Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Monday, October 19

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From ONE, May 1959, page 15.

The June 1966 edition of The Ladder with photo of Dob vice president Ernestine Eckstein. Photo by Kay Tobin (Kay Lahusen, see Jan 5).

The Daughters of Bilitis’ official magazine The Ladder first appeared in October, 1956 as a twelve-page typewritten, mimeographed and hand-stapled newsletter. One hundred and seventy-five copies of that first issue were sent out, and from those humble beginnings, The Ladder went on to become first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the U.S. In Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement, Marcia Gallo wrote “For women who came across a copy in the early days, The Ladder was a lifeline. It was a means of expressing and sharing otherwise private thoughts and feelings, of connecting across miles and disparate daily lives, of breaking through isolation and fear.” The Ladder appeared monthly from 1956 until 1970, then every other month until its demise in 1972.

EMPHASIS MINE:
To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Daughters of Bilitis, The Ladder published five of the Pierre Louy’s “Sings of Bilitis, from the translation by Mitchell S. Buck of The Collected Works of Pierre Louis (New York, Liveright, 1926). The Ladder added:

Our cover photo this month (by Herner Neumeister) was taken at  the Spoleto, Italy premiere of John Butler’s ballet “Les Chansons de Bilitis” (“Songs of Bilitis”), set to Debussy’s music. The dancers are Vera Zorina and Carmen de Lavallade. We are grateful to Mr. Butler for the photo and permission to use it.

LIV
The Past Which Survives

I will leave the bed as she has left it, unmade and rumpled, the covers tangled, so that the form of her body may remain impressed beside mine.

Until tomorrow, I will not go to the bath, I will not wear any garments, I will not comb my hair, for fear lest I efface her caresses.

This morning, I will not eat, nor this evening; and upon my lips I will place neither rouge nor powder, in order that her kiss may remain.

I will leave the shutters closed and I will not open the door, for fear lest the remembrance which she has left might fly out upon the wind.

LXIV
The Sleeper

She, sleeps in her unbound hair, her hands joined behind her neck. Does she dream? Her mouth is open; she breathes gently.

With a bit of white swan’s-down, I wipe away the perspiration of her arms, the fever of her cheeks, but without awakening her. Her closed eyelids are two blue flowers.

Very softly, I will arise; I will go draw water, milk the cow and ask fire of the neighbors. I would arrange my hair and dress before she opens her eyes.

Sleep, dwell for long between her fair, curved eyelids, and continue the happy night with a dream of good augury.

LXI
Tendernesses

Close thine arms, gently, like a girdle about me. 0 touch, touch my skin thus! Neither water nor the breeze of noontide are so soft as thy hand.

Today, cherish me, little sister; it is thy turn. Remember thou the tendernesses which I taught thee in the night past, and kneel thou near me, silently, for I am weary.

Thy lips descend upon my lips. All thine unbound hair follows them like a caress after a kiss. It glides over my left breast, it hides thine eyes from me.

Give me thy hand; it is hot. Press mine; hold it always. Hands better than mouths unite, and their passion is equaled by nothing.

LXIX
Words in the Night

We rest, our eyes closed; the silence is deep about our couch. Ineffable nights of summer! But she, believing me asleep, lays her warm hand upon my arm.

She murmurs: “Bilitis, thou sleepest?” My heart throbs, but, without response, I respire regularly like a woman couched in dreams. Then she begins to speak:

“Because thou hearest me not,” she says, “Ah! How I love thee.” And she repeats my name: “Bilitis… Bilitis…” And she touches me with the tips of her trembling fingers.

“It is mine, this mouth! Mine alone! Is there another so beautiful in the world? Ah! My happiness, my happiness! Mine are these naked arms, this neck, this hair…”

LXXVI
Evening Near the Fire

The winter is hard, Mnasidika. All is frozen except our bed. But arise and come with me, for I have lit a great fire with dead branches and broken wood.

We will warm ourselves, crouching quite naked, our hair over our backs, and we will drink milk from the same cup and we will eat cakes with honey.

How gay and noisy the flame is! Are thou not too near? Thy skin reddens. Let me kiss it wherever the fire has burned it.

Amidst the ardent firebrands, I will heat the iron and I will dress thy hair here. With a dead ember I will write thy name upon the wall.

— “Songs of Bilitis.” The Ladder 10, no. 3 (December 1965): 10-11.

A Daughters of Bilitis breakfast, 1959. L-R: Del Martin, Josie, Jan, Marge, Bev Hickok, Phyllis Lyon.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
► 60 YEARS AGO: Daughters of Bilitis Founded: 1955. Phyllis Lyon remembered the phone call in September. Rose Bamberger was on the other end, asking, “would you like to be a part of the group of six of us that are putting together a secret society for Lesbians?” Lyon recalled later, “We said ‘Yes!!’ Because we would immediately know five more lesbians and we did, which was…. AMAZING.” The “we” were Lyon (see Nov 10) and her partner, Del Martin (see May 5). They had known each other since meeting in Seattle in 1950, and lived together in San Francisco since 1953. But they felt isolated because they hadn’t made any other friends who were lesbians. So when Rose, whom they met earlier that summer through a gay male couple they knew, suggested they start a secret club, Lyon and Martin jumped at the chance. “She wanted it to be in people’s homes and she wanted it to be so we’d be able to dance … so that we wouldn’t get caught up in police raids and we wouldn’t be stared at by tourists and so on. You couldn’t dance in the bars in those days. And she loved to dance. That was the whole idea behind it.”

Over the month of September, four couples, including Martin and Lyon, met to make plans for forming the club. Their first decision to make was the club’s name. Several were suggested: Que Vive, Habeas Corpus, Plus Two, Amazon — but all of them were rejected. Then someone suggested Daughters of Bilitis, named for the work of nineteenth century poet Pierre Louys, whose Songs of Bilitis spoke of lesbian love. Lyon had never heard of him. “Del and I went to the library to look up Bilitis, and of course found nothing. They had said it would be a great name because no one would know what it meant.” The second important decision was how to pronounce it. They rejected Bill-EYE-tis because they thought it sounded too much like a disease. So Bill-EE-tis it was.

The small group met several more times to begin putting some organization behind the idea: bylaws, membership rules (no one under 21, males welcome only as guests on specific occasions), and a tentative schedule. Business meetings would be held on the first Wednesdays of each month at 8:00 p.m. “Qui vive” became the club’s motto, sapphire blue and gold the colors, and an triangular insignia was chosen — that was serendipitous; they didn’t know that the pink triangle marked homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps. And then they named interim officers: Del Martin was president, Noni Frey was vice president, Phyllis Lyon was secretary, Rosemary Sliepen was treasurer, and Marcia Foster was trustee.

The first official meeting took place on October 19, 1955. It was awkward. The women quickly realized that they would be welcoming other women into their homes with whom they had very little in common except their sexuality. But more meetings followed, and the members became more comfortable with each other, they also became more confident. Within a year, they began reaching out to the local Mattachine Society and the staff of ONE magazine in Los Angeles. When they joined the Mattachine Society to lobby for a change in California’s sex laws, they began to get involved in local advocacy and cooperation with other homophile groups.

But they remained focused for providing a social and intellectual outlet for women within the larger gay movement. In 1956, DoB began publishing The Ladder, first as a typewritten and mimeographed newsletter, then as a nationally distributed magazine which became a lifeline to lesbians across the country and around the world. Soon, there were DoB chapters in dozens of other cities, including one in Melbourne, Australia, which was the first openly gay political organization in that country. Beginning in 1960, the Daughters convened the first of their biennial conventions in San Francisco.

DoB remained active until 1970, when the national organization disbanded but allowed the remaining local chapters to continue under the name. The Ladder survived the national organization by two years, until it went under due to a lack of financial support in 1972. But as many as twenty local DoB chapters continued in several American cities, with New York, Boston and the original San Francisco chapters remaining particularly active. The original San Francisco chapter folded in 1978, and its files, which included both the local and national archives, were turned over to the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. At last report, the Boston Chapter, since moved to Cambridge, was still in existence as of 2004, but it appears to have gone dormant sometime since then.

[Source: Marcia M. Gallo. Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006).]

“Downtown” Markleeville, Alpine County’s unincorporated county seat.

► 45 YEARS AGO: Gay Liberation Front Plans Takover of Alpine County: 1970. Los Angeles gay activist Don Jackson was quite serious when he suggested the idea at a meeting of  fellow West Coast Gay Liberation Front members in December of 1969. Tiny Alpine Count California, located high up in the Sierra Nevadas and not far from Reno, had a population of just a little over 400 residents and only 384 eligible voters. Why not get a bunch of gay people together and move to Alpine?  It would only take a few hundred people to move there and, after ninety days of residency, the could register to vote, mount a recall campaign against current officeholders, and elect gay members to the five-person county board, as well as judges and sheriff. In  short, they could take over the entire county and create a “gay mecca.”

When Jackson proposed the idea at the West Coast GLF conference in Berkeley, the idea didn’t catch on. Other gay leaders denounced the effort because it would, in effect, create a new gay ghetto. It would further reinforce the feeling of separation that gay people felt “rather than breaking down walls.” Los Angeles activist Morris Kight, who was himself no stranger to cockamamie ideas for the sake of publicity, didn’t like this one. “I thought they were all crazy.  We can’t do that, we can’t go into the country. We’d starve to death.”

Undaunted, Jackson pressed ahead with the idea. And it certainly had a certain appeal for some. With homosexuality still a criminal act in California (it would remain so until 1975: see May 12), having power over law enforcement would be a really big deal. As Jackson explained, “A gay Superior Court Judge would have great discretionary powers. A gay district attorney could choose which laws and which criminals he wished to prosecute. … It would mean a … gay civil service and a county welfare department which made public assistance payments to refugees from prejudice.” Before long, 479 gay people had signed up and promised to move into the county by January 1, 1971.

By the summer of 1970, even Kight came around, sort of. As one of the leaders of the Los Angeles GLF, he still thought the idea was silly. But the LA GLF’s “A Demonstration A Day” campaign had failed to garner any media attention. “You have to hit them over the head with a two-by-four before they’ll pay attention to our issues,” he complained. ” A gay and lesbian takeover of a whole county: now that would certainly be a two-by-four!”  “So I brought together Jon Vincent Platania, Stanley Williams, and Don Kilhefner.  The four of us met over at 1501 North Hoover, next door to KCET-TV and I said, ‘Let’s do it.  Let’s take over Alpine County, but don’t.  Let’s agree among ourselves that we’ll fake it.  That we’re going to be serious, we’ll stare into the camera and we’ll say that we’re taking over Alpine Count ‘…And so we held a press conference.”

Platania later remarked, “people were just homophobic enough to believe and fear it.”  On October 19, the wires services picked up the story and it ran it in papers nationwide, quoting extensively from GLF’s press release:

The GLF statement said: “Housing could be created under public housing laws with funds furnished by the state and federal governments. A new county health service and hospital could provide for our sick.

“It would mean a … gay civil service and a county welfare department which made public assistance payments to refugees from prejudice.” … “The new gay (community) could bring a large income from the tourist trade, “Jackson wrote. “Communications media could be relied upon to give the gay colony worldwide publicity on account of the uniqueness and the controversy it is sure to cause.”

Controversy indeed, especially among those who already called Alpine County home. Hubert Bruns, chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors, joined four other officials in a closed-door meeting with Gov. Ronald Reagan’s assistant legal affairs secretary to try to figure out what options were available to them. The news wasn’t good. Bruns told reporters, “If these people come up here and abide by the laws, there’s nothing in the world we can do to prevent them from coming and registering. Today, to the best of our knowledge, we don’t have gay people here. We do not need that kind of business.”

Bruns predicted a chilly reception. “We thought it was a joke,” Bruns said. “Today we don’t think it is a joke. They will receive a hostile reception when they come,” adding “apples and peaches don’t grow very well” in the cold climate. “No fruit is very welcome in our particular county.” When asked how he would know which of the new residents were fruits, Bruns replied, “We’re going to make every attempt to find out. I’m sure we’ll know some of them.” Other observers noticed that the cool reception wouldn’t just be from county residents. The planned January 1 start date would have coincided with the dead of winter when it’s not uncommon to have twenty-five feet of snow on the ground.

The LA GLF was ecstatic over the publicity. As a GLF writer crowed in their newsletter Front Lines:

Not everyone in the gay community was on board either. The Gay Liberation Front of Berkeley voted against the proposal. They gave the same reason they gave for everything else they opposed: it was “sexist” and “racist.” And “impractical,” something that they had not been known to be worried about before. Alpine County sheriff Stewart Merrill expressed relief that Berkeley withdrew from the plan. But Berkeley’s vote didn’t bother L.A.’s Don Kilhefmer though. “All the Berkeley vote means is that they don’t dig the idea, while San Francisco and Los Angeles is going ahead.” By then, Kinhefmer added, more then 500 had signed up to move, including some from Las Vegas, Witchita and Washington, D.C. Kight and other L.A. activists saw the whole idea as nothing but a hoax, albeit one that had an important result: the mainstream media — including NBC television, which sent one of their top reporters to Alpine County to cover the news — was now discussing anti-gay discrimination, bigotry, and other issues important to the gay community.

But the plan fizzled as winter approached, as Kight and other L.A. activists knew it would. Jackson, on the other hand, was completely serious about what he called his Stonewall Nation high up in the Sierras, and he continued his organizing efforts, in vain, well into the New Year. That January, Alpine County was blanketed in eight feet of snow in the worst snowstorm in nineteen years.

Postscript: Whatever reservations Alpine County residents had towards gay people in 1970, those attitudes changed remarkably by 2008, when Alpine County was one of just three interior counties in California to vote against Prop 8. County residents disapproved of the discriminatory ban on same-sex marriage by 379 to 293.

[Additional sources: Associated Press. “Homosexual group plans gay takeover.” The Daily Review (Hayward, CA), October 19, 1970.

Associated Press. “Mountaineers fear gay takeover.” The Milwaukee Journal, October 22, 1970. Available online here.

United Press International. “Alpine County seeks Reagan’s aid in blocking gay invasion.” Lodi (CA) News Sentinel, October 22, 1970. Available online here.

United Press International. “Gay Front turns down plan to seize county.” Youngstown (OH) Vindicator, November 4, 1970. Available online here.

Associated Press. “Liberation group still intends to go to Alpine County.” St. Joseph (MO) Gazette, November 6, 1970. Available online here.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► Robert Reed: 1932-1992. Poor Carol Brady. How could she know that her husband was gay? Actually, Florence Henderson, who played “the lovely lady” in The Brady Bunch, later said she figured it out the first time they shared a screen kiss in the first episode.

Reed was already a well-established character actor, appearing in episodes of more television series than anyone can count. He also worked on Broadway, in Neil Simon’s Barefoot In the Park. Reed never liked his role on The Brady Bunch, thinking that the schmaltzy show was beneath him. He often sparred with the show’s producer, Sherwood Schwartz over the silly scripts and nonsensical story lines. But Reed liked his co-stars and filled the role of father figure to the six younger cast members whenever he could. After the third season wrapped, he even brought the entire cast on vacation to New York and a cruise on the Queen Elizabeth II to London. Most of the cast members knew he was gay, but they were very protective of the fact. After all, in the 1970s it would have been a career-killer. When he died in 1992 of colon cancer and lymphoma, the media reported that he had died of AIDS (he had tested positive for HIV the year before but it had not progressed to AIDS). His Brady family was taken aback by the sensational reporting surrounding his death. As he was a father figure to the Brady cast in life, they returned the favor by being something of a family-figure to him. The cast attended his memorial, while many of his actual relatives stayed away.

► 70 YEARS AGO: Divine: 1945-1988. He was born as Harris Glenn Milstead, but everyone knew him as Divine, the Drag Queen of the Century who practically defined what a John Waters movie was all about. Divine described his character as “just good, dirty fun, and if you find it offensive, honey, don’t join in.” But he drew a clear distinction between his private life and his performance. “My favorite part of drag is getting out of it,” he said. “Drag is my work clothes. I only put it on when someone pays me to.” And yet whether he was in or out of drag, he was always Divine: he even had it put on his passport.

His most famous character, that of Edna Turnbald in the film Hairspray, was so popular that the character has been played by a male in drag in every adaptation since then, whether on the stage or the 2007 film remake. But not all of his characters were in drag; he also appeared as the racist TV station manager Arvin Hodgepile in Hairspray and as Earl Peterson, the fat man driving an Edsel station wagon who picks up Divine while hitchhiking. Divine was nominated for a Razzie Award for playing Rosie Velez in Lust In the Dust, which Tab Hunter both produced and starred in. I think he should have won an Oscar, with Lainie Kazan receiving special kudos for playing Divine’s step sister. He died, much too soon, of heart failure in 1988 at the age of 42.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?