Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyDecember 28th, 2011
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Closeted Anti-Gay Activist Dies of AIDS: 1986. Terry Dolan, who helped to found the National Conservative Political Action Committee, was pretty well known in elite gay circles. According to Randy Schilts’s And the Band Played On
Dolan knew how to raise money. “The “shriller you are,” he said in 1982, “the easier it is to raise money.” That’s been the recipe for anti-gay activists ever since. But four years later, Dolan himself was dead of AIDS at the age of 36. The following May, The Washington Post published an article about “the cautious closet” of Terry Dolan. His brother, Reagan White House speechwriter Anthony Dolan was livid, and took out an two-page ad in The Washington Times, arguing that “the greatest and most malicious falsehood in this story was its entire thrust, its basis: the claim that my brother lived and died a homosexual.” But he did live and die a homosexual, and a deeply closeted one at that. But despite his and the family’s best efforts, the secret was out, and no amount of wishful thinking otherwise would ever change that.
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Charles
December 28th, 2011
“His brother, Reagan White House speechwriter Anthony Dolan was livid, and took out an two-page ad in The Washington Times, arguing that “the greatest and most malicious falsehood in this story was its entire thrust, its basis: the claim that my brother lived and died a homosexual. ………..his brother wasted his money
Donny D.
December 28th, 2011
I remember Dolan but I don’t remember his as closeted.
Donny D.
December 28th, 2011
his = him
Rick Rosendall
December 28th, 2011
Terry Dolan was closeted (he couldn’t have been open without suffering right-wing banishment), but as is often the case, it was an open secret in the gay community. He went to gay bars in DC, and he cruised me a few times when we passed each other on the sidewalk on 17th Street in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. The book “God’s Bullies” describes a gay sexual liaison he had with someone I knew.
One small act of decency I remember of Dolan’s was defending Robert Bauman from an effort to remove him from the board of a right-wing organization after Bauman’s gay-hustler scandal ended his congressional career in 1980. I do not remember if the organization in question was NCPAC, YAF, or the American Conservative Union. While both men’s consorting with the anti-gay right was despicable, Dolan appeared to have a pang of conscience and resisted doing the obvious thing in response to Bauman’s scandal, which would have been to throw him overboard.
Breton
December 28th, 2011
Is there a scan of the two-page Washington Times ad placed by Anthony Dolan available?!?!
I think it would be EXTREMELY interesting to see that ad. It could also be extremely interesting to ask Anthony Dolan if he continues to stand by that ad now.
Was Terry Dolan Ken Mehlman’s hero, role model, and inspiration? I see strong parallels. Sick stuff.
Donny D.
December 29th, 2011
Rick Rosendall wrote,
It must have been an VERY open secret. I never saw him referred to in gay media of the time as anything but gay. I think straight conservatives “didn’t know” because they didn’t want to know, especially given how politically effective he was for their side. But then this was during the Reagan years, when there still was some live and let live sentiment felt among straight Republican conservatives in regard to gay conservatives. This was before the 1992 Republican convention, the Pat Buchanan Culture War speech and the Republican party basically declaring war on LGBT people.
It may also be that culture war conservatives weren’t patrolling gay media as aggressively and thoroughly then as they are now.
Soren456
December 29th, 2011
It is SHILTS.
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