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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 lobbyPosts Tagged As: Daily Agenda
July 9th, 2016
We Two Boys Together Clinging, 1961.
The British artist was born with synesthesia — his brain “sees” colors whenever he hears music. Those colors guide him when he designs stage sets for operatic and ballet productions. In addition to set design, he is a renowned painter, print maker and photographer. While still a student at the Royal College of Art, Hockney’s exhibition Young Contemporaries in 1961, marked British Pop Art’s arrival. Later that year, he sold two of his prints to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. That same year, he also read the poems of Walt Whitman, which inspired Hockney to paint several paintings on the themes of love and homosexuality, including We Two Boys Together Clinging, where the title and some of the text in the painting are lines from the Whitman’s poem of the same name. By the mid 1960s, Hockney moved to Los Angeles, where he made an entire series of paintings of swimming pools rendered in vibrant colors.
In more recent years, Hockney has been exploring the limits of scale. His “A Bigger Grand Canyon” (1998) is actually a series of 60 paintings which, when combined together, produce one enormous painting of 6 3/4 feet by 24 feet. That painting was bought by the National Gallery of Australia for $4.6 million. In 2007, he produced Bigger Trees Near Warter, a series of fifty separate canvases which combine to form a 15 feet by forty feet painting. He donated those canvases to the Tate Gallery in London. “I thought if I’m going to give something to the Tate, I want to give them something really good. It’s going to be here for a while.” He described it as a duty of successful artists to donate some of their work. He had turned down several requests to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, explaining politely that he was too busy painting her country. But he relented in 2012 while watching the Thames River pageant for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee on television. He created a digital painting on his iPad and donated a printed copy to the Royal Collection.
David Hockney with Bigger Trees Near Warter, 2007.
July 9th, 2016
When the other gay star of Top Gun came out of the closet in 2009, she said that coming to terms with her sexual orientation had been a long, ongoing process since she was twelve, when she was convinced that God was punishing her. She now says that it’s much easier to become spiritual now that she knows that “God is okay with you being gay.” She graduated from Juilliard’s Drama School in 1983 and began landing acting roles right away. Her breakout role was as an Amish mother in 1985’s Witness with Harrison Ford, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe award. In 1986, she was the flight instructor, Charlie, in Top Gun with Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer. She continued acting in films and television throughout the 1990s before taking a break in 2001. She resumed acting in 2004, and in 2008 she guest starred on Showtime’s The L Word, where she played a closeted Army colonel. In 2010, McGilllis entered into a civil union with her partner, but they separated a year later.
July 8th, 2016
Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49 years old.
Brenda was the mother of eleven children. And she beat cancer. Twice. She was one tough mother. She was from Brooklyn, moved to San Bernardino, California, then to Orlando. Her ex-husband — they remained friends and stayed in touch — said, “She was a good mother [and] a good provider. She was always trying to help people, taking people in who had no place to live.”
Her son, Isaiah Henderson, is gay, and she loved dancing. So they often went out to Pulse together. They were there again that night. Shortly after midnight, she posted a video to Facebook showing dancers having fun on the dance floor. Before the gunman opened fire, she spotted him. According to her sister-in-law, who was also inside the club during the attack, “Brenda saw him point the gun. She said, ‘Get down,’ to Isaiah and she got in front of him. She was shot dead. That’s how much she loved her kids.”
Isaiah got separated from his mother during the chaos, and was later pulled to safety by police when they stormed the club. Isaiah is taking his mother’s death very hard, and relatives say he is struggling with survivor’s guilt. During the funeral, he paid homage to his mother. “I never thought that her life would be ended right in front of my eyes,” he said, sobbing. “My mother accepted everyone with open arms. She loved everybody equally, no matter what.” He broke down, and two of his brothers rushed to the pulpit to hold him up and console him. “I haven’t stopped crying since,” he said.
July 8th, 2016
From The Times of London:
The existence of a Club, or Society, for the purpose so detestable and repugnant to the common feelings of our nature, that by no word can it be described without committing an outrage upon decency, has for some time been suspected by the Magistrates of Bow-street; who cautiously concealing the odious secret, abstained from taking any steps on the information they had received, until an opportunity should offer of surprising the whole gang. About 11 o’clock last Sunday evening, three separate parties of the patrole, attended by constables, were detached from Bow-street on this service; and such was the secrecy observed, that the object of their pursuit was unknown, even at that moment, to all but the confidential agents of Mr. Read, who headed the respective parties. The enterprise was completely successful. — We regret most deeply, that the information given at the office was found to be so accurate, that the Officers felt themselves justified in seizing no fewer than 23 individuals, at a public-house, called the White Swan, in Vere-street, Clare-market.
Three years later, the Vere Street scandal was the subject of Robert Holloway’s pamphlet, The Phoenix of Sodom, or The Vere Street Coterie:
The fatal house in question was furnished in a style most appropriate for the purposes it was intended. Four beds were provided in one room: — another was fitted up for the ladies’ dressing-room, with a toilette, and every appendage of rouge, &c. &c.: — a third room was called the Chaple, where marriages took place, sometimes between a female grenadier, six feet high, and a petit maître not more than half the altitude of his beloved wife! There marriages were solemnized with all the mockery of bride maids and bride men; the nuptials were frequently consummated by two, three or four couples, in the same room, and in the sight of each other!
Incredible as this circumstance may appear, the reader may depend it is all provable: — the uper part of the house was appropriated to wretches who were constantly in waiting for casual customers; who practised all the allurements that are found in a brothel, by the more natural description of prostitutes; and the only difference consisting in that want of decency that subsists between the most profligate men and depraved women. — Men of rank, and respectable situations in life, might be seen wallowing either in or on beds with wretches of the lowest description: but the perpetration of the abominable act, however offensive, was infinitely more tolerable than the shocking convcersation taht accompanied the perpetration; some of which, Cook has solemnly declared to me, was so odious, that he could not either write, or verbally related. It seems many of these wretches were married; and frequently, when they are together, make their wives, who they call Tommies, topics of ridicule; and boast of having compelled them to act parts too shocking to think of…
It seems the greater part of these reptiles assumed feigned names, though not very appropriate to their calling in life: for instance, Kitty Cambric is a Coal Merchant; Miss Selina a Runner at a Police office; Black-eyed Leonora, a Drummer; Pretty Harriet, a Butcher; Lady Godina, a Waiter; the Duchess of Gloucester, a gentleman’s servant; Duchess of Devonshire, a Blacksmith; and Miss Sweet Lips, a Country Grocer. It is a generally received opinion, and a very natural one, that the prevalency of this passion has for its object effeminate delicate beings only: but this seems to be, by Cook’s account, a mistaken notion; and the reverse is so palpable in many instances, that Fanny Murry, Lucy Cooper, and Kitty Fisher, are now personified by an athletic Bargeman, an Herculean Coal-heaver, and a deaf tyre Smith: the latter of these monsters has two sons, both very handsome young men, whom he boasts are full as depraved as himself. These are merely part of the common stock belonging to the house; but the visitors were more numerous and, if possible, more infamous, because more exalted in life: and these ladies, like the ladies of the petticoat order, have their favourite men; one of whom was White a drummer of the guards, who, some short time since, was executed for sodomy with one Hebden, an ensign. White, being an universal favourite, was very deep in the secrets of the fashionable part of the coterie; of which he had made a most ample confession in writing, immediately previous to his execution; the truth of which he averred, even to his last moments; but it is impossible to give it literally, for the person who took it, in the presence of a magistrate, said that the recital made him so sick he could not proceed…
That the reader may form some idea of the incontrollable rage of this dreadful passion, Cook states that a person in a respectable house in the city, frequently came to this sink of filth and iniquity, and stayed several days and nights together; during which time he generally amused himself with eight, ten, and sometimes a dozen different boys and men! …
Sunday was the general, and grand day of rendezvous; and to render their excuse the more entangled and doubtful, some of the parties came a great distance, even so much as thirty miles, to join the festivity and elegant amusements of grenadiers, footmen, waiters, drummers, and all the Catamite brood, kneaded into human shape, from the sweepings of Sodom, and the Spawn of Gomorrah…
Two men were found guilty of sodomy and were hanged (Mar 7). Seven more were found guilty of attempted sodomy and were made to stand at the pillory (Sep 27). The crowds who turned out for the pillory were particularly violent, throwing rotten fish, dead cats, “cannonballs” made of mud, and vegetables at the convicted men. The men were severely injured and barely survived their allotted time at the pillory.
July 8th, 2016
Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke. Photo by Kay Lahusen (see Jan 5).
Jack Nichols (Mar 16) and Lige Clarke had cut their activists’ teeth as members of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C.. Nichols helped to organize the the first White House protest in 1965 (Apr 17), while Clarke lettered nine of the ten picket signs. Nichols and Clarke moved to New York in 1968, where the couple became regular columnists for the straight, unabashedly-pornographic Screw magazine. Their column, “The Homosexual Citizen,” was the first regular LGBT column to appear regularly in a non-LGBT publication, and it made them arguably the most visible gay couple in the country.
Nichols and Clarke devoted their July 8 column to a description of the Stonewall riots, which had occured the week before. “Last week’s riots in Greenwich Village,” they wrote, “have set standards for the rest of the nation’s homosexuals to follow.” They also reported that the Electric Circus, a popular and hip night club, took the unusual step of publicly inviting gay people to dance with their straight patrons on the dance floor. “If you’re tired of raids, Mafia control, and checks at the door, join us for a beautiful evening on Sunday night, July 6.”
According to Nichols and Clark, “for the first time in New York’s history, a huge club was experimenting with social integration between heterosexuals and homosexuals.” Nichols and Clarke went, and found “a groovy crowd. … hip moustaches, long hair, and hundreds of handsome young men. The acid-rock band blared forth a medley of fast tunes.” They found that the Electric Circus’s experiment was successful, mostly, with the exception of one “uncool creep” who was shouting “Goddamn faggots” as he was hustled out of the club. They closed their column with the following “call to arms,” which Nichols later attributed solely to Clarke:
The revolution in Sheridan Square must step beyond its present boundaries. The homosexual revolution is only part of a larger revolution sweeping through all segments of society. We hope that “Gay Power” will not become a call for separation, but for sexual integration, and that the young activists will read, study, and make themselves acquainted with all of the facts that will help them carry the sexual revolt triumphantly into the councils of the U.S. government, into the anti-homosexual churches, into the offices of anti-homosexual psychiatrists, into the city government, and into the state legislatures which make our manner of love-making a crime. It is time to push the homosexual revolution to its logical conclusion. We must crush tyranny wherever it exists and join forces with those who would assist in the utter destruction of the puritanical, repressive, anti-sexual Establishment.
[Sources: Charles Kaiser. The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America 2007 ed. (New York: Grove Press, 2007): 201-202.
James T. Sears. Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press , 2001): 28-29.]
July 8th, 2016
Police sketch of “The Doodler”
The Associated Press reported:
(San Francisco) Police say a suspect in 14 homosexual murders has not been charged because three survivors of his knife attacks, including a “well-known entertainer” and a diplomat, won’t “come out of the closet” and testify against him. For the past year, police have been questioning a young man they call “The Doodler” about the 14 slayings and three assaults that occurred in San Francisco’s gay community between January 1974 and September 1975, Inspector Rotea Gilford said Thursday.
Interest in the case surfaced again this week after two Redondo Beach, Calif., men were arrested in Riverside for questioning about as many as 28 slayings linked to homosexual encounters.
The suspect here, his name not released, has talked freely with police but has not admitted the slayings, Gilford said. He said police are “fairly certain” they have the right man, but need the testimony of survivors who may be able to identify “The Doodler.”
In the attacks, the murderer met other men at a number of after-hours gay clubs and restaurants in San Francisco. He usually sketched them men before having sex with them and then stabbing them. Police believe the man committed the murders after feeling shame over his homosexual experiences.
Gilford said the three survivors include the entertainer, the diplomat and a man who left San Francisco and won’t answer letters or phone calls at his new express. “My feeling is that they don’t want to be exposed,” he said.
Harvey Milk, an advocate for homosexual rights, said of the victims who refuse to speak up, “I can understand their position. I respect the pressure society has put on them. Milk said many homosexuals may keep their sexual preference a secret because they fear losing their jobs. “They have to stay in the closet,” he said.
Another spokesman for the gay community, teacher Hank Wilson, said the case represents society’s “double standards” in dealing with crimes involving homosexuals. “You never year about the heterosexual murderer who had killed 12 women after raping them,” he said.
“The Doodler’s” victims included:
With no witnesses willing to identify him, “The Doodler” was never brought to justice.
July 8th, 2016
In news that surprised no one, The Advocate’s Washington, D.C. editor Larry Bush revealed “a concerted nationwide surveillance and investigation program by the FBI into the lives of wealthy, prominent, closeted homosexual men as well as into gay civil rights groups, and the collection of thousands of names of suspected homosexuals in the course of nearly 30 years.” According to FBI spokesman Lane Bonner, the surveillance began in 1954 and involved the national headquarters and every FBI field office. Bonner said that the surveillance ended in the late 1970s under Attorney General Edward Levi, but not before collecting thousands of pages of information on gay activists and private citizens.
The Advocate learned that the investigations had actually begun as early as 1943, when the FBI paid informants to report on the loyalty of gay Americans. The surveillance was expanded drastically in the early 1960s during project HOMEX, short for Homosexual Extortion. HOMEX investigated prominent, wealthy, closeted gay men who the FBI believed were potential extortion targets who might not come forward if they were being blackmailed. HOMEX generated twelve volumes of material kept at FBI headquarters, with each volume about two inches thick and containing some 200 entries. Another “25 or 27” volumes were kept in the New York FBI field office. It was anybody’s guess how much more was maintained at other field offices. To collect all of that information, the FBI conducted what it called “fugitive-style investigations,” which involved monitoring personal mail and bank accounts, interviewing neighbors, friends and employers, and the occasional surveillance of the targets’ movements. Bonner tried to explain HOMEX in the best possible light: “In the HOMEX investigation, it was necessary for us to do extensive investigations into homosexuals, because of their reluctance to come forward. There may be some people confused by that. We were not surveilling people to see if they engaged in homosexual acts. But also, in connection with other counterintelligence activities, we had a responsibility to disseminate information on those who held government employment.”
Bush wrote, “The HOMEX program resulted in only one arrest: of a commercial rabbit breeder from a Denver suburb on charges of extortion, in January 1978.” But HOMEX also produced other benefits for the FBI. Through HOMEX, they could identify people who the FBI could “develop” as informants for the FBI. In other words, a project that was ostensibly supposed to protect gay people from blackmail wound up being a tool of blackmail for the FBI. One 1967 memo addressed “To All Agents” spelled out what they were looking for: a “Baby Doll — A victim who exhibits a real fear of being caught and exposed as a homo and who is particularly vulnerable to extortion (possibly on a continuing basis).” The memo directed all agents “to submit names or identifying information on persons who may be logical persons to include in this album, so their photographs and background information may be obtained.” The memo closes with the request that “Any agent knowing of anyone coming under the category of ‘SHAKEMEN,’ ‘CHICKEN,’ or ‘BABY DOLL’ who could be developed as informants should route information to [redacted].” [Emphasis mine]
If the FBI was looking for gay people they could blackmail into becoming informants, they also feared that the Soviet Union and other hostile intelligent services might be doing the same. In a memo titled, “Homosexual Hangouts Throughout the United States, Criminal Intelligence Program,” dated December 23, 1965, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover directed each field office to “index locations” in its territory of all gay bars and meeting places “in order to conduct thorough interviews and for use in setting out leads” of foreign agents looking to entrap gay people into their intelligence services. According to The Advocate, FBI spokesman Bonner wouldn’t comment on whether its surveillance of gay bars was still underway as of 1982. “We know that representatives of the Soviet Union routinely cruise so-called gay bars. We know that for a fact. This matter would fall within the internal security mandate of the FBI. It would certainly be a matter of investigative interest to the FBI, to determine the targets of their contacts and their efforts. We certainly are interested in any effort on the part of hostile intelligence groups to expose or use any person’s sexual preference who would have access to national security information.”
That’s not the only thing the FBI was worried about. Until 1975, gays were banned from federal employment, and they were also banned from serving in the military long after. To aid other agencies in ferreting out homosexuals from their offices and mail rooms, the FBI established “control files” to collect any and all information on homosexual activities. Field offices were ordered to collect news clippings and any other material relating to the arrests of gay people charged on “morals” offenses. Special annotations were made for those who were later identified as being employees of the U.S. government or who may have held security clearances with federal contractors. A November 23, 1956 memo from the San Francisco FBI field office notified headquarters that “a 53-page memorandum, listing the names of individuals and places suspected of homosexual activity,” had been placed in its files. “Some of these individuals have been identified as having homosexual tendencies, others have been identified as associates of homosexuals.” Another report on November 2, 1960, described “individuals of obvious interest to the Department of Defense [who] are marked with red tabs. In all cases where a member of the Armed Forces has been arrested, a copy of the arrest report has been furnished the Armed Forces Police for appropriate action.” Another report from later that month praised the Salt Lake City vice squad for its “excellent cooperation” by circumventing a municipal ordinance requiring that arrest records be made available only under a warrant. The same report indicated that many of those who were arrested were turned free by the court in protest of the methods used by police to entrap the suspects.
As you might expect, the FBI was particularly interested in gay rights groups, which the FBI considered to be as subversive as the Community Party, the American Nazi Party and the KKK (Jul 6). The FBI sought papers of incorporation, lists of officers, membership and mailing lists, magazines, newsletters, posters, leaflets and anything else they could find. They actively monitored pickets and rallies, and often had informants planted in key meetings to report participants’ names and discussions back to the FBI. Some groups were monitored long after the FBI formally decided they weren’t a threat. A January 29, 1974 memo ending the investigation of the San Francisco Tavern Guild said: “No information developed indicating organization involved in any activity within the investigation jurisdiction of the FBI. Activities of this group will continue to be followed by above source [name redacted]” even while recommending “this matter be placed in a closed status.” The Advocate also had these examples from San Francisco:
By 1959, when San Francisco’s mayoralty race first raised the possibility of a tolerant attitude towards homosexuals (Oct 7), the FBI memos show infiltration of the Mattachine Society and an effort to determine whether the group favored one political candidate over another, and particularly whether there was any ground for believing the incumbent mayor was sympathetic to the call for an end to harassment of homosexuals. In the early 1960s, a memo noted that a homosexual rights group had endorsed then-San Francisco Sheriff Richard Hongisto for office. The files also indicate that all officials of the Committee on Religion and the Homosexual (Jan 1), including prominent San Francisco ministers, had been marked for name indexing and the establishment of separate files.
The Advocate found evidence that similar investigations took place in Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego, Birmingham, New Orleans, Miami, New York City, Denver, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Records indicated that those investigations slowed by the mid-seventies. None of the files provided to The Advocate, however, shed any light on the FBI practice of planting anonymous charges of homosexuality to smear public officials or civil rights leaders. Bayard Rustin (Mar 17), who had co-founded the Congress for Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, often found his homosexuality being used against him. But others who had filed Freedom of Information Act requests to see their own FBI files found plenty of evidence of this tactic. One was Dr. Laud Humphreys, a sociologist and author of Tearoom Trade, a 1970 book about sexual encounters between men in public toilets:
“I filed for my FBI records under the Freedom of Information Act,” Humphreys told The ADVOCATE, “and that’s where I learned what they had done to me. They sent anonymous letters to university officials where I worked, calling me a homosexual, saying I should be dismissed.” Humphreys said he found the accusation interesting, since there was nothing in his files to indicate he was in fact homosexual or even rumored to be so.
“My concept of these data is what I call a freeze-dried stigma,” Humphreys said. “It involves all sorts of data, punched up and flattened, and all the distinctions disappear. You just add hot water to it, and you have a person who immediately looks guilty.”
Historian (John) O’Emilio said he had found the FBI documents “surprising, yet I really shouldn’t be surprised. No matter how aware I become of how unscrupulous people with power are, I am always shocked when I see the actual instance. Thirty years ago what made it especially pernicious was that we were sitting ducks, and we still haven’t counted up the costs of individual lives that were ruined because of it.”
[Source: Larry Bush. “Investigations of Gay People Confirmed: Has the FBI Been In Your Closet?” The Advocate Issue 346 (July 8, 1982): 16-20, 24.]
July 8th, 2016
110 YEARS AGO: (d. 2005) He was only twenty-four years old and fresh out of Harvard when he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He would have been regarded as a great visionary even if that had been his only accomplishment. But Johnson wanted more, and in his travels to Europe he became exposed to such masters of modernism as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Walter Gropius. Johnson’s 1932 MOMA show, “The International Style: Architecture Since 1922,” introduced modern architecture to the American public, and Johnson became an evangelist for the International Style. Johnson’s travels to Europe also exposed him to the early ideology of Hitler’s National Socialism, which Johnson also eagerly embraced. He remained enamored with Nazism until Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland, when he toured that conquered country at Hitler’s invitation. As Johnson later said, “I have no excuse [for] such utter, unbelievable stupidity. … I don’t know how you expiate guilt.”
Philip Johnson’s perfectly sublime Glass House (1949).
Fortunately for Johnson, there would be a second chapter to his life. After the war, he designed his 1949 masterpiece Glass House as his own private residence in New Canaan, Connecticut. That design put him at the forefront of modernist architecture in America. In the 1950s, he teamed up with his mentor Meis van der Rohe to design the Seagram Building in New York. The steel-and-glass design would define the essential elements of American skyscrapers for the next sixty years. Other important landmarks followed: the PPG tower in Pittsburgh, the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, the IDS Tower in Minneapolis. Johnson’s minimalist steel and glass design would also be the defining feature of his Chrystal Cathedral, which he designed for televangelist Robert Schuller in Garden Grove, California. After Schuller’s empire went bankrupt, Chrystal Cathedral was sold in 2011 for $57.5 million to the Orange County diocese of the Catholic Church. After some sensitive and beautiful renovations for liturgical purposes, the building became Christ Cathedral, the diocese’s official seat.
From the sublime to the ridiculous: the AT&T Building, 1984.
By the 1980s, Johnson had decided that minimalism had boxed him into a corner, if you will excuse the pun. So in a fit of iconoclasm, he abandoned his minimalist signature by placing a garish Chippendale corbel on top of the AT&T building in New York. In doing so, he practically invented what became known as post-modernism. Because of that horrible act of vandalism to New York’s skyline, I hold him singularly responsible for the damnable plague of third-rate developers placing post-modernist geegaws on every tacky strip mall, apartment complex and gated community home in North America.
Fortunately, Johnson’s latest design is considerably more redeeming. The largest LGBT congregation in America, Dallas’s Cathedral of Hope, commissioned Johnson for its Interfaith Peace Chapel, which opened to the public in 2010. Johnson didn’t live to see it come to fruition. He died in his sleep at Glass House in 2005, survived by his partner of 45 years.
July 7th, 2016
Amanda Alvear, 25 years old.
Amanda worked as a pharmacy technician and planned to become a nurse. She had transformed herself over the past two years. She shed 180 pounds with the help of bypass surgery and daily workouts. On that Saturday, she had spent the day shopping with her nieces. “She was a fashionista,” said her brother. “She liked to look good, and she wanted my girls – her girls – to look good,” he said. “She liked to make them look very good.”
Her brother said that she enjoyed going out to gay and lesbian clubs because they were fun places to be and she felt safe there. “She wouldn’t want anyone to spread hate for her,” her brother said. “She’d rather they spread more love, keep friends and family close and have a good time doing it.” She went to Pulse for Latin Night with her best friend, Mercedes Marisol Flores. While at Pulse, Amanda posted a series of short videos on Snapchat. In the last video, she captures the moment the gunman opened fire. First, it’s just her having fun with friends. Then gunshots. “Shooting,” she says. Whatever she said after that is drowned out by about 17 gunshots in six seconds.
Neither Amanda nor Mercedez made it out. They were both found dead in a bathroom. “I found out earlier today from another friend of hers that Amanda and her had a chance to escape,” said her brother, “But Amanda went back in because she wasn’t going to leave without Mercedez. She almost made it out.”
Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old.
Mercedez was originally from Queens, New York, but moved to Davenport, Florida, where she graduated from Ridge Community High School in 2008. She worked at Target and studied literature at Valencia College. She was also an avid music fan and was interested in party planning. She wanted to learn to coordinate events for her two older brothers who worked as DJs.
She went to Pulse almost every weekend, often with her best friend, Amanda Alvear. Mercedez and Amanda had known each other for 12 years and were best friends. “They went on cruises together, road trips, plane trips, whatever,” said Amanda’s cousin. “They were both so outgoing. They were like twins.”
July 7th, 2016
Clyde Tolson and J. Edgar Hoover, on vacation.
J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ 48-year chief, was dogged by rumors of his homosexuality and a suspected longtime affair with his assistant Clyde Tolson, but those rumors were put down as quickly as they arose. When Hoover died in 1972 he left his estate to Tolson, who moved into Hoover’s house. When Tolson died in April of 1975, speculation arose again over what everyone acknowledged as an extraordinarily close relationship with Hoover. In July, the subject came up again on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” according to this UPI article:
Rumors that the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual “absolutely could not be true,” according to a former top FBI official.
William A. Sullivan, who retired Saturday as assistant FBI director, made the statement in response to a reporter’s question on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Hoover never married and maintained a lifetime friendship with his top assistant, Clyde Tolson, who died earlier this year.
CBS reporter Fred Graham told Sullivan it was “common knowledge that there were allegations that J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual.”
“I wonder, “Graham asked, “can you tell me if that was investigated by any security agency, and can you tell me whether or not the FBI knows whether or not that’s true — was true?”
Sullivan replied: “I think that that is a — that question there is so ridiculous, about the homosexuality of J. Edgar Hoover, that I will just not give any credit to it, because I think it — it just absolutely cannot be true. I don’t believe.”
Graham: “But are you telling me that it was never checked out?”
Sullivan: “Certainly not. It was not checked out. It was so ridiculous that you could not check out something like that.”
July 7th, 2016
George Cukor, on The Philadelphia Story set with Katharine Hepburn.
(d. 1983) A glance through his filmography shows that Hollywood would not have been Hollywood without George Cukor’s directing many of its landmark films with RKO and MGM. In 1931, he made his solo directorial debut with Paramount with Tarnished Lady starring Tallulah Bankhead, and went on to work on twenty-six films over the next ten years including, notably, A Bill of Divorcement (1932, debuting Katharine Hepburn), Dinner at Eight (1933), Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936), Camille (1936), The Women (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Gaslight (1944), Adam’s Rib (1949), Born Yesterday (1950), A Star is Born (1954), and My Fair Lady(1964). Cukor had been hired by his mentor, David O. Selznick, to direct Gone With The Wind even before the book was published. But Cukor was fired three weeks into filming after expressing dissatisfaction with the script. (A replacement director was also dissatisfied with it and quit, prompting a complete re-write of the film.)
Cukor had a reputation as a “woman’s director” for his ability to coax great performances from his actresses. He hated the title, perhaps seeing it as a dig at his open secret: just about everyone in Hollywood knew he was gay. He luxurious home was host to weekly Sunday afternoon pool parties attended by closeted celebrities and their guests. Hollywood was — and still is — a very small company town, and word had a way of getting around. Producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz threw shade: “In a way, George Cukor was the first great female director of Hollywood.” But the quality of Cukor’s work belied those who dismissed him because he wasn’t a typical macho director. Twenty-one actors and actresses working under Cukor received Oscar nominations; three actors and two actresses came up winners. Cukor himself earned five Best Direction nominations, finally winning an Oscar for My Fair Lady.
July 6th, 2016
Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old.
Xavier was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and moved to the mainland about ten years ago. He was dedicated father to his five year old son. He took a job at an Aldo shoe store because the work hours would better accommodate his schedule with his son. When his son graduated from pre-kindergarten, Xavier wrote on Facebook, “I have no words to express how proud and happy I am of my little boy.”
Xavier was also an accomplished dancer known by his stage name, Eman Valentino. He had performed at local theme parks, including Walt Disney World, and on the Norwegian Cruise Line. He also performed at local gay bars, including Splash bar in Panama City and Orlando’s Parliament House. One video posted on YouTube shows him performing at Parliament House in a top hat, long coat and gloves:
Xavier had recently begun dating Leroy Valentin Fernandez, who was also killed during the shooting.
Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old.
Leroy loved dressing up, singing and dancing, especially to Beyoncé or Jennifer Lopez. He was a leacing agent at an apartment complex where he kept his co-workers entertained. “He filled our office with music,” said the apartment manager. “He sang Adele in the office until we couldn’t take it anymore. It just feels very quiet, now.” Things were really falling into place: He was taking care of his mom, he had a job that he really liked, and he was beginning to date Xavier Serrano, someone who shared his love for Latin dancing. What more could he possibly want in life?
July 6th, 2016
Thomas Swinscow
The London Central Telegraph Office had two problems. The first one was that a number of its delivery boys had been found having sex with each other in the basement toilets of its central office. Not only that, but those same boys used their mobility engage in commercial sexual enterprises with gentlemen clients in a loosely organized prostitution ring. For that, the General Post Office had created its own investigative force in 1887 to crack down on prostitution and other crimes being committed in the postal service. In 1889, the Central Telegraph Office had another problem: cash had gone missing from its tills. Naturally, suspicion fell on those same messengers boys, one in particular: Thomas Swinscow, who was discovered to have had 18 shillings on him. That’s about £90 today, a sum which no messenger boy would be expected to have jangling around in his pocket. Swinscow explained that he didn’t steal it, but earned it fair and square. Well, not quite. After police pressed him further, he revealed that he had been paid “from going to bed with gentlemen” at the home of Charles Hammond, 35, of 19 Cleveland Street. He got four shillings to allow clients to “have a go between my legs” and “put their persons into me.” He only admitted to having done so twice in total. But never mind where the remaining ten shillings came from, because Swinscow gave up the names of three other telegraph messenger boys who Swinscow claimed to have worked for Hammond: Algernon Allies, Charles Thickbroom, and Henry Newlove — no, I’m not making that name up — who Swinscow claimed had introduced him to Hammond.
On July 6, 1889, Police went to 19 Cleveland Street to arrest Hammond and Newlove. But when they got there, they discovered that Hammond and Newlove were nowhere to be found. Later that afternoon, they found Newlove hiding in his mother’s home, but Hammond had already fled the country. Police charged the eighteen-year-old Newlove with “unlawfully, wickedly, and corruptly conspire, combine, confederate and agree to” procure young men “to commit the abominable crime of buggery.” And they pressed Newlove, Swinscow and the other messenger boys to cough up more names of men they had serviced. This is where things got tricky because the names implicated were big ones: Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Euston and Lord Arthur Somerset, an equerry to the Prince of Wales. More names were produced, including, most prominently, Prince Albert Victor, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and grandson to Queen Victoria, and therefore the second in line to the throne.
L-R: Charles Hammond; Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Houston; and Lord Arthur Somerset.
There was never any proof of Prince Albert’s involvement, but even without it, the whole affair involved enough prominent people that it’s handling called for a certain delicacy. Not only was Hammond tipped off, but someone also warned Somerset, who fled first to Germany, then the South of France where he spent the rest of his life with a male companion. Hammond, meanwhile, fled to France, which expelled him to Belgium under British pressure. He then emigrated to the U.S., with Somerset paying for Hammond’s passage. Interestingly, neither man was ever extradited back to Britain, despite treaties being in place allowing Britain to do so. Instead, their cases were quietly dropped.
The same wasn’t quite so true for the messenger boys. Newlove was convicted in September of gross indecency and procuring. But in a surprising turn, he was sentenced to only four months hard labor. Gross indecency alone would get you two years at hard labor. The remaining less cooperative youths were sentenced to nine months of hard labor.
The whole story stayed out of the press, partly because police actions against houses of prostitutions were common enough to be boring, and partly because the police kept things very quiet. But Ernest Parke, a journalist for a tiny radical political weekly, The North London Press, found it odd that the boys had been given such light sentences. When he learned about Hammond’s escape, he poked around some more and discovered that the boys had fingered, so to speak, some rather prominent aristocrats.
On September 28, Parke broke the story in The North London Press, but without naming specific names. Two weeks later, he published a follow-up story naming Fitzroy in “an indescribably loathsome scandal in Cleveland Street.” He also said that both Lord Somerset and the Earl of Euston were allowed to escape to Peru to protect someone higher up. When reading between the lines, many readers came to understand that the higher-up was Prince Albert Victor.
Euston was, in fact, still in England, and filed suit against Parke for libel. That trial only ensured that the whole scandal would dominate the papers for weeks to come. But when the trial started, Parke refused to reveal his sources, and with no witnesses willing to come forward to back him up, Parke was found guilty for libel and sentenced to twelve months in prison. But another trial in December brought the case before the public’s attention, when Newlove’s defense attorney was charged with obstructing justice by warning Hammond of his imminent arrest, and thus allowing Hammond to flee the country. The attorney was convicted and sentenced to six weeks in prison.
MP Henry Labouchère
Member of Parliament Henry Labouchère, demanded an investigation of Parke’s allegations of a cover-up. Four years earlier, he successfully campaigned to add “gross indecency” to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1855. His amendment doing so was known as the “Labouchère Amendment.” Labouchère was convinced that the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, the Lord Chancellor of England and the Attorney-General impeded the investigation and allowed Somerset and Hammond to escape. He pressed this allegations so harshly that he was suspended from Parliament for a week. His proposal to form an investigative committee was rejected, 204-66.
The scandal faded, but the newspaper coverage had reinforced generally negative attitudes towards gay men by reinforcing the perception that the telegraph messenger boys had been corrupted and exploited by a homosexual upper class. (In fact, the boys had already played around with each other in the Telegraph Office’s restrooms long before they were introduced to Hammond.) When Oscar Wilde alluded to the scandal in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), one reviewer called it suitable for “none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys.” When Wilde was put on trial for gross indecency in 1895, prosecutors questioned the West End erudite dandy about his associations with young working men. As for Prince Albert Victor, society gossip swirled around his sex life right up until his death in 1892, and it continued long after.
July 6th, 2016
FBI Memo: “Obstructive Tactics of Organizations” (Click to download. PDF: 155 KB/3 pages)
A month earlier, FBI field offices in Birmingham, Alabama, and Louisville, Kentucky, forwarded copies of a leaflet published by the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) containing instructions on “how to handle a federal investigator” (Jun 4). The Eisenhower-era Executive Order 10450 prohibited the federal employment of gay employees (Apr 27), and the FBI, the Civil Service Commission, and several other federal agencies were tasked to investigate and root out anybody on the federal payroll who might be gay. The ECHO pamphlet, which by its language was almost certainly written by Frank Kameny (May 21) of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., provided some fairly straightforward advice: Don’t incriminate yourself, never lie, but also refuse to answer questions when necessary, sign no statements, give no names, insist on witnesses, and so forth. And get a lawyer.
This advice, based on the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, was deemed by the FBI as evidence of homosexuals “obstructing the efforts of the Bureau.” Meanwhile, the Justice Department had asked that the FBI provide to the Department’s Training Division “instructions issued by such groups as the American Nazi Party and the Mattachine Society to their members to obstruct the efforts of the bureau and law enforcement.” On July 6, the FBI fulfilled that request by providing a memo outlining “obstructive tactics” of five “certain organizations.” Lumped together in the five were the American Nazi Party, the Communist Party U.S.A., the Ku Klux Klan, the Minutemen, and the East Coast Homophile Organization [sic]:
The above consists of branches of the Mattachine Society in Washington, D.C. and New York, New York; the Janus Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and the Daughters of Bilitis, New York, New York. These organizations strive to gain acceptance for homosexuals at every level of society. Together, during the Fall of 1964, they issued instructions to their members on the manner in which they are to conduct themselves when questioned by investigators of the Federal Government and when they are arrested. A copy of these instructions, as they were received in FBI Headquarters from the Mattachine Society of Washington, Post Office Box 1022, Washington, D.C., is attached.
July 6th, 2016
Coverage of the Stonewall rebellion in New York’s news media was quite scant. The New York Times buried its first day’s coverage with a very small article on page 33 (Jun 29). The New York Daily News placed its first small story on page 30. But on July 6, the Daily News — which was a very different paper than it is today — returned to the subject again for the Sunday paper, and gave the story the paper’s trademarked sensationalized treatment:
Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad
By JERRY LISKER
She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn’t bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street.
Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra strap to bra strap against an invasion of the helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of their private gay clubs, the Stonewall Inn at 57 Christopher St., in the heart of a three-block homosexual community in Greenwich Village. Queen Power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot. “We may have lost the battle, sweets, but the war is far from over,” lisped an unofficial lady-in-waiting from the court of the Queens.
“We’ve had all we can take from the Gestapo,” the spokesman, or spokeswoman, continued. “We’re putting our foot down once and for all.” The foot wore a spiked heel. According to reports, the Stonewall Inn, a two-story structure with a sand painted brick and opaque glass facade, was a mecca for the homosexual element in the village who wanted nothing but a private little place where they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do when they get together.
The thick glass shut out the outside world of the street. Inside, the Stonewall bathed in wild, bright psychedelic lights, while the patrons writhed to the sounds of a juke box on a square dance floor surrounded by booths and tables. The bar did a good business and the waiters, or waitresses, were always kept busy, as they snaked their way around the dancing customers to the booths and tables. For nearly two years, peace and tranquility reigned supreme for the Alice in Wonderland clientele.
The Raid Last Friday
Last Friday the privacy of the Stonewall was invaded by police from the First Division. It was a raid. They had a warrant. After two years, police said they had been informed that liquor was being served on the premises. Since the Stonewall was without a license, the place was being closed. It was the law.
All hell broke loose when the police entered the Stonewall. The girls instinctively reached for each other. Others stood frozen, locked in an embrace of fear.
Only a handful of police were on hand for the initial landing in the homosexual beachhead. They ushered the patrons out onto Christopher Street, just off Sheridan Square. A crowd had formed in front of the Stonewall and the customers were greeted with cheers of encouragement from the gallery.
The whole proceeding took on the aura of a homosexual Academy Awards Night. The Queens pranced out to the street blowing kisses and waving to the crowd. A beauty of a specimen named Stella wailed uncontrollably while being led to the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall by a cop. She later confessed that she didn’t protest the manhandling by the officer, it was just that her hair was in curlers and she was afraid her new beau might be in the crowd and spot her. She didn’t want him to see her this way, she wept.
Queen Power
The crowd began to get out of hand, eye witnesses said. Then, without warning, Queen Power exploded with all the fury of a gay atomic bomb. Queens, princesses and ladies-in-waiting began hurling anything they could get their polished, manicured fingernails on. Bobby pins, compacts, curlers, lipstick tubes and other femme fatale missiles were flying in the direction of the cops. The war was on. The lilies of the valley had become carnivorous jungle plants.
Urged on by cries of “C’mon girls, lets go get’em,” the defenders of Stonewall launched an attack. The cops called for assistance. To the rescue came the Tactical Patrol Force.
Flushed with the excitement of battle, a fellow called Gloria pranced around like Wonder Woman, while several Florence Nightingales administered first aid to the fallen warriors. There were some assorted scratches and bruises, but nothing serious was suffered by the honeys turned Madwoman of Chaillot.
Official reports listed four injured policemen with 13 arrests. The War of the Roses lasted about 2 hours from about midnight to 2 a.m. There was a return bout Wednesday night.
Two veterans recently recalled the battle and issued a warning to the cops. “If they close up all the gay joints in this area, there is going to be all out war.”
Bruce and Nan
Both said they were refugees from Indiana and had come to New York where they could live together happily ever after. They were in their early 20’s. They preferred to be called by their married names, Bruce and Nan.
“I don’t like your paper,” Nan lisped matter-of-factly. “It’s anti-fag and pro-cop.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t see what they did to the Stonewall. Did the pigs tell you that they smashed everything in sight? Did you ask them why they stole money out of the cash register and then smashed it with a sledge hammer? Did you ask them why it took them two years to discover that the Stonewall didn’t have a liquor license.”
Bruce nodded in agreement and reached over for Nan’s trembling hands.
“Calm down, doll,” he said. “Your face is getting all flushed.”
Nan wiped her face with a tissue.
“This would have to happen right before the wedding. The reception was going to be held at the Stonewall, too,” Nan said, tossing her ashen-tinted hair over her shoulder.
“What wedding?,” the bystander asked.
Nan frowned with a how-could-anybody-be-so-stupid look. “Eric and Jack’s wedding, of course. They’re finally tieing the knot. I thought they’d never get together.”
Meet Shirley
“We’ll have to find another place, that’s all there is to it,” Bruce sighed. “But every time we start a place, the cops break it up sooner or later.”
“They let us operate just as long as the payoff is regular,” Nan said bitterly. “I believe they closed up the Stonewall because there was some trouble with the payoff to the cops. I think that’s the real reason. It’s a shame. It was such a lovely place. We never bothered anybody. Why couldn’t they leave us alone?”
Shirley Evans, a neighbor with two children, agrees that the Stonewall was not a rowdy place and the persons who frequented the club were never troublesome. She lives at 45 Christopher St.
“Up until the night of the police raid there was never any trouble there,” she said. “The homosexuals minded their own business and never bothered a soul. There were never any fights or hollering, or anything like that. They just wanted to be left alone. I don’t know what they did inside, but that’s their business. I was never in there myself. It was just awful when the police came. It was like a swarm of hornets attacking a bunch of butterflies.”
A reporter visited the now closed Stonewall and it indeed looked like a cyclone had struck the premisses.
Police said there were over 200 people in the Stonewall when they entered with a warrant. The crowd outside was estimated at 500 to 1,000. According to police, the Stonewall had been under observation for some time. Being a private club, plain clothesmen were refused entrance to the inside when they periodically tried to check the place. “They had the tightest security in the Village,” a First Division officer said, “We could never get near the place without a warrant.”
Police Talk
The men of the First Division were unable to find any humor in the situation, despite the comical overtones of the raid.
“They were throwing more than lace hankies,” one inspector said. “I was almost decapitated by a slab of thick glass. It was thrown like a discus and just missed my throat by inches. The beer can didn’t miss, though, “it hit me right above the temple.”
Police also believe the club was operated by Mafia connected owners. The police did confiscate the Stonewall’s cash register as proceeds from an illegal operation. The receipts were counted and are on file at the division headquarters. The warrant was served and the establishment closed on the grounds it was an illegal membership club with no license, and no license to serve liquor.
The police are sure of one thing. They haven’t heard the last from the Girls of Christopher Street.
That last sentence was probably the most accurate statement in the entire article. The Village Voice, which was supposed to be the more liberal, counter-cultural paper, was only somewhat more considerate in its choice of language when its coverage hit the streets three days earlier (see Jul 3). But at least the Voice’s Lucian Truscott IV was able to capture the riot’s importance: “The forces of faggotry, spurred by a Friday night raid on one of the city’s largest, most popular, and longest lived gay bars, the Stonewall Inn, rallied Saturday night in an unprecedented protest against the raid and continued Sunday night to assert presence, possibility, and pride until the early hours of Monday morning.” Disrespectful language aside, Truscott’s account would become the story of record, while Lisker’s article would be forever remembered for the kind of universal contempt directed toward gay people that gave rise to the rebellion in the first place. Lisker went on to become the sports reporter for the Daily News, New York Post, and Fox Sports. He died in 1993.
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