Subtotal:
$1.95
HIS69-080 Shoot it Out!
HIS69-080 Shoot it Out!
HIS69
HIS69-080
Rich Cummings
(HIS6980)
$1.95
Introduction
A homosexual scandal tore apart Boise, Idaho, in 1955. A decade later journalist John Gerassi went there to study the affair from its origins to its aftermath. As a result, he wrote a book called The Boys of Boise, anatomy of a homosexual-hunting crusade and a demonstration of the apparent cruelty, pointlessness and destructive illogic of our formal sanctions against sexual deviance.
W. W. Norton and Company recently published a monumental work, Arno Karlen’s Sexuality and Homosexuality—A New View. In it, Dr. Karlen traces homosexuality from its roots in the writings of Ancient Greece, to the present time. He interviews homosexuals and bisexuals, documents, reports and findings and comes up with some startling overall conclusions He says, “Unlike the traitor and the revolutionary, the homosexual does not really threaten the vitals of his society. And perhaps if we stop seeing the sexual deviant as such a threat, we can afford to see him as a unique human being, in many cases little different from others except in his sexual preference.”
Both books, though completely different—one a study of a scandal, one a psychological report after great research, end up with the same basic theory—that the homosexual is not a bad person nor a threat to society just because he is homosexual.
Shoot It Out! does the same thing, only through the device of fiction. It concerns the type of person studied in the Gerassi book, and the type of person researched and interviewed in the Karlen book. It concerns homosexuals, their way of living, loving, and, sometimes, hating. Both Mr. Gerassi and Dr. Karlen say the homosexual is not a threat to society—and Mr. Cummings proves this in his fictionalized account of a young homosexual who leads a Bonnie and Clyde type of existence till love comes into his life. Burt, the character in the novel, can be understood by the reader, can be identified with by the reader, can even be loved by the reader. Thus Gerassi and Karlen are right when they say hunting homosexuals is pointless and cruel, and that the deviant is no different than other human beings except in his sexual preference.
Shoot It Out! provides a balance between the two documented books, and perhaps is the proof-positive that what Gerassi and Karlen both advocate is completely true.
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