ARTICLES & FICTION
14 "COMDOMMANIA"
By Jerry Douglas
18 "WAYLAND FLOWERS"
By Robert Julian
34 "BLACK IMAGE"
By Charles Jurrist
46 "MARINE'S HIM"
By Bill Wills
54 "Al Parker: COPING"
By Robert W. Richards
66 "BUDDY MOVIES"
By Anthony Slide VISUALS
21 "NEWCOMER"
Photos from Catalina Video
29 "TOP MAN"
Photography by David
40 "CASS"
Photography by Jay Kay
61 "CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN"
Photography by Chuck
77 "BEST FRIENDS"
Photos from Studio TCS MONTHLY FEATURES
5 "QUICKIES"
10 "ROUNDUP" (Films, Books, Theatre, Music)
26 "SMOKE FROM JEAnnie'S LAMP"
50 "VIDEO VIEWS"
70 "CONTACTS" EDITORIAL
The lessons we learn as children become the cornerstones of our life philosophy,
and prove the most difficult to change as we grow older. The schoolteacher heroine
of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was absolutely right when she said of her young
students, "I am in the process of putting old heads on young shoulders...Give
me a girl at an impressionable age, and she's mine for life." (If you doubt
this theory, ask any ex-Catholic — if indeed there is such a thing as
a completely ex-Catholic.) The views we absorb and learn to expound early on
are all but indelible, and that is why gay adults should be particularly concerned
that the most pejorative expletive a child or teenager can hurl at another these
days is, "Faggot!"
And so, we are especially impressed by recent moves on the part of the San Francisco
School District to place "gay sensitive staff people" in the city's
high schools this fall, and to hold community panels with teachers regarding
a new "anti-gay slur policy." -
This is certainly a positive move in attempting to nip homophobia early in the
lives of impressionable youngsters and we salute the several specifics of the
program: "gay sensitive" counseling will be available for students;
three- and four-person panels will be offered (but not required) for teachers;
student handbooks will make clear that slurs against sexual orientation will
not be tolerated in the classroom; and the overview of intolerance will be highlighted
by including members of ethnic as well as sexual minorities as leaders of the
program.
The most significant aspect of such a program is that it is a beginning —
hopefully a precedent-setting beginning that may be emulated by educators in
all other parts of the country. Ideally, in the not too distant future, we should
be hearing the epithet "faggot" no more frequently than we hear "nigger"
or "kike" today. And if we do not hear it in the sandboxes, the classroms,
the playgrounds, and the pizza parlors of the present, the time will come when
it is not heard in the offices, clubs, churches, and government chambers of
the future.
Jerry Douglas
Editor
