Box Turtle Bulletin

Today In History, 1967: England, Wales Rescinds Gross Indecency Law

On July 28, 1967, Queen Elizabeth II gave her Royal Assent to the Sexual Offenses Bill, which marked a significant overhaul of Britain’s laws regulating sexual practices between consenting adults. The Royal Assent was the last act in a long, tortuous path toward finally getting rid of the Gross Indecency statute that had ensnared so many victims like the famous playwright Oscar Wilde (May 25) and WWII code-breaker and computer pioneer Alan Turing (Jun 23). The law penalized male homosexuality with up to two years in prison. (Consensual sexual acts between lesbians was not illegal, largely because the phenomenon was unknown when the Gross Indecency statute was last amended in the nineteenth century.)

Efforts to repeal the Gross Indecency law had been ongoing for well more than a decade. It began soon after a a string of arrests of very prominent and well-known men in Britain in the early 1950s, including Lord Montagu (Oct 20), his cousin, Maj. Michael Pitt-Rivers, and journalist Peter Wildeblood (May 19), all of whom had been charged and convicted under the same law that put Wilde away for two years. The resulting debate over whether homosexual acts between consenting adults should remain criminalized let Home Secretary David Maxwell-Fyfe in 1954 to convened a committee to study the issue under the leadership of Lord John Wolfenden. After three years of study, the committee issued what became known as the Wolfenden Report in 1957. The report recommended that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence” (Sep 4). Parliament shelved the report a year later (Nov 26). Efforts to revive the the report’s recommendations followed in subsequent years, but backers of repeal were dealt a severe setback after the John Vassal spy scandal in 1962 (Sep 12).

MP Leo Abse

In 1965,  Welsh Labour MP Leo Abse, and the Conservative Whip in the House of Lords Arthur Gore, 8th Earl of Arran, put forward the Sexual Offenses Bill as a private member’s bill, meaning that the bill was not an official part of the government’s legislative agenda. But the Labour Government signaled its support in 1967 and allowed a free non-party vote on July 4. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins took pains to reassure members that “this is not a vote of confidence in, or congratulations for, homosexuality.” Instead, he said, “those who suffer from this disability carry a great weight of shame all their lives.” Supporters said that the bill would eliminate one of the most frequent causes of espionage: blackmail of gay diplomats and other officials.

But Labor member Peter Mahon summed up the feelings of those who opposed repeal. “It is by no means unnatural to have a feeling of absolute revulsion against a bill of this kind. Without any lack of charity I say without equivocation it was a bad bill to begin with, it is a bad bill now and will be a bad bill until the end of time. It will be a bad bill throughout eternity because homosexual acts are a perversion of natural function.” Conservative member Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles warned darkly that “decent and reasonable” people of Britain would react violently when they realized what Parliament had done. “It will only encourage our enemies and those who disparage us, and it can only dismay our friends,” he declared. Another Tory MP, Sir Cyril Osborne, said that many people were tired of democracy being made safe for “pimps, prostitutes, spivs and pansies — and now for queers.”

Arthur Gore, 8th Earl of Arran

After an acrimonious eight-hour debate, Parliament approved the Sexual Offenses Bill in a rather minuscule 99-14 vote, with most of the 600-member chamber not taking an official position. It then went to the House of Lords, which gave its approval to the measure on July 21. Lord Arran quoted Oscar Wilde in closing the debate. “We shall win in the end, but the road will be long and red with monstrous martyrdoms.” Lord Arran’s subsequent statement then reflected the ambiguity most politicians felt who supported the bill: “I ask one thing. I ask those who have, as it were, been in bondage for whom the prison doors are now opened to show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity. This is no occasion for jubilation and certainly not for celebrations. Homosexuals must continue to remember that while there may be nothing bad in being homosexual, there is certainly nothing good.”

Emphasis Mine

Wikipedia has this anecdote about Arthur Gore, the 8th Earl of Arran and Conservative Whip in the House of Lord, who strongly supported the repeal of Britain’s sodomy law:

Arran was the sponsor in the House of Lords of Leo Abse’s 1967 private member’s bill which decriminalised homosexuality between two consenting adult males. He also sponsored a bill for the protection of badgers. He was once asked why the badger bill had not received enough support to pass whereas decriminalising homosexuality had. “Not many badgers in the House of Lords,” he replied.

Today In History, 1977: Gays Zap Straight Bar Over “Fairies Swatter” Sign

Harry’s Back East was a popular gay bar in New York’s Upper East Side. Next door to Harry’s was Geordie’s, a popular straight bar which didn’t take kindly to its neighbors. Hanging right there behind the middle of Geordie’s bar was a large, three-foot-long ax, with an elaborately-designed sign hanging from it reading “FAIRY SWATTER.”

When the Gay Activists Alliance learned about the sign, they sent a delegation to meet with Geordie’s owner to request the sign’s removal. The owner protested that he wasn’t bigoted, that some of his best friends were gay, and blah blah blah. He claimed, with a reportedly straight face, that the sign and ax had nothing to do with gay people. It had something to do with leprechauns or something. The GAA pointed out that Geordie’s customers might not see the sign the same way the owner claimed to see it, and instead take it as an invitation to violence if any stray gay patrons were found inside of Geordie’s. Remember, this was in 1977, when the Anita Bryant-inspired anti-gay backlash (Jun 7) had already inspired at least one murder in San Francisco (Jun 22). The GAA insisted that one way or another, the sign was coming down. According to one former GAA member:

Geordie’s owner got belligerent and made the mistake of belittling GAA’s ability to deliver on the guarantee that the ax/swatter sign would come down. “Go ahead, throw a picket line up in front if you want to! It won’t change anything,” he taunted. He raised his voice: “You can picket till you’re blue in the face. The ax and sign stay up. Nothing you do will make me take it down! It will never come down! Never!” With that, he walked away ending the discussion, and the GAA delegation left Geordie’s.

When the GAA delegation reported back to the organization’s membership, the reaction was summed up by a member who said: “If he thinks the worst gays and lesbians can do to him is march around on a futile picket line in front of his bar, we’ll have to show him how wrong he is! We won’t be laughingstocks any more!”

Geordie had apparently assumed that GAA just picketed people they didn’t like. In fact, the GAA rarely picketed. Instead, they were known for their “zaps,” a kind of a direct action that was carefully planned and executed with military-like precision. The zap was a GAA invention, and they were very good at it (Jun 4, Jun 24, Oct 27).

At 10:45 p.m. on Thursday, July 28, the GAA conducted a three-prong zap on Geordie’s. The first contingent went in first. Their purpose was to get all of the bar’s employees all in one place. To do that, they rushed straight for the ax. Right on cue, the bouncer, bartenders, and Geordie’s owner rushed behind the bar to defend the ax. That’s when the second contingent came in. Armed with “bigot swatters” — fly swatters and toy tomahawks with labels neatly attached — they harangued the 35 or so customers until they left. A few of the more resistant customers, they physically shoved out of the bar. One group of customers complained that they hadn’t settled their tab. GAA members shouted, “It’s on the house!” The two contingents inside the bar was made up of around 65 GAA members, demanding the sign come down, but otherwise calmly occupying the bar. Meanwhile a third contingent of about 70 more activists arrived outside and they threw up a more traditionally loud picket, I guess as a present to the bar owner.

Seven police cars arrived, sirens wailing and lights flashing. What they saw was this: a very large picket outside, bar employees inside behind the bar, gay patrons who weren’t being served, and a bar owner furiously demanding police arrest everyone in sight. A dozen police officers, surrounded by more than a hundred gay protesters, must have had quite a few flashbacks to another dicey situation with gay bar patrons seven years earlier. Police refused to make any arrests and reminded the bar owner that he could diffuse the situation quite easily on his own. Defeated, the owner took the sign down. The GAA pressed him to promise it would never go back up. He promised, and the GAA erupted in celebration:

The 65 triumphant GAA invaders left the bar and held an emotional victory rally with the 70 gays and lesbians who had been picketing and leafleting outside, as dozens of cops and many hundreds of other people looked on. Chanting, “If it goes up, we’ll be back!” as a parting shot, the jubilant gays and lesbians then dispersed among whoops of victory and yelps of conquest. Their delirious hooting and hollering echoed up and down the canyon of Third Avenue.

A headline in the next issue of New York magazine proclaimed, “Militant Gays Aren’t Kidding Around Anymore,” and wrote: “In the old days, police raided gay bars. Last week, it was a group of whistle-blowing, militant gay activists who raided a straight singles bar.” The ax never went back up, but the adverse publicity kept customers away and Geordie’s went broke soon after.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From The Bay Area Reporter, July 15, 1971, page 13.

I don’t know much about either of these two bars. The Corner Longhorn Saloon, which got top billing in this paring, is now a parking lot. But the building that housed the Cow Palace had been a long succession of gay bars going back to the 1960s. Before the Cow Palace, it was the In Between. After the Cow Palace, it became the Bolt, the Brig, and finally, the Power House.

Today In History, 1854: The Surprising Twists and Turns of a Cross-Dressing Case In London

This odd case began as yet another police round-up of cross-dressing men at a drag ball off of Farringdon Street just a little to the northwest of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Before this story was over, the drag ball would become a masquerade ball, but as you will see, at least one masquerade continued for several days after the ball had been put to an end. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first, let’s start at the beginning: The Times of London reported the following small item on July 27 1854:

GUILDHALL – John Challis, an old man about 60 years of age, dressed in the pastoral garb of a shepherdess of the golden age, and George Campbell, aged 35, who described himself as a lawyer, and appeared completely equipped in female attire of the present day, were placed at the bar before Sir R.W.CARDEN charged with being found disguised as women in the Druids’-hall, in Turnagain-lane, an unlicensed dancing-room, for the purpose of exciting others to commit an unnatural offence.

Inspector Teague said, — From information I received relative to the frequent congregation of certain persons for immoral practices at the Druids’-hall, I proceeded thither in company with Sergeant Goodeve about 2 o’clock this morning. I saw a great many persons dancing there, and among the number were the prisoners, who rendered themselves very conspicuous by their disgusting and filthy conduct. I suspected that the prisoners and several others who were present in female attire were of the male sex, and I left the room for the purpose of obtaining further assistance, so as to secure the whole of the parties, but when we got outside Campbell came out after us, and, taking us by the arms, was about to speak, when I exclaimed, “That is a man,” upon which he turned round and ran back immediately to the Druids’-hall. I returned and took Campbell into custody and observing Challis, whom I have frequently seen there before, behaving with two men as if he were a common prostitute, I took charge of him also.

When Campbell was brought before the three magistrates empaneled for Guoldhall, a baker came forward to accuse Campbell of pickpocketing:

Isaac Somers said, — I am a journeyman baker, and have used the White Hart, in Giltspur-Street, for the last 20 years. About seven weeks ago I met a woman dressed in muslin, and wearing a white veil. She took me to the Druids’-hall, and I had a glass of brandy-and-water and a cigar, for which I paid 1s. I changed a sovereign, and while in the company of that woman I felt her arms close round my waist, and shortly afterwards I missed the 19s. I had received in change. I believe that person, whom I took for a woman, was the prisoner Campbell, in women’s clothing.

Campbell denied the charge, but the lead magistrate ordered him held for further investigation. Challis was offered bail in two sureties of 25 shillings each and his own recognizance at 50 shillings.

Campbell and Challis were called before the magistrates five days later for further examination. With Campbell being charged with the more serious crime of theft, the proceedings that day focused mainly on him. This is where the first surprise comes in: it turns out that Campbell was no ordinary pervert, but was a trained lawyer from Scotland. And his performance in court impressed the lead magistrate who, it appears, had taken a rather dim view of the police officers’ performance in the case. According to The Times:

The prisoner Campbell cross-examined the inspector and sergeant with great adroitness with the view to shake their evidence, and succeeded in showing a discrepancy in their statements with regard to certain portions of the disguise he had on at a particular hour in the evening, and which he urged was an important point established in his favour, as he should prove that the inspector was mistaken in his identity.

Sir R.W. CARDEN.– After all, Campbell, it is entirely a question of character, and if you can show me that you are a respectable person, it will have more weight in my mind than anything you can elicit from the officers.

Campbell.– I wish to ask the inspector another question. Was I dancing when you entered the hall?

Inspector Teague.– You were not; but I afterwards saw you dancing with a man.

Campbell.– How do you know it was a man?

Inspector Teague.– Because he had a beard and whiskers.

Sir R.W. CARDEN.– That is no criterion, for Campbell has ringlets, and yet he is not a woman. (Laughter.)

Campbell.– I had but one dance all evening, and that was with an elderly lady who knew what I was.

Sir R.W.Carden.– I should think it must have been an elderly lady, for no young man would have danced with you (Laughter) … It seems to me very extraordinary, if these immoral practices have been going on for some time as the inspector and sergeant intimated, that they should not have taken greater precautions to apprehend the parties before, or, at all events, to have come prepared with a clearer case. It does appear exceedingly improbable, if Campbell is what he has represented himself, and a clever fellow, that he should have been guilty of the conduct imputed to him in an assembly of 100 persons, and while aware that two policemen in uniform were present watching him. If the police suspected immoral practices were going on there, it was not the way to detect them by going in in full uniform.

The baker, Somers, was then called to the stand. This time, he couldn’t swear that Campbell was actually the one who robbed him. Based on this testimony, the charge of robbery was dismissed, and the rest of the proceedings were dedicated to exactly what on earth was going on at Druids’ Hall.

Unlike a number of other raids that took place in pubs and other public places, Druids’ Hall was a meeting house for the Ancient Order of Druids, a fraternal order in London much like the Oddfellows or the Elks in the U.S. The AOD supplemented their offers by renting out their hall for any number of occasions. There is on archive.org, for example, a report of an early Mormon meeting that took place at Druids’ Hall four years earlier. Undoubtedly, the Ancient Order must have found this kind of publicity deeply embarrassing. A representative from the Order also testified:

John Bestow said, he had the care of Druid’s-hall, (sic) for the Ancient Order of Druids, and he occasionally let it for meetings, lectures, and dancing. On the evening in question there was a bal masqué, and admission was given by tickets issued by Harris, who took the room.

Sir R.W. CARDEN.– Is not money taken at the doors?

Bestow.– I never saw any. I believe Harris gives the balls, and always loses by them.

Sir R.W. Carden.– There was music there on the night of the ball in question?

Bestow.– Yes, Sir. There were four musicians.

Skir R.W.Carden.– And the place is not licensed!

Bestow.– Certainly not, Sir.

Madeleine Vincent said, she attended to the refreshment department in the ballroom, and saw the prisoners there, but saw nothing disguting in their conduct, and never told the police that she had. She had said their conduct was disgraceful because they made such a noise, but that was the only impropriety she saw or complained of.

So now it’s a bal masqué, which, I suppose could be something different from a tawdry drag ball. But not necessarily. Another witness testified that he had seen “disgusting conduct” at these balls and had been complaining about it for the past eighteen months:

Joseph Brundell said, he was formerly in the city police and for 18 months he was on duty near Druids’-Hall. Harris had got up several of these balls and the prisoners frequently attended them dressed in female attire. Witness on such occasions had noticed disgusting conduct on the part of other men towards the prisoners while in their company.

Sir R.W.CARDEN.– Do you mean to say that you saw these things going on for 18 months and reported them to your sergeant.

Brundell.– I did, Sir, and he told me not to interfere unless I saw such conduct take place in the public street.

Sir R.W.CARDEN.– You are bringing a very serious charge against the sergeant, and one that ought to be investigated by the commissioner, for it is monstrous that a house of this character should be allowed to exist in the city of London for two years and no steps taken to suppress it.

Inspector Teague.– It is very difficult to catch them in the act, as they have men placed at every outlet to keep a lookout.

Sir R.W.CARDEN.– And so they have at the west-end gambling houses; but the police there always interfere.

Inspector Teague.– But the police go in with a force, and it is not safe to do so without proof.

Sir R.W.CARDEN.– And surely you can have force where it is required. If you always waited for direct proof, there would be very little chance of detecting or preventing crime.

After dismissing the robbery charge, Carden released Campbell on bail pending the disposition of the misdemeanor charge of cross-dressing. Campbell and Challis were called before magistrates again the next day, but only Campbell showed up. Challis had apparently skipped bail. If the previous day’s events were surprising, this day’s proceedings started with a bombshell: Campbell wasn’t the Scottish lawyer he claimed to be, but the Rev. Edward Holmes, a member of the Scottish Independent Church. Campbell maintained that he was a lawyer, but conceded this true identity as the Rev. Holmes, saying the only reason he had dressed as a woman and attended the ball was “to see vice in all its enormity” so he could “correct it from the pulpit.” For the past twelve to eighteen months! Surprisingly, the magistrates bought it:

Campbell.– It is a quite a mistake. I certainly did wish to see a little of London life without mixing with its abominations.

Sir R.W.CARDEN.– And you thought that dressing yourself in women’s attire was the best way of avoiding those abominations? I must say it was a very imprudent course.

Campbell.– I dare say it was, and I am extremely sorry for my folly…

Sir R.W.CARDEN– I certainly hope you now see the folly of indulging in such extraordinary freaks, as you term them, and that you deeply feel how degrading it is to a man of education — wehther you belong to the church or the law it matters not — to be placed in such a position. …However, under the circumstances, I am willing to believe it was nothing more than an act of the grossest folly, and that you now sincerely repent your imprudent conduct.

Alderman CARTER.– As the sitting magistrate, I can only express my utter disgust at the prisoner’s conduct in so attiring himself as a woman, and, had it not been for Sir F.W. Carden’s concluding remarks, I should have felt inclined to commit you to prison as a rogue and a vagabond. You may go now, and I hope I may never see your face here again.

…Campbell, alias Holmes, was then discharged.

[Sources: The Times (London, July 27, 1854): 12; The Times (London, August 1, 1854): 12; The Times (London, August 2, 1854): 12.]

Today In History, 1927: “The Well of Loneliness” Published

The lesbian love story was so controversial that three publishers turned it down. When it was finally published in England, it appeared in a plain, discreet black cover. It wasn’t particularly racy; the only sexual description consisted of the phrases, “she kissed her full on the lips,” and “that night, they were not divided.” By today’s standards, the book may seem tame, but in 1927 Radclyffe Hall’s novel caused a sensation in Britain. The publisher sent review copies to only a few select newspapers and magazines who he thought could handle the lesbian-themed content. Most reviewers praised the book for its courage or panned it for its dreariness. But only one found it objectionable. James Douglas at the Sunday Express responded by mounting a massive campaign against the novel. “I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel,” he wrote.

Despite most of the British press’s defending the book, the publisher soon landed in court on obscenity charges. Several authors came to his defense — E.M. Forster (Jan 1), Virginia Woolf, and James Melville among them — but the judge declared the novel obscene. It wasn’t the story line he found objectionable; it was the novel’s plea for tolerance and acceptance that made it “more subtle, demoralizing, corrosive and corruptive than anything ever written.” He warned that it would “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences,” and ordered copies rounded up and burned.

A 1951 paperback edition.

The’s no such thing as bad publicity, though. The ban and the massive newspaper campaign against the book just made the public even more curious. Demand for the book soared. And wherever there’s a demand, there’s a supply.  The Well’s supply was met by a publisher in France who shipped copies surreptitiously to newsstands throughout Britain. That had the effect of lowering British officials’ enthusiasm for banning other lesbian-themed novels that followed. A Home Office memo observed, “It is notorious that the prosecution of the Well Of Loneliness resulted in infinitely greater publicity about lesbianism than if there had been no prosecution.” But it wouldn’t be until 1949 when The Well could be published in Britain again — not because any laws had changed, but because the Home Office simply decided to look the other way. It has remained in continuous publication since then.

Surprisingly, the book’s appearance in the U.S. generated a different reaction. Sure, there were attempts to ban it in the U.S. Customs Court and in New York City, where police seized 865 copies from its American publisher’s offices. But both attempts came to naught. When the court cleared the novel of obscenity, the publisher responded by putting out a “victory” edition, and the ensuing publicity raised demand for the book here as it did in England. And despite it’s high price of $5 ($70 today, costing more than than twice as much as an average hardback novel), The Well would go through six printings and sell over 100,00 copies by the time it was cleared by the courts. The Well of Loneliness has been in continuous American publication since its 1928 debut, and it served as an inspiration and comfort for countless women over the next five decades.

Today In History, 1969: Gay Liberation Front Organizes First Post-Stonewall March Against Police Harassment

In the days following the Stonewall rebellion on June 28, the Mattachine Society of New York sponsored several discussion groups to try to tap into the newly-energized gay community and figure out what their next steps should be. One problem that quickly emerged was that in the rebellious atmosphere of the late 1960s, most of the younger crowd was in no mood to sit around and hold endless planning meetings. They were looking for something to do now, and that something, in that place in time, meant taking things to the streets.

An early GLF meeting.

Out of that restlessness came a new force, the Gay Liberation Front, which was an ad-hoc movement that grew out of those Mattachine meetings just a few weeks after the riot. The GLF’s approach to things was truly radical. It eschewed leadership structures and defied all attempts of control. All decisions were made by consensus — often after paralyzing discussions, arguments and endless political analysis. But the GLF was anything but passive, and many credit it with preventing the momentum of Stonewall from dying out, as had happened so many times before when LGBT people had risen up against anti-gay oppression (Jan 1, Aug 21).

One of the GLF’s first public actions took place a month after Stonewall with a march to demand an end to discrimination and police harassment. A crowd of five hundred gathered for a rally at Washington Square. Martha Shelly, president of the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis and a GLF founding member, kicked things off: “Brothers and sisters, welcome to the city’s first gay power vigil. We’re tired of being harassed and persecuted. If a straight couple can hold hands in Washington Square, why can’t we? … We’re tired of straight people who are hung up on sex. Tired of flashlights and peeping-tom vigilantes. Tired of marriage laws that punish you for lifting your head off the pillow.”

After more speeches by Marty Robinson and a straight ally who called herself Sister Marlene, the crowd began marching, four abreast, to Sheridan Square, clapping and shouting “Gay Power!” and other slogans, bringing traffic on Sixth Avenue to a halt. When they arrived at Sheridan Square, there were more speeches, appeals for money, and a round of “We Shall Overcome.” Jonathan Black at The Village Voice observed that “gay power had surfaced … A mild protest, to be sure, but apparently only the beginning.”

[Sources: Edward Alwood. Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996): 90-91.

Jonathan Black. “Gay Power Hits Back.” The Village Voice (July 31, 1969): 1, 3, 28. Available online here.]

Today In History, 1978: New Jersey Senator: “We Used To Beat Them Up”

New Jersey state Sen. Joseph A. Maressa

Through the 1960s and 1970s, a number of states embarked on a massive undertaking of combing through some two centuries’ accumulations of old laws to throw out obsolete laws (flagmen would no longer have to walk in front of automobiles as a warning to people on horseback) and re-codify it into a new easy-to-maintain format. In 1978, when New Jersey Gov. Brendan Byrne (D) signed his state’s new criminal code into law, it had the effect of wiping the state’s old sodomy law off the books. The old law had provided a maximum penalty of up to twenty years.

State Sen. Joseph Maressa (D-Camden Co) discovered the omission and decided to do something about it. On July 27, he introduced Senate Bill 1276, co-sponsored by nineteen of the forty state senators, to keep consensual same-sex sodomy between males (women weren’t covered under the bill) a crime punishable by five year in prison. “I was brought up in the old school,” Sen. Maressa said. “Homosexuality still shocks me. And it galls me when people defend those who desecrate the flag. It’s their right to express themselves that way, they say. I’ll tell you, I’d take them out and shoot them. You might say I subscribe to the old virtues.”

“I checked with Attorney General Degnan,” he added, “and he tells me nobody has ever been prosecuted under the old sodomy law, and I don’t expect anybody will under the new one. We used to beat them up, but we don’t do that anymore.”

Fortunately, his bill didn’t get very far, and he withdrew it, reluctantly, in early 1979 after opposition from the public. “I still agree the male sex role is the macho male,” he said. ” I just hope homosexuals don’t take it out to the streets.”

[Source: “Repression in N.J.” Gay Times, Issue 71 (undated/1978): 5.]

Born On This Day, 1919: Martin Block

(d. 1995) His life was in books, from the early years in which he made deliveries for a book store in New York City, to working at a book store in Grand Central Terminal after a stint in the military, to becoming one of the owners of Studio Book Store after moving to Hollywood. That’s where, in 1950, his friend Rudi Gernreich (Aug 8) invited him to join an organization that Rudi, Rudi’s lover Harry Hay (Apr 7), and others were forming. Block remembered going to his first meeting of what would become the Mattachine Society:

Everybody was scared. I guess people were rather psychotic about it. But because of my background, this business of being afraid of the FBI or the police was a lot of shit to me at the time, as it is now. You see, my father was a socialist, and my mother was an anarchist. When the time came for the meeting, I think Rudi drive, and we took some sort of circuitous route to avoid being followed. Everybody was very worried about Mr. Hoover’s crazy FBI men. I don’t think anybody was interested in following us, but Rudi was fearful. The whole group was fearful…

Block listened to the discussions about forming a new movement to advocate for gay people, and found that he disagreed with every word that was said. But he enjoyed the company and decided to become a member. But after a few years, Block and several others became bored with the endless theorizing and helpless complaining. After one particularly dull meeting, Block, Dorr Legg (Dec 15), Don Slater (Aug 21), and Dale Jennings (Oct 21) stayed late and talked about doing something besides talking, something that would be useful for gay people across the country. That something, they decided, would be a magazine they called ONE, from a quote by Thomas Carlyle, “A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.” Block recalled that ONE’s mission would be a simple one:

We would not attempt to turn anyone in our direction. We weren’t going to go out and say you should be gay, but we said, “You can be proud of being gay.” You can be proud of being yourself. You could look yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m me, and isn’t that nice?” That in itself was radical. Nobody put it in words, but that was the underlying thought and underlying feeling behind the magazine.

Block became ONE’s president and its first editor when the magazine debuted in January 1953. But because of demands at his bookstore and other family concerns, he gave up his editorship in June and was removed as the organization’s president. He remained involved with ONE in various capacities through the 1950s. Later, he became a regular book reviewer for the Los Angeles Daily News, the Saturday Review, and the New York Times Book Review. After he closed his own bookstore in the late 1950s, Block became the manager for the book department at Robinson’s Department Store in Pasadena. He died in West Hollywood, California in 1995.

[Sources: Eric Marcus. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1940-1990. An Oral History (New York: HarperCollins, 1992): 37-42.

C. Todd White. Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History of the Movement for Homosexual Rights (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009): 29-47.]

Born On This Day, 1927: Fr. Robert Carter, SJ

(d. 2002) The early leader of Dignity and co-founder of the National Gay Task Force was gay long before he was Catholic. He had been born to Protestant parents, both from different traditions. He grew up in Lakewood, Ohio, and Park Ridge, Illinois. While studying at the University of Chicago, he wrote a review of a Tennessee Williams poem for the school paper, and was invited to see the opening of Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, which opened in Chicago in 1944. This when Williams was still a nobody. Carter and Williams became lovers, briefly. Carter later wrotein an unpublished memoir, “He may have thought he seduced me, but he didn’t or at least gets only half the credit.”

Carter became interested in Catholicism after reading James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. The day after graduating with his Bachelor’s Degree in 1946, he converted to Catholicism. He continued studying at Chicago, and picked up a master’s degree in Greek and went on to pick up a Ph.D. in 1953. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1954 and was ordained a priest in 1963.

In 1972, Carter co-hosted the first meeting of Dignity in Manhattan with fellow Jesuit Fr. John McNeill. Carter later remembered that meeting: “There were about 15 present. I remember walking to the meeting and wondering with some trepidation what I was getting myself into.” Carter became one of the Dignity’s board members and theological advisers. “No longer was I just the professor of Early Church Studies and a research scholar. Now I was giving hope and new life to many gay Catholics,” he wrote.

He marched with Dignity in the 1973 Gay Pride March in New York City. Howard Brown, a former city commissioner who had recently come out, invited carter to become a founding member of the National Gay Task Force (Oct 15). The New York Times reported on the new organization: “A number of homosexual and lesbian organizations were represented on the board. One member was the Rev. Robert Carter, a Jesuit priest and professor of historical theology.” This marked him publicly as a gay man. A subprovincial of the Jesuit order paid him a visit. “It seems that they were afraid I had had a psychotic break or something,” he wrote. But he was unfazed. “Since Jesus had table fellowship with social outcasts and sinners, those rejected by the religious establishment of his time, I consider myself to have been most fully a Jesuit, a ‘companion of Jesus,’ when I came out publicly as a gay man, one of the social rejects of my time. It was only by our coming out that society’s negative stereotypes would be overcome and we would gain social acceptance.”

Despite calls for his ouster, he wasn’t disciplined. This was before the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality had coalesced into a hardline position. Meanwhile, Carter kept busy with his work in Dignity. When the Catholic Church barred Dignity from meeting on church property, he began celebrating Mass in apartments. He held blessing ceremonies for gay couples, he testified before City Council in support of a gay rights law, and he continued to march with a Dignity contingent in Pride parades while wearing his clerical collar. In 1982, he went back to school and got a degree in Social Work from Columbia in 1081, just in time for the AIDS epidemic to hit. He counseled AIDS patients at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, and he was the supervisor of the AIDS outpatient program at Bellevue. When his Jesuit province banned him from saying Mass for Dignity, he travelled to Philadelphia, which was outside his province’s jurisdiction, to say Mass there. He died in 2010 at a Jesuit health care facility at the age of 82.

Born On This Day, 1940: Rev. Troy Perry

Perry’s life had always been difficult. His bootlegger father died when Perry was twelve. His mother married an alcoholic who reduced the family to poverty and was physically abusive. Troy ran away from home and stayed with relatives, who introduced him to Pentecostalism. He became a preacher and self-styled “religious fanatic” at age fifteen. At nineteen-year-old, he married a Church of God pastor’s daughter and became the pastor of a CoG church in Jolliet, Illinois — all this despite knowing that he was gay and was sexually active with other men. He merely told himself that it was a phase and that he wasn’t really gay. After all, it was impossible to be both gay and Christian, his superiors in the church had reassured him. But when the elders at the church he was pastoring found out, they forced him to resign.

The couple moved to California, where they joined the Church of God of Prophecy, another Pentecostal denomination. While there, his wife found hidden in a mattress a copy of Donald Webster Cory’s groundbreaking The Homosexual In America (Sep 18). That led to an immediate divorce, with his wife taking their two young sons with her.. That meant that he had to explain things to his COGOP superiors. They acted as CoG had: they kicked him out.

Perry spent the next several years, which included a stint in the Army, trying to figure out what he was: was he gay, or was he Christian? In 1967, he tried to kill himself after breaking up with a boyfriend. In 1968, he was on a date at a gay bar near Long Beach called The Patch when when  police decided to randomly arrest two of the bar’s patrons (Aug 17) . His date, broken and demoralized by the experience, decided that no one cared about gay people, including God. That’s when Perry decided it was time to show that young man, and all gay people, differently. He placed an ad in The Advocate announcing a worship service designed for gays in Los Angeles, and twelve people turned up on that first Sunday. That would be the genesis for the Metropolitan Community Church, the only Christian denomination founded specifically to address the spiritual needs of LGBT people. MCC now has 250 congregations in 23 countries around the world.

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From David, a Jacksonville-based gay photography/lifestyle magazine, May 1973, page 48.

The Cove, located along the northern edge of Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, opened in 1971 and later expanded as a twenty-four hour club and disco that catered to the rough trade kind of crowd.  After the rest of the bars closed, the still-unlucky ones could head to the Cove and begin picking among the rest of the leftovers before the sun went up. The music and dancing was said to be top notching, but the bathrooms were known for being among the worst in the South. The Cove closed in 1994 after the city began closing down its remaining twenty-four hour clubs, and the building was later demolished.

This Month In History, 1940: Homosexuality and Lesbianism Treated With Metrazol

The professional literature before 1980 is thoroughly infected with torturous descriptions of psychiatry’s barbarous attempts at “curing” homosexuality. Many accounts deal with the application of painful electric shock delivered via electrodes attached to sensitive regions of the body (Jan 18, Jan 20, Mar 11, May 8, Jun 3, Sep 6, Oct 30, Dec 8). But the imagination for new methods of torture didn’t end there. Dr. Newdigate M. Owensby, who practiced at Atlanta’s prestigious Medical Arts Building and founded the Brook Haven Manor Sanitarium outside of Atlanta, published a brief paper in the July 1940 edition of the prestigious Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease describing his own unique experiments to cure homosexuality.

He based his experiment on curing homosexuality on “the assumption that homosexuality and lesbianism are symptoms of an under developed schizophrenia.” Other psychiatrists had been experimenting with Metrazol-induced seizures for schizophrenia since 1934, and their logic, wierd as it may sound, went like this: people with epilepsy (which was considered a mental illness) almost never had schizophrenia (or so they thought), and people with schizophrenia almost never had epilepsy (or so they thought). And so maybe there was something in the epileptic seizure that either prevented or  cured schizophrenia, so they thought. And why why wouldn’t it, so they thought, since electric seizures induced by Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) was already known to be surprisingly effective for cases of severe depression. (ECT is still found to be useful today to treat severe depression.)

Owensby stretched that already thin line of thinking further: if homosexuality was a kind of an underdeveloped schizophrenia — where he got this belief, I have no idea — then why not try injecting his subjects with Metrazol to produce an epileptic-type grand mal seizure, and thus ridding his patients of that underdeveloped schizophrenia? Owensby extended his already-stretched theory even further by suggesting that Metrazol seizures might “liberate this previous fixation of the libido and the psychosexual energy becomes free once more to flow through regular physiological channels.” Again, who knows where he got that idea. But to give you an idea of what this kind of seizure looked like, here is a brief film clip unrelated to Owensby’s report from a few years earlier:

Ownesby provided six case studies of his experiments:

Case I.-A white male of 19 years had been arrested and sentenced to prison because of moral turpitude (homosexuality). He was paroled for treatment and promised a pardon if his perversion was corrected. The family history was not enlightening. Homosexual experiences began during his fourteenth year and continued thereafter. Feminine mannerisms were evident. Metrazol was administered until fifteen shocks were produced. All homosexual desires had disappeared after the ninth shock, but treatment was continued until all feminine mannerisms had been removed. Normal sex relations were established and eighteen months later there had been no return of homosexual tendencies. He was granted a pardon.

Case 2.-A white male aged thirty-four years. Had been a homosexual since his fifteenth year. He was frank enough to admit that the only reason for seeking treatment was fear of exposure and subsequent disgrace. All homosexual desires disappeared after seven grand mal attacks were induced by metrazol. He was married four months later. At the expiration of ten months he stated there had been no recurrence of homosexual desires or practices.

Case 3.-A white male aged forty-four years. Had been a homosexual since early youth. Most of his past life had been spent in penal institutions because of the opportunities to indulge his perversion. He seemed proud of the fact that he was a “man-woman”. Was constantly inebriated when out of prison. Metrazol was administered until ten grand mal attacks had occurred. He appeared to be regenerated after the ninth seizure. His common law wife states that, with the exception of an occasional overindulgence in alcohol, he has been a normal, hard working man for the past six months.

Case 4–A white male aged twenty-five years. Has been a homosexual since his fifteenth year. His mother was a neurotic. A sister had a manic depressive attack. A brother was an alcoholic. The patient was seclusive and spent most of his free time in his room. Would take an occasional trip to another city in order to satiate his homosexual desires. Was reluctant to discuss his perversion. Six grand mal attacks were induced by metrazol. Normal sex relations became established shortly thereafter and at the expiration of three months the patient claimed to be sexually healthy.

Case 5.-A white male aged twenty-six years. Married. Had indulged in active homosexuality since his seventeenth year. Appeared to be an ambulatory schizophrenic. His marriage had been arranged by a doting mother. Had never been self supporting. An obvious personality change followed the sixth induced grand mal attack. Whereas he had formerly been indifferent to his family and friends, he began to show interest and affection for them. He secured a position after returning home and became self supporting. Six months after receiving the metrazol treatment, he reported that he had continued to be free from all homosexual desires.

Case 6.-A white female aged twenty-four years. Name and address given were admittedly fictitious. Said to have been a lesbian since puberty. Promiscuous. Preferred the active role. Inclined to boast of her conquests. Inebriate for past four years. Ten grand mal seizures were induced by metrazol. Became infatuated with an intern after the treatment had been discontinued and frequently complained of nocturnal emissions. Remained institutionalized for six weeks after the last treatment and appeared to be healthy in every way. No subsequent reports.

The report’s weak findings are obvious: no measures of sexual orientation before or after, no long-term follow-up, widespread evidence of involuntary or coerced participation — not to mention a deeply flawed belief in the nature of homosexuality itself. What’s more, it’s easy to imagine that anyone being subjected to this kind of torture would say or do anything to make it stop. In fact, the use of Metrazol-induced seizures in other cases was finally halted when it was found to be both ineffective and terrifying to patients. The seizures could be so severe that some patients actually experienced spinal fractures. It was later discovered that repeated treatments could, in some cases, lead to lasting brain damage. Needless to say, there is no evidence whatsoever that this treatment had any kind of effect in changing anyone’s sexual orientation. Indeed, in June 1949, Dr. George N. Thompson, writing for the same journal, concluded that Metrazol shock therapy was utterly ineffective in curing homosexuality.

But the National Association for the Research and Treatment of Homosexuality (NARTH) didn’t bother to read that memo. They like to think of themselves as the scientific arm of the ex-gay movement, but when they issued their so-called “journal” in 2009 with a report which supposedly documents successful efforts to change sexual orientation, they included Owensby’s 1940 paper as a success story. Under the heading of “pharmacological interventions,” they write simply, “Owensby (1940) reported that six patients ceased all homosexual behavior after taking the drug Metrazol (pentetrazol).” They not only neglected to mention what Metrazol was all about — it wasn’t just some pill prescribed to patients — they also forgot to point out that the FDA revoked its approval of the drug in 1982.

[Sources: Newdigate M. Owensby. “Homosexuality and lesbianism treated with Metrazol.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 92, no. 1 (July 1940): 65-66.

George N. Thompson. “Electroshock and other therapeutic considerations in sexual psychopathy.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 109, no. 6 (June 1949): 531-539.

James E. Phelan, Neil Whitehead, Philip M. Sutton. “What the research shows: NARTH’s response to the APA claims on homosexuality.” Journal of Human Sexuality 1 (2009). ]

Born On This Day, 1940: Mel White

He had been an important behind-the-scenes figure in the Evangelical movement from the 1960s through the 1980s, working as a ghostwriter for Billy Graham (Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse, 1983), Pat Robertson (America’s Dates With Destiny, 1986), and Jerry Falwell (If I Should Die Before I Wake, 1986, and Falwell’s autobiography, Strength for the Journey, 1987). After marrying in 1962, While revealed to his wife that he had always been attracted to other men. As he wrote in his 1994 autobiography, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America, he embarked on a more than two-decade long struggle to rid himself of the gay, including conventional psychotherapy, electric shock aversion therapy, and exorcism. Nothing worked, and after he tried to kill himself, he and his wife agreed to amicable divorce. She later wrote the foreword for Stranger at the Gate, in which he came out publicly as gay.

In 1998, White founded Soulforce, an organization which advocates for LGBT people through dialogue and other forms of nonviolent direct action in the mode of Mahatman Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 2008, White and his partner, Gary Nixon, were the first same-sex couple to be legally married at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.

White has long been involved in other secular areas as well. Since 1965, he has produced 53 film and television documentaries, mainly about spirituality, and he written sixteen books. In 2009, White appeared in the fourteenth season of The Amazing Race with his son, screenwriter/director/actor Mike White. His latest book, Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality, was published in 2012

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