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 lobbyJanuary 2nd, 2015
In June, the Luxembourg Parliament voted by a large margin in favor of marriage equality. Yesterday that law went into effect.
Heartfelt congratulations to the tiny nation and its people.
January 2nd, 2015
In August of 2014, U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle found that Florida’s ban on same-sex marriages violated the provisions of the US Constitution. He placed a stay on his ruling until appeals (and requests for further stays) could be filed with higher courts. No extended stays were granted and Judge Hinkle’s stay expires today on Monday, January 5th.
Washington County Clerk Lora Bell’s requested that Judge Hinkle direct her as to whether this ruling applies only to the plaintiffs, and the state Attorney General asked whether the ruling applied to all county clerks. Yesterday Judge Hinkle provided clarification regarding those to whom his ruling applied.
Hinkle’s order was slightly nuanced and illustrates the care that judges go through to apply not only the spirit of the law, but its technical structure and authorities. There are three major points in what he said
The technical response
In the absence of any request by any other plaintiff for a license, and in the absence of a certified class, no plaintiff now in this case has standing to seek a preliminary injunction requiring the Clerk to issue other licenses. The preliminary injunction now in effect thus does not require the Clerk to issue licenses to other applicants.
Because there were no other parties in the lawsuit and because it was not a class action lawsuit, the rules of the court do not compel this clerk to issue licenses to any other couples.
The real response
Then the judge followed with the clencher:
But as set out in the order that announced issuance of the preliminary injunction, the Constitution requires the Clerk to issue such licenses. As in any other instance involving parties not now before the court, the Clerk’s obligation to follow the law arises from sources other than the preliminary injunction.
In other words, Hinkle is saying, “I’m not the one compelling you to issue this license. The US Constitution compels you to do so. So hell yes! Follow the law!”
The threat
And he preceded this by “clarifying” what would happen to those county clerks who decided that Hinkle’s ruling doesn’t apply to them and that they could just ignore the US Constitution’s protections.
History records no shortage of instances when state officials defied federal court orders on issues of federal constitutional law. Happily, there are many more instances when responsible officials followed the law, like it or not. Reasonable people can debate whether the ruling in this case was correct and who it binds. There should be no debate, however, on the question whether a clerk of court may follow the ruling, even for marriage-license applicants who are not parties to this case. And a clerk who chooses not to follow the ruling should take note: the governing statutes and rules of procedure allow individuals to intervene as plaintiffs in pending actions, allow certification of plaintiff and defendant classes, allow issuance of successive preliminary injunctions, and allow successful plaintiffs to recover costs and attorney’s fees.
Hinkle warned them that if they want to be obstructionist, additional plaintiffs could sue, the case could become a class action, it could be determined by preliminary injunction (almost immediately), and the cost of all of this will come out of that clerk’s budget. In synopsis, Hinkle said that his ruling may be followed by all courts to all same-sex couples. Further, while it could be technically ignored, this is merely a short-term defiance of the US Constitution and an expensive one, at that.
Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a ‘proceed at your own risk’ statement, indicating that she will not be participating in any efforts to defy the judge:
Following significant public confusion about the federal-court injunction, the court today granted the clerk of court’s request for clarification. In the order, the court specified that the injunction does not require a clerk to issue licenses to same-sex couples other than the plaintiffs, but the court stated that “a clerk of court may follow the ruling, even for marriage-license applicants who are not parties to this case.” Attorney General Bondi’s statement is as follows:
“This office has sought to minimize confusion and uncertainty, and we are glad the Court has provided additional guidance. My office will not stand in the way as clerks of court determine how to proceed.”
The law firm advising the Florida Association of Court Clerks and Comptrollers had, before the clarification, advised counties not to follow the ruling. Yesterday they issued an advisory opposite of their earlier opinion and recommended that clerks offer licenses. “Judge Hinkle’s order states that any clerk refusing to issue a license could be subject to civil damages and liability for the plaintiffs’ fees and costs,”
But the anti-gay activists are saying something quite else. Florida Family Policy Council (who’s sister group Florida Family Action filed a nutcase lawsuit trying to stop marriages) had this to say:
“Judge Hinkle’s ruling is being widely misinterpreted. It clearly says that only the clerk Washington County is required to issue a marriage license and only to the two persons in that case. Judge Hinkle has no jurisdiction outside of the Northern District of Florida to bind any clerk outside of North Florida. Clerk’s outside of North Florida are required to obey the current law and are still subject to all the penalties of a first-degree misdemeanor for violating it,” said John Stemberger, president and general counsel of the Florida Family Policy Council.
Liberty Counsel proclaimed “Victory in Federal Court”
In a highly anticipated ruling to clarify an August preliminary injunction in the federal case Brenner v. Scott, the district judge agreed with Liberty Counsel that the injunction does not require Florida clerks of court outside Washington County to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on January 6. Indeed, the new order clarifies that the injunction is limited to the plaintiffs in the case, expressly holding, “The preliminary injunction now in effect thus does not require the [Washington County] Clerk to issue licenses to other applicants.”
Misinterpretation is definitely going on. But it isn’t by the Attorney General, the law firm advising the clerks, or the newspapers. To see this as a “victory” for anti-gay forces requires a special kind of blinders and more than a little willingness to deceive oneself and others.
Irrespective of the declarations by anti-gays, the end result will be that starting tomorrow on Tuesday, many counties will be granting marriage licenses to same sex couples. Others may not do so immediately, and they engage in a costly and futile legal entanglement before they, too, do so.
This doesn’t mean smooth sailing. Already some clerks have changed their policies to discontinue all marriage ceremonies conducted by the clerk or at the courthouse – be they same-sex or opposite-sex – based on their religious beliefs that whatever else you do, you must never treat your neighbor how you wish to be treated. But that is likely to be only a minor inconvenience as clergy step in to fill that role.
For all practical purposes, marriage equality has finally come to Florida.
January 2nd, 2015
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From David, a Florida-based gay lifestyle magazine, May 1972, page 51.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► William “Billy” Haines: 1900-1973. Throughout his life, Haines refused to deny his homosexuality. At the age of 14, he ran way from home with his boyfriend. Five years later he became a top model, and from 1924 through 1930, he was one of Hollywood’s most dashing leading men during the Silent era. He was already starting to successfully transition to talkies when he picked up a sailor in Los Angeles’s Pershing Square and took him to a room at the YMCA. The police raided the Y and Haines was arrested. MGM head Louis B. Mayer demanded that Haines enter into a sham marriage to salvage his career, but Haines refused to leave his longtime lover Jimmie Shields. Haines was fired and his name was entered into the so-called Doom Book, the blacklist maintained by Hays Commission.
Haines and Sheilds turned their attentions to each other and to interior design. Their design business took off quickly, thanks to Haines’s connections in Hollywood which allowed them to become the designers to the stars. Clients included Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, Carole Lombard, George Cukor, Betsy Bloomingdale, the Annenbergs and the Reagans. Haines and Shields remained together for nearly fifty years, prompting their friend Joan Crawford to dub them the “the happiest married couple in Hollywood.” Gloria Swanson tried to get Haines back into the movie studio for Sunset Boulevard in 1950, but Haines declined. Haines died on December 26, 1973 of cancer. Soon after, Jimmie Shields put on Haines’s pajamas, crawled into their bed, and took an overdose of pills. They are buried together at Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery. In 1999, Haines was the subject of a biography, Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood’s First Openly Gay Star
►Michael Tippett: 1905-1998. Britain, in some respects, is a small island, very nearly not quite big enough to simultaneously host two acclaimed openly gay classical composers who were pacifists during WWII. And so Michael Tippett has often been overshadowed by his contemporary, Benjamin Britten (see Nov 22). Tippett was imprisoned as a conscientious objector (Britten avoided imprisonment), and that, with his broader interest in humanitarian work, often influenced his music. His wartime premiere of his pacifist oratorio, A Child of our Time, (with Britten’s partner, Peter Pears, cast as soloist) received wide acclaim. The Times of London called it “strikingly original in conception and execution,” and The Observer hailed it as “The most moving and important work by an English composer for many years.”
The premier of his First Symphony, Third Quartet, and Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli — one of his most popular and frequently performed works — soon followed. But audiences and performers alike found his 1955 opera The Midsummer Marriage confusing. Modeled after Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Tippett’s work recast it as a Jungian manifesto where, as he put it, “a warm and soft young man was being rebuffed by a cold and hard young woman to such a degree that the collective, magical archetypes take charge.” The music, however, was well received, and he re-used the Four Ritual Dances from the opera as a separate concert work. Controversy surrounded premieres of two following works, the Piano Concerto (1955, its first appointed soloist backed out after declaring it unplayable), and the Second Symphony (1957). During the symphony’s premiere, the BBC Symphony orchestra actually broke down live on air a few minutes into the first movement and had to be restarted.
In 1965, Tippet visited America for the first time, and that experience marked a major turning point as he began incorporating jazz and blues into his music. His third opera The Knot Garden not only explored the complex themes of the Sexual Revolution, but also incorporated electric guitar and a drum set in the orchestra. His Third Symphony (1973) also was influenced by American blues, with the solo soprano’s part becoming a tribute to the late blues singer Bessie Smith. But his fourth opera The Ice Break was roundly criticized for its hackneyed use of American slang and the inclusion of race riots and a psychedelic trip giving what The Telegraph calls “toe-curling results.” Nevertheless, Tippett’s popularity grew through the 1970s and 1980s. He died in 1998, just six days after his ninety-third birthday.
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January 1st, 2015
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From The Advocate, July 12, 1979, page 12.
Some three and a half decades ago, long before Scruff and Grinder, before Gay.com and AOL chat rooms, before the Internet and BBS’s — before all of that, some were still turning to computers, via computerized dating services like Datagay, to help them find their Mr. Right or Mr. Right Now, as the case may be.
EMPHASIS MINE:
The Los Angeles Advocate closed out 1967 with a December editorial comparing the relatively free atmosphere LGBT people in San Francisco enjoyed compared to the near-daily examples official and unofficial harassment in Los Angeles and wondered why there was such a difference:
First of all, we have to bury the idea that SF’s gains were made simply because it is a “different city,” Homosexuals here have used this as an excuse for far too long. True, there was a certain set of conditions that led to the new freedom enjoyed by homosexuals there, but these conditions were man-made, not the result of Kismet — a few enlightened men in positions of power in the Police Department; a few strong and determined homophile organizations, SIR, CRH, and the Tavern Guild; and an unbelievably inept harassment of a big New Year ‘s Eve Ball a few years ago. It was the latter event that apparently triggered the homosexual resurgence, and the organizations were quick to capitalize on the police bungling. The results of the efforts by some hard working people are evident to those of us who visit that city.
Bars are flourishing. Arrests are at a minimum. SIR has almost 1000 members. The Tavern Guild is stronger than ever. The organizations sponsor a variety of public events. Many politicians openly court the homosexual vote. The October issue of SIR’s Vector Magazine carried eight political ads, including one by a candidate for Sheriff. Candidates for Mayor or their representatives spoke before homosexual groups during the campaign. …
The time must come soon when we in Los Angeles will have to test our political muscle, We may get whipped time and again, but if we learn from our defeats, we can still get stronger and do battIe again. One thing is certain, though — the LA organizations will have to unite in any political effort and bury all past enmities. This will be the real test of the homophile leaders. A massive drive to register homosexuals for voting must precede any serious political effort, and homosexuals must devote more of their energies to educating the heterosexual community about homosexuality. It’s worth a good try or two. We cannot believe that homosexuals enjoy second class citizenship.
— Editorial: “Politics by the Bay.” The Los Angeles Advocate, December 1967, page 12.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► 130 YEARS AGO: English Criminal Law Amendment Act Takes Effect: 1885. English law had long held that homosexuality was an “abominable crime” punishable with death by hanging, but in 1861, the law was modified to provide imprisonment from ten years to life instead. But crime of sodomy was always difficult to prosecute because it required a witness and evidence that the sexual act had been fully consummated, complete with penetration and what we would call a happy ending. Obviously, that made convictions rare.
That changed in 1885, although the change may have been somewhat unintentional. During the middle of the nineteenth century, there was a growing concern over the dangers suffered by England’s daughters over the “gross indecencies” imposed upon them. But again, convictions were rare because the statute required that the sexual assault take place in a “public place.” And so on January 1, 1885, a revision to the criminal code raised the age of consent for girls from thirteen to sixteen, and it made “gross indecencies” punishable regardless of age and place a misdemeanor, punishable with up to two years imprisonment. It didn’t take long for “gross indecency” to be interpreted by the courts to include homosexuality. In fact, it would be under this statute that Oscar Wilde would be convicted and sentenced to the maximum two year term ten years later.
► 50 YEARS AGO: San Francisco Police Raid New Year’s Day Ball: 1965. Early San Francisco LGBT-rights advocates had long recognized that much of the opposition to homosexuality rested on religious objections, and that if any progress was to be made, it was necessary to foster links between the gay community and the bay area’s religious leaders — at least those leaders who might be inclined to be supportive, whether publicly or privately. Earlier in 1964, Daughters of Bilitis founders Phyllis Lyon (see Nov 10) and Del Martin (see May 5), together with Glide Memorial Methodist Church, formed the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. CRH was notable for two reasons: not only was it the first organization in the U.S. to incorporate the word “Homosexual” in its name, but it was also the first organization to bring straight and gay people together to minister to the gay community.
And that opportunity for those early straight allies to get a first-hand taste of what gay people routinely experienced came on New Year’s Day of 1965, when CHR held a New Years Mardi Gras as a fundraiser at California Hall. When the ministers informed the San Francisco Police Department on December 23 of their planned costume party, the police tried to coerce the hall’s owners into cancelling the rental. Organizers again met with police on December 29, for negotiations which the ministers described “strained.” SFPD officials couldn’t understand why these ministers were arguing on behalf of gay people. Observing the wedding bands on the ministers’ fingers, one officer reportedly said, “We see you’re married. How do your wives accept this?” Their wives, the ministers explained, would be at the ball also, along with other members of their congregations. Police tried to question them on theology and warned them that they were being “used” by local homophile organizations, but the ministers persisted. Finally, the two parties reached a deal where police promised not to arrest anyone in costume, including those in drag.
A couple walks past police officers to attend the New Year’s Mardi Gras ball.
Those promises quickly proved empty. As guests began arriving at 9:00 p.m. on New Year’s Day, they encountered police officers snapping photographs of everyone as they entered the building. The obvious attempt at intimidation deterred many — organizers expected 1500 to show up but only about 500 actually attended. Later that evening, police demanded entry into the building. Three CRH lawyers explained that the party was a private party under California law and that police could not enter without buying tickets or showing a warrant. The lawyers were arrested, along with a ticket-taker, and charged with obstructing an officer. Two other gay men were arrested for “disorderly conduct” after one of them tripped over a chair; police accused him of trying to kiss another man and both were hauled in.
Throughout the night, police repeatedly entered the hall to conduct “fire code inspections.” The ball was scheduled to end at midnight, but organizers decided to end the ball an hour earlier. Their next job was to get their guests safely out of the building. One minister was threatened with arrest while escorting two guests to their cars.
Police photographer snaps photos of everyone as they enter California Hall.
For many of the straight attendees, this was their first exposure to routine police intimidation tactics against the gay community. Del Martin said, “This is the type of police activity that homosexuals know well, but heretofore the police had never played their hand before Mr. Average Citizen … It was always the testimony of the police officer versus the homosexual, and the homosexual, fearing publicity and knowing the odds were against him, succumbed. But in this instance the police overplay their part.”
The following morning seven of the ministers who had attended the party held a press conference where they described the pre-event negotiations and the resulting “intimidation, broken promises and obvious hostility” of the San Francisco Police. The American Civil Liberties Union agreed to represent those under arrest.
The New Year’s Mardi Gras party, occurring as it did some five years before Stonewall, proved to be a turning point for gay rights in San Francisco. As the Mattachine Society’s Hal Call (see Sep 20) recalled, “That was when we got newspapers, TV, and radio on our side. The police were so brutal. And with some respectable clergymen on our side, that was a turning point.” Phyllis Lyon said that it was “our first step into some kind of connectedness with the rest of the city.” City officials, embarrassed by the obvious police misconduct, responded by designating officer Elliot Blackstone as the first liaison between the department and the LGBT community. (At his retirement dinner in 1975, Blackstone was saluted by LGBT community leaders for his ensuing twenty years of advocacy and support.)
When the three lawyers’ trial began in February, the police department were still trying to figure out the legal basis for their actions. When asked why police were taking pictures of guests arriving at the ball even though no crime had occurred, one official replied that police “wanted pictures of these people because some of them might be connected to national security.” He also said that the contingent of more than a dozen officers and two photographers were needed because “we went just to inspect the premises.” After four days of prosecution testimony and before the defense could begin presenting their case, the judge ordered a directed verdict of “not guilty” after four days of prosecution testimony. One of the lawyers who had been arrested and charged, Herb Donaldson, would go on to become San Francisco’s first openly gay judge.
[Other sources: Kay Tobin. “After the ball…” The Ladder 9, no. 5 (February 1965): 4-5.
Unsigned. “Cross currents.” The Ladder 9, no. 9 (June 1965): 14-16.
Edward Alwood. Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media
Marcia M. Gallo. Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement
LGBT Religious Archives Network. “Raid at New Year’s Day Ball at California Hall.”]
► 
Los Angeles Gay Bar Raided: 1967. It all was sparked by the temerity of a kiss, when a small group of gay men at Silver Lake’s Black Cat bar, upon the countdown to midnight on New Years’ Eve, had the gall to kiss each other “on the mouth for three to five seconds” in the presence of about six undercover policemen who had infiltrated the gay bar. As soon as the pecks on the lips began, police identified themselves and began viciously beating and arresting the kissing offenders. As the melee widened, several people tried to escape to the New Faces bar across the street. Undercover officers followed and raided that bar as well. One of the New Faces workers was beaten so badly by police that they cracked a rib, fractured his skull and ruptured his spleen. Six Black Cat kissers were tried and convicted of “lewd or dissolute conduct” in a public place — legaleese for, in this instance, hugging and kissing.
Just as with the New Year’s Mardi Gras raid in San Francisco two years earlier, the Black Cat raid had the effect of galvanizing the gay community in Los Angeles. Gays turned out for protests and demonstrations in the months that followed, and they began to pass a newsletter around which quickly morphed into a local newspaper, The Los Angeles Advocate, which a few years later became the nationally-distributed Advocate. By the time a similar police raid took place in a dive bar in Greenwich Village two years later, the ground was well prepared for gays to come out nationally to declare their presence in society. In 2008, the Black Cat bar was declared a historical-cultural landmark by the city of Los Angeles, in a move that was partly inspired by the story of the Black Cat bar posted on BTB in 2006.
► Homosexuality decriminalized: The first day of the year often marks the day in which new state laws take effect, which explains why on this day in history, a number of states officially decriminalized homosexuality effective January 1. Among the states that I know of in which laws prohibiting same-sex relations include: Arizona (1980), California (1975), Colorado (1971), Hawaii (1972), Illinois (1962), Iowa (1976), Maryland (1998 for oral, 1999 for anal), New Mexico (1975), North Dakota (1978). Ohio (1974), Oregon (1971) and Vermont (1977). (If you know of any others, please let me know in the comments below.)
Of that list, Illinois is particularly noteworthy. When the state legislature adopted the wholesale revision of their entire criminal code earlier that year, they used the American Law Institute’s 1956 Model Penal Code as a guide, which omitted homosexual acts as criminal offenses (see Jul 28). When the Illinois legislature followed suit, it became the first state in the nation to legalize consensual same-sex relationships.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► E.M. Forster: 1879-1970. Why did the author of such classics as Where Angels Fear to Tread
Before Forster’s lifelong conflict with his sexuality, he was well on his way to becoming a celebrated man of letters. His first novel, 1905’s Where Angels Fear to Tread
Forster’s lifetime publication ended in 1924, but that didn’t mean he stopped writing altogether. He worked on a novel of a homosexual love story set in London, Cambridge, and Wiltshire, with parts of the story likely drawn from personal experiences. But given his reputation that had already been established with the earlier novels — and given that homosexual relationship between men was a criminal offense throughout Britain — Forster could see no way to out himself by publishing Maurice
Based on the strength of his earlier works, Forster was elected an honorary fellow at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life, doing relatively little save an occasional essay and an appearance on the BBC. He maintained his relationship with Buckingham, the “love of his life,” and became close friends with Buckingham’s wife, Mary. In 1964, three years before Britain finally decriminalized homosexuality, Forster complained to his diary, “Now I am 85 how annoyed I am with society for wasting my time by making homosexuality criminal. The subterfuges and the self-consciousnesses that might have been avoided.” He passed away following a stroke in their Coventry home in 1970, and Maurice
► James Hormel: 1933. The grandson of the founder of Hormel Foods made history of his own in 1999 when President Bill Clinton appointed him U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg, making him the first openly gay man to represent to U.S. as an ambassador. Clinton first considered Hormel for Ambassador to Fiji in 1994, but following protests from Fiji, Clinton declined to submit Hormel’s nomination to the Senate. Instead, Hormel was named to the U.N’s Human Rights Commission in 1995, and he became an alternate for the U.N. General Assembly in 1996.
Clinton nominated Hormel for the Luxembourg post in 1997, but the Republican-controlled senate blocked his nomination for the next two years. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) compared homosexuality to alcoholism and kleptomania and other Senators and anti-gay activists called Hormel pro-pornography and anti-Catholic. Hormel was finally named Ambassador in May 1999 as a recess appointment. He was sworn in as ambassador in June with his partner holding the Bible, and his former wife, five children and several grandchildren in attendance.
Previously, Hormel had been one of the co-founders of the Human Rights Campaign in 1981, and he funded the Kames C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library in 1995. He currently lives in San Francisco with his partner, Michael P. Nguyen. His memoir, Fit to Serve: Reflections on a Secret Life, Private Struggle, and Public Battle to Become the First Openly Gay U.S. Ambassador
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December 31st, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From This Week In Texas, January 1, 1977, page 3.
Mary’s opened in 1972 as a gay bar in Houston’s Montrose area, at around the time Montrose was just beginning to develop its identity as a gayborhood. It quickly established a rather wild reputation: “[T]he bar was known for having it’s own set of rules, one of which made it ‘illegal’ to wear underwear. And newcomers who violated the rule would have their underwear stripped from them and thrown to the rafters, past the trapeze that was normally manned by a naked bartender or patron.” As the years wore on, the bar also became something of a community center: “On a Friday night you could experience your favorite fetish out back, and on Monday you could attend a rally to support AIDS funding.” The bar changed ownership in 2003, and experienced a long, slow decline. It’s iconic outside mural was painted over in 2006, and the bar finally closed in 2009. The building now houses the Blacksmith coffee shop.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► LIFE Magazine’s “Homosexuals In Revolt”: 1971. In Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part I (1981), there is the famous pun in which the Count de Monet tells King Louis XVI, “It is said that the people are revolting.” The king replies, “You said it. They stink on ice.” Ten years earlier, Life magazine found homosexuals revolting all over the place, in its year-end photo essay covering “the year that one liberation movement turned militant”:
It was the most shocking and, to most Americans, the most surprising liberation movement yet. Under the slogan “Out of the closets and into the streets,” thousands of homosexuals, male and female, were proudly confessing what they had long hidden. They were, moreover, moving into direct confrontation with conventional society. Their battle was far from won. But in 1971 militant homosexuals showed they were prepared to fight it.
…They resent what they consider to be savage discrimination against them on the basis of a preference which they did not choose and which they cannot — and do not want to — change. And while mist will admit that “straight” society’s attitudes have caused them unhappiness, they respond to the charge that all homosexuals are guilt-ridden and miserable with the defiant rallying cry “Gay is Good!” … Never before have homosexuals been so visible.
The photo essay consisted of eleven pages of angry gays, fists clenched and raised in the air, confronting police, marching in the streets, organizing, and, of course, wierding people out. Later in the essay came mentions of early gay rights groups and activists, including Frank Kameny (May 21), Jack Baker (see Mar 10), Rev. Ray Broshears (see Sep 27), Merle Miller (see Jan 17), and Rev. Troy Perry (see Jul 27) — each and every one of them a “militant.” As for the younger and more nameless “militants”:
Most of the young militants shown here are members of homosexual liberation’s most effective organization, New York City’s Gay Activists Alliance. …GAA has developed a form of protest called a “zap,” which is part picket line and part sit-in. … The activists claim that demonstrations offer them the best therapy for the humiliations inflicted by anti-homosexual society. “One good zap,” they say, “is worth six months on a psychiatrist’s couch.”
Life‘s follow-up article asked the burning question, “Is Homosexuality Normal or Not?”, and they tackled it pretty much the way everyone did back then: by talking to a lot of straight people about gay people, but without quoting from a single gay person. Featured in the article was noted anti-gay therapists Edmund Bergler (despite being dead for nearly ten years), Lawrence Hatterer (who conducted electric shock aversion therapy), Irving Bieber, and Charles Socarides — who would later go on to co-found the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). The article tried to present a rundown on what makes gay men gay (there was virtually no mention of lesbians in the article), and then, without quoting from a single “homosexual militant”, asserted that these militants opposed all research on homosexuality. All of this led to the article’s final two paragraphs:
Whether liberationists choose introspection, militancy, or violence as a course of action, the basic stumbling block remains the same: heterosexual antipathy to homosexuality. Will this ever change? Dr. Hatterer has observed that society’s tolerance of homosexuality is increasing but he doubts that we will ever accept it as a desirable “alternative lifestyle.” Nonetheless he and virtually all other psychiatrists advocate repealing the laws that violate this minority’s civil rights.
On the question of “normality,” much remains to be learned. In opposing all inquiry, the militants expose fears of what science might find out about them. Dr. (Evelyn) Hooker’s task force on homosexuality makes the sensible recommendation that the National Institute of Mental Health fund a center for the study of all sexual behavior. “It is essential,” says the report, “that a study of homosexuality be placed within the context of the study of the broad range of sexuality, normal and deviant.”
[Source: “Homosexuals In Revolt” Life 71, no. 26 (December 31, 1971): 62-71. Available online via Google Books here.
“Is Homosexuality Normal or Not?” Life 71, no. 26 (December 31, 1971): 72. Available online via Google Books here.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► Joe Dallesandro: 1948. His father was in the Navy and his mother just sixteen when Joe was born, and by the time he was five his mother was serving time for auto theft. The younger Dallesandro ended up on foster care before being reunited with his father in Queens. By age fifteen Dallesandro was expelled for punching the school principal and began to follow in his mother’s footsteps steeling cars. After wrecking one stolen car in the Holland Tunnel, he was stopped by police and shot in the leg. He was sentenced to a boy’s rehab center in 1964.
Dallesandro escaped a few months later, robbed a theater in Brooklyn, and fled to Mexico before eventually hitchhiking to Los Angeles. There, he took to hanging out at the bus station where, among the many lucrative offers, was one for modeling for Bob Mizar’s Physique Pictoral as part of Mizar’s Athletic Model Guild. After getting into more trouble in L.A., Dallesandro made his way back to New York, where he appeared in his first Andy Warhol film in 1967, the experimental 25-hour Four Stars. Dallesandro’s work with Warhol and Paul Morrissey changed everything:
“There’s no rhyme or reason why I wound up where I wound up,” says Joe, still sounding vaguely incredulous about his fate. “I walked into that place and everything changed. It wasn’t until Paul and Andy came into my life that I got what you might call ‘direction’. It was only then that I started to know what I wanted to do with my life. If I hadn’t met them I’d probably have ended up in prison because I kept making the same mistakes over and over again. When I got connected with Paul and Andy I got some good direction.”
The following year, his nude scenes in his role as a hustler in Warhol’s Flesh brought Dallesandro to somewhat more mainstream audiences. His comfortable nonchalance with nudity and his laid-back film presence made him the first explicitly-eroticized male sex symbol of the 1970s. His onscreen comfort in his beautiful skin extended to both genders, on screen and off. The New York Times‘ Vincent Canby nodded to Dallesandro’s bisexual appeal when he wrote, “His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him.” Warhol said simply, “In my movies, everyone’s in love with Joe Dallesandro.” Fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo called Dallesandro “one of the ten most photogenic men in the world.” Dallesandro’s crotch served as the cover art for the Rolling Stones’ 1971 album Sticky Fingers, and Lou Reed immortalized him as “Little Joe” in his 1972 hit “Walk on the Wild Side.”
Dallesandro’s collaboration with Warhol and Paul Morrissey continued, with Lonesome Cowboys (1968), Trash (1970), Heat (1972), and Flesh for Frankenstein
By 1980, Dallesandro decided to move to New York, kick the drugs, and eventually dry out. Dallesandro’s movie career then received its second breath with minor roles in The Cotton Club (1984, as the mobster “Lucky” Luciano), Sunset (1988), and Cry-Baby (1990). He also appeared in several guest roles on television, including Miami Vice and Matlock. But since the 1990s, Dallesandro had been semi-retired from acting. At last report, he and his third wife were happily managing an apartment complex in Los Angeles.
► Jennifer Higdon: 1962. Who says playing flute in a Tennessee high school band is a dead end? It certainly wasn’t for Jennifer Higdon, who majored in the instrument at Bowling Green State University where she also began composing. After graduation, she served as Composer-in-Residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Green Bay Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Fort Worth Symphony. Her one-movement tone poem blue cathedral, inspired by her brother’s death from cancer, has become among the most performed modern orchestral works by a living American composer. Her Violin Concerto, which premiered in 2009 in Indianapolis, was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. That same year, her Percussion Concerto won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Higdon lives with her high school sweetheart, Cheryl Lawson, in Philadelphia, where Higdon teaches at the Curtis Institute, where she holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Compositional Studies.
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December 30th, 2014
It’s been nearly 270 years since my forebears left their ancestral home and sailed to the new world. So any relatives I may have in Scotland are very distantly related.
Nevertheless, a hearty congratulations to all the Scottish Kincaids, and all other Scots on this, their first day of marriage equality.
December 30th, 2014
John Stemberger
As we discussed, last night the plaintiffs and the state of Florida filed briefs in response to Washington County Clerk Lora Bell’s inquiry as to whether Judge Hinkle’s ruling re same-sex marriage applied only to one couple or to all clerks in the state. The plaintiffs argued that the ruling is state-wide and the Attorney General did not disagree.
It is almost certain that Judge Hinkle will clarify that his ruling applies to all members of the state infrastructure in any role they play in issuing, processing, recording, or otherwise dealing with marriage licenses and the rights, obligations, and benefits which derive from them.
But Florida Family Action, an anti-gay advocacy group, is predicting otherwise. And they are now suing those mayors and county clerks which have affirmatively announced that they will issue licenses to same-sex couples or participate in their marriages.
Because they are idiots.
Florida Family Action (FFA) announced today the filing of two lawsuits against three elected officials in Central Florida who have made clear public statements of their intentions to defy Florida law and either issue same-sex marriage licenses or officiate over same-sex marriage ceremonies on or after January 6, 2015.
…
John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Action organization issued the following statement regarding the lawsuits:“All three of these officials have shown great contempt and disrespect for the rule of law and are behaving irresponsibly and unprofessionally. The federal court decision is clear that it only applies narrowly to the two plaintiffs and only in Washington County. Elected officials must be held accountable to the law and to the constitution they have sworn to uphold. Part of the reason for the recent landslide mid-term election was the utter disregard and insolence shown by President Obama for the rule of law which is now infecting so many other politicians across America. Respect for law must be restored or else legitimacy in government as an institution will diminish at an even greater rate. Ultimately, if these local officials continue in this same reckless pattern of behavior, they could easily face the same fate as so many other politicians did who are now retired as a result of the last election.”
Stemberger seems to be unaware that you file lawsuits in real courts with real judges, not in the court of public opinion. Or, for that matter, that supporting equality is likely to be a political advantage for these elected officials.
He also seems unaware that judges are very very busy people with tight schedules and they hate it when you waste their time with frivolous lawsuits.
But he may soon learn that.
December 30th, 2014
The fate of same-sex marriage in Florida has been subjected to a bit of a circus. No so much as some states, such as Idaho, Kansas, or Missouri, but still Florida has had its fair share of confusion.
Part of the issue is that there are two courts in which the state’s ban was found, state court and federal court, both ruling on whether the marriage ban violates the US Constitution.
In July, Monroe County Circuit Judge Luis Garcia found that the ban violated the both the Due Process and the Equal Protections provisions of the US Constitution. The state had not put on a particularly stiff defense, merely arguing that the state had the right to set its own laws; Attorney General Pam Bondi did not attend, sending an assistant DA who spoke for about five minutes.
A week later, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Sarah Zabel found the same thing. Both rulings were appealed to the Florida State Supreme Court.
In August, U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle also found that the state’s ban violated the equal protection and due process provisions of the US Constitution. Attorney General Bondi appealed the ruling to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
She then made a request of the state Supreme Court: that it not make a ruling until the Supreme Court of the United State took on one of the many marriage cases before it.
At that time it was a common expectation that SCOTUS would announce in October which case/s it would hear. But to pretty much everyone’s surprise, the court said that it would not be reconsidering any of the pro-gay rulings from the Fourth, Seventh, and Tenth Circuits.
In response Attorney General Bondi asked the Florida State Supreme Court to not continue waiting but instead to decide the issue for the state in due haste. I’m not sure why it was that the Florida Court did not respond (this story is a bit convoluted), but it has not acted.
Which brings us to the federal case, the ruling by Judge Hinkle.
When Hinkle found that the ban violated the US Constitution, he placed a temporary stay on the ruling so that the state could appeal and so that higher courts could put in place a permanent stay, should they wish. That stay expires on January 5th.
Florida requested that the Eleventh Circuit extend the stay until the appeal was heard. It was denied. They requested that SCOTUS extend the stay. It was denied. So on January 6th, same-sex marriages will be allowable in Florida.
The question is, however, to what extent.
The legal counsel for the county clerks association sent a letter telling the clerks that the ruling only applied to the county in which the plaintiffs in that case live. Anti-gay activists demanded that not only was it just one county, but that it was also only just for the one couple.
So the county clerk in Washington County, a small sparsely populated county on the Florida panhandle, asked the judge, “what do I do?”. Judge Hinkle gave the various parties until midnight last night to file their views on the matter.
The judge’s opinion on the scope of his ruling was pretty clear in his order requesting input. He didn’t exactly call the clerk an idiot in so many words, but it was implied.
The counsel for the couples filed a brief yesterday in which they argued that Hinkle’s ruling applied to all the state.
Attorney General Bondi’s brief was a bit more circumspect. Bondi didn’t give an opinion about what the scope of the ruling should be, choosing instead to let the judge do that. She noted that the wording of the original order may not explicitly include all of the state’s county clerks but requested that the judge just tell her what he meant.
This Court is best situated to determine the reach of its own order.
…
If the Court intends the injunction to have effects beyond those that appear on its face, or beyond the interpretation of the Brenner plaintiffs’ counsel, the Court may wish provide appropriate clarification.
In other words, ‘Judge, I don’t think your order says what you want it to say, so please give me some language that tells me what to do’.
I don’t think the judge’s position is going to change. So we should expect ‘clarifying language’ to be released shortly and that same-sex marriages will be legal throughout the state a week from today.
December 30th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Arizona Gay News, December 22, 1978, page 16.
Phoenix’s Band Box was so named for the live bands and other performers that had played there.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
► Beauford Delaney: 1901-1979. His mother had been born into slavery and never learned to read or write. Because of her experiences, and in keeping with the family’s hard-fought position of respectability in Knoxville where his father was a Methodist minister, the values of dignity, education and a keen awareness of injustices were paramount in the Delaney household. Beauford and his younger brother, Joseph, developed an interest in art at an early age, when they drew copies of pictures they saw on Sunday school cards and the family Bible. As a teenager, Beauford got a job at a local sign company, where his work was noticed by Lloyd Branson, Knoxville’s best known artist. Delaney became Branson’s apprentice and, with Branson’s backing, moved to Boston to study art in 1924. His escape from the Jim Crow south opened up a huge world, where he learned the essentials of painting techniques, was first exposed to the black activist politics, and experienced his first intimate encounter with another young man.
Beauford Delaney, “Can Fire In The Park”, 1946
By 1929, Beauford used up Boston and moved to Harlem, which coincided with the great artistic and political flowering known as the Harlem Renaissance. Despite being penniless during the early crushing years of the Great Depression, Delaney found an affinity with the “multiple of people of all races [who] spend every night of their lives in parks and cafes.” As he wrote in his journal, their courage inspired him to believe that “somehow, someway there was something I could manage if only with some stronger force of will I could find the courage to surmount the terror and fear of this immense city and accept everything insofar as possible with some calm and determination.”
That calm and determination became the subject of some of his greatest works. Delaney eventually found work here and there — as a bellhop, telephone operator, doorman, janitor — while also finding, slowly, an audience for his paintings. He rubbed shoulders Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Miller, and became close friends with author James Baldwin (see Aug 2), and yet he remained an isolated individual, presenting carefully crafted faces to the people he encountered depending on where he was. To his neighbors in Greenwich Village, where his studio was, he was part of a larger gay (and mostly white) circle of friends; in Harlem, he kept his other life hidden. The decidedly macho world of modernist and impressionist art in New York undoubtedly added to his isolation. Those who knew him saw an introverted and private person, one who had apparently never formed any lasting romantic relationships.
Beauford Delaney, “Nativity Scene,” 1961.
In 1953, Delaney moved to Paris where he found a greater sense of freedom in an already well-established expatriate community of ex-patriate African-American artists. His paintings shifted from the figurative images of his New York period to more of an abstract impressionist exploration of color and light. But by 1961, his mental and physical health began to deteriorate, problems which were compounded by continuing poverty, hunger, and heavy drinking. Baldwin remembered, “He has been starving and working all of his life – in Tennessee, in Boston, in New York, and now in Paris. He has been menaced more than any other man I know by his social circumstances and also by all the emotional and psychological stratagems he has been forced to use to survive; and, more than any other man I know, he has transcended both the inner and outer darkness.”
Delaney returned briefly to the U.S. in 1969 to visit family, but he was dogged by paranoia and hallucinations. He returned to Paris in 1970 and tried to resume working, but it became increasingly clear to his friends that he was no longer capable of living independently. In 1975, he was hospitalized, then committed to St. Anne’s Hospital for the Insane. He died there in 1979, and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Denaley’s work was mostly forgotten through much of the 1970s and 1980s, despite his influence on fellow artists. In 1986, Baldwin wrote that Delaney was “the first living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist. In a warmer time, a less blasphemous place, he would have been recognised as my Master and I as his Pupil. He became, for me, an example of courage and integrity, humility and passion. An absolute integrity: I saw him shaken many times and I lived to see him broken but I never saw him bow.”
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December 29th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From The Empty Closet (Rochester, NY), December 1989, page 8.
John Addington Symonds (left) and Edward Carpenter (right)
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► “The Most Beneficial Results Accrue from the Sexual Relations Between Men”: 1892. John Addington Symonds was an English poet and literary critic who, although married and a father, was an early advocate of male homosexuality (see Oct 5). Edward Carpenter was a poet, socialist philosopher, and an early gay advocate — and among the very few who lived openly as a gay man in Victorian England (see Aug 29). In 1892, Symonds was beginning his collaboration with sexologist Havelock Ellis (see Feb 2) for Ellis’s first installment of his six-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex, when Symonds wrote to Carpenter to discuss some of the topics he intended to cover. While Ellis intended to stick strictly to a psychological discussion on homosexuality (or Sexual Inversion, as it was called at the time), Symonds was keen to open the topic up to historical and ethical considerations:
It is a pity that we cannot write freely on the topic. But when we meet, I will communicate to you facts which prove beyond all doubt to my mind that the most beneficial results, as regards health and nervous energy, accrue from the sexual relations between men: also, that when they are carried on with true affection, through a period of years, both comrades become united in a way which would be otherwise quite inexplicable.
The fact appears to me proved. The explanation of it I cannot give, & I do not expect it to be given yet. Sex has been unaccountably neglected. Its physiological & psychological relations even in the connection between man & woman are not understood. We have no theory which is worth anything upon the differentiation of the sexes, to begin with. In fact, a science of what is the central function of human beings remains to be sought.
This, I take it, is very much due to psychologists, assuming that sexual instincts follow the build of the sexual organs; & that when they do not, the phenomenon is criminal or morbid. In fact, it is due to science at this point being clogged with religious & legal presuppositions.
…My hope has always been that eventually a new chivalry, i.e.., a second elevated form of human love, will emerge & take its place for the service of mankind by the side of that other which was wrought out in the Middle Ages.
…How far away that dream seems! And yet I see in human nature stuff neglected, ever-present — pariah and outcast now — from which I am as certain as I live, such a chivalry could arise.
Whitman, in Calaumus, seems to strike the key-note. And though he repudiated (in a very notable letter to myself) the deductions which have logically to be drawn from Calamus, his work will remain infinitely helpful.
[Source Chris White’s Nineteenth-Century Writings on Homosexuality: A Sourcebook
Catholic Church Reaffirms Opposition to Homosexuality: 1975. It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. But on this date in 1975, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — think of it as the Vatican’s equivalent of the Justice Department (so to speak) — issued Persona Humana, addressing “certain questions concerning sexual ethics.” On the subject of homosexuality, the Congregation stated:
A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.
In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.
In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God. This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.
The same statement also reaffirmed the Church’s opposition to premarital sex, extramarital sex and masturbation (which it also branded “an intrinsically and seriously disordered act”).
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Billy Tipton: 1914-1989. It wasn’t until his death in 1989 when it became widely known that the American jazz pianist, saxophonist and bandleader was a transman. Early in his career, Tipton performed as a man while continuing to present as a woman otherwise, but by the 1940s, he had transitioned his gender identity fully to male — except for when he went home to his family, where he became Dorothy again, leading fellow musicians to believe he was lesbian.
By the 1950s, Tipton was identifying solely as a man. It was during that time when he was awarded a recording contract with Top records, for whom he recorded two albums of jazz standards. The albums were reasonably successful, and he was given the opportunity to sign a contract for four more. He declined the offer, and took his Billy Tipton Trio to Spokane where he performed weekly at a downtown nightclub called Allen’s Tin Pan Alley and worked as a talent broker at the Dave Sobol Theatrical Agency. He also entered into at least five heterosexual relationships, including a common-law marriage with Kitty Kelly with whom Tipton adopted three sons. One son, William, remembered Billy as a good father who loved to go on Scout camping trips. It was William who would learn that his father had been born a woman, when he was looking on as paramedics tried to resuscitate him after collapsing with a hemorrhaging peptic ulcer.
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December 28th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From This Week In Texas, December 27, 1975, page 13.
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 Shilts’s And the Band Played On
Among those awful things was sending out fundraising letters for NCPAC, which claimed that “Our nation’s moral fiber is being weakened by the growing homosexual movement and the fanatical E.R.A. pushers (many of whom publicly brag they are lesbians).” Meanwhile, Dolan had, at the time of that 1984 encounter with Kramer, had just ended an affair with a male epidemiologist at the New York City Health Department, and was then enjoying everything the gay social scene had to offer.
Dolan knew how to raise money. “The “shriller you are,” he said in 1982, “the easier it is to raise money.” He had honed those skills at NCPAC, and during the late 1970s as part of the leadership of Christian Voice, a pre-Moral Majority right wing anti-gay group. And those skills he honed during those years have 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 a 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 Dolan did live and die a homosexual, and a deeply closeted one at that. But despite his brother’s and family’s best efforts, the secret was out, and no amount of wishful thinking otherwise would ever change that fact.
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December 27th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Club Scene, a magazine catering to gay motorcycle clubs and enthusiasts. December 1983, page 22.
Kindred Spirits is described as “a women’s alternative” for Houston, Texas.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► “An Evil Force In Our Land”: 1708. That was a sermon against “sodomites” delivered by a British preacher, according to historian Rictor Norton:
The Societies for Reformation of Manners was founded in 1690 and there were about twenty such Societies by 1701. They aimed to clean up public vice, and focused particularly upon prostitution. The leader of the Societies, Reverend Bray, was obsessed with sodomy, which he called “an evil force invading our land” in the sermon he preached at St Mary’s Le Bow before the Societies for Reformation of Manners on 27 December 1708. Bray directed several raids from 1707 through 1709, in association with Constables who were themselves members of the Societies. By their annual meeting in 1710 they were able to boast that by their means “our streets have been very much cleansed from the lewd night-walkers and most detestable sodomites.” Our knowledge about the homosexual subculture of London at that time is exactly coterminous with the investigations of the Societies for Reformation of Manners. It is not accurate to say that the gay subculture was “born” at that time, only that it was “uncovered” by these campaigning moralists.
► A Stranger “Declared Himself in Favour of the Crime of Sodomy”: 1720. Historian Rictor Norton has a treasure-trove of British history at his web site. Here’s another excerpt, from The London Journal which reported the following:
Some Days since a Gentleman meeting another on the Royal Exchange, though a Stranger to him before, was presently acquainted with him, and told him, he was captivated with the fineness of his Person, and then declared himself in favour of the Crime of Sodomy; and warmly sollicited him for his Company to an adjoyning Tavern. This stun’d at first, the other; but collecting himself in order to view the Monster, and have an Opportunity to punish and put him to shame, he agreed to meet him the next Day at a Tavern by the Exchange; but before they met, the Gentlemen acquainted the Master of the House with the Matter, and several Persons were got ready on the Signal to enter the Room. Accordingly, when every thing within was ready for Action and the Alarm given, the People rushed in. The Guilty Person was not able to rectify some Indecencies he was in. Upon this they gave him the Cold Bath with several Pales [i.e. pails] of Water thrown in his Face. Thus restoring Speech and Motion to him, he cursed and swore in a very outragious manner, and endeavoured to fling himself out of the Room, but they would not part with him till he had been well rubbed down with some Oaken Towels, prepared for that purpose; after which they kick’d him out of the House.
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December 26th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Data Boy,December 23, 1982, page 29.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► 55 YEARS AGO: Body Build of Male Homosexuals: 1959. In many ways, just about everyone (including most of the mental health community) saw gay people, particularly gay men, as being so alien as to almost constitute a different species. Well, maybe not a different species literally, but for some, gay men were at least some sort of a mutation of homo sapiens, and were not like just any common man on the street. On December 26, 1959, the august British Medical Journal published a short paper by Dr. A.J. Coppen, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London who believed that he had proven, on the basis of physical measurements of just thirty-one gay men, that there was a distinct body build associated with homosexuality in men — and it was the same body build associated with mental patients.
He came to this determination by measuring the shoulders and hips of three groups of people. “The homosexual group,” he wrote, “consisted of 31 patients who had been either exclusively homosexual or predominantly homosexual, with only occasional heterosexual activity. The patients had attended the Maudsley Hospital primarily for homosexuality; the majority had been referred from the courts after they had been convicted of homosexual offences.” Because a number of them had “psychiatric symptoms” of “mainly depression or anxiety” (is there any wonder?), he included “another control group of 22 heterosexual neurotics, … as any differences found in the homosexuals may be related to the differences widely reported in psychiatric patients rather than to their specific sexual abnormalities.” The third group, a control group, consisted of 53 members of a business organization “who were attending for mass radiography,” and who agreed to be part of the study.
For all three groups, Coppen measured the circumference around their shoulders (biacromial) and hips (bi-illiac), calculated an equivalent diameter (he doesn’t say how), and used those measurements to determine what he called an “androgyny score” (3 x biacromial – x bi-iliac diameters, in cm.). Coppen scoured the literature to provide evidence to support his contention that such a score could detect deficiencies in masculinity in men — because, as they all knew in the 1950s, all homosexuals suffered from this very deficiency:
Raboch (1957) found a decreased biacromial diameter in hypogonadal men and in men with female sex chromatin. Lindegard (1956) showed that size of penis was correlated with the androgyny score. Patients suffering from pre-eclamptic toxaemia and frigidity have been found to have abnormally masculine androgyny scores (Coppen, 1958). Thus there is evidence that subjects who suffer from certain abnormalities related to sexual function will show abnormalities in their androgyny score. The hypothesis tested in the present investigation is that homosexuals have abnormally feminine androgyny scores.
And with those measurements, Coppen determined that:
The results show that homosexuals have a decreased androgyny score and biacromial diameter compared with the control group. This difference, however, is not specific for homosexuality, as the neurotic patients in this study also differ from the controls to approximately the same extent as regards both androgyny and biacromial width. The androgyny score does not discriminate between homosexuals and controls better than does the biacromial diameter, though, as the Chart shows, three homosexual patients have very low androgyny scores, outside the range of the other two groups. It appears, therefore, that homosexuals are similar to people with other psychiatric disorders in having decreased breadth measurements, but that their sexual abnormality is not specifically related to these. Rather it seems that the homosexual is influenced by the similar (unknown) factors that produce the abnormalities in body-build found in other psychiatric patients.
This article from 1959 is an interesting holdover from an early path of investigation that is reminiscent of nineteenth-century Phrenology. That discarded science is perhaps best known today for its busts and diagrams of human skulls with dotted outlines of areas denoted with labels like “Friendship” or “Adhesiveness” (see Aug 6). Phrenologists believed that different areas of the brain consisted of “organs” relating to different character traits. Early on, they also believed that it was possible to determine the different developmental levels of these “organs” by relating them to the shape of an individuals skull with its various bumps and bulges.
That last theory was soon discarded, but the idea that an individual’s character traits could somehow be imprinted on that person’s physical development was firmly established in the scientific imagination. In the late 1800s the Italian Cesare Lombroso, who is credited for founding the discipline of Criminology, drew on phrenology, Degeneracy Theory (see Aug 16, Sep 9, or Oct 26 for brief explanations) and Social Darwinism to argue that criminality was an inherited trait rather than an impulse of human nature. Lombroso argued that criminals, would-be criminals, and other “defectives” could be diagnosed via their anatomical features such as the shape of the forehead, ear sizes, limb sizes, asymmetrical features and other “stigmata of degeneracy.” The appearance of children with Down’s Syndrome, for example, only seemed to confirm these theories.
By the end of the first third of the twentieth century, such theories had been largely discarded. But some of the ideas that took root in those theories took a lot longer to die off. Texts on homosexuality right up through through the 1950s often had several paragraphs dwelling on the physical characteristics of their study subjects, and some even included nude photos to illustrate purported masculine deficiencies. By the late 1950s, those descriptions had mostly disappeared from the literature, which make this 1959 article something of an interesting anachronism.
[Source: A.J. Coppen. “Body-Build of Male Homosexuals.” British Medical Journal no. 5164, vol 2 (December 26, 1959): 1443-1445. Available online here.]
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December 25th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From Club Scene, December 1983, page 56.
All of us at BTB wish you a wonderful and happy Christmas.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
► TIME Magazine’s “Object Lesson”: 1950. Col. Alfred Redl was Austria-Hungary’s masterful chief of counter-intelligence, having set up a massive espionage network in Russia. But when the Russians discovered evidence of his homosexuality in 1903, they blackmailed him into becoming, for the next eleven years, a double agent. In 1913, Austria-Hungary officials learned of Redl’s treachery. A group of officers confronted Redl at the Hotel Klosmer, and left a revolver behind in Redl’s room when they left. Redl wrote a last farewell letter and shot himself (see May 25). Thirty-seven years later, Time magazine wrote about the growing Lavender Scare taking hold in the U.S. (see Feb 28, Mar 14, Mar 23, Apr 18, May 15, May 19, Jun 15, Jul 17, Dec 15), and recalled the Redl Affair, as that whole mess had been known, as an “object lesson” on the what it called the dangers of allowing gay people to work for the U.S. government:
Last week, a Senate investigating committee resurrected the case of Alfred Redl as an object lesson for the U.S. For 27 weeks, North Carolina’s frock-coated Clyde Hoey, with three other Democratic Senators and three Republicans, had been quietly looking into a sordid matter: the problem of homosexuals in the Government. The problem had been the subject of nervous explanations, joke-cracking and effective campaign sneers ever since last February, when Deputy Under Secretary of State John Peurifoy offhandedly told Congress that State had gotten rid of 91 employees for homosexuality (see Feb 28).
Senator Hoey’s investigators had compiled a shocking history. They had found a record of homosexuality or other sexual perversions among workers in 36 of 53 branches of government, as well as in the armed forces. Between Jan. 1, 1947 and last April, 4,954 cases had come to light among some three and a half million people in Government service. Most were in the armed services, which are far larger than civilian Government departments and traditionally aggressive at searching out perverts.
There were 574 cases involving civilian Government employees and 69 are still under investigation; in all the other cases the accused had either quit, been cleared or fired. The investigators found the greatest batch of civilian cases—143—in the State Department. State had cleared or gotten rid of all but a dozen whose cases were still pending. A surprise second in the totals was the Veterans Administration, with 101 cases. Others: Atomic Energy Commission, 8; EGA, 27; Congress’ legislative agencies (Library of Congress, congressional employees, etc.), 19; White House office, none.
…The investigators feared that some sex perverts would inevitably go undetected in Government jobs, but most federal bureaus and agencies, they concluded sharply, had been lazy or downright negligent about cleaning house. The Senators recommended tighter laws and harsher punishment for sex perversion in the District of Columbia, more intensive examination of job applicants.
[Source: “Object Lesson.” Time (December 25, 1950): 10.]
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► Albert Cashier: 1843-1915. It’s unclear when Jennie Irene Hodgers undertook a male identity, but by 1862 the Irish native was living in Illinois when he decided to enlist in the union army. He enlished as Albert Chashier and served in Company G as part of the Army of the Tennessee under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Company G fought in the siege of Vicksburg, the Red River Campaign and at Guntown, Mississippi. Cashier’s fellow soldiers noticed that he was small and standoffish, but thought little about it. He was once captured by the Confederate army, but escaped back to Union lines after overpowering a guard. He remained in the Union army until he and the rest of his company were mustered out in 1865.
After the war, Cashier worked as a private handyman for Illinois State Senator Ira M. Lish at his estate in Saunemin. Cashier also workd as a farm hand, church janitor, and cemetery worker. As a man, Cashier registered and voted in elections long before women’s suffrage came into being, and he claimed a veteran’s pension. He successfullly maintained his male identity until 1911, when he was hit by a car and broke his leg. The attending physician discovered his biological gender, but in an amazingly forward-thinking move, the physician decided to respect Cashier’s privacy, sharing the secret only with the superintendent of the Soldiers and Sailors Home at Quincy, where Cashier was then living. It was only after Cashier’s mind deteriorated and he was moved to Watertown State Hospital in 1913 when attendants discovered his birth gender and forced him to wear a dress. But when Cashier died on October 10, 1915, he was buried in his Civil War uniform and given a full military funeral. His grave stone in Saunemin cemetary simply reads: “Albert D.J. Cashier. Co. G., 19 Ill. Inf.” Sometime in the 1970s, a second tombstone was placed with Cashier’s birth name added.
► Quentin Crisp: 1908-1999. He was always a gender-bending raconteur, even going back to when he was the object of endless teasing in elementary school. In 1926, he studied journalism at King’s College London, but switched to art at Regent Street Polytechnic. He also visited the cafes and pubs of Soho’s Old Compton Street, which is still the heart of the gay community in London. It was then that he decided that his life’s work would be “making the existence of homosexuality abundantly clear to the world’s aborigines,” and he did so by developing the flamboyant style that would become his signature. When World War II broke out, he tried to join the Army, but was rejected on medical grounds — “sexual perversion” was the diagnosis. He remained in London during the Blitz, and placed himself at the service of American G.I.’s, so to speak. That’s where Crisp picked up his love for all things American.
In 1968, he achieved success with his third book, an autobiography he titled The Naked Civil Servant
Here he is in a Q&A session in Los Angeles following a lecture on style:
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December 24th, 2014
TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:
From The Blade (Washington, DC), December 1976, page 12.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
► Brenda Howard: 1946-2005. “The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why Gay Pride Month is June tell them “A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.” That’s how New York area gay rights activist Tom Limoncelli euglogized Brenda Howard shortly after her death in 2005. Howard was among the thirty-seven women and men who founded the more militant Gay Liberation Front shortly after the Stonewall rebelion in 1969. She helped to organize a one-month anniversary commemoration of Stonewall, and then created the Christopher Street Liberation Day March a year later for Sonewall’s first anniversary. She later pushed to expand the commemoration to a whole week, to be known as “Pride Week” and encouraged similar observances in cities across American. Those efforts led to her being known as “The Mother of Pride.”
After GLF broke up, Howard moved over to the Gay Activists Alliance to chair its Agitprop Committee and Speakers Bureau with it’s message, “Gay is great, be proud if you’re gay, don’t mess with us if you’re not.” In 1987, she helped to found the New York Area Bisexual Network and became active in BiPAC and BiNet USA. She died of cancer on June 28, 2005, on the very day of the thirty-fifth Pride Parade of New York.
Lee Daniels: 1959. The actor, producer and director became the first African-American to solo produce an Academy Award winning film with 1992’s Monster’s Ball
His 2012 film The Paperboy, a 1960s erotic thriller starring Matthew McConaughy, Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, David Oyelowo, Macy Gray and Scott Glenn, opened to decidedly mixed reviews. The strong cast appears to have saved the film from ignominy. The Village Voice Film Poll sprinkled best actor/actress nominations for just about about the entire cast, but nominated Lee Daniels for Worst Film. His 2013 film, The Butler
► Ricky Martin: 1971. Born Enrique MartÃn Morales, the Puerto Rican singer first achieved fame as a member of boy band Menudo before embarking on a solo career in 1991. His early popularity in Latin markets was boosted by his appearance in the second season of a Mexican telenovela, Alcanzar Una Estrella (“Reach for a Star”) in which he played a member of a boy band which achieves fame and fortune. In 1999, Martin found crossover appeal with the singles “Livin’ la Vida Loca” and “She’s All I Ever Had,” from his first English language album. That was followed with “She Bangs” in 2000. In 2007, he took a break from recording, but returned again with a new album in 2010, along with his autobiography, Me
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?
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