About Walt Whitman

There's so many different kinds of material in Gay Today that I suppose people read your content for a variety of reasons. Speaking for myself, one reason I keep coming back is because of GayToday's commitment to honoring our past.

As I keep returning, I learn more and more about the vision and leadership that has brought an endangered minority "out of its dark confinement," to paraphrase Walt Whitman, and out onto the "open road." It's splendid folks like GayToday's Jack Nichols, who were fighting for me many years before I finally came out of the closet in 1982, at age 27. Speaking of Walt, I was fascinated by Nichols' prescient speech from 1973, penned in a dark era when Whitman's sexuality was still subject to a degree of academic denial that makes today's "don't ask/don't tell" policies look tolerant. Nichols makes a pretty serious claim for the value of that speech when he writes, "It's the first such attempt to hoist high a banner on behalf of Whitman's Leaves of Grass by a prominent 60s-70s' gay activist." But if that's indeed the case, then I agree: this represents an indelible mark in our history.

I suspect there are some penetrating insights in this speech that were sadly neglected over the passage of subsequent years, such as:

"A friend of mine, a simplifier who likes categories, once told me that there were two types of homosexuals. He said there were Gideans--Protestant agonizers like Andre Gide-and there were Wildeans-after Oscar Wilde, the flamboyant. I told my friend that he'd left me out. I explained to him that I'm a Whitmanite. I see the American poet, Walt Whitman, as a great precursor and fountainhead of prophecies, visions and attitudes, both toward society and the self, that I feel are at the very basis of the movement I've been working to advance."

and:

"[Whitman] realized that it is through the material world-through our bodies-that we experience spiritual awareness."

What do these ideas look like in the year 2000? Well, for starters, stop by some pages starting to get linked together over at my lambda theology site. Please, give me your feedback.
www.generalpicture.com/camerado/light.htm

God bless you for sharing your historic speech with us again, and for all the years of striving. Certainly more than almost any of us alive today, you truly understood Whitman when he said:

I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,
For I confront peace, security, and the settled laws, to unsettle them,
I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me,
I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule,
And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me,
And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me...

-- "As I Lay with My Head on Your Lap Camerado" (1865)

Ciao,
Mitch Gould, founder, a lambda theology organization

I enjoyed the Perry Brass article on transgender. I was also raised in the south. At the age of 10, I would perform in front of family grownups in drag (wearing my mother's clothes) as Carmen Miranda and doing the hula. I collected Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth photographs and I wanted to be more like them. It was World War II, masculine marching troops, Hitler, square jaws and hard eyes, and I was obviously trying to find the opposite or the feminine screen goddess within, having been born with long eyelashes.

Related Stories from the GayToday Archive: Walt Whitman: The Poet of Comrades and of Love A Way Out of the Gender Mess South Africa "AIDS Dissident" Dispute: Time to Stop and Think Related Sites: Perry Brass George W. Bush for President or GayToday does not endorse related sites.

As I grew older and in a restricting Ivy League East Coast straight Eisenhower enviornment of college, I got paranoid about letting any hairpins about being feminine whatsoever drop around me. No wonder I have been so paranoid most of my life. Society did it.

At age 66, I have finally realized self and my motto is, live, love and create beauty. Beauty will save the world, and beauty is expressed in the balance between the masculine and the feminine qualities within us all. Transgenderism is definately the wave for the future, just in time to save the world from the self- destructiveness of an over the top masculine society, Arnold Wartsnegger and all. The same type of society that produces Hitlers.

Love Charles

I am pushing for a movement so that every time George W. Bush appears in public he is asked whether or not he is going to rescind or reaffirm President Clinton's executive order banning job discrimination for federal employees based on sexual orientation.

My personal opinion, after watching G.W. squirming around trying to appease the religious reich, is that he will not promise to keep the policy, and I also believe that his failure to make that promise would be enough to sink him in the elections.

Paul Barwick
San Francisco

We were not sure what saddened us the most about "South Africa "AIDS Dissident" dispute: Time to stop and think" (Gay Today, April 14, 2000). The article gave a clearly one-sided view of the history of the South African AIDS controversy, but also managed to leave out important facts regarding Mbeki's request for an open discussion.

Writer John S. James wrote "…with mother-to-infant HIV transmission, where one dose of Nevirapine is likely to make the difference between a normal lifespan and dying of AIDS without the difficulties of lifelong drug regimens and toxicity."

Where on earth did this information come from? There was no source cited, is Mr. James now an expert on HIV therapies? If so, how come he failed to mention that pregnancy is one of the 69 conditions that scientists recognize will produce a false positive result on Western Blot and ELISA tests?

We don't know how many pregnant South African women are producing HIV false positive readings because they (and their fetuses) are being given these antiretroviral medications as soon as test results are in.

These medications may be unnecessary as well as dangerous. Why did Mr. James also fail to mention that unethical and immoral tests of Nevaripine were conducted on South African women resulting in five deaths, 55 women with serious liver damage, and that no one knows the long term effects on the fetuses. These are definitely conditions that could create "difficulties of lifelong drug regimens and toxicity."

We applaud Mbeki's and PAC member Patricia deLille's desire to hear all aspects of HIV treatment. He would indeed be an unwise and uncaring leader if he did not question why South Africa suffered from so many "treatment failures" as the pharmaceutical companies call dead HIV+ victims.

Why has no one questioned the pharmaceutical companies trying so urgently to negotiate a price-reduction for their drugs, are we supposed to assume this is a humanitarian effort? What is humane about five deaths and 55 livers being damaged, and those numbers just from the drug trial. Why isn't anyone questioning the fact that the definition of AIDS in Africa is different from that in the west?

The very symptoms required to be diagnosed with AIDS in Africa are no different than a plethora of other diseases, malaria or TB for example, that are common to most African communities with poor socioeconomic and health problems.

Here are two simple facts, there has never been any published findings that HIV can destroy T-cells in an efficient enough manner to cause AIDS symptoms. AZT is a highly toxic drug designed for chemotherapy in the 1960s and taken off the market because of toxic side effects. It's not really difficult to understand Mbeki's reasons for asking questions knowing this.

This really isn't a question of Mbeki speaking with Dr. David Rasnick, or hearing Duesberg's theories, this is about making an informed decision. I would bet that if the South African women who were used for drug trials were told of the potential risks to themselves and their unborn children they would not have agreed to take the drugs.

Can we even be sure they had that option? Yes, the pharmaceutical companies fund the largest portion of research and development, yes, our government has committees to make decisions for our president regarding health. These two things may not be mutually exclusive. As in any big money business, there is lobbying, schmoozing, string pulling, and perhaps even out right lies to make a buck.

Do not perpetuate the condemnation of a president who calls into question the motivation of doctors who have vested interests in pharmaceutical companies and the drugs they wish to push. Do not perpetuate a volatile situation, in which the lives of so many hang in the balance, with hate-mongering and sci-fi "dissident" language.

We do believe there is an epidemic in Africa, we just think that there may be more than one way to approach it, and Mbeki is right, it has to begin with an open discussion.