Safe from Junk Science—But for How Long? As this issue has an “anniversary” theme, and this year being the 35th anniversary of the landmark decision by the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness, let it be noted that the APA had to cancel a scheduled panel at this year’s convention because it was poised to resurrect this long-settled issue in an especially insidious way. The panel was titled “Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension”—already an ominous-sounding name to some ears—and included panelists whose religious credentials far outstripped their psychiatric ones, among them: Warren Throckmorton, an unlicensed psychologist from a Christian college in Pennsylvania, who claims to be a successful practitioner of “sexual identity therapy” designed to “cure” homosexuals; and Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, who advocates the use of a prenatal test to determine an embryo’s sexual orientation. Also in the line-up was Dr. Jack Drescher, an out gay psychiatrist based in New York, who’d been told to expect a “balanced discussion” but smelled a rat when he saw the line-up and withdrew from the panel, precipitating its cancellation. It’s not entirely clear what organizer David Scasta, former president of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, had in mind, but it seems fair to surmise that he was taken in by the veneer of therapeutic credentials presented by the religious speakers. At any rate, days before the May 5 event, it came to light that the churchmen were planning to use the panel as a propaganda vehicle for “conversion” or “reparative therapy,” which they hoped their presence on the panel would legitimate. Nor is this the first time the “ex-gay” crowd has insinuated its way onto a psychiatric panel. A little vigilance, please!
Land of Lesbians The people who live on the Greek island of Lesbos are Lesbians by virtue of their place of residence but not their sexual orientation. This possible source of confusion has been around for a long time, but until now the Lesbian islanders have endured in silence any insult to their heterosexual creds. Perhaps they just didn’t know whom to sue, or the thought of suing someone hadn’t occurred to them. But now a group of islanders has taken their grievance to a court in Athens, where they’ve filed a lawsuit against the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, the only officially registered gay group in Greece whose name uses the word lesbian. The plaintiffs are seeking to compel the group to remove the word from its name. Commented one of the three plaintiffs: “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos.” Or do they? It seems the island of Lesbos has become a magnet for lesbian tourists from around the world, who make pilgrimages to the poet Sappho’s reputed village of Eressos. So the island seems to have acquired a quite tangible connection to these “ladies,” whether the native Lesbians like it or not. (And consider the tourist euros!)
Strange Bedfellows—Not! There are some images one truly doesn’t want to dwell upon, however fanciful. Here’s one: Barbara Walters making hot sweet love to Roy Cohn, the New York attorney and power broker who died of AIDS in 1986. The reason the image is fanciful is because Cohn was as gay as a goose and as deeply closeted as last year’s pumps; the relationship was purely hypothetical, a figment of Cohn’s fabrication to disguise the darkest of his many dark secrets. Walters’ lot was to play that venerable role known as the “beard”—in this case by allowing Cohn to brag publicly that they were dating. “I was his claim to heterosexuality,” Walters declares in her new autobiography, Audition. One can only assume that Cohn found Walters a plausible squeeze when they “dated” in the 1970’s. (Oy, would this have made them the first “power couple”?) The question remains, what did Walters get out of performing this rather ignoble service for a man she seems basically to have loathed? Apparently, it was a matter of family payback: she reveals in the book that Cohn somehow got a warrant for her father’s arrest dismissed. One can only hope it was for a very serious offense; otherwise Ms. Walters has some additional explaining to do!
Sex, Videotape, and Mixed Blessings Cumberland County (PA) Commissioner Bruce Barclay appears to have had two weaknesses, two vices, to use an old-fashioned term: one was hiring male prostitutes for sex, and the other was secretly taping the proceedings for later consumption. The obsessive nature of both pursuits was revealed when police found many hundreds of tapes of Barclay, a Pennsylvania Republican, engaging in sex with hustlers, which he did on a weekly basis. The reason the police went snooping around Barclay’s home was because one of the hustlers reported that he’d been raped by the Commish in the latter’s home. But just when Barclay seemed doomed by vice number one—wonder of wonders!—vice number two came to the rescue. It seems that among the many hours of sexual activity he had immortalized was some footage of Barclay with the twenty-year-old plaintiff, which a judge obligingly watched and found to be rape-free. Thus the rape charges have been dropped; however, Barclay now faces the prospect of charges of privacy violations and soliciting for sex. Which may not be as bad as knowing that the Cumberland police have all these tapes to pull out and cue up on those idle evenings at the station.
Felons Okay, But Not If You’re Gay In its desperation to meet recruitment quotas, the U.S. military has drastically lowered its standards for service. First it was the requirement for a high school degree that fell by the way; now recruits are being given “moral waivers” to allow in those with a felony conviction, previously an automatic disqualifier. This is especially galling to GLBT people who want to serve, since it implies that the military is placing gay people on a lower moral plane than convicted felons. Indeed their ears grew a little redder when a recent study revealed that people were being inducted who had committed very serious crimes, such as aggravated assault and crimes involving weapons. Among the felons identified were nine convicted for sex crimes and six for manslaughter or vehicular homicide. Come to think of it, with thugs like this now entering the military, is this really the kind of organization that gay people ought to be joining?
