Correspondence.

RECLAIMING THE WORD "GAY"

To the Editors:

It is clear that Tamarah Cohen does not want to be referred to as "gay" ("'Gay' and the Disappearing [+Female], Nov.-Dec. 2002). Most homosexual women I know like to be known as both "gay" and "lesbian." Far fewer women insist on being referred to solely as "lesbian," and fewer still wish to be thought of exclusively as "gay."

When the fictional character "Ellen" came out to the world on national TV, she said, "I'm gay" into an airport microphone. She was not telling the world she that was a male homosexual, but was referring to herself unambiguously as a female whose sexual orientation was directed toward other women. When I write about "gay people," I'm writing about both women and men, unless I specifically indicate that I'm referring only to "gay men." I use the terms "gay women" and "lesbians" interchangeably.

Ms. Cohen fails to acknowledge that there are homosexuals who do not wish to lose the unifying role that "gay" has had for many men and women. As Doreen Benson wrote in Ft. Lauderdale's Congregation Etz Chaim (May 2001), "Do you remember when we were all gay and not labeled into sexual identity groups? I know I may ruffle a few feathers, but I have to tell you, that when we were all gay we were one. There was unity, pride, sensitivity, concern, nurturance and a special kind of commitment to each other." Like Ms. Benson, I hope that we can still in some way hold onto the unifying term "gay" to describe both female and male homosexuals, as did the early pioneers of our liberation movement when they chose this special word.

Marc Paige, Cranston, RI

A GAYER NIETZSCHE

To the editor:

Charles Stone's essay on Nietzsche [May-June 2002] clarified what most of us suspected--the triumphant Hellenism in Nietzsche's anti-Christian (as opposed to anti-Christ) stance. But it only gave pointers as to how "gay"--a retrospective slant permitting--Nietzsche really was in his personal life. Yes, when he said something was anti-nature, one might read anti-same sex, and Nietzsche's dervish-like ideas contrarily offer an underpinning for a modem gay understanding of the world. In The Epistemology of the Closet Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick remarked that a phrase index of Nietzsche was like a concordance with Proust's Sodome et Gomororrhe. Sedgwick's Nietzsche equated homosexual desire with Dionysian initiation, or bonding that derived from ancient warrior classes, and thus stood for health and strength, for an enhanced life free of cant. The "evidence" about Nietzsche that Stone refers to from Joachim Kohler's book is telling rather than circumstantial. Unlike the Nietzsche of Irvin Yalom's novel When Nietzsche W ept where his love was for a woman, Nietzsche's secret was simply that he loved men.

Nietzsche adored one man above all others--Richard Wagner. In the early days when Wagner was 53 and Nietzsche was in his early twenties, he worshipped him almost as one might a divinity. Sigmund Freud first observed that men who get themselves into triangular relationships often do so to indicate their homosexual desires. They can like the woman only in the presence of the man, only in an act of mimesis for the man's love. The female in the picture was Cosima Wagner, the illegitimate daughter of Franz Liszt and eventually wife of Wagner. In Nietzsche's creative love triangle, Wagner was Theseus, Cosima was Ariadne and Nietzsche was Dionysus, who rescues Ariadne from Theseus. The Wagners viewed the younger man as a brilliant intellectual, as someone they could utilize to promote themselves, but as also gauche and embarrassing.

According to Joachim Kohler, Nietzsche turned against Wagner because the latter began to criticize his unsuppressed enthusiasm for his friend Erwin Rhode, with whom he was always seen. Wagner--hardly the most sensitive of men when he wanted something--nagged Nietzsche to play by straight rules. Wagner asserted that lack of love was no obstacle to Nietzsche getting married, but his own effeminate tendencies were nonetheless highly developed. Many had noted that the cult of Wagner at Bayreuth brought out droves of young, ardently worshipful, homosexual men. Wagner had even hypnotized the homosexual young King Ludwig of Bavaria into a state of abject subservience embarrassing for a monarch. Nietzsche however managed to extricate himself from Wagner's oppressive views, though not without a lot of pain. He aligned his deepest feelings with Paul Ree, who was Jewish, and committed the grave error of bringing Ree to meet Wagner as though for a blessing. It was this combination above all that sickened Wagner, whose bi tter anti-Semitism mingled with his loathing of overt homosexuality, chased Nietzsche out of the charmed circle at lake Lucerne. The split came and eventually Nietzsche wrote The Case of Wagner (1888) in which he says that Wagner "has made music sick."

Nietzsche was a supremely idiosyncratic, visionary iconoclast, an outstanding seer into the clunking mechanics of how morality quickly becomes a trap of self-loathing that body-hating ideologies spin for the unsuspecting believer. To him we owe the cleansing of the accrued debris of the Judeo-Christian inheritance. He did this with a prophetic vehemence that has lost none of its power to jolt us into new insights. That he also supported a morality that did not condemn homosexuality seems perfectly logical now that we can fully appreciate the significance of his tastes.

Kieron Devlin, Brooklyn, NY

No ASSIMILATION TO THE PRIMATES

Dear Editor,

I really appreciate your journal's unusual philosophical approach to homosexual issues, and in particular how many of the articles stimulate a healthy consideration of the meaning in being gay or lesbian. I think I instinctually crave the investigation of my existence as a gay man, a hunger amplified by living in what seem to me increasingly bizarre times, not so much to justify my existence as to stimulate my further growth and self-realization.

I found Frank Muscarella's article on "Homoerotic Behavior in Human Evolution" (Nov-Dec. 2002) stimulating in two ways. First, it's rare to see anything written on why gayness exists, especially something that imagines the evolutionary development of homosexuality stemming from pre-human, primate sources. The article's construction of a comprehensive schematic explaining how homosexuality might have functioned to aid in the cohesion and survival of groups and tribes makes an important contribution to the essential work-in-progress of our evolving collective exploration of our nature as gay and lesbian people.

Second, I liked the article because its thesis got me pretty riled up. I found it to be yet one more in an enormous series of what could be called "postmodern" statements on homosexuality produced these past fifteen years, with its deconstructionist subtext, enabling its seemingly liberal point of view to hide a reactionary agenda. Like a stealth bomber, Muscarella's article flies below the radar in a battle over the essence of gayness. The author presents a sleek and seemingly logical, "legitimate" theory of homosexuality, which he contrasts with that of sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, who argued that gay people are genetically altruistic, programmed to assist their family members in ways that improve their prospects for survival and procreation.

But Muscarella falls to state that his argument is actually taking sides in an old debate in homosexual theory between "assimilationists" and "liberationists." Assimilationists like Muscarella would reduce the profound mystery and creative potential inherent in gayness to a mere sexual activity, so that "gay soul" is cleanly annihilated, dissipated into the fluid sea of unconscious conformity. Note that Muscarella replaces "homosexuals" as a category of persons with "homoerotic behavior" by any kind of person. In prehistoric humans and in animals like baboons, he posits, widespread homoeroticism served in the formation and maintenance of power dynamics with the ultimate--and sole--aim being that of propagation of the species.

Opposing this assimilationist position are the gay and lesbian liberationists inspired by the long tradition of homocentric theories and visions such as seen in the works of Plato, Sappho, Karl Ulrichs, Magnus Hirschfeld, Walt Whitman and the late Harry Hay. This is the tradition that gave rise to the modern gay and lesbian movement, from which the idea has come that homosexuals are a people to be liberated--not just a behavioral variation--a people with unique and important traits and tendencies, a kind of people who have existed in different guises throughout human cultures and history. Our gay ancestors' revolutionary ideas have been crucial in providing a sense of meaning and fulfillment for all gay-identified people today. How else could we homosexuals survive mentally and emotionally in any healthy way in this bleak and hostile heterosexist world? Gay centrism exists in the philosophical and psychological foundations within all gay-identified people, whether we're aware of it or not. Without the desire to honor and free a homosexual perspective, gay identity wouldn't exist and the reader wouldn't be reading this right now.

While assimilationist arguments about gayness like those of Muscarella amount to homophobically-inspired opposition to gay essence and truth, they provoke consideration of gay nature that can open doors to the homosexual imagination about what it means to be that way, a place where gay people ultimately will find we have always flourished and discovered extraordinary and special potentialities.

Chris Kilboume, West Hollywood, CA

OF PRIESTS AND PEDERASTS: A REPLY

To the Editor:

Margot Louis's letter (Nov.-Dec. 2002) complains I was not sensitive to the realities of sexual abuse in my essay on the priest sex scandals (July-Aug. 2002). She takes issue with my comparison between men being charged with sex with minors today and the demonization of black men in the South as potential rapists of white women; or the legal status of Jews under the Nazis. "What man accused of pedophilia today," she asks, "is having his property destroyed by systematically organized riots or stolen by the sate? What man accused of pedophilia is being forced to wear a symbol or shame ... [or] is being placed in a concentration camp?"

Anyone who has kept up with the news in recent years would be able to answer those questions. In the U.S., men convicted of consensual sex with minors (as well as other sex offenses) are required to have their names and photos, and often their addresses, listed in public registries, typically available for viewing on the Internet Police sometimes poster neighborhoods with this information, or courts require individuals to put signs on their dwellings or cars labeling them as "sexual predators." Being so identified prevents persons from finding jobs and homes, and has led to suicides and attempted murders.

Jews forced to wear yellow stars under the Nazis would be familiar with such measures. In the Hendricks decision of 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "pedophiles" can be permanently confined with no clime needing to be alleged or proven, on the grounds that such persons are "likely" to break the law in the future. Similar provisions exist in Canada, and hundreds of men are now interned without due process in North America.

Those who avoid confinement face lifetime parole, increasingly imposed on men found guilty of sex with minors. This in effect puts sex offenders under a separate legal system, with few of the rights granted other citizens. Parolees can be sent back to prison for violating an arbitrary rule imposed by probation officers, such as keeping a 9:00 p.m. curfew, not traveling beyond a twenty mile radius of home, or not speaking to a person under eighteen. Violations do not have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, so hostile neighbors can simply state that they saw the man speaking to a minor, and he can be returned to prison indefinitely. In one New York case, a man on parole was re-imprisoned for possessing a copy of The Best Gay Erotica of 1996.

It is telling that Louis's picture of human motivation is such that sexual desire and curiosity completely overwhelm an individual's sense of truth and fairness, while the opportunity to receive a financial windfall does not. The Catholic Church in the U.S. is said to have paid some $10 billion to people who allege sexual contact with clergy. When the accused has assets, sex prosecutions are now often accompanied by civil suits; alleged victims can clean up even when no charges are proved. Could some of the horror stories about the consequences of sex with a priest be connected to the fact that the more suffering you claim the bigger your financial windfall?

The underlying problem with the view that Louis expresses is that the term "sexual abuse" has become as conceptually confused as it is politically potent. Does it really make sense to create a single body of law that encompasses, say, consensual sex between a nineteen- and a sixteen-year-old and the forced penetration of a three-year-old child? If we want to tease out the fine-grained moral textures of sexual acts and understand the range of their consequences, good and bad--a project Louis and I would agree is important--then we must reject overarching and emotionally charged terms and assumptions and confront the injustices committed in the name of stamping out sex between older and younger people.

Bill Andriette, Boston

WHAT THE BIBLE DOESN'T SAY

Dear Editor,

At this time of pedophiliac and paraphiliac scandal within the Catholic Church [G&LR, July-Aug. 2002], you may find interesting my research into the Holy Scriptures relative to the subject. I have retranslated from the Hebrew and Greek all the verses of the Bible pertinent to pedophilia and paraphilia. The problem is that in all these verses the topic of pedophilia is hidden within the words used by previous translators. There are four principal locations in the Bible where pedophilia and homosexuality are discussed: Leviticus 18:10-29 and 20:13-16; Romans 1:26,27; I Corinthians 6:9,10; and I Timothy 1:8-10.

As you know, in any language a word can have several different meanings. I have selected accepted translations of pertinent words in the original languages from dictionaries of biblical Hebrew and Greek. I have selected renderings that seem appropriate to the context in which the words are used and in accordance with the intent of the author.

Regarding pedophilia, previous translators have chosen to hide this issue within the general topic of homosexuality (or "sodomy") without any reference to pedophilia, excluding it entirely from the translation. The true meaning is left to the deciphering mind of each reader. It is doubtful the various translators even considered the possibility that pedophilia was the intent of the original author. There can be no doubt, however, that the words in question in each of the verses under discussion apply equally as well to the sexual abuse of children.

Regarding the general topic of homosexuality, I have found that there are two possibilities. Either the passages refer to indiscriminate promiscuous sex or they refer to mankind's general immoral conduct toward one another, such as greed, murder, robbery, lying, warfare, and the like. Homosexuality that is not promiscuous is not condemned. What is condemned is sexual promiscuity, whether hetero- or homosexual, because of the harmful effects on the body (referring to sexually transmitted diseases?). Otherwise what is condemned is man's hurtful actions toward one another.

In any case, it does not say anywhere in the whole Bible that pedophiles or the promiscuous are excluded from Heaven. Indeed, it does not say anywhere in the whole Bible that anyone will ever he excluded from Heaven for any sin whatsoever!

Dr. John P. Mercurio, Gloucester, MA