INTEGRITY

GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM

c Integrity 1976   ISSN: 0095-2184

Vol. 3  No. 2   December 1976

 

INTEGRITY:  GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM is the official newsletter of Integrity, Inc., a nonprofit religious, charitable, educational, and literary organization of Gay Episcopalians and our friends.  Integrity, Inc. maintains a national office with The Rev. Ron Wesner, President, 5014 Willows Avenue, Phila., PA 19143, tele. 215-748-2118.  Membership and subscription correspondence should be sent to Forum Business Manager, Dave Williams, INTEGRITY, P.O. Box 891, Oak Park, IL 60303, tele 312-386-1470.  Editorial correspondence should be sent to Louie Crew, 701 Orange Street, No. 6, Fort Valley, GA 31030, tele. 912-825-7287. 

 

Signed articles represent the views of the contributors.  The editors reserve the right to revise all sexist language. 

 

Copyright 1976 by Integrity, Inc.  10 issues per year.  Membership subscriptions are $10; subscriptions without membership are $12.  Add $3 for all subscriptions that require plain envelopes; Canadians add $2 if paying in Canadian currency.  Couple rates are $13 for one newsletter. 

 

President................................ The Rev. Ron Wesner

Vice President................................. John Lawrence

Treasurer............................. The Rev. John Lenhardt

Editor............................................ Louie Crew

Business Editor............................... David Williams

 

Trustees:     Ernest Clay, Louie Crew, Julie Peterson,

              The Rev. Richard Younge

 

Consultants:The Rev. Malcolm Boyd, The Rev. Robert W. Cromey, The Rev. Norman Pittenger

 

Member:  COSMEP - Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers

 

COLLECT BEFORE CRUISING

 

Oh God, loving creator of both flesh and spirit, integrate both within us by your own holiness.  In drawing us together, sensitize us to your presence and to our opportunities for exciting your goodness.  Amen.

 

INTEGRITY MEETS WITH PRESIDENT OF THE DEPUTIES

 

NYC.  Dr. Charles Lawrence, new president of the Episcopal House of Deputies, met here on October 22nd with Fr. Ron Wesner and Louie Crew, INTEGRITY spokespersons.  Wesner and Crew urged Dr. Lawrence to appoint openly Gay Episcopalians to the new Commission on Health and Human Affairs, the body charged by General Convention to deal with issues of human sexuality and with Gay sexuality ln par­ticular.

 

Dr. Lawrence explained that he could not accept "as principle" the need for such a Gay witness but that he could consider the possibility of such appointment in fact, if such person or persons had other qualifications and skills necessary for such service.

 

Fr. Wesner and Dr. Crew shared with Dr. Lawrence a list of Gay Episcopalians in medicine, the priesthood, and other professions. They also stressed that they by no means want a stacked Commission, but one that, as did the former Com­mission on the Church and Human Affairs, represents the full spectrum of the membership of The Episcopal Church.

 

Dr. Lawrence took all of these views under thoughtful advisement. The appointments are expec­ted by the first of 1977.

 

VICE-PRESIDENT OF DEPUTIES AND INTEGRITY

 

Atlanta.  "I am not disturbed by the open agenda, namely that Gay people be welcomed as Child­ren of God an accorded the full love and pastoral concern of the Church.  What does trouble me is the hidden agenda.  I am not always sure just what kinds of changes Gays are working for, and there are many parts of our present order that I consider sacred."  Thus spoke The Very Rev. David Collins, new Vice ­President of the Episcopal House of Deputies, in a meeting with Louie Crew at The Cathedral of St. Philip here on 4th November.

 

Dean Collins concurred with his colleague Dr. Lawrence that it would not be sound in principle to have openly Gay Commissioners just to have openly Gay Commissioners, though he stated no opposition to having them when other important criteria could be met.

 

Dean Collins also concurred that wide representa­tion from the whole Church is a most important factor of successful commissions.  Otherwise, he noted, one too easily assembles those who already agree on the importance of the issue, and the real job of education and communication with the whole church is thereby minimized.

 

Dean Collins did not specify what "hidden agendas" most disturbed him, but did speak about the importance of the Christian family.

 

AN UNCOMFORTABLE PRESIDENT-ELECT

 

Plainfield, NJ.  According to the evangelical tabloid National Courier for October 29th, now President-Elect James Ray Carter had the following exchange with the publication's interviewer:

 

 

What is your view of homosexual relationships?

 

I am not comfortable with the issue of homosexuality;; I was raised in the belief that it is a sin.  But I do not believe that homosexuals should be singled out for special harassment, abuse or discrimination.

 

EPISCOPAL WOMEN'S CAUCUS SUPPORTS INTEGRITY

 

Rochester, NY.  According to a letter that reached Forum, in late October, after General Convention, last April the Episcopal Women's Caucus at its annual meeting in Detroit voted to send to INTEGRITY the following resolution:

 

"Whereas INTEGRITY is an organization expanding consciousness of the presence and ministry of Gay people within the Episcopal Church, and

 

"Whereas the Episcopal Women's Caucus is also concerned that patterns of ministry within the Episcopal Church contribute to the full development and use of each person's talents,

 

"Therefore be it resolved:  that we, the Epis­copal Women's Caucus at our Annual Meeting, April 1976, convey our greetings ln Christ to INTEGRITY, with our prayers of thanksgiving and continued support of their ministry,

 

"And be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be promptly forwarded to the editor of Integrity:  Gay Episcopal Forum."

 

In the letter reporting this resolution to former INTEGRITY president Jim Wickliff this October, The Rev. Helen M. Havens, President of ECW, added:  "The Episcopal Women's Caucus has an underlying belief that until all people are free, none are.  It is our prayer and our determination in the months and years ahead to educate in terms of freedom, in pastoral ways."

 

CANON CLINTON JONES HONORED

 

Hartford.  On 7th November The Rev. Canon Clinton R. Jones was honored here with a surprise celebration of his sixtieth birthday and of his long-term counseling ministry at Christ Church Cathedral.

 

Dr. George C. Higgins, Jr., Professor of Psycho­logy and College Counselor at Trinity College, Hartford, addressed the congregation.  The Rev. Edward B. Geyer, Jr., Rector of the parish, offici­ated at Evensong.  Afterwards there was a dinner in the parish hall for over 100 invited guests.

 

Canon Jones is the author of Homosexuality and Counseling and is convenor of INTEGRITY/Hartford.  He has long been active ln efforts to educate our Church to issues of sexuality.  He joined other INTEGRITY persons in meeting with the old Commission on the Church ln Human Affairs last January.

 

VISITORS IN CHICAGO

 

Chicago.  Ron Wesner, new national president of INTEGRITY, was the guest of the chapter here for several days in early November. Louie Crew, Forum editor, will visit with the chapter during the week of 20-28 November, while participating in the meeting of National Council of Teachers of English.

 

NEW CHAPTER IN DETROIT

 

Detroit.  According to The Record, a publication of the Diocese of Michigan, a new chapter of INTEGRITY is organizing here, with meetings scheduled at the Church of the Nativity in nearby Birmingham for 13th November and 4th December.  The group plans to meet for the Eucharist, followed by a covered dish supper and a discussion.

 

For more information, contact Convenor William B. Giles, 167 West Pike, Pontiac, MI 4815,

 

CHICAGO ELECTIONS

 

Chicago.  In recent elections here, INTEGRITY/Chicago reelected as convenor David Williams, who also serves as business manager of Forum.

 

Also elected to office in the chapter were Jim Fdminster, assistant convenor; Tom Peters, secretary; and Tom Walters, Treasurer.

 

Guests attending the Second Annual Chapter Meeting and Banquet were Ken Martin of Good Shepherd MCC and his lover Tom, and the Very Rev. James Carroll of the Cathedral Church of St. James.  Mr. Martin gave the blessing at the end of the meeting, and Dean Carroll gave a brief response for "the non-Gay Christian community."

 

Fr. Ron Wesner was the principle speaker for the occasion.

 

STUDY IN MILWAUKEE

 

Milwaukee.  A diocesan ad hoc committee here on The Study of Homosexuality has invited Forum editor Louie Crew to meet with them on the evening of 22 November.

 

"This committee is similar in purpose to that of the Diocese of Michigan in that it has as its purpose to study homosexuality and make recommendations to the diocese with regard to the status of homosexual persons in the Church, particularly as they may be pertinent to situations within our own diocese.  [The] Committee is interested in having the strongest case possible presented for changing the Church's traditional stance toward homosexuals" --thus wrote Fr. William Lawson, in extending the Committee's invitation.

 

GAY CLERGY IN ENGLAND

 

Minneapolis.  Many rumors have reached Forum that at General Convention here in September the visiting Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Frederick Donald Coggan, frequently stated informally when asked his views of the Gay issues:  "Why if the Gays left, I'd lose half my clergy."

 

INTEGRITY/NYC, INC.

 

NYC.  The INTEGRITY chapter here has recently been incorporated under the laws of New York State.

 

Other chapter news includes word of a visit from The Rev. Richard A. Norris, former Curate at St. Mary's Oxford and currently Professor of Historical Theology at The General Theological Seminary, on 17th November.

 

On 10th November two priest members of INTEGRITY who are also active in the RACA (Recovered Alcoholic Clergy Association) talked with the group.  Homilist for the evening eucharist was The Rev. Margie Dunlap.

 

The NYC chapter meets weekly on Wednesdays for eucharist, beginning with Organ Voluntary at 7:15 at Church of the Ascension on 5th Ave. at 10th St.

 

NORTH OF THE BORDER

 

Toronto.  The Canadian Churchman here devoted a size­able portion of its October issue to the homosexual community, both those within and outside the Church.  The material was edited by regular staffer Ann Benedek, who spent many months on the project, including a visit to the INTEGRITY second national convention in San Francisco last summer.

 

One of two editorials in the issue follows.  Many members will want to send for a copy of the entire October issue, at 600 Jarvis St., Toronto, ONT, Canada M4Y2J6:

 

A ROLE FOR THE CHURCH

 

Wherever there is a violation of human rights, there lies a clear role for the church to play.  Where those whose rights are being violated are without a voice the church can and should speak for them.

 

One or the last remaining areas in Canadian society where explicit discrimination is allowed is that of sexual preference.   An organization may fire (or refuse to hire) an individual simply because he or she is homosexual and it will suffer no legal consequences.

 

It has been argued that certain jobs, rated as security positions must be closed to homosexuals because of the ever-present likelihood of blackmail.  In this way discrimination becomes self-perpetuating.  Blackmail is possible only where there exists.  If the gay man or woman is freed from the fear of losing a job, of becoming a pariah in society, then the grounds for blackmail disappear.

 

Sexual preference has nothing to do with job performance; it has everything to do with the insecurities, the self-doubts, the ignorance of those who use this a grounds for discrimination.

 

The majority of Canadian homosexual men and women suffer from this type of prejudice yet, unlike women's black's or native people's groups who have protested legalized discrimination they cannot speak out against it.  Only a few of their number have the freedom to declare themselves and work actively toward revision of discriminatory provincial and federal laws.

 

One man, whose life could virtually be destroyed if his homosexuality were discovered, told CANADIAN CHURCHMAN that much as he would like to, he could not work in this area.  "These causes have to be carried by people who are on the other side of the fence ‑‑ heterosexuals who are beyond suspicion," he said.  In other words, by the heterosexual majority which has until now silently (or loudly) condoned the prejudice that exists.

 

There is a role for the church to play.

 

It could join ranks with those in the gay community working towards change in provincial and federal law.  It could work towards changing the public attitude that makes the gay man or woman an outcast in society.  It could remove the terror of those within its own ranks who live a double life in daily fear that their homosexuality will be discovered.

 

It could do all these things ‑‑and it should.

 

It's a simple case of human rights.

 

A CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

 

For Valley.  Forum very much needs your point of view if we are to remain true to our commitment to be a forum for the full spectrum of views in the Gay Chris­tian community.  Chapter convenors are especially urged to encourage speakers to send copies of their local presentations for consideration in the national news­letter.  Persons everywhere are urged to jot down their ideas, however short or seemingly inconsequential.  If you don't like something someone else has said, take that opportunity to articulate your objection.

 

Forum is delighted to report that Convenor David Allen White in San Antonio has kindly responded to an appeal in the October issue and will be indexing the first two volumes of the newsletter.

 

Another task very much in search of a doer, perhaps someone in seminary or graduate school who could make the project serve as a term project as well: viz., the preparation of a reader survey for use in Forum and possibly in several other Gay Christian publications to evoke a fuller response and record of our experiences of persecution and of fulfillment not only in our culture at large, but also within the Church.  Fr. John McNeill has noted the particular importance that our community document our experience.  The nonGay Christians right in our midst often do not have any idea of what we are actually experiencing, often at the hands of a small but powerful homophobic minority.  No one has passed among us yet to write Gay Like Me.  We need the facts.

 

FORUM

 

Thank you very much for your letter.  I deeply appreciate that evaluation of what we went through at the Convention.  I do think that, on the whole, the spirit was infinitely better than at any previous Convention.

 

We have, I think, only just begun to open the door to further significant explorations of the issues around human sexuality.  I am glad to be a part of that exploration.

 

              The Rt. Rev. John B. Coburn

              Bishop of Massachusetts

              (Former President of the

              House of Deputies)

 

Thank you for your very kind note of October 5th.  I am most pleased that the Church experienced the kind of Convention by God's grace it did in Minnea­polis.  I thought it was perfectly magnificent.

 

We have much work cut out for us in the next triennium and many things that need to be looked at as you say, from all points of view.  I think the Archbishop of Canterbury was most accurate when he said diverse opinions and ideas are important to the life of the Church in a kind of tension that is creative.  If that tension is to the glory of God rather than to ourselves as individuals, the music that that tension produces will indeed be a hallelujah.

 

God give you His grace and His strength.

 

              The Rev. James R. Gundrum

              Secretary and Treasurer

              The General Convention

 

In response to your letter concerning my reac­tion of the advertising submitted by the Presbyterian Gay Caucus, the following considerations are involved.

 

1.  The information that the advertisement offered our readers is considered not acceptable under the 13th provision in the policy statement of A.D. Publications Incorporated.  A copy of that policy statement was sent to the Rev. David B. Sindt [organizer of PGC].  The paragraph that applies reads:

 

Advertising that seeks to distribute propaganda, promotional materials, or solicit contributions, directly or indirectly, concerning controversial religious, political, moral, or intellectual subjects or viewpoints is not accepted.

 

2.  The name Presbyterian Gay Caucus is misleading in that the inference can be drawn that this organi­zation is an official agency of the Presbyterian Church.

 

3.  Most publications, including A.D., include the following statement on advertising acceptance:

 

The publisher reserves the right to reject any advertisements for any reason at any time even though previously acknowledged.

 

This statement rests on the judgment of the publisher as to the acceptability of advertising.  You may call it censorship, but the publisher must decide what type advertising is not acceptable in relationship to the audience of the magazine.

 

As you must recognize, homosexuality is a complex and highly controversial matter.  I am not going to argue the theology of the homosexual problem within the church.  I do, however, feel that a lot of ques­tions need to be answered before I can be convinced that we should carry the advertising of organizations or groups identified with homosexuality.

 

              Roy A. Lord, Publisher

              A.D.

              1840 Interchurch Center

              475 Riverside Drive

              NYC 10027

 

(See last month's Forum for more background. --Editor)

 

If your November issue isn't out, you might add a "z" to Carpzovius, who I now find was credited with sign­ing 20,000 death warrants ln witchcraft cases.

 

I am now trying to track down a bizarre legend you may have heard of.  According to an unamiable tradi­tion, going back to St. Jerome, all homosexuals were supposed to have died at the moment of Christ's birth.  This legend seems to have been most popular with Spanish canonists.  At any rate, the first Archbishop of Havana declared that Christ, at the moment of his birth, had killed all sodomites, thus replacing a presumably homophobic Christ with a genocidal one.  Among those who were thought to have perished was the poet Virgil.  Then about 1600 a canonist came up with the theory that Virgil had lived longer, which was enough to cause him to be reclassified as "straight."  (We now date Virgil's death about 19 B.C.)

 

              Louis Crompton

              University of Nebraska

 

One of the problems may have been [in INTEGRITY's never being answered with queries about COSMEP/South --see Forum for November 1976] that Mr. Oliveros' address was printed wrong by mistake twice in the national COSMEP newsletter....

 

I'm sorry you did not make it to the conference.  Mr. Oliveros says that he did sent you the flyer with the relevant information, and since openness is the assumption in COSMEP, both on a national and regional basis, I suggest you bear with any errors and misunderstandings which may have occurred to date and test the organization....

 

I'm sorry for your unpleasant experience, and if I can be of further help to you, let me know.

 

              Judy Hogan, Organizer

              COSMEP/South

 

As chairman of the National Gay Prisoners Coalition, I would like to say thanks to all the Brothers/Sisters who supported me in my recent court case against the U.S. Bureau of Prisons at Marion, Illinois.  Having been victorious in a Gay rights case, I can state that your letters of support and funds had a real effect on the outcome of the trial.  However, several other gay Brothers/Sisters are still in need of legal help, funds for appeals, etc.; to overcome the oppression placed on us by both state and federal officials, we must continue to support the needs of Gay prisoners.

 

Send any funds to Sister Evelyn Ancilla, Convent of Transfiguration, 495 Albion Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45246.

 

              John Gibbs, 86876-132

              Box 1000

              McNeal Island, WA 98388

 

Someday I will see someone say, for instance, that there is not a need to explain away damaging quotes of the Bible, since we don't care, since the same churches at one time approved of slavery from the same Bible.  I am a United Methodist who does not support the church, have never sought its approval, but have sought an honest view of homosexuality from it, and have not gotten it.  I would assume that any­one seriously interested in knowing about homosexuality ­would contact us, since we are the obvious first place to look.  When the church gets serious, it will contact such reliable people.  Where were all these religious people when Dr. Clarence Colwell (of the first Council on Religion and Homosexual) was trying to help them?  What works in the field even mention him today?

 

              William Edward Glover for the

              Homosexual Information Center, Inc.

              6715 Hollywood Blvd., 1210

              Los Angeles, CA 90028

 

LET THERE BE NO HIDDEN AGENDA

 

Dean Collin's candid concern about possible hidden Gay agenda in the Church [see page 1] is very helpfully provocative.  I suspect that he has been kind enough to say what many more are whispering in the back rooms.  I would like to see all of us in the Gay community strive even harder to say as precisely as we can just what we want.

 

Forum exists qua focum precisely to facilitate the articulation of all of our agenda.  Our motto might well be:  "For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad" (Mark 4:2).

 

Precisely because we are a forum have we refused to wait until a consensus approves of any views we air.  The more views we reveal, the more it seems that there are few consensuses, that most items on agenda are still personal and negotiable.  The danger of the notion of "hidden agenda" is that it might inflame persons to suspect uniformity where it does not exist, even to suspect a conspiracy.  No real understanding of the hateful isolation of the majority of most Gay persons could ever long sustain the illusions of a vast underground network for the overthrow of the heteroworld.  It may well turn out that the nuclear family is indeed fission­able for Gay energy, but I do not know of any Sexual Energy Commission plotting that kind of Hiroshima.

 

The kinds of hidden agenda that continue to dominate in disturbing me are the hidden agenda of the heterosexual majority, as in their spiraling rates of adultery not promised in the marriage con­tracts, in their often loveless homes not vouchsafed at conception, etc.  As we urge full and open dialogue from ourselves, we must demand similar candor from our nonGay sister and brother Christians.

 

As a case in point: recently a nonGay priest in our Church told me that he went to his bishop with three requests on the same day:  "I want to be confirmed; I want to remarry, though divorced; and I want to enter the priesthood."  The bishop, who knew him well, asked, "Are you now having sex with your new bride-to-be?"  "Yes," was his reply." Oh I'm so glad," the Bishop responded:  "I feel much better about a relationship when I know some of those problems have been worked through."

 

All three requests were granted, and this man is now a very good priest, now remarried.  Interestingly, his bishop voted against both the Gay resolutions and women's ordination, "because they are too radical a departure from our historic Christian faith and understanding of human sexuality and holy orders"!

 

Hidden agenda indeed.  There are hundreds of other hetero examples.  I believe that it is time we all were open, that our Church does not need to preserve God Almighty's reputation, that God said all God needs to say about Her/His reputation by allowing it to be besmudged for all times at Calvary for the sins of all of us.

 

THE PROBLEM OF GAY CRIME

 

The case of Fr. Vermilye [see next page] presents another real specter of hidden agenda to most nonGays and to some Gays as well.  It would be terribly unfair for any of us to sit in judgment on this poor soul merely on the basis of a newspaper report and some statistics in Episcopal Clerical Directory.  Nevertheless, some general observations are very much in order.

 

First, there really is no such thing as "Gay Crime" or "Black Crime" or "Women Crime":  there is only human crime which happens to be committed by persons who are Gay, Black, Women ....  Sometimes particular factors of the quality of life provided those subgroups in any one culture can set patterns of criminal behavior that statistically seem to have a racial or sexual origin.  But put enough Blacks ln ghettos while providing better environments for whites and you will create this bizarre and unnatural entity called "Black Crime."  Put enough Gays in a cruel isolation where even to make a hint of affection towards someone one takes also to be Gay can run the risk of the penalty of "solicitation to commit an immoral act," punishable as a felony in over half of the United States!

 

The hetero majority is a persistent manufacturer of Gay Crime.  Every time my lover and I reconsummate our Christian concern for each other, we are committing a felony in Georgia; and my dreams of police coming and my nightmares about surveillance belie my waking sense that there really is not much likelihood that these laws will be reinforced.  Millions of Gays live in terror because of our criminal status.

 

Such legislated "crime" is quite different from the charges made against Fr. Vermilye, though.  He is charged with having set up a commercial operation for sexual exploitation of wayward youths whom he allegedly was befriending.

 

Interestingly, Fr. Vermilye has more obvious hetero than homosexual credentials.  In the Episcopal Clerical Directory he is listed as the father of four children.  He was ordained priest in 1959 and has served the Church in a variety of capacities since then.  Our files show no record of his having ever made any effort to get in touch with us, and I would imagine that our kind of openness would have been anathema to one interested in clandestine activity such as that for which he is charged.

 

John Ciardi wrote in the Saturday Review several years ago, just after the Jewish death sentence for Nazi organizer Eichmann, that a far more rewarding sentence might have been to keep Eichmann around for study, so that we might find out from him the qualities that he had in common with us.

 

I recommend the same response to the hetero majority of the Episcopal Church as they review the case of Bud Vermilye.  The record seems to suggest that he is not really a Gay outsider, but a heterosexual insider morbidly fascinated with the mechanics of an alien sexuality.  Almost any Gay person I know could suggest forty or fifty better Gay ways to relate to those young boys than the exploitation of them by drink and film -- and those Gay ways need not be genital.

 

Or perhaps we will discover that Fr. Vermilye really did harbor deep-seated Gay lasciviousness.  With 20 million Gay Americans, such a rare incidence would not be surprising.  Still the tragedy is not the orientation, but the lack of maturity to which the orientation was put.  Of course, the Episcopal Church has never given a closet Gay priest many models of mature ways to express one's Gay sexuality.

 

Richard Wright in Native Son develops an analogue in the criminal Bigger Thomas, a rude Black of simple and disadvantaged origins who, when he finally does get in a potentially erotic situation with an attractive white woman, ironically does not know any other way to behave than to rape and kill her, as the white stereotypes have taught him to do!  I can remember in my own adolescence as I began to cope with Gay arousal, worrying that in the end I might be the seducer of youths!  That stereotype was the only evidence­ of Gay affection allowed to be visible in my world then, as it was in Fr. Vermilye's world only eight years older, and as it is for most youngsters protected in "good" Episcopal homes today.  The only other way out then that had any kind of imprimatur from the Church and from the literature, was suicide; and Gays undoubtedly still have one of the highest suicide rates of any minority group.

 

In my personal view, the pederastic overtones are only inflammatory in the Vermilye story.  Too much sentimentality often obscures genuine sexual maturity on the part of adolescents.  Many whom we now call children in most of the world's history would have been viewed as adults.  At Boys Farm, Inc., it is the exploitation for money and the apparent lack of Christian affection that most disturb me with the scene.  Viewed cynically, Fr. Vermilye in making money out of sex was pursuing the course that religion has always followed with sexuality.  Pagan religions turned their temples over to the prostitute and collected the fees.  Judaism and Christianity threw the prostitutes out and collected guilt fee from their patrons.

 

I suspect that the whole issue of adolescent sexuality is one that the Church really wants to avoid at all costs, particularly when adults are in­volved.  Yet, the hottest issue I hear discussed on campus after campus is heterosexual liaisons between staff and students.  Our commercial culture has certainly made capital out of exploiting the notion of youths principally as sexual objects.  Fr. Vermilye is a product of our culture's ageism.

 

ONE OF US

 

Certainly there should be rage at what occurred at Boys Farm, Inc., but let that rage be focussed on the way that scene reflects much that is operat­ing in our Church at large.  It is often too easy, particularly with minority sexual orientation, for the majority to explain away everything simply on the basis of minority orientation.  I suspect that the millions of Gays are the ones most embarrassed and tempted to say, "Oh, he's not like me."  Yet Fr. Vermilye is indeed the Christian brother of us all, nonGay and Gay alike.  Our Church ought to be there right now owning him and trying to touch him in whatever spiritual space or spacelessness he now finds himself.  Surely any abandonment of him in the hour of greatest need is hidden agenda that must go.  We are all to be judged by how we treat "the least of these."

 

PRIVACY AND SECRECY

 

In calling for candor and openness with agenda, I am not asking that no privacy remain.  Probably what most people do privately in bed would properly be boring to most nonparticipants anyway.  Too many persons confuse the words private and secret, particu­larly when dealing with minority sexuality.

 

When I read Howard Brown's Familiar Faces:  Hidden Lives I was deeply touched by his gratuitous confes­sional about the times he had perjured himself rather than allow a Gay brother to be convicted under sodomy laws that he felt were themselves a violation.  In our bid for Gay openness, I feel that we should not require such revelations that jeopardize one's career and psychic wholeness.  Gay people deserve the secret places of the heart too, and one of the cruelest parts of our oppression is that to let others know how bad it is many of us are compelled into violating our own privacy.  I feel this particularly in everything that I write about my own personal relationship, and I pray that a day will hasten when we will not have to risk the crude fantasies of the prurient.

 

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid' Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

 

                   Louie Crew

 

WAYWARD BOYS HOME

Indictment Says Orgies Used for Raising Funds

 

WINCHESTER Tenn (UPI) - A county grand jury Thursday returned a 16-count indictment against an Episcopal priest accused of establishing a home for wayward boys and using it for homosexual orgies.

 

Authorities said the Rev. Claudius I "Bud" Vermilye was indicted on 11 felony and five misdemeanor counts.

 

He was freed on a $10,000 bond following his arrest but was ordered returned to jail following the indictments.

 

The priest is accused of engaging in homosexual activities with the children and selling pornographic pictures of them to raise money for his "Boys Farm Inc."

 

District Attorney General J. William Pope ordered Ver­milye's arrest Wednesday.

 

Pete Bouldin, one of Pope's investigators, and young men present when authorities raided the farm a week ago, were among eight witnesses called to testify before the Franklin County grand jury.

 

Vermilye, 47, featured in the current issue of the na­tional church magazine The Living Church has operated the farm for wayward young­sters near the Alto com­munity for the past five- years.

 

Pope claims Vermilye showed the boys adult movies to get them sexually aroused, gave them liquor to make them less inhibited, photographed them engaging in homosexual acts and sold the pictures to raise money for the farm.

 

Pope displayed for reporters Wednesday scores of pornographic pictures he said were seized by agents in the raid on the farm last Thurs­day.  Also seized, he said, were mailing lists of "sponsors" of the farm and correspondence between Vermilye and the sponsors.

 

"He had sponsors from Aus­tralia and Canada and virtua­lly every state in the union," Pope said.

 

Vermilye founded the farm in 1971 as a rehabilitation center for juvenile offenders and juveniles from broken homes.

 

              --From The Atlanta Constitution

 

NOTICES

 

"Common Sense Approach to Working with Gay Alcoholics," an unpublished paper by Dr. Carol A. Polo, presented at the 1976 ADPA Annual Meeting in New Orleans.  Dr. Polo is an Episcopalian and very supportive of us.  Many of us know people who need the kind of care documented here.  As long as copies last, Dr. Polo can send them to interested persons who send a manila self-addressed envelope with 46¢ postage, to Tower State Bank, Suite 105, 1314 North 38th, Kansas City, KS 66102.

 

The Gay Alterative, a Gay liberation journal pub­lished quarterly out of Philadelphia since 1972, announces that it is ceasing publication.  The magazine's files and assets are being turned over to Mouth of the Dragon, which will offer subscribers the option of thereby completing their subscriptions.  The Gay Alternative has been one of the better Gay publications and will be sorely missed.

 

The Gay Blade (P.O. Box 1583, Alexandria, LA 71301; $5 for 12 issues) is becoming one of the more articu­late and informative small regional newsletters, in just six months of publication.  It is the newsletter of the Gay community in Louisiana, but also has lucid commentary about affairs in a wider geographical area. Most issues run 12 page, 7 X 8, mimeograph.

 

Gay Greeting Cards.  These cards depict same-sex affection, but are taken from 19th-century children's books.  For pictorial brochure, write J.R.M. Cooper, 3002 Marietta Avenue, Lancaster, PA 17601.  The sampling includes Lesbian and Gay male cards in rich supply.

 

The Gay Question by Bob McCubbin, available for $1 from World View Publishers, 46 West 21st St., NYC.  Part of the purpose of this book, according to a publisher's blurb, is to discuss "the special role played by religion as a major force of repression  of not only homosexuality but of all free expression of sexuality."  The book also treats Gay history and "points to socialist revolution as the only viable means of ending centuries of gay oppression."

 

Insight:  A Quarterly of Gay Catholic Opinion (P.0. Box 1554, FDR Sta., NYC 10022; $4 per year).  The first issue is scheduled for October, 1976, and promises "to be as lively and unorthodox as it is possible to be on the printed page....  Perhaps you won't agree with some of these, and we might not like others ourselves, but they will all be from the gut source of the Catholic experience of being gay, within the body of an unsympathetic Church."  The publication is sponsored by DIGNITY/New York.

 

Journal of Divorce.  This new journal will be pub­lished by The Haworth Press, 174 Fifth Avenue, NYC 10010.  The charter issue is scheduled for Sep­tember 1977.  Editor Esther O. Fisher, 1050 Park Avenue, NYC 10028, now solicits manuscripts.  The perspective will be broad and interdisciplinary, directed to a wide variety of helping professionals involved with divorce.

 

The Lambda Book Club, P.0. Box 248, Belvidere, NJ 07823.  This new venture attempts to assemble a wide selection of good Lesbian and Gay male books and typically provides members discounts on each.  A single, one-time membership fee of $10 entitles members to receive the bimonthly Lambda Bookletter in addition to discounts on any books purchased.  There are no requirements as to purchases.  There are no time limits.  Books are shipped only when ordered, never automatically.  The current short listing is very impressive.  This is a good service for us all and highly recommended.

 

Man's Body: An Owner's Manual (The Two Continents Publishing Group, 30 East 42nd St., NYC 10017; $6.95 in paper, 256 pp. with illustrations, ISBN 0-8467­-0107-3).  This work explains in graphic form and in lay terms virtually everything that is known about the male body, from the physiology of reproduction and inheritance to the physical concomitants of aging, including sex. According to the publisher, the book "has no political ax to grind, nor is it intended to be a medical text."

 

Familiar Faces, Hidden Lives by Dr. Howard Brown, M.D. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 757 Third Ave., NY).  Dr. Brown was health administrator in NYC during the Lindsay administration, made an his­toric coming out in the N.Y. Times in 1973, and was active in forming the National Gay Task Force and other service organizations to Gay people before his untimely death of a heart attack in 1975.  This book is Dr. Brown's account, written from the heart, of his own first-person narrative.  246 pp.  $8.95 cloth.

 

Prisoners Yellow Pages.  Available free to prisoners and for $2 to non-prisoners, this edition contains 751 listings of prisoner support groups, including law libraries which offer service to prisoners.  It is available through the Board of Institutional Ministry of MCC, Box 5570, LA, CA 90055.

 

Roles & Relationships by Barbara Stanford and Gene Stanford (Bantam Books, X2601, $1.75 paper).  This is "a practical guide to teaching about masculinity and femininity" and the material on "Topic III: Homosexuality" (pp. 43-50) is well worth the cost of the book.  There are guides to audio-visual materials and to book lists; and there are other very helpful and specific teaching suggestions.  The book is a forceful and informed attack on ignorance.  It would be most helpful in planning visitations with diocesan study groups and in developing chapter education programs.

 

Sexual Variance in Society and History by Vern L. Bullough (Wiley-Interscience, 605 Third Avenue, NYC 10016, ISBN 0-471-12080-4; $25 hardbound; 715 pp.  This is surely a landmark publication, a must for any scholar's library.  Consider the range indicated by the chapter topics:  The Background; Culture and Sexuality; Sources of Western Attitudes; The Jewish Contribution; The Contradictory Contributions of the Greeks; Roman Mythology and Reality; Classical Sources of Christian Hostility to Sex; Early Christianity: A Sex-Negative Religion; Islam:  A Sex-Positive Religion; Sex in the Indian Subcontinent; Sexual Theory and Attitudes in Ancient China; Byzantium and Eastern Orthodox Christianity; The Early Middle Ages in the West; The Later Middle Ages; A Reevaluation and Reaffirmation; from Religion to Science; Europeans in a New Setting:  Colonial America; Nineteenth ­Century Attitudes Toward Sex; The Law and Its Enforce­ment; Stigmatized Sexual Behavior in Nineteenth-Century America; Problems and Prospects [in the 20th Century]; Where We Are Going and How We Get There; Suggestions for Further Reading; Index.

 

Quite a fare, and all most lucidly written with thorough and helpful documentation for followup study.  The book is genuinely worth the high cost.  Be sure to require all diocesan study commissions to buy and to read the material.  Dr. Bullough is a respected his­torian and a professor at California State University in Northridge.

 

In the Preface Dr. Bullough explains:  "Occasionally my bias must appear evident, namely that sex is person­al, something to be enjoyed as long as those involved engage in it of their own free will.  It is my hope that readers will come away from this book with a better understanding of what human sexuality is as well as a realization of the wealth of material history offers on the subject.  A major obstacle to under­standing our own sexuality is realizing we are prison­ers of past attitudes toward sex."

 

Susan Saxe Defense Committee Newsletter, available from The Women's Center, 46 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139.  This is the best single source for keeping up with the inside information regarding the trials of this very important sister.

 

 

Us... is a new quarterly magazine by, for and about those who are victims of exploitation and discrimina­tion in society.  The magazine is a vehicle or forum for people to speak to those issues that directly affect their lives, and it prints suggestions as to what action can be taken that will help to alleviate oppressive conditions and lead to social change. Subscriptions are $2.50 per issue; $9 for four issues.  If you cannot afford the full price, send what you can.  Contributions are welcome.  Make payable to Us..., P.0. Box 3816, Loring Station, Minneapolis, MN 55403

 

JOIN THE PEOPLE OF NGTF

 

Barbara Gittings

HOME:  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

PROFESSION;  Gay speaker, Bibliographer, Editor

OTHER INTERESTS:  Singing, Hiking, Canoeing, Mystery and Detective Stories, Old Movies.

PROFILE:  Still smiling after 17 years of battle for the cause, this dynamic and versatile woman rejoices especially in having sparked gay groups in the professions, and in reaching out to isolated gay people.

QUOTE:  "Those of us who can afford to be visible have a special message for the millions who can't be.  Courage folks, because those of us who are out are oiling the closet door hinges as fast as we can!"

MEMBER:  The National Gay Task Force

REASON:  "If we gay people don't work together to end prejudice and discrimination directed against us, no one else is going to do it for us."

 

NGTF  National Gay Task Force, Rm. 506, 80 Fifth Ave.

New York, N.Y. 10011, Tel.: (212) 741-1010

 

Yes, I would like to join NGTF.  Enclosed is my contribution for:

 

$15 Basic Member   $100 Supporting Member $25 Household Member

$25 Contributing   $500 Lifetime Member           (for two)

  Member           $1,000 Sponsor             $5 Limited Income

$50 Sustaining                                   Member

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I understand that I will receive the NGTF newsletter, IT'S TIME, with my membership.

[ ] Please keep my name and mailing confidential.

 

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THE VISION OF VICTORY

 

Fr. Malcolm Boyd kindly shared with us the letter below which he received from Deacon Bill Landram.  BiIl has kindly given us permission to share in this Forum.

 

Dear Malcolm,

 

Since I returned from the INTEGRITY Convention in San Francisco I have been mulling over the many provo­cative things you said.  Among those which particularly struck me was your vision of victory as a mangled body on a cross covered with flies.

 

Early this year a young man I knew died from leukemia.  He was from a small town in Illinois but he had come up to the medical facilities at Madison three years ago at the outset of the disease.  I had met him then and had kept seeing him at each hospital visit.

 

A few days before he died -- he had been delirious for days -- I was visiting him and his parents.  He had just been given some medication which affected him by making him very excitable.  His parents were restraining him and his nose started bleeding.  I had he job of wiping his face since they had to hold him in bed.

 

About two months later I went on a retreat to the Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Nativity ln Fond Du Lac.  While there I meditated upon his death and that of another young man and former student who had drowned that fall.  My meditations on C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed and Job 10:15 and II Corinthians 1:5 produced the following poem.  While I am under no illu­sion that it is great poetry, I hope you'll forgive my presumption in sending it to you, but I simply wanted to share it with you in light of what you had said.

 

You jump with anxiety.  Don't you know you must

          sit still for death?

One mourner control's your right hand--"Behold

          your mother."

     But can you even see her?

One steadies your left--"Your father has not

          forsaken you."

     But has he?

I mop the blood trickling down your lip; I sweep away

          its real presence.

     But can I?

We have not deserted you,

     but we will.

How selfish you are!  The cup stay with you;

          you will not pass it.  We

          thirst also.

 

You are my rock.  On you I build my Church.

 

You are Christus Victorious.

Your misshapen death is Easter morning.

Your ugliness is beauty's ideal.

Your struggling breaths are peace's form.

 

I don't know; I feel

 

Your spirit is commended.

 

---------------------------

 

God bless you for your courage, Malcolm, and for shar­ing your gifts.  I wish we could have talked longer.  I was in a light denim suit and we bantered about the diaconate at the end of the convention.

 

              Sincerely

              (Bill Landram)

 

Murderers of homosexuals studied

 

A sociology professor has concluded that gay men are far more likely to be murdered by heterosexuals than by fellow homosexuals.  Dr. Laud Humph­reys, professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, studied one hundred and eleven murders of male homosexuals and found that the murderers were often people with a strong fear or hatred of homosexuality.

 

Humphreys further believes that most murders of homosexuals are an indirect result of society's attitudes toward homosexuality.   These attitudes cause some people to feel that they have the right to beat up gay people while others are "sometimes so filled with self-hatred that they develop psychotic patterns that can lead them to murder."

 

In his study, Humphreys found no evidence that homosexuals are more likely to be murdered than heterosexuals, but he did find that many murders of gays are extremely brutal, leading the media to sensationalize them.  He feels that this excessive brutality is a further indication of the depth of the hatred and fear on the part of the murderer.

 

              --From Chicago Gay Life

 

BLUE AND GREEN

By The Rev. Ron Wesner

 

In the first grade ln New London School, on the north side of the building, in 1944, I learned, while making place mats for our mothers, that blue and green did not go together.  I thought I liked blue and green together but I was wrong, and so I learned.

 

In the sixth grade, at Quaker Haven Friends Camp, in one of the white artificial log cabins, I learned, while engaged in a physical conversation with a friend, also sixth grade, that a penis was not attractive to other boys.  I thought I liked my penis and his, but I was wrong, and so I learned.

 

In my junior year in high school, in Southern Cali­fornia, I learned, while on a double-date, that my place was in the back seat with her, rather than in the front seat with him.  I thought I wanted to be in the front seat with him, but I was wrong, and so I learned.

 

In my sophomore year in college, in Carpenter Hall, in a class on Marriage and the Family, I learned that the highest way a man is fulfilled is in a loving and creative marriage with a woman.  I was in love with my roommate, who was not a woman, and I wanted to tell him I loved him, not in a good-friend sense, but in an erotic/arousal/masturbation fantasy sense, but I was wrong, and so I learned.

 

In my senior year at Yale Divinity School I learned that heterosexuality was a part of God's natural order and that homosexuality was a turning away from God's natural order.  I thought I liked to stare at the male students' bodies ln their tan corduroys and sockless loafers, but I was wrong, and so I prayed all night long for God to set me right, and so I learned.

 

In the eighth year of my fourth parish in Portland, Or­egon I was told that it was okay for me to be gay.  I thought I had learned that gayness was sick, that men don't really fall in love with other men, that boys belong with girls, that the penis is not attractive to a man, that blue and green don't really go together, but I was wrong,

and thus I was set free.

 

INFO

 

International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses

12th Annual Edition--1966-67

 

For a dozen years now this Directory has been used the world over by poets, writers, librarians, students of contemporary literature, creative writing classes and others as a guide to the ever-increasing community of small and independent magazines and presses.  It contains such important data as name, address, editor(s), price, circulation, frequency, type of material used, payment rates, rights purchased, discount schedules, size, personal statements by editors, number of issues/titles published in the previous year and projected in the coming year, etc.  The Directory has been called "the first and by far the best..." by Bill Katz in Magazine Selection (R.R. Bowker).  ALA's Choice says it's "the most comprehensive and detailed listing of non-establishment periodicals ... that rarity among reference books, a directory that is a delight to read."  Bob Miles (Small Press Book Club) calls it "the one indispensable book" and the Wall Street Journal claims it's "the Bible of the business."

 

Complete with Subject and Regional Indexing

$6.95/copy-add 65¢ postage/handling

(Also add State sales tax, if any)

 

Send all orders to:

Dept. INTEGRITY

DUSTBOOKS

P.0. Box 1056

Paradise, CA 95969

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

 

"JUST MARRED" [sign on back of car in sketch]

 

WELL, MAYBE SO.  TOO OFTEN THIS SPELLING IS CORRECT.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

 

TWO SPECIAL ITEMS FOR SALE FROM INTEGRITY/SAN FRANCISCO

 

INTEGRITY T-SHIRTS

$5 each, incl. postage

 

White BVD Shirts

Piped with Red at Collar and Sleeve

INTEGRITY Cross on the Front

 

S, M, L, and XL

---------------

CONVENTION SERVICE BOOKLET

A Eucharist for the Second Annual

National Convention of INTEGRITY, Inc.

Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, 1976

 

75¢, incl. postage

 

Both of the items above are available from:

 

INTEGRITY/San Francisco

P.0. Box 6444

San Jose, CA 95150

 

TWO SPECIAL ITEMS FOR SALE FROM INTEGRITY/CHICAGO

 

THE INTEGRITY MEDAL

 

Nickel-Silver Plate Over Bronze

Outlined in Blue Enamel

 

$10 postpaid

-------------------------

IN CELEBRATION

 

Edited by Jim Wickliff, the 92-page paperback record of INTEGRITY's First National Convention including the keynote address by The Rev. Dr. Norman Pittenger.

 

$3.10 postpaid

 

Order from:

 

INTEGRITY

P.0. BOX 891

Oak Park, IL 60303

 

GAIETY

reflecting gay life in the South

 

GAIETY                  12 issues

P.O. Box 3620           First Class $9.00

Memphis, TN             Third Class $6.00

38103                     (in USA)

 

All subscriptions mailed in heavy brown envelopes.  First Class is sealed.  Make check or money order payable to GAIETY...

 

A SONG FOR GAY CHRISTIANS   

Text and tune by Larry Wheelock (1976)

[N.B. Music for melody line handwritten in text -- cannot reproduce on computer]

 

1.   We've heard it said so many times, the Devil's pow'r

          is strong

I know it's true and so do you - we've suffered for it long.

     But we have heard the Gospel preached and know that is it          true

     That Jesus set us free from sin and made us each anew.

 

(Refrain - after every verse)

 

Smile, my child.  Our God had made us gay. 

Laugh my friend.  God loves us each this way.

We're given, each, a special gift not all can understand,

And then set forth to share the love God gives across the land.

 

2.We've seen a brother, sister stand; afraid and all alone,

     Whose courage has been turned to fear, whose heart has        turned to stone.

     We've felt a brother's, sister's touch, as warm as it could        be.

     We've come together now to share that Love that sets us       free.

 

3.   It's said that you shall know the truth and that shall make        you free;

     But as I look around the world I ask, how can this be?

     And yet, the truth that's known to us is love from God on          high,

     It's love so great it sent the Son to suffer and to die.

 

4.   It's said it's Holy Mystery for which the people yearn.

     That Christ has died, and Christ arose, and that he will      return;

     But now until we reach that time he's given this command;

     To love each other as ourselves and take each other's hand.

________________________________________________

This song may be freely reproduced in any form so long as the copy carries the credit line:  "Text and tune by Larry Wheelock (1976).  All rights reserved in the case of public performance for profit."  Copyright L. Wheelock, 1516 Lombard Street, Philadelphia, PA.

 

INTEGRITY:  GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM SUBSCRIPTION FORM

 

Enclosed is my check or money order for $_______.  Please [check one] ___ enter or___ renew my subscription as indicated below.

 

Name______________________________________________

Address___________________________________________

City______________________________________________

State and Zip_____________________________________

 

___ $50 Sustaining Membership

___ $25 Supporting Membership

___ $10 Regular Membership

___ $13 Couple Membership

ALL OF THE ABOVE INCLUDE ONE YEAR OF Forum.

___ $12 One year Forum, non-member

    $ 3 Plain Envelope

 

IF YOU WANT FORUM MAILED IN A PLAIN ENVELOPE, YOU MUST    ENCLOSE THE $3 ADDITIONAL.

 

Enclosed as my contribution for the general purposes of the national office.

 

Canadian and Foreign subscription remit in U.S. funds.  Air Mail extra.  Return to: INTEGRITY, P.0. Box 891, Oak Park IL 60303.

 

[Last page blank on hard copy.]