“When I was doing my residency in New York, a patient came in 18 weeks pregnant and very, very sick. The only way to save her was to terminate the pregnancy. We were in a Catholic hospital … I vividly recall my director of obstetrics and the chairman arguing with the nuns. They said, “Well, the baby’s only 18 weeks, it’s going to die.” They felt very strongly that we could not do anything, but they would be okay with us transferring her to get care elsewhere. The director rode with the patient in the ambulance because he was afraid that she would have seizures. She was in her early 20s, and she already had a kid. That really got to me. How could we let this mom die and leave her child behind when we have the means to take care of her? I said to myself: “I never want my hands tied behind my back like that again.” I used to travel; these days I’m mostly in Georgia and I’m a backup physician in Alabama. In Alabama, my patients tend to be poor and young. The youngest was barely 12. She went to play with a classmate, and there were older boys over … When her guardians brought her in, I was reluctant to take care of her in an outpatient setting because we couldn’t sedate her. I went to the local hospital and said, “She’s just a baby. She’s suffered enough. Please, can we put her to sleep.” Everybody was onboard. Things have changed so much I don’t know if I would be able to get away with that now. The most frustrating thing for me, especially in the Southeast, is seeing so many women who are not empowered to take care of themselves. Especially women of color. You hear things like “I was told I’m too young for an IUD” when we know that’s not true. They need to know what their options are. I’m Haitian-American, and the part of me that is extremely cynical wants to say, Well, it’s because these are black women. But I really think it’s a matter of poverty. It just so happens that the face of poverty may be black. A few weeks ago, a woman came in for a medical abortion. As she was about to take the pill, she asked, “Do you think God hates me?” And I said, “No, he doesn’t hate you.” She said to me: “I tried so hard not to get pregnant. I told my boyfriend to use a condom, but he refused and forced himself on me.” If you overturn Roe v. Wade, what’s going to happen is we’ll go back to the way it was before. Every state for themselves. And best believe that the conservative states are going to try to outdo each other. Poor women will suffer. Poor women will die. There’s a generation of abortion providers who are more willing to be vocal about the impact of these different legislative measures. I tell my learners, “I don’t expect you to provide abortion care, but I want you to support your co-worker if they say, ‘Hey, we need a piece of legislation.’ I want you to stand behind us. But most importantly, I want you to be able to counsel and educate your patient in a way that respects her decision.” If I can train 500 providers who are compassionate and willing to respect and help their patients, I’ve done my job.”
It’s interesting to me that we frame a lot of issues as costing money.
Unhoused folk cost money to house.
Disabled folk cost money, too.
Immigrants cost money.
Trans folk cost money.
Nobody ever says, “Hey, how much does Jeff Bezos cost?” “How much does it cost us to have Elon Musk around, hoarding his money?” “What’s it costing us to have all these fabulously wealthy people?”
It’s costing us a lot more than we ever talk about. Not just because their hoarding of wealth takes that money out of circulation and contributes directly to poverty and the spiralling cost to human beings everywhere.
Also because things are being framed in this way, because we are being forced to think of ourselves and others in terms of cartoon dollar symbols.
That is not a natural state of affairs for humans, it is not something that is morally defensible, and it is something that eats away at each of us in different ways depending on our position vis à vis wealth.
“On 10th April 1984 Customs and Excise officers raided London’s Gay’s the Word bookshop and seized all their imported books. This was the start of so-called ‘Operation Tiger’.
The operation also included raids on the homes of the shop’s directors and the retention of thousands of pounds worth of other imported books at their ports of entry.
The basis for this assault was the Customs Consolidation Act of 1876. Just as Mary Whitehouse had used archaic blasphemy laws to prosecute Gay News in 1977, the British government was using antiquated legislation to attack this gay community bookshop. The 1876 Act is, in effect, a way of skirting round the provisions of the much more realistic Obscene Publications Act of 1959.
This latter Act allows for the defence of publications on the grounds of literary or artistic merit. However, it only applies to documents published in the UK. The Customs Consolidation Act, on the other hand, does not allow such a defence to be applied to imported material.
Given that the UK’s lesbian and gay publishing industry was still relatively small at that time, it follows that an LGBT community bookshop would necessarily seek stock from abroad.
But it was clear that Customs and Excise decreed any book imported by GTW to be obscene and, therefore, seized. This ‘obscene’ material included works by Oscar Wilde, Armistead Maupin, Tennessee Williams, Kate Millet and Jean-Paul Sartre
Some works – such as The Joy of Gay Sex and the Joy of Lesbian Sex – were sexually explicit, yet their heterosexual equivalent (Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex) was never subjected to such measures. It seemed that Her Majesty’s Government saw ‘homosexuality’ and ‘obscenity’ as one and the same thing.
‘Operation Tiger’ represented a massive assault on Gay’s the Word. The raid on the bookshop itself had led to around one third of its stock being removed. They were also advised that a further £12,000 of stock had been seized in transit. And in October they received a further 20 seizure notices detailing 144 titles, many of which were standard academic texts.
This immediate and unanticipated withholding of stock obviously generated financial pressures for GTW. But there was another, less obvious, impact as Customs played its arbitrary game of censorship. I think it was Paud Hegarty, who worked at the shop at that time, who told me that books were occasionally released by Customs. However, when they were received they were generally damaged as a result of poor treatment ‘in custody’. In consequence, it was impossible to sell them at their full market price so another financial loss was incurred.
And then there were the legal costs. In December the shop’s eight volunteer Directors and one member of staff were charged with “conspiracy to import indecent or obscene material”. In spite of the huge outcry that had greeted the initial seizures, HM Customs were determined to keep up the assault.
Support for GTW came from a wide range of sources. Obviously the LGBT community got behind the bookshop, helping to raise money for a defence fund. But many other people also saw the prosecutions for what they really were – a serious assault on civil rights and freedom of expression. Authors, the book industry, MPs, civil rights groups, Trade Unions and many others also gave their support.
Somewhat bizarrely, it would appear that German sex dolls had a key role to play in the case eventually being dropped.
Some months prior to GTW’s case being brought to court in June 1985, a company called Conegate had tried to import sex dolls from West Germany. HM Customs seized these as “indecent or obscene articles” but the company had fought back. They took their case all the way to the European Court arguing that there was no restriction on manufacturing the same items in the UK, therefore a ban on imports was a restriction on trade.
They won their case and it set enough of a precedent for the judge in the GTW case to throw it out of court. Customs and Excise also dropped the charges but no apology has ever been received from them or the Government for this orchestrated attack on an LGBT institution.
So Gay’s the Word lived to fight another day – although they still have to contend with other problems such as rising rents, online retailers like Amazon and, sadly, homophobic attacks on the premises. But it’s still supporting the LGBT community. Let’s hope the LGBT community continues to return the favour.”
The Directors and staff member Paud Hegarty – all charged with conspiracy to import indecent or obscene material. Photo courtesy Jim MacSweeney/Gay’s the Word.
Middle: The Communards made their first public appearance at a GTW benefit at Heaven in London.
Bottom: The Gay’s the Word float at Pride 85, Hyde Park, London.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.