Gay Today: World

Right Wing Pundits Link Gay S&M
—SF Activist Acts!

By Jack Nichols

New York, New York—A "Page Six" column by Richard Johnson and Paula Froelich and titled "Times link to Nazi fetish Web site" appeared in Monday's New York Post, a newspaper owned by right-wing mogul, Rupert Murdoch. The columnists suggest that swastika-dominated S&M scenes hosted on a gay web site that has "liberal" Times connections are anti-Semetic.

Some gay activists believe that the religious right's next step toward defaming gays will escalate with examinations of "kink"--including S&M and bestiality. Robin Tyler, representing StopDrLaura.Com on Tuesday evening's Murdoch-owned Fox News channel was confronted by Robert Knight of The Family Research Council speaking challengingly of given sex acts deemed improperly deviant by ordinary citizens.

Ms. Tyler admonished Knight: "Get your mind out of the gutter," and she declined to dignify his lewd references as having any application to the major civil rights movement she represented. Knight, however , was persistent.

The "Nazi fetish web site" referred to in the New York Post, was described as being for "bi and gay adult males only." Images the article describes were "frontally nude, bondage-attired men wearing SS-like leathercaps and boots, abusing chained, naked 'prisoners'. Giant swastikas, some dripping blood, glow in the background. Other areas feature hardcore gay porn pix."

Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
S&M: Private Fantasy & Public Politics

The S&M Debates—Part II

Giving a Spanking to S&M

Related Sites:
New York Post

New York Times

Stop Dr. Laura.com

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The Brotherhood, the name by which the web site refers to its members, includes people it calls "masters, slaves, skinheads, Nazis, Aryans," and "rapists." Even so, claims the site, "this is not a hate group."

Author William Schmaltz, who covered the rise of the American Nazi Party in the 1960s, told the "Page Six" columnists that he felt that dressing up like Nazi storm troopers is "the logical progression to that kind of (sexual) extremism." A representative of B'Nai Brith has promised to look into the site, with the pundits hoping that a connection between the Times and gay Nazi fantasies can be demonstrated.

In a letter to GayToday published in last week's Pen Points, philosopher and pioneering gay activist Arthur Evans, suggested that it was not unrealistic to assume connections between private fantasy and public politics. As examples he used the rise and fall of hyper-macho homosexual Nazis who thrived as such in the Third Reich but were then murdered in the early 1930s by Hitler.

Arthur Evans

Now, it appears, Rupert Murdoch's right-wing zealots are attempting to cause bad blood between Jews, the Times and gay males by propagandizing such Nazi images as they have found on the gay S&M site. The proliferation on the web of heterosexual S&M and bondage sites is ignored.

Evans, a critic of S&M fantasies who, in 1970, distinguished himself as a co-originator and a foremost practitioner of "zap" tactics (direct action) in New York's Gay Activists Alliance, moved to San Francisco in 1975.

Yesterday, Arthur Evans presented Tom Ammiano, the openly gay president of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, with a controversial and provocative suggestion for dealing with serious injuries that might be sustained by consenting partners in any given S&M tryst.

"I've come to the conclusion that some law is necessary to protect people who are abused in such scenes," says Evans. " I don't envision this law as creating a criminal offense, but rather as one that would allow victims to sue for damages in civil court."

Pat Califia

Informally, Evans joked, he's planning to call his proposed law "The Pat Califia Act", named after the outspoken advocate of lesbian sadism who, several years ago was publicly accused by another woman of having carved a swastika on her skin. Ms. Califia, reportedly, heatedly denied "carving" the swastika, saying instead that she'd simply "scratched" it onto her partner.

Text of the Pat Califia Act

Section 1. The right to sue in civil court for damages resulting from personal injury shall extend to significant injuries deliberately inflicted on a party in a consensual sado-masochistic sex act.

Section 2. For the purposes of this act, the following definitions shall apply: "Sado-masochistic sex act" means any sex act where one or more parties is preoccupied with deriving pleasure by inflicting pain on another party or parties. "Significant injuries" means scratches or cuts to the skin inflicted by means of an implement or tool; extensive bruising; damage to internal organs that requires surgery to repair; broken bones; amputations; or death.