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 lobbyJuly 7th, 2014
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From Midnight Rider, July 4, 1980, page 24.
Mary’s of Houston, Texas held a “Get Out of Jail Free” party on Monday, July 7 as an act of defiance against the Houston Police Department, which had raided the bar on June 24. Sue Cummings wrote about the raid the week earlier:
I wrapped up the Wilde ‘n Stein radio show Thursday night with, “I’m off to San Antonio for the State Democratic Convention,” but. .. going home via Westheimer took me past Mary’s. There I saw the police loading bar patrons into a van. The first thing I did was the 100-yard dash to a public phone and 25¢ later KPFT and Ray Hill had the news.
I returned to find Jim Farmer, owner and Grand Marshal of the Gay Pride Week Parade with his hands against the side of the van. There were uniformed officers of the vice squad and also plainclothes policemen trying to pass for gay. Guns tucked in the small of their back, badges at their waist, they had dressed in out-of-date hippie gear. The billy clubs were out as they confiscated leather vests, caps, belts, and wristlets studded with metal and hung with chain.
It was not the Stonewall. All these men with their “deadly weapons” did not resist. They went quietly; some joked to keep the morale up. Two groups of onlookers gathered — one near Montrose Boulevard and the other at Waugh Drive. I asked a young man standing to my left “how many are in the van?” but he didn’t know. He told me they would not let him enter the bar. One by one a policeman placed men in the backseat of a blue cruiser parked on Waugh until there were five. Shortly after that myself, Sharon Taylor, and David, the young man I had spoken with were also arrested.
When Sharon, Officer Krol, and I arrived at the station the men were lined up against a long white wall. We were placed in an office across the hall from Andy Mills, manager and leader of the Montrose Singers, Family, Tavern Guild, etc. A vice officer pokes his head into the office and says, “You mean they have dykes down there too?” Sharon is refused permission to use the bathroom.
From where we sit in the booking room we can see the men being processed. They are brought in from the tank — a dark, crowded cell used for holding — searched, and photographed. Some are ridiculed. Then they are told the amount of their bail. Now I am being frisked. “No purse?” Now I am being booked. “Were you arrested at that place on Westheimer? Don’t you know that’s a queer bar?” Sharon and I are handcuffed for the trip upstairs. But first we pass a sign that says: HPOA EATS CRAP.
6th Floor-Women’s Unit. We are turned over to a policewoman and allowed to use the telephone. It is 4 AM. Then on to cell 7 where a nylon stocking hangs from a steel bar above my head. It is sunrise and we wait for court to begin. Sixty-one people wait for someone to pay their bail. Next year, Sharon suggests, we should put a Gay Pride billboard down by the police station.
Mary’s opened in 1970, and remained in business until 2009. To learn more about Mary’s see April 26.
[Source: Susan Cummings. “The Night They Raided Mary’s.” Midnight Runner (June 24, 1980): 14.]
Clyde Tolson and J. Edgar Hoover, on vacation.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► Hoover’s Homosexuality Denied …Again: 1975. J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ 48-year chief, was dogged by rumors of his homosexuality and a suspected longtime affair with his assistant Clyde Tolson, but those rumors were put down as quickly as they arose. When Hoover died in 1972 he left his estate to Tolson, who moved into Hoover’s house. When Tolson died in April of 1975, speculation arose again over what everyone acknowledged as an extraordinarily close relationship with Hoover. In July, the subject came up again on CBS’s “Face the Nation”, according to this UPI article:
Rumors that the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual “absolutely could not be true,” according to a former top FBI official.
William A. Sullivan, who retired Saturday as assistant FBI director, made the statement in response to a reporter’s question on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Hoover never married and maintained a lifetime friendship with his top assistant, Clyde Tolson, who died earlier this year.
CBS reporter Fred Graham told Sullivan it was “common knowledge that there were allegations that J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual.”
“I wonder, “Graham asked, “can you tell me if that was investigated by any security agency, and can you tell me whether or not the FBI knows whether or not that’s true — was true?”
Sullivan replied: “I think that that is a — that question there is so ridiculous, about the homosexuality of J. Edgar Hoover, that I will just not give any credit to it, because I think it — it just absolutely cannot be true. I don’t believe.”
Graham: “But are you telling me that it was never checked out?”
Sullivan: “Certainly not. It was not checked out. It was so ridiculous that you could not check out something like that.”
George Cukor, on The Philadelphia Story set with Katharine Hepburn.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► 115 YEARS AGO: George Cukor: 1899-1983. A glance through his filmography shows that Hollywood would not have been Hollywood without George Cukor’s directing many of its landmark films with RKO and MGM. In 1931, he made his solo directorial debut with Paramount with Tarnished Lady starring Tallulah Bankhead, and went on to work on twenty-six films over the next ten years including, notably, A Bill of Divorcement (1932, debuting Katharine Hepburn), Dinner at Eight (1933), Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936), Camille (1936), The Women (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Gaslight (1944), Adam’s Rib (1949), Born Yesterday (1950), A Star is Born (1954), and My Fair Lady(1964). Cukor had been hired by his mentor, David O. Selznick, to direct Gone With The Wind even before the book was published. But Cukor was fired three weeks into filming after expressing dissatisfaction with the script. (A replacement director was also dissatisfied with it and quit, prompting a complete re-write of the film.)
Cukor had a reputation as a “woman’s director” for his ability to coax great performances from his actresses. He hated the title, perhaps seeing it as a dig at his open secret: just about everyone in Hollywood knew he was gay. He luxurious home was host to weekly Sunday afternoon pool parties attended by closeted celebrities and their guests. Hollywood was — and still is — a very small company town, and word had a way of getting around. Producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz said, “In a way, George Cukor was the first great female director of Hollywood.” But the quality of Cukor’s work belied those who dismissed him because he wasn’t a typical macho director. Twenty-one actors and actresses working under Cukor received Oscar nominations; three actors and two actresses came up winners. Cukor himself earned five Best Direction nominations, finally winning an Oscar for My Fair Lady.
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Eric Payne
July 7th, 2014
Jim — What a great juxtaposition of stories from our history (and I am being neither snarky nor sarcastic in saying this). Could there be two men “in the closet” who lived their lives as such polar opposites?
Cukor celebrated his life as openly as he could, though he stayed pretty much within the confines of the so-called “celluloid closet.” I remember reading in a Hollywwod history of Cukor being afraid of exposure, loss of his career, and public humiliation when he learned he was — as part of Senator Joe McCarthy’s “pinko” crusade — being investigated by J Edgar Hoover.
Hoover, as you suggest, had his own “open secret,” but instead of reveling in his life, chose to openly assist and abet in making homosexuality, itself, all but a federal crime. I will give Hoover his due, though; unlike today’s bunch of closeted politicians and powermongers, Hoover remained consistent — he didn’t try to claim it was wrong for everybody else, but okay for him. He kept his relationship sub rosa for 35 years, and even managed to leave behind a reputation that, as this above-mentioned Meet the Press reveals! simply didn’t allow for scrutiny of his life and relationships.
Yet Hoover was in a relationship with one person for 35 years, while Cukor never had a male long-term lover/partner. Isn’t that odd?
Victor
July 7th, 2014
No one investigated Hoover because no one dared. During his reign of tyranny he managed to “get the goods” on any person powerful enough to take him down – including several sitting presidents. One could easily posit that the driving force behind his blood thirst for unrivalled power was neither his patriotism nor his devotion to the rule of law, but rather his fear of exposure. In fact his now-legendary dossiers on everyone – always compiled through the unregulated abuse of his power without justification beyond his own interest – are proof that he had other motives. The very fact that he tacitly abetted Joseph McCarthy and the senator’s closest aide, Roy Cohn, who was virulently anti-gay while deeply closeted himself, is proof that Hoover’s goals were both selective and self-serving. Had this not been the case he would have taken down Cohn and, by association, McCarthy. But Cohn’s abuses in the service of McCarthy served Hoover’s parallel agenda. There are few people in U.S. history who were more ruthless than J. Edgar Hoover… a scourge, an embarrassment, and a sociopath; he remains the poster child for those who may be homosexual, but never evolve into the higher consciousness of being gay.
Stephen
July 7th, 2014
Both Eric and Victor, very interesting observations.
Eric Payne
July 7th, 2014
Victor — Personally, I believe Hoover was investigated, probably many times… but the people investigating did not have the tools available to them that Hoover did… and once Hoover got wind of any investigation into him, he retaliated with an “official” investigation into those conducting/responsible for the investigation into him.
The result? Ray Cohn… and the Kennedy brothers… and LBJ… and Richard Nixon all lived in a sort of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) pact with Truman.
Eric Payne
July 7th, 2014
Oops… “With Hoover,” not Truman… I had Truman on the brain because he was the only President in all the years Hoover was “in power” who was probably “clean” enough to dire him, with their being minimal, if any, fallout.
Victor
July 7th, 2014
Agreed, Eric. Many wanted to take Hoover down – Nixon tried – but Hoover had out-maneuvered them all preemptively. It was the ultimate exercise of self-preservation… like a conventional gay closet surrounded by nuclear warheads with Hoover’s thumb on the detonator. In his own sick way, Hoover was probably the most powerful gay man who ever lived. And all who cowered before him never understood that it was his own fear of exposure and self-hatred that compelled him to torment them. There is a certain poetic justice to so many straight people being made to pay for Hoover’s need to remain closeted. Considering the caliber of those whose fates he held in his hand, it could be argued that the closet into which countless generations of gay people have been forced – along with Hoover, the biggest closet-case of them all – has been the single most powerful political tool in U.S. history. God only knows how different the world might be if being gay had never been something to hide.
Paul Douglas
July 7th, 2014
Hoover reminds me of the guys in charge at the Vatican. Same self-preserving, ruthless climbing on the backs of others for power and prestige. Eric has interesting points but I think Victor is closer to the truth here.
Ben in Oakland
July 7th, 2014
The closet perverts, twists, debases, and destroys EVERYTHING it is associated with…
Even while protecting, in a perverted, debased and twisted way, those who hide within it.
Eric Payne
July 7th, 2014
But the point of my original comment was the dichotomy between Hoover and Cukor’s lives when it came to “relationships.” Hoover, the closet case, had a relationship for at least 35 years that was also pretty public (for the times). Though he had to use the occasional “beard,” Hoover and Tolson were known to make public appearances together, even at official state functions, whereas Cukor never had a long-term relationship, either with any man or the beards he had to use from time-to-time. Cukor’s love life seems to be one of dalliances with aspiring actors and Santa Monica Boulevard boys.
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