i^mbda
(giblin a Gay*AssociatiorL^cwglettei*
LKIU
Volume 9, Number 4
May/June 1983
Air Force Lesbian Awaits
Clemency Hearing
(Compiled from The Washington Post, The
Washington Blade, Gay Community News,
and press releases from the State Con
ference Legal Defense & Education Fund)
Lt. Joanne Newak, who was court mar-
tialed, convicted on charges of using
marijuana, engaging in sodomy, and
attempting to use amphetamines, and
sentenced to six years of hard labor at
Leavenworth Penitentiary will have a new
clemency hearing in June 1983.
Newak joined the Air Force in August
1979, and had a spotless career prior to
these charges. She was highly recom
mended for advancement and was being
considered for a promotion prior to
being charged.
During her off-duty hours at Hancock
Air Force Base in Syracuse, NY, where
she was stationed and where she assumed
that her private life in her off-base
apartment was not subject to the mili
tary code, Newak occasionally smoked
marijuana, had an affair with a woman
and belived some pills in her possession
were amphetamines. The pills, tested by
the Air Force, turned out to be caffeine
pills.
Officials in command at the base- made
a deal with a female airman who had been
picked up for druken driving; they drop
ped charges against her in exchange for
her agreement to spy on other enlisted
women at the base. After the spy had
gathered evidence against Newak and her
lover. Airman 1st Class Lynn Peelman,
lawyers in the Judge Advocate General's
office promised Peelman a transfer to
Germany, which she had wanted, in return
for her giving evidence against Newak.
Peelman agreed, and the same officials
subsequently booted her out of the Air
Force with a less-than—honorable dis
charge. Newak began serving her six
year sentence in June 1982.
Newak was originally appointed Air
Force attorney Captain Raymond Smith for
her defense. Smith had a conflict of
interest because he was also defending
Peelman, who he had persuaded to tes
tify, under immunity, against Newak. He
also admitted to telling Peelman that
Newak was "going down the tubes."
Smith was removed from the case, and
Newak obtained a new civilian lawyer,
(See AIR FORCE LESBIAN, p. 2)
Querelle
Fassbinder’s Final Film
As the last film completed by the
legendary Rainer Werner Fassbinder prior
to his untimely death last June,
"Querelle" was bound to become a cinema
tographic myth even before it was pre
sented to the public. Adapted from the
1947 novel "Querelle de Brest" by Jean
Genet, "Querelle," apart from being
Fassbinder's valedictory film, also
represents the tantalizing marriage of
two of the world's most daring and revo
lutionary "renegade" artists. The
response to their collaboration, which
was first unveiled at last,summer s
Venice Film Festival, has ranged from
euphoria to unadulterated shock.
Genet, who began his writing career
while serving ona of his numerous prison
sentences for stealing, begging and
smuggling, was condemned to life
imprisonment in 1948, just a year after
writing "Querelle," his signal work.
Pardoned by the President of the Repub
lic at the behest of France's most emi
nent writers, he then went on to become
one of France's most eminent writers
himself, with such novels as Our Lady
of the Flowers, The Thief's Journal, and
the Miracle of the Rose and such plays
as "The Balcony," "The Blacks," and "The
Maids," now widely acknowledged as land
marks of post-war literature. Never one
to hide his homosexuality. Genet used
the once-shadowy milieu of the gay "out
cast" as a symbol of modern man's soli
tude in a hostile world.
(See QUERELLE, p. 3)
'ih