by Christine Burton

Do you read the daily news? Papers
count the bodies for you; TV shows them to
you in body bags. Papers report investiga-
tions; TV shows you well-dressed and
well-heeled men in august congressional
chambers or lofty courtrooms accusing]
denying. All the while Alaska’s pristine
beaches that water birds and animals call
“home” are tarred with the inebriated care-
lessness and corporate greed of those
higher(?) creatures called men.

Sometimes on talk shows you hear
older women and men in the audience (or if
younger they’re libido-suppressed bible
thumpers) regret the passage of the “good
old days” when you didn’t hear all this talk
about sex (shudders) and women were vir-
gins until they married (not required of
men), and prostitutes were called “fallen
women”;(the johns weren’t “fallen”). And
“mercy me! I never heard of homosexuals
until Phil and Oprah came along. My tough
luck to get tickets for today.”

This columnist has always wondered
about the “oldest profession on earth.” It
must have a valid place in human living to
have found such an enduring market.
Manufacturers of detergents and cereals
should be so lucky. Since it’s MAN’S
money that keeps prostitution going, it may
fulfill the needs of h_is_ nature; all he has to
do is pay for it. Many species of lower(?)
animals have to fight to the blood for the

right to enjoy sex.

Nostalgia seems to fill most people
with pleasure and pain; pleasure that the
past was wonderful and with pain that the
present is horrible. They get a double-shot
of emotion, an effective defense against
thinking. Otherwise they might realize we
create the world we live in and always have.

I never yearn for the past, that time
when women were economically enslaved
by the conniving of men. I think we live in
wonderful times and the best is yet to come.
TV , that accused destroyer of the innocence
of our children, is destroying their igno-
rance. Never again can there be a rug large
enough to sweep under it all the vagaries
and exigencies of the human condition that
we have not been mature enough to face.
Never again will the human spirit be con-
tent to live in a hypocritical world in which
we swathed our moral sense with pretense.

Never again will we be satisfied to_

disassociate effect from cause. We humans
are moving away from obedience to author-
ity; we are evolving towards acceptance of
personal responsibility, the only way to go
if our species and our planet are to survive.

Are you reminding me of the Alaskan
oil spill and the perennial corruption in high
places that only seems to get worse? But we
find those aberrations in the older genera-
tion. More and more our young people are
opening their eyes, accepting diversity, and
assuming responsibility for their own

 

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choices. Sometimes the only way for a
culture to eliminate its own restrictive
conditioning and to move upward is for
older people to die off.

Before I am accused of being a sense.
less Pollyanna, let me tell you the source for
my opinion. It is that modern communica-
tion phenomenon, the TV talk show. The
star of the show is the audience. The talk
show host is useful to move the microphone
around, the panel sets the focus of stimulus.
But watch the audience, listen to the audi-
ence, and you have your ear to the ground
of what's happening to our culture.

A year ago, at the mention of homo-
sexuality, homophobes were loud, their
mouths juicing around their words with
disgust, their body language suggesting
violence. If one timid soul would remind
them that after all homosexuals agehuman,
the homophobes would come on like ten
brass bands. Last week I watched two talk
shows with homosexual themes, one Oprah
and one Donahue. Only a couple of people
timidly hinted at homophobia, their voices
mild. They were easily talked down and
ignored. I've noticed this trend for several
months now. And where is that mighty roar
we call Jerry Falwell? Since a gay man
demanded to see Falwel1’s boastful tape in
court a couple of years ago, and won a
money award, Jerry has been on the de
cline.

During this cultural leap forward, les-
bians and gay men cling to their closets
even when they don’t need to. They still
strive to pass while fewer and fewer people
show interest in their sexual orientation.
Are they becoming the new anachronism?

More laws will be passed to protect the
civil rights of lesbians and gays. But what
will we do with our long-sought freedom?
Nothing, probably. Are we so accustomed
to hypocrisy that we can’t give it up?

"We Are Your
Neighbors"
Benefit for L/ G Pride

June 8th

At Pearls
135 Pearl Street, Burlington
8:30 - closing

$3.00 Cover

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