BOOK ON GAYS IN MILITARY ALMOST KILLS AUTHOR
    By Ros Davidson

GUERNEVILLE, California, July 14 (Reuter) - Randy Shilts, the
pre-eminent chronicler of gay America who laid bare official
foot-dragging on the AIDS crisis, has turned his sights on the
U.S. military's controversial ban on homosexuals.

    But five years of work on a 780-page book which exhaustively
examines the plight of gays and lesbians in the armed forces came
close to costing him his life.

    Shilts, an openly gay author made famous by his writing on
homosexuals and AIDS, has himself developed the disease.

    He dictated the end of his new book, "Conduct Unbecoming:
Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military," from what doctors said
might have been his death bed in a San Francisco hospital last
February.

    He had contracted AIDS-related pneumonia. But he was so
engrossed in the book that he says he did not seek proper medical
care. On Christmas Eve 1992, his lung collapsed and a two-month
life and death battle began.

    "I was very sick -- there was literally a doctor standing
over my bed saying I was going to die, that I would never leave
the hospital," he said.

    Shilts, a slight, boyish-looking 41-year-old, says his health
is now much better, although in a recent interview at his home in
Guerneville, 80 miles (130 km) north of San Francisco, he still
appeared weak and reclined to ease his breathing.

    Shilts became nationally known with his 1987 best seller on
the early years of the AIDS crisis, "And the Band Played on,"
which criticised the slow official response to the epidemic.

    After the success of that book, he became fascinated by the
U.S. military's ban on homosexuals. With uncanny timing, "Conduct
Unbecoming" was finished just as the ban became a burning
political issue after President Bill Clinton took office vowing
to lift the ban.

    But Clinton ran into a barrage of opposition from military
chiefs and key members of Congress and was forced to delay his
decision pending further study.

    Defence Secretary Les Aspin is expected to recommend a "don't
ask, don't tell" compromise to Clinton by July 15 under which
service members would not be asked about their sexual
orientation.

    Shilts began "Conduct Unbecoming" in 1988 even though he knew
he was HIV-positive. He had been tested as soon as he finished
"And the Band Played on," but kept his diagnosis private until
last February, when word started to leak out.

    "I did not want my health issues to overshadow my work," he
says, his voice weak with the effort of speaking.

    "Conduct Unbecoming" chronicles heart-wrenching incidents of
the broken and ruined lives of gay people through interrogations,
purges and prison terms.

    Shilts interviewed 1,100 gay service people, from privates to
generals. Under the Freedom of Information Act, he got nearly 15,000
pages of material about investigations, military trials and
policy.

    Especially newsworthy is the detailing of Orwellian purges
such as that of lesbians at the Parris Island Marine Corps
Recruit Training Depot in South Carolina in the late 1980s.

    The book maintains that those most affected by the policy are
not men but women, who it says often live in fear of being
accused of lesbianism unless they acquiesce to sexual harassment.

    Shilts's book also notes deep hypocrisy -- the Navy was
discharging 1,700 people a year for being gay in the early 1960s,
but at the height of the Vietnam War buildup in 1970 was only
discharging 400 a year.

    Shilts is adamantly opposed to Aspin's likely compromise
proposal on gays in the military.

    He said the policy amounts to "as long as nobody finds out,
you won't be kicked out." "Well that's what it is now, and
there's a lot of people living in terror that they'll be found
out," he said.

    Shilts remains critical of how effectively the AIDS epidemic
is being fought. "Not enough is being done by government -- it's
how the money is spent," he said. "A year lost here means a
hundred thousand people dying in a couple of years."

    Shilts's work is in great demand. He says he is looking
forward to starting a column in September for his newspaper, the
San Francisco Chronicle, from which he is currently on a leave of
absence as a national reporter on AIDS.

    Two of his books are being made into movies. Home Box Office
will air "And the band played on" in September while Robin
Williams is to star in a film version of his first book, "The
Mayor of Castro Street," about San Francisco's first openly gay
politician, Harvey Milk, to be made later this year.

    Shilts has not always been so well-accepted. He grew up in
small-town Illinois, and says he never heard the word
"homosexual" spoken out loud until he went to college in Oregon.

    For years, he says, he found it hard to get work in
journalism because of his candour about his sexuality. When he
was hired at the San Francisco Chronicle, he was the first openly
gay reporter at a major American news organisation.

    Yet for Shilts, his work is a reason to go on living.

    "I come from that tradition of journalism at the turn of the
century -- the muckrakers," he said. "We're using journalism to
help solve society's problems."

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iqm171@uriacc.uri.edu         "Don't label me.  I'm a people person"
                                         --Sandra Bernhardt