
wasn't just a matter of her accepting it. She hated it." I think that
really cemented things for Paul.
Those two-o'clock-in-the-morning calls did it?

Yes. At he knew what had been at the heart of his homosexuality:
last,
his over controlling, suffocating mother who would not allow him to
leave her and become an individual in his own right, and a man. We
saw more progress, months later, when Paul was having good sex
with his fiancee. And, then, much later, his feelings about his mother
were confirmed for all time when Paul reported, with great insight,
how his mother reacted to the news that Paul gave her over the
—
telephone that he and his wife were going to have a baby. He told
me his mother's voice took on a very icy tone. She said, "No son of
mine has had a c hild. You are no son of mine." That was a triumphant
point for Paul (and for me). For me, it was a definitive sign that the
therapy had really solidified.
Is this a patternmany ofyour cases?

in
Yes. Paul had a problem most common among the homosexuals who
have come to me for help. He had unconscious ties to his mother. She
Treatment 139
had made him dependent on her. And so, he was drawn to

terribly
—
her simultaneously drawn and repelled, because, in being drawn to
her, he was in implicit competition with his father. As a consequence,
he feared all women. At the unconscious level, "all women" equaled
"mother." And, then, even into adulthood, he still carried his mom
inside him—what we call "the introjected mother." That still caused
him to live in fear.
How could he banish that introjected mom?

First, he had to see how much pain his mother had caused him, and
how much she was still causing him. Part of that pain was when he
began to recognize his bondage to perversion. Once he de-coded that
perversion —
Wait a minute. What do you mean, "decoded his perversion?"

He began to see that hissame-sex partner was really a substitute for
his sexual feelings toward his mother. His sucking a man's penis was
really a substitute for sucking at his mother's breast.
That seems like quite a reach. How did he (and you) figure that out?
Itemerged in his dream material. That, too, was a therapeutic
moment. Once he saw that, it was like a great light went on in his
mind. He was now able to tell himself, "Hey, why go for the substitute
when I can have the real thing?" In a similar fashion, he found that
same-sex sex was also a kind of searching for masculinity the kind —
of masculinity he might have had if he had been able to model
himself on a manly father. Unfortunately for Paul, he hadn't had that
kind of father. And so, he was out looking for some way of
incorporating the manhood of others.
He'd he more manly if he took in the penis of another man? Sounds a

little dumb. Would I be more deer-like, that is, could I run faster, if I
ate the flesh ofa deer?
You have to understand that we are talking about feelings that come
from deep unconscious mind. They are very primitive. In fact,
in the
if you've ever read any Indian lore, you may remember that Indians
would, in fact, eat the flesh of a deer in order to become faster afoot.
To us, that's a very primitive idea. But it had a mythic significance for
a young Iroquois brave. The American advertising business uses the
same concept: the ad people sell us things based on the notion that
we will become what we eat, or drink, or possess. The Christian

sacrament supposed to have a similar effect. Christians who take
is
Holy Communion are supposed to become "more like Christ." Jesus

said at the Last Supper, "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my
blood...."
Yes, I can see we are getting into some deep waters here. So what is
happening in your therapy? Are you trying to get your patients out of
the realm of myth and into reality?
Yes! Exactly! I tell them, "Enough of this symbolic life. Life is not
symbols. Life is real. Get into the real."
Well, what would be the next real step here?

Once my patients come to a certain point in their therapy, they find
an overall improvement in every area of their lives: work,
competition, social life. It all goes together. Then, they usually tell me
they are ready to start experimenting with new forms of behavior.
Such as going out with women?

Yes, but that may be difficult at first. Same-sex is very easy sex. All you
have to do is show up at a gay bar or a gay sand dune and you've got
it. It's not that easy for a professional man of thirty or so to just up
and start something with a good woman. That will take time. Just
going out and having sex with a prostitute, for example, doesn't really
mean been much progress, even if he takes some pleasure in
there's
it. comes when my patient finds some woman to love,
Real progress
some woman who really excites him, and who is excited by him.
So what are your patients supposed to do in the meantime?

In a way, at this point in therapy, they are figuratively back in their
earlier years just before puberty, when they felt budding sexual
feelings toward girls in general, or toward a particular girl, but turned
away from those feelings in face of the first obstacles that arose. Then,
maybe they drifted into masturbation. If they were already grooved
toward same-sex sex by reason of their hatred of mom, or their fear of
dad or lack of respect for him, they may have fallen into masturbation
with homosexual fantasies, or masturbation in the company of other
young men.
Which, of course, you do not encourage?

—
Treatment 141
Right. But, before my patient can engage in successful intercourse

with a woman, he has to explore the conviction it may be conscious —
—
or it may be unconscious that his penis isn't adequate to the task
that it's defective, or too small, or whatever, as is often true among
homosexual males. The cure for that is some creative masturbation,
performed with manual stimulation, looking at his erect manhood,
and thinking of a particular woman.
Or a fantasy woman?
Yes, that can help, too. Looking at Playboy or Penthouse isn't the be-
all and the end-all. It, too, is a substitute for the real thing. But, for a
patient who has been exposed from his parents for
to threats
masturbating in early childhood, or for a patient who, for some other
reason, does not or cannot take any delight in his own erection, then
it is a beginning.
You 're saying masturbation is good, then ?

Masturbation in an imaginary heterosexual twosome consolidates
and repairs a defective body ego-image.
Meaning?
It helps a man take pride in his own manhood. If, as a little boy, he
was punished for touching his penis, or even looking at it, how could
he take pride in the very thing that marked him as a young man?
Unfortunately, that's the way it's been for too long in our Puritanical
culture. Other cultures are different. In Rome, you walk around town
and see penises all over the place, on the nude male statues in almost
every piazza. In some more primitive cultures, we even see a
celebration in some statues of the penis when it is erect.
Masturbation also promotes my patient's awareness of the difference
between the sexes, a major factor in the attainment of his appropriate
gender-defined self-identity. It represents the completion of a
developmental phase never before reached in those who have been
into same-sex sex for their entire lives. Ralph Greenson, a famous
West Coast psychoanalyst, described the developmental phases in
simple, succinct language. Phase One: "I am me, John." Phase Two: "I
am me, John, a boy with a penis." Phase Three: "I am me, John, a boy
with a penis who likes to do sexual things with those anatomically
different people, little girls."
Is this all your patient needs?
No. Some of my patients, would I say the majority of them, have a

conscious or unconscious fear of the female vagina. It's important to
see if I can help dispel that fear, because this fear of the vagina is all
wrapped up in my patient's earliest incestuous feelings toward his

mother. At a primitive level, the vagina might be a symbol of the little
boy's fear that he'd be engulfed by his mother.
Presuming you can detect the present vestiges of that primitive fear,
how do you reverse thatfear?
First,by helping my patients bring their fears up to a conscious level.
Up time they begin therapy, those fears lurked in their
to the
unconscious. In therapy, sometimes through analysis of their dreams,
they begin to draw those fears out of their unconscious and take a
real look at them, figure out their origin, talk about them with me,
begin to see how anachronistic it is to keep letting those fears (often
drawn from childhood) affect how they are living (or not living!)
today.
You've mentioned that some ofyour patients actually fear women in

general,and see the female vagina itselfas a threatening thing.
I try to help my patients overcome that fear by getting them to take an
objective look at the female vagina. In the past, I have sometimes
resorted to drawing pictures of the female genital system, to help take
away some of the mystery. But the men's magazines have taken care
of that for me. Some people may be shocked by the terribly explicit,
full page, color pictures they see in Penthouse, for example. Some
may call them pornographic. But they can be useful in therapy.
So what happens to your patients when they first attempt to have sex
with a woman?
In their first attempts, I find that many of my patients have fantasies
that include me.They seem to require my imaginary presence, to
help provide them with strength and encouragement, and often
report, "You were right there over my shoulder, cheering me on." My
patient, Paul, had a dream about me, just before he went off for his
firsttime with a woman, and he reported, somewhat to my surprise,
—
that he took real pleasure in that first time so much pleasure, in fact,
that he had to cable me when I was vacationing in Bermuda. The
astronauts had just landed on the moon that very day, at a site called
Treatment 143
Tranquillity Base. Paul's cable read: "TRANQUILLITY BASE HERE.

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED." That's all the cable said, but I could feel
his sense of elation in accomplishing what he felt at the beginning of

—
his treatment was almost impossible to be able to make love to and
be in love with a woman. And my heart soared like an eagle's too. If
my patients can take such obvious pleasure in "landing," like Paul
did, so much the better. Normal pleasures have a way of driving out
perverse pleasures. This is our aim in therapy: to help the patient find
pleasure in his life: in his sex life, his social life, his work life.
What made Paul's therapy a success?

Ihad a long, follow-up interview with Paul seven years after he'd
completed his therapy. I recorded that interview. I'll let him tell you
what happened.
"I think I got well because I related very strongly to you, because I had
a tremendous need to get well, and I had to trust somebody and you
were the only person I could trust. There was nobody else in my
life... nobody that I could really feel secure with. So I just decided that
if I'm going to accomplish my purpose I'd better let it all out and not
have any holds barred and be extremely open and extremely honest
and really let myself go....
"A big part of my therapy was the tremendous encouragement I got

from you. I was confident that you were on my side completely. That
was important. No matter what happened, you were always on my
side. I really needed somebody to be on my side against my mother. It
was also interesting that I related to my own father so much better
after awhile. For the last three years of his life, we were real buddies
and we could never be that before. And he got tremendous
satisfaction out of that. Because he didn't get much satisfaction out of
many other things in because my mother cut him off from
life
everything. She cut him off from his own family, his brothers and his
sisters and his children, and she really made mincemeat out of him.
He was happy that I did undergo therapy. He realized the importance

of it. I don't think he realized it at first. He wasn't very educated.
When my father died, my mother stopped paying for my therapy, and
it wasn't that she couldn't afford to help me. She started telling me
that it should only have taken six months. Why am I still going? And I
would always say, 'Because I am getting better.'
"My saying much. I remember getting a charge out
that upset her so
of hearing her response. It would infuriate her that I felt I was getting
better. And I was."
How long was Paul in therapy?

He saw me four times a week for a year, then two or three times a
week for another two years.
That's a long time. Isn *t there a faster way?
I understand that Dr. Albert Ellis (who helped make some gays
straight) used a form of what he called "reality therapy." He was more
direct than I. He concentrated on a homosexual's self-hatred, and its
illumination through techniques of persuasion. Dr. Edmund Bergler
attempted to cure a homosexual's masochism by educating him
about the unconscious meaning of same-sex sex that carried a heavy
load of masochistic suffering. There are others in the field who do not
use long-term psychoanalysis. Readers can phone Dr. Joseph Nicolosi
in Encino, California, for referrals to other therapists in the field,
members of NARTH, the National Association for the Research and
Treatment of Homosexuality. Some of them do other forms of
therapy. Some doctors try to get their patients to discuss, at length,
their inability to get close to, or identify with, their fathers. Other
doctors find their patients get some benefit from group therapy,
where members of the group can share experiences and reassure one
another that they're on the right course. Some doctors use some of
my methods. My methods are classically psychoanalytic. And
although the psychoanalysis I do takes time, it works for me, and,
more importantly, it works for my patients.
What about aversion therapy?

You're talking about giving a patient something to make him throw
up when he sees a picture of a gay man's penis? Or giving him electric
shocks whenever he becomes sexually aroused? That's quackery.
Punishment doesn't get to the root of the problem. It only treats the
symptoms. It doesn't last. And it upsets the patient in other ways. I
have never used aversion therapy.
Paul's story was that he wasn't able to "separate" from his mother.
That's one story, and, as I understand it, a very common tale that
homosexuals have to tell about their infancy and early childhood.
Can you give some other examples of things that help orient a man
Treatment 145
toward same-sex sex?

Well, here's another story that I've come across a good deal:
seduction of the boy by his mother. You have to understand that
little
a little boy can be very vulnerable. If his mother allows him to see her
nude, he may be frightened on two counts. One, he may be simply
frightened of her vagina. As I said before, this may affect him for the
rest of his life. On a primitive, unconscious level, he may associate the
vagina with a threat of engulfment by his mother (and, by extension,
with all the women who ever appear in his life later on). And, two, if
he has fantasies about having sex with his mother, it is likely that he
will not understand what is happening to him, except to know that he
is very scared of his own erection (unless he has a mom who can
reassure him and tell him that he's very normal, and should be proud
of what he's got). That fright may stay with him for a long time. As a
result, he may avoid contact with little girls, and play with boys
instead. That's normal enough for a little boy, until the age of 12 or
13. Then, normally, a boy will get interested in girls. When he doesn't,
it may be because of that infantile fear of the mother, fear that was
triggered in him and embedded there when he saw her in the nude.
He may also be afraid that his own little erections will get him in
trouble with his own father. "Why, gosh," the little boy might say to
himself, "if my father saw me as a rival for the affections of my
mother, he could cut off my penis. Or damage me in some other
way."
Any other examples of childhood trauma that may have caused this
homosexual orientation?
Yes. had one patient who remembered that he'd seen his parents
I
having intercourse. He was four. Shortly after that, he was sent to the
hospital for a very painful tonsillectomy. He made a false
interpretation of that episode. He construed the operation as a simple
punishment for watching his parents in the act of making love. It was
an easy logical leap for him to connect this act of intercourse with his
own excruciating pain. He decided that he'd have to cross that kind of
behavior off his list. Sad? Yes. Illogical? Yes. But it happened. And, 30
years later, the young man turns up in my office wondering why he
can only have sex with men.
What could you do for him?

After he began to see the origin of his infantile fears, he could look at
them in an adult manner, and understand. But he had to do more

than simply understand the origin of his early fears. I also had to
encourage him to start thinking of attempting intercourse with a
woman, and, then, finally, doing it. Once he could bring himself to do
it, he began to take pleasure and pride in his performance. That was,
ultimately, the glue that held his success together. Not only had he
begun to think like an adult, he began to act like an adult, too.
How did you feel about that?

When this happens, I always feel I've been able to open an iron gate
for someone, giving him a ticket, as it were, to the greatest pleasure in
life, and to his own self-realization. I feel terrific. Ihad the key to
paradise. I gave it to him. Then he turned the key, and opened the
gate, and walked right in.
What kind ofpatients do not succeed in therapy?

I can predict a poor outcome in patients who are unable or unwilling
to attend sessions, show severe disturbances in verbal
communication and an inability to make connections in the analysis.
I have a hard time making progress with patients who don't dream, or
cannot remember their dreams. I also have a hard time with those
who have no conscience; these are the people who cannot seem to
join the therapeutic situation and alliance or engage in a positive
transference.
Meaning?
Trust me to deal with them as, perhaps, their fathers did not. Accept
me as a guide on this expedition of discovery, on this journey into
inner space.
How about people who lie to you, or withhold important

information?
Well, if they do that and do it over a long period of time, have to ask I
why they are even in my office. Obviously, they're not serious about
wanting to change. They're just not ready for psychoanalysis. Neither,
for that matter, are people who are severely dependent on drugs.
Tell me about one ofyour tougher cases.

I had one patient — call him Kevin —who was brought up in a family of
women. He had a father, but the father was painfully reticent and
Treatment 147
made it clear that he didn't much care for Kevin. Kevin wasn't a
momma's boy. He was a gramma's boy. The strongest person in his
household was his grandmother. She was an Auntie Mame type, a
major stage figure in her time, and still possessed of a noble carriage
and great physical beauty. Kevin's mother was a career woman
herself— always gone —
and so the major influence in Kevin's life was
his grandmother. In the presence of this beauty, and in the absence of
his father, Kevin could do little else but emulate her. He became like
his grandmother. In psychiatric jargon, he'd be described as someone
with "a disturbance in his male gender identity." When he went off to
school, he found the other boys laughing at him. He became stricken
by a paranoid illness. (You'd be paranoid, too, if the whole world was
against you.) In order to gain the approval of his classmates, he ended
—
up seducing them by using his own rather spectacular, handsome
—
bearing which came from a molding of himself in the form of his
stylish and glamorous grandmother.
Whatever happened to Kevin?

He was a hard case. Through successful analysis, he came to
understand what was going on. Once he realized that he was
seducing men in order to avoid being humiliated by them, he began
to eliminate his homosexual urges.
You've had some patients who were priests?

Yes.
So,how can you cure the homosexuality of a priest? He's supposed to

be celibate. Are you going to tell him he has to learn how to
masturbate? Are you going to encourage him to have sex with a
woman, a woman who can really love him?
Well, I can try to get him into a process that Freud called
"sublimation."
Explain sublimation.
Freud once considered that much socially beneficial behavior
originated in deflecting the force of our instinctual drives, such as our
aggressive drives or our sexual drives, from their original aims or
objects into more creative channels for the betterment of mankind.
This would obviate the need to repress the drives—just put them to
better use. This may be what happens in the case of a successful
surgeon. He may have this drive to aggression, and deflect the force of
itby performing great surgery. This is the kind of thing that a priest
who wants to remain celibate must do with his sex drive. He gives up
the normal use of his manhood so he can serve the people of God.
Is this easy?
No. So far, in my experience, I have found complete sublimation of

the sexual drive almost impossible. I have found some exceptions. I
know some women who were raised in an excessively tyrannical

atmosphere where there was never any mention of sex, never any
suggestion that they could even think of gratifying their sexual
impulses. I have found such women devoting their lives to charitable
activities, nursing, teaching and the like.
So,when you have a priest-patient who can't sublimate his sex drive,
what do you do?
I just counsel him to put himself on a different track. Dr. A.H. Sipe has
some beautiful passages on masturbation in his book on celibacy.
Sipe believes that, for a priest, masturbation can be an act of virtue,
because it provides him with a needed sexual outlet —in face of the
Church's strictures against any other kind of sex. If a priest can get
into that mode without feeling guilty, fine. If not, then he has to think
of dropping the commitment to celibacy. If he has to leave the
priesthood, so be it. But that's notmy job, to concern myself with
these ecclesiastical matters. My job is to help a man save his life, not
his priesthood.
Have you had homosexual patients who were psychotic?

Yes, a few. And they have been my very toughest cases. They tend
toward paranoid thinking of an insistent and intractable nature that
does not yield to analysis. The homosexuality that does appear in
some psychotics is an ancillary symptom. On the whole, the sexuality
of a psychotic is pretty chaotic; he can be interested in the same sex,
the opposite sex, or in children. Except in the case of pedophilia,
doctors tend to treat the psychosis, not the homosexuality. And then
there is the statistically rare case of a Jeffrey Dahmer, whose
homosexuality was an ancillary factor to his psychosis. Men like
Dahmer are dangerous and they have to be locked up and treated
with drugs. No one has had any great success treating these patients.
«
Treatment 149
But you've had considerable success treating more normal

homosexuals?
Yes. My track record speaks for itself. My success rate is as good as, or
better than, my profession's efforts to treat any other psychological
disorders. Over the past 30 years, I have had a success rate of about 35
percent. By success, I mean I've been able to help a homosexual
become heterosexual. That is, able to have complete, satisfactory sex
with a woman and develop the capacity to really love her.
Will that patient typically have no further homosexual fantasies or

desires?
Not necessarily. If I treat a patient because he has a fear of flying, that

doesn't mean he will never have any vestiges of trepidation when he
buys an airline ticket. But he will be able to get on a plane without
making a scene. My patients aren't de-corticated.
De-corticated?
I don't remove their brains.
Well, then, how can you say that your treatment has been "a
success?"
My treatment aimed at helping my patients free themselves from

is
—
their compulsions. Freedom is the key word free-will choices rather
than old automatic responses. Consider all the thousands of men and
women who have stayed sober for years by going to AA meetings, and
following their 12-step therapy. Has AA been a success for them? I'd
say, and they'd say, it has. But that doesn't mean that they don't have
occasional fantasies about downing a nice, cold bottle of beer. After
the kind of education they get in AA, they realize how they've been
caught up in a kind of compulsion, a sickness called alcoholism. But,
even with that realization, many of them have to keep on going to AA
meetings, so they can live the sober life, as they say, "one day at a
time." Studies of alcoholics who committed themselves to Hazelden,
the famed treatment facility in Minnesota, one of the best in the
world, show a success rate of about 35 percent.
So you can compare homosexuality to alcoholism?

They're comparable, in that they're compulsions. But they're not the
same. Most people in AA aren't too happy with themselves if they're
still taking an occasional drink —mainly because, for an alcoholic, one
beer leads to the consumption of an entire case, or a brewery. But,

some homosexuals that have had in treatment consider their
I
therapy a success if they're now able to control their up-to-now

uncontrollable impulses toward same-sex sex. I, too, consider that a
modified form of success. And in the age of AIDS, that can make a
difference. I had one patient tell me the other day, "Doctor, if I
weren't in therapy, I'd be dead." If you add these patients to my
success rate of complete cures, I am batting about .666, with about
1,000 "at-bats." That is, with a total of 1,000 patients.
And what about the other third?

They discontinue treatment for a variety of reasons: 1) some move
out of the area, 2) some succumb to external pressures from their gay
friends, or from gay activist propaganda, 3) some find that, in
therapy, their anxieties lessen and then they go off thinking they have
everything under control (only to find that they don't), and, finally, 4)
some fear facing the underlying demons which causes their

homosexuality to begin with.
Demons?
One demon would be fear of incest with mother or murderous rage
against father. It requires courage to face down this demon and forge
on to ultimate victory.
Have any other psychiatrists or psychoanalysts been successful?

Yes. But you have one of the most difficult problems
to realize this is
in the history of psychiatry. briefly saw very few homosexuals

Freud
and he did not have notable success with them. Nor did many of his
followers. The early outlook among members of my profession was
pessimistic. But then, starting in the 1940s, Edmund Bergler, a New
York psychoanalyst, began helping some of his homosexual patients.
He published reports on his successful therapies in 1944 and 1959
(and, for that, he was the object of an open hate campaign against
him by organized homosexual activists of the time). Despite the
attacks, a number of other courageous psychoanalysts followed in
Bergler's path: Gustav Bychowski published results of his work in
1944, 1954 and 1956, Sandor Lorand in 1956, Albert Ellis in '56 and
'59,Harry Gershman in 1967, Samuel Hadden in 1958 and 1966,
Lionel Ovesey in 1969, Toby Bieber in 1971— they all demonstrated
the success of various therapies.
Treatment 151
In 1960, the Portman Forensic London under the guidance

Clinic in
of the prominent psychoanalyst Edward Glover reported in the
treatment of a large number of cases that, "Psychotherapy appears to
be unsuccessful in only a small number of patients of any age in
whom a long habit is combined with psychopathic traits, heavy
damage and a lack of desire to change."
One of the most-well-documented set of results was published in

1962, by a research team led by Dr. Irving Bieber of New York. That
work, under the title, Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male
Homosexuals (New York: Basic Books) presented the findings of a
nine-year study of male homosexuals. There were nine practicing
psychoanalysts and two psycho-analytically-trained psychologists on
the team, and they, in turn surveyed 77 respondents (all
psychoanalysts) on a 500-item questionnaire concerning a research
—
sample of their patients 106 male homosexuals, and a comparison
group of 100 heterosexual males. All 206 of these patients were in
treatment with members of the Society of Medical Psychoanalysts —
all of whom were either members of the faculty or graduates of the
Psychoanalytic Division of the Department of Psychiatry of New York
Medical College.
What were the findings in the Bieber report?

Of the 106 homosexuals who started psychoanalytic therapy, 29 were
exclusively heterosexual at the time the volume was published. This
represented 27 percent of the total sample. Fourteen of these 29 had
been exclusively homosexual when they began treatment; 15 were
bisexual. In 1965, in a follow up study of the 29, 1 was able to reclaim
the data on 15 of the 29. Of these 15, twelve had remained exclusively
heterosexual; the other three were predominantly heterosexual, but
had occasional episodes of homosexuality when they came under
severe stress.
That report was published more than 30 years ago. Anything more
recent?
In 1969, the psychologist R.B Evans did some work that confirmed
Bieber's findings about the origins of homosexuality. So did J.R.
Snortum and four other associates, in the same year. W.G. Stephan
did some confirming research on the link between parental
relationships and the early sexual experiences of homosexual males
that was published in 1973. Also in 1973, N.L. Thompson Jr and three
other clinical psychologists presented the results of studies they had
done on parent-child relationship and the sexual identities of male
and female homosexuals that also confirmed some of Bieber's
conclusions on the causes of homosexuality identity. After 1973, it
became less fashionable (or more dangerous) to do that kind of
research, much less research on the treatment of homosexuals. So we
didn't see any more until 1993 when —
Wait a minute. Why did it become "less fashionable" and/or "more
dangerous" to do this kind of research?
Because the American Psychiatric Association cured homosexuality
by fiat on December 15, 1973. Til tell you all about that a little later.
It's a intriguing story —
one that is more about politics than
psychiatry.
Okay. What happened in 1993.

Houston Macintosh, a from Washington,
certified psychoanalyst
D.,C. has a report in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic
Association, concerning a survey he had done of 285 psychoanalysts
who had had 1,215 homosexual patients under their care. He was
prompted to do the survey when a member of the Gay Caucus of the
American Psychiatric Association maintained that traditional
psychoanalysts could not help a homosexual, and should not even try
because "homosexuality is biological in nature and not subject to
change." Macintosh set out to find out what his colleagues in
Washington thought of this. He also sent out questionnaires to a
semi-random national sample.
And what kind of response did he get?

Some 67 percent responded. Ninety eight percent of them disagreed
with the statement by the member of the Gay Caucus that
homosexuals could not change their orientation. Sixty two percent of
them said they believed that homosexual patients "sometimes
change to heterosexuality" in analysis. These doctors reported that 84
percent of their patients "achieved significant therapeutic benefit"
from whether or not they had changed
their treatment, regardless of
However, 23 percent of their patients did
their sexual orientation.
change. Dr. Macintosh's survey is important. It explodes the gay
militants' assertion that homosexuality can't be changed. Dr.
Treatment 153
Macintosh also found, incidentally, that his therapist- respondents as

a group tended to be tolerant toward homosexual patients who
conducted their affairs in private with mutually consenting adults.
And that a majority of them agreed with my guidelines in working
with homosexual patients, published in my book The Preoedipal
Origin and Psychoanalytic Therapy of Sexual Perversions.
What were those guidelines?

1) meaning of a person's homosexual behavior must
Interpreting the
be done with tact and without damaging the patient's pride.
wrong for a doctor to say that homosexuality is biological in

2) It is
origin or caused by genetic factors. (That would preclude any
possibility of change.)
3) Modification of sexually deviant practices should be first suggested

by the patient, and then proceed only when the patient and the
analyst understand the underlying structure of the symptom.
So, how would you sum up the attitude of the psychiatric and the
psychoanalytic community today toward homosexuality?
We've been under assault by a small coterie of gay doctors inside the
profession, but we're trying to stand firm in our convictions that we
—
can help homosexuals who want to be helped despite loud and
sometimes very obnoxious insistence on the part of gay activists that
they don't need help.
What do you mean, "obnoxious?"

For some years now, gays have been disrupting our meetings,
shouting down people trying to deliver their scientific papers,
threatening individual doctors like myself. Gay activists threatened to
file a lawsuit against us for discrimination.
What happened?
For years, we psychoanalysts didn't knowingly allow homosexual
doctors into our training institutes unless they went through analysis
for their homosexuality. In 1991, under a great deal of political
pressure, we passed a resolution at a meeting of the American
Psychoanalytic Association that allowed them entry. Then they
demanded more; they wanted to become training analysts without
first undergoing analysis of and treatment for their condition, and,
when we refused, they actually succeeded in getting the ACLU to

send a letter to the president of our association, threatening a lawsuit.
The cost of fighting such a suit would have run into seven figures.
Because of the cost, we capitulated — to sexual politics and legal
coercion. We sacrificed our scientific integrity, and let them in,
without insisting that their homosexuality be subjected to the same
rigorous analysis that other candidates get for their heterosexuality.
How was that a sacrifice ofyour integrity?

We have certain professional standards that come out of our
tradition, dating back way to Freud. And now we were letting
all the
outsiders in who wanted undermine that tradition on grounds
to —
that were not scientific but political. The only thing we could do,
then, was let them in, but tell them at the same time that we expected
them to behave themselves.
Behave themselves?
Not play gay politics. our research, disrupt our
Stop trying to stifle
meetings, or try to derail our efforts to understand more about the

—
origins and treatment of homosexuality which a majority of us still
believe is a developmental disorder.
Do you think they will behave themselves?

I doubt it. The gay activists have a ferocious irrationality. They turn
every scientific agreement into a political issue —which is all they can
really do, since the only science they have going for them is pseudo-
science.
u
You don't believe that treating homosexuals is one of the most
flagrant abuses ofpsychiatry in America?"
Absolutely not.And we will go on treating homosexuals despite the
very successful campaign that gay activists have mounted to
normalize what was always considered deviant behavior. It's more
than a campaign, really. It's more like a movement. There are now
hundreds of gay organizations in this country, all of them promoting
a spurious homosexual freedom. As a result, to them, and to an
increasing number of straight Americans, homosexuality has become
"just another lifestyle."
Welly an official body of your own profession, the American

Psychiatric Association, declared in 1973 that homosexuality was not
Treatment 155
a disorder.
was a turning point. But it was a fraud. It never should have
Yes, that
happened. Our scientific integrity had been eroded in the pursuit of a
false freedom.
CHAPTER SIX:
PSYCHIATRY
"The psychiatrists were subjected to as shrewd a job of

hidden lobbying as you'd ever see in Washington."
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association took homosexuality off

its list of disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual II.
A lot of unfortunate things have happened as a result of that action.

But it was a huge mistake. Many members of the American
Psychiatric Association were led to believe that this move would
protect homosexuals from a lot of abuse they were taking from—
society in general, from the criminal justice system in particular.
Instead, I fear that the APA was acting like parents who raise their kids
without any rules at all and then find that the kids are all confused
and think their parents don't love them any more. If they loved them,
they wouldn't let them run wild as they do. So the kids go out and act
out, get in all kinds of trouble, just so their parents will notice them.
In some ways, the gay community in this country are like a bunch of
confused kids. They knew they had these mysterious sexual
compulsions. They knew they weren't happy. And then the nation's
psychiatrists said, in effect, "Hey, you're okay. Go out and have fun."
So they did.
Yes.
And then what happened?

Some gays and their families who might have looked for
psychoanalytic help just never considered an option. Now they
it
could grow a new delusion, courtesy of the American Psychiatric

Association. But that was only the beginning. The APA decision led to
a number of decisions by policy makers all over the country. They
decriminalized sodomy in half the country. That led to the rise of the
gay bath house culture. And that fueled the century's most horrific
plague, the plague of AIDS.
How could you let the APA do that?

Iand a group of my colleagues tried to stop them. We lost the battle.
Don't you think the members of the APA meant well?

They meant well. But they were tricked into this by clever political
moves on the part of a coterie of homosexuals, some of them inside
the profession itself. I can prove how they connived to get what they
wanted. They, of course, had their own private agenda.
Which was?
To justify and legitimize their own lifestyle.
Tellme how the fight began.

The year was 1964. The New York Academy of Medicine had just
issued a report on homosexuality, declaring it an illness, but
something that should be dealt with as we now deal with alcoholism
—
and drug addiction not blaming the victims, but trying to help them
get over their illness. Young then, and full of confidence in this
medical model, I wrote to Dr. Stanley F. Yolles, then Director of the
National Institutes of Health, suggesting his agency think about
starting up a national program for the prevention and treatment of
homosexuality and other sexual disorders. I said modern medicine
could dispel the mystery that surrounds homosexuality and that
psychoanalytically informed psychiatry could bring some fresh
approaches to therapy. Dr. Yolles encouraged me to come down to
Washington and talk to members of his staff. At a meeting on
February 3, 1965, they turned my idea down. Flat.
But you didn't give up.

Psychiatry 159
No. continued seeing my homosexual patients, learning more,

I
writing and publishing my findings. And in 1967, I gave a paper on

homosexuality to the Adult Psychiatry Branch of the National
Institute of Mental Health. Shortly after my presentation, maybe
because of it, the NIMH appointed a Task Force on homosexuality,
and in October 1969, this group submitted its final report, which
acknowledged at least in part the validity of my earlier proposal by
recommending that NIMH establish a center for the study of sexual
behavior.
That was a minor victory?

Not really. The NIMH Task Force wanted to mollify taboo and myths
about homosexuality, provide a rational basis for intervention, and
give policy makers data they could use in their efforts to frame social
policy. I wanted these things, too. But the Task Force never
concluded that homosexuality was a pathological condition of any
kind.
How could it do that? Weren't you a part of the NIMH Task Force?
No. In fact, the Task Force included only three psychiatrists. I wasn't
on the list. Neither were any of the psychiatrists and psychoanalysts
who had been doing work in the field for years, people like Irving
Bieber, Samuel Hadden, Gustav Bychowski, Sandor Rado, Sandor
Lorand and others.
So who was on the Task Force?

Itwas loaded with people who had already decided that
homosexuality was no better, no worse than heterosexuality. It
included Judd Marmor, a psychiatrist from UCLA, Evelyn Hooker, a
psychologist from UCLA, Paul Gebhard, a long-time colleague of
Alfred Kinsey at Bloomington,and John Money, an early proponent
of transsexual surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
Gebhard told me they wouldn't have me on the Task Force or any of —
the others who had been treating homosexuality —
because of our
"Freudian approach." In other words, because we thought
homosexuality was a developmental disorder that brought people a
good deal of psychic pain.
Did Irving Bieber call it a disorder?

In men, he called it a form of maladaptive behavior that was put on to
avoid the perceived injurious consequences of having sex with

women. Dr. Bieber thought that homosexuals fear having sex with
women because of some happened to them when
terrible things that
they were very young. They're harboring a of fear and a lot of rage.
lot
This fear and rage takes lip a lot of psychic energy. And it drives them
—
into behaviors that lessens them physically and psychologically. If
this isn't a disorder, what is it?
What I am suggesting is maybe you guys shouldn't have leaned

that
so heavily on the medical model Nobody wants to be called sick.
In retrospect, wish we had used a great deal more finesse in our

I
definitions of homosexuality. For my part, I have rarely used the

words "disease," or "sick." I just knew my patients needed help to get
to the bottom of their fear and their rage. And so, I went right on
—
speaking and writing about my own clinical work only to find that
there was a growingly militant political movement building against
me and my like-minded colleagues.
A political movement?
Yes. In 1970, gay activists made the first systematic effort to disrupt
the annual meetings of the APA by flocking in to our sessions in San
Francisco. In a panel on transsexualism and homosexuality, they
denounced my colleague, Irving Bieber, and showered his
presentation with derisive laughter. One protester called him "a
motherfucker." Bieber took this very hard. He'd been working all
these years to help these people and
And now they were putting him under attack?

He got off easy. They actually broke up another meeting. One
protester tried to read a list Most of the psychiatrists
of gay demands.
left the room. Those of us who stayed heard our profession
denounced as an instrument of oppression and torture.
Then what happened?

Gays demanded a spot on the official program of our next annual
meeting, in May 1971, in Washington, D.C. Otherwise, they
threatened to break up the whole convention with their own terrorist
tactics. Our 1971 program chairman, John Ewing, quickly agreed.
That told gay activists they could get what they wanted from "the
shrinks" by using calculated violence and threats. Sure enough, when
Psychiatry 161
the 1971 convention rolled around, gays stormed the podium during
a solemn Convocation of Fellows. Frank Kameny, who was always a
key strategist in this whole thing, grabbed a microphone and issued a
manifesto. "Psychiatry is the enemy incarnate. Psychiatry has waged
a relentless war of extermination against us. You may take this as a
declaration of war against you." He demanded that gays be allowed to
put on their own presentation.
And theAPA let them do so?

Yes. We wanted to hear them out. And they gave us a pretty good
preview of a line they would follow for the next 20 years. Kameny
said, "We're rejecting you all as our owners. We possess ourselves and
we speak for ourselves and we will take care of our own destinies."
Larry Littlejohn, representing the Society for Individual Rights in San
Francisco, said, "I think the homosexual lifestyle for those people
who want to live it, is beautiful and I think it should be appreciated...
for many people, hundreds of thousands of people [it] is a valid,
healthy... lifestyle."
Did anyone argue with that?

No. We were all too intimidated. Some psychiatrists capitulated right
on the spot. They pleaded with the gay panelists. "Don't think," they
said, "that we're all followers of Bieber and Socarides."
They sound like wimps.

Many of them didn't know what they were doing. They didn't treat
homosexuals. And so, they couldn't describe, much less understand,
what was at stake. As a class, psychoanalysts who are also MDs like to
stay out of the limelight. They'd rather not get involved in politics of
—
any kind not really understanding that other elements in society
cannot make decisions for society without some input from our
profession.
Who needs help from the psychoanalytic community?

Men and women in law, education, religion and the media. But I am
sorry to say that we're just not giving them much help these days.
Why not?
Because of this story that I am trying to tell. We let ourselves be
intimidated by the gay activists.
We were talking about the APA giving the gay activists their own
panel at the 1971 APA convention.
Yes. When the gay panelists challenged the APA delegates to "break
the monopoly" enjoyed by those who said homosexuality was a
disorder, a small minority inside the APA began laying plans to see
how they could re-classify homosexuality —that is, take it off the
APA's list of disorders.
This was in 1971?

Yes. But the time was not yet ripe. It would get riper after our next
annual meeting in Dallas in 1972, when spokesmen Frank
like
Kameny started taking a new, more reasoned tack. Kameny handed
out a flier asking that the profession engage in discussions with the
gay community
— "of our problem with us," as he put it. He added:
"Psychiatry... has been the major single obstacle in our society to the
advancement of homosexuals and to the achievement of our full
rights, our full happiness and our basic human dignity. Psychiatry can
become our major ally." The flier called upon the profession to
renounce "the sickness theory" and join with gays in their attempts to
reform public opinion, support legal reform and equal opportunity
legislation. Kameny's flier proclaimed the movement's slogans: Gay,
Proud and Healthy and Gay Is Good. The flier ended with the
declaration that "with you or without you" we will work toward their
acceptance and "fight those who oppose us."
How did that go over?

Many of us could go along with some of Kameny's goals. We deplored
society's unreasoned fear of homosexuals, and we certainly didn't
want to deny them equal opportunity. But we didn't see how we
could renounce our own research and our own long experience with
homosexuals whose imperative needs made for a lifestyle that was
anything but healthy. But something else emerged in that Dallas
—
meeting the revelation that there were gays inside our own
profession. Barbara Gittings, a long-time lesbian activist and chair of
the Task Force on Gay Liberation of the American Library
Association, gave a presentation that told us about gay psychiatrists
who lived anguished lives, terrified at the prospect of professional
ruin if anyone exposed them. She was followed by a Dr. Anonymous
who wore a hood, a move calculated to win sympathy, because it
dramatized his fears of persecution. He announced, "I am
Psychiatry 163
homosexual. I am a psychiatrist." He called upon his fellow gays who

were present to join the struggle for change. He called upon the rest
of us to accept them.
Could you do that?

Up to a point. We could accept them if they were struggling to change
themselves. But became increasingly clear that this minority inside
it
the profession was asking for things that would hurt homosexuals in
the long run, and subvert society in the process. Excuse me. They
weren't asking. They were demanding. Their road to acceptance was
a road of intimidation and attack. We weren't ready for that. No one
stood up to gainsay any of those calling for acceptance at any cost.
We were doctors, not politicians. And these people were not talking
about the power of reason. They were talking about the power of
power. Dr. Judd Marmor, a psychiatrist from UCLA, launched a
vitriolic attack on me for an article that I had just published in JAMA,
The Journal of the American Medical Association. He called it "an
unfortunate potpourri of prejudice and misinformation [which]
stems ... from obvious personal prejudices."
And of course you responded?

I did. But not at Dallas. When I got home, I proposed to the New York
County District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association that
the Branch should establish its own local task force to educate our
profession and the public on the nature, meaning and content of
homosexuality. It was done with the enthusiastic support of our then
president, Dr. Bernard Diamond, who, unfortunately, died in 1971.
Our group plunged into two years of deliberations. It was an
impressive bunch, a dozen experts affiliated with the major medical
—
centers of New York City the first all-psychiatric group ever to study
homosexuality. We had 16 plenary meetings. In late 1972, we
submitted our report. It called for civil rights for homosexuals. But it
also said they were suffering from a disorder of psychosexual
development.
The District Branch liked your report?

No. The Executive Committee (headed by gays) wouldn't allow us to
read the report at a meeting of the District Branch. And it dissolved
our Task Force.
On what grounds?
Simple politics. At the national level, a group of politically active
psychiatrists — some of them gay — was forming. They called
themselves the Committee for a Concerned Psychiatry (CFCP). Over
the next few years, their lobbying and their electioneering led to a
seizure of the presidency and the chairs of the APA. They gave strong
support to Alfred Freedman for his election as president of the APA,
and it made a difference: in an election where more than 10,000
really
Freedman won by two votes. Then the CFCP helped to set
voted, Dr.
up John Spiegel and Judd Marmor in the chairs, ready to move up
—which, with the support of the CFPC, they did.
into the presidency
Then each of them—Freedman, Spiegel and Marmor—later delivered
what the CFCP wanted; they each played important roles in the move
to delete homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
But there was something in the air anyway, wasn't there? Gays were
beginning to have more of an influence in America.
Yes. The Executive Committee of the APA put their wet fingers to the
breeze and they felt the blowing of a new wind. It wasn't much of a
wind, and, considering it was blowing in from the San Francisco Bay
Area, the Executive Committee might have used a little more
discrimination. But they didn't.
What was blowing in from San Francisco?

Two straws. In 1971, the San Francisco chapter of the National
Association for Mental Health adopted, under the prodding of two
lesbian activists, a resolution declaring that "homosexuality can no
longer be equated only with sickness, but may properly be considered
as a preference, orientation, or propensity for certain kinds of
lifestyles." In 1972,under pressure from the same quarters, the
Golden Gate Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers
adopted a similarly worded resolution. The point is that the
leadership of the APA (who are, naturally, more politically inclined
than the general membership) thought they saw the beginning of a
trend. They could also tell the membership that there was trouble
ahead if they didn't go along with that trend. It seemed to me that
they were advocating the easy way out. Since many of them were not
directly involved in the treatment of sexual pathologies themselves,
they found it expedient to retreat behind their ignorance —and leave
those of us who were involved high and dry.
Psychiatry 165

The next thing we heard was that in mid- 1973, the president of the
American Psychiatric Association, John Spiegel, and the vice
president, Judd Marmor, had brought the Nomenclature Committee
of the APA to a meeting at Columbia University with representatives
of the Gay Activist Alliance, the Mattachine Society, and the
Daughters of Bilitis to discuss the deletion of homosexuality from the
APA's Diagnostic and Statistic Manual. I discovered later that the
chairman of the Nomenclature Committee, Dr. Henry Brill, had been
shunted aside on this matter, and a new subgroup was formed, the
Nomenclature Task Force on Homosexuality, to be headed by Dr.
Robert Spitzer, a psychiatrist from Columbia University's College of
Physicians and Surgeons.
Anybody call you in?

Hardly. heard nothing until November of 1973, when a reporter
I
from Newsweek asked if I were invited to attend the upcoming
celebration/ cocktail party scheduled for December 15 or 16 at the

APA headquarters in Washington, D.C., and whether I would care to
comment on it.
A party to celebrate what?

He said, "the greatest of gay victories —the purging of homosexuality
from the realm of psychiatry."
The purging was done that quickly and that quietly?

Yes.And here is how they did it. I am indebted to Ronald Bayer of
Columbia University for some of the story that follows. When Bayer
was a fellow of the Hastings Institute in New York, he did an entire
book on this APA affair, called Homosexuality and American
Psychiatry.
Was that a fair account?

It was an objective report that didn't take sides. That's why I like to
quote Bayer's conclusions. He wrote a story of how the American
Psychiatric Association "had fallen victim to the disorder of a
tumultuous era, when disruptive elements threatened to politicize
every aspect of American social life. A furious egalitarianism...
compelled psychiatric experts to negotiate the pathological status of
homosexuality with homosexuals themselves. The result was not a
conclusion based on an approximation of the scientific truth as

dictated by reason, but was instead an action demanded by the
ideological temper of the times."
And Spitzer was a major character in that story?

Yes. Decidedly. The meet in Bayer's book is someone who
Spitzer you
crosses far over the line, from science to open advocacy of a political
position. Bayer tells us that Spitzer had never even published a paper
on homosexuality. But now he presumed to write a position paper for
the Nomenclature Committee about the meaning and content of
homosexuality.
J don't get it. If Spitzer was so new to this ballgame, what made him
so confident he could play in the big leagues?
He brought in some ringers to go to bat for him with testimony to the

Committee —Wardell Pomeroy and Alan two sluggers from the
Bell,
Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University. That was the Kinsey
Institute, which had long been in sympathy with the view that
homosexuality was "normal."
These were Dr. Alfred Kinsey 's people?

Yes. They weren't even psychiatrists. They knew nothing about the
origin and dynamics of homosexuality. They were sociologists, and,
as bean counters, all they could say was that "a certain number of
folks just like to mate with members of their own sex." Spitzer also
brought in Charles Silverstein, a gay psychologist. (He would later
collaborate on a book called The Joy of Gay Sex.) On February 8, 1973,
Spitzer had Silverstein up before the Nomenclature Committee to
present an array of citations which were meant to prove that the
classification of homosexuality was "inconsistent with a scientific
perspective." He incorrectly leaned on an interpretation of early work
on animal sexual behavior, especially in primates, by two Yale
anthropologists, Cleland Ford and Frank Beach.
This 1950-51 research by Ford and Beach ended up proving that

therewas an inherent biological tendency in all animals toward "an
inversion of sexual behavior?" And that, therefore, same-sex sex is
"natural?"
They didn't prove that. Not really. Ford and Beach reported animals
engaged in same-sex mounting behavior. Other anthropologists
Psychiatry 167
challenged the conclusion that this activity was really sexual. They
thought it may have had more to do with aggression and submission.
Who really knows?

To really know about motivation, you'd have to put a monkey on the
couch and ask him what he was doing. We can't do that yet. But I —
think it's enough to quote Frank Beach in 1971, twenty years after his
original research. He told the author, Arnold Karlen, "I don't know
any authenticated instances of males or females in the animal world
preferring a homosexual partner, if by homosexuality you mean
complete sexual relationships including climax.... It's questionable
that mounting in itself can be properly called sexual."
So what about sex in the animal kingdom?

The media speak with a certain amusement about "gender-bending"
activity among humans. But scientists are not amused by gender-
bending in the animal world. "In the gender-bending waters of Lake
Apopka, alligators aren't quite male. They aren't quite female either.
They may be both. Or neither."
You're readingfrom a news report?
Yes, from a long piece headlined "Sexual Confusion in the Wild" that
ran in The Los Angeles Times on October 2, 1994. The story quotes a
good number of scientists who are alarmed.
By what?
According to The Times' environment writer, Maria Cone, "Elsewhere
around the world, the same astonishing phenomenon is turning up in
a menagerie of fish, birds and other wild animals. Testosterone levels
have plummeted in some males, while females are supercharged with
estrogen. Both sexes are sometimes born with a penis and ovaries,
and some males wind up so gender warped they try to produce eggs.
'Everything is really fouled up. It is indeed real, and it is scary,' said
Tim Gross, a University of Florida wildlife endocrinologist on the
team that discovered the feminized alligators. We didn't want to
believe it, in all honesty."
What didn 't he want to believe?

His point was that this phenomenon is no quirk of evolution. It is
probably a legacy of pollution.

And what's your point?
My point is that, when it comes to the animal kingdom, we have
absolutely no difficulty making value judgements about what's
"natural" or "unnatural." We're genuinely alarmed by "gender
bending" among alligators and turtles in a Florida swamp, because it
portends extinction for these species and for other species wherever
certain pesticides have infiltrated waterways "across the continent
and across the globe." But arbiters of human culture approve of
"gender bending" on the campus at Columbia University men —
having sex with other men, women having sex with other women,
because it's "just an alternate lifestyle."
Tell me more about Silverstein's presentation.

He cited the research of Evelyn Hooker, a well-known psychologist,
who was supposed to have proved in one celebrated but
methodologically flawed study that the homosexuals in her cohort
were as "psychologically adjusted" as the heterosexuals in fact, —
superior to heterosexuals. (Her study showed nothing, one way or the
other about the "adjustment" of the homosexuals in it; it was not
adequately designed to do that.) He also noted that three
contemporary psychiatrists, Judd Marmor, Richard Green and Martin
Hoffman, had expressed "serious doubts about the validity of
classifying homosexuality as a disease" —thus exposing "the scientific
errors" of the psychoanalytic establishment. He also made an
emotional pitch to the Committee to consider the psychological
havoc that resulted from labeling homosexuality as a pathology. He
said:
We are told, from the time that we first recognize our

homosexual feelings, that our love for other human beings is
sick, childish and subject to "cure." The result of this in many
cases is to contribute to a self-image that often lowers the
sights we set for ourselves in life, and many of us asked
ourselves, "How could anybody love me?" or "How can I love
somebody who must be just as sick as I am?"
Eloquent.
Yes, but also beside the point. This image is part of the
bad self
problem that psychoanalysts like myself have been trying to get to the
bottom of. You don't deal with someone who has that problem by
simply telling him he's okay when he isn't. But Silverstein's
Psychiatry 169
sometimes passionate presentation, all papered over with pseudo-

science, gave Spitzer some material that he could pass on as
"scientific" in his position paper for the APA.
Did Spitzer ever call you or any ofyour psychoanalytic colleagues for
your input?
Never. Later, at a psychiatric meeting at the Carnegie Foundation in
1974, he said he already knew what we'd say.
Did Spitzer get any kind of approval from the Nomenclature

Committee?
We thought he must have done so. Later, we found out that Dr. Brill
was very uncomfortable with Spitzer's "aggressive assumption of

leadership on this issue." Ronald Bayer reported that Spitzer by-
passed the Nomenclature Committee and turned his proposal in
directly to the APA's Council on Research and Development. That
group was comprised of five senior psychiatrists who were
responsible for providing the APA with advice on matters of policy
and with information on current matters of research. Bayer wrote
that by-passing the full Nomenclature Committee represented
"Spitzer's own effort to resolve what many APA leaders considered 'a
hot potato.'"
Did the Council on Research know this?

RussellMonroe, chair of the Council on Research, knew that the
Nomenclature Committee had been "completely divided" on this
issue. Dr. Brill suggested to Dr. Monroe that they survey a stratified
sample of the APA membership before they went any further. Monroe
said it was a ridiculous suggestion. The very idea! He told Brill, "You
don't devise a nomenclature through a vote."
So how do you do it?
Not the way Monroe and his Council on Research did it. They never
studied the matter. They simply decided the question on procedural
grounds. His Council wouldn't "override Spitzer's task force." As
Bayer put it, that "would have represented a violation of the principal
of scientific authority."
But what scientific authority did Spitzer have?

Actually none. I repeat: the proposal that he brought before the
Council on Research was not the considered conclusion of the full
Nomenclature Committee, but rather the work of Spitzer himself.

"More importantly," as Bayer also pointed out, "the task force had
not been appointed on the basis of expertise on the question of
homosexuality; indeed none of its members including Spitzer
considered himself expert on the question."
That didn't stop the momentum?

A number of psychiatric groups tried to slow things down. They, in
turn, were opposed by other psychiatrists (who happened to be gay)
insisting the matter come to a head. Spitzer's proposal moved
forward, through two more bodies of the APA, the Assembly of
District Branches and the Reference Committee. In fact, none of
these committees ever called for a scientific, critical discussion
between those who had been treating homosexuals and those who
just thought that curing homosexuality by fiat would be the easiest
way to help homosexuals gain equal rights under the law. But the
committees went ahead and virtually rubber-stamped Spitzer.
"Virtually rubber-stamped?" What change was made?

Spitzer had recommended that homosexuality be classified as "a
sexual orientation disturbance" —but only for those who were upset
with the knowledge that they had a preference for same-sex sex. You
were only neurotic if you complained. Someone on the Reference
Committee, I was later told, wanted to include heterosexuality under
the same rubric.
Heterosexuality?
Yes, for those who were suffered with the knowledge that they were
interested in other-sex sex. "Suffered"was the key word. And this
disturbance would be applied to homosexual and heterosexual alike.
They wanted to make heterosexuality a disorder, too?

I was an attempt at humor. I'm sure they finally realized that
think it
this little private jokewould also make the APA a laughingstock

around the world. So they dropped the idea.
So what was the final proposal, the one that made its way to the
Board of Trustees in early December 1973?
That the APA should take homosexuality off the list of disorders.
Psychiatry 171
Homosexuality itself was not a psychiatric condition —unless some

homosexual felt that his condition represented a subjective
"disturbance" to himself and/or it led to "some generalized
impairment in social effectiveness or functioning."
In fact, do you ever see homosexual patients who don't fit these
criteria?
What do you mean?
J mean, since your patients only come to you if they're disturbed

and/or if they find themselves unable to function in some way or
other, you could have bought into Spitzer's definition and saved
yourselfa lot ofgrief What difference did it make to you ?
To me, personally? Very little difference. But I could foresee nothing
but grief for a good many others if society started accepting
homosexuality as "just another legitimate lifestyle."
Did you say that then, or is this just a bit of20/20 hindsight?
I said it then, before the Board of Trustees. In response to my protest
that the APA was railroading this thing through without sufficient
input from those in the profession who knew most about
homosexuality, the Board of Trustees of the APA allowed three of us
to come before the Board and state our case. They only did this after
we demanded to know how, as guardians of our scientific heritage,
they could do what they were obviously intending to do without
hearing any testimony on the other side. So they gave us each five
minutes, on December 15, 1973, before a bare quorum of the Board.
Who appeared?
Irving Bieber, professor of psychiatry at the New York Medical
College, Robert J. McDevitt, professor of psychiatry at the University
of Cincinnati, and I. Armand Nicholi of Harvard said he couldn't
come, because his aunt was ill.
Summarize what the three ofyou told the Board.

First of all, we all asked for an anti-discrimination statement
expressing our conviction that the nation repeal all persecutory laws
against homosexuals. But we also insisted that there was no scientific
evidence to justify removing the diagnosis of homosexuality as a
psychiatric condition. Bieber stressed the dire consequences of a
172 .4 Freedom Too Far
diagnostic shift for what he called "the pre-homosexual child." He

predicted that the contemplated shift could only bring about an
increase in homosexual experimentation among young men. (And, as
recent history has shown, he was right.) McDevitt argued that clinical
evidence made it was indeed a pathology,
clear that homosexuality
and that altering the nomenclature could only be explained "on
political and philosophical grounds." Far from helping homosexuals,
he said, this act would "create more despair than hope" for them. I
tried to say what social consequences would follow this change. It
would amount to a legitimation of same-sex sex, would lead to a
general breakdown in society, and widespread confusion in our legal
and educational systems. It wouldn't do much for psychiatry either.
But the Board had already made up their minds?

Oh Within minutes, the Board voted unanimously in favor of
yes.
deletion, with two abstentions. Dr. lohn Nardini of Washington, D.C,
w ho w as then a member of the board, told us later how sorry he was
T r
that this pretense had been inflicted on us. He said, "The board was
set up from the beginning to vote against you, no matter what you
had to say. Your testimony was simply pro forma."
So the Board voted yes to Spitzer's formulation without giving their

rationale?
Officers of the APA gave a press conference/cocktail party on

December 16, with members of the National Gay Task Force at their
sides. Someone asked Spitzer, "Aren't you afraid the gays will now
take over the APA?" Spitzer said, with what I understand was a look of
self-satisfaction, "Look around you. They already have."
It didn 't bother him ?

To the was a victory for Spitzer. He was a hero. But, in
contrary. This
my opinion, his victory was a purely political one, and had nothing to
do with psychiatry. At the news conference, the board members
didn't present any scientific rationale for taking homosexuality off the
DSM-II. In fact, Alfred Freedman, the APA president, had said in a
press release that the APA's decision did not mean that
homosexuality was "normal" or "as desirable" as heterosexuality. But
the press paid little attention to this caveat from Freedman. In fact,
the press said exactly the opposite. The Washington Post banner read:
DOCTORS RULE HOMOSEXUALS NOT ABNORMAL. The New York
Psychiatry 173
Times story ran under this headline: PSYCHIATRISTS IN A SHIFT.

DECLARE HOMOSEXUALITY NO MENTAL ILLNESS. The story in The
Advocate, a gay weekly, said, SICK NO MORE.
So what did the officers of the APA talk about in their press
conference?
These were psychiatrists. They did not talk about psychiatry. They
talked about politics and the law. They went on record as opposing
the use of criminal sanctions against same-sex sex between
consenting adults, and deploring patterns of social discrimination
against gays and lesbians. The gays at the press conference were very
pleased with this tack. They made it was only a first
clear that this
stop in their fight "for equality." They would launch immediate
assaults on the nation's sodomy laws, immigration restrictions, and
child custody cases. And they would start a campaign to purge school
textbooks of any material that smacked of being "anti-gay."
Who were the gays at the press conference?

Howard Brown, chair of the National Gay Task Force, Bruce Voeller,
its executive director, Barbara Gittings, the long-time lesbian activist,
and Frank Kameny. Itwas Kameny who had long ago seen how
radical this decision would be and how much it would mean to "gay
liberation."
How did the Board explain its action to the membership?

The Board issued its release a few weeks later to the Psychiatric News.
It contained two items: 1) A background paper by Spitzer which, the
Board said, had provided it with its essential rationale. And 2)

conclusions to a book published in 1973 by Drs. Marcel T. Saghir and
Eli Robins, Male and Female Homosexuality.
Tell me more about these two items.

Spitzer'spaper simply repeated Kinsey's old assertions that exclusive
homosexuality was a normal part of the human condition at one end
of the Kinsey scale. It did not meet the requirements of a psychiatric
disorder since it "does not either regularly cause subjective distress or
[is] regularly associated with some generalized impairment in social
He
effectiveness or functioning." this, no citations
gave no proof of
from anyone, nothing from the psychoanalytic community. He
ignored my own entries in the American Handbook of Psychiatry,
1974. These items documented disturbances of the inner, psychic
structure of homosexuals, as well as disturbances in their choice of
partners. My work was deleted from the Handbook a year later,
because, by then, it did not conform to the existing political
orthodoxy of the American Psychiatric Association.
What contribution did Saghir and Robins make?

Saghir and Robins were psychiatrists, but their work looked more like
a sociological study. They presented their conclusions about "the

normality" of those who were into same-sex sex from a set of
interviews they had done with a group of 89 homosexual men and 57
homosexual women. The study was done, they said, "to promote
better understanding of homosexuality, one of the prime goals of the
movement." They also paid for interviews with a control group of 40
men and 44 women, "unmarried heterosexuals."
What did their report add up to?
Saghir and Robins told us what certain folks did, but nothing about
why they did it. From a psychiatric point of view, there was nothing
scientificabout it. Both Spitzer's paper and the Saghir and Robins'
study ignored hundreds of individual psychoanalytic papers and
reports on homosexuality that had been written over the years, not to
mention a number of other serious studies by groups of psychiatrists
and psychoanalysts and educators.
How did members of the psychiatric profession react to all this?

Bayer writes that many saw the move "as a craven capitulation to the
power of the mob." One psychiatrist wrote to the Psychiatric News: "I
think the Board of Trustees did not have the strength and guts to
resist superficial social pressure from homosexuals who, having a
collective Oedipal complex, wish to destroy the American Psychiatric
Association. It is a bad day for psychiatry." Another psychiatrist
foresaw more politics ahead for the APA: "It now seems that if groups
of people march and raise enough hell they can change anything in
time.... Will schizophrenia be next?" Abram Kardiner, a revered figure
in our profession who had won a Humanitarian Award from The New
York Times some years before for his pioneering, cross-disciplinary
work in psychiatry and anthropology, took the long view and he
didn't like what he was seeing. He also wrote to the editors of the
Psychiatric News:
"
Psychiatry 175
Those who reinforce the disintegrative elements in our

society will get no thanks from future generations. The family
becomes the ultimate victim of homosexuality, a result which
any society can tolerate only within certain limits. If the
American Psychiatric Association endorses one of the
symptoms of social distress as a normal phenomenon it
demonstrates to the public its ignorance of social dynamics,
of the relation of personal maladaptation to social
disharmony, and thereby acquires a responsibility for
aggravating the already existing chaos.
What did your own group do?

Fortunately, we were holding our mid-winter meeting of the
American Psychoanalytic Association in New York in January. We
were outraged. In two days, we got 243 signatures on a petition (43
more than the statutory 200 required by the APA by-laws). We
demanded a referendum on the position taken by the Board,
demanding that further scientific study be made before the APA take
such a crucial decision.
Did you thinkyou could win a referendum?

We were sure of our position on clinical grounds. We didn't think we
had to get political in order to bring most of the working psychiatrists
in the country along with us.
But the other side did get political, right?
Yes. It seemed that the officers of the APA decided to fight back any
way they could against our referendum. A special mailing went out on
February 28, signed by the three men who were then candidates for
president of the APA, Judd Marmor, Herbert Modlin, and Louis Jolyon
West, and by two vice presidents of the APA, Harold M. Vizotsky and
M. Mitchell Bateman. The letter asked for membership support of the
Board's action, not because the Board had taken the right decision,
but because it would be "a potentially embarrassing step for our
profession to vote down a decision which was taken after serious and
extended consideration by the bodies within our organization
designated to consider such matters."
But those bodies hadn't taken "serious and extended consideration.
Yes. That was one of the ways the leadership lied to the membership.
And so, on that basis, the profession closed ranks around its
leadership?
members voted out of a membership of

Yes, In April 1974, 10,091
17,029. Some 3810 voted with us. More than 400 others abstained.
Those voting with the APA leadership numbered 5854. We lost, 58
percent to 37.8 percent with 3 percent abstaining. Under the
circumstances, 38 percent wasn't bad. The APA rubber-stamp
committee had voted unanimously all along the line. Now the
membership at large demonstrated nothing close to that kind of
consensus.
How was this played in the press?

The press simply allowed the APA to put its own spin on the
referendum. CBS News, for example, had a report from Barry Serafin,
who asked APA's President Alfred Freedman on camera whether
homosexuals should now be considered normal. Dr. Freedman said,
"The action of the American Psychiatric Association doesn't state it as
normal. It merely states that it is not a mental illness... It's a
condition." Reporter Serafin asked him what other things might be
considered "a condition." Freedman answered the question with
another question: "Well, for example, is spinsterhood a mental
illness? Is vegetarianism?"
And that was the end of that?

Not quite. Then we found out about the fraud.
Whatfraud?
We soon discovered that the February 28th 1974 letter asking the
membership for support was not composed by those who signed it
by Marmor, Modlin and West, or by the two vice presidents, or even
by the staff of the APA. According to Ronald Bayer, the letter was
written by Robert Spitzer and Ronald Gold of the National Gay Task
Force. The Gay Task Force also purchased the necessary address
labels from the APA, and underwrote the full cost of the mailing.
Bayer reported that at least one of those who had signed the letter
said it was better if the membership did not know how the letter was
bought and paid for by the gay community. That would be "a kiss of
death."
In other words, ifAPA members had known, they would have voted it
Psychiatry 177
down on that basis alone?

What do you think it means: "A kiss of death?" Sure, I think the
membership would have recoiled if they had known the truth. I think
some were already upset when they read the verdict of the best
newspaper columnist in America on the original vote. "The patients
are taking over the asylum," wrote Mike Royko.
How did Royko react when he found out about the involvement of the
National Gay Task Force?
Here's some of what he told his readers in middle America on April
19, 1974:
...The voting was not on the up and up. What the

really held
psychiatrists don't realize were subjected to as
is that they
shrewd a job of hidden lobbying as you'd ever see in
Washington.
The gay movement's leadership knows about it, because they

were behind the lobbying....
Here is how it was done:
Before the APA voted on the homosexuality issue, a letter was

received by all 18,000 members. The letter was signed by five
prominent psychiatrists. Three are candidates for president
of the APA, two are vice presidents....
But did the prominent psychiatrists whose names appeared

on the letter actually write it?
They did not. The letter was composed by the National Gay
Task Force. The gays wrote the letter, paid for the mailing list
that was used in sending out the letter.
However, there was nothing in the letterhead, the return

address, or in any part of the letter, to show that the gays had
anything to do with it...
In other words, the letter was a piece of gay movement

propaganda.
Some psychiatrists, after learning of the gay movement's

hidden tactics, believe that the referendum results are now
meaningless, and that another vote should be taken.
I'd agree. The gays have been saying it is time for them to
come out of the closet.

Royko ended his piece by suggesting the gays "come out of the mail
room, too."
How did you know the Gay Task Force was involved?
It we saw a copy of another letter
wasn't too hard to figure out, after
written by Howard Brown and Bruce Voeller on the National Gay
Task Force letterhead, dated February 13. It was an appeal for funds
to everyone on the Force's mailing list, all the proof we needed that
the letter originated with the Task Force. Brown and Voeller said,
"The National Gay Task Force has obtained agreement from the three
candidates for the presidency of the APA to sign a statement opposing
the referendum, and our plan is to send this to the entire voting
membership of 17,910 The best parts of the letter
psychiatrists...."
were written "THE BEST GUESS IS THAT THE VOTE
in capital letters:
WILL BE CLOSE. WE ARE CONVINCED THAT THIS MAILING
COULD BE THE DECIDING FACTOR IN THE VOTE... FOR US TO DO
THIS MAILING, WE NEED $2,500."
Did they get the $2,500?
Obviously. They used some tricks to do so. They told potential
contributors that checks over $100 could be tax-deductible if they
made them out to St. Mary's Episcopal Church. That was an illegal
move, but I doubt the IRS ever looked into it.
How could those who signed the letterjustify what they'd done?
They were now doubly embarrassed when the truth emerged. But the
Board had to brazen it out. When we asked for an investigation and a
new vote, the APA did appoint an Ad Hoc Committee under the
chairmanship of Dr. Redlich, a psychiatric researcher from Yale, who
swept this whole sorry issue under the rug. His Committee said that,
since it was "opposed to the use of referenda," it would not
recommend another referendum or declare the first referendum
invalid. But that was an improper order.
Why improper?
Because the Ad Hoc Committee was not a legislative committee. Its
job was to investigate, not tell us we couldn't do something already
guaranteed by the APA's Constitution and By-Laws. We had a right to
call for a referendum, and the APA had a duty to conduct one if we
Psychiatry 179
had the requisite number of signatures.
Didn't Redlich even hear your side?

He heard us out, but didn't give us a chance to confront those who
had allowed themselves to be used by the Gay Task Force. He didn't
even ask for testimony from them. Or from Spitzer either. His Ad Hoc
Committee ended up refusing to concede anything—except
to say
that sending out the letter was "unwise." And in the future, the APA
shouldn't do anything like it again. Yes. One would think they would
want to tell their members that outsiders were intruding on our own
procedures.
Are you sure you lost the referendum?

What do you mean?
I mean, do you know who counted the ballots?

No. What are you suggesting?
Well, how do you know that the members of the Gay Task Force who
had been so helpful to the leadership weren't on hand to help them
again, when it came time to count the ballots?
We don't know. We never asked who counted the ballots, or got any
independent verification of any kind.
And you never thought of getting an independent organization to

audit the ballots?
No. But in light of what we know now, maybe we should have insisted
on it. At the time, it didn't seem like a very gentlemanly thing to do.
Maybe you should have insisted on another referendum?

By then, we didn't have the heart to insist on it. But, four years later,
another referendum was taken by a learned journal, Medical Aspects
of Human Sexuality. Its editors sent questionnaires to 10,000
members of the APA, and compiled the first 2,500 responses (a
normal practice at the time). Of those answering, 69 percent said they
believed "homosexuality is usually a pathological adaptation, as
opposed to a normal variation." Only 18 percent disagreed. And 13
percent were uncertain. A percent said homosexuals'
total of 70
problems have more to do with their own inner conflicts than with
stigmatization by society at large.
Did that survey get any press?

Time magazine did a short piece on this survey, issue of February 20,
1978, along with a satiric headline: "Sick Again?"
What did that mean ?

Time's editors were saying, in effect, "Can't these shrinks make up
their minds?" Thank the gay politicians in our profession for The
that.
Nomenclature flap was a public relations disaster, one from which
we've never recovered with the public-at-large. Fortunately, among
psychoanalysts and psychiatrists the world over, the APA decision has
been deemed irrelevant.
How so?
According to a September 1993 release in Psychiatric News, a survey
of psychiatrists in 125 nations conducted by the American Psychiatric
Association revealed that a majority of the psychiatrists in all of these
countries still consider homosexuality a pathological deviation.
But how about U.S. psychiatrists? Aren't most of them in

disagreement with your view? In fact, didn't the American
Psychiatric Association come out with another statement in 1994,
saying that the APA does not endorse any psychiatric treatment for
homosexuality?
At its May 1994 convention in Philadelphia, the APA tried to pass a
resolution curtailing any therapy seeking to change a person's sexual
orientation.
Where did the resolution come from?

From the APA's Board of Trustees. But that board was only passing on
the results of some intense lobbying by the APA's Gay and Lesbian
Caucus.
What did members of the Gay and Lesbian Caucus want?

They wanted to get the APA to stop professionals like myself from
treating homosexuals.
And the proposed resolution would have done that?

It might have made things a great deal more difficult for me, and for
the members of my organization, NARTH, the National Association
for the Research and Treatment of Homosexuality.
Psychiatry 181
How?
They wanted the APA to say that the APA "does not endorse any
psychiatric treatment which is based either upon a psychiatrist's
assumption that homosexuality is a mental disorder or a
psychiatrist's intent to change a person's sexual orientation."
What did that mean?

Likemost statements fashioned by a committee, this one didn't parse
very well. In working with patients who come to us, we assume
nothing. We encourage the patients who come to us to tell us about
themselves and about the conflicts that give them pain. And it is not
our "intent" that moves patients into therapy, but, rather, their own
wishes. But what that resolution meant was very clear: the Gay
Caucus wanted to get the APA to rule reparative therapy out of
order —in effect, to outlaw therapy.
Did the Gay Caucus succeed in this?

No. Sensing a floor fight it couldn't win, the APA's leadership tabled
the resolution.
What made the leaders think it couldn't win a fight here?

They knew we had a meeting of NARTH going on in Philadelphia
right up the street. Among our group was a number of former
homosexuals, now therapists, who were engaged in ongoing and
successful treatment of homosexuals who wanted to put aside the
same-sex sex lifestyle. In other words, we provided the assembly with
ample testimony about how we were helping people who wanted to
be helped. Did members of the Gay Caucus want to stop us from
doing that, simply because they had their own axe to grind? We made
it very clear that if they kept pushing, we could call for a renewed
debate on the 1973 decision to take homosexuality off the APA's list of
disorders. We'd never had a chance to debate that 1973 decision on
theoretical and clinical grounds. Would the APA want to do that now?
Furthermore, we made the case that passing such a resolution would
constitute a serious abridgment of our First Amendment Rights. Did
the APA want to see us debate a move to curb free inquiry, free
thought, and free speech within the profession? No way. The APA
leadership didn't want a floor fight they weren't sure they could win.
And so, they tabled the resolution.
Was that the end of it?

I don't think we'll ever see an end to gay politics. But, on the last day
of the convention, we were treated to a visit by a large contingent of
former homosexuals from the Washington area, who came to tell the
APA that reparative therapy had worked for them. They were led, in
fact, by Anthony Falzarano, a former homosexual who is now happily
married and the father of two young children.
How did the APA members react to Falzarano 's group?

Many members came up to them and said they had gay patients in
therapy themselves, and that they would have resisted these efforts
political moves, nothing more —to make their work somehow outside
the pale for an ethical psychiatrist. In fact, a therapist's relationship to
his patient is private, not something to be dictated from the outside,
by politics.
They resented the politics?

Yes. Butwe live in an age when everything is politicized. We shouldn't
be surprised when even doctors who are engaged in a wholesale
denial of their own perversions will attempt to find a pseudo-cure
through the political process. But politics works both ways. For
decades, the military had resisted moves to normalize same- sex sex
within their ranks, and then the people of the United States elected a
president who had made some campaign promises to gay rights
activists. He would open up the military to gays and lesbians, and he
made that his first order of business after the inauguration.

Fortunately, at that moment, politics worked hand in hand with
common sense.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
MILITARY
&
"You'd think that homosexual priests could control
themselves. But many of them can't. And if they can't
control themselves, what makes us think that gay
Marines can?"
In the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton said he wanted to let

gays serve openly in the military. But Congress and the Joint Chiefs of
Staff didn't go along with President Clinton.
Yes. And thank God they didn't. They were quite right to resist the
president's wishes. Open homosexuality in our armed forces would
be disruptive to this country's military mission.
But Bill Clinton said, "This is not about embracing anybody's

lifestyle. This is a question of whether if somebody is willing to live by
the strict code of military conduct, if somebody is willing to die for
their country, should they have the right to do it? I think the answer
is yes."
In a way, President Clinton gotwhat he wanted. Sen. Sam Nunn and

the Joint Chiefs of Staff conceded that much to the president. They
wouldn't bar gays and lesbians from enlisting. They just didn't want
them flaunting their homosexuality. It came down to a policy of, "We
won't ask if you are a homosexual and we don't want you to say that
you are. And you go along with that, and keep your zippers up, we
if
won't try to throw you out of the service."
Isn't there an inherent contradiction here?
How so?
Well, now, you can join the military and be a homosexual. But you
can't do anything about it. Randy Shilts put it this way: It's like
saying you can be a Catholic. But you can't tell anyone you're a
Catholic. And you can't go to Mass.
Nice analogy, good p.r., calculated to win over the 25 percent of the
U.S. population that calls itself Catholic. But same-sex sex is not a
religion. And it is not one of the Four Freedoms either, as much as gay
activists might wish to make it so.
But the military have been employing gays and lesbians for quite
some time now. Many of them have served their country with
distinction. One of them, Sgt. Joseph Zuniga, was named Soldier of
the Year in the U.S. Sixth Army.
Yes, and then he was discharged when he announced his

homosexuality. It's too bad. Zuniga was a good soldier, and could
have remained a good soldier if he hadn't come out so publicly. He

did so in an Op Ed piece in The New York Times, and in a story on the
front page of The Washington Post. Strange case. He came from an
Army family, and had turned down an appointment to West Point. He
was married and, he says, never had sex with a man. I don't really
believe that. But that's what he says. And, under military policy, open
declarations like Zuniga's presume that you intend to engage in
same-sex sex. And that means O-U-T. Out. That's what the
compromise adds up to.
How can you call it a compromise? President Clinton endorsed what

Senator Sam Nunn and the Joint Chiefs insisted on. As The New York
Times put it, may serve in the military only if they
"Homosexuals
agree to be celibate and silent regarding their sexual orientation.
For political reasons, the president had to paint it as a compromise.
That's what the Joint Chiefs wanted. That's what Sen. Sam Nunn
wanted. And Sen. Nunn had the Senate votes to overturn any attempt
to legitimize same-sex sex in the military. But Friedman is only half
right.Under the compromise, homosexuals in the military do not
have to "agree to be celibate." They do have to be very discreet, and
Military 185
not flaunt their homosexuality.
But that's been true all along. A number ofgay veterans can attest to
that. These were men who were in the military for years, and got
away with it, because they were able to be discreet?
Yes. But now gays in the military can relax a The military
little.
commanders are being told not to spend a lot of time and money
ferreting out homosexuals. In the very recent past, according to
Randy Shilts's book, Conduct Unbecoming, government investigators
have acted all too much like Inspector Javert pursuing lean Valjean
through the sewers of Paris. They went after gays and lesbians with
unjustified zeal, especially wiien they were aiming at good people
who were serving their country well.
Was that standard operating procedure?

I wonder. Maybe Shilts was only telling us about the most egregious
cases. Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, the Air Force Chief of Staff, said the Air
Force processed 70,000 discharges last year. Only 115 of them were
for homosexuality. The Air Force dismissed five times as many people
for drug abuse, and ten times as many for obesity.
What is the policy on homosexuality now?

The policy is unclear. In September 1993, in the case of Meinhold v.
the U.S. Department of Defense, a federal judge in Los Angeles
declared the administration's new policy unconstitutional. The U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco reviewed that
case and ruled in the summer of 1994 that the Navy couldn't
discharge Meinhold merely because he said he was gay. The Clinton
Administration was expected to appeal that ruling to the U.S.
—
Supreme Court, but let the time pass thereby throwing the
Administration policy into a kind of legal limbo.
Who was Meinhold?

Keith Meinhold was and is a petty officer in the U.S. Navy, a flight
instructor who had served the Navy well for 13 years until he
announced his homosexuality. Then the Navy tried to give him a
discharge. Meinhold sued the Navy. When the case came up before
U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter, Jr., he said the Navy hadn't made a
good case.
Was he right?
Ifyou read the government's pleadings in the case, you can't help
agreeing with Judge Hatter. The government didn't make a very good
case.
Why didn't it?

I don't think the government lawyers did their homework. They
needed to show how disruptive open homosexuality would be to the
military mission. And they didn't do that.
What was unconstitutional?

According to Judge Hatter, the government had never proven that
Keith Meinhold's homosexual orientation (there was no mention of
any homosexual conduct) interfered with the Navy's military mission.
To throw someone out of the Navy, according to Judge Hatter, went
against the equal protection clauses of the Fifth Amendment.
Furthermore, said Hatter, the Navy's case was "based on cultural
myths and false stereotypes." Judge Hatter said that reminded him of
nothing so much as the argument made 40 years ago against
integrating blacks in the Army. That analogy seemed to weigh heavily
in the mind of Judge Hatter, who is black.
Was it a good analogy?

No. Keeping men out of the Navy because they are black is mightily
different that screening men whose lifestyle is compulsive, same-sex
sex. But Judge Hatter bought the analogy, and he told the Navy to
reinstate Meinhold and, furthermore, tried to stop "any action
whatsoever against gay or lesbian service members" anywhere. He
said he would fine anyone who tried to take such action. In effect,
that put the Clinton Administration's position on hold.

The Clinton Administration appealed Judge Hatter's order before the
Ninth Circuit, and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block Judge
Hatter's order in 115 other cases like Meinhold's that were still
pending. The Supreme Court ruled on October 29, 1993, that Judge
Hatter's ruling could only apply to the Meinhold case, agreeing with
government attorneys who argued that Judge Hatter had no
jurisdiction to issue a nationwide injunction that invalidated not only
the old policy, but the Administration's new policy, which was not
then before him.
Military 187
What is the administration's policy now?

Until that decision of the Ninth Circuit is confirmed one way or
another, it looks like the Pentagon guidelines issued on July 19, 1993,
are in force.
And what are those guidelines?

No investigations or inquiries will be conducted solely to determine a
servicemember's sexual orientation. Orientation alone will not be the
subject of a criminal investigation. Commanders, not investigators,
will determine when sufficient credible information exists to justify a
look into allegations.
Allegations of what? What's forbidden?
Engaging in homosexual acts. Open proclamations that you're a

homosexual or a bisexual. Attempting marriage to someone of the
same sex. George Stephanopoulos, the presidential adviser, hailed
the change. He said, "The day President Clinton announced the gays-
in-the-military plan will be remembered as the day that the military
decided to live and let live with homosexuals."
You agree with this? "Live and let live?"
Well, that was the benign spin that Mr. Stephanopoulos had to put on
the compromise. Which was all he could do, under the
circumstances. Though Mr. Clinton was president of the United
States, he couldn't get the military chiefs to do what they didn't want
to do. I think the president finally realized that he'd done all he could
have done, and, maybe, should have done.
Why do you say that?

Because I think he finally realized that the Army and the Navy and the
Marines and the Air Force are not places where the open approval of
homosexuality will do anything but cause problems.
To many on the outside, the new policy still looks like discriminatory.
You mean, because the armed forces are still saying they won't enlist
people who on that basis, the military
are openly homosexual? Well,
chiefs can be very discriminating. They can still say, in effect, "We
don't want to employ sodomites here." There's nothing new about
that. They don't recruit people who are too short, or too tall, or
grossly overweight, or color blind. They don't recruit people who
have Downs syndrome. There's nothing wrong with short people, or

tallpeople, or Downs people. People with Downs syndrome are,
typically, loving, beautiful human beings. But the military can't,
normally, use them. At least, Maybe
they haven't tried to do so yet.
they'llhave men and women with Downs syndrome start
to, if
organizing and demand their right to serve in the Marines.
Bad example, based on an inability to measure up physically. Ifgays

pass all the physical requirements, why can't the military use them?
There have been some very specious reasons given, most of them
looking to the inadequacy of the men already in the military, and not
to anything found wanting in the homosexual recruit. Depending on
who's coming forward with the sophistry, the troops don't want gays
or lesbians in the ranks because they represent challenges to: 1) their
machismo, 2) their virtue, or 3) their forbearance. Three bad
arguments.
Machismo?
Some have argued that bringing in people who are openly gay might
well call into question the fighting man's traditional manliness. They
ask whether these men can really be good soldiers if you surround
them with people who aren't manly. And, to bolster that view, they
note the results of a poll in the spring of 1993 indicating that 78
percent of the men in the military didn't want gays in their outfits.
Sen.Nunn had some top officers testifying on this in May of 1993.
Maybe this is what Gen. Schwarzkopf meant when he said that
allowing gays to serve openly would ruin the armed services.
Is that a good argument?

Like Congress, have to listen to military men when they tell us what
I
helps their mission and what hurts it. The difficulty is that policy
always deals with things in general. In particular, however, there may
be some gays who would do well in the service. (Many already have.)
Frankly, I haven't been impressed by the arguments of some that a
few gays in uniform would threaten the virtue of our military men. As
if our young warriors were the kind of nervous Nellies who would
faint if they knew a homosexual was soaping up next to them in the

shower. Or, even more silly, that they couldn't let down their guard
for a second, not even long enough to bend over and pick up a bar of
soap.
Military 189
What was the third had argument?

That military leaders could not assure the safety of a homosexual in
the ranks. One Marine colonel told the Armed Services Committee
that he had a son who was gay, and would fear for his life if he entered
the Marines. That was a sorry statement. Are we to believe that
officers have so little control of their men— that they'd allow their
men to hurt, or even kill, a homosexual who dared sleep in the same
barracks? What a sad commentary —on our officers, on our enlisted
men!
But they say that this "don't ask, don't tell" policy institutionalizes a
lie.
The current, compromise policy isn't a lie. What, after all, is a lie? A lie
is a deception. No one's asking a recruit to deceive his recruiting
officer. The recruiter doesn't ask about anyone's whether
sexuality,
he's a homosexual, a fetishist, a transvestite or a pedophile. It's none
of the recruiter's business. And the recruit, gay or straight, doesn't
volunteer. I have read the remark of one anonymous gay soldier
whining to a reporter: "I can't say who I am." But of course he can. He
can say, "I am John Jones of Laguna Beach, California." That's who he
is. The men in the military just don't want him to say what he is. And,
—
in this, they're doing him a favor if he really has a desire to serve his
country. If he wants to serve, let him serve, and drop the notion that
he has to go around telling people "who he is." The new compromise
just asks everyone not to flaunt their sexuality.
But why shouldn't they be able to flaunt it? What's wrong with
flaunting it?
It's And it's an invasion of other
irrelevant to the military enterprise.
people's privacy to go around telling them how you get your orgasms.
But that's not the only reason, is it?
No, I'm afraid that none of the military spokesmen want to offend
with a bald truth.
Well, what is the bald truth that no one wants to talk about? What
was the real reason for drawing the line at open homosexuality in the
ranks?
Our military men see their careers are much more than mere jobs. A
Marine sees the Corps as a way of life. Or, maybe I should say, "A life-
and-death way of life." Individual sexual freedom? Yes, it must be
protected —until it conflicts with the needs of a military unit. You just
have to put a taboo on any sexual contact in the military, because
depend on it. And I don't think the U.S. Marines or
lives absolutely —
— —
any other branch want to sacrifice their lives or their way of life
to provide the nation with a social laboratory.
What do you mean by social laboratory?

Maybe this experiment would work. Maybe it wouldn't. Why run the
risk of ruining the Marine Corps, for instance, for an experiment that
could end up disrupting all discipline?
Discipline?What do your friends in the military have to say about

Tailhook?Is that an example of discipline in the military?
The Tailhook convention in Las Vegas? Where a bunch of drunken
Navy officers and reservists assaulted Navy women in a hotel hallway
gauntlet? Tailhook simply illustrates the difficulties of controlling
male sexuality of any kind. no wonder that those whose first
It is
concern is for efficiency in the military would shrink from contending

with the kinds of problems that are attendant upon male
homosexuality, which is far more uncontrollable than male
heterosexuality. And then, discipline aside, with open homosexuality
in the military, you run high risk of bringing on a plague.
A plague?
Some pretty good studies
All right. This is the heart of the question:
have already proven that male homosexuals have a very high
infection rate for STDs. You can't introduce this element of risk into
the U.S. armed forces.
STDs?
Sexually transmitted diseases. In New York City, at one point in the
early 1980s, 52 percent of the gay male population had come down
with these diseases. In Dallas, 60 percent. In Newark, 64 percent. And
then there's the STD to beat all STDs: AIDS.
AIDS?
Researchers at Columbia University have been tracking AIDS in the
homosexual population of New York City for years. They say 40
percent of the gay males in New York are either HIV or have AIDS. In
Military 191
January 1995, Michael Warner wrote in The Village Voice, a voice,

really, of New York's gay community, "The best estimates are that
about 50 percent of gay men my age in New York have HIV."
And why is that?

Because most gays— at least the obligatory have
homosexuals that I
known —can't, or won't, control themselves. And, from have

all I
read, this lack of self control almost invariably goes with the gay
lifestyle. Homosexuals are astoundingly promiscuous.
Colman McCarthy, an outstanding columnist and former editorial

writer for The Washington Post, says there's no scientific evidence of
that
I wonder how well informed he In The Evolution of Human
is.
Sexuality, Donald Symons cites at least seven scientific studies, most

of them conducted between 1965 and 1977 by gays and lesbians,
which show that the search for new sexual partners is a striking
feature of the male homosexual world. Six of the studies present
statistics demonstrating that "the most frequent form of sexual
activity" for this group "is the one-night stand in which sex occurs,
without obligation or commitment, between strangers." According to
Evelyn Hooker, such liaisons "often do not last a night; in a few
minutes, or hours, the individuals may be back in the bars again,
cruising." Martin Hoffman reported on one man who was sodomized
by 48 men during one evening in a gay bath. According to Symons,
this was "more partners in a single evening than most lesbians and
heterosexual men have in a lifetime." In Evelyn Hooker's eight-year-
study of 30 homosexuals who were not seeking psychological help,
and who showed her no signs of psychological disturbance, 27 of
them sought stable, dyadic relationships, but only four of them
sustained an exclusive relationship for as long as two years.
Do any recent studies show this pattern?

A study by the San Francisco Department of Health in 1991 found
that gay men between the ages of 17 and 25 consistently engaged in
high risk sex with numerous partners, mostly strangers, and without
the benefit of condoms, to boot. And the younger they are, the more
they persist in having a great —
number of partners and rarely with
protection.
But this was in San Francisco.

I think you allowed open homosexuality in the military, you'd end
if
up with a certain number of predominantly gay platoons, gay

battalions. The culture inside those outfits would begin to resemble
gay enclaves in New York and San Francisco, where the incidence of
AIDS is a fact of life.
What about AIDS in New York City?

According to a release from theNew York City Department of Health
at the end of 1994, "More than 130 AIDS-related deaths now occur
each week in New York City, up from about 100 in 1993. Among men
who have sex with men, alone, almost half a million years of potential
life has been lost during the first 13 years of the epidemic here." The
same agency reports that from the beginning of the epidemic until
June 30, 1994, 67,111 AIDS cases— 16% of all U.S. cases— were
reported in New York City, 79% in men, 19% in women, and 2% in
children aged 12 and younger.... Sixty-seven percent of all adults
reported with AIDS have died."
And all these AIDS deaths were linked to same-sex sex?

No. Again, according to. New York's Department of Health, "Among
men, 47% of reported cases have been among those whose risk for
acquiring HIV infection is sex with other men; 42% among persons
with a history of injected drug use, and fewer than 1% among sexual
partners of women at risk for HIV."
What's happening in San Francisco these days?

Delegates to the international AIDS conference held in Berlin in 1993
heard a report from public health researchers in California who
studied risk behaviors of 425 homosexual and bisexual young men
interviewed at 26 public venues in San Francisco and Berkeley during
1992 and 1993. They found that one-third of their sample were
engaging in unprotected anal intercourse. They found that 10 percent
were HIV positive, but, at the time of the interview, 70 percent of
those infected with HIV did not know that they were seropositive. The
researchers published their findings in the Journal of the American
Medical Association on August 10, 1994.
Warner of The Village Voice reported in January 1995 that a

forthcoming study of young men in San Francisco "found rates of
infection nearly four times what they were in 1987."
Military 193
How do they explain this phenomenon?

They The Los Angeles
don't. Robert A. Jones, a veteran journalist for
Times, tried in the summer of 1993 to get young gay males in
California to explain what the experts could not that is, why the —
youngest generation of gay males seemed to be acting so heedlessly.
Well, the accounts of these young men explained what they were
doing. But they couldn't explain why. Their own activity was a
mystery to them.
Why couldn't they explain the mystery?

Because they aren't psychoanalysts, and they don't have
psychoanalytic help to explain their own unconscious and imperative
drives. But if you listen to their stories, as recorded by Bob Jones, I
think you may have the answer to the mystery.
Share some of these stories.

Here's Jeff. He's 19. He said
His parents are Hollywood producers.
that he had his first same-sex sex at age 12 —
about the time when
—
Rock Hudson was dying with gay friends of his parents who had
come over to the house for parties "I knew AIDS was scary and I knew
people were dying. I think I just never connected it to me." So far, he
is not HIV.
Here's Alex. He's 18. He grew up

Azusa with his mother and a
in
succession of her live-in boyfriends. He ran away when he was 11. "I
met the man who gave me AIDS in front of the gay and lesbian center
in Hollywood. This guy walked up and started talking to me. After a
while, he invited me up to his apartment and I said okay because I
was so tired and I didn't care. We became lovers. I was like this young
thing that he kept around so he could have his fun. Even before
Wayne, I never practiced safe sex. I didn't know condoms existed. I
mean, I knew about condoms. I just didn't know what they were for.
And even if I had known, it wouldn't have made any difference. I just
thought, T'm so cute, and I'm so good in bed, nothing will happen to
me.'"
Here's Kurtis. He's 22, and goes to law school in the Bay Area. "I met
this guy and we started talking. I was really interested in talking to
him and at that point I knew I would go back to his hotel if he asked.
That's when I realized that if the passion is strong enough, your
standards about careful behavior will go out the window. When the
attraction goes beyond a threshold level, you will ditch those

standards. you really like someone, you will take more risk. If you
If
are desperate on a particular night, and really want to have sex, you
will compromise."
Here's Angelo. He's 18 and a recent arrival in Hollywood, from

Denver. "So far, I've had sex with 10 or 12 men, a pretty small
number. What I've found is, I can't have sex with anyone who is my
friend. So I only do it with people I don't know."
Here's Gabe. He's 18 and he's a high school student. When he started
the gay he imagined it would be the way it was in the movies.
life,
"You do things together and spend time together and have a

relationship. My experience was totally different. I would meet
somebody and think he was perfect and we would go someplace and
have sex. Then it was over. The next night I would try to find someone
else, and if I was lucky, the same thing would happen. Pretty soon I
was doing everything. Anal sex, everything. I got a fake ID so I could

get into the gay bars. It never failed. I'd get picked up by a guy. We'd
go back to their place or somewhere and just do it. I loved the sex and
thought, 'Boy, this is great.' For me, AIDS wasn't an issue because I
thought it was something that happened to older guys. So I just
categorized it as something that didn't happen to young people."
Gabe tested positive on April 22, 1992. "I remember thinking, 'Gabe,
you have f up big time.You are now going to die.' The most
interesting thing is, I've become very intrigued by death. I don't want
to commit suicide or anything, it's just I'm so curious about what's
out there after I die. I want to know what it's like to leave this world
and go somewhere else. Somewhere new."
And so, you think that young gay males in the military would be a lot
like these kids?
Yes. They're all caught up in their imperative needs, and they don't
understand them, and they don't know what to do about them.
They're out of control. You've read all the recent stories in the press, I
am sure, about the homosexual priests who go around seducing

adolescents? You'd think that priests, coming from a celibate culture,
with their ascetical training and all, priests who have so much to lose
if they ever get caught, you'd think that homosexual priests could
control themselves. But many of them can't. And if they can't control
themselves, what makes us think that gay Marines can? That's why
Military 195
you can't have open and approved homosexuality on (or off) a

military base.
If you were recruiting for the U.S. Marine Corps, how would you
know which ones can control themselves and which ones can't?
Well,you could admit everyone who enlists and then try to discharge
those who turn out to be disruptive. But maybe, by then, you will
have ruined military discipline and put a mighty crimp in your
recruitment efforts. Even conservative, Republican gays get AIDS.
And they will continue to do so, until researchers discover an AIDS
vaccine. And that's not going to happen soon. So I don't care how
deep in the closet our gay servicemen are, the chances are good that
more than half of them will come down with AIDS. And they may end
up giving AIDS to some of the men in their own units men who are —
not homosexuals.
How is that?
The military draws four-fifths of its blood supply from its own people.
Dog tags carry everyone's blood type to facilitate transfusions in
emergency and combat situations. Many servicemen would refuse to
accept a transfusion from a blood supply that's augmented by
contributions from homosexuals. Some of them in an emergency
—
situation might wait a long time even risk bleeding to death than —
accept blood from someone they knew was a homosexual.
So, if we want to be fair, what do we do?

The policy announced on July 19, 1993, is fair. Maybe it would be
more fair to tell young homosexuals what Les Aspin, the secretary of
defense, said on the day the Administration policy was announced.
He said homosexuals "would be much more comfortable pursuing
another profession than the military."
What if the courts reject the Clinton-Pentagon compromise, based on

equal protection guarantees under the Fifth Amendment that have
been accorded, for example, to blacks?
That would be a very sad day for America, and I doubt that it would
happen. But if it does, we might look to the armed forces of Israel for
an answer on this. In some ways, the
Israeli plan could work out
better than our current compromise. They have compulsory military
service in Israel, so they have needed to exercise some control on
what, they frankly acknowledge, could be a problem, but need not be.
They insist that gays in their military undergo some psychological
examinations, when they are inducted, and then periodically during
their service. Presumably, they screen out those homosexuals who
have the most obviously severe compulsions.
So the Israelis exercise some discrimination?

Not discrimination. But they are discriminating, good sense of in the
the word. In many ways, the U.S. military is discriminating even now.
And not only on physical grounds. The Army doesn't want people
with serious addictions —but not because their addiction to alcohol
or to drugs is a sin. It's because those addictions can hurt them, or
someone else, in a life and death situation. And being around much
of our military arsenal is, indeed, a life and death situation that calls
for a great deal of control.
And, as you've said, many homosexuals have an addiction to sex?

Yes. To same-sex sex, a very imperative need that needs constant
filling. It's an addiction that could be just as distracting as drink or
drugs to a man who's standing a midnight watch.
So you really are admitting what's behind the military policy —

exactly the thing that the gay activists claim: discrimination.
No, not discrimination. The word is "discriminating." I'm afraid that

the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Air
Force can't afford to be anything but very discriminating. And,
frankly, I don't think the brass have ever really wanted gays around at
all.
This doesn 't sound very democratic.
— —
Good football teams winning teams aren't very democratic either.
And if you want to talk about democracy, then you have to approve
the current compromise. Our current policy on gays in the military
wasn't laid on us by a presidential decree. It came after consultation
with Congress and with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head coaches.
You're using a football metaphor. Does that metaphor work equally

well for the women?
What women?
Military
The lesbians already in the ranks. And the lesbians who'd like to join
up.
They can still join up. And now, unless they flaunt their same- sex sex
styles, they can stay in. But lesbians tend not to flaunt their
homosexuality anyway.
Not even the lesbians who are leading figures in the feminist
movement, not even the lesbians in academe?
No, I don't mean them. They're a special, articulate (and ferocious)
group.
In the military, however, you'd treat gay women differently than gay
men?
I'm not sure. I don't see how you could treat them differently.
But lesbians don't get AIDS, not unless they're into the drug, needle-
sharing scene.
That's right.
And lesbians aren't typically promiscuous, aren't driven by the

compulsive anxieties that mark so many male homosexuals?
Yes, that's also true.As Symons pointed out, studies showed that
lesbians get together to socialize, not have sex. "Lesbian bars are far
—
fewer in number than male gay bars, and unlike male gay bars or
even heterosexual singles' bars —
they are not sexual marketplaces.
Lesbians rarely pick up partners for one-night stands, do not cruise,
do not have anonymous sex in public places, and there are no lesbian
baths."
Is serving in the military a right?
Of course not. It's a privilege.
Well, maybe that's the solution then. The loint Chiefs just decide to
give the women certain inducements, or privileges, that they can't, or
won't, give to the men.
It may be your solution. But I doubt that it would stand up to

challenge in the courts. The courts can hardly resist any argument
based on equal protection of the law. What would you do: give
lesbians in the service the right to marry, give them spousal benefits,
pay for lesbian spouses to travel overseas, give them housing benefits
at home and abroad? And deny the same rights to gay males? I think
that solution is just a bit too subtle for the official, bureaucratic,
governmental, everybody's-equal-under-the-law mentality. Besides
which, it goes against all the recent trends in the military —where
they've already decided to give equal treatment to women in the
service, even to the point of allowing them to fight in battle.
Do you foresee any changes ahead, then?

After all I doubt President Clinton
the furor over the current policy,
or any other president —
want to resurrect this thing in the next 20
will
years at least. But only time will tell. Whatever change lies ahead will
probably come from the courts, where gay activists are continuing to
pursue their cause.
How do you think that legal challenge will go?

Idon't know. am not a lawyer. And not even
I the lawyers seem to
know, There are some anomalies in the Clinton policy,
at this point.
and a deliberate vagueness about its execution. You can be of the
homosexual persuasion. But you can't do anything about it. Or even
speak out about it. And military commanders will be given a great
deal of discretion in dealing with those who cross over the line.
In effect, the policy imposes celibacy (and silence) on the troops who
like to have sex with guys, hut not on the troops who like to have sex
with girls.
Well, no one is supposed to flaunt their sexuality. And there are
certain codes of conduct in the military, even for straights. But I think
imposing silence on the gays has rankled more than anything. David
Mixner of Hollywood, purportedly the gay activist who was closest to
Pres. Clinton during the 1992 campaign, said on CNBC on July 4,
1993, that, if gays and lesbians couldn't talk about their same-sex sex
partners, then it wasn't fair for Pres. Clinton, the Commander-in-
Chief, to ever talk about Mrs. Clinton. You see how firm he is in
asserting (by implication) that homosexuality and heterosexuality are
on an absolute par? Mixner sounded like he was spoiling now for a
fight. He said that gays "will not accept any compromise on gays in
the military."
What will he and gay rights people do about it?

Well, I think they've shot most of their ammunition already,
politically. According to Mixner, they contributed $3.5 million to Bill
Military 199
Clinton's presidential campaign, and established the fact that they

are "anew political force" — one that Clinton and his people "don't
know how to deal with."
It looks like the president knew very well how to deal with this force.
He just ignored them.
Yes.The president realized that taking on gay rights lost him an
immense amount of political capital. He has tried to put the issue
behind him And so, the gay activists have only one road left to travel:
.
the road through the courts.
That will cost millions.

Yes, this kind of litigation can get expensive. It will be interesting to
see how far the movement wants to pursue it. Two men on active
duty and four reservists who won a suit in the Federal District Court
in Brooklyn on March on their rights of free
30, 1995, built their case
speech under the First Amendment. Which prompts me to conclude
that some gays aren't as interested in serving as they are in speaking
out. Two gay activist organizations paid for this lawsuit (which the
government is appealing) because they want to use the gays-in-the-
military issue as a platform for launching new policy that would
normalize and legitimate gay lifestyle in other parts of the public
arena.
You think they will still want to pursue a Gay Civil Rights bill in
Congress?
They'd like to. But I think SamNunn and the Pentagon may have sent
them a message tellingthem now is not the time. And I have a notion
that there are a lot of things the military leaders told Sen. Nunn, but
aren't telling us.
Such as?
Such as a study of courts martial prosecuted against homosexuals
during the past four years by the U.S. Army's legal people. The
Washington Times had to file a lawsuit under the Freedom of
Information Act to ferret out the results of that study.
What did that study show?

That Army people weren't prosecuting homosexuals for a little
innocent playing around, by mutual consent. Eight of every ten
homosexuals who were court martialed by the Army for sexual

misconduct were involved in a sexual assault. And nearly half of the
102 assault cases were assaults against children. The Army could have
gone very public with triese items if it wanted to contend with the gay
rights people. But it chose to exercise some restraint here. This is
nothing the Army was particularly proud to talk about. And it wasn't
cited in the RAND report on gays in the military.
Yes. What about that RAND report?
The RAND report, "Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel
Policy: Option and Assessment," was undertaken for the National
Defense Research Institute, working under the U.S. Secretary of
Defense, at a cost to the taxpayers of one and a half million dollars.
Some four dozen RAND researchers worked on it in the spring of 1993
under the direction of Bernard D. Rostker, who presented Sec. Aspin
with the analysis before Pres. Clinton and Secretary of Defense Les
Aspin announced their policy on July 19, 1993. Apparently, the
president and the secretary ignored RAND's recommendations.
What did the report conclude?

It said that the military should ignore sexual orientation among its
personnel, treat it as "not germane" — that not relevant to this

is,
country's military mission — and draft a new Standard of Conduct

thatwould curb any kind of sexual activity that was disruptive.
Homosexuals could then serve openly and effectively, RAND said,
provided the policy got strong leadership from above. An editorial in
The York Times praised the RAND report, and blasted the
New
Pentagon and the president for ignoring it.
What do you think of the RAND study?

I think the study was slanted in favor of gay rights. And it is amazing
to me how that study could affect such an agnosticism about who
gays are, and what gays do.
Agnosticism?
Yes. For a study that cost $1.5 million, you'd think researchers would
have been able to come up with some clear answers. Instead, time
and time again, they said, "We don't know. We don't know. We don't
know." Most of the "don't knows" revolved around questions they
should have known the answers to.
Military 201
Like what?
For example, they said, "We do not know what percentage of
homosexual men have AIDS, because we do not know how many
homosexual men there are in the United States." That was
disingenuous. RAND's researchers could have consulted Martina
Morris and Laura Dean, two researchers at Columbia University's
School of Public Health, who have been tracking the AIDS epidemic
in New York for years. Ms. Morris and Ms. Dean know how many HIV
—
males there are today about 40 percent of the male homosexual
population in New York City. RAND researchers could have also
consulted the health departments in New York and San Francisco.
These health departments have good numbers. They have a very
good idea how many gay males live in New York City, or in San
Francisco, and how many of them come down with AIDS. The RAND
people could have extrapolated from those numbers to come up with
an answer to the military's obvious question: "If we open wide the
gates to homosexuals, will that make us more vulnerable to AIDS?"
But the RAND researchers didn't do that. It seems that RAND's Bernie
Rostker was working toward a pre-determined conclusion: let the
gays in, and if they get AIDS, or are otherwise disruptive, toss 'em out.
What's the source of the RAND bias?

I'm not sure. But if you read the entire RAND study, all 518 pages of it,
you can see internal evidence of the bias. The report overused certain
expressions, like the politically correct word, "gender," for instance.
That was one, quick tip-off. The report also gave too much weight to
the 1948 Kinsey statistics about the number of homosexuals in the
U.S. —and too to the more scientific study done in 1993 by the
little
(What number to go with? they mused. Ten percent

Battelle Institute.
or one percent? Boldly, RAND decided to go with "2 to 9 percent.")
RAND researchers seemed to give more weight, and space, to a 1982
readers' survey conducted by Playboy magazine than to the Battelle
study. The RAND team seemed very partial on its selection of sources;
itleaned on a 1987 study that concluded that, since the advent of
AIDS, gay men are involved in less risky behaviors that they have —
fewer partners than ever before, that they are more likely to use
condoms than heterosexual males. But there is good evidence that
gays from the ages of 18 to 25 (which
I've already cited indicating that
justhappen to be the age cohort most likely to join the military) are
behaving more dangerously than older gays.
RAND ignored that evidence?

Yes. And there's more. RAND's editors devoted more than 30 pages of
their report to argue that the history of racial integration in the
militarywas relevant to the current gay issue. Integration of black
troops was brought about by strong leadership. The same strong
leadership, RAND argued, could bring the integration of gay troops.
Ditto on two other analogies: the experience of local police and fire
departments in the U.S., and the history of the armed forces in
certain foreign countries that do not screen out homosexuals. Each
analogy, RAND claimed, proved that we could enlist gays in the Army,
the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines of the United States with
little or no worry about social or unit cohesion.
You imply that these analogies are questionable?

Yes. But the RAND study gave questions like this short shrift.
You say one of the key RAND recommendations was to treat any gay
orientation as irrelevant —
The words RAND used was "not germane."
— and then discharge anyone, straight or gay, who violates a new

Standard ofProfessional Conduct?
Yes.
How would the military authorities go about enforcing this new

Standard ofProfessional Conduct?
The military would have had to spend a great deal of time and energy
going through all the legal steps necessary to discharge anyone for
violating the new Standard.
That's easier said than done. Look at the history of the Tailhook
affair.
Yes. Precisely. But the RAND people realized this. So they

recommended there be no enforcement of any rules regarding
"private sexual behavior between consenting adults." But you can see
where that would lead. All of a sudden, we would have "private sexual
behavior between consenting adults" established in the military.
Then we'd see a creeping expansion of gay rights: gay marriages, gay
spouses joining their mates in overseas assignments, sharing quarters
in officers' housing. It wouldn't be long before you'd see that same
—
Military 203
approval across the board, in every agency of the government from

the Foreign Service to the Forest Service. The result: a new, federally
mandated, legally binding, approval of same- sex sex as just another
alternate lifestyle. The ramifications of that policy would then spread
across the land, in both public and private institutions.
And what did RAND conclude about the danger of the AIDS epidemic
taking hold in the military?
AIDS was not a problem, according to the RAND study, because very
few members of the military come down with AIDS. And those who
do are mustered out.
Increasing the number of gays in the military wouldn't change that

situation?
RAND professed not to know a thing about that. Part of the

agnosticism I was just talking about.
What was the problem at RAND?

I don't know RAND very well. These are very bright people. But they
lean toward the so-called hard sciences. Like Alfred Kinsey, they tend
to think that, even when dealing with such a mysterious thing as sex,
quantification is the key to understanding. If they can count it, it
exists. Otherwise, forget it. Which is why, I suspect, they gave no

—
attention to any studies at all from psychology, or psychoanalysis
which attempted to deal with the causes of homosexuality, or the
imperative needs that drive so much outrageous behavior by gay
males. They cited hundreds of works and other statistical studies on
the legal and historical aspects of homosexuality, including two works
by Randy Shilts. But they did not cite (or apparently take into
account) And The Band Played On, Shilts's book on the history and
origin of AIDS, which was so clear in its depiction of gay sex as
promiscuous sex, which Shilts said was the principal culprit in the
incubation and spread of AIDS.
Let's talk about gays and AIDS,
Yes. We should do that.

CHAPTER EIGHT:
AIDS
"lam sick ofguys who moan that giving up careless sex

until this thing blows over is worse than death. How can
they value life so little?"
Larry Kramer, the AIDS activist, said homosexuals were never that
keen on getting in the military anyway. And that the fight over gays
in the military was just a distraction from more real issues.
Yes, I read those comments by Kramer in The New York Times. He
said the fight has "taken the focus off of AIDS... and we have not been
able to have the energy to fight back...."
Is AIDS the number one problem for gay males?

It's killing them off, one by one. What else could be more important?
A gay's right to enjoy same-sex sex in the Army pales before the fact of
the gay plague everywhere.
What is your experience with AIDS?

I'm a physician as well as a psychoanalyst, and I have some training
in public health. Besides, my case load is thirty to forty percent
homosexuals in New York City, where more than 32,000 have already
died of AIDS. I knew a good many of them. In the early 1980s, one of
my patients, a dermatologist, started telling me about this strange
new disease that many of his patients were coming down with. These
patients were homosexuals, and, though many of them were
professional people — bankers, artists, designers, financiers,
physicians, lawyers —they were all sexually hyperactive. And now
many of them were afflicted with Kaposi's sarcoma, strange velvet
lesions, a kind of tumor that came to be known as "gay cancer." It was
incurable. And people started dying from it. At that time, neither my
doctor-patient nor I knew that AIDS was associated with a virus that
was transmitted mainly through sex, most particularly anal sex. But
we suspected something of the sort.
What was your reaction to this news?

I was alarmed. AIDS had anything to do with sex (straight sex or gay
If
sex), then this could be catastrophic for the whole population in time,
and, right now, for the gay community. I knew something that most
people did not know about the lifestyle of obligatory homosexual
males. They couldn't stop what they were doing. There was a
powerful force within them telling they needed same- sex sex, like an
addict needs a fix, and nothing could stop them, not even the fear of
death.
Was this true for all obligatory homosexuals?

Yes, to a greater or lesser degree. Some of my patients had stronger
compulsions than others.
What did you do?

I tried to learn all I could about the disease. Eventually, the medical
school at Columbia came out with some guidelines that counseled
"safe sex" —that is, the use of condoms. But I knew condoms
that
weren't safe. I started telling my patients to avoid most of their
favorite sexual pathways. "The safest sex," I said, "is about two and a
half feet away from your partner."
But you've lost some patients to AIDS?

Yes.One has died and several are in various stages of dying. The one
who died was a young man of 32, a talented physicist who had
completed some original work in astrophysics. After four years of
analysis,he had conquered his homosexual desires, and had fallen in
love with a young woman. He was supposed to be married, but two
weeks before the ceremony, he came to my office all out of breath.
AIDS 207
His condition was so extreme that I sent him right over to New York
Hospital for an exam. They did a bronchoscopy, and came up with a
diagnosis of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, an opportunistic
infection of the lung that is related to AIDS. His fiancee stuck by him.
They went to Paris together, where he was treated with HPA-23, an
anti viral medication, the same drug that had been prescribed for
Rock Hudson. I had to phone Dr. Luc Montagnier, the leading
virologist at the Pasteur Institute, to help him secure the medical go-
ahead to take the medication. Dr. Montagnier gave it to him. And he
thought that cured him. He returned to New York and was married.
But he died two years later.
Is AIDS a gay disease?

Gays didn't start the fire. They did not create the virus, but some
public health officials feel they bear considerable responsibility for
incubating it and spreading it to other populations.
Why do you say "populations'* and not "people?"

I am talking big numbers here. When the first international AIDS
conference was held in Atlanta in 1985, there were 9,285 cases of
AIDS in the U.S. At the time of the 10th conference, held in Yokohama
in 1994, there were 402,000 AIDS cases in this country alone, with
243,000 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. The World Health Organization has even more disturbing
figures. By the end of the century, more than 40 million will be
infected, worldwide, with AIDS. But the Global AIDS Policy Coalition
at Harvard says the number could go as high as 110 million. Whatever
the number, it is certain that almost everyone who tests positive for
HIV will die. That's why I talk about populations.
But in Africa and Latin America and Asia, a large percentage of

people with AIDS are women. There, it's a heterosexual disease.
It is now. It's particularly epidemic in Africa because, in Africa, there
are a lot of other sexually transmitted diseases going around. Sores
from these diseases are gateways for the AIDS virus. Another factor:
men and women in Africa regularly use anal intercourse as a form of
birth control.
What difference does that make?

The walls of the vagina are elastic and several layers thick, and they
have glands that provide natural lubrication during intercourse. This

prevents quantities of sperm from entering the bloodstream. But the
lining of the rectum is made of a single layer of columnar epithelium.
In other words, the rectum wasn't engineered for intercourse?

Exactly. Unlike the vaginal epithelium, the rectum is not only
incapable of protecting against any abrasive effect. It also promotes
the absorption of sperm antigens, thus enhancing their exposure to
the immune apparatus in the lymphatic and blood circulation.
During anal intercourse, then, the biological design of the rectum,
combined with the aggressive properties of sperm, expedite entry
into the bloodstream. When this occurs repeatedly, antibodies to
sperm circulate throughout the bloodstream and impair the immune
system. This happens both apart from and along with infection by the
AIDS virus.
Are you saying that not even monogamous anal intercourse is safe?
Iam. The medical community knew that some time ago. In 1984,
G.M. Maglivit and others reported in the Journal of the American
Medical Association that three-fourths of the passive partners in
monogamous homosexual relationships manifested sperm-induced
immune dysregulation, which appeared to weaken these men and
predispose them for infection by AIDS. I do not recommend anal
intercourse for anyone, gay or straight.
You say there's an epidemic in Asia, too?

Yes, most particularly in India and Thailand, because of the hundreds
of thousands of men and women, boys and girls, involved in
prostitution there, where the huge sex industry caters, in large part, to
businessmen who travel the whole world. According to a report
issued in April 1993 by the Asian Development Bank, India and
Thailand each had less than 1,000 people carrying the HIV virus ten
years ago. Thailand now has from 200,000 to 400,000 who are HIV-
infected. And India may have as many as one million. The report says
that Asia is vulnerable to AIDS because of the widespread use of drugs
and a tolerant attitude toward prostitution. In 1994, the World Health
Organization predicted that the then current number of HIV
infections in all of Asia, 2.5 million, could reach 10 million by the year
2000.
AIDS 209
So,who really started the epidemic?

We can't really say with precision. Some say that homosexual males
incubated the disease in the U.S. The detectives at the Center for
Disease Control have actually been able to trace the man who started
the plague in this country.
We don t know where he got it, do we?

f
No. But virologists can make an educated guess. based on their

It is
knowledge of how viruses mutate and strengthen themselves in their

evolutionary struggle, losing weak particles as they "move up" via
"hosts" to the point where they take on a life of their own. It is quite
possible, they say, that the AIDS virus was around for many years. But
it may have been a harmless virus. It did not attack the general
population because it wasn't strong enough. Then came the sexual

revolution of the 1960s, and the gay revolution of the 1970s. That's
when this weak virus got muscles. And the latest 1993 studies are
indicating that the agent that causes AIDS is getting more complex
and more potent. Researchers are watching it change even as we
speak.
You're saying the sexual revolution helped make AIDS possible?

AIDS couldn't have taken hold in a culture that didn't glorify sex-in-
And this notion represents a real marker in the history of ideas,
itself.
one thatjournalists were quite right to explore when the upswing in

sex-in-itself first appeared in the 1960s. This was news. The
businessmen who controlled the media cranked up the bandwagon,
because there was circulation (that is, money) in sex. Some Danes
made a blue movie which they called yellow, "I Am Curious, Yellow,"
that put simulated intercourse right up there on the screen, in general
release.Hugh Hefner built a billion-dollar magazine and sex club
empire on what he called "The Playboy Philosophy."
What was The Playboy Philosophy?

It was nothing new. The ancient Greeks and Romans had a name for
it. They called it hedonism: "If it feels good, do it." Hefner printed his
ruminations month after month during the 1960s. But the Playboy
Philosophy always came down to Hefner's own peculiar slant, the
important of the orgasm, wherever, whenever, with whomever. In
November 1993, Playboy was still sticking to the same line. Its editors
responded to a subscriber, a Navy man wondering why Playboy's
editors endorsed lifting of the ban on homosexuality in the military.

The editors responded, "We represent sexual freedom for all." In
other words, any kind of orgasm was still okay. So Hefner's Playboy
Foundation has been a big contributor to gay causes. It still
contributes to what some call "the democratization of sex." I'd prefer
to call it "the depersonalization of sex."
How's that?
The gay culture had always treated sex as a-thing-in-itself. Penises
were always interchangeable. And I think it was all too easy for
elements within the straight culture of the 1960s and the 1970s to buy
into that. Some bright scientists, you may recall, had invented the
birth control pill in 1956. By the mid-sixties, novelists like lohn
Updike were giving us characters who copulated indiscriminately in
what they called "the post-Pill paradise." Women enlisted in that
paradise. They liked orgasms, too. Couples started trading partners in
orgy scenes —from commercial settings like Plato's Retreat, a former
gay bathhouse in Manhattan, to private, invitation-only, swingers'
clubs in suburban tract houses in LA's San Fernando Valley.
Improbably enough, there's a sex club now operating in Manhattan
that is much like the old Plato's Retreat, frequented by men and
women who are there to try anything sexual.
You're saying that straights were (and are) emulating gays?
Dennis Altman makes a good argument for this thesis in his book, The
Homosexualization of America. He published that book in 1982. By
then, the era of polymorphous perversity was almost 20 years old.
"Polymorphous perversity?"
Freud coined the term. For him, it was meant to describe a stage of
early childhood when little boys and little girls engage in a number of
sexual experimentations, instinctively and without restraint. In the
1960s, Norman O. Brown, a philosopher, brought back the term to
describe the experimental spirit of the age, a time when a number of
other intellectuals were pushing the notion that, "If it feels good, do
it."
What intellectuals?
Marcuse and Paul Goodman were among
Well, in the U.S., Herbert
the most influential. Their ideas drew a good deal of respectful
AIDS 211
attention among certain (mostly left-wing) intellectuals. But few

bothered to point out at the time that Paul Goodman was a
homosexual, and that he had his own private agenda to plant the —
idea that there really isn't much difference in the sexual roles of men
and women.
You speak as if that revolution was a bad thing. I thought Freudian

analysts served as cheerleaders for the sexual revolution.
My colleagues in psychoanalysis and I always took a middle ground

on sex. Sex one of nature's greatest gifts. We thought rigid
is
suppression of sexual instincts was wrong. So was wild abandon. We

were always seeking to discover what was good for human beings,
and what was bad for them, what made for growth and enrichment of
the personality and the self, and what made for their atrophy and
destruction. In short, we believed that good sex should help make the
world a better place for men and women, as individuals and as
members of society. It is my opinion that much of the so-called
sexual revolution didn't do that. That wholesale release of all sexual
expression that we saw in the 1960s and the 1970s led, paradoxically,
to the negation of sex in its healthiest manifestations. America
became the land of instant everything, instant satisfactions, instant
solutions, instant pleasures. And so we saw a proliferation of group
sex, the approval of sexual perversions, obscenity and pornography
that brutalized women, unrestrained sexual license, all kinds of
gender-role confusion, and the eradication of sex-role differences
between men and women.
We were talking about the sexual revolution bringing on the plague

ofAIDS. That seems like another big stretch.
Does it? I'd like to lean on an authority who should be unbiased: Larry
Kramer.
Larry Kramer, the playwright?

Yes. As is often the case, the artists in our society areway ahead of the
rest of us. In a Playboy interview published in September 1993,
Kramer, who is gay, said that it was Hugh Hefner's intention " and it —
was certainly the intention of the gay movement at the time —to make
sexuality a full, free, liberating experience. Well, it's turned out to be
everything but that." At this, the Playboy interviewer said, "Hold on...
the arrival of a deadly epidemic can hardly be blamed entirely on
people's exploring sexual knowledge and freedom." But Kramer stuck

to his guns. He "Whatever benefits the sexual revolution
said,
brought, it The road was taken for the most
also brought AIDS.
logical, and, perhaps, virtuous reasons. But in the end it proved to be
the wrong road. Let's face it: That's the life we were all leading, gay
and straight. But it cost too much." These are Larry Kramer's words:
"It proved to be the wrong road. It cost too much."
So you see a line of causality between the sexual revolution and

AIDS?
Yes. And the general permissiveness —as it extended to gays —got an
extra jolt of legitimacy when the American Psychiatric Association
took homosexuality off its list of disorders in 1973. In the previous
year, early in 1972, Dr. William H. Masters of St. Louis announced
that same-sex sex was "natural" and that he could teach homosexuals
how to have better orgasms. In effect, he raised the status of the anus
to the level of the vagina. With this kind of pseudo-scientific support
(from the eminent sexologist William Masters and the APA), gay
rights activists were able same-sex sex legitimized in certain
to get
legal venues. In 1981, the highest court in the State of New York held
the state's anti-sodomy law to be unconstitutional, which led to the
proliferation of gay bathhouses, not only in New York, but in other
cities where the laws were also changed: Chicago, Toronto, Los
Angeles, San Francisco. Up to then, these places operated on the
shadowy fringes of the law. Now they advertised openly. And the gays
were like the little boys in Pinocchio who were turned loose on the
candy mountains of Pleasure Island. They gobbled and were turned
into donkeys.
You say "gobbled. " What do you mean?

They had keep feeding an appetite that was only becoming more
to
voracious. They had to satisfy their escalating need for new thrills, the
only way to keep sex-in-itself from getting boring. They plunged into
traumatic sex — promiscuous, abusive, violent, brutal, vicious,
ramming sex that often tore the linings of intestines and rectum, so
that now, using poppers and speed to enhance the thrills, they were
exchanging semen and blood and feces with hundreds of partners,
thousands. Most of them started coming down with hepatitis. They
picked up venereal warts, and herpes. They got intestinal diseases,
like amebiasis and giardiasis. In the late 1970s, at the New York Gay
AIDS 213
Men's Health Project, 30 percent of the patients suffered from

gastrointestinal parasites. Randy Shilts reported that, between 1976
and 1980, shigellosis in San Francisco had increased 700 percent
among single men in their thirties. Incidence of "Gay Bowel
Syndrome" had increased by 8,000 percent after 1973. As Shilts told
the story in his book on AIDS, And the Band Played On, "Gay doctors
had long recognized that parasitic diseases... were simply a health
hazard of being gay. The problem grew with the popularity of anal
sex, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, because it was nearly
impossible to avoid contact with fecal matter during that act. As
sexual tastes grew more exotic and rimming became fashionable, the
problem exploded. There wasn't a much more efficient way to get a
dose of parasite spoor than by such direct ingestion."
What's "rimming?"
Oral-anal intercourse. One man's tongue inside the other man's
rectum.
Didn't they realize what was happening?

Very few in the gay community seemed to care about these waves of
infection. Shilts wrote, "Promiscuity... was central to the raucous gay
movement of the 1970s." He noted the commercial element here.
Hundreds of gay bath houses and sex clubs, a $100 million industry,
spanned the U.S. and Canada. "Bathhouse owners were frequently
gay political leaders as well, helping support the usually financially
starved gay groups. The businesses serviced men who had long been
repressed, gay activists told themselves, and were perhaps now going
to the extreme in exploring their new freedom. It would all balance
out later, so, for now, sex was part and parcel of political liberation.
The popular bestseller The Joy of Gay Sex, for example, called
rimming the 'prime taste treat in sex,' while a leftist Toronto
newspaper published a story on 'rimming as a revolutionary act.'"
And doctors said nothing?

Dan William, a gay doctor in New York who worked at the
Department of Public Health, tried to warn people. In one interview
published in 1980, he observed, "One effect of gay liberation is that
sex has been institutionalized and franchised. Twenty years ago,
there may have been a thousand men on any one night having sex in
New York baths or parks. Now there are ten or twenty thousand— at
the baths, the back-room bars, bookstores, porno theaters.... The

plethora of opportunities poses a public health problem that's
growing with every new bath in town." There wasn't much pretense
about going there for a steam bath, or, indeed, a bath of any kind.
These were sex clubs, pure and simple.
Why didn't the authorities take steps to close down the bathhouses
and the sex clubs?
One reason: money. In 1984, in San Francisco, the owners of the
bathhouses told some of the doctors: "Close the bathhouses? What's
the problem? We make money when they come to our bathhouses. If
they get AIDS, you make money by taking care of them." And then, of
course, politics. Always politics. Nobody wanted to offend the gay
community. In San Francisco, for instance, Mervyn Silverman,
appointed the city's health director in 1977, took pride in making
every decision by political consensus. And every community and
interest group in San Francisco had their own advisory groups to the
health department. There were 34 of them. Silverman listened to
them all. And, anyway, who really knew what would happen?
No one had any clues?

A few people did. Dr. Selma Dritz was one. She was the infectious
own health department. She said at a
disease specialist in Silverman's
meeting in 1980 of doctors at the University of California at San
Francisco Medical Center, "Too much is being transmitted. We've got
all these diseases going unchecked. There are so many opportunities
for transmission that, if something gets loose here, we're going to
have hell to pay." And Larry Kramer had a clue.
Kramer again.
he is, to me, a towering figure. Back in
Yes. In the history of AIDS,
1978, he had written a novel called Faggots. In the novel, his
protagonist, a Jewish screenwriter-producer, delivered a tirade that
was both a prophecy and a prescription: "Why do faggots have to fuck
so fucking much? It's as if we don't have anything else to do... all we
do is live in our Ghetto and dance and drug and fuck... there's a whole
world out there!... as much ours as theirs... I'm tired of being a New
York City-Fire Island faggot, I'm tired of using my body as a faceless
thing to lure another faceless thing, I want to love a Person! No
relationship in the world could survive the shit we lay on it." Kramer's
AIDS 215
protagonist told an unfaithful lover at the book's climax that he

needed to change his ways, "before you fuck yourself to death." Then
came news about the first cases of Kaposi's sarcoma in the U.S..
When was that?

In September 1979. Two New York City gays came down with it, a
schoolteacher and a model. It was a fairly benign form of cancer that
usually struck Jewish and Italian men in the sixth or seventh decade
of their lives, due to a compromising of their immune system,
secondary to aging. They developed some flat, painless purple lesions
and then died, much later, of something else. Now here were two
young homosexuals with Kaposi's. One of them told his doctor she
ought to talk to another homosexual who had the same rash. His
name was Gaetan Dugas, and he was a flight attendant for Air
Canada.
And who was he?

The disease detectives have fingered him as Patient Zero, in all
probability the first man on this continent to come down with what
was later called AIDS. Maybe he brought it from Paris. (Or maybe he
took it there.) In 1979, he was 28, blond, good looking, chic, sensual, a
charming Quebecois with a voracious sexual appetite who vacationed
in Mexico and the Caribbean, made it a point of being in San
Francisco for the annual gay festivals every June, and would soon
become a fixture at pool parties in Los Angeles and on New York's
Fire Island.
How long did it take him to realize that he might he giving AIDS to
others?
He was diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma in 1980. But it took him

more than three years to die— of AIDS. During that time, the
international medical community was hard at work, trying to figure
out the cause of this new plague, one that was killing off male
homosexuals with this "gay cancer" that produced the large purple
lesions, Kaposi's sarcoma, or with "gay pneumonia," Pneumocystis
carinii pneumonia, or with several other opportunistic diseases that
took hold in a man when his immune system was down.
And people knew about Dugas and did nothing?

Gaetan Dugas's sexual prowling had reached legendary proportions
in the gay community. But no one did anything about him, and the
man didn't do anything about himself. He couldn't face the truth
about himself. He was in what I believe the 12-step people call
"denial," a form of self deception. In his book on the AIDS plague,
Randy Shilts reports a conversation that Dugas had in early 1983 with
his best friend, also a flight attendant. The
friend suggested that
anyone with AIDS should stop having "They can't tell me that
sex.
having sex is going to transmit it," said Dugas. "They haven't proved
it yet." His friend said that if there even the slightest possibility....
Dugas said he supposed his friend was right. He shouldn't do it any

more. But he did. One of his tricks tracked him down to confront him
about his having AIDS. By the time they were done talking, according
to Shilts, "Gaetan had charmed the man back into bed."
But he knew what he was doing?

Yes. Shilts reports that Dugas had moved to San Francisco in
November 1982. By then, he was aware that investigators for the
Center for Disease Control in Atlanta were questioning some of his
old boyfriends. At first, he was telling people that "cancer is not
contagious." He was still enjoying the easy bathhouse sex. Later, he
got bolder, even dared to tell his sexual partners, "I have gay cancer
and maybe you'll get it, too." It didn't take long for this news to reach
Dr. Selma Dritz at the health department in San Francisco. When she
tracked down Dugas, he told her, "It's none of your goddamn
business. It's my right to do what I want with my own body." She said
it was not his right to give other people disease, that he was making
decisions for their bodies. He said that it was their duty to protect
themselves. "They know what's going on there. They've heard about
this disease."
What did she do?

She tried to have him locked up, but the city attorneys in San
Francisco said there was no precedent for such a thing. In some
places now, they have laws on the books; if you know you have AIDS
and have sex with someone, you can be charged with attempted
murder. But in the early years, there was a lot of denial. People didn't
want to face facts. Most particularly gays. Gay doctors at the CDC
—
refused to use the term GRID Gay Related Immunodeficiency
Syndrome. Members of the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York,
refused to tell the gay community they should stop having sex with
AIDS 217
one another. The GMHC newsletter issued in July 1982 presented

various views on what to do about this year-old epidemic. One article
— —
told gays mistakenly that they needed only to cut down the
number of their sex partners, advising them that, "It is the number of
sexual partners, not sex itself, that increases risk." A gay sociologist
sneered at even that. It contributed to panic, he said, which was
unjustified in face of the fact that "278 cases out of a possible 11
million [gay men in America] hardly constitutes an epidemic." Larry
Kramer confronted the board members of a group that he had
founded, the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City. They told
him, "We don't want to get into the business of telling people what to
do in bed." Kramer said he thought that's exactly what you had to do
during an epidemic of a sexually transmitted disease.
But did they really know, then, that this was a sexually transmitted
disease?
They didn't, not for sure. Besides, they were beginning to get reports
that drug addicts and hemophiliacs were also coming down with the
still-unnamed disease, whatever it was, and whatever caused it. But it
wasn't until January 30, 1984 that the Pasteur Institute in Paris proved
to the world they had isolated what they thought was the virus behind
the epidemic. They called it LAV, lymphadenopathy-associated virus,
or a virus that attacks and disables the white blood cells that normally
ward off infection. These white blood cells, called helper T-cells,
normally serve to activate other cells which produce antibodies that
attack invading organisms. But, when
AIDS virus invades these
the
white blood cells, the T-cells lose their normal role and become,
instead, factories for the production of more AIDS virus. In the
process, the T-cells disappear, and in short order the immune system
disappears, too. American researchers, led by Dr. Robert Gallo of the
National Cancer Institute, were reluctant to give the French credit for
discovering anything. Finally, Dr. Gallo came up with his discovery of
the virus that causes AIDS, something he calls HTLV-III: human T-cell
lymphotrophic retrovirus. Then they started saying that the agent
that causes AIDS is "HTLV-III /LAV."
It sounds like an international compromise. Are they absolutely sure

now that the cause ofAIDS is a virus called HTLV-III/LAV?"
No. And they don't even speak of HTLV-III/LAV any more. Now,
someone who tests positive for the human immunodeficiency virus is
said to be "HIV positive." There's some dispute about what

still
specific agent actually causes AIDS. Maybe that's because the virus
keeps on changing, and that, maybe, it's not one virus at all, but a
whole gang of them. They already know that the virus (or viruses) not
only attack the immune system; they also spread to the nervous
system, and cause progressive brain disease.
Are there any effective vaccines now that can prevent someone from
becoming HIV positive?
No. And it some time to come.
doesn't look like there will be any for
At the tenth annual international AIDS conference, held in Yokohama
in 1994, reports on all the research-in-progress were uniformly bleak.
And, needless to say, there's no cure envisioned for those who are
already HIV positive. A report given at a 1991 international
conference on AIDS made it pretty clear that AZT, one of the more
popular drugs being given to people who are HIV, "neither prolongs
life nor delays the onset of AIDS."
Why not?
For years, we thought that infection by HIV, the human
immunodeficiency virus, was a gradual process in which the virus
acts slowly to undermine the immune system. According to two
breakthrough studies whose results were released in lanuary 1995, we
know now that the virus and the immune system engage in a pitched
battle from the very start of the infection. Each day millions of new
virus particles are produced and millions are killed by the immune
system. But the immune system's losses are also staggering, with up
to one billion infected cells dying and replaced each day. The virus
wins in the end, not only because it has a slight statistical edge in the
fight, but because the AIDS virus keeps developing mutants that are
almost instantaneously resistant to new drugs.
Who did this study?

It came from the labs of two leading AIDS researchers, Dr. David Ho,
director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York,
and Dr. George M. Shaw of the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
Their findings were published in Nature, a prominent scientific
journal in London. As part of his study, Dr. Shaw gave a drug called
nevirapine to people with AIDS virus infections. That drug destroyed
99 percent of the virus in these patients. But, in only two days, mutant
AIDS 219
viruses resistant to the drug sprang up to take the place of the old
microbes. Two weeks later, virtually every virus produced in these
patients was resistant to that drug. In most patients, this is a battle
that goes on for as long as ten years, until, finally, the virus wins.
So HIV is always a death sentence?

Not always. There are a few —we really don't know how many—who
are HIV but live for ten years or more without developing any AIDS-
related symptoms or demonstrating any T-cell evidence of
progression to AIDS. Researchers are doing studies on these "long-
term non-progressors." They may hold key clues to the puzzle of
AIDS. But, so far, epidemiologists have uncovered no single biological
factor to explain why they have a more favorable course than the
others. It may simply be a genetic accident. But, if that is so, it is
possible that bio-engineering and gene-splicing may provide a cure

for AIDS.
It sounds like Congressman Waxman of California may be right.

Waxman?
He says the nation needs to find the cause and the cure of AIDS, no
matter what it costs, even if it costs as much as the Manhattan
Project. That was the super-secret, super-expensive scientific and
engineering effort that developed the A-bomb.
That would be a great thing, to find a cure.
I have been encouraged by
news reports in February 1995 that some researchers are making

some progress by treating AIDS not with one vaccine, but with a
whole panoply of different drugs. But the federal government hasn't
been using AIDS money very wisely. For a time, the government was
spending significant monies on clinical trials of potential new drugs,
and on vaccine which there was little or no scientific
studies, for
was being scanted. That emphasis was
rationale, while basic research
changed under the direction of Dr. William E. Paul, federal
coordinator of AIDS research, who told a news conference in August
1994 that the government was then starting to provide more funds for
pure research on "basic unsolved problems related to AIDS and HIV."
Otherwise, he said, "we may find that a decade from now we are no
further along in our struggle."
Where did the federal government go wrong?

Those in charge of the funding found it hard to resist cries from the
AIDS community, demanding the government go full speed ahead in
—
a race to find a cure at a time when no one knew which way to go.
And then, going full speed ahead, the government put millions of
dollars into targeted programs to develop and test drugs and
vaccines, and created a huge research infrastructure. It was very hard
to reverse momentum. Now, every time the government tries to move
research dollars from one set of researchers to another, it gets loud
objections.
Is this the only way to stop an epidemic —with drugs and vaccines?
For other contagious diseases, like tuberculosis, for example, we have
tests, and we try give them to everyone. But, we do not have any
universal testing for AIDS. We have not chosen to quarantine for
AIDS, as we do for a number of contagious diseases. We have,
instead, provided the public with disinformation about AIDS.
Why is that?
From the beginning of the epidemic, the gay community has
consistently given their own rights to a so-called privacy an
overwhelming priority over saving lives. In the early 1980s, Dr.
Stephen loseph, the commissioner of health in New York City,
advocated contact tracing and widespread testing. AIDS activists
called him an enemy of privacy and drove him from office. The New
York State Health Commissioner, David Axelrod, refused to classify
AIDS as a sexually transmitted disease. As a result, the testing and
notification program that applied to syphilis and gonorrhea still do
not apply to HIV in New York. And gay politics have, up to now,
prevented the State of New York from informing pregnant mothers
that they have AIDS.
Informing pregnant mothers?

A significant federal study has shown that the babies of mothers with
AIDS who are given a drug called AZT are three times less likely to be
born HIV positive. Given that information, some public health
officials want all pregnant mothers to be tested for AIDS, so that those
who are HIV positive can be given AZT.
Would the testing be mandatory or voluntary?

There's an argument about this. Dr. Philip Pizzo, chief of pediatrics at
AIDS 221
the National Cancer Institute, wants mandatory testing, so that no

pregnant woman with HIV fails to be
"To say there's a
identified.
possibility of preventing— not just attenuating but preventing—
infection in two-thirds of infants...."
And on the other side?

Any talk about mandatory testing triggers anxiety — indeed,
paranoia — in the gay community. And, so far, their anxieties have
prevailed— at least in New York.
Which leaves us where?

I'll just quote Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at
the University of Pennsylvania. "It seems to me," Dr. Caplan told The
New York Times, "that despite all the verbiage, this isn't such a
complicated moral call. If you can prevent a young child from being
infected, it would seem to me that you are under an obligation to take
the steps necessary to prevent that harm." He added that the real
debate was not over testing, but, rather, "a fight to make sure that
testing remains confidential." The solution, he said, was to address
those concerns about confidentiality. "To give a kid a preventable
case of AIDS in the name of civil rights seems wrong."
Has the federal government done enough in face of the AIDS crisis?
AIDS made appearance just about the time that Pres. Reagan took
its
office. But his administration nickel-and-dimed its way through the
epidemic. His people thought at first they could ignore "gay cancer."
If it was a gay disease, then prevention was easy: just tell the gays to
practice safe sex, or no sex. And if it was cancer, well, everyone knew
cancer wasn't contagious. On that, of course, they were proven
wrong.
But even when the Reagan Administration knew what was

happening, it didn't do all that much. Neither did the Bush
Administration.
As far as treatment for AIDS was concerned, nobody knew what to do.
We still don't. We can treat some of the associated diseases, like HIV-
related pneumonia, for example. But there's still no cure for AIDS. As
for prevention, George Bush had his answer. He told the gay
community they should change their lifestyle.
You mean practice "safe sex?"

If there is such a thing. We see ads in the gay tabloids, and in the gay
magazines: those who are HIV positive are bidden to come and have
safe sex together. But I think the only "safe sex" is masturbation. Or
no sex commit to a monogamous relationship
until you're ready to
with a partner whoHIV positive (if you can tell, and you really
isn't
can't). Or sex-for-two that keeps any bodily fluids away from anus,
lips, penis, or vagina. Some gays advocate circle jerks mutual —
masturbation while sitting around in a circle. Some gays talk about
having sex in one another's armpits. But let's face it, you can't tell a
man who's caught up in his imperative needs not to have sex

anymore. As Michael Kimmel and Martin Levine, two U.S.
sociologists, described the situation for most men and for sexually
hyperactive gay males, "Safe sex is an oxymoron. That which is sexy is
not safe; that which is safe is not sexy." And then there is the political
problem in the gay community itself.
Political problem?
From the very beginning of the epidemic, gay politics obstructed all
manner of common-sense solutions to the AIDS crisis. Some doctors
were suggesting, for instance, that gays not be permitted to donate
(or sell) their blood. But a gay physician in New York, Dr. Roger
Enlow, had argued persuasively in July 1982 that it was too early to
push for guidelines. Any such move would have implications, he said,
for the civil rights of gays. Officials at the Center for Disease Control
were too-long-reluctant to sound any public alarms. Their excuse was
that they didn't want to offend the gays or inflame the so-called
homophobes.
And if they were inflamed? What would happen then?

Who knows? Despite the power of the gay activists in this country,
there have been some among them who warn the gay community to
watch out for official repression. Some say there are elements in this
nation who want to impose a general AIDS quarantine maybe even —
force all HIV positives and people with AIDS to some kind of Devil's
Island, or leper colony.
Any danger of that happening?

If there ever were, I happening now. We have gone too far
can't see it
in allowing the epidemic to spread. We may have a million people in

this country who are HIV positive. Most of them are homosexual
AIDS 223
males. Some of them are drug users who got AIDS by sharing a needle
with someone who had AIDS. Maybe five percent are women who got
it from having sex with one or another of the above. And now there
are some tiny babies who get AIDS in their mothers' wombs. Or from
their breast milk.You can't repatriate a million of these people and
ship them off to some Molokai.
President Castro of Cuba has tested everyone and quarantined

everyone who is HIV positive, and that, reportedly, has cut down the
incidence ofAIDS in Cuba.
Yes. In October 1993, CBS's "60 Minutes" had a good report on the
moves in Cuba, where they stopped all blood imports from abroad in
1985, and made an effort to give HIV tests to more than a half million
Cubans who had been working abroad. Those identified with AIDS
were put in sanitariums, where they exchanged their freedom for free
rent, free anti-viral medications, good kitchens, and an extension of
their previous salaries.
How effective was the move?

Cubans with AIDS are getting better care than many Americans with
AIDS, and they have twice the life expectancy of other AIDS patients
in any Third World country. And Cuba itself has contained the AIDS
epidemic. No other nation has been able to do as well.
But Cuba has done it by putting thousands in compounds.

Not thousands. According to a Feb. 7, 1993, letter to the editor of the
New England Journal of Medicine from three California health
professionals, "Cuba now has 13 sanitariums housing 927 patients
seropositive for HIV." These professionals spoke very highly of the
care given to AIDS patients in Cuba. "We found an enclosed,
landscaped, suburban community that included houses, apartments,
a dormitory, a library, recreational facilities, a clinic, and an
infirmary. Medical care is provided by a team including physicians,
social workers, nurses and psychiatrists. Home visits are frequent,
and we observed close interpersonal relationships between health
care providers and residents."
Dr. Stephen Joseph, the former health commissioner in New York

City, went along to Cuba with the crew from "60 Minutes." He said
there was a tradeoff: "For every person in the sanitarium, there are
thousands of Cuban women and... children who are not infected with
the virus today. " Dr. Nancy Shepherd Hughes, a professor of medical
anthropology at the University of California, who has been studying
the Cuban experiment for three years, approves of this "blend of care
and coercion." She says, "This sanitarium is not a prison. This is not
to punish but to prolong and protect society." (Incidentally, "60
life
Minutes" reported an overwhelming number of letters supporting

Castro's solution.)
Do you think the Cuban solution is likely here?

No. I don't think Americans in general would approve the quarantine.
There are too many chances for abuse. We value freedom too much
in America. But we could follow Cuba's lead on testing and tracking.
Indeed, this is not a Cuban idea. Since the 19th century, the U.S. has
used testing and tracking for syphilis and gonorrhea. But we won't do
it for AIDS.
Why not?
Gay politics. Gays wouldn't stand for it. Too bad. But for that, we
might have contained the plague. On "60 Minutes," Dr. loseph said,
"We made a fundamental mistake in the United States. We've viewed
AIDS as a civil liberties emergency that had important public health
implications. But it's a public health emergency that has important
civil liberty implications."
So what's the answer?

At this point, all we can do is appeal to the most responsible elements
in the gay community itself.
You're saying the real control on HIV positives and on people with
AIDS has to come from themselves?
Yes. And I think the real danger in this country is not doing too much
to stop the epidemic, but too little. We have to work on official and
unofficial indifference —
and group rivalries which can stop almost
anything (good or bad) from happening in this country. Recall the
fiasco surrounding the U.S. blood supply and the turf fight between
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Center for Disease
Control. The FDA had control of the nation's blood supply, and they
resented moves by the CDC to invade their territory with scare stories
about some as-yet-unnamed disease that might be contaminating it.
As a result, a majority of the nation's hemophiliacs (people whose
—
AIDS 225
disease regular blood transfusions) now carry AIDS and are

demands
dying. There an uneven clash between private greed and official
is
—
indifference from those in science, government, the mass media
and public health officials. Also the gay movement itself has been
blind to a great opportunity to help itself.
What could they do?

They could stop the epidemic tomorrow by demanding epidemic
—
control, through established mechanisms of testing and quarantine,
at least quarantine for some. Tom Stoddard knows that these
mechanisms can help save lives. He wrote not long ago in The New
York Times that while there is no cure for AIDS, in many cases the
related infections that actually kill people can be stopped through
antibiotics. He himself developed HIV-related pneumonia, but
doctors could only prescribe antibiotics for him after he was tested
positive for HIV. found it interesting that Stoddard would, in this
I
same Op Ed piece in The Times, cite a 1992 study at Howard

University Hospital in Washington that reported 41 percent of the
people who died there of AIDS had never been diagnosed with it. Nat
Hentoff, the editorial columnist and First Amendment scholar, said
that, for these people, "silence —
lack of testing and contact tracing
equaled death."
Will gays reverse their long-standing resistance to testing and contact

tracing?
No. Not if recent past history tells us anything. From the beginning,
at leastby the mid-1980s, they knew the facts, but chose not to act.
—
They chose freedom the freedom to deceive themselves, and the
public. You should read And the Band Played On, by Randy Shilts. If
you've seen the HBO movie version, read the book anyway. It
presents a truer story, the whole story, before gay activists put their
spin on it in the movie version.
/ understand that Shilts came down with AIDS?

Yes, and he died
in 1994. That was a real tragedy. Even though he was
gay,he could say who and what was causing "this infernal epidemic."
He said the epidemic "was about sex, and it was about homosexuals."
Shilts was a good reporter.

Yes. His inside reporting about all the official stupidities in the early
AIDS is absorbing stuff. I recall his account of a summit
years of
meeting of all the different constituencies in the City's gay
community on March 31, 1983, at the Belli mansion in San Francisco.
Dr. Robert Bolan of the Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, who
—
was gay, gave them the bad news and, at that time, it was news: they
had to avoid contact with all bodily fluids. Bolan said, "That would
include semen, urine, saliva, and blood. This is the big enchilada,
guys. You don't get a second chance, once you get this." County
Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver, a longtime ally of the gay community,
immediately suggested that the health department should get a court
order to shut down the gay bathhouses. She was heckled into silence.
Shilts says these gay leaders couldn't heed a call to arms against an
epidemic. They were more concerned with pleasing their own
constituency. In San Francisco, that meant keeping their playpens
open. At the time, perhaps one percent of San Francisco's gay
population had shown signs of AIDS. They finally closed the
—
bathhouses in San Francisco in 1985 when no one could deny that
the doors of the bathhouses were doors of death.
So the bathhouses are now closed?

No. A new wave of sex clubs has now crested to take their place.
But, back in the 1980s, wasn't anyone in the gay community
speaking out?
Larry Kramer was.
What did Kramer do?

There had only been 41 AIDS victims when he figured out what was
happening. He said, "I just knew it was going to be awful." So he
started to write. First it was a series of essays and letters to the editor
of a gay weekly, the New York Native. They've been collected in a
book, Reports from the Holocaust. Then, in early March 1983, he
wrote a bombshell of a piece for The Native. It was headlined "1,112
and Counting." He chided the Center for Disease Control for not
gathering the data that could tell gays how AIDS was being
transmitted, through which bodily fluids, by which sexual behaviors,
in what social environments. He attacked The New York Times for its
scant AIDS coverage. He excoriated Mayor Ed Koch for not doing
enough about AIDS. (In fact, Koch had to battle gays themselves and
even city and state health commissioners who didn't want any
r
AIDS 227
stronger actions taken in New York.)

Did anyone else start listening to Kramer's warnings?
The Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco's gay newspaper, re-printed
Kramer's entire article, "1,112 and Counting," and its editor also
—
made a confession that the Reporter hadn't been covering the AIDS
—
epidemic because, he thought that gays owned their own bodies,
and that included ownership of the way they wanted to die. Now, the
Reporter would "up the noise level on AIDS and the fatal furies that
follow in its wake." Soon after, officials in San Francisco set up a
specialAIDS ward at the San Francisco General Hospital (a move, by

the way, that was denounced by New York's Director Enlow as
nothing more than a leper colony). And then San Francisco
Congressman Philip Burton introduced a resolution in Congress
asking for $10 million for research by the CDC. Congresswoman
Barbara Boxer, the other representative from San Francisco, launched
bill to send another $20 million to the National Institutes of
a parallel
Health for studies on AIDS. At last, it seemed that people were
starting to listen to Kramer's message.
And what was Kramer's message?

To Kramer, no one was doing enough about AIDS, not any of agencies
in the federal government, not the City of New York, not the media,
not even the gay media or the gay community itself. But he put the
onus of the burden on his fellow gays. He wrote, "I am sick of guys
who moan that giving up careless sex until this thing blows over is
worse than death. How can they value life so little and cocks and
asses so much?"
You have an answer to that question?

It's what I've been saying all along. Many men who are into same-sex
sex can't control themselves. Even at the risk of death. They are
moved by a force over which they have no control. Furthermore,
infection spreads among men having same-sex sex in a geometrical
progression. They get it, and pass it on. Like anyone with a sexual
deviation, like the pedophile, the exhibitionist, the voyeur, they will
experience anxiety, depression, and other serious psychological
symptoms unless and until they do what their particular compulsions
dictate. Their sexual enactments are like medicine to them. And they
are so caught up in these compulsions that they have also been
compelled to play politics on the AIDS issue. By their pressure tactics,
and their disinformation campaigns, they have gotten in the way of
doctors and anyone who has wanted to do something about this
plague.
Disinformation campaigns?
Shilts —
used the term AIDSpeak referring to all the double talk this
nation had been getting about AIDS for the past decade. Let's face it.
The AIDS establishment in this country is less interested in saving
lives than promoting the gay agenda. This establishment has forced
—
the suppression of the truth about AIDS in the movie industry, in
business, in the media, in schools and colleges and universities, in
medical societies, in medical schools, in hospitals, and in every level
of government. Doctors who speak out are threatened with lawsuits,
firing, loss of license, expulsion from their professional societies,
severely bodily harm, even death.
Those who try to speak out about AIDS, or those who speak out about
homosexuality?
Both. In a way, when I am speaking out about the causes and cure of
this disorder, my words are a prescription that will help prevent AIDS
over the long term.
And you've been attacked?

Yes. have had hate mail, midnight telephone calls, threats on my
I
life. have been followed to meetings. I was put on a national

I
enemies list by a group that the New York City police commissioner
called "a legitimate terrorist organization." I have this outfit's own
letter, which said it would be contacting everyone on the list, and
attempt to "raise their level of consciousness." There was something

very sinister about that phrase, as used in this context.
Who was on the list?

Dr. Bieber and I. Dr. David Reuben, Midge Decter, Cardinal
Spellman. The pope was on the So was William Safire of The New
list.
York Times, and lohn Simon, then writing for New York Magazine.
Whoever wrote the letter said the organization would add other
politicians, writers, psychiatrists, journalists, TV and film producers
to the list as they saw fit. But gay politics got a lot more serious than
that.
AIDS 229
Has gay politics affected your own profession?

Well, I've already told you about the gay coteries inside the American
Psychiatric Association, and their successful efforts to take
homosexuality off the list of disorders, and to discredit any
psychiatrists or psychoanalysts who wanted to treat homosexuality.
As a result, psychiatry has discredited itself in the eyes of many young
medical students. Harvard Medical School used to send as many as
20 doctors a year into psychiatry. Now the profession is lucky to get
two or three. This year, one Harvard grad is going into psychiatry.
Robert Campbell, who is gay, has been the editor of Psychiatric News
for more than 25 years, and that gives him a great deal of power.
Because of gay politics, several students at the Albert Einstein College
of Medicine have been warned not to write their theses on the
psychogenesis of homosexuality. Lecture courses on sexual
deviations are being phased out there and in a majority of medical
schools. I used to teach about homosexuality at Albert Einstein, but I
haven't been asked recently. The medical profession itself has long
looked to psychiatry for guidance on matters beyond their med
school training. But we don't give this guidance anymore. We've been
all but silenced.
Why did you let yourselves be silenced?

Can I tell you a story? In 1976, the psychiatric profession called a
symposium on the psychogenesis of homosexuality. We had all the
big guns in attendance —Bieber, Ethel Person, Herbert Hendin—and
a big, distinguished audience gathered in the stately halls of the New
York Academy of Medicine. The meeting ended almost as soon as it
began. It would be the profession's last attempt to have a public
dialogue on homosexuality.
What happened?
Hours before the meeting, gay activists surrounded the hall, men with
torches and police whistlesand amplifiers blaring forth the sounds of
barking dogs. They lay down in the atrium to prevent people from
entering the hall. When the meeting was finally called to order by Dr.
Arnold Cooper of Cornell Medical College, gays who had already
taken strategically scattered seats throughout the auditorium turned
to people around them and excoriated them for their very presence in
the hall. Everyone was very intimidated. Many rose and left the hall.
Dr. Cooper just called the meeting to a halt. And that was the last
serious public attempt by medical men and women to inform

themselves about homosexuality as a disorder. And now these same
professionals tend to deal with the homosexuality-and-AIDS problem
by preaching the use of condoms.
i(
Isn 't that what they call safe sex?"
Condoms don't make sex safe. People fail to use condoms correctly,
or to use them at even in high risk situations. One survey of
all,
college women in 1989 indicated that only 41 percent of them

insisted on condom use during intercourse. You'd expect college
women to be more prudent than any other group in our population,
wouldn't you? If so, you'd be right. Other studies indicate that
— —
teenagers and gays are even less likely to insist on condoms. In
one San Francisco survey done in lune of 1990, nearly half of the
teenagers said "sex without condoms is worth the risk of AIDS." A
Canadian survey of white, middle-class college students in 1991
found that while 80 percent knew condoms were the best protection
against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, only 19 percent
used them. What's more, as some doctors have pointed out, condoms
fail. "They slip. They break. They leak." Madame de Sevigne, a noted
savant, made the same observation in 1671. She said that a condom
was "a spider web against danger."
Presumably, they hadn't yet invented latex in 1671.

The safety of the latex condom has been oversold. Dr. C. Everett
Koop, surgeon general of the United States, had virtually identified
condoms with "safe sex." But he retracted that statement in an
interview with The Los Angeles Times on September 22, 1987. And it
wasn't a moment too soon, Very shortly after that, the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration found that about 20 percent of all condoms
made in the U.S. didn't measure up to standards; the FDA had to
recall millions of them. The National Institutes of Health further
destroyed the safe- sex condom myth after their first serious, scientific
study —
came up in 1988 with the bad news that only one brand of
condom was effective in blocking penetration of the AIDS virus. It
was the Mentor condom, and it tested out at 98.9 percent. But all the
other brands rated far below that. The next two on the list, Ramses
Non-Lube, and Ramses Sensitol, scored 91.3. The next five rated at
85.2 or lower in the 80 percent bracket, ten rated in the 70 percent
bracket, nine were only sixty percent effective, and one, Contracept
r
—
AIDS 231
Plus, had a rating of 21.3.
What study was that?

The one done in collaboration with researchers at the University of
Southern California and at the University of California at Los Angeles
under the direction of Dr. Roger Detels of UCLA. Early results were
carried in The Los Angeles Times on June 29, 1988. Another later study
done by the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston showed
that condoms were only 69 percent effective against the transmission
of HIV in heterosexual couples. The 69 percent was an average,
computed from a data base of 1 1 different studies of 593 partners of
HIV-infected people. Actual effectiveness of the condom was as low
as 46 percent in some cases, but only as high as 82 percent in the best
instances. It was published by Dr. Susan Weller, on the faculty at
Galveston, in the June 1993 issue of Social Science and Medicine.
Where was the prior USC-UCIA study published?

That study was never completed. The people at the NIH canceled the
project entirely because they quickly saw that condoms were simply
too risky. The government didn't want homosexual subjects who
were using condoms, even under controlled conditions, to come back
months (or years) later with the news that the condoms had failed
and that they had contracted AIDS as a result. The government might
have to pay out millions of dollars in damages.
But aren't school kids still being taught that condoms equal "safe
sex?" The schools in New York and Los Angeles, among other places,
are still handing out condoms.
Yes. They are doing that because, obviously, eighty percent is better
than zero percent —that is, using a condom is better than not using
one at all. Nevertheless, they're selling the condom
solution with a
myth: that condoms equal "safe sex." Three years after publication of
the USC-UCLA study, people were still believing the myth. Magic
Johnson told the world he had AIDS in November of 1991, and called
a news conference to say to the youth of the land, "I am here to tell
you you can have safe sex." He was mistaken, and he corrected the
record a few weeks later. But, in fact, he had been urging young
people to use condoms, as if that would do the trick in high risk
situations.
What are high risk situations?

During casual sex —that is, with a partner you don't know anything,
or very little, about. Or with someone who is very sexually active. Or
with someone who has sex with gays or bisexuals. Or, worst of all,
having anal sex. Some condoms may help. Better a latex condom
than nothing. But condoms are most likely to break during anal sex.
Dr. Cecil Fox, an HIV transmission expert working at the National
Cancer Institute, told the LA Times in 1988, "Anal intercourse is too
dangerous to be practiced under any circumstances." In the context,
he meant with or without a condom.
But hasn't the gay community turned things around with various
education programs?
Of course not. Some gays aren't using condoms at all. A report at the
international AIDS conference in Florence in 1991 indicated there
was "a second wave of the AIDS epidemic passing through the gay
community," because younger gays were engaging in a high level of
unsafe sex practices, including oral sex.
These findings indicate that all the information campaigns in the

San Francisco area aren't doing much good.
Apparently not among the younger gays. In its final report of 1993,
the National Commission on AIDS said that "while HIV transmission
among older men who have sex with men is sharply reduced from the
early 1980s, transmission continues at high levels in younger gay
men." The researchers reported that a number of their respondents
had "feelings of invulnerability characteristic of youth." Some
justified risky behavior based on a partner's "healthy appearance." Or
on the notion that AIDS afflicted older men. Some said their
judgment was impaired by drugs and alcohol.
Did they know that they could get AIDS from oral sex?
My patients tell me there's a myth going around that you can't get
AIDS from oral sex. I read recently in The New York Times that gays
still sit around debating both sides of the question, which tells me
that some of them won't stop having unprotected oral sex. And I read
in The Culture of Desire by Frank Browning, a gay reporter for
National Public Radio, that the gay community in 1993 had left aside
any pretense at what they were calling "safe sex" a few years before.
Now, according to Browning's book, they are plunging witlessly into
unprotected sex, even oral sex, even anal sex, particularly in
AIDS 233
California. Browning wrote: "Californians tend to gobble one another

up with little thought to condoms."
And, you look at the ads in the gay press of New York, Los Angeles
if
and San Francisco, you will see that little has changed. Here's a
classified ad from a recent issue of The Advocate that's typical:
HAND 'N FIST

Sadomaster
Uses flexible hands/fists to bring
satisfaction to
TITS, BALLS, HOLES
Whine to Bruno
(212) 475-xxxx
Dr. Lorraine Day, who was an orthopedic surgeon at the San

Francisco General Hospital, says, "They could stop the epidemic
tomorrow if they simply had sex with one person and one person
only, someone who had the same HIV- status as they. But they won't
do that. They won't stop, because they have an addiction." Michael
Warner, writing in The Village Voice in 1995, says he wants risky sex
"knowing that danger is part of the attraction." Despite the danger,
gay male sexis still sadistic, masochistic, promiscuous, hedonistic,
contemptuous, anonymous, and unhygienic. And compulsive.
How can they keep going on that way?

Browning quotes Yoel Kahn, a young gay rabbi in San Francisco.
"AIDS is like the Holocaust, in that we have to go on living as though
it were not happening, just as Jews in the camps could bear their
existence only by living as though they were not facing death in the
gas chambers and the ovens."
But isn't that very unreal?

Yes. That's part of the gay pathology. Rabbi Kahn says gays must "go
on living asan act of positive resistance, not in denial of disease but
in spite of it," even though they know elsewhere in their minds that
they "will surely succumb to it." Browning obviously agreed with him.
He recalled a line of Jean-Paul Sartre about his own life in the French
Resistance. Sartre was never so free, he said, as when the Gestapo was
on every corner. Many in the gay community are living that kind of
life. "The life of resistance," according to Browning, "is at once
spiritual, militantly political, and irrepressibly intimate in its sense of

collective nurturing."
Very poetic. But also very sad.
Well, if they don't think they can sublimate their need for same-sex
sex, what else can they do? A wise man once observed that "a great
deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for
illusion is deep." Life goes on, even if it is only a few more months, or,
in the case of some, a few more years. They can buy time with AZT (if
they, or their insurance carriers, or the taxpayers can afford it), or

with aerosolized pentamadine, Bactrim, foscarnet or ddl or ddC or
any of a score of emerging drugs. That's the American way. There's
always a quick, technological fix for everything; there ought to be a
quick fix for AIDS, too.
And you re saying there isn 't a quick fix?

f
That's what all the experts tell us now. As of the spring of 1994, there
were only a handful of HIV positive men 139 in the entire U.S. —
—
population who had resisted AIDS for 10 years or more. Dr. Day
says, "As late as 1987, we were told that only ten to twenty percent of
people who turn HIV positive would develop AIDS and die. We now
know with virtual certainty that anybody carrying the virus is carrying
his final script.... Most victims are given a decade. These people have
been sentenced to a slow, undignified and painful death... victims of
our appalling ignorance, crusading patronage, social cowardice,
pressure politics, medical inertia and AIDSpeak." —
Some more examples ofAIDSpeak?
Dr. Day fought with the medical establishment in San Francisco. She
had insisted that patients be tested for HIV before she and her teams
operated on them. But she lost the battle, and, after taking her story
to TV's "60 Minutes," she resigned and wrote a book on AIDS. Here's
what Dr. Day said about AIDSpeak: "We were told that AIDS was a
form of cancer, and that cancer wasn't contagious. We were told that
women couldn't get it, that children couldn't get it, that blood
transfusions couldn't give it to us, that dentists couldn't give it to us,
that health workers couldn't get it from needle sticks, that AIDS
wasn't linked to the number of heterosexual partners, or even to sex
with prostitutes, much less to conventional other-sex sex. Now we
know we were told wrong on all of the above."
AIDS 235
You've mentioned dentists, which means dentists in general Isn't it a

fact that only one of our nation's dentists, a doctor in Stuart, Florida,
who died of AIDS in 1990, gave AIDS to six of his patients? And that
there's no proof, so far, that health care workers who are HIV positive
have infected other patients?
You're talking about Dr. David J. Acer, whose patient Kimberly
Bergalis attained a good deal of visibility before she died of AIDS in
1992. Well, they haven't really solved the Dr. Acer mystery yet. But it is
pretty clear that, since AIDS is a blood-born disease, his patients

became infected because he didn't take some precautions he should
have taken. Now, I understand, all dentists are much more careful to
sterilize their drills and other instruments, always use rubber gloves,
things like that. They call them "universal precautions."
But what about the larger issue? So far, no studies have

demonstrated that health care workers with HIV or AIDS can infect
their patients.
Those studies were flawed. Four studies followed the patients of 57

HIV positive health care workers and showed none of some 19,000
patients to be infected. But more than half of their patients were
never traced. Moreover, the patients traced who had other risk factors
were thrown out of the study. They might have turned up HIV
positive; their DNA might have been linked to the health care person
who worked on them. But we will never know. Finally, there are at
least 50,000 health care workers who are HIV positive who have not
volunteered for studies to determine if their patients were infected.
We have to wonder what other surprises lie in waitfor us.

Yes. Well, Dr. Day advises us to be on the lookout for AIDSpeak from
special interest groups. "Off and on," she writes, "you will hear that
the disease has 'peaked' — in the San Francisco gay community, for
example, [where] 'new infections have leveled off sharply.'" She adds,
trenchantly: "New infections always 'level off sharply' when most
people already have the disease."
So what needs to be done?

As far as I am concerned, I have to continue to help turn homosexuals
around. I cannot (and do not try) to tell people they should not have
same-sex sex. (What I suggest, for their sake, is no more mucous
membrane contacts, so their lives and their partners' lives can be
spared.) I can do them most good, however, by trying to help my

patients understand the origins, causes and functions of their
condition. And, in my books and public lectures, I am also trying to
counteract the current common wisdom that homosexuals are "born
that way and can't change." They can change, but it takes time. We
cannot leapfrog to a cure*.
From a public health viewpoint, what needs to be done?

We must no longer engage "epidemic exceptionalism," a term
in
coined by Ronald Bayer of the Columbia School of Public Health.
Meaning what?
That this is the only epidemic in history in which mandatory testing
and quarantine has not been used to stop an epidemic. But we've got
a real epidemic here. Considering the forecasts for the year 2,000,
we've got a plague. But we aren't doing what needs to be done about
it.
Specifically, how do we control the plague?

I liked some of the straight talk we got from Pres. Clinton's first AIDS
czar, Kristine Gebbie, a former community nurse who ran the state
health departments in Oregon and Washington. She said in August
1993 that "vaccines and better treatments are not the whole answer
to AIDS.... We need to balance biomedical research with research
aimed at understanding the human behaviors driving this epidemic.
And I think we need to do more in the way of prevention."
But will any of this straight talk get straight action by those in power?
Ican just imagine the orchestrated outcry from the gay and lesbian
lobby that would follow any suggestions to put federal research
dollars into the kinds of studies I advocated way back in the late
1960s. Those studies would have validated conclusions that I have
since come to on my own about the origins and treatment of those
addicted to same-sex sex. That's an issue that is at the very heart of
Ms. Kebbie's message when she talks about "research aimed at
understanding the human behaviors driving this epidemic." More
than 85 percent of all those with AIDS in this country are
homosexuals and intravenous drug users. So far, the American people
and the American press and the American Congress haven't come to
any real understanding of the compulsions that drive either of these
r
AIDS 237
groups. And, largely because of politics and GaySpeak, the scientific

community hasn't made much of a contribution to that
understanding.
For the time being, what would you settle for?

As far as the prevention of AIDS is concerned? We need to know who
has AIDS and who doesn't.
Does that mean universal, mandatory testing?

Yes. This is obvious to me, a psychoanalyst and a physician. It should
be just as obvious to most doctors in the field of public health. But,
for the first eight years of the epidemic, officials at the CDC said they
did not need to know who was HIV positive. They'd never said that
about any other disease. Federal, state and county officials went after
syphilis, and brought it under control because they weren't afraid to

identify syphilitics and trace their contacts. Now federal public health
authorities are asking the individual states to start testing, and
reporting, not only those who have AIDS, but also those who are HIV-
infected but have yet to develop symptoms of AIDS. So far, however,
only about half of the states are doing that kind of reporting or
contact tracing for AIDS.
Universal testingfor HIV sounds like a pretty big job.

We're already doing it, in part. Ten million blood donors have already
been tested. Two million members of our armed forces. All the
inmates of the Nevada prison system. Some 44 states perform
anonymous HIV tests on all newborns. Incredibly enough, health
officials in these states cannot tell the mother of an HIV positive baby
that her baby is HIV. Since a newborn who is HIV must have become
infected through its mother, this rule also prevents the states from
telling a mother she is HIV.
What's the reasoning behind such a rule?

If you look at the law in New York State, you'd have to conclude that it
isaimed more at protecting the privacy and the civil rights of those
with AIDS than it is at stemming the plague.
It seems like a dumb law.

Yes. It pits the right of themother against those of her child. And it's a
tip off to the power of the gay lobbyists in Albany. But many of the
state's pediatricians are trying to change that law now —because
there are things they can do to help these HIV babies, if only they
were allowed to test babies for AIDS, and then inform their mothers if
the tests were positive.
How many AIDS babies are there?

According to The New newborns in
York Times, "Blind testing of all
New York State revealed that 7,325 children were born to HIV-
positive mothers between 1986 and 1991." And the State of New York
was precluded from telling mothers their babies were HIV.
But that would only get the state more involved in the AIDS battle.
Yes, and that's what the gay rights people are afraid of. Start testing
pregnant mothers and newborns today, and then, they say, tomorrow
there will be cries for testing in the schools and colleges, or in the
workplace.
And what's wrong with that— if it will help stop the plague?
Then, would have to administer routine HIV tests
logically, the state
to all health care workers, including dentists, physicians and

surgeons. But the gay doctors' lobby won't hear of it.
They say that would be discrimination.

Nobody shouts discrimination when they're being tested for TB or
—
measles which happens routinely today in 50 states. Of course we
have to realize that those who have been indiscriminate are precisely
the ones who have advanced the plague. Way back in 1985, Dr. Helen
Singer Kaplan, head of the Human Sexuality Program at the New York
Hospital-Cornell Medical Center said, "We would stop the spread of
AIDS today if these high-risk people, these typhoid Marys, would stop
spreading the disease."
But the gay lobbies have a legitimate concern, don't they? They don't
want to be targets for attack. They don 't want to be scapegoats.
We have to realize that, in taking the medically necessary moves,
we're not attacking people, but a death-dealing virus. Things are
going to get even worse unless we make attempts to test everyone,
gays and non-gays alike. A lot of high school and college kids are
coming up HIV positive. AIDS has become the top killer of American
men between the ages of 25 and 44. A lot of others just don't know
AIDS 239
they carry the AIDS virus, and they may be infecting others
unwittingly.
What should gay groups do?

They've proven themselves in the political arena. Now let them
engineer consent from their own people, and push programs for
universal testing. They should be in the vanguard on this one. Let the
gay rights people start talking about gay duties, too.
But, with universal testing, people are worried about losing their
jobs.
If people are worried about losing their jobs or their insurance

policies by testing positive, then, as Dr. C. Everett Koop has
suggested, we just have to give them guarantees that they won't be
fired or lose their insurance. Nothing should stop us from taking
necessary remedies to keep the epidemic from spreading.
And now it's spreading to heterosexuals?

It's spreading to heterosexuals who share needles with people who
have AIDS. It's women who have sex with
spreading to heterosexual
bi-sexual males. It's men who have sex
spreading to heterosexual
with prostitutes and others infected with AIDS (although men are less
prone than women to get AIDS through heterosexual intercourse).
But, let's not lose sight of the big picture. In the U.S., at least, AIDS is
still Some gay rights propagandists have helped put out

a gay disease.
the notion that AIDS is now a heterosexual disease. But gays
exaggerate here, so they can make more effective appeals for
increased governmental funding for AIDS treatment and AIDS
research.
You're not against more fundingfor AIDS research?

No, I'm not. But I think we should be able to recognize propaganda
when we see Michael Fumento has tried put things into
it.
perspective on this issue. In July 1994, he wrote, 'The AIDS epidemic

—
has peaked and not everyone wants you to know about it. Especially
not the media, which have taken recent CDC reports to proclaim yet
again that AIDS is exploding, especially among heterosexuals." He
quoted a piece in Time: "The number of new AIDS cases surged
unexpectedly last year, more than doubling, owing to a jump in
infections among heterosexuals.' Newsweek jumped in to proclaim
that 'heterosexual AIDS is no myth.'" But Fumento, who had written a

book called The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, took issue with this
interpretation. He said that heterosexual AIDS cases will always grow
fastest in percentage terms, because those cases start from a very low
baseline. "In other words, if the Eskimo and Mexican populations of
Houston were two and 50,000 respectively, and in 1993 two more
Eskimos moved to town along with 10,000 more Mexicans, the
Eskimo increase would be 100 percent while the Mexican increase
would only be 20 percent. No one would point to these data as
indicating that Houston would shortly be swamped with Eskimos."
So, should we ignore the spread ofAIDs among heterosexuals?

Obviously not. AIDS is growing more entrenched in poor urban
communities, particularly among teens, women (and their babies)
and blacks. They need information and education. But then, don't
we all?
"
CHAPTER NINE:
EDUCATION
&
"Bombarding students with misinformation and
disinformation and enticements to try same-sex sex
because they might like it— well that's a form of
sexual subversion.
You think students are getting misinformation and disinformation

about same-sex sex?
Yes,and often enough in the name of two current fads: "diversity"
and "democracy." Academe has bought into diversity at any price,
even to the ruination of the very idea of a university. Just look at the
words. Diversity is the exact opposite of uni-versity. University says
wholeness. Diversity implies division. And so now they're turning
centuries of civilization on its head, by trying to institutionalize same-
sex sex.
And they're doing so in the name ofdiversity and democracy?

Yes, but they're using spurious arguments —the kind that will destroy
the civilization we under the old theory of the
built in this nation
melting pot — a theory that didn't deny differences brought to our
shores from afar, but opted, wisely, not to put taxpayers' dollars into
structures that would emphasize them.
How do they pursue thatfight?

Inmany colleges and universities in America, every minority group
now gets to have its own curriculum. Some schools have set up whole
programs —of black studies, Latino studies, women's studies, gender
studies, and, now, gay and lesbian studies.
This is a trend?
Gay and lesbian studies followed in the footsteps of a trend that has
been happening in U.S. higher education for almost 30 years. Black
studies came in during the 1960s. You may recall that, at Cornell,
blacks demanded courses in black history at the point of a gun. And
they got them. The whole affair was like a lab course in the politics of
resentment. But others had resentments, too. Latino studies followed.
Then women's studies —which have always been courses in advocacy
for the feminist political agenda. No one enters these women's
studies programs expecting anything other than confirmation of their
own particular political slant.
So, by analogy, we now have gay and lesbian studies?

According to a 1993 report by the National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force, more than 45 U.S. colleges and universities have started to
offer at least one course on the homosexual experience usually in —
literature, history, sociology or psychology departments. The City
University of New York began a gay and lesbian research center for
graduate students in 1991. In the fall of 1993, San Francisco State
University became the country's first four-year school to offer a
formal academic program of courses on gay, lesbian and bisexual
culture. Students there can get a minor in Gay and Lesbian Studies.
Professor John DeCecco, who is gay, heads the program.
What kinds of courses?

Lesbian literature. Sexual Identity. Homosexuality on Film. AIDS
Contemporary Health Crisis. Variations on Human Sexuality. Things
like that.
Some of the very questions we've been talking about in this book.
That's right. But, believe me, Prof. DeCecco would never have me on
his faculty.
Why not?
Education 243
Because these courses are all pro-gay. They're intended to raise gay
consciousness, one more proof that American education has become
politicized —
and become more propaganda than science. DeCecco
and others like him around the nation who are setting up these gay
—
and lesbian programs they're nearly all gays and lesbians. Anyone
who has different ideas gets plowed under.
Where are they comingfrom?

Those teaching in gay and lesbian studies believe that same-sex sex
orientation fundamentally affects the way literature is written, art
produced, history analyzed, science investigated. And anyone who
isn't gay or lesbian is obviously unqualified to teach gay or lesbian
literature, or art, or history.
What's wrong with that view?

presumes that being gay or lesbian gives a gay or lesbian some
First, it
special cache. It doesn't. Gays and lesbians are human beings, and if
their art or their science is any good, it must reflect what is universal
in nature or in humankind. If Michelangelo was a homosexual, as
many gays now claim, what is it about his art that marks the art as
"homosexual?" Nothing. It is, simply, human. Oscar Wilde was a
homosexual. But his plays weren't about homosexuality. He wrote
one of the most perfect plays in the history of English literature, "The
Importance of Being Earnest." It wasn't informed by his
homosexuality, but by his intelligence and his wit. That's why college
and community theater groups still mount the play. You think people
will want to see "Angels in America" a hundred years from now?
Twenty? Ten?
What about a course on gay history?

History is history. And I would like to think that, in our college
classrooms, we're giving students a history that is whole. Teaching a
special course on gay history, especially at the college undergraduate
level, tends to present a partial view. Why would you
teach gay
— —
history or Catholic history unless you are trying to enter the realm
of special pleading? Up to now, most universities have wanted to stay
away from special pleading. The really good Catholic universities
decided decades ago that they wanted no part of what they called
"hyphenated learning." No such thing as Catholic literature. Much
less Catholic science. Educators like Father Hesburgh of Notre Dame
said that a university is a place where, presumably, people are in

search of the truth. If you try to say there is such a thing as "Catholic
truth," you're implying there are other truths, which is to say there is
no truth at all, depends on your point of view. Then

that everything
the only criterion for what you teach is fashion. And if that's true,
then only the campus groups who have fashionable causes can have
their own courses and programs.
So, is that why

they have black studies, Latino studies, women's
studies? Because they advocate causes that are fashionable?
If you visit any of these classrooms, you will see they are mainly
exercises in special pleading, or consciousness raising. According to
the people at San Francisco State, most of the young men and women
taking the gay and lesbian courses are gays and lesbians.
What's wrong with raising someone's consciousness?

In its proper place, it's okay. People have the Constitutional right of
free assembly. But why should the taxpayers pay for it? These
programs are also They propagate and perpetuate the notion
divisive.
of "us-against-them." They also tend to give official legitimacy to a
lifestyle that ought to remain "off-scene." Instituting a special
program at San Francisco State puts the State of California in the
position of saying, by implication, "gay is good." And, as I've been
trying to show, gay ain't so good.
But now, inacademe, there are some pretty high-powered

intellectuals who have succeeded in popularizing the opposite view.
Yes. They've organized several national conferences devoted to gay
studies, three at Yale Harvard and Rutgers. There are
and one each at
plans for others, at CUNY and in San Francisco. Since
1991, they have
had a national Lesbian and Gay Studies Association. There are a
number of academic journals focused on homosexuality. And they've
published dozens of books on the history, incidence, and culture of
homosexuality.
Sounds like a new fad in academe.

Yes, and, like deconstructionism, which took American universities
by storm in the 1980s, this fad also started in France, principally
under the influence of Michel Foucault.
Who is Michel Foucault?

Education 245
You mean "who was he?" He died in 1984, still working on the third
volume of his history of sexuality.
Did Foucault have a key idea?

Yes. In all of his many he tries to demonstrate that what
writings,
most people consider as "normal" are mere human inventions. By
implication, they're also arbitrary. In his History of Sexuality, Volume
1: An Introduction, Foucault said that sex itself was a relatively recent
historical construct.
And what was the logical consequence of this idea?

Foucault attempted, in his own life, to liberate himself by breaking
out of the construct. In fact, he tried to de-construct himself by
indulging in all manner of polymorphous perversities.
Did he succeed?
In his personal program? Yes. During three separate appointments as
a visiting professor at Berkeley, he became quite entranced with the
gay bath houses of San Francisco. He was absolutely fascinated with
the SM scene across the bay, and succeeded in de-constructing
himself, quite literally. On June he died of AIDS at the
25, 1984,
Hopital de la Salpetriere in Paris, the very institution he had studied
inMadness and Civilization, a place that served in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries as a de facto prison for beggars, prostitutes
and criminals. After the Revolution, Salpetriere became an institution
for the insane.
Foucault died ofAIDS?

Yes,and that should tell us something. But the gays and lesbians in
academe aren't listening. They simply do not want to allow for the
possibility that the human race has discovered, over time, that certain
things work, and certain things do not. Jerry Z. Muller, a professor of
history at the Catholic University of America, has pointed out the
fallacies inherent in their approach in the August- September 1993
issue of First Things. Prof. Muller says that, in their "assumption that
heterosexuality and reproductivity are merely arbitrary constructs,"
they bracket out "the natural basis of heterosexual attraction as part
of normal human experience."
Why do they do this?

It's part of the gay and lesbian agenda. Gay males have had to find
ways of rationalizing their appetites for same-sex sex. Lesbians have
another program: they want to reject the oppression of the male race
by simply swearing off any possibility of becoming mothers. These
lesbian theorists say that "cultural gender does not flow naturally and
inevitably from anatomical sex, but rather is a socially learned role
with no essential link to anatomy." And so, they gobble up Foucault,
because he has given them a piece of theory that helps them put
down heterosexuality. But the theory forces them to be blind to the
entire history of the human race. Or, as Prof. Muller contends, deaf.
To Muller, these homosexuals are like the deaf theorist who insists
that spoken language is abnormal merely because he does not hear it.
They are also blind and deaf to the idea that culture can help people
—
to live better, happier lives to strengthen "the more noble, holy, or
socially useful parts of our nature while teaching us to repress
degrading, dangerous, or asocial desires."
How long has this been going on?

The theorists of gay liberation have been publishing their notions for
more than twenty years. Germaine Greer was one of the first
outspoken feminists of the extreme left. In 1970, she said there was
only one way to improve woman's lot: by total political revolution.
"This society must be destroyed before her flower can bloom," she
wrote in The Female Eunuch. "And her flower is one of the things that
is going to destroy this society." Norman Mailer made an effort to
stand up to Greer at the time. But hardly anyone else neither in —

—
academe, nor in the media has dared contradict Greer, or any of the
lesbians who have followed in her footsteps. Jean Bethke Elshtain was
one of the few who did. He noted that the ideologists of gay liberation
presented a vision of politics with "no sense of social goods or
purposes." They simply wanted a world, Elshtain said, "in which
everyone can openly and freely engage in sexual behavior of any sort
and be anything whatever."
When did he write this?

In 1983.
Why didn't the coming of AIDS bring down the gay liberation
movement?
Through skillful propaganda, and by picturing themselves as helpless
Education 247
victims, the gay movement gained strength, even though many gay
males were already dying. Perversely, a good many other scholars
—
who are not gay jumped on the gay bandwagon as Muller says, "in
the name of self-creation and re-creation." And many U.S. scholars
have bought into Foucault's notion that truth is merely the product of
power. They transform truth by changing the structure of power.
Thus, they do not engage anyone in debate according to any norms
that are traditional. To them, there are no valid norms. They're all
arbitrary.
Therefore, they will just proceed to institute new norms?

No! They're not interested in norms at all. They do come up with
some intellectual arguments, but only as a pathway to power.
What will they do with this power?

You can see what they've already done in certain U.S. university
settings, where lesbian academics have as much or more power than
their gay male counterparts. They saw an opening when they realized
that the study of women had long been excluded from the more-
established disciplines. They appealed to the democratic instincts of
the more-well-heeled foundations, and started setting up programs
and majors in women's studies.
And what is the content of these programs in women 's studies?

The lesbian, feminist agenda. They would spearhead the revolt
against the domination of men over the centuries. Since men
achieved this domination by forcing them to be "breeders," they'd
stop that right away with some plain and fancy theory. They'd want,
first of all, to make heterosexuality seem unnatural. Charlotte Bunch,
a lesbian theorist, made this very explicit some time ago when she
wrote that "Heterosexuality separates women from each other. It
makes women define themselves through men; it forces women to
compete against each other for men and the privilege which comes
through men and their social standing. Lesbianism is the key to
liberation and only women who cut their ties to male privilege can be
trusted to remain serious in the struggle against male dominance."
So men and women never really can get together?

That's the theory. Prof. Muller sums up the position of the lesbian
libbers: "Non-oppressive sexual relations are only possible between
members of the sex, and heterosexual women are victims of

same
false consciousness, brainwashed into believing that their true
interests lie in loving men rather than other women."
And many feminist theorists, of course, have gone on to develop this

idea?
Yes. Judith Butler is a professor of humanities at the Johns Hopkins
University, and a rising star in a new field called "gender studies."
(The word, "gender," is a tip-off, Whenever you see the word gender
being used these days outside a Latin grammar lesson, know that
you're probably in the clutches of a feminist, and probably a lesbian,
man-hating feminist at that.) Here, get this, from the pen (or word-
processor) of Dr. Judith Butler:
Because there is neither an "essence" that gender expresses

or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires,
and because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender
create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would
be no gender at all.
For her, "gender" is only "performance." Gender (i.e., "sex" in the

dictionary sense of the world) only arises from the various acts that
together give the illusion that gender (i.e., sex) has a deeper reality.
Why, she sounds, she sounds like a, a Communist!

You But Butler actually aligns herself with Karl Marx. Muller
jest.
writes that, "The parallel with Marx is Butler's own. While his goal
was to bring about revolution, hers is to bring about 'gender
disorder.'" Muller maintains that Butler and her followers enjoy an
inordinate amount of power in academe. Because she is a leader in
her discipline, she will help control academic appointments and
academic and foundation grants. Other professors, gay and lesbian or
not, will kowtow to her power.
And how will she use that power?

To counteract the belief that sexual identity, desire, and conduct are
natural and not a human invention.
Hah!
You laugh. But kind of theory that gets translated into
it is this
popular culture. Transgendered gobbledegook today in academe,
cover story on RuPaul in People magazine tomorrow. And Dr. Butler
Education 249
will be in our high school classrooms the day after tomorrow with her
new slant on "gender."
How can they carry this off?

Easy. There's been virtually no resistance to this ideology within
American academic life. Tim Egan, the gentleman from The New York
Times in Seattle, reported in 1988 about a business major named Pete
Schaub Washington who enrolled in a course
at the University of
called "Introduction to Studies" taught by Donna Langston
Women's
and Dana-Michele Brown. On the first day of class, he and the class
were told that traditional American families are dysfunctional.
Students who said their families were quite functional were shouted
down by the teaching assistants with cries, in unison, of "Denial!
Denial!" A few days later, Prof. Langston brought guest speakers in to
talk about masturbation. "They said you don't need a man," Schaub
told Reporter Egan. "They proceeded to show how to masturbate with
a feather duster, and they had dildos right there." When Prof. Brown
said statistics showed lesbians could raise children better than
married couples, Schaub went up after class and quietly asked for her
source. Prof.Brown dismissed him and his question. "Why are you
challenging me?" she said. "Get away from me. Just leave me alone."
A member of the class called Schaub "a chauvinist goddamn
bastard." The next day, his professor had two campus police officers
there to enforce her order banning Schaub from her class. Schaub
protested the ban. Weeks later, the administration said he could go
back to class. But Associate Dean James Nason advised him to drop
the course.
J haven't seen open public criticism of this trend outside academe.

Gays and lesbians have pre-empted criticism from outside academe
(principally from the media, including the world of book publishing)
because they've been able to define any opposition as a disease called
"homophobia." Insofar as the media buy that gay-and-lesbian
definition, Prof. Muller says, "it is impossible to give good reasons for
the cultural disapproval of homosexuality." He wonders whether
anyone will be able to articulate the case for heterosexuality.
What will happen if no one does so?

I think we can look forward to a continued gay and lesbian assault on
American culture. Muller says we can already see one effect: the
growing popularity of drag queens. He quoted a lead article in the

Style section of The Washington Post about the feminist-inspired
"mainstreaming of drag." It quoted a leading feminist theorist,
Marjorie Garber, director of the Center for Literary and Cultural
Studies at Harvard, who reminded The Post writer that "Gender is
always an act. It's not a natural but a culturally derived category." But
I think we do not have to subject ourselves to this kind of torted and
woolly prose to understand what's happening. All we have to do is

look at the inroads that gays and lesbians are making on student life
in our colleges and universities, and, as a matter of fact, in our

elementary schools as well as our high schools.
What impact are they making on student life?

As Thomas Sowell, an economist and culture critic, has pointed out,
"On many of our leading college campuses, gays have become
another privileged class... Men's toilets have become rendezvous
centers for homosexual activity to such an extent that gay activists
have published annually updated guides to the best places for such
encounters. Holes have been drilled in the toilet stalls to facilitate
anonymous homosexual activity from Dartmouth to Georgetown to
the University of Florida and the University of California at San
Diego. Gay and lesbian and bisexual student associations are now
active on most college campuses. They're funded by student fees, and
by offices of multiculturalism.
What's the purpose of these associations?

These associations are serving as centers for the seduction of the
innocent, even on the campuses of private, religiously-oriented
institutions. Here, for example, is a self description by the Lesbian,
Bisexual and Gay Coalition at Columbia University in New York:
Aims to: create a gay community at Columbia which will

enable its members to relate to each other as people in an
unoppressive atmosphere; promote among homosexuals,
bisexuals, and heterosexuals alike an enlightened
understanding of homosexuality free of taboos,
misconceptions, and stigmatization of a sexist society; fight
against the oppression of gay persons, in and out of
Columbia. Sponsors discussions as well as many social
activities for gay people on campus. Conducts monthly dance
Education 251
to bring together the gay youth of New York City and

surrounding areas.
Oh, good! Fresh meat!

You're being flip. May I continue? In freshman orientations all over
the country, students are given "homosexual perspectives"—
meaning that they're being taught that antipathy toward
homosexuals on a par with racism. At a freshman orientation in the
is
fall of 1992, a Columbia University student told hundreds gathered in
the gymnasium about the night he came to terms with being gay.
According to a story in The New York Times, he looked at himself in
the mirror, "trying to find out who he when he realized
really was,"
that his fate was to live his life "in the arms of other men." He cried at
his discovery, he said, with tears of pain and relief— "pain because of
the names he knew he would be called and relief because he could
begin a tremendous journey armed with confidence and hope." The
chairman of Columbia's English department says he "committed to is
hiring, tenuring and working with" gay and lesbian scholars. At

Northeastern University in Boston, they now have a policy to recruit
openly homosexual faculty members. At Harvard, each dorm has a
designated gay tutor.
How do you feel about gay tutors in every dorm at Harvard?

I'm from Harvard. I am appalled. This is just another form of child
abuse, late-adolescent branch. Kids in their late teens are still
vulnerable to assaults on their sexual identity. Many of them haven't

yet come to full terms with their identities (and some of them may
not do so until late in life). But bombarding them with
misinformation and disinformation and enticements to try same-sex
—
sex because they might like it well that's a form of sexual
subversion. I can only think back on my first years at Harvard. What if
I'd been told by a gay tutor, "Try it, you'll like it?" I was as horny then
as any shy young man of 18 from a small town in Massachusetts, and

I had had my eye on a sophisticated beauty from Manhattan who was
attending Radcliffe. At the time, I was trying, in vain, to figure out

ways of approaching this girl, who then seemed
so unapproachable.
What if taken the easy road to orgastic relief— acceded to the
I'd
suggestion of my gay tutor that I try anal or oral sex with a male
classmate?
You might have liked it?

Who knows? There's not a gene that tells you how to experience
orgastic relief. Anyone can indulge in anything. It would have been all
too easy, back then. Instead of going off to a football game on
Saturday afternoon, and scheming on ways to approach my dream
girl from the halls of Radcliffe, I could have settled in for an afternoon
of oral sex in Dunster House. And become an optional homosexual

a much easier way to go, but one that would have affected my future
functioning as a man.
What happened with the girl from Radcliffe?

I finally summoned up the courage to approach her, and discovered
that she had noticed me, too, but didn't know how to approach me.
We had a fine romance.
Sounds like the title ofa song.
Well, I was singing about her then, believe me.
So you're saying that the current folkways in some U.S. universities

can and do contribute to an increasing number of optional
homosexuals?
Exactly. And Even if these young men survive all
that worries me.
that, and go on to get married, I wonder what will happen to them at
the first sign of trouble in their marriages. Will they then give up and
revert to homosexuality? That would be a move that could only make
their lives worse.
Who—or what— is behind this move?

As a psychoanalyst, I beyond the obvious answer
can't help going
that there are a lot of gay males out there in academe who are using
their positions to seduce golden young men. I have a theory. Call it
my envy theory.
Your envy theory?
Relatively speaking, professors do not make much money, not even
professors at Harvard and have probably gone
Yale. Their classmates
on to Wall Street or the business world and made millions. But here
they are, in a stuffy university classroom, earning peanuts, and filled
with envy and jealousy when they see the young men arriving each
fall, many of them from very well-to-do families. What better way to
Education 253
destroy them and lead them to destruction than enticing them into
same-sex sex?
These are envious, gay academics, right?

They could be gay. What better way, besides, for these gay academics
to save face? They propound the view that "everyone can be gay!"
And, then, lo and behold, they find that they have fresh recruits for
the gay revolution. Or, maybe theyMaybe they're simply
aren't gay.
jaded, middle-aged professors who take some perverse, private
pleasure in leading men away from women so they can have at —
them.
What about the high schools? What about the elementary schools?
What's happening there?
Across the land, we now have a proliferation of sex education courses
that are putting out the propaganda —that there's nothing natural
about other-sex sex, and that same-sex sex is just another legitimate
construct, or lifestyle.
Did this happen by accident? Or design?

By design. But the elementary and high school teachers of America do
not look so much to Michel Foucault and his gay and lesbian
followers in American universities. Rather, they get their direction
from the followers of Alfred Kinsey. The gay and lesbian program in
the U.S. goes all the way back to Kinsey, who actually used the term,
"grand design," to establish the ideal sexual universe according to a
homoerotic blueprint. We talked about this earlier about Kinsey's —
"model" that put exclusive homosexuality at the zero end of a six-
point scale, and exclusive heterosexuality at the other end with —
bisexuality in the exact middle. That was Kinsey's "grand design."
That was his new norm for mankind.
But Kinsey produced his reports a long time ago —in 1948 and 1953.
Yes, and he also founded the Kinsey Institute at Bloomington,
Indiana. Through that institution, now called the Kinsey Institute for
Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, he created a new field of
study. It was called "sex research." And he ordained a new high
priesthood to carry that research forward, all disciples of Kinsey, who
have imposed their bias on the whole field of sex education in
America.
And what is their bias?

Kinsey stated it very clearly at the end of his report on male sexuality.
He said that all types of sexual activity —sex with the opposite sex, sex
with the same sex, sex with both sexes, sex with children, sex with
whips and chains, fisting sex, sex with animals any kind of sex was—
normal. Long live the diversity! And that's the notion that they've
been able to promulgate throughout the schools in this country. To
Kinsey, all this sex "may seem to fall into categories that are as far
apart as right and wrong.... In actuality, they all prove to originate in
the relatively simple mechanisms which provide for erotic response
when there are sufficient physical or psychic stimuli.... But the
scientific data which are accumulating make it appear that, if
circumstances had been propitious, most individuals might have

become conditioned in any direction...."
In other words, according to Kinsey, sexual orientation is a matter of

indifference to nature?
Yes, and I can't help but laugh now, in this context, when I think of a
psychiatric meeting we had in Atlanta in 1988. Dr. Richard Isay, a gay
psychiatrist and a leading proponent and promoter of same-sex sex,
was on a panel where someone asked him about a Kinsey-like
statement that Isay had made something about nature's—
indifference to any form of sexuality. The questioner asked Isay about
farm boys who might be attracted to sheep. Would he encourage
these boys to have sex with sheep? With a straight face, Isay said this
was entirely acceptable, "as long as the erotic attraction was
satisfying to both the boy and the ewe." Here was the leading
spokesman for the gay and lesbian caucus at the APA, giving a
rationale for bestiality.
How would he know if the ewe felt an erotic attraction to the farm
boy?
He wouldn't, not unless he could have had a session with the sheep.
Dr. Isay has completely missed the point — of psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis was not invented as a palliative for people (much less
sheep) who want to good about indulging all their most primitive
feel
instincts. Freud's message to humankind (contrary to a once-popular
view) was not "TRY IT, YOU'LL LIKE IT." Freud's message was that
cruelty, avarice, war, violence and abuse of all kinds can be alleviated
or prevented only if we develop techniques to control our instinctual
"
Education 255
drives. But first, we have to acknowledge these drives a painful —

enough task in itself. Then we have to learn to overcome them. It is
no trick at all for psychiatrists like Isay to tell their patients to go for
the old, easy, concrete and immediate satisfactions. That only makes
for a very cruel and very violent world, one that would surprise a
visitor from outer space, considering all the marvelous technological
advances we have made in the past forty years. That visitor might be
moved to say that humankind has conquered a good many things,
outside itself, including space. But humankind has not yet learned to
conquer the world inside.
All right All right. Back to the gay takeover ofAmerica's classrooms.
How have they been able to do that?
By seizing control of the sex education establishment.
They have an establishment?

Yes. At first, seemed centered in SIECUS, the Sex
the establishment
Information and Education Council of the United States. It was
founded in 1964, a year after the death of Alfred Kinsey, by Dr. Mary
S. Calderone, who had been the medical director for the Planned
Parenthood Federation of America, and Lester Kirkendall, a

sociologist who was then teaching in the Department of Family Life at
Oregon State University. SIECUS described itself as "the only
organization in the United States that acts as an advocate for human
sexualityand provides information and education in sexual matters
through a clearing house and resource center."
Sexuality needed an advocate?
It did according to SIECUS.
And what did SIECUS advocate?

Mary Calderone often talked about the need for young people to
manage their own sexuality. She pushed an "inner- directed and self-
developed authority that should take the place of our former
authoritarianism.
Which meant what?

Someone once asked her what her position was on premarital
intercourse. She replied, "What's yours?" Her point was that "nobody
from up on high determines this. You determine it." Well, ifshe was
talking to a bunch of teenagers (and she was), then she was fooling
the kids, or fooling herself, or both.
Why is that?
Because young people don't have a chance, today, to determine
anything. They're assaulted on all sides by the powers of darkness,
manipulating them in a million different ways every month, every
minute. They don't need a lot of encouragement to follow the
philosophy of "anything goes." But they get it, often enough from
peers who have the peculiar power to dictate what's fashionable.
Young men and young women in their teens are notorious followers,
and very susceptible to charismatic figures who can whip them up
into almost anything. I am not only speaking about the
psychopathologies of the young women who attended on Charles
Manson's every need, even to the point of going out and killing for
him. I have some clippings here from the magazine press about a
groundswell of lesbianism on U.S. campuses which, I have no doubt,
exemplify the power of fashion. At Oberiin College in Ohio, which
Newsweek magazine identifies as "a gay mecca," they have an annual
Lesbutante Ball for lesbian couples who like to dress up as "butch" or
"femme." At the University of Washington, they have an annual Dyke
Visibility Day. Newsweek reported in June 1993 on the phenomenon
of the "four-year lesbian."
What's a four-year lesbian?

Some college women refer to it as "the LUG phenomenon." Lesbian
until graduation. They date and go to bed with other women, but only
for four years. According to Catherine Stimpson, a feminist scholar
and dean of the graduate school at Rutgers University, these women
consider themselves to be part of a bisexual Third Wave. "They're
quite condescending about dividing humanity into heterosexual and
homosexual," Stimpson says. And I say, if they think they can just
determine their sexuality for themselves, they can thank Mary
Calderone. She helped start this.
What was Mary Calderone's connection with sex education in

America?
She took leadership in a field that had had little direction before the
1960s.
Since 1978, her organization, SIECUS, has had a close relationship

Education 257
with New York University, one of only three institutions of higher

learning in the U.S. that can hand out post-graduate degrees in sex
education to the people who will teach tomorrow's teachers in the
area of sex education.
And those three schools are —

New York and the
University, the University of Pennsylvania,
Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San
Francisco, which was founded by Wardell Pomeroy.
And you say that these three schools are all pushing the Kinsey
agenda?
Most definitely. If students in these institutions don't buy into the
Kinsey beliefs, they have a hard time getting their degrees.
"Beliefs?"
I use the word advisedly. There's nothing scientific about Kinsey's

program. It is special pleading, pure and simple designed to —
promote an "anything goes" attitude toward sex of any kind. With
special loving care given to the nurture of those who have a
propensity toward same-sex sex.
Have these institutions outlined their beliefs?

A document called SIECUS/NYU Principles Basic to Education for
Sexuality, published in 1980, gives us a pretty good clue. It advocates
"acceptance of the wide range of possible expressions of sexuality."
This fits advanced in the same document that "the
in with the claim
majority of individuals have some elements of both homosexuality
and heterosexuality in their makeup that may or may not be
expressed by the individual throughout his or her life."
Anythingfrom SIECUS that is more recent than 1980?

SIECUS issued new, sweeping guidelines that
In October 1991,
somehow won endorsement from the American Medical Association,
the National Educational Association and 14 other major groups.
They advocate that sex education begin and continue
in kindergarten
through graduation. Some of the guidelines are just fine. But one of
them lays it down as a kind of law that any sexual relationship is as
good as another.
So, in practice, what does his mean?

You only have to look at the origins of the academic programs at the
three schools. The curricula and the thrust of those programs was
designed and advanced by an accreditation committee appointed by
the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex in 1983, sometimes called
"Quad S." That committee has presumed to tell higher education in
America what guidelines to use in accrediting any courses in human
sexuality.
What were the goals of that body?

According to Edward Eichel, a graduate of NYU's program, you only
have membership of Quad S. Over the years, it has
to look at the
included Deryk Calderwood of NYU, Kenneth George, an avowed
homosexual, of the University of Pennsylvania, and Wardell Pomeroy
and Paul Gebhard, both Kinsey people. There were other members
who were followers of Kinsey people: most notably Mary Calderone,
Lester Kirkendall, and Vern L. Bullough, a gay historian.
Did any of these people articulate their approach to sex education?

Wardell Pomeroy gave a presentation to the Third International
Congress of Medical Sexology, meeting in Rome in 1978. There, he
noted progress in the evolution of what the public considered normal
human sexuality. The greatest advance, he said, was the recognition
of homosexuality as a variation rather than a sickness. This allowed
—
for people to give more attention to bisexuality "which may ease the
confrontation between good and bad, healthy and unhealthy." Now,
he said, people had come to accept something he called "sexual
science."
And what did we learn from "sexual science?"
According to Dr. Pomeroy, sexual science gave us some implicit

recommendations about ideal sexuality: "Both male and female are
now expected to be sensuous, sexually fantasizing, always ready-to-
do -it, no matter what the outlet or choice of partners." Pomeroy said
the emphasis on abnormality and illness was gone. Even in the case
of childhood sexuality.
He actually said that?

That's entirely consistent with the Kinsey canon. Kinsey and his
people seemed quite obsessed with the study of kids and their
orgasms. You can look up Dr. Pomeroy's talk in Rome. It was re-
—
Education 259
printed in a book called Medical Sexology, edited by Forleo and

Pasini, and published in 1980 by the PSG Publishing Co. Pomeroy
talked there about a new "exciting concept" emerging, "a fresher way
of viewing our sexuality."
A fresher way?
Pomeroy said, "There is not only one way to be in sex but many... and
how we are is not so much a product of how we are born but rather
how we are raised and oriented socially and taught to perceive
psychologically and experientially."
In other words?
In other words, Pomeroy was saying what Kinsey had been implying
all along: that bisexuality would make for a more advanced state of
human development. Bisexuality, of course, includes same-sex sex.
(And, incidentally, it is the most dangerous kind of sex there is. It will
hasten the transmission of AIDS from the homosexual community to

the heterosexual community.)
This gives us a pretty good idea of Pomeroy 's bias. But is there any
indication that this is what these grad schools are teaching?
You can see what they teach by picking up almost any of the texts that
are used in high school and college classrooms today. Here's an
excerpt from some teaching materials produced in 1979 by Emory
University's Family Planning Program. It was distributed at a
National Boys Club of America conference in Washington, D.C. in
1984, for boys aged 14 to 18. "Experts do agree... that homosexuality
and heterosexuality are not 'either/or' choices. It is a matter of
degree. Many of us, when you stop to think about it, are 'bisexual'
we find people of both sexes attractive.... Attraction to both sexes
seems natural. But as we grow up, we are taught that we are supposed
tobe turned on only by the opposite sex."
But, of course, "what we are taught" is in error?
That's the implication. But if you want to know the truth, check in
—
with "sexual science." Here's another example this time from the
lateDeryck Calderwood, who developed an instruction kit for the
Unitarian Universalist Association, called About Your Sexuality. It
included filmstrips showing explicit erotic acts between homosexuals
and between lesbians. In an explanatory note to a revised 1983
edition of the kit, Calderwood stated that his material "focuses on the
human experience of making love first, and looks at the choice of
partner as a secondary one." Note this well: this is an astounding shift
in the way we look at ourselves. Has the human race somehow got it
wrong through all of recorded history? Are we now to pretend that the
biological differences between men and women do not matter?
Well, that's what you've been telling me— this is the latest fad in
academe.
Yes. It's part of the new sexual politics. Feminists assume that
difference must entail inequality. So they can't accept the difference.
It will only perpetuate the subordination of women. And there's also
the lesbian angle: Donna Minkowitz suggests in a 1992 article in The
Advocate, called. "Recruit, recruit, recruit!" that lesbians "take the
offensive for a change, whether the issue is promiscuity or recruiting
the previously straight." She adds that a fact gleaned from gay
experience
— "that gender is and purposes a fiction
for all intents
also has the potential to revolutionize straight lives." I doubt very
much she's picked this up as "a fact from gay experience" but, —
rather, from theoreticians like ludith Butler. But, no matter. Other
gays and lesbians from coast to coast also parrot the Butler line. I've
already pointed out the comic absurdity of Kate Bornstein's self-
—
description of herself "a bisexual heterosexual lesbian gay male
transsexual woman who is in a committed relationship with a lesbian
man named David." Her notion that there's "nothing essential about
being a woman" is part and parcel of the new ideology. To them,
being female or male is merely a matter of choice. Men and women
are not different. Or, as Deryck Calderwood would have it, love comes
first, and whether the partner is a man or a woman is "secondary."
Was that a key notion in the Kinsey ideology?

Absolutely. You may note that this was the underlying theme in a
movie that won a number of Oscar nominations in 1992, "The Crying
Game." When the Irish terrorist in that movie finds that the girl he
loves is really a man, his cultural construct (i.e., his "homophobia") is
challenged. But it is finally resolved when he realizes that it doesn't
really matter whom he has sex with. The most important thing is love.
It's a clever piece of film propaganda for same-sex sex. The movie has
already risen to the status of a cult film in the gay community.

Education 261
Why is Calderwood important?

He was a disciple of Wardell Pomeroy and Lester Kirkendall. He
began his professional career in the mid 1960s as the first male staff
member SIECUS. And he moved from there to the faculty at New

at
It was Professor Calderwood who was educating the
York University.
educators in NYU's first sex education fellowship program for
elementary school teachers in New York City in 1968. He went on to
design the curriculum for NYU's Marriage, Family Life and Sex
Education Program with the Department of Health Education. It won
approval from the New York State Education Department in 1970.
And what was notable about the Calderwood curriculum?

Itpromoted bisexuality and homosexuality, even pedophilia.
Bisexuality was presented as the unbiased sexual orientation.
Anything else was aberrant. Calderwood put male students together
in nude "body workshops" and encouraged them to explore each
other's genitals, then try it again, blindfolded, to see if they could
identify one another by handling their private parts. In the same
workshop, students were instructed to trade prostate exams with a
—
partner after viewing a Calderwood video called "David Sexual —
Self-Help and Sexual Pleasuring." The David in this case was one of
Calderwood's students, who, Calderwood claimed, was following a
self-help pamphlet published by the American Cancer Society.
(According to Edward Eichel, the Cancer Society disclaimed any
knowledge of such a pamphlet.)
What was that particular exercise — the pseudo-prostate exam—all

about?
He wanted people to try anal intercourse. This was just a first step.
One of the objectives of the Kinsey-oriented curricula is to get
heterosexuals to engage in same- sex experiences. That's part of the
program. In effect, people like Calderwood were saying, "How can
you knock it if you haven't tried it?" Or, "Try it, you'll like it."
Was he homosexual?
He had a wife, but his students at NYU believed he was gay. I say
"gay" and not "homosexual" because, however, he got his orgasms,
he did everything he could to advance the gay agenda. For example,
he tried to get people to accept the notion of adults having sex with
children.
How did he do that?

Edward Eichel reports in his book, Kinsey, Sex and Fraud (co-
authored with Dr. Judith A. Reisman) that, in 1983, he attended a
summer seminar conducted by Calderwood in The Netherlands.
There, Eichel noted "a disproportionate number of speakers focusing
—
on and presenting material in support of—pedophile relations."
What happened to Calderwood and the program at NYU?

Calderwood has passed on. He died of AIDS in 1986. But those who
follow in his footsteps at NYU, and others education
in the sex
establishment, are still promoting the idea that we all have to be more
accepting of the notion that, in sexuality, "anything goes." The people
from NYU and SIECUS expressed this pansexualism in Principle 17 of
a manifesto that came out of an international conference at Uppsala,
Sweden, in 1979: "Rational understanding and acceptance of the wide
range of possible expressions of sexuality constitute one goal of
education for sexuality."
What does "wide range" mean?

"Wide range" means pedophilia. It means bisexuality. It means
homosexuality.
How are the sex educators promoting acceptance of this wide range?
In different ways at different levels. But the indoctrination in
pansexualism has been going on for some time in medical schools,
universities and colleges, high schools, and elementary schools across
the nation. The Quad S group publishes a manual for accreditation of
programs in human sexuality. The academic topics it recommends
for a course of study include "Homosexuality and Bisexuality,"
"Sexual Variations," and "Alternate Lifestyles." Dr. David McWhirter,
a gay psychiatrist from San Diego, was giving seminars in sexuality in
U.S.med schools back in the early 1970s. Among other things, he
used pornographic films to "shake up the med students, let them
know what's happening in the real world."
What was wrong with that?

Educating doctors about sex by showing them pornography is a very
dubious kind of education. Catherine McKinnon, a feminist legal
scholar, makes a very good case against it in her book, Only Words.
"Sooner or later," she writes, "in one way or another, the consumers
Education 263
[of pornography] want to live out the pornography further in three

dimensions."
Very interesting. What was Dr. McWhirter's rationale?

Doctors had traditionally been given nothing or very little in the way
of sex education. What they had gotten was an upper-class view of
sex —very prissy, very inadequate, and very confused. In 1963, only
two medical schools were offering sex education classes. But the air
became freer in the 1960s. By 1966, some 25 medical schools were
giving instruction in human sexuality. But, by then, the field had been
taken over by those who were following the Kinsey strategy: to
normalize the abnormal. McWhirter's presentations took that slant.
But I think they were also intended to soften up the medical
profession, to promote the gay rights agenda.
And that's still going on ?

As far as I know. The people certified to give this instruction are
accredited by the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors
and Therapists. As part of the certification, this organization requires
attendance at a seminar designed to "bombard" the attendees with,
among other things, the simultaneous projection on many screens of
a variety of pornographic and erotic films. It's an SAR, and,
called
originally, the letters stood for Sexual Attitude Restructuring.
Sounded like something out of The Manchurian Candidate, so they
changed it to Sexual Attitude Reassessment. But, whether it was
"reassessment" or "restructuring," the intent was clear, as seen from
Mary Calderone's account of her first SAR, which she said helped her
get over her "sexual hangups, particularly about homosexuality."
Here's what she said after her SAR:
I went out walking on air, because now I knew what

homosexuals did, and they did all the same things I like to do,
and it was fine. I felt good about them from that moment on.
When did Mary Calderone attend this SAR?

Sometime in the 1970s.
But She was a grandmother then, in her 70s. And

that's incredible.
she's saying that what she saw homosexuals doing were "all the same
things" she liked to do? And "it was fine?"
Well, maybe she was extraordinarily sexed. Frankly, I don't really care
how Mary Calderone went about getting her kicks. But I rather think
she was following the gay and lesbian party line. Or, maybe, setting
the line. What bothers me is that she had so much influence on the
shape of sex education in America. She started the snowball rolling in

a particularly bad direction. Now it's become an avalanche that has
already thundered over' a generation of young people now in their
twenties, and even now threatens a current generation of school
children across the land.
How so?
Every part of the country has its own horror stories to tell about
programs to promote homosexuality. In 1982, the Los Angeles City
Schools instituted a program called Project 10. The "10" comes from
—
Dr. Kinsey's well-established myth that ten percent of us are
homosexuals. Project 10 was run by a lesbian faculty member at
Fairfax High School named Virginia Uribe. She obtained funding
from the City of West Hollywood for her first year's program at Fairfax
High in 1986-87. Then, for the 1987-88 school year, she got support
from the board of the LA Unified School District to counsel students
who suffered discrimination because of their sexual orientation. The
program underwent a gradual transformation—first into a rap group
for students "who needed their sexuality confirmed," and then into a
propaganda campaign that had Ms. Uribe signing up 210 high
schools and junior high schools in the city, lecturing, running a hot
line, dropping off literature, holding workshops, urging those who
knew, deep down, that they were sexually attracted to their own sex
to come out, trying to counteract what she called "homophobia"
among those who were not gay.
Well, wasn't Ms. Uribe just trying to educate the kids?
She was trying to recruit them into what she called "a legitimate
alternative lifestyle." She promoted the notion, for instance, that gay
and lesbian teachers in the District "can have a very positive effect
—
upon attitudes toward homosexuality both for heterosexual and
—
homosexual students if these teachers affirm rather than conceal
their sexuality."
In other words, she wanted gay and lesbian teachers to tell the kids in
their classes that they were gay?
Not only tell them. She hoped that class discussions would "move
Education 265
from a purely humane and tangible

intellectual level to a heartfelt,
situation that elicited more personal and emotional exchanges that
led to greater acceptance and insight."
"Acceptance" of homosexuality?
Yes.
By both homosexual and heterosexual students?

Yes. And note her emphasis on "more personal and emotional
exchanges." She wanted the gay and lesbian teachers to turn the kids
on to a new way of being.
This sounds very close to a kind of indoctrination.
Exactly. Some handed out also tell us that.

of the materials Ms. Uribe
One of Project 10's brochures tells young woman who
the story of a
discovered she was a lesbian when she was 14 years old. How did she
discover that? Her teacher, acting as a chaperone on an overnight
trip, came to her room and persuaded her to have sex. She says, "I
became a lesbian and a woman that night." If a male teacher or any

other male had come to the girl's room that night and done the same
thing, he would have been arrested for statutory rape and sent to
prison. Yet this type of situation is presented in Project 10 literature
as acceptable behavior, simply because the teacher was homosexual.
Is Project 10 strictly a Southern California phenomenon?

I suspect it is an idea that's spreading.
Tellme more about New York City's sex education program.

Gays in New York tried to take radical control of it in the 1980s—first
by AIDS education program, then by writing the
infiltrating the
intercultural program called "Children of the Rainbow." This
program was simply New York City's effort to celebrate the city's
ethnic and racial diversity. But putting gays and lesbians into that mix
practically assured that the schools who followed the materials given
—
them would be approving homosexuality just as SIECUS and the
Kinsey- oriented schools had been urging for the last three decades in
America. In 1992, New Yorkers finally woke up, saw what was
happening, and took steps to stop it. Anybody who reads The New
York Times can tell you as much as I. They know that Joseph
Fernandez, the chancellor, lost his job over it.
Dr. Fernandez was a good man. Why did he lose his job?
According to Midge Decter's analysis, Dr. Fernandez "staked his
power and his considerable reputation as a manager on a battle
against a group of outraged and mobilized parents for the sake of
providing the city's six year olds with someone's idea of a preemptive
cure for homophobia."
Why would he do that?

Decter said he needed to assert his authority. He was also driven by
—
municipal politics where gays are deeply entrenched. Because of
the power of the gay community in New York City, Decter claims,
Fernandez wouldn't repudiate a program that reflected the gay
agenda. But the Board of Education could alter it, and did, once a
majority of its members saw how the public and the press reacted
to it.
What was the problem with the program?

Much was very good. There were only a few pages at issue out
of it —
of a 443-page teaching guideand a supplementary reading list. But
those few pages were enough to alarm the community board of
School District 24 in Queens.
Why was the Queens board alarmed?

To the board, it seemed that gays had infiltrated the program, and
had succeeded in making "Children of the Rainbow" a vehicle for
normalizing abnormal sex.
1'
You say ^infiltrated?
Itturned out that the material in question had been written by a

member of the Gay and Lesbian Teachers' Association and quietly
inserted in the teaching guide without any fanfare. In fact, when the
press got the story, Fernandez confessed that he hadn't read the
material in question before it was published.
And what was it about the material that was so offensive?

In its efforts to counteract this new social disease called homophobia,
the material crossed over the line between tolerance and approval. In
the guide, teachers were instructed to "include references to
lesbian /gay people in all curricular areas and [to] avoid exclusionary
practices by presuming a person's sexual orientation, reinforcing
—
Education 267
stereotypes, or speaking of lesbians/gays as 'they' or 'other.'" A

supplementary reading guide recommended a gay/ lesbian coloring
book for pre-schoolers, and three books designed for first graders:
Daddy's Roommate, Heather Has Two Mommies, and Gloria Goes to
Gay Pride.
Describe these.
They were books clearly intended for very young They had
children.
large illustrations and the briefest text. In Daddy's Roommate, we
read: "Daddy and his roommate Frank live together/Work
together/Eat together/ Sleep together/ Shave together/And sometimes
even fight together." In Daddy's Roommate, we also read: "Being gay
is just one more kind of love. And love is the best kind of happiness."
Heather is pretty much in the same vein, except that in Heather, we

read (and see in a large drawing) how one of Heather's mommies,
Mama Jane, had to be artificially inseminated. In Gloria, we go off
with a little girl to her first gay parade, and learn, with her, to sing,
"Two, four, six, eight. Being gay is really great."
What was the point ofall this?

Fernandez claimed that it was merely an attempt to teach children
—
what he called "the fourth R" respect for their neighbors and
themselves. An editorial in The New York Post disagreed. "As with
—
AIDS instruction literature which affords elementary school
students graphic information about the sexual practices of gay men
becoming increasingly apparent that these curricula are oriented
it's
toward recruitment." But an editorial in The New York Times agreed

with Fernandez.
Did New Yorkers buy that?

A lot of them didn't. Some were outraged. Teaching "the fourth R,
indeed" —in a city where the system was having difficulty teaching
the first three R's! There were many schools within that system where
the authorities couldn't protect children from getting shot, or cut by
the knives and razors that made their way past the schools' metal
detectors. On February 10, 1993,among the 79 people who spoke for
and against the dismissal of Fernandez, one African-American
mother said, "To have a program about black history, must we bow
the knee to homosexuality? Shame on you. Is your mother proud of
you? How dare you teach a nine-year-old how to use a contraceptive
jelly, and refuse to teach her math?"
A piece on Fernandez in The New Yorker by Tony Hiss said that many
who spoke against Fernandez that day were "badly misinformed.
Mary Cummins was hardly misinformed. She was the board
president of School District 24, and her analysis cut to the heart. She
said putting gays and lesbians into the rainbow could have one effect:
to popularize sodomy. She spelled out her group's three major
objections (and steps were later taken by the Board to revise the
Rainbow curriculum in accord with her objections). 1) The guide
informed teachers that homosexuality was commonplace, using the
old Kinsey figure of 10 percent. 2) It promoted the idea that "sodomy
isn't particularly dangerous" —
this in face of "the grim medical
reality" of AIDS. And 3) Its ultimate message was that homosexual
couples are families like all others and that children must be taught to
acknowledge the positive aspects of such households. In other words,
she said the Rainbow curriculum was outright homosexual
—
propaganda and only part of a wider campaign by the gay
community to gain influence over the schools.
What did she mean by "wider campaign?"

At that time in 1992, the school system had also issued a draft
curriculum for teaching about AIDS from kindergarten through grade
6. It was issued by the Board of Education after a review by 56
members of an advisory council on AIDS. It included educators,

doctors, social workers, minority activists, representatives of civil
rights organizations, two Protestant ministers, two rabbis, one priest
and six people from three gay activist groups. But this document was
also very political; many of its observations were canted in favor of a
gay view.
For example?
Wherever the term abstinence appears, it is immediately contradicted
within and by the surrounding context, which invariably stresses and
blesses the joys of sex, straight and gay alike.
That could be confusing to kids from kindergarten to the 6th grade.
Yes. The whole thing would have been very difficult for the kids to
grasp. But gay ideology was in the driver's seat here. For several years
now, it's been state law in New York: elementary and high school
Education 269
programs are supposed to "stress abstinence as the most appropriate

and effective pre-marital protection against AIDS." The N.Y. State
Board of Regents affirmed that law in a July 1991 resolution. C.
Everett Koop, the former surgeon general, wrote a note to the
education commissioner saying that abstinence was "the single most
useful thing that educators can do to protect teen-agers against HIV
infection." But the school system in New York City all but ignored
these injunctions. Instead, according to Ray Kerrison, a columnist for
The New York Post, it "flooded the schools with sex-ed literature that
is filthy beyond description slime being circulated in the guise of
...
AIDS education." Kerrison said that one leaflet from the Gay Men's
Health Crisis purporting to provide "safer sex guidelines" tells how to
engage in sex practices "so deviant they cannot be described in a
newspaper."
Well, this isn't a newspaper. Can you describe them here?

Kerrison may have been referring to material like that being
distributed out of the Hetrick- Martin Institute, a public school for gay
children in Manhattan. Here's a Hetrick-Martin guide for teaching
teens. Among this book's instructions for the proper application and
use of condoms are tips like this one:
For oral sex, use no lubricants on the outside of the condom.

For vaginal or anal intercourse, put a lot of water-soluble
lubricant on the outside of the condom. For anal intercourse,
lube up the receptive partner's anus (asshole) as well. Do it!
(Have fun!)
What's wrong with AIDS education?

In itself, nothing. In fact, 48 states have mandated AIDS education.
But gay activists have infiltrated these programs, using them as one
more way to teach the exact opposite of what should be so patently
clear —that the gay lifestyle is, in reality, a death style.
How can you say it's a death style?

Let me quote from a letter — Jean Genet to Jean- Paul Sartre on
homosexuality, which, Genet says, is, au fond, a death-option, "a
refusal to continue the world." Genet, as you know, was a novelist
and a playwright in the French theater of the absurd right after World
War II. He was an orphan, a thief and a homosexual who had spent
most of his youth in prison. But, after his discovery by the
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, Genet became a very celebrated man of

letters. Here, now, is Genet's view of homosexuality as a death style:
The significance of homosexuality is this: A refusal to
continue the world. Then to alter sexuality. The child or the

adolescent who refuses the world and turns toward his own
sex, knowing that he himself is a man, in struggling against
this useless manliness is going to try to dissolve it, alter it;
there's only one way, which is to pervert it through
pseudofeminine behavior. That's the meaning of drag
queens' ... bitter need to mock virility. Significance of
pederastic love: The beloved becomes the object ordained to
"represent" death (the lover) in life. That's why I want him to
be handsome. He has the visible attributes when I will be
dead. I commission him to live in my stead, my heir apparent.
The beloved doesn't love me, he "reproduces" me. But in this
way I sterilize him. I cut him off from his own destiny. You
see, it's not so much in terms of sexuality that I explain the
faggot, but in direct terms of death.... As for the appearance,
at certain moments, of pederasty in the life of a normal man,
it's provoked by the sudden (or slow) collapse of the life force.
A fatigue, a fear to live; a sudden refusal of the responsibility
to live.
John McNeill updates Genet. He writes, "Today, with the onset of the
AIDS epidemic, we who are gay... are now linked to a frightening,
usually fatal disease. By our very existence ...we are a constant
reminder to everyone of the inevitability of death. Gay people are
now called upon to give a special witness to the meaning of death."
And this is what gay activists tried to introduce into the New York
school system?
According to Edward Eichel, the AIDS education that was first

mandated in New York City in 1986 was "a major breakthrough for
gay activists, to turn the program into a gay lobby forum." At one of
the first teacher-training sessions held in January 1986 in a
Manhattan-based high school, the following list of do's and don'ts
was presented:
Homosexuals should not be blamed for the spread of AIDS.
Infants infected with AIDS should not be referred to as

"innocent" children as that implies that someone is guilty.
Education 271
Teachers should not be squeamish about using explicit terms

to describe gay sexual behaviors. Stress safe-sex behaviors.
Don't make an issue about the number of sex partners.

Teachers should stress to children that they should take a
civic stand on issues to protect the civil rights of
homosexuals.
And that's what they're saying now in AIDS education workshops all
over the country?
Many follow the New York City curriculum, written in part by Andrew
Humm. One line is instructive: it says, "Children need to know that
AIDS is no one's fault, and that all people with AIDS should be treated
with compassion."
You don't think that people with AIDS should he treated with
compassion?
May I be permitted to "draw a line" there —in other words, exercise a
little discrimination? To
do think they ought to be treated with
wit: I
compassion. But I am not so quick to concede that AIDS is "no one's

fault." Any more than I am compelled to say that alcoholism, or drug
addiction, though they may be disorders that "run in the family," are
"no one's fault." The vast majority of AIDS cases in this country are
homosexual males who can't, or won't, curb their desires for
dangerous same- sex sex. When they say, in the New York City AIDS
curriculum, that "AIDS is no one's fault," they're propagandizing little
—
kids to widen the circle of denial.
You sound a little angry.

No. I am not angry. But I am homosexuals who
disturbed. Not at the
can't help themselves. But at the indoctrination in the joys of same-
—
sex sex which is a kind of implicit recruiting that's behind much of —
this so-called AIDS education. I can't refrain here from quoting John
P. Hale, a New York lawyer and sometime adviser to the Archdiocese
of New York. Referring to the advertising of the gay lifestyle in the city
school system, Hale said, "This is extremely destructive. In order to
give comfort to that 1 out of 100 who may ultimately choose a
homosexual lifestyle, they are willing to put at risk the other 99 by
encouraging them to experiment in their formative stages of
adolescence. If a man in his early 30s invited the neighborhood
children over to tell them about their sexual options, parents would
call the cops; the school system is just substituting young emissaries
for the man next door. I call it proselytizing." But this activity has
been going on in New York for at least a decade. And the major media
have all but ignored it.
Are you disturbed about anything else?

As a matter of fact, I am. I can't help recalling the Exeter case.
What happened at Exeter?

For years, the parents of the kids at this very exclusive Eastern prep
school prided themselves on their enlightened attitude toward
homosexuality. They not only tolerated the homosexual teachers at
Exeter. In their hubris, they gave the faculty a free hand to "make
students aware of homosexual issues."
Hubris?
They said their kids were so intelligent that they wouldn't buy the gay
propaganda they knew their kids were getting in some of their classes.
But they were in for a rude surprise. In the summer of 1992, police
arrested Exeter's drama chairman, Larry Lane Bateman, after they
confiscated 650 video tapes that he had produced on campus over the
past ten years. In some of the tapes, past and present Exeter students,
all males, were engaged in sex acts. In October 1992, Bateman was
convicted of possession and distribution of child pornography, and,

in January, sentenced to five years in prison. He had actually been
selling the videotapes.
But this could have happened anywhere, couldn't it?

I think not. Exeter's administration brought this on themselves with
According to an account in The New
their oh-so-enlightened attitude.
York Times, "Exeter's principal, Kendra Stearns O'Donnell, has
emphasized making the school socially progressive as well as
academically outstanding. The school does not exclude homosexual
teachers from living as faculty residents in dormitories, as some other
boarding schools do.... Graduates who are homosexual return to the
school to speak about their experience. The school has established a
campus group for gay and lesbian students."
How could Exeter known that Bateman was a dangerous character?

—
Education 273
Given the sexually-liberal mindset at Exeter, no way. Authorities at

Exeter would never agree with me on a definition of "dangerous" if
"dangerous" meant hiring a teacher who had
and produced
written
two plays before he came to Exeter, plays that dealt with the
bittersweet plight of male teachers who seduce students into
homosexual relationships.
Bateman had done that?

He even admitted in his Ph.D. thesis at Southern Illinois University
that one of his plays was inspired by an incident involving himself
and a student when he was teaching at Augustana College in Rock
Island, Illinois. I have to say this about Bateman: in court, he was very
frank about his homosexual proclivities. He said in court that he
didn't understand what was "so wrong" about what he had done. "If
I'd strangled a child, if somebody had been hurt, if somebody's
property had been destroyed, then there certainly would be a victim.
Where are the victims?"
Where were they?

Come on. He was indoctrinating and recruiting these kids into a
death style that haunt many of them till the end of their days
will
which, in the age of AIDS, may not be very long. I am thinking of how
few homosexual males ever reach the age of 55. We don't have much
hard data on this, but I saw one U.S. study that places the number at
three percent. Whatever the figure is, we are all aware of how much of
a toll has been taken in the gay community by AIDS. The obits in our
large metropolitan dailies tell the story in another way. And the men
who die! They are so young. Men in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.
Is this kind of indoctrination going on at other prep schools like

Exeter?
Idon't know. But communities all over the land can tell you stories
about homosexual teachers who are going beyond the bounds. In
March 1984, the U.S. Department of Education conducted hearings in
seven cities regarding the Protection of Pupils Rights Amendment.
There were some very interesting pieces of testimony that reflect the
linebeing taught in sex education classes around the country. But
you didn't read or hear about this hearings in the national news
media. In Bellevue, Washington, children were being given
questionnaires that presupposed they were already promiscuous.
There was one teacher in Bellevue who had all the eighth grade boys
saying the word "vagina" and the girls all saying "penis." He forced
one girl who was too embarrassed to say "penis" to get up in front of
the class and shout it ten times.
What's your objection tothis?

It tampers with the kids' native innocence. One parent told the panel
how she felt about her children in that kind of class: "I feel what they
are accomplishing is to embarrass them, to break down their natural

sense of modesty, to just break down their barrier. They say they
don't want the kids to have sex, but if they break down their natural
defenses, those kids are going to have sex more easily." At that same
hearing, a parent from Lincoln City, Oregon, testified, "In my son's
fifth grade health class, all questions were answered without regard to
moral right or wrong. Homosexuality was presented as an alternative

lifestyle. Sexual activity among fifth graders was not discouraged
since it was feared that students might be embarrassed and not ask
additional questions."
You have some textbooks that take the same line?

Most of the sex ed textbooks follow the gay activist line. Here's one
called Learning About Sex: The Contemporary Guide for Young Adults,
by Gary F. Kelly. It was voted on to the Best Books for Young Adults
List by the American Library Association, and endorsed by none other
than Mary S. Calderone. Here are some sample quotes:
A fair percentage of people probably have some sort of sexual
contact with an animal during their lifetimes, particularly
boys who live on farms. There are no indications that such
animal contacts are harmful.
In the traditional marriage, however, it was sometimes

impossible for the partners to be who they really were as
individuals... but most gay men and women report that they
have always felt themselves to be at an advantage in finding
true equality in a relationship.
Homosexuality is recognized to be a valid life-style which

seems to be suitable for those who prefer to love and have
sexual relationships with their own sex.... Most human beings
have the potential for both heterosexual and homosexual
attraction, and most of us learn to be heterosexual because
our culture finds that pattern more acceptable.
(
Education 275
And does our culture find that heterosexual pattern more acceptable?
Decreasingly so. Does a news story out of England count? Here's an
item relayed by The New York Times. Seems that in 1994 the
headmistress of a primary school in East London turned down an
offer of cut-rate tickets for her students to see the ballet of Romeo and
Juliet because it was, in her words, "a blatantly heterosexual love
story." Then there's the city- wide prom
homosexuals sponsored
for
by the Los Angeles County Unified School District. The New York
Times ran an upbeat story on it on May 23, 1994. It was headlined
"Two White Sports Coats, Two Pink Carnations: One Couple for a
Prom." Stories like this are only reflect a phenomenon in our society
that I call "the erosion of heterosexuality."
You think heterosexuality is on the way out?

No. But I am disturbed by all the forces in society that have rushed
intoan endorsement of same-sex sex. These forces represent a direct,
on the primary unit of society itself, the family. Now,
frontal attack
more and more, parents are beside themselves when they are
confronted with sons and daughters who have announced they are
now gay or lesbian.
"
CHAPTER TEN:
PARENTS
may help to realize that there are some terrible

"It
parents who don't have this problem, and some great

parents who do.
Tell me what you say to parents who come to you, worried because
they think their boy might be a homosexual?
I tell them what I tell parents whose kids may be on drugs: Realize
you're not a failure as a parent, you're not helpless and you're not
alone.
Not failures as parents?

I tell them that whatever they did to their kid in early childhood (or
didn't do) is no reason to give up on parenthood now. Early maternal
failures may have arisen from the best of intentions. Early paternal
failure may have come from circumstances beyond the father's
control. The father may have been gone a lot because of his job. He
may have been away fighting a war. In fact, the rise of homosexuality
in the U.S. may have a lot to do with the fact that a good many fathers
were off fighting World War II, or serving in Korea or Vietnam. I can
tell a father who's grieving over his son's gay lifestyle that it was pretty
hard to be a role model for your son if you weren't around. I tell him,
"But that was then and now

now. You didn't know what was
is
happening then. Now, you do, and because you do, you can be a
better parent."
How?
Face up to the problem. Don't accept the currently fashionable cop
out that it isn't a problem. Try to talk to your kid. Listen to him. Don't
attack, don't get hysterical, don't engage in threats. (Don't be too
hard on yourself. It may help to realize that there are some terrible
parents who don't have this problem, and some great parents who
do.) Wait for a calm moment and then explain to him that you're
worried about whatever you've noticed concerning his behavior or
his choice of friends. Tell him about your values, and why you're dead
set against same-sex sex. He's still your kid, your young adult. And he
needs your support. You're not going to stop loving him, or ignore
him, much less banish him from your home. That will tell him a lot
about you and your love for him. That alone the sense of being —
—
loved, no matter what does wonders. Same thing goes for your
daughter. Your kids need your help.
What help can parents give at this stage?

It all depends on what stage their son or daughter is in. If you can, get
him or her to a psychiatrist or a psychoanalyst or psychologist who
knows something about homosexuality. In this day and age, your
family doctor may have been taken in by the propaganda that —
sexual lifestyles are a mere preference, or innate, or biological. This
may be the doctor's way of attempting to help you save face, and not
blame you, and not look down upon you for having a homosexual
child or young adult. If your doctor does that, look for other help.
What other help is there?

There are family counseling programs and support groups. There's a
new group, the National Association for Research and Therapy of
Homosexuality (NARTH), which you can call at (818) 789-4440, to
help you find the program you need. The right program will depend
on the circumstances of each case: how your child got involved in
same-sex sex, his or her degree of involvement, and the kind of
professional help that is available in your area. In most of our larger
cities, there are out-patient clinics, day-care residences, and private
practitioners who will help. In most cases, the whole family has to get
Parents 279
involved. The whole family can help get to the bottom of the
problem —finding out the nature, meaning, content, and origins of
the behavior. And what can be done to get your youngster back on
track.
What can parents do to prevent their children from becoming

homosexual in the first place?
Well, much young parents
of what we've talked about earlier will give
some They themselves have to be good role models moms
clues. —
and dads who really love one another, and show it, with a lot of hugs
and kisses. They shouldn't spare the hugs and kisses for their children
either. When little girls are about three years old, I'd advise their
fathers to present them with a special present, preferably a doll,
something that will assure the little girl of her femininity. Fathers who
demonstrate approval and admiration of their daughters in this
fashion are helping to set the course for a normal feminine
development. In my practice, I have found that lesbians had deep
feelings of inferiority as little girls. Anything that parents can do to
—
make their kids feel proud of their identity as young men, as young
women—will help the process.
Would you advise moms to give dolls to their little boys?
Absolutely not. I don't know where this idea came from, but the
voguish practice of encouraging little boys to play with dolls is a

stupid and dangerous one. Boys normally learn sensitivity from their
sisters.Or from their little girl playmates, or, later, from their
classmates in school. They don't need dolls. What they need most,
these days, is a sense of identity as little men, destined to become
fathers, like their dads.
What stops this process from happening?

— —
Both mother and father team up all unwitting to set in motion
some inner dynamics that underlie the later development of a
homosexual pattern.
How do the parents do this?

Mother can do things that inhibit his being able to say, "I am a little
man."
Like what?
She can do a number of things. To give you one obvious example, she
—
might treat him like a girl have her young boy-baby wearing dresses
until he's five years old, or fail to have his hair cut, keep him in long
curls.
Are these the kinds of homosexuals who turn out to pluck their
eyebrows and use liberal dashes of Chanel No. 5?
The limp-wristed, effeminate homosexuals who speak with a lisp? No,
not necessarily. Ernest Hemingway's mother had him in long curls
until he was five. And he reacted for the rest of his life by assuming
the most macho ways. By the way, the swishy homosexual is a cliche,
promulgated mostly by old, bad movies. Most homosexuals, in my
experience, are not swishy. (If they are, it's because they want to
increase their allure to other men.) As I have said more than once,
obligatory homosexuals are in search of their masculinity. If they
want to make any kind of statement by the clothes they wear, they try
to wear things that accentuate their sexiness as males: shirts
unbuttoned in the front, so others can see their nipples, tight pants so
others can see how well endowed they are.
Ummm. Getting back to the mom

who keeps her son in dresses —even
ifshe does, the kid has to know he's a little man doesn't he? p
Yes, but if she's very domineering, that won't really matter. If she
insists on treating him like a girl, or as a part of herself, he'll have
difficulty thinking of himself in any other terms.
Where does dad come into the picture? Don't little boys want to be
like their daddies?
Yes, they do, and if the father is around and asserts himself, that will
inhibit the influence of an over-controlling mom.
Then the boy-child will adopt a view of himself as "like his dad more
than like his mom?"
Right. But if the father abdicates his responsibility as a father, or is
seen as somehow rejecting his son, then the son will still think he is
like his mother more than he is like his father.
And so, when the tot doesn't come to a full realization that he is a
boy -baby that gives him a lasting predilection for same- sex sex?
f
Not necessarily. The boy can come to his self-identity as a man later
on, if his mother doesn't interfere with other processes that help the
Parents 281
boy grow up as a young man.
How can she interfere?

By fostering competitiveness with his dad, and by disrespecting him.
How does she do that?

By making it clear that she favors the boy over his father. That's very
seductive for a little boy. Before he realizes what's happening, he's
taken his father's place, and, through no fault of his own, maybe even
alienated him. If Dad then abdicates, fails to boy fishing or to
take the
ballgames — all those male things that fathers —
and sons do the boy
can grow up identifying more with his mom.
How else can she interfere with the other normal processes?
By exerting total control over his development to the point where he
cannot separate from her and take charge of his own life. By trying to
thwart every independent move he makes, and expressing her open
disapproval if he makes one. By filling him with fear if he wants to
take trampoline lessons, or play football, or go on an overnight
camping trip with his scout troop. By making him feel he belongs to
her, physically and psychically. If she doesn't let him play with other
boys. By making him feel he is doing something wrong when he
wants to have a little girl friend. I had one patient, let's call him
Patrick. He had had a mother who was an extremely beautiful
woman, who treated Patrick as an extension of herself. He was her
phallus, and he dared not do anything, as a child, without clearing it
with her. She lived through him, and, to assure herself that he'd
always be there for her, she demeaned and diminished his
relationship with his father. This made it impossible for him to form
his own natural identity. He ended up taking on the traits of his
mother. He
took on her posture, walked like her, talked like her. He
began to wear her dresses. Now his father, who had been indifferent
to him before this, really rejected him —
the son who had become a
sissy. That's also what the kids in school began to call him, a sissy and
a faggot. Patrick ended up being just what she'd wanted all along, an
extension of herself.
I've heard that a good many sons and daughters are now coming
home from college these days with the news that they are gay or
lesbian.
Every get a dozen calls or so from worried parents, often right

fall, I
after the Thanksgiving holiday. They tell me that their beloved

Janices, or Jimmies, have come home in the middle of their first
college semesters to announce, often at the holiday dinner table,
"Hey, mom, hey dad! Be thankful! I have something to tell you. I'm
gay!" For this reason, I don't look forward to Thanksgiving any more.
It's a new tradition in America. I call it "The Thanksgiving Day
Massacre."
Why "massacre?"
Announcements like this that our kids have suddenly decided they're
gay amount to a kind of murder of the family. Parents can't imagine
things that are worse. something like a premature Alzheimer's
It's
disease; there's no more communication, no more sharing of

real
experience, now, or ever. Some great parents can say that this is okay.
But, deep down, they know they are deluding themselves. This can
—
mean the end of hopes and dreams for their kids that they will some
day experience the extreme joys that have been repeated over and
over again since civilization began, that they will become parents.
And make them grandparents. To know that this isn't going to
happen —well, it's a sadness.
Can you help their children?

I —
can help the obligatory homosexuals by helping them get to the
bottom of some early childhood dynamics they haven't understood.
ButI am not optimistic about my ability to help those who are into
thenew kind of homosexuality emerging on our nation's campuses.

Young women, for instance, who aren't obligatory homosexuals go
have sex with another young woman, then
off to school, fall in with a
lesbian crowd that has taken on all the aspects of a cult.
You know ofany cases like this?

A good many parents are phoning me these days. I get more calls
from parents of daughters who have declared they are lesbians. Let
me quote from one recent letter. "I have gone through the parent
'roller coaster from hell' of emotions over my daughter, Hannah,
who, upon her graduation from Stanford in June, said she was a
—
lesbian at age 23. I'm not ready to accept this. My wife has
stonewalled her feelings by rejecting Hannah and keeping the pain
largely within herself. I've tried to talk and reason with my daughter
Parents 283
and I've tried to understand what this choice is all about. Can you
give me some guidance? I realize that anything I say to my daughter is
rejected, and it often has an opposite effect. There is some pressure
on me just to acceptMy pastor says, 'There's nothing to be done,
it.
My feelings say she's being a prodigal daughter, and that

so tolerate.'
she'll come back in time. But I'd like a plan. How can help her come I
back?"
What could you tell him?

I told him he had to keep being a good dad — loving, kind,
understanding, patient. If he's like the father in the famous parable of
the prodigal son, he can, in fact, do nothing but wait for this young
woman to hit some kind and
of bottom
then, on her own, figure out
how she'd been steered into the life of a lesbian by people who had
their own best interests in the matter, not hers. I've had other such
visits from other parents. A well-to-do couple from the Midwest
called on me recently to tell me their daughter, Anne, had become
part of a campus group of gays and lesbians who were giving her
moral support, urging her to hold out against the entreaties of her
parents.
This young woman, Anne, was a lesbian?

Well, she said she was. She was a promising a sophomore at
scientist,
an elite college in the East. She told her parents she had fallen in love
with another young woman.
And Anne's parents didn't know what they could do?

Yes. That's why they came to me. They wondered if I would see their
daughter, and explore things with her. I saw her, and I found out that
her so-called lesbianism was hardly anything she (or I) could say she
was born with. She was raised in a fairly Puritanical household, got
very good grades in school, and liked boys. But she had two
unsatisfying affairs in her late teens, had some fumbling sex, and no
orgasms. Then, on the rebound, as it were, and away from home for
the first time, she encounters a sexy young lesbian from Los Angeles,
and has some terrific sex, Pow! That does it. Now she's a lesbian.
What could you do about it?

Under the circumstances, nothing. I tried to learn something from
Anne about her dream life, encouraged to do some free association,
so we could try and get to the deeper origins of her obligatory

homosexuality. As it turned out, I could see no signs that she was an
obligatory homosexual at all. I tried to tell her that. She didn't care.
She was in She liked the feeling. She enjoyed the company of
love.
others like her on campus. She didn't need young men. Didn't want
—
them. For her, this was simply a choice of an alternate lifestyle.
Well, maybe, if it was a choice in 1995, she could make another

choice, after she graduated, in 1998. She could decide that she was
simply one of those "four-year lesbians. "And that now she was ready
to meet a young man and get married and have babies.
Yes, that's possible. For her sake, I certainly hope so. She has a very
wealthy grandmother who would disinherit her if she knew that Anne
was a lesbian. And for her parents' sake. Anne is their only child.
They'd like grandchildren. But I worry about Anne. After four years of
same- sex sex, how ready will she be for a heterosexual marriage? And
if just simply decides that that's the option she wants in 1998, what's
going to make her stick with her man when she encounters the
inevitable problems that come with any marriage?
So, do you have Anne in treatment now?

Hardly. I don't treat anyone unless they want it. Anne doesn't want it.
You sound glum about Anne.

I am. She's bought into the notion that men don't matter. I think
she's ruining her life. Worse, I think there are a good many other
Annes out there who have bought into the same-sex sex propaganda.
I wonder what's going to happen to our society.
Any other advice for parents?

Parents should know that nearly all adolescents experience some
degree of uncertainty about their sexual identity. But now they're
being told by some psychiatrists and counselors that any form of
—
sexual identity is okay "gay, straight or in-between." If they think
this, then they're caught in the middle of a fantasy that will divert and
derail their lives. We
can only hope they find their way out of that
fantasy before late. We have to encourage our children to
it's too
accept themselves as male, or female, and encourage them to live.
Life is a series of painful courses, painful but necessary. We go
through them because they make us who we are, and help us take our
places as contributing members of society.
" —
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
SOCIETY
&
"Thisbreakdown of the family could only happen in a
society that seems tohave decided, over the past 20
years, that dads were optional single mothers were chic,
and recreational sex normal, even for children.
Does homosexuality threaten society?

Yes,and the most troubling thing to me is that we don't know it yet.
The American public doesn't understand. For more than 40 years, the
most basic institution in society, the family, has been under assault
while the nation's traditional watchdog, the press, has been largely
unconcerned.
Well, Americans have always put freedom at the top of the list. And
that includes sexual freedom, too.
Enlightened people everywhere want true sexual freedom, for

themselves as individuals and for society as a whole. As human
beings, we have emotional and sexual needs, and, therefore, we ought
to have the freedom to fulfill those needs joyfully and lovingly
without frowns from religion, or proscriptions from the state.
Absolute, unconditional freedom?
No. There ought to be one agreed-upon condition: that these sexual

freedoms don't give anyone permission to destroy society. And that's

what the gay rights movement is doing, destroying society, in the
name of freedom, a Active freedom.
That's a large statement How is the movement destroying society?

First, it takes deadly aim on the primary unit in society, the family.
Second, it is eliminating one of the very obvious, but very key factors
in the making of a civilization: the fact that one generation succeeds
another generation. Certainly, for the individual homosexual,
homosexuality is intergenerational suicide. It is no accident that the
first book of the Bible is called "Genesis." And no accident that the
rolling poetry of all those "begats" in the Gospel of Matthew "And

—
Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob begat Judah
—
and his brothers..." still affects us in gut ways even today. The Bible
was an attempt to tell the history of the human race. And the same-
sex sex movement, perhaps all unwittingly, would bring that story to
a premature end. Third, the very fact of AIDS is the same-sex sex
movement's terrifying contribution to this terrific century, which may
end with as many 110 million people infected with the most dread
disease in human history. Now, do you see why I say this movement
threatens society?
Um. I see. But you say these effects have been unwitting?
I have a small example here, an old yellowed clipping
Yes, largely.
from The New York Times, dated Nov. 3, 1973, that reports on a piece
of legislation in the Australian parliament designed to stop violence
against homosexuals —which a cabinet minister described as
"virtually a recognized civilian team sport" in Australia. The story of
what the people of Australia did to kill off this "civilian team sport"
demonstrates a certain amount of good will—but no discernment
on their part. The same yellowed by Robert
clipping, bylined
Trumbull, goes on to tell and in the school
of efforts in the churches
system to re-educate the Australian people. Martin Smith, a
candidate running for parliament in New South Wales on a gay
liberation platform, told Trumbull that a team of 15 homosexual
lecturers had spoken on the subject at 30 state and private schools in
Sydney "without opposition." He said, "We are not trying to tell the
children that homosexuals are any better or worse than
—
heterosexuals. We make no moral judgments we leave that up to the
children." I submit that "leaving moral judgments up to the children"
Society 287
is one sure step toward the breakdown of society (whether its

proponents realize it or not) and of the primary institution of society,
the human family.
And now, society has taken that one sure step?

Yes.
How?
By approving the gay-rights crusade, which is a political movement.
How do you figure that it's a political movement?

What was a small band of non-conformists during the 1960s has been
transformed into a well-managed and well-financed complex of
organizations that promote homosexuality.
How many gay and lesbian organizations are there?

It'shard to say. I have heard estimates as high as 14,000 individual
chapters for various national and regional gay and lesbian
associations. Currently, the most powerful of the national groups are
the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights
Campaign Fund, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund,
Queer Nation, and the AIDS Coalition to Un-leash Power, better
known by its acronym, ACT UP. During the Clinton presidential
campaign, an organization of very affluent gays took shape out in Los
Angeles. It was called ANGLE, Access Now for Gay and Lesbian
Equality. There was also a short-lived organization to promote gays in
the military, the Campaign For Military Service. There's an
organization of gays and lesbians in the U.S. Congress. There's
something called Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and
another called Senior Action in a Gay Environment. I almost forgot:
under the presidency of Patricia Ireland, the National Organization
for Women, with a membership of 280,000, has become, in Ms.
Ireland's words, "an active part of the lesbian-and-gay-rights
movement." Ms. Ireland, though married, is also a lesbian.
Considering their numbers, gays and lesbians have been making a

lot of noise.
They have help from the national press. Just having these
organizations gives gays a kind of amplified legitimacy, because, as
organizations, they're recognized by the media. The media, in turn,
confer extra legitimacy on the movement's leaders, who swear

allegiance to the movement. This allegiance is so strong in some that
it overcomes loyalty to their own families, to their own churches, to
their professions,sometimes even to their own countries. Burgess
and MacLean, the homosexual Britons who handed over atomic
secrets to the Russians, affirmed that their loyalty to each other
transcended any loyalty they might have felt to the Crown.
And you say that some gays are similarly subversive?

They've taken over the field of sex education in many of our nation's
schools. They've tried to infiltrate theBoy Scouts of America. But, so
far, the Boy Scouts of America has been able to resist, even in the face
of lawsuits claiming discrimination against the Scouts for not
allowing gays to join up or be scoutmasters.
J understand President Clinton skipped the quadrennial Boy Scout

Jamboree summer of 1993, passing the invitation along to
in the
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit, who also cancelled.
Every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has attended that

Jamboree. They say Bill Clinton couldn't do it without incurring the
wrath of the gay and lesbian community. So he snubbed the Boy
Scouts, a snub that "may yet come back to haunt" the Clinton
Administration.
Who said that?

The editors of The Wall Street Journal. Their words were quite
scathing. "At a time when educators are busy conceiving of newer
and faster ways to distribute condoms to schoolchildren, an
organization whose Oath still pledges young members to keep
'physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight,' will seem, of
course, out of date to some. For our money ... the Scout Oath
represents infinitely saner rules for survival than all the
demonstrationsnow going on in grade schools showing how to put
condoms on bananas."
But showing children how to put condoms on bananas was part of a

campaign to educate our youth about AIDS.
Yes, and, as I've already pointed out, gays used the anti-AIDS
—
campaign as a wedge to help indoctrinate our schoolchildren with
their views about same-sex sex as a legitimate, alternate lifestyle.
"
Society 289
They've done a very good job of it, too. Pro-gay activists, homosexual
or otherwise, now portray same-sex sex as normal as apple pie, and
intimidate others with different views, especially in the higher
reaches of academe. And they're aided and abetted by the major
media. The movement has already accomplished what every human
society would have trembled to tamper with, a revision of the basic
code: that men and women mate with the opposite sex and not with
each other.
Aren't you exaggerating a bit? I haven't seen too many cries of alarm
over this "subversion ofsociety.
Threats about what is happening to society do not have much effect.
Nobody considers himself the guardian of society. The average

citizen says he doesn't quite know what these social interests are and,
after all, aren't personal decisions about sex a private matter?
Aren't they?
No. Sexual behavior is down by no one

not an arbitrary set of rules set
knows who, for purposes which no one understands. Our sexual
folkways are a product of the human race's long evolutionary march,
which has established certain patterns that were found to work. They
make possible the cooperative existence of human beings with one
another. At the individual level, they create a balance between the
demands of sexual instinct and the external realities surrounding
each of us. Not all cultures survive. The majority have not, and
anthropologists tell us that serious flaws in sexual codes and
institutions have undoubtedly played a significant role in many a
culture's demise. I cannot help quoting Billy Graham here. "If God
doesn't destroy the United States of America," he once said, "He owes
Sodom and Gomorra an apology."
You don't think that some of our society's values can change?
Many should change. The ecological movement has helped us see the
way to some basic changes in the way we are despoiling our earth,
our skies, and our waterways, and wiping out many of the creatures
that live in that eco-system. But polemical, political pseudo-science is
not the way something so basic as the male-female

to re-evaluate
design. No society has ever accepted adult preferential
homosexuality. Nowhere is homosexuality a desired end in itself.
Nowhere do parents say, "It's all the same to me if my child goes one
way or the other." Nowhere does homosexuality per se place one in

an enviable position.
How about the area of the fine arts?

That's the one exception. Some of the people making grants for the
arts are homosexuals, and they tend to give grants only to other
homosexuals. Being gay in certain theater circles doesn't hurt a
young man's career; it may help a lot. But that is part of the problem.
Insofar as the artists in any society help change a people's
perceptions, the growing power of gay artists, gay novelists, gay
playwrights, gay journalists represents a real danger. There's
evidence that same-sex sex is growing in popularity, particularly
among our young people, who see it as a new kind of fashion. Here's
a story from Urvashi Vaid, now 35, a former head of the National Gay
& Lesbian Task Force, about her first days at Vassar: "I was 16 when I
walked in the door. I was quite innocent and quite earnest and I got
immediately involved in campus politics. There was a women's group
on campus, and the women were fabulous, dressed in black from
head to toe, just as I am today. Very attractive and all rumored to be
lesbians. To me they were my first role models of what a lesbian
looked like, and they were so glamorous." We've already noted the
phenomenon of college women becoming "four-year lesbians," with
the notion that they can then go on to marriage and motherhood.
Maybe they can.

I suppose they can. But this isn't an equal-opportunity phenomenon.
Their brothers who follow the same fad — into same-sex sex may —
have acquired some habits in the process that are very hard to kick,
including AIDS.
AIDS is a habit?
It'san archaic use of the word, but the medieval philosophers called
—
disease itself a habit in the sense that it was not something inborn,
but acquired, and gained domination over a person by a kind of
observed duplication and re-duplication of power, until the disease
finally won. Another example of where fictive freedoms lead: to
annihilation.
You don't think people ought to be free to hurt themselves? What

about the so-called "consensual crimes?"
Society 291
Yes, what extreme civil libertarians sometimes call "victimless
crimes." But we always have to ask whether that's an apt description

for some of the popular consensual crimes, such as prostitution,
pornography, adultery, incest, bigamy, polygamy, and, of course, at
least in certain states, sodomitic intercourse.
But isn 't there a move on to repeal all laws against these crimes?
Yes.
On what grounds?
According to Peter McWilliams, author of Ain't Nobody's Business If
You Do, these laws are un-American and un-Constitutional.
McWilliams argues that "we are, after all, 'endowed by [our] Creator
with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness.' Thus, we are well-endowed. Let's use our
endowment." You can see where he's coming from. He's saying, in
effect, "As long as nobody's hurt, what's the harm?" But this is my
point. —
We can't pretend that our personal choices our freedom, if
you will— doesn't have an impact on society. It does. Since we started
liberating ourselves in the 1920s, we are only now beginning to realize
—
that our freedoms particularly our sexual freedom have led to a —
many unforeseen consequences. Take pregnancies, and births,
great
among very young, unmarried women. In some communities, 40
percent of the teenage women are having babies out of wedlock.
You want society to frown on this?

There was a time when society did. Now, even such arbiters of the
public good as the editorial writers for The New
York Times have
insisted that school authorities in Texas who tried to keep pregnant
cheerleaders off the cheerleading squad were wrong. The Times
proposed that we not stigmatize girls who become pregnant because
we don't stigmatize the boys who make them so. Society (and The
Times) should realize that if we fail to frown on the notion of children
having children, we condone it. It's a situation that's creating all
kinds of societal havoc. You can see the consequences of all these
most vividly when you visit our juvenile courts, and
illegitimate births
see that a good many of the kids in trouble never had a father. Or start
out a little your investigation: check out the pathetic
earlier in
condition of babies who are unlucky enough to be born of unmarried,
teenage mothers who have been on crack. How can you look at a
crack baby, born blind and with permanent neurological damage of

all kinds, and talk about abrogating the laws against victimless
crimes?
What crime pertains here?

Well, for one thing, we still have laws against statutory rape —having
sex with a minor, even though she's given her consent. But these laws
are rarely enforced. Almost never enforced if the guy who's made her
isalso under age. But the extreme civil libertarians like Peter
McWilliams (who, by the way, is gay) keep talking about sexual
freedom.
You dare to tell Americans they have too much freedom?

The trouble is that we put the freedom label on some very empty
promises. We've been sucked in by our own little self-delusions, and
by a lot of propaganda. At one time, I thought that psychoanalysis- as-
a-movement was going to teach us how to free ourselves from our
delusions. But psychoanalysis has a bad press these days.
How do you accountfor that had press?

Some of come from gay psychiatrists. In their drive to
it has
rationalize their own behavior, they have become scoffers at
psychoanalysis itself. And elements in the press have bought into
Americans begin to re-analyze what has happened in the
that. But, as
land of instant-everything— a nation hooked on instant solutions,
instant satisfactions and instant pleasures — I foresee a return to
psychoanalytic solutions that can help society.
You want to psychoanalyze society?

No. Psychoanalysis is "one-on-one." But society has come to
resemble a child who is caught up in a developmental phase that
Freud called "polymorphous perversity." And it would be nice to see
society grow up.
Meaning?
Children go through periods in their early years when they entertain
all sexual objects and urges without restraint. This is a time of
confused but emerging sexual role identity. It's part of a normal
development. Kids outgrow it, as they become socialized.
And how has society come to resemble children who are going
Society 293
through this phase?

There are a good many elements mainstream who want to
in the U.S.
eliminate sexual differences between men and women. Some gay and
lesbian theorists also advocate the legitimation of all the philias, and
the normalization of same-sex sex as an alternate, and honored,
lifestyle. What troubles me most is that society's watchdogs,
including some elements and our nation's churches,
in the press
approve of all this polymorphous perversity, on the grounds that it's
all part of the freedom we should enjoy as Americans —to do anything
we want.
But don't gays and lesbians deserve the same civil rights as everyone
else in this country?
They already have these rights, as human persons, as American
citizens. But they have been able to convince many Americans that
they deserve special rights, as gays and lesbians. That's where society
has to draw the line. And, so far, it looks like many Americans do not
know this yet. At the time of the Washington march in the spring of
1993, there was a kind of general applause across the land people —
were cheering "another victory for civil rights." But I am sure they did
not realize that the victory that was being celebrated by gays and
lesbians that day was a victory over this nation.
And what about those who are not gay? We saw some of them
marching, too. What were they celebrating?
These people joined the march because they are part of that segment
of the American public that enjoys the prospect of complete sexual
—
freedom although, as I've already tried to point out, it is a fictive
freedom. If they can have that kind of freedom, they are all-too-
willing to grant gays what they want: a complete legitimation of their
lifestyle,
But many gays insist they'd be justfine ifsociety left them alone.
I wonder. Is this why they want to march in the St. Patrick's Day
Parade in New York, they want to
celebrating their homosexuality? If
be left alone, why do they dress up and announce

in outlandish attire
their gay pride? I think society would be quite happy to leave them
alone if they didn't go around demanding that society accept what is
in the final analysis a program that subverts society.
How does their program subvert society?

The big answer is program subverts the primary unit in
that their
society, the family. But you can see the results in some discrete
manifestations of certain ills in society. Consider, for example,
teenage suicide. A U.S. Task Force on Youth Suicide reported in 1989
that gay adolescents may account for as many as 30 percent of youth
suicides each year. In fact, the actual figure may be closer to ten
percent. But, whatever the percentage is, I say this is not because of
anything society has done to them, but because they are desolate
over their homosexual inclinations. Or, most likely, in despair after
their homosexual enactments. And yet we see programs like Project
10 in Los Angeles and the Children of the Rainbow in New York City
going around to all the schools promoting homosexuality. Now that's
subversive.
You say they're "promoting homosexuality." But haven't you

concluded that homosexuals are pretty much grooved by the time
they are three years old?
Those are the obligatory homosexuals. But many of these people, in

their compulsion to find new converts, are always on the lookout for
recruits. In the gay community, they even have a name for them:
chicken hawks.
A number of gay spokesmen specifically deny that gays or lesbians

are out to recruit young people. Some authorities, like the sociologist,
Father Andrew Greeley, for example, go along with that.
Then Father Greeley hasn't seen the evidence that I have. I can cite all
the sex education literature that's going around the nation's schools
these days, much of it prepared by gay and lesbian teachers.
Invariably, these materials tell children that they all have "legitimate
sexual alternatives." Almost every week in this country, ephebophiles
(homosexual adults who go for young adolescents) are arrested and
charged with sexual misconduct. Many of them are teachers and Boy
Scout leaders. Some of them are even priests. I can also cite a 1977
assertion by Bruce Voeller and lean O'Leary, then executive co-
directors of the National Gay Task Force. They said, "We believe it is
immoral to pretend to children that they don't have a variety of loving
options in their own lives, or to force them to believe that they are the
only ones in the world to have loving or sexual feelings for their own
sex."
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—
Young men or women of high school age can they he recruited if
they don 't already have some leanings toward same-sex sex?
Many teenagers are ambivalent and confused about their sexuality.

Some young men are overwhelmed by their sexy new feelings, but too
shy to approach a young woman. They're the ones who are always
ripe for seduction by an older boy, or, indeed, a homosexual male of
any age who can show them some new thrills. Young women are
similarly vulnerable to seduction by confident lesbians. I would
submit that the young woman of 14 who was seduced on a trip
involving Project 10 wouldn't have dreamed of naming herself as "a
lesbian" if her lesbian teacher hadn't told her she was a lesbian.
So, when she was enjoying sex with her teacher, what was she?
Getting off with someone of the same sex doesn't make one a
homosexual. To be sure, she was learning something about her own
body by entering young women have been
into this sex play. But
doing this for centuries. It's a stage way to
they go through, on the
maturity. Freud observed this phenomenon. He called young women
who never got beyond this stage immature. He said the same thing
about young men who never grew up to their full manhood. To tell
such young men and women they are homosexuals is a cruel thing to
do. Many of these young people are not my obligatory homosexuals.
They just haven't grown up.
Do you see these kinds ofpeople in your practice?

Increasingly so. I have a case right now. A music student from the
mid-West came New York City for the summer. He had one
to
homosexual experience at NYU and was afraid that, now, he was a
homosexual. His mother was beside herself. "What is happening to
our world?" she wanted to know.
What did you tell her?

I told her that some of our most basic institutions are under grave
assault.
What institutions?
The family, for one. To many gays and lesbians, the traditional
—
family— mother, father, children is anathema and an anachronism.
Gays set the destruction of the nuclear family as part of their agenda
early on. Back in 1970, according to the Quicksilver Times, a gay
publication in Washington, D.C., a male homosexual workshop at a

Philadelphia convention included as one of its demands, "The
abolition of the nuclear family because it perpetuates the false
categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality." There was a
lesbian workshop at the same convention. Its members made a
similar demand they labeled "Destruction of the Nuclear Family."
They charged that "the nuclear family is a microcosm of the fascist
state, where the women and children are owned by, and their fates
determined by, the needs of men, in a man's world." This flies in the
face of the teachings of the world's great religions. I quote from an
April 1993 opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post. "Judaism sees the
family as the bedrock of sane society, and sees homosexuality as the
family's most lethal enemy." Many gays refer contemptuously to
women, now, as "breeders."
You think gays are taking over the country?

Ifyou want some insight into the gay activist- artist fantasy, I cite a
piece, "For the Homoerotic Order," in the Feb. 15-21, 1987, issue of
Boston's Gay Community News:
"We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble

masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies.... Your
sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will
be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore
us.... We shall write poems of the love between men; we shall
stage plays in which man openly caresses man; we shall make

films about the love between heroic men which will replace
the cheap, superficial, sentimental, insipid, juvenile,
heterosexual infatuations presently dominating your cinema
screens. We shall sculpt statues of beautiful young men, of
bold athletes.... The museums of the world will be filled only
with paintings of graceful, naked lads.... Our writers and
artists will make love between men fashionable and de rigeur,
and we will succeed because we are adept at setting styles.
We will eliminate heterosexual liaisons.... We will unmask the
powerful homosexuals who masquerade as heterosexuals....
We are everywhere; we have infiltrated your ranks... There
will be no compromises. We are highly intelligent, we are the
natural aristocrats of the human The family unit will
race....
be abolished. Perfect boys will be conceived and grown in the
genetic laboratory. They will be bonded together in
communal settings, under the control and instruction of
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homosexual savants.... All churches who condemn us will be

closed. Our only gods are handsome young men.... The
exquisite society to emerge will be governed by an elite
comprised of gay poets...."
Who wrote this?

Someone named Michael Swift. He describes himself as a gay poet
and revolutionary from Connecticut. In fairness, I should point out
that he said his essay was "an eruption of inner rage, on how the
oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor." But I do not
think he was just one lone, kooky voice in the urban wilderness. I cite,
for example, a June 1993 article in The Village Voice by a prominent
gay writer, Richard Goldstein, who says that "homoeroticism exists in
everyone.... embraces everyone who honors their homosexuality.
It
And armed with faith in the goodness of gayness, it moves beyond its
enemies' worst night-mare. It reproduces and recruits." The piece
reads like some gay manifesto. Indeed, it was entitled, "Faith, Hope
and Sodomy: Gay Liberation Embarks on a Vision Quest."
Do you get angry when you read stuff like this?

Itend to sympathize with the pain behind these brave declarations. I
can see that Michael Swift's piece is just a megalomanic threat
uttered by someone who is very frustrated with his life, but doesn't
quite know why. But then I am brought up short when I realize that
many of the things he predicted in 1987 have already been
institutionalized in American society today.
How so?
When I hear of 18-year-old college freshmen coming home to
announce, "Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. I'm gay." When I see plays and movies
same-sex sex. When I see homosexual priests and ministers
extolling
preaching acceptance of homosexuality from the pulpits.
So what does this mean to the rest of us?
Those who realize what's happening might be bold enough to say,

"Enough." They might want to reverse a process that's been going on
in this country for more than 40 years. They might want to see if they
can figure out ways to stop this gay revolution.
What have the gays done?

To sum up what I've already said at some length, they have taken over
our schools. They've taken over our universities. They've taken over
many of our professional organizations. They've taken over much of
the media. They're making same-sex sex fashionable among our
young people. They've facilitated the AIDS plague, which will kill
millions of Americans, and made it politically dangerous for anyone
to talk about it, and about its real causes. Wait until they succeed in
codifying their so-called rights in the laws of the land. Then you'll see
what this means.
What do you mean, "codify?"
To pass laws giving homosexuals special rights, rights that impose

legal consequences on those who do not want to grant these special
rights.
Is that in the cards?
There's a strong coalition of gay groups, led by the National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force, that intends to get a federal "gay rights bill"
passed by Congress. If it passes, it will have enormous repercussions
on our daily lives. If it passes, we will have crossed over the final line
between tolerance and approval. The model, of course, is the Civil
Rights Bill of 1964, which dealt with racial discrimination.
A Gay Civil Rights Act? Is that likely?

More than 65 cities in this country have already adopted such laws,
and, so far, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld them. If our
legislators and our courts treat homosexuality the way they treated
race, then all of the laws that give certain guarantees to blacks and
Hispanics, for example, will automatically apply to those who
practice same-sex sex.
What guarantees would gays then have?

They will have carte blanche to push their gay and lesbian agenda in
our schools, from kindergarten through grad school. Teachers will be
—
hired with an eye toward "sexual orientation" making certain that
there are enough gays and lesbians on staff to provide potential
homosexual youths with role models. There will be homosexual clubs
in every school. Businesses will have to hire gays and lesbians. Even
now, law firms are being pressured to do so or suffer the —
consequences of exercising "job bias."
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Really? Law firms?
In September 1993, the New York Law Journal published results of a

study commissioned by the New York Bar Association, which found a
—
good deal of bias in the legal workplace based on some findings by a
group of gay lawyers that a number of New York firms weren't making
active efforts to recruit gays and lesbians or adopting "express goals
and timetables for hiring and promoting gays and lesbians." So, you
see, in spite of denials by gays that they want to establish hiring
quotas in the workplace, they're attempting exactly that. If
homosexuals force open acceptance in the U.S. armed forces, you will
see these special rights enforced by federal law.
How would that happen?

I cite John Taylor's article in the November 30, 1992, issue of New
York magazine. This was a piece that sympathized with the gay rights
people. But Taylor wrote, "Gays are either deluded or disingenuous
when they say they want only to end discrimination and are not
interested in establishing affirmative- action quotas for homosexuals.
One leads to the other. Once the regulation outlawing homosexuals is
lifted, it is virtually an openly gay soldier passed over

inevitable that
for a promotion will sue, claiming discrimination. Activists will
demand the promotion of gay officers, the naming of a gay general,
gay- sensitivity courses during boot camp."
You think the gay-rights* people will make all this happen?
As I said before, the courts could overturn the compromise struck by
President Clinton with the Pentagon. But politics may get in the way.
Politics?
People. We'll see whether the people-at-large are going to stand for it.
Speaking of the political arena, didn't Oregon voters turn down a

referendum in Oregon in the fall of 1992 that would have outlawed
homosexuality?
The electorate in Oregon turned down Ballot Measure 9 by 11
percentage points. But that initiative wasn't intended to outlaw
anything. It just wanted to put the voters of Oregon on record as
saying that state, regional and local governments, including the

public schools, should set a standard for Oregon's youth that
recognizes homosexuality as "abnormal, wrong, unnatural and
perverse," and to direct that it " be discouraged and avoided."
In part, that sounds like your position.

Yes, but only in part. The measure was also intended to pre-empt any
local measures, like the ordinance passed by the City Council of
Portland on May barring discrimination against gays and
12, 1992,
employment and credit. I don't go along with
lesbians in housing,
discrimination against homosexuals in housing or credit, or
employment.
That's reasonable.
The proponents of Ballot Measure 9 in Oregon argued that this is not

such a reasonable position. One spokeswoman said that homosexuals
already had every right she had under the Constitution. "We are just
saying we don't think it is right that an advantage should be granted
to someone based on how they have sex."
And that's what the Portland ordinance was doing—giving special

rights to homosexuals?
Well, that's what they seemed to be arguing about As we
in Oregon.
speak, voters in at least seven states are debating the same issues. But
I wonder if housing, employment or credit ratings are really the issue.
If Measure 9 had passed, I seriously doubt, as the American Civil
Liberties Union in Oregon maintained, that the state would have had
an army of investigators rooting out people in state and local
government who were speaking favorably of homosexuals. And I
doubt, as the chairwoman of the No on 9 Committee told The New
York Times, that "... thought police and peeping Toms [would be]
crawling all over Oregon looking for homosexuals."
So what was the real issue?

I think people were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the
notion now being taught in the schools and in the major media that
homosexuality is just another legitimate lifestyle. People see this as a
part of a specificbreakdown of society's basic unit, the family. And
that this could only happen in a society that seems to have decided,
over the past 20 years, that dads were optional, single mothers were
chic, and recreational sex normal, even for children. For some people,
passing out free condoms in the schools may have been the
overriding symbol of the breakdown.
Society 301
You 're speaking of the religious right?

No! I am definitely not speaking about the religious right. That's the
canard that's been sold to the American people by the media: that the
backlash against gays is nothing more than a rear-guard action by a
bunch of right wing nuts. The Rev. Peter Gomes published a piece on
the Op-Ed page of The New York Times in August 1992 that tried to
lump all those opposing the legitimation of the homosexual lifestyle
into three marginal categories: 1) neurotics, 2) religious bigots, and 3)
stupids.
Who is the Rev. Peter Gomes?

He's the Plummet Professor of Christian Morality at Harvard. He
spoke openly about his homosexuality in The New York Times on Dec.
22, 1991. 1 think there are many compassionate and sensitive people
of intellectual integrity who will not
buy Gomes' arguments. They will
—
oppose the gay agenda especially when they see what the gay
still
and lesbian propaganda machine is doing to family values.
"Family values?" Isn't that the platform that Vice President Dan
Quayle ran on in 1992?
If your question implies that Dan Quayle was wrong —
simply because
—
he and George Bush lost the election then I have to take vigorous
issue with you. In fact, as some very impressive research has
demonstrated, Dan Quayle was right about the deterioration of the
American family. And there is a growing number of people around
— —
the country from both political parties who are saying we need to
re-evaluate what we've done to the family since fictive freedom's tide
started rising in the 1960s.
You 're against sexual freedom ?

No. I'm for true sexual freedom. I'm against a mindless sexual license,
which always ends up being the exact opposite of freedom, or choice.
Like war, this fictive freedom is very unhealthy for children and other
living things. Susan Carpenter McMillan, founder of a conservative
women's political action committee in Southern California, is not a
right wing nut. She says that the anti-nuclear family ethic is "like a
cancer eating away at the basic foundation of our society." And it's
more teen suicide than ever before, juvenile crimes out of
resulted in
on school campuses reaching unthinkable highs.
control, violence
"More than 70% of incarcerated juveniles," she wrote, "are from
single-mother households, while many low-income children don't

even know who their real fathers are and may not have the same
father as their siblings.... New research shows that when the nuclear
family breaks up (or was never there to begin with) children feel
abandoned, confused and angry."
But the people behind Ballot Measure 9 in Oregon were from a

religious group, weren't they?
The people who put Measure 9 on the ballot were church people.
They were led by Lon Mabon, a self-professed follower of the
television evangelist Jerry Falwell. He founded something called the
Oregon's Citizens Alliance, which was funded, in part, by the
television evangelist Pat Robertson. His Christian Coalition gave
Mabon $20,000 and helped mail some campaign literature.
What's the matter with church people getting involved in this?

Nothing! I say, "Good for them!" Their religious sensibilities made
them immune to all the GaySpeak that's been filling the media for the
past few years. They have a strong belief in the family as the
foundation for love of God and love of country. And they're willing to
do something about it.
But 55 percent of the voters in Oregon didn't go along with their

program.
Yes. That 55 percent were more inclined to listen to opponents of the
measure, who poured more than $1 million into the campaign.
One million dollars?

Yes. With a good deal of help from Hollywood, gays and lesbians in
Oregon were able to outspend Mabon and his Alliance by a margin of
at least five to one. They ran some TV spots that had an effect. In one
spot, a veteran Oregon schoolteacher asked, "Do we want extremists
telling us what we should teach, what we should read, how we should
live and raise our families? Is that what Oregon is about?" That was an
ad that played well to Oregonians who have long prided themselves

on their tolerance.
And how did Mabon and company argue with that?

They maintained that the people didn't have to tolerate sin. Yes. They
actually used the word "sin." That may have rubbed a lot of people
Society 303
the wrong way. Americans have an antipathy toward anyone talking

about sin, especially about the sins of others.
That was a tactical mistake?

I think so. According to my friends in Oregon, Mabon was much more
effective when he argued, for instance, that schools can tell their
charges to stay away from drugs, so why can't they also
tell them that
same-sex sex is harmful, too? People tend to see sin as very

subjective. But they could see Mabon's point when he was talking
about "unhealthy lifestyles" among the gay population.
How did he get that notion across?

He distributed fliers and videos that characterized gay men as
disease-ridden, promiscuous and prone to pedophilia. Some of the
videos featured clips from San Francisco's annual gay pride parade:
nearly nude men simulating sex, topless lesbians, Jesus depicted as a
transvestite, homosexuals talking about the joys of bondage and
sadomasochism.
It's hard to understand how all the mainstream church groups could
endorse those things.
Some voices of moderation —including many of the mainstream
churches in Oregon —suggested voting No on 9. The Roman Catholic
archbishop of Portland came out against the Measure. But these
people weren't endorsing the gay lifestyle. They just thought that
passing Measure 9 would have given the wrong signal to society in
general.
What wrong signal?

Ithink they figured it would lead to some plain and fancy gay
—
bashing actual violence against homosexuals. That would have
done real harm. And they figured that passing the Measure wouldn't
have done that much good.
Ballot Measure 9 would have had no real effect? Not even in the
schools?
That's probably where would have had the most effect. I don't think
it
it would have led to the firing of teachers, on the mere grounds that
they were homosexuals. Almost everyone agrees that this would be so

discriminatory as to be un-Constitutional. In the fall of 1992, voters in
Colorado did pass Amendment 2, an initiative similar to Oregon's

failedMeasure 9. It was intended to repeal laws in Denver, Boulder
and Aspen prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in jobs
and housing. But it never went into effect, because Jess Bayless, a
judge in Denver's District Court, issued a temporary injunction
against the measure, ruling that Amendment 2 appeared to endorse
discrimination. Judge Bayless said, "There's a fundamental right here,
and it is the right not to have the state endorse and give effect to
private biases." Then, in October 1994, the Supreme Court of
Colorado agreed with Judge Bayless, and struck down Amendment 2
on the grounds that it singled out a class of people for denial of basic
rights and thereby violated the equal protection clauses of the
Colorado and Federal Constitutions.
Was that the end of it?

No. The State of Colorado has taken the case up to the U.S. Supreme
Court, which has agreed to hear the case. But we won't get a decision
on that until sometime in 1996.
What's the State of Colorado's position?

The Attorney General of the State of Colorado will try to show that the
voters adopted Amendment 2, not because of private biases, but
because of a provable public interest in not wanting to widen the
universe of those protected by civil rights legislation. Will Perkins of
Colorado Springs, the leader of those who pushed for adoption of
Amendment 2, has said, "How someone has sex is not an appropriate
criterion for protected class status."
Is Perkins right?
Since we're talking about a legal question, we'll have to wait and see
what the high court decides. You can bet that the court will get a good
—
deal of argument here on both sides.
Where do you stand?

I have always been on the side of those who supported civil rights for
homosexuals —as long as we're not talking about special rights for
gays. Many Coloradans who voted for Amendment 2 were afraid that
the anti-discrimination laws passed in Denver, Boulder and Aspen
would lead to affirmative action for gays.
Society 305
You mean hiring quotas?

Yes.And I can understand why a majority of the people in Colorado
didn't —
want to see that particularly in the schools. Imagine, a
principal being told that he had to make sure that a certain
percentage of his faculty were gays and lesbians!
What were the arguments on the other side?

One of the judges from the 6-1 majority said the state had "no
compelling interest in having a particular form of family." In other
words, the Colorado court seemed to be endorsing the propaganda
set forth in Heather Has Two Mommies. Most of them leaned on an
analogy — a false one,
I think —
that gays and lesbians needed the
same kind of protections given to African Americans and Hispanics
and other minorities by the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The analogy is a false one?

Yes. You can only make the analogy if you believe that being gay is
like being born black.
And it isn't?
Homosexuals are not like blacks. They weren't born that way. Many
of them have an orientation toward same-sex sex because of some
abuse, early in their lives.
—
What about optional homosexuals people for whom same-sex sex is
a preference? You think the state should discriminate against these
people, simply because they like to mate with members of their own
sex?
No. But the state should not make special rules in their favor —as the
communities of Denver, Boulder and Aspen tried to do. But a
tremendous amount of gay propaganda has been produced for this
Colorado case.
For example?
One of the plaintiffs in the case submitted an article from the UCLA
Law Review stating that "the entire U.S. population is largely
composed of bisexuals."
Where did that come from?

The author, Janet E. Halley, said she was relying on the research of Dr.
Alfred Kinsey.Can you believe this? Now the entire U.S. population is
bisexual. More propaganda came in from John Boswell, the gay
historian from Yale, whose major work, Christianity, Social Tolerance,
and Homosexuality, was a kind of revisionist history of same-sex sex,
designed to show that mqdern disapproval of homosexuality is really
an historical aberration.
What line did Boswell take in his representation to the Colorado

court?
He was trying to show that Jews and homosexuals have a great
affinity, that they both suffered together, as general objects of
medieval persecution and prejudice.
Homosexuals and Jews? Why put them together?

Boswell has his own political reasons for doing this. The gay rights
movement has had some success enlisting black civil rights activists
on their side, as fellow members of a persecuted minority. Now, it
seems that Boswell has been trying to get the Jewish community
working for the gays, as well.
Can you document this?

Boswell's affidavit filed to the District Court in Colorado in October
1993 is part of the lawsuit filed by gays and others to overturn
Amendment 2.
And what is Boswell saying in that affidavit?

In effect, that Jews should join gays in their rights campaign. This is a
good, five-page example of history-as-propaganda. Jewish
communities in the Middle Ages had nothing in common with
homosexual communities (if, indeed, there was such a thing as a
homosexual community at that time). But, in Boswell's history, gays
are always marching side-by- side with the Jews. It turns out that the
only thing they have in common is that both groups came under the
same, generally rhetorical, attack. One example from Boswell's
gay persons used language identical to that
affidavit: "[T]racts against
used to denounce Jews, muslims and heretics, and these different

minorities were frequently denounced together indiscriminately as
offenders of orthodoxy. In particular, anti-gay literature of the late
Middle Ages repeatedly stressed that gay persons were threats to, and
corrupters of, children. This rhetorical trope was repeated, in almost
—
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identical terms, against Jews, who were frequently charged with the
ritual murder of children, and muslims, who were charged with
desiring to kidnap children from Christians and enslave them."
What's your answer to that?

It proves nothing —except, maybe, that some medieval preacher was
going overboard, as modern preachers (layand religious) often do,
putting all kinds of different folks on the same enemies list.
What about these charges that both gays and Jews were corrupters of
children?
These about the Jews seem to have been pure concoctions, part
tales
of the demonology of the day. But I think we have ample historical
proof that children have always been abused, sexually and otherwise.
They still are today.
You don't think medieval preachers were just manufacturing

bogeymen when they issued warnings about the danger of a town's
children being captured and sold into slavery?
Hardly. During the Children's Crusade, begun in the year 1212,

thousands of youngsters from France and Germany, their numbers
growing as the army marched along, set out to free the Holy
Sepulchre. One group ended up in Marseilles. When the sea did not
part for them, as they believed it would, they turned to two kindly
Marseilles businessmen, who volunteered to put seven ships at their
disposal, and to carry them, free of charge, for the glory of God, to
Palestine. Two of the ships were lost with all hands off Sardinia, but
the children on the other five boats made it safely to their pre-
determined destination, a slave market in Bougie, on the Algerian
coast. No one in Europe ever saw those children again.
/ understand Lon Mabon and his people weren't fazed by the 1994
decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, or by the vote that went
against them in Oregon in November 1992. Sounds like they're not
giving up.
That's right. Mabon and company say they are going to continue to
fight now pending in a number of other states
gay rights legislation
and, if it goes forward, they will fight a move in Congress to include
gays and lesbians in a new U.S. civil rights act.
Would you approve of that?

I think lawmakers have to find a middle ground —that is, figure out a
way to protect the civil liberties guaranteed to every American
without, at the same time, endorsing a process that Dennis Altman,
the gay historian, calls "the homosexualization of America"
particularly in the schools. People may well say of homosexuals, "Live
and let live."But when! all of a sudden, they realize how much
success homosexuals have had in schools across the nation, making
legitimate what could be so patently harmful to their kids, then, they
say, it's time to draw the line.
Why now? Why all ofa sudden?

Ever since Kinsey, there's been a gathering of gay forces, in a political
and educational campaign to win general endorsement for same-sex
sex. In the past year or so, those forces finally reached enough of a
critical mass for the media to trumpet the news that "everybody's
doing Which, in our other-directed society, is tantamount to
it."
giving homosexuality society's approval. Suddenly, it was not only all

right to be gay. Suddenly, it was good to be gay. I think Len Mabon
—
and his people in Oregon and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and
—
Lou Sheldon and their followers all around the nation were just the
first ones to wake up and say, "Hey, now just a damn minute!" They
were the last organized bastion not to be breached by disinformation,

propaganda, and some very twisted thinking about what's good for
society.
Why them?
Who speaks for society? Academe and the media couldn't or wouldn't
cry any alarms. So certain religious groups started doing so. On the
other hand, some religious groups, have joined the gay parade. I think
many of these have been subverted by gays and lesbians who have
infiltrated their ranks. They're terribly misguided. But they have
many allies inside higher education. And in the judicial system, too.
In 1991, a district court in our nation's capital held that Georgetown
University had to treat gay and lesbian campus organizations like any
other social organizations on campus.
Georgetown? A Catholic university?

Yes. The court held that D.C.'s "Human Rights Act" gave the District
power to force support at Georgetown for activities that are contrary
to Georgetown's own ethical and religious beliefs.
Parents 309
How can it do that?

This is the logical, legal conclusion to the notion, now established in
the common wisdom, that same-sex sex is a legitimate lifestyle. If
"gays are born that way," and "same- sex sex is not a disorder," then
we have to treat gays and lesbians like anybody else. Democrats and
liberals cannot fight this argument. Some black leaders make
common cause with gays on this. Jesse Jackson lines up his Rainbow
Coalition with the gays and lesbians. Coretta Scott King once visited a
gay rights dinner in New York City to express her "solidarity with the
gay and lesbian community in your struggle for civil and human
rights in America and around the world." She said, "I believe all
Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have
a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual
orientation. If sexual relations between consenting adults are not part
of the right to privacy... then American democracy is in trouble."
You don't agree with that?

I'd like to talk to Jesse Jackson and Coretta King, and see if they don't
agree, in part, at least, with me. Undoubtedly, these gay and lesbian
"rights to privacy" are part of a rationale that may help meet some
needs of gays and lesbians. But if those rights bring with them a full
societal approval of same-sex sex, I wonder if they don't see how that
could further weaken the one institution that needs all the support
we can give it: the loving family? Otherwise, to quote Coretta King, I
am afraid that democracy is in trouble.

Why do you say that?
Democracy's in trouble if we think it calls for giving absolute freedom
for anyone to do anything. In his March 1995 encyclical, Evangelium
Vitae, Pope John Paul II makes this argument. He says that once we
hold that "anything goes," then all we have is a society pushed and
pulled this way and that by "subjective and changeable opinion... self
interest and whim."
But wasn't this encyclical about abortion?

Yes, but the pope was enunciating some principles that thinking men
and women could apply to a number of other problems that follow
upon what I call "a freedom too far." The pope said, "This view of
freedom leads to a serious distortion of life in society. If the
promotion of self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy,
people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone
else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself.
Thus society becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but
without any mutual bonds.... In this way, any reference to common
values and to a truth absolutely binding on everyone is lost, and
social life ventures on to the shifting sands of a complete relativism.
At that point, everything is negotiable, everything open to
bargaining.... The 'right' ceases to be such, because it is no longer
firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made
subject to the will of the stronger part. In this way, democracy,
contradicting its own principles, effectively moves toward a form of
totalitarianism."
But what has this got to do with same-sex sex?

Everything — if you think that democracy demands that we legitimize
any and every form of perverse behavior. But this way lies madness
and death. I've been talking here about the gay lifestyle as a kind of
death style. Now, the pope himself talks about modern society
embracing "a culture of death."
But wasn't he talking, again, about abortion?

Yes, this phrase "culture of death" comes in a reference to the taking
on to say, could
of life not yet born. But this culture of death, he goes
only spring up in a society that pushes "a freedom too far." The
pope's words could apply equally to a number of other abuses in our
times, things once considered criminal but now becoming socially
acceptable.
Such as?
In the name of freedom, we've allowed the rise of an international,
multi-billion dollar sex industry that traffics in pornography and
prostitution. This is a business that threatens civilization itself. This
sex industry has nothing at all to do with Eros. It has everything to do
with Thanatos.
What's Thanatos?
That's a Greek word meaning you want a translation of
"death." But if
the word in this context, try "lust and greed." As readers who have
lived long enough must know, encounters with lust and greed tend to
sap the human spirit, which is a form of death.
Society 311
You don't sound very optimistic about the way things are going in
our society.
No, I'm afraid I don't. It is enough "to make the angels weep." I
borrow the phrase, proudly, from one of William Shakespeare's bitter
comedies, "Measure for Measure." Here's the entire quote:
But man, proud man,
drest in a little brief authority,
most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,
his glassy essence like an angry ape
plays such fantastic tricks before high heavens
as make the angels weep.
Ido not think I am misusing the Bard's language to account for what I
imagine might be angelic tears over a major deception of our age,
over the mystery of how some men can turn out to be most ignorant
—
of what they ought be most assured their masculinity.
So what's the answer?

It'snot that complicated. Since the 1960s, we've seen all kinds of
radical answers to problems that we have created for ourselves, and
in ourselves. In a kind of desperation, supposedly wise men and
women have suggested we stand reality on its head just start all —
over, from scratch. Nothing, they say, is a given. Everything is up for
grabs. If family isn't working, they say, let's try no-family. If you don't
like being a man, become a woman. Or vice-versa.
Isn't this still a free country?

Does that mean we can do anything we like? Standing on our heads is
a ridiculous posture, and one that puts us in no position to make a
better world. I am tempted to quote once more my old mentor, Dr.
Abram Kardiner, an expert in the psychoanalystic investigation of
cultures: "Homosexuality cannot make a society, nor keep one going
for very long. It operates against the cohesive elements of society. It
drives the sexes in opposite directions. And no society can long

endure when either the child is neglected or when the sexes war upon
each other... Regarding homosexuality as a normal variant of sexual
activity... militates against the family and destroys the function of the
latter as the last place in our society where affectivity can still be
cultivated."
So what do we do?
We just have to re-affirm what the human race has known for a good
long time: that there's nothing so important for a well-functioning
society than good happy loving families. Good happy loving families
tend to turn out good happy loving children. And those good happy
loving children tend to meet and mate and create new good happy
loving families —while they also pursue their own missions in life,
fighting ignorance and poverty, bringing about justice, stopping

cruelty and exploitation, and making more gentle the life of the
world.
INDEX
Acer, David J. 235 Bateman, Larry Lane and Exeter

The Advocate 260 case 272-273
affirmative action 9 Bateman, M. Mitchell 175

AIDS 9, 21, 24, 31, 38, 55, 58, 65, 69, bathhouses 21, 133, 212, 210,
79, 83,84, 85, 90, 93,114, 121, 213-214,216, 226
133, 134, 150, 158, 190, 192, 195, Battelle Institute 201
201, 203, 205-240, 245, 246, 259, Bay Area Reporter 227
262, 265, 267-271, 273, 286, 288,
Bayer, Ronald 165-166, 169-170,
290, 298
174, 176, 236
alcoholism, as compared to
Bayless, Jess 304
homosexuality 68-69, 102, 149
Beeson, Ty and Jeannette, Lambda
Alexander the Great 40
Report 21
Allen, Luther 47
Beach, Frank 100, 166-167
Altman, Dennis 30-31, 53-54, 210,
Bell, Alan 166
308
Benkert, K.M. 15
American Association of Sex
Bergler, Edmund 102, 144, 150
Educators, Counselors and
Therapists and its Sexual Bieber, Irving 101, 105, 159-161,
Attitude Restructuring (SAR) 171-172, 228-229
program 263 Bieber, Toby 102, 150
American Psychiatric Association bisexuals 16, 18, 29, 66, 71-72, 87, 97,
(APA) 55-56, 73-74, 80-81, 105, 114, 131, 151, 187, 192, 232, 242,
108, 152-154, 157-182, 212, 229 250, 253, 256, 258-259, 260-262,
American Psychoanalytic 306

Association 79-80, 116, 152, 175 Bloom, Amy 34
anal sex 24, 32, 49, 58, 84, 88, 114, Body Politic 31
192, 194, 206, 208, 213, 232, 251, Bolan, Robert 226
261, 269 Bornstein, Kate 16, 260
"Angels in America" 243 Boswell, John 306-307
Angier, Natalie 94
Bowers v. Hardwick 49
Arentino 41 Bowne, Alan 47
Aspin, Les 195
Boxer, Barbara 227
Axelrod, David 220
Boy Scouts of America 32, 79, 288
Brill, Henry 165, 169
Babbitt, Bruce 288 Brown, Dana Michele 249
Bailey, Michael 98-99 Brown, Howard 173, 178
Baker, Richard Tim and Pete 120 Brown, Norman 0. 210
Balzac, Honore 111 Browning, Frank Culture of Desire
Barnard, Adrian 29 120, 232-233
Bullough, Vern 258 Dahmer, Jeffrey 109-110
Burgess and MacLean 288 Davison, Gerald 76

Burr, Chandler 98, 104 Day, Lorraine 233-235
Burton, Philip 227 Dean, Laura 200
Bush, George 12,221 death style 28, 90, 190, 194, 206, 226,
Butler, Judith 248, 260 227, 233, 269-270, 273,310
Bychowski, Gustav 102, 150, 159 Decter, Midge 12, 92, 109, 228, 266
degenerate 43, 49
Calderone, Mary S. 255-256, DeCecco, John 242-243
263-264, 274 de Sevigne, Madame 230
Calderwood, Deryk 258-262 Detels, Roger 231
Campbell, Robert 229 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual II
Caplan, Arthur 221 157-182
Castro, Raoul and Cuban Diamond, Bernard 163

quarantine for AIDS 223-224 Diaz, Kay 97-98
Chamberlain, Wilt 20 Dinkins, David 105
Charen, Mona 58 drag culture, transvestites 12, 35, 36,
Chauncey, George Gay New York 48, 250, 270

42-44 Dritz, Selma214,216
"Children of the Rainbow" NY City drugs 21, 23, 121,232
Schools 265-271,294 Dugas, Gaetan ("Patient Zero")
Children's Crusade 307 215-216
civil rights and civil liberties, 8, 9, 54,
59, 163, 199, 221, 222, 224, 237, Eagan, Tim 249
271,293, 298, 304-305, 307 Edward W. 262
Eichel, 70, 258,
Clinton, Bill 82, 183-184, 187, 195,
Ellis, Albert 47, 102, 144,
198-200, 288, 299
Elshtain, Jean Bethke 246
Clinton, Hillary 198
Enlow, Roger 222
Cobain, Kurt 12
ephebophilia 58, 294
Colorado's Amendment 2 on gays
erotic pleasure, instinctive 26-27
304-308
Evans, R.B. 151
Commentary 59, 92
Ewing, John 160
condoms 191, 201, 206, 230, 231,
232, 269, 288, 300
Cone, Maria 167 Falwell, Jerry 308
Cooper, Arnold 229 Falzarano, Anthony 182

Coward, Noel 52 femininity 108, 132
"The Crying Game" 36, 260 Fernandez, Joseph 265-268
Cummins, Mary 268 First Things 245
Cuomo, Mario 105 Ford, Cleland 166
cure 101, 103-104, 135, 144, 147, 150, Forleo and Pasini Medical Sexology
152, 182, 236 259
,
Index 315
Foucault, Michel 244-245, 247, 253 gay propaganda 37-38, 66, 79,
Fox, Cecil 232 104-105, 113, 130, 150, 177, 239,

243, 247, 253, 260, 264, 268, 272,
Frank, Barney 61
278, 284, 292, 301, 305-306, 308
Freud, Sigmund 18, 42, 74, 88, 101,
gay psychiatrists 130, 153-154, 158
132, 147, 150, 154,210, 254,
292, 295 gay stereotypes 33, 108, 113, 186,
266
Freedman, Alfred 164, 172, 176
gay studies 243-244
Freedman, Mark 107
gay suicide 294
Friedman, Richard A. 104-105
Gebbie, Kristine 236
Fumento, Michael 85, 239-240
Gebhard, Paul 159, 257-258
gender bending 16, 168
Dialogue on the World's
Galileo,
Great Systems 9 Georgetown University 308-309
Gallo, Robert 217 Genet, Jean 269-270
Garber, Marjorie 250 Gentlemen's Quarterly 12

gay, as a term 51-54 Gerber, Henry 44
"Gay Civil Rights Act" 298-299, Gershman, Harry 102, 150

307-308 Gittings, Barbara 162, 173
Gay Community News (Boston) Glover, Edward 151
296-297 Gold, Ronald 176
"gay gene" 94-97, 252 Goldstein, Richard 297
gay marriage 9, 56, 82, 106, 133-134, Gomes, Peter 301
187, 202
Goodman, Paul 210-211
gay movement8, 11, 13, 28, 30, 33,
Graham, Billy 289
37, 38, 48-51, 53-55, 59-67, 77,
Greeks and homosexuality 40-41
123, 153-54, 160, 162, 174, 177,
89-90
199, 211, 213, 224-225, 246, 247,
285-289, 295-297, 300, 306, 308 Greeley, Andrew 294
movement's effective use of art Green, Richard 168
290 Greenson, Ralph 141
helped by press 287 Greer, Germaine 246
subverts society 288, 298
Gross, Tim 167
gay lifestyle 44, 51, 55, 57, 79, 82-83,
90, 99, 102-103, 114, 130, 154,
Haitians 84-85
158, 161-162, 164, 168, 171, 181,
183, 186, 191, 199, 203, 206, 221, Hadden, Samuel 102, 150, 159
244, 253, 262, 264, 269, 271, 274, Hale, John P. 271
278, 284, 288, 293, 300-301, 303, Halley, Janet E. 305
309-310
Hamer, Dean 94-98
gay myths 113-114
Hannon, Gerald 31, 60
gay politics 50, 105, 153-154, 182,
Hartman, Lawrence 105
220, 222, 224, 228
Hatter, Terry J. Jr. 185-186
gay pride 293
Hay, Henry 45-46
Hefner, Hugh 209 homosexuals:

hemophiliacs 69, 224-225 and lews, spurious pairing of
306-307
Hendin, Herbert 229
civil rights of 49-56
Hentoff,Nat225
obligatory 16-19, 22-23, 25, 29,
Hesburgh, Theodore 243-244 51,68, 88, 90-92, 98, 100-101,
Hetrick-Martin Institute 269 • 108-109, 111, 119, 125, 191,
Hiss, Tony 268 206, 280, 282, 284, 294-295
Hitler, Adolf 13 optional 17-18, 29, 290

lesbians 9, 16, 19, 22, 25, 30-31,
Ho, David 218
34,41,60, 63, 65-66,81,89
homophobia 36-37, 249, 260, 264,
in the military 183-203
266
in search of their masculinity 19,
homosexuality: 20, 35,91, 103, 108, 111, 126,
and AIDS 205-240 132, 139, 280,311
as a disorder 162-182 Hoffman, Martin 168, 191
as a fashion 12, 29-30, 244, 256,
Hooker, Evelyn 159, 168, 191
290, 296, 298
Hope, David 61
and freedom 7, 11-12, 14, 38,51,
76, 82-83, 119, 149, 154-155,
House Un-American Activities
184, 190,210,212-213,
Committee (HUAC) 45
224-225, 285-286, 290-293, Hubbard, Ruth 96
301,309-310 Hudson, Rock 193, 207
as an ideology 30, 36, 62, 249, Hughes, Nancy Shepherd 224
260,268
Humm, Andrew 271
causes of 125-131, 160, 280
Hunnicut, BJ. 107
overcontrolling mothers 91, 93,
100-101, 108, 126, 128-129,
131-133, 135-138, 142-145, Ireland, Patricia 287
150, 279-281 Isay, Richard A. 66-67, 76, 79,
parental combination 8, 92, 110, 254-255
130, 132, 141, 145, 157, 289
weak or abdicating fathers 17,
Jackson, Jesse 309
29,91-92, 100-101, 128,
131-136, 139, 143, 145-146, Jaffa, Harry V. 59
150, 277, 279-281,302 Jerusalem Post 296
definitions 15-38 John Paul 11309-310
ideology of 61-85 Johns Hopkins University 159
latent 36, 73, 102, 104
Johnson, Magic 231
as an illusion 111-112, 119-120
Jones, Robert A. 193
as a mystery 193
as a term 15 Joseph, Stephen 220, 223
as a sickness 24, 58, 60, 73, 79, 90, Journal of the American Medical
160, 162, 164, 168, 173, 180, Association (JAMA) 114
258 Jung, Karl 106
rationalizations for 17, 119-120,
Kahn,Yoel 233
125
Kameny, Frank 73, 82, 161-162, 173
1
Index 317
Kaplan, Helen Singer 238 Marmor, Judd 74, 159, 163-165, 168,
Kardiner, Abram 174, 31 175-176
Katz, Jonathan 46 Masters, William H. 212
Gary F. Learning About Sex

Kelly, Marx, Karl 13, 248
274 masturbation 32, 70, 140-141, 148,
Kerrison, Ray 269 222, 249
Kimmel, Michael 222 Mattachine Society 46-47, 165

King, Coretta Scott 309 Mattison, Andrew 68, 113-114
Kinsey, Alfred 64-66, 69, 70-73, 89, McCarthy, Colman 191
159, 173, 201,203, 253-254, McCarthy, Joseph 45
257-260, 263, 268, 306 McGovern, Jimmy "Priest" 120
Kirkendall, Leslie 255, 258 McKinnon, Catherine 262
Klinger, Maxwell 107 Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality
Koch, Edward 226 179
Koop, C. Everett 230, 239, 269 Meinhold, Keith 185-186
Kramer, Larry 38, 125, 133-144, 205, Melzer, Peter 33
211-212,214,217, 226-227 McDevitt, Robert J. 171-172
Kramer, Yale 82 McMillan, Susan Carpenter 301
Krauthammer, Charles 95 McNeill, John 68, 106-107, 270
McPeak, Merrill A. 185
Laing, R.D. 54-55 McWhirter, David 68, 113-114,
Langston, Donna 249 262-263
Laub, Donald 34 McWilliams, Peter Ain't Nobody's
LeVay, Simon 92-94, 97-98 Business If You Do 291
Levine, Martin 222 Michelangelo 40-41, 243

Littlejohn, Larry 161 Mill, John Stuart 54
Loftus, Thomas 115 "Miss Saigon" 29
Lorand, Sandor 102, 150, 159 Mixner, David 198
Los Angeles Reader 35-36 Modlin, Herbert 175-176

Los Angeles Times 82, 167, 193, 230, Money, John 34, 56, 106, 159
231 Monroe, Russell 169
Montagnier, Luc 207
M*A*S*H 107 Morris, Martina 201
Mabon, Lon 302, 307-308 Muller, Jerry Z. 245-250
Macintosh, Houston 152-153
MacNeil, Robin 38 Nakajima, Hiroshi 1 14
Maglivit, G.M. 208 Nardini, John 172
Mailer, Norman 246 Nason, James 249
male-female design 13, 27-28, 41, National Association for the
42, 103,111,113, 289 Research and Treatment of
Marcuse, Herbert 210 Homosexuality (NARTH) 144,
Mardh, Pers-Ander 83 180-181,278

Nature 218 Penthouse 141

Nero 118 People 248
Nicholi, I. Armand 171 Percy, William A. 61-62
Nicolosi, Joseph 144 Perkins, Will 304
Nirvana 36 Person, Ethel 229
New Republic 119 Petronius Satyricon 118
New York Magazine 12, 228 Pierce, Hawkeye 107
New York Native 226 Pillard, Richard 98-99
New York Post 57, 267, 269 Plato 9, 40-41
New York Times 12, 33, 53, 59-60, Plato's Retreat 31, 210
66-67, 82-83, 94-95, 97, 99, Playboy 133, 141, 201, 209-211
104-105, 172, 174, 184, 200, 205,
Pomeroy, Wardell 166, 257-258, 261
221, 225-226, 228, 232, 238, 249,
priests and homosexuality 68, 69,
251, 265, 267, 272, 275, 286, 291,
77-78, 120, 147-148, 194, 297
300-301
"Project 10" LA City Schools
New Yorker 34, 82, 268
264-265, 294
newborns who are HIV 237-238
pseudo-science 17, 27, 95, 97,
Newsweek 12, 66, 94, 95, 165, 239,
99-100, 153-154, 169, 289
256
Psychiatric News 173-174, 180, 229
North American Man /Boy Love
psychoanalysis 7, 9, 10, 78, 100, 104,
Association (NAMBLA) 33
121, 126, 130, 135, 144, 146, 203,
Nunn, Sam 183-184, 188, 199
211,254, 292
psychotherapy:
O'Donnell, Kendra Stearns 272
candidates for 116-117
O'Leary, Jean 294 early history of work with
oedipal and pre-oedipal 35, 131, homosexuals 150
132, 174 goal of 123, 126, 149
oral sex 59, 88, 232, 251, 252, 269 good outcomes 123, 149, 152
like detective work 8, 121
Oregon's Ballot Measure 9 on gays
299-304
non-candidates for 118
patients who hold back 127, 146
outing 60-62
patients who leave therapy 150
out-of-the-closet36, 60, 68-69, 178, patient and therapist in working
195 alliance 122
Ovesey, Lionel 102, 150 sublimation 147-148
success rate 149-150
Palmer, Lou 59 transference 128
paraphilias 8, 56-57, 293

Paul, William A. 219 Quayle, Dan 301
pederasty, as a form of child abuse Quicksilver Times 295
40, 70, 90 quotas in the workplace 81, 105-106,

pedophilia 33, 58, 71, 84, 106, 148, 299,305
189, 227, 261-262, 303
r
Index 319
RAND report on homosexuals in 88, 145, 250, 253, 260, 264,

military 200-203 267, 271-273, 294, 295, 297
Rado, Sandor 159 Sartre, Jean-Paul 233, 269-270
Reagan, Ronald 221 Savitz, Ed 58
Redlich, Fritz 178-179 Schaub, Pete 249
Reisman, Judith 70 Schwarzkopf, Norman 188
religious right, defense of on gay- Science 94
issue 301,308 scientific studies of homosexuality:
Reuben, David 228 Battelle Institute (Guttmacher)
Ricoeur, Paul 10 65, 201
Robertson, Pat 308 Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg

173-174 20
Robins, Eli
Edmund Bergler 150
Rosen, Harold 34
Irving Bieber 151
Rostker, Bernard D. 200-201 Toby Bieber 150
Royko, Mike 177 Gustav Bychowski 150
Rueda, Enrique 69 Edward Eichel and Judith
RuPaul36, 248 Reisman 70
Albert Ellis 150
R.B.Evans 151
safe sex 193, 206, 221, 222, 230-232
Harry Gershman 150
Saghir, Marcel T. 173-174 Samuel Hadden 150
same-sex sex: Evelyn Hooker 191
aggressive 25, 124 Sandor Lorand 150
anonymous 20 David McWhirter and Andrew
as a compulsion or addiction 17, Mattison 68, 113-114
19, 25, 42,51,57, 88, 90, 103, Houston I. Macintosh 152-153
109-110,118, 120, 124-125, Martina Morris and Laura Dean

133, 136, 149, 157, 162, 191, on AIDS 201
194, 196, 203, 206,213-214, Lionel Ovesey 150
227, 232-233, 236 San Francisco Dept. of Health
as incorporation of the other 190-191
109-110, 139 Silverstein and White 24
as learned behavior 129, 290 J.R. Snortum 151
as perversion or deviance 23, 41, W.G. Stephan 151
56, 57-59, 101, 116, 119, 139, USC-UCLA study on condoms
153, 154, 229, 269 231
as promiscuous 21, 31, 125, 213, Seidenberg, Robert 82
260 Serafin, Barry 176
as repetitive 25
sex industry 310
as a release 16, 17, 25, 57, 100,
Sex Information and Education
101
Council of the United States
as a simulation of male-female
(SIECUS) 255-258, 265
sex 16
easy 29, 140 sex instincts 26, 27, 47, 118, 125, 211,
recruitment and seduction 19,
254-255, 289
sex education as indoctrination in 142-144
homosexuality 253, 255-259, Sara 133
261-264, 288, 294 other works by 3
sex-in-itself 23, 120, 133, 209, 212 sets guidelines for treatment of
Shakespeare, William "Measure for

homosexuality 153
social critic 10, 51
Measure" 311
suggests starting voluntary
Shaw, George 218
national program in 1964 for
Sheldon, Lou 59, 308 prevention and treatment of
Shilts, Randy 21, 61, 184-185, 203, homosexuality 158
213,216, 225, 228 societal ramifications of
Signorile, Michelangelo 60-62 homosexuality 9-11, 14, 23,
Silver, Carol Ruth 226 27-30, 37, 42, 46, 51, 55-56, 58,
Silverman, Mervyn 214 69-70, 74-75,81-82, 95, 99,

106-107, 162-163, 171-172, 175,
Silverstein and White The Joy of Gay
179,211,224, 246, 275, 284
Sex 24
Society for the Scientific Study of
Silverstein, Charles 166, 168
Sex (Quad S) 258
Simmons, Champ 45
sodomy 21, 49, 64, 118, 158, 173,
Simon, John 228
212, 268, 297
Sipe, A.H. Richard 148
Sowell, Thomas 250
Smith, Martin 286
Spartacus International Gay Guide
Snortum, J.R. 151 84
Socarides, Charles W.: Spiegel, John 165-166
appointed to homosexuality Spitzer, Robert 75, 165-166, 169-174,
panels in APA 116 176, 179
distinguishes between
Springer, Arthur 47
homosexuals and gays 51
Stephan, W.G. 151
fights American Psychiatric
Association 157-182 Stephanopoulos, George 187
first intuition that AIDS is gay Stimson, Catherine 256
disease 205-207 Stoddard, Tom 59-60, 66, 225
homosexual patients 43, 1 15
first
Stoller, Robert 35
gives 1967 paper at NIMH 159
Stone, Alan A. 55
helping homosexuals for more
Stonewall Inn 48, 49, 52
than 40 years 7
in freshman year at Harvard 251 Streisand, Barbra 12
individual patients: Sullivan, Andrew 119-120
Abraham 134 Symons, Donald 191
George 91 Swift, Michael 296-297
Kenneth 85
Szasz, Thomas 54
Kevin 146-147
Nigel 88
Norman 88 Taylor, Elizabeth 12
Patrick 281 Taylor, John 299
Paul 52, 78-79, 135-139, 10 Percent 16
Index 321
testing for AIDS 55, 220, 221, 224, Vidal, Gore, 10

225, 236, 237, 238, 239 Village Voice 191, 193, 297
Thompson, N.L. 152 Vizotsky, Harold M. 175
Time 85, 94, 97, 180 Voeller, Bruce 66, 173, 178, 294
tolerance v. approval 8, 1 1-12, 44, voyeurism 57
59, 82, 95, 187, 202, 203, 211, 266,
298, 302, 308, 309
Wall Street Journal 288
transsexuals 34-35
Warner, Michael 191-192, 233
Truman, Harry S 13
Washington Post 29, 73, 96, 172, 184,
Trumbull, Robert 286
191,250
Waxman, Henry 219
UCLA Law Review 305 Weinberg, Martin 20
UNESCO 82 Weiss, Eduardo 42
Uribe, Virginia and "Project 10" West, Louis Jolyon 175-176
264-265
Westphal, Karl 15
U.S. News & World Report 85
Wilde, Oscar 243
U.S. Supreme Court 49, 61, 85-86,
William, Dan 213
298, 304
Williams, Pete 61
Updike, John 210
Williams, Tennessee 124-125
Yolles, Stanley F. 158
vagina 142, 145
Vaid, Urvashi 290
Vanity Fair 82
Z Magazine 97-98
He 3 9999 04807 488 2
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Charles W. Socarides, M.D.

Adam Margrave Books

For multiple orders: (800) 345-0096

Note on confidentiality: All casework material in this book has

Publisher's Cataloging-in-Publication Data

RC 558.H64 1995 616.85'834 — dc 20

Beyond Sexual Freedom, Quadrangle, N.Y. Times Book Co.,

Homosexuality, Jason Aronson Inc., 1978.

On Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Observations (co-edited with

The World of Emotions: Clinical Studies ofAffects and Their

The Preoedipal Origin and Psychoanalytic Therapy of Sexual

The Homosexualities: Reality, Fantasy, and the Arts, (with

The Homosexualities and the Therapeutic Process, (with

Work and Its Inhibitions: Psychoanalytic Essays, (with Dr. Selma

for self-knowledge have made this work possible

CHAPTER ONE: DEFINITIONS 15

neurotic adaptation to unconscious fears."

CHAPTER TWO: HISTORY 39

CHAPTER THREE: IDEOLOGY 61

CHAPTER FOUR: ORIGINS 87

CHAPTER FIVE: TREATMENT 115

CHAPTER SK: PSYCHIATRY 157

CHAPTER SEVEN: MILITARY 183

CHAPTER EIGHT: AIDS 205

CHAPTER NINE: EDUCATION 241

CHAPTER TEN: PARENTS 277

parents who don't have this problem, and some great

CHAPTER ELEVEN: SOCIETY 285

'We can manipulate, mismanage and denature almost

unconsciously determined in a child's early years, and that we have a

information and outright disinformation about homosexuality, I

normal? Or a case of arrested development? Or what?"

no fool,and who has had few unpublished thoughts about any

copied black fashions in the 1960s. In 1993, Gentlemen's Quarterly

became active in gay causes. A good many college students were

about the nature of nature. In the past century, we have seen a

informed defense for good, old-fashioned sex between men and

this freedom,I submit, is not ours to fulfill. It is a freedom that goes

too far, because it undoes us all. It is a freedom that seeks to overturn

Who coined he term?

case history of a homosexual. His patient happened to be a woman

Now what do you mean by same-sex sex?

sexual landscape does get cluttered by those who are caught up in

No. Sometimes, they switch roles. Sometimes, they do each other

Why do they do that?

What feels good?

What are "obligatory" homosexuals?

Homosexuals who engage in same-sex sex because they hardly have

But why does this orientation drive them to other men?

What kind of rationalizations?

And how do they know this?

it into the movies by going to bed with directors or producers who

prefer same- sex sex.

Would you include bisexuals in this class?

So there are two kinds of homosexuals, obligatory and optional

Those compelled are in the grip of unconscious forces and early-life

homosexual men done in 1990, some 37 percent of them were