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Page THE HERALD OUTLOOK Saturday January 21 198S Life with AIDS chronicled in new book By WILLIAM ARTHUR COLLINS When I use a word Humpty Durapty said is rather a scornful tone Ht means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less The question is said Alice whether you can make words mean so many different things The question is said Humptj Dumpty which is to be master thats all Lewis Carroll Alice Through The Looking Glass Jim A Life With AIDS Is Ok story of Canadas longest surviv ing AIDS victim a man fadng a terminal disease It Is also the tale of a man trying to come to terms with his homosexuality and how it relates to his religion which is that of the Jehovahs Witnesses June Callwoods book Lester and 288 pages is not a brilliant apologia for homosexuality such as John Boswells Christianity Social Tolerance and Homosexuality nor is it a work of history such as The Pink Triangle in which Dr Richard Plant investigates the Nazi persecution of homosexuals The story of Jim Is In a sense a more personal and finer focus of And The Band Played On in which Randy Shilts gives us the big pic ture of the development of AIDS through personal narratives and historical incidents Jim as both a book and a person is much more egocentric has done an excellent job of stepping aside and letting the protagonist speak for himself It is a tale of courage But is courage and honesty ever enough Members of the Waffen SS were courageous the Islamic fanatic who blew himself up and took the Marine Compound in Beirut with him was unquestionably brave and the Ayatollah Khomeini is sincere But It also helps to be brave courageous and sincere in a good cause It helps to have morality and ethics based on tradition which until recently was the benchmark for all decent people in our Western society To enter the world of Jim St James is to leave these commonly understood standards behind and walk through the Looking Glass to a world of selfdefinition It Is a world of ethical and moral quick sand where on Page 101 the pro- can have a taste for sadomasochistic sex beating up his partners as part of the relation ship and estimate that over about 18 months that he had bet- ween five- and six hundred sexual partners and just over 200 pages later after he has developed AIDS say that it wont help any of us if we lambaste ourselves for having sex As be thinks its wrong for us to guilt ourselves about this Because If we have to die of something its better to die of something we got from making love than to die in a war trying to kill someone else As someone trained in the field of anomalous deviant sexual behavior I work daily with people convicted of legally proscribed sexual activity I am desensitized to much that would nauseate the ft Directory of Services Offered In Our ACC0UMTM6 BOOKKEEPING BOB YOUNG 21 Mill St Acton Ontario 8534534 ADVERTISING SPECIALTIES REFLEX ADVERTISING SPECIALTIES 119MILLSTREET PRINTING GEORGETOWN ONTARIO ROBERT BOB BURKE L7G2C7 APPLIANCE SERVICE 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we COLOUR If By Accident CALL US WELL SET THE JOB UPTOWN COLLISION I MOUHTMNVKW NX QEOnOCTOWN STEAM CltAMHC SS JiiSS Complete Car Brian 8776021 ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR GLEN ERIN ELECTRIC SERVICE GESSO A Able Arts Masonry FmoUcss Mitamy ft Mr- 4543398 Put More Muscle in your CALLUS TODAY LtJ average reader of this book As a priest I have worked with homosexual and lesbian clergy on The Interfaith Committee for AIDS so this book neither shocks me nor surprises me It simply leaves me sad INTOLERANT Jims world the world of homosexuality is a world as in tolerant of any divergent opinion as that of the most rabid TV evangelist It is a world where you are allowed as a priest to help the dying only if you accept as a given the normalcy of homosexual ac tivity and do not mention repen tance for you are told that homosexual behavior is nothing to repent about The homosexual world is a world of promiscuity This is not the opi nion of religious fanatics but documented by Bell and Weinberg of the Kinsey Institute For Sex Research in theirstudy of diversi ty among men and women This study is 10 years old but is still rele vant when they quote some homosexuals as boasting of at least 500 different sexual partners during the course of their homosexual careers Bell and Weinberg admit that some of their subjects may have exaggerated But is Jim St James exaggerating when he talks of sexual partners in a year and half This book is a tale of courage but also of great silliness You are in a world where a grown man climbs into bed with his teddy bear and another decorates bis hospital room with a teddy bear dressed in leather and holding a whip All of us have idiosyncrasies but hopefully we dont revel in them publicly if we want to be taken seriously And AIDS is serious Callwood devotes Chapter 7 to explaining the nature and spread of the disease She makes the point that while in Africa per cent of people with AIDS are heterosex ual in the United States per cent of people with AIDS are homosexual and in Canada close to 90 per cent of people with AIDS are homosexual The story of Jim is not a tragedy in any sense of the word It is not even specifically the story of a homosexual It Is the story of an ir responsible lifestyle leading to a hideous disease Obviously no one can absolutely prove that pro miscuity brought Jim to this pass but it appears highly probable It would appear probable that the spread of AIDS in the homosex ual community is the result of pro miscuous sexual behavior And where in Western Society it is sex ually transmitted among heterosexuals it is probably due to promiscuity andor rough sexual practices as well Callwood has done the homosex ual community a great service by leading us through the Looking Glass into Jims world The reader may not like what heshe finds on the other side but to understand the homosexual and his lifestyle the trip is necessary Rev William Arthur Collins has worked as a probationparole officer in westcentral Toronto for the past 17 years He in cases involving anomalous sexual activity As well as his Degree In Arts and his Licentiate In Theology he holds an honors cer tificate In Human Sexuality with a In anomalous sexual behavior He Is a member of Slec- can The Sex Information and Education Council of Canada The American Association of Sex Educators Counsellors and Therapists and The Inter Committee for Aids SCREEN RINTING Screen Prmtmg Textile Printing Specialists 391 GEORGETOWN