Box Turtle Bulletin

Born On This Day, 1973: Neil Patrick Harris

NPH has successfully smashed two important acting barriers. A former child actor, he has successfully navigated the difficulties of becoming an adult actor in Broadway, film, and television. And he has also navigated the difficult transition from assumed-straight actor to a highly visible gay one, with partner David Burtka and twin children who were born in 2010. And as a very visible gay actor, he still manages to play straight roles on film and television. In addition, he has been an acclaimed host for the Tony Awards in 2009, 2011, 2012, and 2013. He didn’t host the 2010 Tonys, but that year he did win an Emmy for hosting the 2009 Awards, and he won two more Emmys for hosting the 2011 and 2012 Tonys. His winning ways continued with his performance in the Broadway premiere of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, for which he won a Drama Desk Award and a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical. This past weekend, NPH debuted his shaved head look at the Tony Awards. I’m still not ready to update the picture.

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This Month In History, 1914: Sexual Inversion Among Women in Spain

Not much has been written about lesbians in the historic literature, where most of the focus was on gay men. But Douglas C. McMurtrie, the New York editor of the Urologic and Cutaneous Review came a cross an article in a Spanish journal by the criminologist Bernaldo de Quiros and decided that the information was “of sufficient originality to warrant an abstract in English.” Using the term “tribadism” for lesbianism, McMurtrie went on to summarize de Quiros’s paper:

In certain cases, particularly those of congenital inversion with or without reference to physically inverted characteristics, tribadism develops, from instinctively digressive tendencies, in centers where there are segregated members of the female sex. There are various centers of this sort: convents, boarding-schools, manufacturing establishments, etc. Sapphic love affairs are very prevalent in tobacco factories. In explanation of this a new cause has been mentioned; namely, the irritation which the flying tobacco dust produces. Until recently, there was, near the tobacco factory of Madrid, a tavern which, had the proprietor known any classical mythology — beyond that pertaining to Bacchus, could have been christened “To the Island of Lesbos.”

Among the prostitutes, inversion is frequent, as also with some female criminals. The prison and hospital are centers of initiation into the practices of tribadism. Tribades are seldom permitted in brothels. Whenever recognized, they are found living independently. We have become acquainted with some who act as “men” and keep their beloved locked up at home while they go out on business to earn by their degraded profession, means for their mutual maintenance and provision for their needs. Admitting the frequency of homosexuality among prostitutes, it is necessary at the same time, to consider at least, the paradoxical hypothesisof Kurella, according to which prostitution is a partial inversion in woman, this being evidenced by the absence of feminine honor — which is obvious — and by the failure of ordinary sexual practices to give them satisfaction.

One of the great struggles that writers about homosexuality were forced to endure was to wrap their brains around the possibility that sexuality and gender roles were somehow separate. Men and women were defined according to both who they were anatomically, and according to what they did behaviorally. Men had penises and did men’s work; women had vaginas and performed women’s tasks, and the idea that the two parts of the definition could be decoupled in any meaningful way was beyond the imagination of most observers. That failing is not altogether their fault; it was also beyond the imagination of most gays and lesbians of that era as well. Where today we would simply see two men or two women in a same-sex relationship, that observation would have proved extremely difficult to understand a century ago. And so there was a considerable effort to figure out in these same-sex relationships who was the man and who was the woman, a task that McMurtrie candidly admitted was a difficult one:

It is difficult to picture the dualism of the sexes and the roles played by the different characters in this kind of love. One criterion of inversion which has been taken, is the development of the clitoris, either congenital or acquired by manipulation; this organ corresponding in the homology of sexual dualism to the male penis. The tribades whom we questioned on this point answered in various ways. The “man” is the masculine, not by reason of extraordinary development of the clitoris, but rather by the manifestation of characteristics which they, with their knowledge of the psychology of the other sex, consider as masculine. The “male” tribade is such through her impulse of domination, through her masculine impetus, and especially, according to the eloquent love-confession of one of these women, “because she is the one who does the beating.” The normal woman or the inverted woman lives under the “rule of the club” and in the delivery of mitigation of “the beating” that the differentiation is accomplished. …The “male” tribade likes to imitate a man in actions and occupations. They also adopt masculine nicknames.

[Source: Douglas C. McMurtrie. “Sexual inversion among women in Spain. Urologic and Cutaneous Review 18, no. 6 (June 1914): 308. Available online via Google Books here.]

Born On This Day, 1961: Boy George

55 YEARS AGO: George O’Dowd’s first stage name was Lieutenant Lush when he performed with Bow Wow Wow. That tenure was short lived: he was booed off the stage. He then joined up with drummer (and regular boyfriend) Jon Moss (previously of The Damned and Adam and the Ants), bassist Mikey Craig and guitarist/keyboardist Roy Hay. They called their group In Praise of Lemmings and then Sex Gang Children. When they finally realized that they had a androgynous Irish singer, a black bassist, a Jewish drummer and an English keyboardist, they decided to call themselves Culture Club, with Boy George as the frontman. Their debut album Kissing to Be Clever was released in 1982, and their single “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” became an international hit. “Time (Clock of Heart)” and “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya,” gave them the distinction of being the first group since the Beatles to have three Top 10 hits in the U.S. from a debut album. Their next album Colour By Numbers, did almost as well, with “Church of the Poison Mind” and “Miss Me Blind” hitting the Top Ten in the U.S. and “Karma Chameleon” holding the #1 spot for three weeks (and for six weeks in the U.K.).

Boy George left Culture Club behind in 1986 when his relationship with Moss soured and he began descending into a nasty heroin addiction. He went into rehab, but part of his treatment added prescriptions for narcotics to deal with the heroin withdrawal. He ended up trading one addiction for another. He had a few modest hits as a solo artist, including the title song from the movie The Crying Game in 1992. He wrote the score for the London musical Taboo, which was based on his life and earned him a Tony nomination for Best Musical Score. But his troubles continued to follow him. In 2005, he was arrested in New York for cocaine possession and filing a false burglary report. The drug charge was dropped and he pleaded guilty to the false report. He was sentenced to five days of community service, fined $1,000 and ordered into drug rehab. In 2008, he was arrested and charged with assault and false imprisonment. He was convicted and sentenced to fifteen months imprisonment. He was released after four months and was placed under home detention. In 2010, he released Ordinary Alien, which he followed in 2013 with This Is What I Do.

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These are the names of the dead as of late last night.

Edward “Top Hat Eddie” Sotomayor, Jr., 34 years old. A brand manager for a travel agency that specializes in gay cruises.

Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old. A pharmacy tech, originally from Massachusetts. “Always bubbly and super down to earth and such a sweet guy.”

Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old. Friends called him “Omar.” One aunt says he now “dances freely in heaven.”

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old (left). His boyfriend, Drew Leinonen, was also at the night club. Late last night, his mother confirmed that he had died. Drew had established a Gay-Straight Alliance in his high school.

Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old. Originally from Puerto Rico, he had been married to his husband for about a year.

Peter Ommy Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 years old. Originally from New Jersey. “R.I.P. Peter Ommy. A great person with a beautiful smile.”

Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old. A student at Seminole State College. Worked the “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey” ride at Universal Orlando Resort.

Kimberly”KJ” Morris, 37 years old, a bouncer at Pulse. Friends remembered her dancing and her smile.

Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old. “Mommy I love you,” he texted to his mother at 2:06 a.m. “In club they shooting.”

Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old. (No photo available as of 10:15 PDT.)

… And 39 others.

Today In History, 1961: Delaware Police Announce “Morals” Roundup

55 YEARS AGO: A state investigation in a “morals case” ended with the arrest of fifteen men, aged sixteen to twenty-seven years. As The Mattachine Review commented, the sixteen-year-old “unfortunately gives authorities a valid reason to conduct the investigations,” although it is unclear from the Wilmington Evening Journal’s article of June 13 whether that was the focus of the investigation or merely something police discovered sometime after it began. The investigation started on April 6 when police officers in Newark arrested Vance H. Middleton, 37, who “admitted participating in immoral acts.” Police went to his home and “seized a mass of obscene pictures and literature and photographic equipment and original photographs. It was through these photographs that the identity of many of those in the investigation was established.” Through a kind of a snowballing operation in which each contact was interrogated in order to obtain the names of other contacts, police surmised that “The Newark parties drew persons from throughout Delaware, Elkton, Philadelphia and New York” and that “most of the immoral activity centered in the Newark-Brookside area of week-ends.” One man, James M.F. Short, 31, of Newark and Wilmington, was charged with “63 morals charges by state police” and was being “held for psychiatric treatment on the Newark charges.”

A reader sent a copy of the Wilmington Evening Journal’s article to The Mattachine Review, and added the following details.

Police pressure is terrible throughout the state, they are pressuring homosexuals that are picked up to name and identify all their acquaintances. They even go to the places where they are employed, call them off the job and not even permit them to inform their employers they are leaving. They then are held as long as the police desire to hold them and generally cost the respective employee his job (which the police clearly envision because of their actions). When they are picked up, they are taken to the station for interrogation, subjected to a contingent of police officials’ questioning, and their actions and conversation filmed and tape recorded for the entirety of their stay. Their legal rights are denied on a wholesale basis, and none of them as yet has taken any action against the police.

Of course, in some towns down state, attorneys will not even defend a prospective client against the police even on charges other than homosexuality. (Proof of that statement In the Delaware State News, Dover, Delaware)

Short, one of the defendants in the case, attempted to implicate a State Trooper, so, of course, the numerous charges placed against him clearly indicate how the police plan to handle him.

[Sources: “15 Arrests in Morals Case End State’s Investigation.” Wilmington (DE) Evening Journal (June 13, 1961). As reprinted in the The Mattachine Review 7. no. 7 (June 1961): 27-28.]

Letter to the editor. The Mattachine Review 7. no. 7 (June 1961): 27.

Harold Call. “Calling Shots.” The Mattachine Review 7. no. 7 (June 1961): 4-5.]

Today In History, 1995: LGBT Leaders Welcomed to White House With Rubber Gloves

Relations between the LGBT community and the Clinton Administration were at a low point in 1995. Instead of repealing the ban against gays in the military, the Clinton Administration negotiated “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” with conservative Democrats and Republicans. Instead of filing a Justice Department brief with the Supreme Court to weigh in on a lawsuit challenging Colorado’s Amendment 2 which would have banned civil rights protections for gay people, Attorney General Janet Reno sat on her hands. But with the White House beginning to cast an eye toward the 1996 elections, they realized that they needed to do something to try to placate a seriously pissed off constituency.

So on June 14, the Clinton Administration invited 40 gay leaders, including state senators and representatives, city council members, judges and other elected officials from around the country, to a special White House meeting. The meeting’s purpose was to announce that Marsha Scott, a deputy assistant to President Clinton, was being named as White House liaison officer for gay and lesbian issues. They were also there to learn about a new 30-member presidential advisory council on HIV/AIDS. But before the meeting even got started, things got off on the wrong foot when the LGBT leaders were greeted at the White House by Secret Service agents who had put on rubber gloves before granting them access. The activists were furious when agents told them they were wearing the gloves to protect themselves from HIV. “For that to even happen at the White House shows they haven’t a clue about AIDS,” said Act-Up spokesman Steve Michael. “It just shows where they’re at.”

What was supposed to be a grand kiss-and-make-up session quickly turned into yet another embarrassment for the administration. Secret Service director Eljay Brown issued a statement saying that he regretted “the unfortunate actions” taken by his agents. “It is not the policy of the Secret Service to wear gloves merely based on known sexual preference.” The Treasury Department, which had jurisdiction over the Secret Service, was asked to investigate. White House press secretary Mike McCurry said, “It’s safe to say the chief of staff (Leon Panetta) and others were distressed by that and believe it to be an error of judgment.”

Born On This Day, 1926: Paul Lynde

(d. 1982) He studied drama at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois with fellow students Cloris Leachman, Charlotte Rae, Patricia Neal, Jeffrey Hunter and Claude Akins. Imagine what that class must have been like. After graduating in 1948, he moved to New York and became a stand-up comic and a Broadway actor. In 1960, he appeared in Broadway’s Bye Bye Birdie, as well as in its film adaptation in 1963. But most of his work was in television, where he appeared in numerous sitcoms (he was Uncle Arthur in Bewitched) and lent his voice to animated cartoons. He is probably best known as the “center square” for the game show Hollywood Squares with host Peter Marshall, where Lynde became famous for his one-liners and double entendres. They say his sexual orientation was an open secret in Hollywood. It’s hard to imagine any secret being more open than his. Especially considering Hollywood Squares answers like these:

Peter Marshall: In the Wizard of Oz, the lion wanted courage and the tin man wanted a heart. What did the scarecrow want?
Paul Lynde: He wanted the tin man to notice him.

Marshall: Is the electricity in your house A.C. or D.C.?
Lynde: In my house it’s both.

Marshall: What do you call a man who gives you diamonds and pearls?
Lynde: I’d call him “darling”!

Marshall: It is the most abused and neglected part of your body– what is it?
Lynde: Mine may be abused but it certainly isn’t neglected!

Marshall: Paul, in what famous book will you read about a talking ass who wonders why it’s being beaten?
Lynde: I read it, “The Joy of Sex.”

Marshall: Paul, why do Hell’s Angels wear leather?
Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.

Marshall: According to the old song, what’s breaking up that old gang of mine?
Lynde: Anita Byant!

And here are a couple more:

Lynde was enormously popular, but several attempts to give him his own shows invariably ended in low ratings and swift cancellations. Audiences loved him, but only in small doses. This will give you an idea of how powerful his presence was: we may remember his appearances on Bewitched, but he only appeared on that show ten times throughout its eight year run.

Also working against him were skittish TV executives, who were concerned his homosexuality and his worsening alcoholism and substance abuse. When he was sober, he was well-loved by his fellow performers. When Lynde won an Emmy for Entertainer of the Year in 1976, he immediately turned the statue over to host Jackie Gleason, who had never won an Emmy, saying that Gleason was “the funniest man ever.” But when he was drunk, he was one of the most out-of-control drunks to inhabit the planet. In 1965, he was partying with a young actor (and alleged lover) in Lynde’s room at San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake hotel when the actor fell from the eighth-floor window to his death. That tragedy was hushed up, which saved Lynde’s career but did little to sober him up. He was repeatedly arrested for his drunken behavior, including one arrest in1978 outside of a gay bar in Salt Lake City which led to his being dropped from a guest appearance on the Donnie and Marie show.  That same year, he was banned from the campus of Northwestern University after unleashing a horrendously racist tirade at a black professor in a nearby Burger King.

Lynde left Hollywood Squares in 1979 (some say he was fired for being drunk and belligerent on the set), but came back a year later, clean and sober. He also started living a much quieter life outside the studio, hosting dinner parties at home and apologizing to friends and co-workers. But a lifetime of hard living had already taken its toll and he died of a heart attack in 1982 at the age of 55.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Today In History, 1967: Supreme Court Strikes Down Bans On Racially-Mixed Marriages

Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were an unusual couple. They had long crossed the racial barrier as friends in rural Central Point, Virginia: she was Black and Native American, he was white. But friendship turned to dating, and when Mildred became pregnant at the age of 18 in 1958, they decided to go to Washington, D.C. to elope. When they returned home, a group of police officers invaded their house late at night hoping to catch them in the act of having sex (which would have been a crime because of their racial differences). Mildred pointed to the marriage license that they had hung on the wall, hoping that it would protect them. Little did she know, but that license was proof that they had committed another crime. Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 prohibited any “colored” person with so much as one drop of African American or Indian blood from marrying a white person. Miscegenation was a felony, punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years. The couple pleaded guilty on January 6, 1959, and they were sentenced to one year, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on the condition that they left Virginia.

The Lovings moved to D.C., and in 1963 the ACLU began a series of motions and lawsuits alleging that Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Those lawsuits eventually made their way all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, along with similar laws in fifteen other states. In the unanimous ruling, the Court held that “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.” Despite this ruling, anti-miscegenation laws remained on the books for several years to come, despite their being unenforceable. In 2000, Alabama voters approved a ballot initiative to repeal its anti-miscegenation law, although even then more than half a million — 40% — voted to keep it.

Mildred and Richard were never political people. After the Supreme Court victory, the couple returned to Virginia and raised three children. Richard died in 1975 at the age of 41 when their car was struck by a drunk driver. Mildred lost her right eye in the accident. She passed away in 2008 of pneumonia at the age of 68. But a year before she died, she issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, in which she saw the fight for the freedom to marry as unfinished business:

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone, they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Born On This Day, 1858: Henry Scott Tuke

(d. 1929) His Quaker family moved from York, where Henry was born, to Falmouth in Corwall, where the weather was warmer and, perhaps, more hospitable to his father’s tuberculosis. The warmer weather, and the nude sea bathing that was so commonly practiced there, would become the prime inspiration for Tuke’s paintings.

Tuke studied painting at the Slade School of Art in London from 1874 to 1880. After graduating, he traveled to Italy, then Paris, where he met the American painter John Singer Sargent (Jan 12). Back in London, he also rubbed shoulders with Oscar Wilde (Oct 16), John Addington Symonds (Oct 5) and several other poets and artists. In 1883, he joined an artist colony in Cornwall, where he completed his first planting of boys in boats, a subject which would inspire Tuke for the rest of his life.

Henry Scott Tuke, Ruby, Gold, and Malachite (1902)

In 1995, he returned to Falmouth, bought a fishing boat for £40, and refurbished it into his living quarters and studio. He also purchased a modest cottage in the town. His early models were boys from London, but soon some of the local fishermen and swimmers around Falmouth became both close friends and models. One of those models was Charlie Mitchell (1885-1957) — he’s the boy sitting on the rock in the lower left corner of Ruby, Gold and Malachite –was Tuke’s boatman for thirty years. When Tuke died in 1929, he left Mitchell £1,000 in his will (about £48,600 or US$69,300 in today’s valuations). All of his Falmouth models wound up getting called up during the First World War, and some of them didn’t return home.

Whatever conclusions one may draw from the nudity in Tuke’s paintings, they are never explicitly sexual. No genitals are shown, nor is there typically any physical contact, certainly none of an overtly sexual nature. But because the impressionistic influences of his work broke so completely with the frigid and formal conventions the public was used to seeing, the comparable freshness of Tuke’s works ruffled feathers among late Victorian critics. One patron, Martin Colnaghy, withdrew his support in 1886 when he caught sight of one of Tuke’s paintings.

Henry Scott Tuke, Off Falmouth (1896)

But as the Victorian era gave way to the Edwardian period and English impressionism became more popular, Tuke’s popularity grew. His nudes, augmented with landscapes, still lifes, maritime scenes and commissioned portraits, sold well enough to give him the wherewithal to travel abroad. Tuke was honored at the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society in 1900, and elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1914.

Tuke died in Falmouth in 1929, and was buried in a small cemetery near his home. He kept detailed diaries all his life, but only two survive. The other ten disappeared after Tuke’s sister wrote a very protective biography of him in 1933. After his death, his reputation faded. But in the 1970, a new generation of gay collectors rediscovered his work. More recently, he’s been the subject of numerous shows, a lavish monograph and biographies, and his paintings have been doing very well at auctions.

Born On This Day, 1930: Jim Nabors

Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle (left), with Frank Sutton as Sgt. Carter.

The Sylacauga, Alabama, native learned to sing at his high school and church, but he didn’t get into acting until he attended the University of Alabama. After graduating, he eventually landed his first job in television: cutting film for a television station in Chattanooga. He eventually decided to move to Los Angeles because of his asthma. While singing and acting in a local Santa Monica cabaret, he developed an unusual comedic character — a naive, golly-gee southern bumpkin with a high-pitched voice and thick accent would would suddenly launch into a nearly operatic baritone when singing. That’s where Andy Griffith discovered him, and signed Nabors to turn his character into a not very bright gas station attendant named Gomer Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show in 1962. It was only supposed to be a one-off appearance, but Gomer proved so popular that Nabors became a regular for the 1963-64 season. The following year, Nabors headlined his own spinoff, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., which ran from 1964 to 1969.

Nabors was among a handful of actors who were openly gay among friends and co-workers, but who were never out publicly. “I haven’t ever made a public spectacle of it. Well, I’ve known since I was a child, so, come on. It’s not that kind of a thing. I’ve never made a huge secret of it at all,” Nabors said recently. What made Nabors so unusual is that he never bothered to play the game of “dating” women for publicity’s sake.

But things did get very uncomfortable for Nabors in 1971, when a rumor went around that Nabors had “married” Rock Hudson. The rumor traced to a joke invitation to a party in Huntington Beach, thrown by several gay friends. The invitations, engraved and everything, went out to about 500 people who attended the annual party, reading, “You are cordially invited to the wedding reception of Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors.” The joke continued with the line saying that Hudson would take the last name of Nabors’s character and become “Rock Pyle.” That line should have tipped everyone off to the joke, but a fan magazine conveniently decided to ignore that. It published the rumor, but without naming names but dropping a few hints. Everyone in the business knew who it involved. A Chicago disk jockey described the couple as “sort of the rock of Hollywood” and “a plain guy … just neighbors.”

Both Nabors and Hudson, who had been friends but nothing more, feared that the rumors could ruin their careers. Nabors considered suing the magazine for libel, but his lawyer talked him out of it. But it does bring up the only time I know of when Nabors gave the standard 1960s response to why he wasn’t married. “I love kids,” he said. “But I’ve been so busy with my career that I really haven’t given marriage much thought.” The rumor also ruined Nabors’ friendship with Hudson. “I’ll tell you one thing that makes me sad about this,” said Hudson. “And that’s that Jim Nabors and I are no longer friends. We can’t be seen together.”

Jim Nabors and Stan Cadwallader

By 1969, CBS had gained the nickname of “Country Broadcasting Service” thanks to its lineup of rural-themed shows: The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, Hee Haw, Maberry, R.F.D.,  and Gomer Pyle. Tired of that rut and being typecast as a hick, Nabors decided to quit his show in 1969 in favor of his own variety show. Despite decent ratings, The Jim Nabors Hour fell victim to CBS’s “rural purge” when the network replaced all of its cornpone offerings in favor of programs designed to appeal to the more urban and younger audiences that advertisers favored. Nabors continued to make guest appearances on other programs, including a few children’s programs, and he also returned to theater, concert halls, and night club venues. By the mid-1970s, he was mostly done with TV, although he would show up from time to time through the first half of the 1980s. He moved to Hawaii in 1976, where he and his then-longtime partner and now husband, Stan Cadwallader, have made their home.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Today In History, 1965: Life Magazine Opposes Decriminalization of Homosexuality

One year earlier, Life magazine published a groundbreaking essay on “Homosexuality in America,” (Jun 26), which was notable for being one of the earliest relatively balanced portrayals of gay life in California. Gay rights advocates had hoped that the article might portend more positive press for gay issues, at least in the pages of Life, but that hope proved short-lived. In 1965, there was a proposal before the New York legislature to repeal that state’s sodomy law, which banned “deviant sexual intercourse” between unmarried persons. If passed, New York would have become only the second state, after Illinois, to decriminalize consensual sexual behavior between gay adults (Jul 28). Life, in an unsigned, self-contradictory and illogical editorial in its June 11, 1965 edition, opposed the move:

As readers of LIFE’s survey of homosexuality in America will remember, the “gay world” (actually a sad world) is coming increasingly above ground in many big cities and is lobbying for more sympathetic treatment. Homosexuality is frequently curable, but jail is the last place to expect a cure, and the laws restricting it are notoriously ineffective. Enforcement is either nonexistent or unjust and repugnant because of its peep-hole and entrapment methods. …

But the legislative debates have produced some robustious arguments on the other side. In Albany one legislator, who favored lifting the sanctions against adultery but not against homosexuality, explained that “after all, there are more of us than there are of them.”

There are more cogent arguments for retaining the laws against homosexuality. Its practice can and does break up families; and protection of the family is a legitimate area for legislation. Repeal would imply an indifference that society cannot afford. Until it finds a better way of discouraging the practice, a statute at least expresses society’s disapproval.

The proposal failed to make it into law, and New York’s sodomy law would remain on the books until 1980 when the New York Court of Appeals struck it down as unconstitutional.

[Source: “The law and the homosexual problem.” Life 58, no. 23. (June 11, 1965): 4.]

Today In History, 1977: Gay Mormon Group Affirmation Founded

Gay and lesbian Mormons had been meeting, very unofficially and very secretly, off and on the Brigham Young University campus for a mix of discussions, social activities and mutual support through much of the 1960s and ’70s. In 1977, Matthew Price began promoting the idea of a national organization of gay Mormons, and on June 11, 1977, the first official meeting of Affirmations: Gay Mormons United was held in Salt Lake City during the city’s Conference on Human Rights. Rev. James E Sandmire, a prominent pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church in San Francesco and a former Mormon himself, was there to give the closing prayer.

Affirmation/GMU quickly grew establish chapters in Denver, Dallas and Philadelphia, but by autumn the organization’s flame was just about to flicker out. Denver and Philadelphia disappeared off of Affirmation’s map, and meetings in Dallas and Salt Lake were sporadic. Then Paul Mortensen read an article about Affirmation in The Advocate and contacted Price about establishing a chapter in Los Angeles. That chapter quickly grew and became organizations lead chapter. Other chapters across the country soon followed.

Until Affirmation came along, there were really only two options were available to LGBT Mormons: remain closeted and stay with one’s local ward, or come out and leave one’s identity as a Mormon behind. Those who came out publicly, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, risked excommunication and its loss of social networks and cultural ties. As L.A. chapter leader Jacki Riedeman explained, “When you’re Mormon, it’s not so much just a religion. It really is a cultural identity. …We have our own vocabulary, basically. We have our own way of looking at things. And so you can’t just give up all that along with the religion.” Affirmation gave LGBT Mormons a third way, creating a sense of authentic LDS community among gay mormons who would otherwise experience their coming-out in isolation.

In the summer of 1979, Affirmation decided it was time to make itself over in a more public way by participating in the Gay Pride parade in Los Angeles, and a contingent participated in the March on Washington that autumn (Oct 14). Then in Decemberrepresentatives from Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Washington D.C. met to formally for the first time to give the new organization shape, a new governing charter, a new publication (Affinity) and an updated name — Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons. (Today, it is Affirmation: LGBT Mormons, Families and Friends)

Because the LDS Church has a history of counseling gay men to marry and start families as a way of dealing with their sexuality, Affirmation spun off a group in 1992 called Gamofites (an approximate portmanteau of Gay Mormon Fathers, in a style that echoes the names of tribes in the Book of Mormon.) Since then Affirmation has created a whole host of affinity groups for women, friends and families, mixed orientation families, teens, Millennial, people of color, and transgender people. Today there are Affirmation chapters across the U.S., and Canada, as well as in nine other countries around the world.

[Additional sources: “News Briefs” Arizona Gay News (Oct 7, 1977): 3.

Melissa M. Wilcox. Queer Women and Religious Individualism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press: 2009): 53.

John-Charles Duffy. “Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons.” from JEffrey S. Siker (ed.), Homosexuality and Religion: An Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007): 47-48.]