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