Box Turtle Bulletin

Today In History, 2008: Norway’s Parliament Legalizes Gay Marriage

In 1993, Norway became the second country in the world to recognize same-sex relationships when it instituted Registered Partnerships, which granted most of the protections, responsibilities and benefits of marriage — except adoptions or artificial insemination services. In 2001, the Norwegian Parliament allowed second-parent adoptions, allowing registered parters to adopt their partner’s children.

In 2004, two MP’s from the Socialist Left Party introduced a bill to abolish Registered Partnerships and make marriage laws gender-neutral. That bill was withdrawn in exchange for a request for the cabinet to study the measure.

Little happened until 2008, when two opposition parties, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, came out in favor of a proposed marriage equality bill. On June 11, the Odelsting (lower house) approved a marriage equality bill in an 84-41 vote. The Lagting followed suit one week later, approving the measure with a 32-17 vote. King Harald V gave his royal assent and the law took effect on January 1, 2009.

In 2015, the Church of Norway voted unanimously to allow same-sex weddings to take place in its churches. The decision was ratified in April 2016.

Born On This Day, 1939: Wilma Burgess

(d. 2003) Before Chely Wright came out, there was k.d. lang. But before k.d. lang — before anyone, in fact — there was Wilma Burgess. The surprising difference with Burgess however was that she never really came out. She was always out, throughout her career. She enjoyed recording romantic ballads, but in a break from most “girl singers,” she avoided recording gender-specific songs whenever she could. A southerner from Orlando, Wilma wasn’t much interested in country music when she first began singing professionally. But when she attended an Eddie Arnold concert, she was struck by the emotional honesty of Arnold’s music. She made her way to Nashville in 1962 where she cut her first single. “Confuses” didn’t really go anywhere, but it got her a contract for Decca Records.

After a several singles, she landed pay dirt in 1965 with “Baby,” which peaked at #7 on the country music charts. That same year, she purchased Patsy Cline’s old home in Nashville. In 1966 she recorded two more notable hits, “Don’t Touch Me” and “Misty Blue,” which became her signature song. That song was eventually covered by the man who inspired her to perform country music, Eddie Arnold. She had several more Top Forty country hits, but by the mid-1970s she decided to retire from the music business. She then opened the Hitching Post, Nashville’s first lesbian bar, where she regularly performed. She died suddenly in 2003, while still very much in her prime, of a massive heart attack.

Here is a 1967 performance of “Misty Blue” on the Bobby Lord Show,  a weekly syndicated half-hour program from Nashville:

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From The Body Politic (Toronto, ON), November 1975, page 16. (Source.)

Jay Cochrane and Sandy Leblanc opened David’s in the spring of 1975. It was one of the first clubs in Toronto to be gay-owned, and it was decorated with a decidedly gay sensibility:

The club was a sizable, two-level layout. Once opened, David’s heavy wooden door revealed a path that went up a few stairs, past a ticket booth, along a catwalk, and to your choice of billiards room or the main bar. In the upper part of the main room there was plenty of seating – sofas, tables and chairs, and booths alike. The floors were red carpet. Some of the walls were, in part, also covered in red carpet while others were heavily mirrored. It was, after all, the ‘70s.

Two winding staircases led down to the dancefloor. Most famously, the stairs also curved around the club’s star attraction: a fountain containing a larger-than-life, and, by many accounts, excessively well-endowed replica of Michelangelo’s David. There was also a stage, raised go-go platform, and a DJ booth that overlooked the dancefloor. Of course a large mirror ball reflected the pink, purple and multi-hued lights, and the sound system is said to have been quality. David’s also boasted a snack bar, pinball machines, and a high-tech coat check system, complete with revolving hangers.

Open to men-only at first, a common practice in those days. Months after it opened, the owners took the unusual step of opening it up for everyone — male or female, gay or straight. And because it wasn’t licensed to serve alcohol at first, David’s became a refuge for those sixteen and up. A few years later, with David’s open door policy and the addition of an alcohol license it quickly became an important player on Toronto’s punk rock scene:

The Viletones performing at David’s.

“David’s was sort of a big deal at the time,” (filmmaker Tibor Takács) tells me in a phone call from California; “It was such a cool place – down an alleyway, with people always falling out onto the street. David’s was a very decadent, underground club that had a bit of a New York vibe to it. When David’s was in its heyday, I don’t think there was anything else like it at all in Toronto.”

David’s burned during a show on December 31, 1977. LeBlanc was murdered the following year, stabbed more than 100 times. No one was ever charged. David’s sat empty for several years until Le Mystique opened in the mid 1980s. The building has since been torn down and replaced with a massive condo tower.

Today In History, 2003: Ontario Registers First Same-Sex Marriage In North America

Michael Stark (L) and Michael Leshner (R)– later known as “the two Michaels” — kiss after marrying in Superior Court in Toronto on June 10, 2003.

Nearly a year earlier, on July 22, 2002, the Ontario Superior Court issued a 3-0 ruling in the case of Halpern et al. v. Canada, finding that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights. While also finding that current statutes didn’t prohibit same-sex marriage, the court stayed its ruling for two years to give the federal government time to pass legislation implementing same-sex marriage. The plaintiffs, seven same-sex couples who were suing for the right to marry, appealed the lower court’s stay and asked that the decision take effect immediately. On June 10, 2003, the Court of Appeals for Ontario agreed, and struck down the lower court’s stay, and that afternoon Michael Stark and Michael Leshner became the first gay couple to legally marry.

The next day, the Attorney General of Ontario announced that he would comply with the ruling. But while the Ontario Appeals Court ruled on Canadian law, its jurisdiction was limited to Ontario. Nevertheless, the province was the first jurisdiction in North America to provide same-sex marriage. (Massachusetts wouldn’t begin marrying until almost a year later: see May 17.) On February 24, the provincial legislature enacted Bill 171, (“An Act to amend various statutes in respect of spousal relationships”) which cleaned up several Ontario laws to bring them into accord with the court rulings. Provincial courts elsewhere began issuing similar rulings — British Columbia in 2003; Quebec, Yukon Territory, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador in 2004; and New Brunswick in 2005. By the time Parliament enacted marriage equality nationwide in July of 2005, only Alberta, Prince Edward Island, Nunavut and Northwest Territories had yet to come on board.

Born On This Day, 1899: Anita Berber

(d. 1928) She lived fast and died young, as the saying goes, epitomizing the anything-goes attitudes of the Weimar Republic. She moved to Berlin at the age of sixteen to become a cabaret dancer, and by twenty she took her dancing to feature films. Audiences took her art quite seriously early in her career as one of the pioneers of modern expressive dance. Some of her dances were set to music by Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss, and Camille Saint-Saëns, and she was known for her erotic gestures and exotic costumes — or no costumes at all.

Her nude dancing and androgynous-for-the-era looks — she bobbed her hair and died it fiery red — those things alone would have given the chattering classes plenty to chatter about. Klaus Mann described her this way: “One dances hunger and hysteria, fear and greed, panic and horror… Anita Berber — her face frozen into a garish mask under the frightening locks of the scarlet coiffure — dances the coitus.” Shocking the seen-it-all Weimar audiences wasn’t an easy thing to do, but Berber’s increasingly macabre performances soon earned her the nickname, “The Priestess of Depravity.” Her Dances of Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy included dances with such titles as “Byzantine Whip Dance,” Cocaine,” “Morphine,” and “Suicide.”

Otto Dix, The Dancer Anita Berber, 1925.

Her off-stage behavior only reinforced her notoriety, thanks to her enthusiastic bisexually, insatiable sexual appetite, legendary drug use, and the rough crowd of boxers, prostitutes and homosexuals who she partied with. She spent her evenings touring the city’s clubs wearing just her trademark makeup and nothing more except a sable coat, which she would have a waiter ceremoniously remove. (This was half a century before Grace Jones was called daring and avant-garde for doing same thing.) Her antique brooch carried her night’s supply of cocaine, but her favorite drug was a mixture of absinthe and ether, which she mixed in a bowl and swirled about with a white rose before eating the pedals. While dancing in Zagreb, she publicly insulted the Yugoslav King and spent six weeks in prison. Her three short (mostly sham) marriages only added to her provocative image. By the time Otto Dix immortalized her on canvas in 1925, he created a searing portrayal of her dissipative lifestyle: a woman who looked much, much older than her twenty-six years. In the summer of 1928, she collapsed on the stage of a Beirut nightclub and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. With her body already ravaged by years of drug use, she didn’t last the year. When she died in November, a friend said that “she had the mask of a mad old hag.” She was buried in a pauper’s grave.

Born On This Day, 1922: Judy Garland

Judy Garland’s legendary 1961 Carnegie Hall concert.

(d. 1969) A straight friend of mine, shortly after I came out to him, asked me to explain “the Judy Garland thing.” What was I to say? The Rainbow reference seemed obvious to me — Somewhere Over the Rainbow, the rainbow flag — but that didn’t explain why she meant so much to so many generations of gay men. (I would later learn that the rainbow flag was meant to symbolize diversity, not Judy Garland. Silly me.) I then turned to the song’s lyrics, but it turns out they are incredibly simple — almost a throw-away. So it’s not the song itself either. Instead, I think the explanation begins with how she sang about her yearning to find a land of happiness somewhere over there, where “the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.” And if birds can fly over there, “why then, oh why can’t I?”

Why can’t I? — that’s the plaintive refrain that every LGBT person has uttered at some of the most painful moments of their lives, at least for those who spent any significant time in the closet. Judy’s life also had its painful moments, including a marriage to the barely-closeted gay director Vincente Minnelli, a nervous breakdown, morphine addiction, alcohol problems, you name it. But her Carnegie Hall comeback concert in 1961 was called by many “the greatest night in show business history.” The resulting two-record recording, Judy At Carnegie Hall, spent thirteen weeks on Billboard’s number one spot and won four Grammies. If you’ve never heard it, you are missing out on a night of mutual love between Judy and a house full of those Friends of Judy. And it’s that resilience which, I think, explains “the Judy Garland thing” more than anything else.

That and those ruby shoes.

Born On This Day, 1928: Maurice Sendak

(d. 2012) He wrote and illustrated more than a dozen children’s books himself, most famously his 1963 best-seller Where the Wild Things Are, which revolutionized the children’s book genre and established his career. More than four decades later, Spike Jonze adapted Wild Things for a animated/live action motion picture.

But for all of its success, Wild Things that wasn’t Sendak’s favorite book. That would be 1981’s Outside Over There. Nor was it his most controversial book. That would be his 1970 award-winning In the Night Kitchen, about a boy who dreams of flying to a magical kitchen. The boy also happens to lose his clothes early in the book, and images of a naked flying boy placed the book on the American Library Association’s list of “frequently challenged and banned books.” In September 2011, HarperCollins published Sendak’s Bumble-Ardy, his first new book in 30 years.

Sendak remained publicly closeted most of his life, despite a fifty-year enduring relationship with his partner, psychoanalyst Dr. Eugene Glynn. Sandak wasn’t even out to his parents, Polish Jewish immigrants whose relatives died in the Holocaust. “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy,” he once said. “They never, never, never knew.” Glynn died in May 2007, and Sendak came out in a 2008 interview, saying that the idea of a gay man writing children books would have hurt his career when he was in his 20s and 30s. But when Sendak died in 2012 at the age of 83, he was hailed by The New York Times as “the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century.” Another picture book, My Brother’s Book, was posthumously released in 2013.

Born On This Day, 1974: Dustin Lance Black

Black’s early childhood in a devout Mormon family included fears of going straight to hell. “I had my first crushes on a boy neighbor when I was like six, seven. I knew what was going on, I knew I liked him, but what Texas did and what the culture of growing up Mormon, growing up military [reinforced], was, the very second thought I had, ‘I really like that boy, and it’s not just as a friend,’ the very second thought was, ‘I’m sick, I’m wrong, I’m going to hell. And if I ever admit it, I’ll be hurt, and I’ll be brought down.'” No wonder he became withdrawn, intensely shy, and had thoughts of suicide. “I was a pretty dark kid, because I had an acute awareness of my sexuality, and was absolutely convinced that I was wrong.”

He says that darkness lifted when he went off to college, came out during his senior year and graduated with honors from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. Much of his career as a screenwriter, director, and producer has touched on LGBT themes. In 2000, he wrote and directed the gay romance films The Journey of Jared Price and the short Something Close to Heaven, followed by the documentary, On the Bus, which followed six gay men on a road trip to Burning Man. But his own burning passion was the desire to bring the life of Harvey Milk to the screen. The problem for Black was how to convey the “emotional heartbeat” of the story:

“It was tough. It was clearly, in my mind, a gay movie. I wasn’t so interested in the politics, I wasn’t so interested in Dan White; I was interested in this man who, to me at least, was a father figure to his people … to people who lost their fathers, their parents and their families because of their sexuality. Here was this father figure, and it was something I craved!”

Milk was a critical and commercial success, and Black won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2009.

Black has turned his writing skills to other topics as well. He leveraged his Mormon background as one of the screenwriters (and the only Mormon writer) for HBO’s Big Love, and he wrote the sceenplay for 2011’s J. Edgar, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. In 2010, Black narrated the documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition, which portrays the heavy investment made by the LDS church in California’s Proposition 8 battle. In 2011, Black wrote the play 8, which is based on the actual transcripts in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial (which later became Hollingsworth v. Perry), the successful federal court challenge against Prop 8. Black wrote the play after the court blocked the release of the trial’s video recordings. (Black is a founding board member for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which brought the suit against Prop 8.)

Black was in the news again after Olympic diver Tom Daley came out in December of 2013 because “I met someone and it made me feel so happy, so safe, and everything just feels great.” That someone was Black, and the two now live together in London. They plan on tying the knot after this summer’s Olympics.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From The Advocate, May 3, 1979, page 23.

Mary’s opened in 1972 in Houston’s Montrose area, at around the time Montrose was just beginning to develop its identity as a gayborhood. It quickly established a rather wild reputation: “[T]he bar was known for having it’s own set of rules, one of which made it ‘illegal’ to wear underwear. And newcomers who violated the rule would have their underwear stripped from them and thrown to the rafters, past the trapeze that was normally manned by a naked bartender or patron. As the years wore on, the bar also became something of a community center: “On a Friday night you could experience your favorite fetish out back, and on Monday you could attend a rally to support AIDS funding.” The bar changed ownership in 2003, and experienced a long, slow decline. It’s iconic outside mural was painted over in 2006, and the bar finally closed in 2009. The building now houses the Blacksmith coffee shop.

Today In History, 1947: Newsweek On “Homosexuals In Uniform”

An “undesirable” discharge from the Navy, 1948 (click to enlarge).

“Although Army regulations strictly forbade the drafting of homosexuals, scores of these inverts managed to slip through induction centers during the second world war. Between 3,000 and 4,000 were discharged for this abnormality; others were released as neuropsychiatric cases. Last week, with most of the records on homosexuals tabulated, Army medical officers, for the first time, summed up their strange story.”

That strange story, in retrospect, was that gay people came from all walks of life. But in 1947, neither the Army nor Newsweek could wrap their heads around that fact. Newsweek was surprised to learn that gays were, on average, intelligent, not particularly feminine, and “as a whole, these men were law-abiding and hard working. In spite of nervous, unstable and often hysterical temperaments they performed admirably as workers. Many tried to be good soldiers.” If gay soldiers were “nervous,” that undoubtedly came from the consequences of being found out. “Once this abnormality was detected, the man was usually evacuated by the unit doctors to a general hospital where he received psychiatric treatment while a military board decided whether or not he was reclaimable. A good number begged to be cured, but doctors usually doubted their sincerity, and recommended discharge.”

But being discharged was far from the end to these soldiers’ problems. During the first half of the war, they were brought up on court-martial, punished and dishonorably discharged. But by 1943, courts-martial were overwhelmed by the rising caseload, so the Army decided to let them go with an administrative “blue” discharge — neither honorable or dishonorable, and so named for the color of paper they were printed on.

The suspiciously vague nature of blue discharges made it very difficult when these soldiers hit the job market. In an economy where nearly every able-bodied man served, one’s discharge papers were as important to obtaining a job as a diploma or good references. In fact, discharge papers were considered among the most important references one could have — from Uncle Sam himself. And when the vast majority of those job applicants could present their honorable discharges to their prospective employers, these blue discharges stood out, and not in a good way. On top of that, the Veterans Administration routinely denied benefits to blue discharge holders, despite the law’s explicit language stating that only dishonorable discharges were grounds for denial of benefits. As of July 1, 1947, the situation was about to get worse: “Instead of leaving the service with the vague and protective ‘blue’ discharge, the homosexuals who had not been guilty of a definite office would receive an ‘undesirable’ discharge.”

Today In History, 1948: Congress Allows Indefinite Confinement of Gay People as “Sexual Psychopaths” in Washington, D.C.

Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C.

The nation’s capital had experienced explosive growth through the New Deal and World War II. And in the relatively short time period, the sleepy Southern town became a major bustling East Coast city, with all of the attendant problems and anxieties which comes with rapid urban growth. Among those anxieties were worries over a declining moral environment in the growing city. In response, Congress passed and the President Harry Truman signed Public Law 615 on June 9, 1948 which provided for the indefinite interment and treatment for “sexual psychopaths” in the District. (Before D.C. was given Home Rule with an elected mayor and council in 1973, the district was ruled directly by Congress and administered by a three-person appointed commission.) The Miller Act, as it was popularly known, defined a “sexual psychopath” as a:

“person, not insane, who by a course of repeated misconduct in sexual matters has evidenced such lack of power to control his sexual impulses as to be dangerous to other persons because he is likely to attack or otherwise inflict injury, loss, pain, or other evil on the objects of desire.”

The act specifically excluded rape or assault with intent to rape. Those charges were handled as normal criminal complaints. But according to this new law, the U.S. Attorney was empowered to initiate proceedings against anyone else — even if they hadn’t been charged with a crime — to have them committed to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital until the superintendent “finds that he has sufficiently recovered so as not to be dangerous to other person.” The act refers to the individual as “the patient”, not the accused or the defendant. It was the sole prerogative of the U.S. Attorney, after reviewing “information… from any source” to decide whether to initiate proceedings. And  those proceedings were civil proceedings, which meant that the “patient” was stripped of his constitutional guarantees against self-incrimination that a criminal procedure would guarantee. Instead, he was required to submit to an examination by two psychiatrists and answer their questions. Those answers then became part of the official record.

The law’s wording suggested the aim was to keep dangerous people off the streets, but the vague definition of “sexual psychopath” left the door open to all sorts of abuse. U.S. Attorney Sidney Sachs, who helped draft the legislation, recalled in 1964 as a guest speaker at a conference of the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) — this was long after he left the Justice Department for a position in private practice — that the law was an open invitation to abuse:

“Though it’s not right,” Mr. Sachs admitted, the courts generally take the path of least resistance when the mental condition of someone accused of sex crime “comes into question”: they commit him to Washington’s mental hospital. There the  overworked psychiatrists “write brief reports” on the person. And when his trial comes up, it’s “just perfectly understandable then” that the doctors’ judgment is chiefly relied on.

A women in the audience challenged the merit of the Miller Act by pointing out — and Mr. Sachs had to agree — that condemnation to psychiatric incarceration is potentially worse than jail because the person could languish in a mental hospital forever. Then a man bluntly asked the prime question: “Would I, as a habitual practicing homosexual, be called a sexual psychopath?” “I think that you would be,” Mr. Sachs replied.

According to a paper read at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1950, the law’s reach did, in fact, extended to “habitual practicing homosexuals” in consensual relationships. Dr. Francis Tartaglino of St. Elizabeth reported that as of March 1, 1950, twenty-four patients had been admitted to the hospital’s maximum security ward under this new law, “including 2 non-coercive homosexuals and 1 aggressive sodomist.”

[Sources: Bernard A. Cruvant, Milton Meltzer, Francis J. Tartaglino. “An institutional program for committed sex deviants.” American Journal of Psychiatry 107, no. 3 (September 1950): 190-194.

Lily Hansen, Barbara Gittings. “East Coast Homophile Organizations — Report ’64. Part Two: Highlights of ECHO.” The Ladder 9, no. 4 (January 1965): 10-11.]

Today In History, 1984: KKK Marches Through Houston’s Montrose Neighborhood

(Source)

Charles W. Lee, Grand Wizard of the Pasadena, Texas-based White Camelia Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, filed for a parade permit to march down Westheimer Blvd. through the heart of Houston’s gay community. While city officials sought legal advice on how to proceed, the result was pretty much a foregone conclusion: there was nothing in the city’s parade ordinance that could stop it. What’s more, a Federal Court ruling seven years earlier held that a neo-Nazi group had a First Amendment right to march down the middle of Chicago’s predominately Jewish suburb of Skokie. That decision was upheld on appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to look into the case any further.

Lee said the Klan was marching because the city’s homosexuals “have gotten out of hand here.” He blamed local churches for failing to sound the alarm over the “prostitution” and “immorality” in the Montrose neighborhood. He also compared his planned march to those of Martin Luther King, Jr., who, he said, used marches and parades to force changes in society.

The Pasadena Klan seems to have had a rather unusual pre-occupation with homosexuals. In 1977, they ran a phone answering machine message from their Pasadena bookstore which said, in part: “While many church people are duped by their brain-washed, pinky-panty preachers into believing that we should merely pray for the homosexuals, we find that we must endorse and support the law of God, which calls for the death penalty for homosexuals.” (Aug 24)

The march was scheduled to take place on a busy Saturday, June 9, right in the middle of the afternoon. Leaders from the Houston Gay Political Caucus and other organizations urged everyone to “not dignify the KKK with our attendance.” A few days before the march, local gay bars received a poster depicting a hooded Klansman saying “I want YOU, Queer — Gas Homosexuals.” A number of bars posted the poster with a suggestion that it would be better to spend Saturday voting in the city’s run-off election. “At the polls, gays win,” read a response in an LGBT magazine, “At the march, no one wins.”

Apparently, most of Houston’s LGBT residents heeded the advice. Police estimated about 2,000 observers showed up for the five block march from Waugh Drive to Mason Street. Those spectators were mostly reporters, photographers, and a few curious families from the area. One father was seen telling his five-year-old son, “See those men in white robes? They’re the bad people full of hate. We’re the good people.” At Mary’s, a legendary gay bar conveniently located where the Klan’s parade began, a loudspeaker blared “Springtime For Hitler.” Six hundred police officers lined the route to protect the crowd from the Klan — or perhaps, more accurately, the other way around — as 58 Klansmen in full regalia marched down the street. The parade itself lasted all of 16 minutes, but it cost the city about $80,000 (that’s about $185,000 in today’s dollars). Other than a few beer bottles tossed toward the marchers, there were no incidents. After the march was over, the Klan boarded their busses and rode back to Channelview, where they burned a cross and a small boat lettered with “U.S.S. Viet Cong.”

[Source: Several newspaper and magazine articles posted in “When the KKK Marched Through Montrose“, a web page of HoustonLGBTHistory.org.]

Born On This Day, 1891: Cole Porter

(d. 1964) American songwriters could match the sophistication, wit, and discreet naughtiness of Let’s Do It (1928), You Do Something To Me (1929), Love for Sale (1930), Anything Goes (1934), Let’s Misbehave (1937), Well Did You Evah! (1939) or Too Darn Hot (1948). That barely scratches the surface of Porter’s musical output. He was born to a wealthy family in Peru, Indiana, and after graduating from an exclusive prep school, he studied law, first at Yale (where he wrote two of Yale’s football fight songs that are still played today), then at Harvard for his graduate studies. But after finally deciding that he was more interested in music, he left Harvard Law and enrolled in Harvard’s music program. In 1917, he moved to Paris to lend his hand at the war effort, and where his luxury Paris apartment became the scene of lavish parties.

That was where he met Linda Thomas, a rich Kentucky divorced socialite who was eight years his senior. She was reportedly aware of Porters homosexuality — his affair with Ballet Russes star Borish Kochno in 1925 wasn’t much of a secret — but they both found marriage mutually advantageous. For Porter, a wife like Linda afforded a respectable heterosexual front, and for Linda, Porter’s success and growing fame only enhanced her social position. And besides, he was genuinely kind to her, which was very unlike her abusive first husband.

In 1928, Porter returned to Broadway to considerable success, resulting in offers from Hollywood. The Porters moved there in 1935, but Linda didn’t appreciate Cole’s increasingly open dalliances with other men. She moved back to their home in Paris, and Porter became about as openly closeted as any other Hollywood A-gay.

A severe horse riding accident in 1937, which left Porter with a permanently-crippling leg injury, brought the Porters back together, but with an apparently tacit understanding. Linda was more than just a beard to Porter: by all accounts they were very close, at least in a spiritual or emotional sense. Yet throughout their marriage, Porter also had significant relationships with several men, including Boston socialite Howard Sturges, architect Ed Tauch (who inspired the song “Easy to Love”), choreographer Nelson Barclift (who inspired “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To”), actor Robert Bray, and longtime companion Ray Kelly, to whose children Porter left half of his royalties when he died in 1964. (Linda preceded him in death ten years earlier.) Porter’s life was significantly de-gayed in the 2004 biopic De-Lovely: The Cole Porter Story with Kevin Kline in the starring role. William McBrien’s 1998 biography however provides a much more complete picture of Porter’s life.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From Vector (San Francisco), September 1968, page 10.

San Francisco-based Vector, a glossy magazine founded by the Society for Individual Rights, published a West Coast travel feature in 1968 that included this description of Vancouver’s August Club:

Vancouver is the home of the largest gay club in the British Commonwealth, both in membership and club area. We arc speaking of the AUGUST CLUB, located at 818 Richards Street in downtown Vancouver. The AUGUST is a totally equipped gay bar. Full kitchen WIth private banquet rooms, two bars, two dance areas-in Vancouver the kids can dance with each other with over 4500 square feet of space, on three levels of fun floors. Parking is beside the building and within walking distance of the gay hotels (which feature only beer). These are: The Castle Hotd, The York, which cater to the regular average types. Then there is the New Fountain for those who like rough trade.

The AUGUST CLUB has a men-only policy, catering to anyone who is gay and over 21. Booze sets for 50 cents per shoe of hard liquor. and 35 cents a bottle for cool Canadian beer. Full exchange is given on all American money.

…Vancouver is the only place to visit in Canada where the gay set has a full degree of freedom, much the same as San Francisco.

The August Club opened in 1968, and became the Shaggy Horse in 1972. The building is gone, and replaced with a condominium with an art gallery on the ground floor.

Today In History, 1977: Florida Bans Gay Marriage and Adoption

Gov. Reubin Askew

Florida’s gay community took a triple whammy today. Just one day after Miami voters overwhelmingly sided with Anita Bryant to rescind an anti-discrimination ordinance (Jun 6), Governor Reuben Askew (D) signed into law two additional anti-gay measures affecting gay Floridians. The first banned same-sex marriage and the second banned gay adults from adopting.

State Sen. Curtis Peterson, (D-Eaton Park) sponsored both bills, and said that the new laws tell homosexuals, “We are tired of you and wish you would go back in the closet.” He continued: “The problem in Florida is that homosexuals are surfacing to such an extent that they are infringing on average, normal people who have a few rights, too.” The bills sailed through the legislature with little opposition. Askew had already publicly supported Anita Bryan’s campaign in Florida, saying ““I would not want a known homosexual teaching my children.”  He signed both bills, which went into effect immediately.

In 2008, Florida voters made same-sex marriage super-double illegal when they passed Amendment 2. But both bans on same-sex marriage were overturned in 2014 by state and Federal courts. As for the adoption ban, that fell by the wayside when a Florida appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that found the adoption ban unconstitutional. Askew died in 2014, and despite his longtime opposition to gay rights (an opposition that he never appears to have disavowed), the New York Times eulogized him as a “progressive ‘New South’ governor.”