I received an e-mail about this and thought I would take it to the list as a
topic. Something like -- what were your first reactions to the gay movement?
I was, as a straight guy, forced to be an early supporter because some of my
friends turned out gay -- and well, you have to support your friends -- but I
really examined nothing about my inner feelings views, etc. Then Tom Foran,
the prosecutor in the Chicago 8 case denounced the defendants as "fags" and
said we were losing our children to the "freaking fag revolution." He made
headlines with this hate speech. So I wrote an article for the Berkeley Tribe
stating that Foran was a repressed homosexual and that the repression drove
him crazy. I pointed out that during the trial after he finished
cross-examining Allen Ginsberg - he whispered "faggot" on the loud side. In
my article I expressed support for the gay movement. I figured Foran would be
given the piece by an FBI agent and be furious. And it certainly was my
intent to make him very angry. I was also expecting to win some sort of
"straight man of the year" award from the gay community -- but instead was
attacked -- my article was being interpreted as saying that it was a bad
thing to have homosexual desires -- and that Foran was bad because he had
them. I reread my article and it seems that I was saying just that in every
third paragraph -- after endorsing the gay revolution in the preceding two
paragraphs. I did not enjoy the hostile response -- but it forced me to think
about the new gay movement in a deeper and more challenging way. And to see
how much street Brooklyn bigotry I still possessed. I wonder how others dealt
with the movement when it was new? Gay or straight.--
Stew Albert
http://hometown.aol.com/stewa/stew.html
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