Brazil 1, U.S. 0 Brazil is a country that needs foreign aid; the U.S. is a country that grants aid to countries like Brazil to help them to modernize. It was thus a startling reversal (as reported by The Wall Street Journal) when Brazil turned down a $40 million grant for AIDS prevention rather than sign a pledge condemning prostitution. What’s more, the director of Brazil’s AIDS program, Pedro Chequer, used the opportunity to chastise the U.S. for its unenlightened policies surrounding sex and public health. While reminding the world that Brazil has been a leader in HIV prevention through an open, accepting approach toward prostitutes, gay men, intravenous drug users, and other high-risk groups, he took the following swipe at Bush’s America: “We can’t control [HIV] with principles that are Manichean, theological, fundamentalist, and Shi’ite.” Speaking for his government, he rejected “interference that harms the Brazilian policy regarding diversity, ethical principles, and human rights.” So it has come to this: a staunchly Catholic country with a recent history of military dictatorship is now in a position to lecture the U.S. about its backward policies.
What the Nose Knows A recent study in Sweden revealed that how one responds to human pheromones is affected by one’s sexual orientation. While gay and straight men responded differently to male and female pheromones, gay men and straight women had a similar response. The media leapt on the story, as it inexplicably does whenever a biological link to homosexuality turns up. Actually, the scientific importance of the paper was its confirmation of the very existence of pheromones in humans, which until recently was in doubt. Only in 2000 was it shown conclusively—as indicated by brain imaging that tracks blood flow to different regions—that heterosexual men and women respond differently to male and female scents. What the new study showed is that pheromones are in fact related to sexual attraction, since it is the object of desire that gay men and straight women have in common. And while it cannot answer the age-old question of whether being gay is genetic, the finding skewers the notion that one’s sexual orientation is somehow “chosen.”
The Creeps By all rights the species of man exemplified by J. Edgar Hoover or Roy Cohn—the homophobic closet case—should be a thing of the past. Yet he’s still with us, as grotesque as ever, only now we get to witness his public disgrace on cable TV. Three stories surfaced in rapid succession:• Arthur Finkelstein, age 59, a political consultant who works exclusively for ultra-right-wing Republicans and was outed as gay a few years ago, was back in the news when he married his partner in Massachusetts. Turns out the man whose greatest triumph was getting Jesse Helms re-elected to the Senate has been in this relationship for forty years (that’s 4-0: you do the math).
• Douglas S. Smith, Jr., was once the national program director for the Boy Scouts of America and headed up the group’s Task Force on Youth Protection, which teaches children how to avoid sexual abuse. But now he’s been arrested for receiving and distributing child pornography and faces up to twenty years in the slammer, having plead guilty to the charges. Prosecutors said they found 520 photos of “young boys” on his computer.
• Spokane Mayor James E. West, whose on-line chats with underage boys came to light in a sting operation in which a local reporter posing as a 17-year-old boy got West to talk dirty and propose a rendezvous, has been a vocal opponent of gay rights and has blocked every pro-gay measure proposed to date. He’s admitted to the on-line propositions (his “blue dress”?) but denies allegations that he used his authority to have sex with minors. The most serious charges go back 25 years to when West was—would you believe?—a Boy Scout leader and allegedly molested some boys in his group.
The second two stories involve not only gay sex but sex with minors, so while Finkelstein (not a Boy Scout leader, to our knowledge) was able to have a happy ending, Smith and West are charged with that ultimate taboo in our society, sex with a minor. Smith is facing time in prison, while West’s plans to run for governor of Washington appear to be on hold.
The Visitor The previous “BTW” told of James Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, the phony reporter and real male hustler who got access to White House press conferences over a two-year period, and mused that perhaps something would turn up linking Guckert to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, about whom rumors have been rife. And behold: details of Guckert’s visits to the White House have been released, and they reveal an odd pattern. While attending 155 of the 196 press conferences held during this period, Guckert also came to the White House more than two dozen times when there was no scheduled briefing—including occasions when there was a briefing elsewhere. Odder still is that his comings and goings were not very closely watched by the Secret Service, whose records show that on fourteen occasions he checked in but was never processed out. Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow pointed out that if similar irregularities had occurred in the White House eight years ago, a special prosecutor would have been appointed by now. Yet the Guckert story, so juicy in every detail, came and went in about the time it would take Karl Rove to revoke the press pass of a no-longer-welcome visitor.
The People vs. the Pope During the media frenzy that was the papal transition from John Paul II to Benedict XVI, the late Pope’s homophobia (and other peccadilloes) went virtually unnoticed. But the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger resurrected a thorny issue in that it was he who, back in 2001, ordered that the Church’s investigations into the sexual abuse of minors by priests be carried out in total secrecy. In his directive, Ratzinger asserted the Church’s absolute authority in such matters—read: don’t tell the police, the family, or anyone else—adding that any resulting “Inquisition” (they still use that word) was “subject to the pontifical secret” for fully ten years after an alleged victim’s eighteenth birthday. Lawyers for the victims of priestly abuse released a statement claiming that the new Pope had committed a “clear obstruction of justice” by withholding information relevant to criminal matters, hinting that their action against the Church could be heading all the way to the top.
