Box Turtle Bulletin

Born On This Day, 1961: Tom Ford

55 YEARS AGO: He definitely has a flair for making his own way. After studying architecture at Parsons The New School for Design, he got his first fashion design job in 1986 with American Designer Cathy Hardwick — through knowing what to say as well as what not to say. He told her that he attended The New School’s Parson division, but he didn’t bother to mention that he wasn’t an alumnus of its prestigious fashion design program. And he knew the right answer when she asked what designers he admired: Armani and Chanel. Hardwick recalled, “Months later I asked him why he said that, and he said, ‘Because you were wearing something Armani.’ Is it any wonder he got the job?”

Two years later, he moved to Perry Ellis, but he still wanted to get away from American design firms. Meanwhile, his partner, journalist Richard Buckley, had recently recovered from cancer, and the two were looking for for a drastic change of scenery. As luck would have it, Gucci was struggling and needed to overhaul its women’s ready-to-wear lines, but no major designer would come near the nearly-bankrupt firm. Ford and Buckley moved to Milan and Ford took over the women’s ready-to-wear line, and was quickly placed in charge of menswear and shoes. By 1992, he was also responsible for fragrances, image, advertising and store design, and the following year he was overseeing eleven product lines. Between 1995 and 1996, sales at Gucci nearly doubled and the company went public. When Gucci bought Yves Saint Laurent in 2000, Ford became its creative directer as well.

By 2004, Gucci was valued at $10 billion, but Ford and Gucci’s management fell into disagreements over artistic control of the group. That’s often the reason given for Ford to cash in his chips to leave Gucci. But it also marks a significant departure in Ford’s creative life as well. In March of 2005, he announced that he was opening his own film production company, and he made his directorial debut with 2009’s A Single Man, based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood. That same year, Ford re-entered the fashion world with the establishment of the TOM FORD brand, which opened his flagship store in New York City two years later. There are now dozens of TOM FORD stores around the world, and many of his products are available online. Ford and Buckley welcomed the arrival of their son, Alexander John Buckley Ford, in 2012. They currently split their time between homes in Los Angeles, London and Santa Fe. His next film, Nocturnal Animals, a thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams, Laura Linney, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is due out in November.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From David, a Jacksonville-based gay photography and lifestyle magazine, May 1972, page 13.

Even as far back as 1954, Miami’s Cactus Lounge on Biscayne Blvd. was widely known around town as Miami’s oldest gay bar. Yet somehow it escaped being mentioned in the local newspapers whenever bars were raided along Miami’s “Powder Puff Lane.” The Carnival Bar, which is also mentioned in this ad, wasn’t so lucky. It was raided along with at least six other bars in an anti-gay sweep in 1954. But the Cactus Lounge survived all of that and latest all the way up until 2004, when development finally accomplished what Miami’s mayors couldn’t do: shutter the bar permanently. The bar was torn down and replaced with a row of upscale condos, which themselves are conveniently located across the street from a Bentley dealership.

Emphasis Mine

Left: two women dressed in male attire. Right: two unidentified men. Both photos are from the early 1900s.

It’s very encouraging to see local efforts to preserve LGBT history in cities and towns all across the country. So much of the study of gay history seems to concentrate itself in the major urban areas. Finding a trove like this one in Lexington, Kentucky, is particularly special. Historian Jonathan Coleman and artist Robert Morgan have compiled more than 12,000 items and 100 hours of recorded interviews to create the Faulkner-Morgan Pagan Babies Archive of LGBTQ life in Kentucky, which is currently seeking a permanent home. Coleman will discuss LGBT history this Sunday at 2:00 p.m. at the University of Kentucky Central Library:

The project began in 2014, when Morgan, a well-known artist and figure in the gay community, told Coleman about material he had been collecting for decades. Much of it involved Faulkner (1924-1981), a renowned Lexington painter who was “out” long before it was socially acceptable.

Morgan, 66, who befriended Faulkner as a teenager, ended up with most of his photographs and memorabilia.

“Henry started giving me stuff, and he took me to all these houses,” Morgan said. “I would meet all these old gay men who were born in the 1800s, and they would tell stories.”

Members of the “Negro Review,” a drag show held in the 1930s at the Woodland Auditorium.

When the AIDS epidemic hit in the 1980s, Morgan cared for many local victims.

“Sometimes I was taking care of people I didn’t really know, and their families would come when they would die and throw all of their stuff in the street,” he said. “I would go back that night and go through the boxes and save their personal stuff, because it upset me so much that the families just threw all that away. I ended up with scrapbooks and photographs and ephemera documenting people’s whole lives.”

When people heard that Morgan was collecting, they brought him more material. An elderly man in Louisville sold him dozens of photographs of unidentified gay couples and cross-dressers he found over the years at Kentucky yard sales and flea markets.

…The archive includes a lot of drag photographs, including black men in women’s clothing performing in 1930s shows at the old auditorium in Woodland Park.

“Sometimes the only history we have are naked men and drag queens, because they were not worried about people seeing them in photographs,” Morgan said. They’re not representative of the larger gay community, he said, but “sometimes you have to take your history where you find it.”

 

Today In History, 1954: Miami Mayor Calls for Anti-Gay Crackdown

Miami Mayor Abe Aronovitz

As pressure mounted in the press over the growing anti-gay hysteria that had swept the Miami area following the murder of an Eastern Airlines flight attendant (Aug 3, Aug 11, Aug 12, Aug 13 (twice), Aug 14, Aug 15, Aug 16), Mayor Abe Aronovitz seized the moment when city manager E.A. Evans and police chief Walter Headley were both out of town on vacation to blast them for “coddling homosexuals” in the city.

Headley had already been singled out by the city’s newspapers for his policy of allowing gay bars to operate in Miami proper “so police can watch them” (Aug 16). That policy earned the him the praises of ONE magazine, the nation’s first nationally-distributed magazine. ONE’s public endorsement of Headly’s policies was more proof to the city’s papers that Headley’s tolerance of “Powder Puff Lane” was a “civic disgrace.”

By mid August, the papers were calling for the firing of Evans and Headley, and Florida’s acting Governor Charley Johns was threatening to intervene personally. Aronovitz decided he needed to respond to the growing political crisis. He told the papers that he would give Evans just one week from the time he returns from vacation to “clean out certain pervert nests in Miami proper.” Criticizing the police chief’s more lenient policies, Aromovitz added, “I firmly believe it is a disgrace to have a place on Biscayne Boulevard whose business caters to the disturbed mind which enjoys seeing a bunch of fairies perform where the sky seems the limit.”

Today In History, 1995: GOP Presidential Candidate Sen. Bob Dole Returns Donation from Log Cabin Republicans

Richard Tafel and Sen. Dole: He’s just not that into you.

Richard L. Tafel, president of LCR, received a letter from John A. Moran, the finance director for the presidential campaign of Sen. Bob Dole. The letter read: “Per our discussion, I am attaching a list of upcoming Dole for President fund-raising events. Senator Dole and I would appreciate any assistance you could give us in turning out your members at each event. I am looking forward to working with you. With all good wishes. Cordially, John.” The letter seemed to vindicate Tafel’s hard work in getting LCR recognized as a valuable partner in electing a Republican to unseat President Bill Clinton. With Dole, Tafel thought he had someone he could work with. Campaign officials were soliciting his support, and he prominently wore a Log Cabin lapel button as he discussed AIDS police with Sen. Dole during a fundraiser.

And so Tafel donated $1,000 to the Dole campaign to support his quest for the Republican nomination. But after a devastating showing at the Iowa Straw Poll — Dole was expected to win handily, but ended up tying with his arch-conservative rival Texas Sen. Phil Gramm — Dole’s front-runner status in the Republican field looked to be in jeopardy. And so in August, the Dole campaign decided to tack right, hard. And as part of that direction, they publicly returned LCR’s donation. Tafel was furious, and made Moran’s letter available to the New York Times. Nelson Warfield, Dole’s spokesman, said they the only reason they accepted the money in the first place was because of “a financial screw up.” He also accused the LCR of making the donation for publicity, saying, “They’re struggling for credibility.” Dole himself tried to appear insulated from his own campaign’s actions, telling ABC News, “I don’t agree with (LCR’s) agenda — I assume that’s why it was returned.” Campaign manager Scott Reed put the donation in a broader context: “We need to be seen as a consistent conservative — and we will be that.”

Dole captured the GOP nomination after his hard turn to the right, but this episode exposed the growing fissure between the party’s conservative and moderate wings. Critics asked why Dole’s campaign returned LCR’s donation “for ideological reasons” — the campaign had acknowledged that the action was the first take solely for that reason — but kept other donations from, for example, Hollywood producers who Dole sharply criticized three months earlier. Rep Steve Gunderson, (R-WI), then the only openly gay GOP Congressman, issued a letter to Dole asking, “Are you rejecting support of anyone who happens to be gay? If this is so, do you intend to now reject my support and request those on your staff who happen to be gay to resign?”

As the weeks wore on, the issue died in the press, but the internecine battles threatened to drive moderates from the party. On October 18, just as his campaign staff had hoped the furor was safely behind them, Dole reignited the controversy again when he publicly reversed the decision. One unnamed Republican said to be close to Dole told The New York Times that the campaign had acted without Dole’s knowledge in returning the check. “Dole absolutely opposed giving it back,” he said. “He was angry about it. The campaign did it without checking with him.” But now it was the conservative wing’s turn to be angry. Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, warned, “When a politician takes money from a group, he or she legitimizes that group’s agenda.” His rivals for the GOP nomination said that the reversal showed that Dole “lacked conviction.” Dole ended up winning the GOP nomination, but his support from the conservative win was lackluster during the general election campaign and President Bill Clinton won his bid for a second term.

Today In History, 1998: Lawyer Suggests Abortion If a Test Could Prove Fetus Has “Gay Gene”

That was the San Francisco Chronicle’s headline when Chicago attorney Aaron Greenberg, proposed this thought experiment on one possible consequence if science were to discover a genetic basis for homosexuality. Greenberg, who was set to present his argument before the 15th annual symposium of the San Francisco-based Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA), said he was “pro-gay, but also pro-freedom.” According to the Chronicle:

“All things being equal, I think a kid who is heterosexual would have an easier life, not for any good reason, but because people irrationally discriminate (against homosexuals),” he said, giving what he speculated would be the biggest reason parents would want a straight child.

He said parents who make such a decision also would probably relate better to a heterosexual child and might feel they would have a better chance of eventually becoming grandparents.

…”I don’t want to upset anyone,” Greenberg said. “But I don’t think, with certain conditions, that there’s anything morally objectionable with choosing a child’s sexual orientation.”

Even if hatred is the motive, he said there’s no harm in a homophobe choosing not to have a gay child.

San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano denounced the suggestion. “I find it very frightening,” he said. “I think that in Germany during World War II there were some of the same rationales” for the elimination of Jews. Discrimination against gay people is fast eradicating, and certainly even if it’s still around, it wouldn’t justify that. I think this guy is grabbing for the spotlight, and also capitalizing on the campaign against gays that’s coming from the Republicans.”

San Francisco PFLAG chapter heads, Sam and Julia Thoron, who had a grown lesbian daughter, said the world was a better place with their daughter in it. Sam added, “All of this implies that there’s something wrong with being gay. There’s nothing wrong with being gay, underline and exclamation point.”

But others, while not supporting Greenberg’s suggestion, nevertheless felt that the debate needed to be aired. GLMA Executive Director Ben Schatz said, “Sure it’s going to upset people. But I think it forces us to come to terms with the fact that people hate us and there’s no magic bullet to make it go away. I think this underscores that we can’t look to science or technology as an antidote to bigotry.”

Born On This Day, 1904: Christopher Isherwood

(d. 1986). Born in North West England to a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, young Christopher moved around a lot as his father was stationed in various towns around England. But after his father was killed in the First World War, Christopher and his mother and brother settled at Wyberslegh. As Christopher grew to adulthood, his life appeared to have taken on some of the wanderings of his father: He studied at Cambridge, but dropped out in 1925. He studied medicine at King’s College London in 1928, but left in 1929 when he followed a friend to Berlin. There, he discovered the thriving gay scene in the Wiemar Republic, and Isherwood thrived there. He had done some writing in England, but in Germany he came into contact with several other writers, including E.M.Forster (Jan 1), who became his mentor.

Isherwood wrote several novels throughout the 1930’s, including The Memorial and a collection of shorter novels which were later released as The Berlin Stories. When the Nazis came to power, Isherwood and his German lover moved to Copenhagen. After his lover returned to Germany for a brief visit in 1937 and was arrested as a draft dodger and for committing “reciprocal onanism,” Isherwood and his writing partner, W. H. Auden, traveled to China to collect material for a book they were working on, and stopped in New York on their way back to Britain. That’s when they decided to emigrate to the U.S., Auden remained in New York while Isherwood took off for Hollywood.

On Valentine’s day at the age of 48, he met nineteen-year-old Don Bachardy (May 18), and the two of them began a partnership that lasted until the end of Isherwood’s life. The differences in ages raised quite a few eyebrows among their circle of friends. They had their differences and difficulties, including separations and affairs, but in the end they remained devoted to each other. Their relationship provided material for 1964’s A Single Man, which Isherwood wrote during one of the couple’s periods of difficulty. Bachardy recalled later, “I was making a lot of trouble and wondering if I shouldn’t be on my own. Chris was going through a very difficult period (as well). So he killed off my character, Jim, in the book and imagined what his life would be without me.” The novel is not just a classic in the cannon of gay literature, but one of the great novels of the 20th century, and it became an award-winning film under the direction of Tom Ford in 2009. Isherwood died in 1986 of prostate cancer. Bachardy still lives in the home they shared in Santa Monica, California. The 2007 documentary Chris & Don. A Love Story recounts their lives together.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Emphasis Mine

From a letter written by Leonard Bernstein’s wife, actress Felicia Montealegre, sometime in 1951 or 1952:

The connubial couple.

Darling,

If I seemed sad as you drove away today it was not because I felt in any way deserted but because I was left alone to face myself and this whole bloody mess which is our “connubial” life. I’ve done a lot of thinking and have decided that it’s not such a mess after all.

First: we are not committed to a life sentence—nothing is really irrevocable, not even marriage (though I used to think so).

Second: you are a homosexual and may never change—you don’t admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do?

Third: I am willing to accept you as you are, without being a martyr or sacrificing myself on the L.B. altar. (I happen to love you very much—this may be a disease and if it is what better cure?) It may be difficult but no more so than the “status quo” which exists now—at the moment you are not yourself and this produces painful barriers and tensions for both of us—let’s try and see what happens if you are free to do as you like, but without guilt and confession, please!

As for me —- once you are rid of tensions I’m sure my own will disappear. A companionship will grow which probably no one else may be able to offer you. The feelings you have for me will be clearer and easier to express—our marriage is not based on passion but on tenderness and mutual respect. Why not have them?

…n any case my dearest darling ape, let’s give it a whirl. There’ll be crisis (?) from time to time but that doesn’t scare me any more. And let’s relax in the knowledge that neither of us is perfect and forget about being HUSBAND AND WIFE in such strained capital letters, it’s not that awful!

Born On This Day, 1918: Leonard Bernstein

(d. 1990) When he died only five days after announcing his retirement in 1990, the New York Times lionized him as “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.” He became instantly famous in 1943 when he stepped in at the last minute — unrehearsed — to conduct the New York Philharmonic when conductor Bruno Walter fell ill. That concert at Carnegie Hall was nationally broadcast, and it led to guest conductor engagements around the country. In 1947 he conducted a complete Boston Symphony concert in Carnegie Hall, the first time that orchestra had allowed a guest to do so in 22 years. In 1953 he became the first American-born conductor to conduct an opera at Milan’s famed La Scala. When he was named the New York Philharmonic’s musical director in 1958, he became the youngest person to fill that role in the orchestra’s history.

Bernstein was also the first conductor to give numerous television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954, continuing until his death. Meanwhile, he also achieved popular success with his many compositions, including three symphonies, ballets and operas; his Mass; and music for such Broadway hits as Candide, On the Town, and most famously, West Side Story.

Bernstein conducting the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, 1970.

Bernstein was known for both his punishing schedule and his highly animated conducting style. One legendary story has it that at his first rehearsal as guest conductor for the St. Louis Symphony, his initial downbeat was so dramatic that the startled musicians simply stared in amazement and made no sound. In 1982 Bernstein fell off the podium while conducting the Houston Symphony, and he did it again in 1984 while leading the Vienna Philharmonic in Chicago.

Bernstein married Chilean actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn in 1951. and although they had three children, the marriage didn’t fool anyone. He certainly didn’t fool her. She knew he was gay from the very beginning, and agreed to look the other way. The reached an accommodation, and by all accounts he was a devoted father and husband. But when they separated in 1976 and he moved in with his boyfriend, she was furious, saying, “You’re going to die a bitter and lonely old man.” A short while later, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. He begged her to let him move back in. She relented, and he took care of her until she died in 1978.

Bernstein’s homosexuality, often rumored throughout his life, became public knowledge with the 1987 publication of Joan Peyser’s Bernstein: A Biography. Arthur Laurents, Bernstein’s collaborator in West Side Story, said simply that Bernstein was “a gay man who got married. He wasn’t conflicted about it at all. He was just gay.”

Texas Leads A Five-State Lawsuit Over Obamacare Transgender Rules

From Buzfeed’s Chris Geidner:

Five states, led by Texas, and several nonprofit medical groups, all of which are religiously affiliated, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the Obama administration’s efforts to ensure health care coverage to transgender people under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“On pain of significant financial liability, the [Health and Human Services Department’s] Regulation forces doctors to perform controversial and sometimes harmful medical procedures ostensibly designed to permanently change an individual’s sex—including the sex of children,” the complaint in the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit also contains claims challenging abortion-relation coverage protections in the same regulation, specifically highlighting the lack of a religious exemption in the regulation or underlying ACA provision.

The lawsuit was filed in Northern District of Texas, the same district where Texas filed its thirteen-state lawsuit seeking to block the Obama Administration’s interpretation of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act to extend discrimination protections for transgender people under the law’s provisions based on sex. This latest lawsuit was assigned to Federal District Judge Reed O’Connor, the same judge who last week issued a preliminary injunction against the Administration’s Title IX efforts.

The four other states joining Texas are Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska and Wisconsin. The lawsuit also is filed on behalf of several religiously-affiliated nonprofits, which are represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

Wikileaks Outs Saudi Gay Men, Male Rape Victims, People With HIV

WikiLeaks has always bragged that it was on a mission to expose government secrets in the quest for open government. It’s own operations and agendas aren’t nearly so transparent, especially with its recent cooperation with Russian hackers to influence the U.S. presidential elections in favor of Donald Trump. Now Wikileaks is releasing private medical and other files affecting ordinary citizens which have nothing to do with government secrecy:

In the past year alone, the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web. In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, an extraordinary move given that homosexuality is punishable by death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom.

They published everything: my phone, address, name, details,” said a Saudi man who told AP he was bewildered that WikiLeaks had revealed the details of a paternity dispute with a former partner. “If the family of my wife saw this… Publishing personal stuff like that could destroy people.”

….The AP independently found three dozen records pertaining to family issues in the cables — including messages about marriages, divorces, missing children, elopements and custody battles. Many are very personal, like the marital certificates which reveal whether the bride was a virgin. Others deal with Saudis who are deeply in debt, including one man who says his wife stole his money. One divorce document details a male partner’s infertility. Others identify the partners of women suffering from sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and Hepatitis C.

…Three Saudi cables published by the WikiLeaks identified domestic workers who’d been tortured or sexually abused by their employers, giving the women’s full names and passport numbers. One cable named a male teenager who was raped by a man while abroad; a second identified another male teenager who was so violently raped his legs were broken; a third outlined the details of a Saudi man detained for “sexual deviation” – a derogatory term for homosexuality.

Scott Long, an LGBT rights activist who has worked in the Middle East, said the names of rape victims were off-limits. And he worried that releasing the names of people persecuted for their sexuality only risked magnifying the harm caused by oppressive officials.

“You’re legitimizing their surveillance, not combating it,” Long said.

Is Australia’s Marriage Equality Plebiscite Doomed?

Two recent developments have revived the debate over whether the Australian government should proceed with its stated intention to hold a promised national plebiscite over same-sex marriage this year, next year. Of course, the first development was the announcement that the plebiscite won’t happen until February at the earliest, despite promises by the ruling Liberal Party (which is actually Australia’s conservative party) and its coalition partners over the past two years to hold the plebiscite in 2016. The announced delay has been roundly denounced for breaking a major, oft-repeated campaign pledge. That row prompted former High Court justice Michael Kirby, who is openly gay, to publicly denounce the very idea of a plebiscite:

He said Australian voters had rarely supported referendum questions and there was no reason a plebiscite would be any different.

“It will mean any time that there is something that is controversial, that’s difficult for the parliamentarians to address or they don’t want to address, they’ll send it out to a plebiscite.

…”This is going to be, if it goes ahead … running out the old issues of hatreds and animosities, abominations and all the old arguments against gay people. We didn’t do this for the Aboriginal people when we moved to give equality in law to them, we didn’t do it when we dismantled the White Australia policy … we didn’t do it in advances on women’s equality, we didn’t do it most recently on disability equality. Why are we now picking out the LGBT, the gay community? It’s simply an instance of hate and dislike, hostility to a small minority in our population. It’s unAustralian.”

Kirby’s sentiments aren’t new. Others have said the same thing. They also note that when the Liberal government explicitly banned same-sex marriage in 2004, they didn’t hold a plebiscite to do it. And besides that, there is no provision in Australia’s constitution that would make a plebiscite binding. The Government would be free to ignore it regardless of its outcome. These and other similar reactions coming from many other quarters of Australian society seems to have stiffened the spines of opposition leaders in Parliament:

Bill Shorten has prepared the ground for Labor to block the government’s proposed marriage equality plebiscite after he launched a stinging attack on the plan.

Speaking to the National Press Club on Wednesday, the opposition leader said he and many of his colleagues were “on the record as opposing” the plebiscite.

“I am gravely concerned about the merits of the plebiscite,” he said.

With senators Nick Xenophon and Derryn Hinch indicating this week that they would vote against legislation to enable the plebiscite, a parliamentary bloc is emerging consisting of Labor, the Greens, Xenophon and Hinch that would be sufficient to block it.

Shorten is repeating the demand that Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull allow a free vote in Parliament. (A free vote occurs when party members are permitted to vote their conscience instead of being bound to support the party’s position.) Shorten noted that before Turnbull became Prime Minister, when his predecessor and fellow Liberal Tony Abbott held the job and opposed a free vote on marriage equality, Turnbull supported a free vote in Parliament. Other opposition parties also say they will oppose a plebiscite:

A plebiscite on same-sex marriage is looking less likely, with the Federal Opposition determined to have a parliamentary vote to change marriage laws instead.

The Government has promised to have a national vote — or plebiscite — to determine whether same sex marriage should be allowed. But the Greens, Labor and the three Senators from the Nick Xenophon Team are all firm that a plebiscite is unnecessary. That would make it impossible for the Government to pass a law to have a national vote.

…Greens leader Richard Di Natale said Parliament could agree to same-sex marriage when it meets for the first time next Tuesday, “but instead, the Liberals want to run a costly and divisive public vote that may be ignored by many of their so-called representatives anyway”.

“The plebiscite is pointless,” Senator Di Natale said.

“We already know there’s overwhelming support for marriage equality in the community and in the parliament so it can’t be seen as anything but a delay tactic.”

Polling shows that upwards of 70% of Australians support marriage equality, while support for conducting a national plebiscite is quickly losing ground.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From Arizona Gay News, August 18, 1978, page 3.

Homosexuality was very much in the news in 1978, thanks to the numerous Anita Bryant-inspired political hate campaigns taking place in several cities across America and the contentious Briggs Amendment that was being hotly debated in California. A number of cities, like Phoenix, saw a terrible spike in anti-gay violence. On August 7, Tucson-based Arizona Gay News reported on three separate incidents in late July:

The most serious of the three occurred late last Thursday night, July 27. Blain Henderson, 22, was leaving the 3-0-7 Bar by the side door when he was accosted by three people who took his wallet and demanded his automobile keys. Henderson refused to give up his keys and, while two of the men ran away, the third produced a small caliber revolver and shot Henderson. The bullet entered through the cheek bone, into the left eye, and lodged in the right eye with some splinters lodging in the brain. At presstime, Henderson was in critical condition in intensive care. Hospital spokespersons contacted late Tuesday appeared optimistic concerning Henderson’s recovery, although it is anticipated that, because of the eye damage, he will be permanently blinded. It is two early to speculate about possible brain damage.

On August 18, Arizona Gay News followed up with news of the fundraiser:

As reported in the August 7 issue of AGN, a member of the Phoenix gay community was assaulted, robbed and shot in the parking lot of a local Phoenix bar. Still under a doctor’s car and with almost positive loss of sight in both eyes, Blaine Henderson is recovering at the home of his brother and sister-in-law.

…Mr. Henderson is able to converse and visit with friends, but from all indications, he will require “lifetime care,” according to Phyllis Nest, who helped stage a benefit for Henderson and two other men injured the same week. … The Connection and the Doug Cooper Show will be holding a benefit dance and show for Blaine Henderson, Thursday, August 24 beginning at 8:00 p.m. and lasting until midnight. These benefits are being held to help defray the astronomical medical costs that are being accrued by Blaine. Dale Williams, popular owner of the Connection, is making the first donation of $100.

In better times, The Connection was known for hosting its County Fair in the parking lot over Memorial Day weekend. They also hosted an annual summer Luau, with the entire parking lot filled with sand to create a kind of a beach scene. Grace Jones reportedly performed at one of the Luaus. The levi/leather bar later opened a leather disco next door called Der Druck, with a Kenworth cab next to the dance floor. The owner died of AIDS in 1988, and the businesses closed soon after. The whole thing today is now a parking lot across the street from the VA hospital.

Today In History, 1970: New York Times Looks At “Homosexuals In Revolt”

Homosexuals are fit to print.

On June 28, 1969, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn erupted in revolt when New York City police tried to raid the bar. The New York Times, the city’s newspaper of record, barely covered the story, burying a few paragraphs on page 33 with the headline “4 Policemen Hurt in ‘Village’ Raid” (Jun 29). More than a year later, the Grey Lady finally found that the explosion of new gay organizations, along with the successful Gay Pride march and a large gathering in Central Park marking the one-year anniversary of Stonewall a few months earlier (Jun 28), was all too much to ignore. And so on August 24, 1970, the Times printed an exhaustive and (for 1970) relatively balanced exploration of the shifts that had just occurred within the gay community over the past year, namely its new-found pride and emerging sense of self worth. Of course, not everyone thought those developments were positive:

This new attitude has its critics, both among “straights” and among homosexuals. Many doctors believe that, while homosexuals have full legal rights, “gay” is not necessarily “good.” Dr. Lionel Ovesey, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, said: “Homosexuality is a psychiatric or emotional illness. I think it’s a good thing if someone can be cured of it because it’s so difficult for a homosexual to find happiness in our society. It’s possible that this movement could consolidate the illness in some people, especially among young people who are still teetering on the brink.”

Having gotten that out of the way, the rest of the Times article focused mainly on the the emergence of a new attitude and commitment to equality among younger people, in contrast to the timidity that was still common among the older generation. The youth, who were organizing gay advocacy and social groups at an astonishing pace across the country, were inspired particularly by the African-American civil rights movement as well as the women’s movement:

“We are all fighting for equal rights as human beings,” explained (New York Mattachine Society president Michael) Kotis, who had a picture of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. above his desk in the society’s cramped offices on West End Avenue. “The philosophical ideals on which this country was founded have yet to be realized. We owe a great debt to the blacks — they were the pioneers.”

But gays and lesbians were up against a lot of history. They were also up against a lot of internalized shame and guilt — even among some of the brave new activists:

“The first job we have to do is to decondition ourselves, to undo that self-contempt we have,” said Don Kilhefner, a graduate student who started a Gay Liberation branch at the University of California at Los Angeles. “We’ve gone through the same kind of conditioning blacks have gone through. We believe the myth society tells about us, consciously or unconsciously.”

“Homosexuality is not an illness; it’s a way of expressing love for someone of the same sex, and any form of love is beautiful and valid,” said Karla, a leader of the Lavender Menace, a lesbian organization in New York, who would not give her full name.

The article went on to discuss some of the discrimination that gay people face, particularly in employment where they were routinely fired if their employers found out they were gay:

As a result, people like Karla, despite her devotion to the movement, are still afraid. “I still face the possibility that I might have to make it in the ‘straight’ world,” she said, in explaining why she would not give her full name. “And there are a lot of things you still can’t do if they know you’re ‘gay’.” In answer to these problems, “gay” organizations provide legal counsel, offer advice on job hunting, and lobby for legislative reforms.

There is much that feels antiquated about this article more than forty years later, but there is also much that feels familiar, particularly the tensions between the more established gay rights groups who feared pushing too hard and provoking a backlash (and who, quite visibly in this article, called themselves “homosexuals”), and the younger, more active members of the community who were impatient for change and were more willing to take their complaints to the street — and to proclaim themselves gay:

There are sharp disagreements within the homosexual community. People such as Michael Brown of Gay Liberation in New York identify with a broader radical movement. “The older groups are oriented toward getting accepted by the Establishment,” he said, “but what the Establishment has to offer is not worth my time. …”

On the other side are organizations such as the Tangent Group in Los Angeles, headed by a brisk, middle aged man named Don Slater (Aug 21). He agreed that homosexuals should have pride in themselves, but he added: “People should stop thinking of homosexuals as a class. They’re not. We have spent 20 years convincing people that homosexuals are no different than anyone else, and here these kids come along and reinforce what society’s thought all along — that they’re ‘queer.’ ‘Gay’ is good! To hell with that. Individuals are good.”

The parameters of the argument have changed quite a bit in the past forty years, but the fundamental discussion continues: assimilation vs. queer identity, the establishment vs. the grassroots, Gay, Inc. vs. Act-Up. Some things may never change.