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one demanding "complete control of our bodies against the state planners and legislators and the medical profession." As a result of the Saturday night incident, women from Bristol, Leeds, and London formed a group called CLAN (Committee for Lesbian Action Now) to fight instances of lesbian oppression throughout the country."

Gay rights rebound in Atlanta

ATLANTA-Late in March, City Councilor Hugh Pierce proposed an amendment to the charter of the city's Community Relations Commission (CRC), which investigates discrimination complaints, that would have struck "sexual orientation" as a protected area-along with age, sex, marital status, disability, political affiliation, and just about everything else except race, creed,. and national origin. According to Commission member Bill Smith, Pierce felt that the CRC had been "running wild," and he was particularly disturbed at two investigations it conducted last year into gay complaints of police harassment. Gays are "emotional misfits," Pierce has several times said in public.

However, the gay paper The Barb publicised Pierce's move and called for gay people in Atlanta to make their feeings known to their Council representatives, which resulted in Pierce himself receiving a number of calls from outraged gay constituents. He turned out not to have the courage of his prejudices and withdrew his proposed amendment before his colleagues could vote it down. Councilor Marvin Arrington then proposed a new amendment, that would strike all the specific categories from the CRC charter and instead direct it to secure equal rights "for all citizens" without qualification. This proposal passed unanimously, receiving even Pierce's support.

Tip of the iceberg

NEWARK, N.J. Denouncing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons for laxity in caring for youthful prisoners, Judge Herbert J. Stern ordered Jan Elgaard, 19, of Ramsey, N. J. freed from the Federal Reformatory in Petersburg, Va.. because the youth was raped by three other inmates. Elgaard had served less than two months of a six-year sentence when the incident occured. Prison authorities, who placed him in solitary confinement "for his own protection" after he complained, did not dispute his charges, and the U.S. Attorney's office joined in recommending his release..

"It is difficult enough for a judge to sentence an individual to incarceration," Stern said, "(but) that task becomes well nigh impossible and terribly frightening when prison officials cannot provide rudimentary protection against that sort of crime."

It is not known as yet whether similarly abused inmates elsewhere have applied for relief based on the precedent set in this case.

I'll take toe

NEW ORLEANS Police here said they think they have nabbed the bandit who broke into homes and sucked his victims' toes, according to Gay Scene, the "intellectual gay monthly." Officers responding to a burglary call recently arrestedArthur L. Ford, 21, and charged him with nine counts of burlgary. Ford wore a ski mask and entered victims' homes by cutting screens, police said, but he never took much money. His primary purpose, according to police reports and complaints filed by victims, was just to suck victims' toes.

Zapping the homophobic shrinks

NEW YORK-On April 6 four well-known proponents of the now professionally-unrespectable view that homosexuality as such is a mental illness or disorder gathered together for a panel discussion on "The Psychodynamics of Male Homosexuality" at the New York Academy of Medicine. Chairing the session was Dr. Herbert Hendin, who provides his services whenever the New York Times wants to run an anti-gay article or review (most recent was his hatchet-job on C.A. Tripp's The Homosexual Matrix). The other psychiatrists present were Drs. Irving Bieber, Lionel Ovesey, and Charles Socarides, all of whom have written books explaining the "pathology" of homosexuality and have participated in attempts to "cure" gays (by aversion therapy and other methods) of their "illness." Socarides in particular is a frequent guest on radio and television programs dealing with homosexuality, where he always "balances" the discussion with his predictably anti-gay views.

The discussion, sponsored by the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine, was closed to the general public. While more than 100 gay people from Gay Activists Alliance/New York, Gay People at Columbia, and other groups marched on a picket line outside the building and/or "sat in" in the lobby, several members of the Gay Socialist Action Project got into the lecture hall via a service entrance and a back staircase. Five minutes into Ovesey's opening address, one member of the group began blowing a whistle, and then another loudly announced that "the actual topic of tonight's discussion will be 'The Social Dynamics of Anti-Homosexuality among Male Psychiatrists and Psychologists.""

The demonstrators began reading a long, impassioned denunciation of the assembled psychiatrists, but after a few minutes moderator Hendin announced that the meeting was adjourned.

Unitarians train gays as sex education leaders

BETHESDA, Md. During a three-day conference here in February to train adult leaders for the Unitarian Universalist Association's "About Your Sexuality" curriculum, most of the trainees were members of the church's Gay Caucus. This is the only known instance in this country in which open gays have been trained to lead sex education classes for young people.

Roberta Nelson of Fairfax, Va., one of those in charge of the conference, commented in UU World (the church's newspaper) that after leading about 20 such training groups, she could see "no significant difference between gay leaders and heterosexual leaders. Some are better than others in their ability to enable young people to share their concerns about sexuality and sort out their values in life."

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GAY NEWS May 1976

Page GAYE

'Gay bank robber'

Harassment by others lands 'little John' in solitary

LEWISBURG, Pa John S. ("little John") Wojtowicz, whose illfated bank robbery attempt formed the basis of the movie Dog Day Af ternoon, is still doing very "hard time" in the Federal Penitentiary here. (See feature article in the February Gay News.) After a series of robberies from his cell and three fires started in it by others (once last November and twice in January), the prison authorities decided on Jan. 19 to remove him from the main population and place him in segregation (solitary confinement) for "protective custody." More than two months later, he is still there, locked up 23 hours a day (with one hour of recreation outside), and his requests for a transfer to some other institution seem lost in the bureaucratic maze.

Wojtowicz is bitter about what he sees as punishment for crimes committed against him by others. The official explanation is that it has become "too expensive" to maintain him outside of segregation. But the statements by the Inmate Disciplinary Committee that he is really not being punished, just "protected," don't make the lonely days any easier to take. In his own words, in a letter to Gay News staff members, "I have not heard a song, or the news, or read a daily. newspaper since coming to Segregation on Jan. 19... I'm going buggie; I feel like a caged-up animal."

Among the possessions lost in the fires were many of the legal papers pertaining to his own case. (which he is appealing) and suits he has brought against the producers

GAY NEWS UPDATE

and publishers of Dog Day Afternoon. In addition, many letters he got as the result of stories in this and other gay newspapers were destroyed before he had a chance to answer them. With the letters and addresses gone, answers are impossible, even when the persons inIvolved send new letters, because in many cases they omit return addresses and sign only with their first names. "I don't want my friends and fans to think I don't want to write because I do; their letters help me to make it through this horrible time and I thank them for them," Wojtowicz emphasizes.

In the meantime, little John's "jailhouse lawyer," George Heath, has been active in pressing his appeal for a sentence reduction. According to Wojtowicz, the Legal Aid attorney who originally handled his case told him that if he would plead guilty, he wouldbe sentenced to only 10 to 15 years, which with parole could be shortened considerably. He did so, and was smacked with a 20. year term, which leaves him three more years to go before he can even be considered for parole.

The motion for a sentence

Anti-vice squad suit gains

SAN FRANCISCO-A taxpayer's suit to halt the operations of the SF Police Department's vice squad (see story in the February Gay News) made a significant gain, on March 17 when a Superior Court judge here denied a petition by the City Attorney's office to dismiss it. Deborah Hinkel, attorney for the

GAY NEWS UPDATE

plaintiffs, several of whom are associated with the Pride Founnation (a gay rights organization), was delighted at the ruling.

"Now we are going to start taking depositions from persons who have been arrested by the vice

process of entrapment and/or provocation. The 14 plaintiffs claim standing as taxpayers to challenge the expenditure of public monies for what they call "an illegal secret police force" and "a strange group of men lurking in the bushes.";

The next step in the battle is a request for a preliminary injunction that would temporarily halt arrests under the contested statute, or better, a "summary and judgment" that would prohibit them altogether at any time in the future.

Donations for legal expenses, which have been considerable, are being collected by the Pride Foundation.

reduction was denied by the U.S. District Court, and Heath is now appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Heath, who is the only legal counsel Wojtowicz has, is asking for a "remand with instructions" to the lower court, which he hopes will result in a resentence to a term of 15 years or less. The main argument he is using, besides the matter of the misleading "plea-bargaining", is that at the time of the robbery Wojtowicz was an honorably discharged veteran, with no other arrests or convictions, and that his motive for the crime was not selfaggrandizement but a desire to help someone else (namely, his transsexual male "wife," portrayed in the movie by Chris Sarandon).

In addition to the court strategy, Heath and Wojtowicz have prepared a petition for a Presidential pardon for Wojtowicz, which they are circulating among. friends and in sympathetic gay groups. The chances of this succeeding are, of course, virtually negligible, but Heath seems to feel that he can use the signed petitions to help influence the Court in the appeal hearing.

Because of difficulties Wojtowicz has experienced in getting and sending out mail from Lewisburg, a friend has set up an outside mail address for him: 525 N. Laurel Ave., Hollywood, Calif. 90048. Interested persons should. write to him at this address.

"There's nothing greater in terms of our life on earth than an enduring relationship if it's truly loving. But we are brainwashed into accepting the standards of the hetero majority, and we need to keep reminding ourselves that we needn't, shouldn't conform to straight standards, that long-lasting love isn't incompatible with promiscuity. That love can enter into one-night stands too. Such love could be higher in its nature than Idomestic love, because it verges on that thing we all talk about so much but rarely meet-love of mankind." Christopher Isherwood

squad under section 647A Test case' flops as High

('solication for a lewd act in a public place') of the penal code," she told the San Francisco Sentinel. According to figures in the district attorney's office, in the first six months of 1974 over 5,000 arrests were made in the city for violations of 647A. "We assume that almost all of those persons were gay," Hinkel said. "It's this section which has been used to harass gays."

Conviction for violating the solicitation law carries with it the obligation to report to the local sheriff or chief of police whenever one moves to a new residence within the state. "That amounts to a lifetime parole," Hinkel commented, adding, "That's going to be our next target."

The suit contends that vice squad officers are themselves guilty of the acts for which they arrest

others, since the arrests are never by chance but through an active

Court upholds sodomy laws

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NGTF, and the National Coalition of Gay Activists. The only non-gay organization thus far heard from, besides the Liberatarian and Socialist Workers parties, is the Unitarian Universalist Association, whose president called the Court's decision "a set-back for all American citizens and their rights of privacy." U.S. Rep. Edward I. Koch (D-N.Y.), one of the co-sponsors of the federal gay rights bill, read a critique of the decision into the Congressional Record and distributed copies of his remarks in a newsletter for constituents. In a most peculiar fencestraddling editorial, the Wall Street Journal, torn between dislike of homosexuality and dislike of big

govenment, suggested that state legislatures should pass resolutions condemning homosexuality and then repeal their sodomy laws.

What it is most important to remember is that while the Court has said states can criminalize homosexual acts, it has not said they must do so, and not even the Richmond panel gave any new reasons why they should. With four Nixon appointees the Supreme Court is no longer a reliable protector of individual rights and its decision, unless reversed, largely removes the judicial system as a path for sexual law reform. What that means is that the legislative route assumes even more importance. With 35 more states to go, there's a lot of work to be done.