Stonewall Remembered (fi‘0mpage17)

A friend, caught up in some activist
group, one day stated baldly that “you’re
not really gay unless you like to get
fucked,” which pretty well left me out, and
I saw the shadow of the True Believer, Gay
Fascism and Political Correctness for a
moment cross my sun.

I remember marching at the front (I
was a little bit compulsively excessive at
the time) of the first Gay Pride Parade, up

Fifth Avenue just like big people, under a
child's-drawing yellow sun on blue sky,
past crowds of quite puzzled shoppers, then
debauching into Central Park. Lying on my
back on the grass in the Sheep Meadow (not
Strawberry Fields) with my lover on one
side and his girl friend on the other, a swarm
of TV microphone power-pack boys
swooped in and, sticking a mike in my face,
demanded, “So who does what to who?”

Dykes to Watch Out For byAIison Bechdel

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June 1991

How could I answer someone who
didn’t understand the proper use of the
objective interrogative personal pronoun?

I thought that Gay Pride march was a
lark, lots of fun, but not all that important.
Because I felt I'd already found my free-
dom by acting free, not hiding, just being
who I was, being gay on the streets, in my
job, openly, painlessly. I had forgotten all
the struggle it had taken me, and so many
others, to achieve that freedom, all the pain
of the dismal Fifties, the internal and exter-
nal turmoil of the Sixties. The oppression of
homophobia is still with us, as every young
person growing up gay knows for sure.

It took actually living gay for those
kids at the Stonewall to wake us all up to the
potential we have as people, as a commu-
nity. You’ve got to be proud of them, and
you’ve got to emulate them. You’ve just
got to be yourself and proud of it. And you
don’t have to like getting fucked.

But it’s okay if you do.

Al     (frompage9)

recent controversy over health care work-
ers with HIV. The American Medical As-
sociation and the American Dental Asso-
ciation recently called for mandatory test-
ing for HIV and AIDS, mandatory disclo-
sure, screening of doctors and other health
care workers, and restrictions placed on
those with HIV. In doing so, the Significant
Risk standard established in Arline once
again came under debate.

A recent conference of the Centers for
Disease Control called such measures un-
reasonable and alarmist. A number of legal
and medical professionals reiterated what
had already been stated in Arline: that a call
for a zero per cent risk rather than a signifi-
cant risk was far too problematic to imple-
ment and might very well be impossible to
maintain.

Still, the debate continues, bringing
Wolfson to comment that it’s “a battle we
shouldn’t have to be fighting, (and one that
is) consuming an awful lot of time.”

Time is, after all, very much of the
essence in dealing with AIDS and HIV on
every level affected. Wolfson’s discussion
of the legal issues surrounding AIDS and
HIV made that clear, as well as demonstrat-
ing the incredible number of areas encom-
passed by those issues.

19

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