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Despite these new forms of support, gays still often feel isolated and persecuted. There are now three homosexual bathhouses in Milwaukee, a sign in a way of how far the movement has come. But there has been a price to pay: since last year, police have arrested 36 men on charges of disorderly conduct, though the police found enough evidence to arraign only four. Says Milwaukee District Attorney E. Michael McCann: "I view the homosexual community as a quiet but suppurating sore on the body politic."
Even in cities or states that have freedom-of-sex laws, the gays are often in danger of losing jobs, or their apartments, if they come out. Says Gay Boston Attorney John P. Ward, speaking of Massachusetts, whose highest court has handed down two notably liberal decisions: "What the law really is is what happens in the little district courts, and between you and the police officer-and the law has to change considerably before the message goes out to places like Fitchburg and Leominster that it is not open season on homosexuals."
As a result, while the gay rights movement is definitely moving ahead, the life-styles of homosexuals vary widely throughout the nation. Some examples:
> In Mankato, Minn. (pop. 32,000), Jim Chalgren, 27, and five other men were thrown out of the Trader and Trapper Discotheque in 1976 for dancing together. Now Chalgren occasionally dances with other men in bars and encounters nothing worse than name-calling. In fact, he has organized gay dances that are held every three or four months in hotel ballrooms, drawing crowds of as many as 130. But, he says, "there are people who meet at our dances who will avoid each other if they cross paths in a hardware store. It can still be a disaster to be identified as gay in Mankato."
> In Macon, Ga. (pop. 150,000), two gay bars compete for customers with no police harassment. But the only proclaimed homosexual in town is Disc Jockey Johnny Fambro, who came out last fall to help organize opposition to an Anita Bryant rally. "Susan," a lesbian who works at nearby Robins Air Force Base, attended the anti-Bryant demonstration but would not carry a picket sign because she feared she would not get a security clearance; nor will she take her roommate "Doris" to parties.
> In Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard -Radcliffe Gay Student Association meets openly every Wednesday night to hear speeches and play readings, and has thrown parties that attracted as many as 300 students from the area. At Harvard Law School, gays have acquired considerable clout; the school now will not allow any law firms that discriminate against homosexuals to use its placement service for employment interviews. But gay students at Harvard Business School still keep their homosexuality a deep secret for fear that it will hurt their employment prospects with major corporations when they graduate. The chairwoman of the Radcliffe Lesbians Association asks that her name not be printed in TIME because "I would just as soon my relations in California did not know."