c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service<
GARDEN CITY, N.Y.—Nassau County District Attorney DenisDillon, who has crusaded against abortion for years, Wednesdaysharply criticized his congresswoman, Carolyn McCarthy, for votingagainst a ban on a type of late-term abortion.
Dillon, who said he had gone to Washington in January andlobbied Mrs. McCarthy on abortion, issued a press release andletter on his official stationery criticizing her. In a telephoneinterview he said, ``Carolyn McCarthy is morally blind on thisissue.''
Mrs. McCarthy's spokeswoman, Effie Johns, said the congresswomanwas not available to comment. She added that Mrs. McCarthy, wholike Dillon is a Roman Catholic, opposes abortion in general.
But Ms. Johns said that Mrs. McCarthy had explained in floordebate that she could not support the ban on the late-termprocedure, which opponents call ``partial-birth'' abortion, becauseit did not allow for exceptions when a woman's life or health wasjeopardized.
Dillon said the bill included such exceptions.
Both Dillon and Mrs. McCarthy are registered Republicans withunorthodox political histories. He started out in office as aDemocrat but switched parties in 1987 because of the abortionissue. Mrs. McCarthy, whose husband was killed in the Long IslandRail Road massacre, won election last fall, running as a Democratto unseat Dan Frisa because he voted against an assault weapons banthat she supported.
Dillon publicized his dispute with Mrs. McCarthy by having hispress office distribute his letter to a child abuse preventionagency in which he criticized its plan to have her as a guestspeaker and honor her at a luncheon Thursday.
``Your honoring of Carolyn McCarthy is an act of moral blindnessand opens you to a charge of hypocrisy,'' Dillon wrote to MaryGardner, president of the Child Abuse Prevention Services, anonprofit educational agency in Roslyn, N.Y. His letter said therewas no moral distinction between child abuse and ``the deliberatekilling of a fully formed baby'' in an abortion. He wrote that itwas ``ironic'' for a child abuse prevention group to honor Mrs.McCarthy.
The letter caught the agency by surprise. Ms. Gardner did notrespond to a telephone request for comment. But the organization'sexecutive director, Elane S. Fagin, said the group had no positionon abortion and saw that issue as unrelated to its mission ofeducating children and adults about abuse and also unrelated to thehonoring of Mrs. McCarthy's work for children and against violence.
``This is not what the day is about,'' Mrs. Fagin said.
She also said of Dillon's letter: ``I will tell you I wasshocked to see that it was on his official stationery. Everybody isentitled to their own personal opinion, but when it's on officialletterhead, I don't know what the message is.''
Dillon defended the use of his position to speak out for lawsagainst abortion as no different from his lobbying for gun controlor other laws.
Dillon, who has been in office 22 years and is up forre-election this year, became an anti-abortion advocate in 1981,leading pickets at abortion clinics. But he has said his officeavoids conflicts of interest by calling on the district attorney ofneighboring Suffolk County to handle cases involving trespasscomplaints against protesters at abortion clinics.
Dillon's office prosecuted a man who firebombed an abortionclinic. It also prosecuted and convicted the murderer of Mrs.McCarthy's husband.
^New America News Service@=
To some, Marshall Herff Applewhite was the disciplined,charismatic spiritual leader of the sect called Heaven's Gate atthe Rancho Santa Fe house near San Diego, Calif. But to the outsideworld, he simply seemed bizarre.
The latter description was not always the case, according toJohn Alexander, a former college roommate. He told The New YorkTimes, ``Herff wasn't weird or strange or anything like that(then). You just wonder what makes a person do such a radicalchange.''
One explanation may have to do with a secret Applewhite had beenhiding for several years during early adulthood. It was a secret hekept from his siblings, wife and children—his own homosexuality.
According to The Washington Post, Applewhite lost a teaching jobin Houston in 1970 when officials at the University of St. Thomaslearned of his relationship with a male student.
``Depressed, ashamed and suddenly hearing voices, Applewhitechecked into a psychiatric hospital the following year and asked tobe `cured' of his homosexual desires,'' the Post reported.
In a subsequent Associated Press report, school administratorsdenied firing him for that reason account.
But ``Applewhite allegedly felt guilty about his homosexualaffairs,'' the Post reported. In the same Post story, Robert Balch,sociology professor at the University of Montana, said Applewhite``confided to at least one of his lovers his longing for ameaningful platonic relationship where he could develop his fullpotential without sexual entanglements.''
Those entanglements are presumably homosexual relationships, butin the end Applewhite's strange religion renounced human sexualityacross the board.
To Applewhite, celibacy, castration, asexual androgyny, suicide_ all alien notions to most people—served a higher purpose: theLevel Above Human.
Why? Commentaries grapple with that question, tying in thingssuch as the millennium, Hale-Bopp, charisma, cultism, the Internet,Hollywood and the Supreme Court. All of them have been offered asexplanations—or scapegoats—for this tragedy.
But everyone is missing a crucial point. A fundamentaldiscomfort with sexual expression permeates this harrowing tale. Asthe architect of this particular anti-sexuality world view,Applewhite's own self-hate is the key to understanding what wentwrong and how far amok wrong assumptions and misguided spiritualdirection can go.
From what we know, Applewhite began to unravel psychologicallyduring the early 1970s, well after a divorce and several years intoa number of homosexual relationships.
Fear, guilt, self-hatred, job-loss trauma and isolation from family probably all played a part in causing him to lose touch withreality.
Times were different then. Society's contempt for gay people hadfar more potentially corrosive effects on body, mind and soul.
Before 1973, psychiatry claimed homosexuality was an illness.After that year, the American Psychiatric Association removedhomosexuality per se from its list of mental disorders.
Organized religion claimed homosexual activity was immoral,perverse. Few people knew anybody who was openly gay.
In light of this, it's easy to see how Applewhite very likelyinternalized the prevailing attitudes of those times, turning onhimself, engaging in self-destructive behavior and developing aphilosophy for his disciples of complete denial of healthy humansexuality. He even had himself castrated.
Today we have a word for the visceral disgust of homosexualityand homosexual activity. It's called homophobia.
According to Richard Isay, a prominent openly gay psychiatristand author, ``Gay men and lesbians who internalize society'sprejudice believe they are defective or sick.''
Isay adds that ``internalized homophobia'' in gay people may beexpressed in demeaning and denigrating comments and behavior.
A Boston Globe news report quoted one of Applewhite's employees,a bar manager, who described his ``nasty side.'' In the account,the manager talked about a party he and Applewhite attended whereApplewhite pitted an old lover against a new one.
``He really made the old lover feel bad about feeling bad,'' theformer manager said.
Pitting one side against the other—that's exactly what wentwrong inside the UFO cult leader's head.
Applewhite obviously didn't feel good about himself. Unable toaccept his homosexual orientation, this charismatic, intelligentprospective Presbyterian minister—a lover of music and philosophy_ turned against his better self and all sexuality.
The end result was a doomsday creed of major proportions anddisconnections—body from soul, mind from spirit, sexuality fromspirituality.
``It seems like they were trying to aspire beyond humanness, andone of the realities of being human is sexuality,'' said CollierCole, a clinical psychologist, in the Globe.
But it didn't need to be that way. More than 25 years ago, whenApplewhite said goodbye to family, he told his sister, ``You justdon't know the real me.''
In hindsight, those last words seem like a veiled reference tohis distorted view about the intrinsic evil and pathology ofhomosexuality.
Applewhite badly needed a more integrated concept of self. If hehad incorporated a gay-positive identity, probably this tragedywould not have occurred.
(Chuck Colbert earned his bachelor's degree from Notre Dame in1978. He is a founder of the Gay and Lesbian Alumni of NotreDame/St. Mary's College.) c. 1997 Chuck Colbert
c. 1997 Chuck Colbert
^(Distributed by New York Times Special Features)@=
``I have come to believe that by and large the human family allhas the same secrets, which are both very telling and veryimportant to tell.''
_Frederick Buechner, ``Telling Secrets: A Memoir''
_
To many, Kathryn Harrison's latest book, ``The Kiss,'' is amemoir that is hot for all the wrong reasons.
The book's legion of detractors say ``The Kiss,'' which detailsHarrison's consensual four-year affair with her father when she was20, promotes incest solely for profit.
Enough already, says James Wolcott in The New Republic _tongue-kissing your father is something we don't need to knowabout. ``The truth is,'' he writes in a vicious review, ``that(keeping) some secrets may have a healthy purpose ... (but) now theproblem is ... getting people to put a cork in it.''
Harrison says she is surprised by the response, perhaps naivelyso. She says it only proves that, even in the era of Oprah, peoplecannot handle real-life discussions of forbidden subjects.
``If I were from the wrong side of the tracks,'' Harrison saysfrom her publisher's office in New York, ``undereducated, was in abad marriage, no children, a drug addict ... If I ... had beendestroyed by or driven mad by what happened, I would be OK. We havethis understanding that there should be a fallout from breaking thetaboo.''
The fallout, then, is from those who say that publishing ``TheKiss'' is an affront to Harrison's children, her status as aserious novelist and the bounds of good taste.
MEMOIR OVERLOAD: Harrison is only the latest in an astoundingnumber of recent memoir writers. The success of the tell-all talewould be amusing were it not so pervasive. Last week, eight of thetop 13 books on The New York Times' bestseller list were memoirs _including the top four sellers. It's not surprising that this hasbeen dubbed ``the age of the memoir.''
Snarky commentators have started weighing in, though. ``I neverexperienced incest,'' columnist Maureen Dowd writes in her mockingproposal to ride the memoir gravy train, ``but I had a couple ofvery annoying boyfriends.'' (Her asking price: ``only $2.4(million)'').
Dismissing such books out of hand ignores a long tradition ofmemoir writing. Many personal tales are moving because of theintimate secrets they reveal, regardless of a person's celebrity. Agifted writer can use the prism of his or her self to cast light onthe human condition.
Unfortunately, Harrison does not do that in ``The Kiss.'' Themost shocking thing about the book is that the prose is sotorturous when Harrison has written three small but criticallywell-received novels. In ``The Kiss,'' Harrison finds deep meaningin everything from cockroaches to her father's Mont Blanc (''Hehands me the pen, it's barrel still warm from the heat of hisflesh.'') It reads like ``The Leches of Madison County.''
Even those in the book industry say it's not an author's insightthat drives today's diary-ish book deals; contracts are doled outbased on the author's glitter-ary status and his or her tale'slevel of titillation.
``The book marketplace is so crowded that publishers are onlylooking for a book with a hook,'' says Dallas literary agent DavidHale Smith. He says glam authors such as Harrison often serve astempting bait. ``They want to be able to put the author on the`Today' show who will give a sexy interview that will make peoplerun to the bookstore.''
Or to the television, or the movie theater. The exploration ofprivate moments is bona fide entertainment in any medium: a new PBSdocumentary chronicles five years in the life of a Queens, NewYork, couple; A&E ``Biography'' series now airs five episodes aweek or more; monologuist Spalding Gray has filmed his 14thpersonal monologue, this one an 80-minute discussion of his eyeproblems. Nothing is inviolate. Few today believe the Arabianproverb that says a secret is ``your slave if you keep it, yourmaster if you lose it.''
Which is surprising for a novelist only because a writer has theluxury of exploring his or her secrets through fiction. Six yearsago, Harrison did just that: One of the characters in her firstnovel, ``Thicker Than Water,'' had an incestuous relationship withher father. At the time, Harrison defended the novel as the bestform of autobiographical writing.
``Some truths are better expressed through fiction thannonfiction,'' she told The Associated Press in 1991. ``That's whatstorytelling is all about.''
Now, Harrison backs away from that opinion.
``I feel that at some level, all art is autobiographical,'' shesays. ``As a writer, the relationship with my father stopped beingsomething that inspired my work and instead distracted from it, andneeded to be met head on. ... I felt that in some level, early on,I had sort of betrayed the material. I hadn't done with it what Ihad hoped to in fiction. I'm now at a point as a writer and a humanbeing that I can deal with this more at this time.
``And there was a real need on my part to''—Harrison pausesfor a long time—``to cut as close to the bone as I could. Writingit, I hoped to own it, in the sense of owning up, to admit andpossess the material, in the way I could only do in memoir.''
She insists the book wasn't planned, that she wrote it onlybecause the novel her publisher, Random House, had contracted herto write was going nowhere. Nevertheless, she gives aid to thosewho say she and her husband, the writer Colin Harrison (who penneda story for Vogue about what it's like to live with a woman whoslept with her father), simply realized that there was a demand fortawdry revelations, for memoir as schtick.
MEMOIRS DEFENDED: ``I get annoyed that some people are socritical of memoirs now,'' says Kay Redfield Jamison, a professorof psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.Jamison was lauded for her 1995 book ``An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir ofMoods and Madness,'' which chronicled her own struggle withmanic-depressive illness. ``Readers will determine what they wantto read.''
Jamison, who has not yet read Harrison's book, says sheunderstands some of the general criticism of ``The Kiss''—``Justbecause you want to make something public doesn't mean your familydoes,'' she says—but thinks critics are off-base if they assumethey know how a writer's family will react.
``You have to consider the effect on your family,'' she says.``In my case, they were extremely supportive. They said, `Theproblem is that people won't talk about it.'''
In her book, Jamison says that keeping the secret was, for her,``dishonest. Necessary, perhaps, but dishonest.'' Harrison, ofcourse, agrees.
It's not surprising that Harrison says the affair—andtherefore the book—was really about her dysfunctionalrelationship with her mother, whom she resented. (Harrison wasraised by her grandparents.) During the affair, she contemplatedsuicide and underwent therapy. She says she saw herself as ``amonster.''
When her mother died of cancer, she finally came to grips withher feelings and broke off the relationship with her father, whomshe hasn't seen in 10 years. ``The spell is broken,'' she writes ofthe funeral, ``her death releases me.''
But does she regret it? Not really. ``The loss of my father willgrieve me,'' she concludes in ``The Kiss,'' ``it will hurt andnever cease hurting.''
The publication of the story also ensures that her affair willnever go unknown. Which may be good for her well-being, but,critics say, it can't possibly be good for her children.
``As a general rule, disclosure of secrets is good for a family,with some obvious exceptions,'' says David Cross, chairman of TexasChristian University's department of psychology. ``In a situationlike this, what you worry about is ... how the children will betreated by others who've read the book.
``Maybe as a writer it's essential to write to a larger public,and have those concerns in mind. Maybe so, but I still don'tunderstand the need to publish it. Although, it's true thehealthier she is, the better she will be as a parent.''
Exactly, Harrison says. ``This (secret) had insidious effects onme as a mother. ... People have been quick to point out thenegative effects (on her children). On the other hand, growing upis hard, and maybe it's worthwhile to know your mother is strong.That she can overcome.''
_
(Visit the Star-Telegram's online services on the World WideWeb: www.startext.net; www.arlington.net; and www.netarrant.net)
c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service<
GARDEN CITY, N.Y.—Nassau County District Attorney DenisDillon, who has crusaded against abortion for years, Wednesdaysharply criticized his congresswoman, Carolyn McCarthy, for votingagainst a ban on a type of late-term abortion.
Dillon, who said he had gone to Washington in January andlobbied Mrs. McCarthy on abortion, issued a press release andletter on his official stationery criticizing her. In a telephoneinterview he said, ``Carolyn McCarthy is morally blind on thisissue.''
Mrs. McCarthy's spokeswoman, Effie Johns, said the congresswomanwas not available to comment. She added that Mrs. McCarthy, wholike Dillon is a Roman Catholic, opposes abortion in general.
But Ms. Johns said that Mrs. McCarthy had explained in floordebate that she could not support the ban on the late-termprocedure, which opponents call ``partial-birth'' abortion, becauseit did not allow for exceptions when a woman's life or health wasjeopardized.
Dillon said the bill included such exceptions.
Both Dillon and Mrs. McCarthy are registered Republicans withunorthodox political histories. He started out in office as aDemocrat but switched parties in 1987 because of the abortionissue. Mrs. McCarthy, whose husband was killed in the Long IslandRail Road massacre, won election last fall, running as a Democratto unseat Dan Frisa because he voted against an assault weapons banthat she supported.
Dillon publicized his dispute with Mrs. McCarthy by having hispress office distribute his letter to a child abuse preventionagency in which he criticized its plan to have her as a guestspeaker and honor her at a luncheon Thursday.
``Your honoring of Carolyn McCarthy is an act of moral blindnessand opens you to a charge of hypocrisy,'' Dillon wrote to MaryGardner, president of the Child Abuse Prevention Services, anonprofit educational agency in Roslyn, N.Y. His letter said therewas no moral distinction between child abuse and ``the deliberatekilling of a fully formed baby'' in an abortion. He wrote that itwas ``ironic'' for a child abuse prevention group to honor Mrs.McCarthy.
The letter caught the agency by surprise. Ms. Gardner did notrespond to a telephone request for comment. But the organization'sexecutive director, Elane S. Fagin, said the group had no positionon abortion and saw that issue as unrelated to its mission ofeducating children and adults about abuse and also unrelated to thehonoring of Mrs. McCarthy's work for children and against violence.
``This is not what the day is about,'' Mrs. Fagin said.
She also said of Dillon's letter: ``I will tell you I wasshocked to see that it was on his official stationery. Everybody isentitled to their own personal opinion, but when it's on officialletterhead, I don't know what the message is.''
Dillon defended the use of his position to speak out for lawsagainst abortion as no different from his lobbying for gun controlor other laws.
Dillon, who has been in office 22 years and is up forre-election this year, became an anti-abortion advocate in 1981,leading pickets at abortion clinics. But he has said his officeavoids conflicts of interest by calling on the district attorney ofneighboring Suffolk County to handle cases involving trespasscomplaints against protesters at abortion clinics.
Dillon's office prosecuted a man who firebombed an abortionclinic. It also prosecuted and convicted the murderer of Mrs.McCarthy's husband.
Go back to SOCIOLOGY 260 -- Sociology of Marriage and the Family Page
If you have any questions or comments please email: