Box Turtle Bulletin

Born On This Day, 1967: Anderson Cooper

Kathy Griffin’s favorite New Year’s foil is the son of writer Wyatt Cooper and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. The younger Cooper’s media exposure began early: he was photographed as an infant by Diane Arbus for Harper’s Bazaar, and his mother brought him along for a guest appearance on The Tonight Show when he was three. But it was his older brother’s death by suicide in 1988 that sparked Anderson’s interest in journalism. “Loss is a theme that I think a lot about, and it’s something in my work that I dwell on. I think when you experience any kind of loss, especially the kind I did, you have questions about survival: Why do some people thrive in situations that others can’t tolerate? Would I be able to survive and get on in the world on my own?”

After graduating from college, Cooper forged a press pass and went to Myanmar, where he filmed a series of reports about students fighting against the military dictatorship. He was able to sell those news segments to Channel One, a youth-oriented news program broadcast to junior and senior high scools in the U.S. He then moved to Vietnam for a year, where he filed more reports for Channel One about Vietnamese life and culture. He also filed reports from war-torn countries like Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. In 1995, he became a correspondent for ABC News, but he took a detour in 2000 to host the reality show The Mole “to clear my hed and get out of news a little bit.” After two seasons and 9/11, he decided it was time to get back into the news, this time with CNN. In 2002, he became CNN’s weekend prime-time anchor, and in 2003 he got his own show, Anderson Cooper 360°.

In 2012, he became what The New York Times called “the most prominent openly gay journalist on television” when he came out in an email published by Andrew Sullivan:

Andrew, as you know, the issue you raise is one that I’ve thought about for years. Even though my job puts me in the public eye, I have tried to maintain some level of privacy in my life. Part of that has been for purely personal reasons. I think most people want some privacy for themselves and the people they are close to.

But I’ve also wanted to retain some privacy for professional reasons. Since I started as a reporter in war zones 20 years ago, I’ve often found myself in some very dangerous places. For my safety and the safety of those I work with, I try to blend in as much as possible, and prefer to stick to my job of telling other people’s stories, and not my own. I have found that sometimes the less an interview subject knows about me, the better I can safely and effectively do my job as a journalist.

…Recently, however, I’ve begun to consider whether the unintended outcomes of maintaining my privacy outweigh personal and professional principle. It’s become clear to me that by remaining silent on certain aspects of my personal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something – something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed or even afraid. This is distressing because it is simply not true. …The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.

Earlier this year, HBO debuted a moving video memior/documentary, Nothing Left Unsaid, featuring a series of conversations between Cooper and his mother

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Born On This Day, 1966: Candace Gingrich-Jones

The lesbian advocate and kid sister to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Candice publicly called her brother to task during his 2012 campaign for the GOP nomination for President over his support for California’s Prop 8. “What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions,” she wrote. “That’s really so ’90s, Newt. In this day and age, it’s embarrassing to watch you talk like that.” Things didn’t change much for Newt, certainly not while he was courting votes from the party’s Tea Party base. He spent much of that year running like it was still 1994. (It was only after the campaign was over that Gingrich conceded that the Republican party should begin to think about coming to grips with a distinction between a “marriage in a church from a legal document issued by the state.”)

Candice has long been an outspoken advocate for gay rights, going as far back as 1995 when she became the Human Rights Campaign’s spokesperson for the National Coming Out Project. In 1996, she published her autobiography, The Accidental Activist: A Personal and Political Memoir, where she talked about growing up in a supportive family with a politically-active half-brother who treated her and her girlfriend with the utmost respect. It wasn’t until 1994, when the Republicans took control of the House and propelled Newt Gingrich to the Speakership that she noticed that his politics included close alliances with the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. When an enterprising reporter wrote about the lesbian half-sister of an anti-gay Speaker, she decided it was time to challenge her brother on his discriminatory politics. That propelled her on the road to political activism. In addition to her work at HRC, Candice made numerous appearances in print and on television, including in an episode of Friends where she officiated over a commitment ceremony. Today, Candace is married to her wife, Rebecca, and works as the HRC’s Associate Director for Youth and Campus Engagement.

Born On This Day, 1977: Zachary Quinto

He grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, raised by his mother after his father died of cancer when Zachary was only seven, attended Pittsburgh’s Central Catholic High School (where he won the Gene Kelly Award for best supporting actor in his school’s production of Pirates of Penzance), and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama in 1999. In 2000, he made his first appearance on the short-lived NBC series The Others, which opened the way to guest appearances on several other programs before becoming a regular on Fox’s third season of 24 in 2003.

In 2007, it was announce that he would play the young Spock on the first installment of the Star Trek reboot. Leonard Nimoy, who played the original Spock, had casting approval over who would play his younger self. “For me Leonard’s involvement was only liberating, frankly,” Quinto said. “I knew that he had approval over the actor that would play young Spock, so when I got the role I knew from the beginning it was with his blessing.” His portrayal was widely praised, and he returned to the Star Trek reboot in 2013 with tar Trek Into Darkness He has remained busy on the stage, with appearances in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Tony Kushner’s Off-Broadway revival of Angels In America, and more in the American Repertory Theatre’s production of The Glass Menagerie.

Quinto came out publicly as gay in 2011 in response to the suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, a Buffalo high school freshman. “[I]n light of jamey’s death,” Quinto wrote in his blog, “it became clear to me in an instant that living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it – is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality.” Even before he came out, Quinto was an active supporter of the Trevor Project, the nation’s leading organization for suicide prevention among LGBT youth.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By

From The Advocate, August 24, 1977, page 37.

Badlands was located along the waterfront in an area that was popular among the leather crowd. Here’s how one guy described it:

The waterfront in the Village and Chelsea was the one place I never walked around at night when I first got to the city. The appearance of danger was all too real; always in your face, lurking in the ever present shadows. I did check out West Street once after the sun went down in October of 1988. While marching around the Village looking for Dylan Thomas’ haunts, I walked past the Badlands, a notorious gay leather bar, where the piers and Christopher Street came together. Huge men with leather vests and chaps with bare asses hanging out smoking cigars would stand on the sidewalk with plastic cups of beer taunting those unfortunate straights who walked by. That night, I was grabbed, taunted and had beer spilled on my Lou Reed style black jeans. I took a right in West 10th Street and ran back to my dorm. It took me years to realize I was terrorized by a bunch of interior decorators trying to act tough.

By 2008, it had morphed into an adult video store being threatened by gentrification’s rising rents. As of 2014, the building was empty and boarded up, just waiting to become a new bistro or tapas bar.

Today In History, 1899: New York State Committee Investigates “Fairie Resorts”

Corruption was so rife in New York’s Tammany Hall that a special state legislative committee was formed to investigate the mess. Unsurprisingly, and notwithstanding the city’s Democratic bosses’ renowned corruption, the Republican-led state investigation quickly took on a decidedly partisan tone. Upstate committee members took every opportunity to portray New York City as a den of rampant bribery, filth and degeneracy. Among those called to testify was Joel S. Harris, a police investigator, who told of the goings-on at Paresis Hall, a popular hangout for “sexual degenerates”:

I was with Mr. (John R. Wood, another investigator) last night at Paresis Hall, No 392 Bowery. I observed the actions of the persons congregated there. I saw and heard immoral actions and propositions by degenerates there. Captain Chapman came in about five minute to 1, as we stepped out. … We had been in the place about an hour or so; plenty of time for information to get from Paresis Hall to the stationhouse. Captain Chapman didn’t say anything to us, but I overheard him say to the proprietor … that he would not stand for any dancing on souvenir night, and he wanted it shut up. I have been in that place before, recently, three or four times, and I have on each occasion noticed the same conduct as I have just testified to. That is a well-known resort for male prostitutes; a place having a reputation far and wide, to the best of my knowledge. I have heard of it constantly. I have never had any trouble in going in. You go in off the street with perfect ease. These men that conduct themselves there — well, they act effeminately; most of them are painted and powdered; they are called Princess this and Lady So and So and the Duchess of Marlboro, and get up and sing as women, and dance; ape the female character; call each other sisters and take people out for immoral purposes. I have had these propositions made to me, and made repeatedly. There is not difficulty in getting into that place.

Paresis Hall was one of several well-known “fairie resorts,” located on the Bowery at Fifth Street near Cooper Square. It was a combination of a brothel, dance hall and all-around proto-gay bar, patronized by working class immigrants and by organized parties of the well-heeled, who visited the establishments on “slumming” tours. Gender norms were much more definitional in those days, and so it was a common understanding, even among the gay men themselves (though not necessarily a universal one), that in any coupling one would play the man and the other would play the woman — with the “man’s” heterosexuality remaining intact. It would take a number of years before the separation of sexual identity and sexual orientation as two distinct concepts would take hold.

And so at the turn of the last century, dressing in drag carried greater significance beyond a style of entertainment or an expression of gender-bending. And with prostitution as an available outlet, it was also, for some of those in drag, a way to making a living — although not all male prostitutes dressed in drag. Those who didn’t dress in drag tended to escape notice from tourists and police inspectors. And those who did often found that paying a cut of the revenues was what it took to get police inspectors to look the other way. “Fairie resort” owners were also in on the bribery schemes, which not only protected them from police incursions, but also, allegedly, resulted in lower tax assessments at Tammany Hall — a very long-about way to get to what piqued the interest of the Mazet committee.

George P. Hammond, Jr., a produce dealer who was “spending a vacation in helping collect evidence” for the committee, also testified. He had been a member of the City Vigilance League, which had been established in 1892 in response to rampant police corruption in the city. He told the committee:

I know this place called Paresis Hall, and under your directions I have visited it a number of times. I have been in the place since April 1st to the present time fully half a dozen times. I knew of it before, as an officer of the City Vigilance League. I am in the produce business. When this committee began its sessions I took a vacation on the produce business and came in to help you. The character of the place is such that what we call male degenerates frequent the place, and it is a nightly occurrence that they solicit men for immoral purposes. They have one woman who goes there they call a hermaphrodite. These male degenerates solicit men at the tables, and I believe they get a commission on all drinks that are purchased there; they get checks. I have observed five or six of these degenerates frequent that place, possibly more; the last we were there we saw a greater number than we did previously. Those five or six are always to be found there; almost invariably you will find them there they go from there across the street to a place called Little Bucks, opposite, and from there to Coney Island. I have never had any difficulty in getting in; not the least; I have been received with open arms. There are two ways of going in, one way up through the barroom, the other through a side entrance; any way at all that suits you can walk in … They have a piano there, and these fairies or male degenerates, as you call them, they sing some songs.

[Source: Jonathan Ned Katz. Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976): pp 46-47.]

Today In History, 1956: Police Impersonator Arrested in Blackmail Scheme

A small article in The Honolulu Advertiser highlighted a common danger that gay men faced in the 1950s:

A Honolulu fisherman has confessed he passed himself off as a vice-squad lieutenant to collect $27 “bail” money from a frightened restaurant worker, police said yesterday. [Note: $27 in 1956 is equivalent to about $230 today.]

The accused man, Bernal Waiwaiole, 28, of 1133 Maunakea St., is being held in custody until he puts up $50 bond for himself.

The 38-year-old restaurant worker told Detective Segundo Antonio he was resting on a bench in Waikiki shortly after midnight March 17 when Waiwaiole accosted him.

He said Waiwaiole flashed his wallet open and introduced himself as “Lt. Shaffer” of the vice squad. Then, he said, Waiwaiole demanded $25 “bail” money with the threat of locking him up.

The victim, frightened and with only $4.90 in his pocket, took a taxicab to his rooming house to borrow the balance of the money. Waiwaiole, who accompanied the restaurant worker, then demanded another $2.

The victim forked it over.

Waiwaiole was arrested Saturday morning after a friend of the restaurant worker told police about the incident.

Today In History, 1994: Air Force Research Lab Proposes Development of “Gay Bomb”

In a scenario that sounds more like a Monty Python skit than an actual proposal for warfare, an Air Force lab suggested the development of some highly unusual non-lethal chemical weapons. According to a memorandum dated June 1, 1994, the Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, sought the development of harassing, annoying, and “bad guy”-identifying chemicals.

Three classes of chemicals were proposed. The first consisted of “chemicals that attract annoying creatures to the enemy position and make the creatures aggressive or annoying.” Rodents and stinging and biting bugs were suggested as suitable targets. The second class of chemicals would “make lasting but non-lethal markings on the personnel,” making them “easily identifiable (by smell or appearance) weeks later, making it impossible for them to blend with the local population.” If the chemicals had an irritating or annoying factor, so much the better. But it was the third category that was oddest of all:

Category #3: Chemicals that effect [sic] human behavior so that discipline and morals in enemy units is adversely effected [sic]. One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior. Another example would be a chemical that made personnel very sensitive to sunlight.

The brief memo conceded that such chemicals did not currently exist and “would need to be created. Manufacturing techniques would need to be developed for chemicals needed in large quantities.” Decontamination measures would also need to be developed. The entire development and testing program for all three categories of chemicals was projected to cost $7.5 million over six years, which was small potatoes for defense programs, even for 1994.

When news of the program broke in 2005, Marine Captain Daniel McSweeney told reporters that the memo was among hundreds of suggestions for non-lethal weapons sent to the Pentagon each year, and said, “‘Gay Bomb’ is not our term. It was not taken seriously. It was not considered for further development.”

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From The Los Angeles Advocate, May 1968, page 10.

Swimming trunks, a matching “swim coat,” and a “swim cup of foam rubber for under swimwear” to finish out the ensemble. What more could you want? Ah Men was both a West Hollywood clothing store and a line of clothing that was sold from 1962 through the early eighties. They eventually had additional stores in the Silver Lake area and in Houston. But most of their business came from their catalogues which, because of their obvous appreciation of the male body, were especially popular with gay men throughout the country. In that way, Ah Men set the standard for the International Male clothing catalogues of the 1980s and 1990s.

Today In History, 1979: Gay Law Students Challenge Pacific Telephone’s Hiring Practices — and Win

The very idea that LGBT people should require specific protections from the more covert forms employment discrimination was still pretty far out there. In the 1970s, the more present battle was to deal with the explicit, written policies prohibiting employment for gay people. In 1975, the U.S. Civil Service Commission finally abandoned its regulations barring gay people from federal employment (Jul 3), and that only came about after more than a decade of persistent pressure from East Coast gay rights advocates. For a bunch of law school students to lead the charge against the behemoth Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, California’s massive telephone monopoly, must have seemed foolhardy, at best.

PT&T, one of California’s largest employers, was notoriously anti-gay, with an explicit company policy that prohibited gay employees among their ranks. The company refused to hire anyone who they knew was gay, and they fired anyone who came out as “manifest homosexuals.” Some of those former PT&T employees took their problem to the San Francisco-based Society for Individual Rights (SIR). SIR joined forces with the Gay Law Students Association, composed of students at Hastings College of Law and the Boalt Hall Law School, and together they decided to develop the case.

SIR needed standing to sue though. So SIR encouraged qualified members to apply for PT&T jobs. When every one of them were turned away, SIR could go to court and argue that their members were harmed by PT&T’s policies. The Gay Law Students Association cited SIR’s experience, and said that as future lawyers who would be interested in working with PT&Tl after graduation, they too were harmed. Together with plaintiffs who were fired or forced out of their jobs, the class action represented the past, present harms, as well as the anticipated future harms of PT&T hiring practices.

In1974, GLSA and SIR first took their complaint to the state’s Fair Employment Practices Commission. But the FECP said it didn’t have jurisdiction in this case because the California Fair Employment Act (FEPA) didn’t include sexual orientation in Commission’s non-discrimination mandate. GLSA and SIR then took their case to court, seeking to compel the FECP to act on their complaint, and to compel PT&T to drop its anti-gay employment practices. The FECP repeated their claim that lacked jurisdiction, and PT&T, rather defiantly, said simply that under California law, they were allowed to discriminate against gay people and they saw no need to change or defend their policy. The Superior Court judge agreed with the FECP and PT&T, and dismissed the case. The California Court of Appeal upheld his decision.

The case then went to the California Supreme Court in 1977. It took the court almost exactly two years to issue its ruling. And when it did, it was mostly a narrow one, based on the fact that PT&T was a state-regulated and protected public utility, “more akin to a government entity than to a purely private employer.” That meant that PT&T, like the state government itself, was bound by the state Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. If the state’s Equal Protection clause prohibited the state government from arbitrary employment practices, then PT&T, as a state-regulated monopoly, also had to follow the same mandate the sate was required to follow.

But the Court wasn’t finished yet. It also found that PT&T’s employment practices went against the Public Utilities Code, which prohibited public utilities from “subject(ing) any corporation or person to any prejudice or disadvantage.” PT&T argued that the clause applied only to rates or services. But the Supreme Court pointed to the phrase “in any other respect” and ruled that PT&T’s employment practices were also covered by the statute.

And the Court still wasn’t done. And here’s where the Court’s ruling expanded its impact beyond public utilities and into the realm of all business employment practices, public or private (although this point was little-noticed by the news media at the time). The Court ruled that PT&T was guilty of interfering with plaintiffs’ political freedoms in violation of the California Labor Code. That code prohibited employers from taking any action “forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics.” And the Court found that the very act of coming out of the closet was a political activity:

A principal barrier to homosexual equality is the common feeling that homosexuality is an affliction which the homosexual worker must conceal from his employer and his fellow workers. Consequently one important aspect of the struggle for equal rights is to induce homosexual individuals to “come out of the closet,” acknowledge their sexual preferences, and to associate with others in working for equal rights.

In light of this factor in the movement for homosexual rights, the allegations of plaintiffs’ complaint assume a special significance. Plaintiffs allege that PT&T discriminates against “manifest” homosexuals and against persons who make “an issue of their homosexuality.” The complaint asserts also that PT&T will not hire anyone referred to them by plaintiff Society for Individual Rights, an organization active in promoting the rights of homosexuals to equal employment opportunities. These allegations can reasonably be construed as charging that PT&T discriminates in particular against persons who identify themselves as homosexual, who defend homosexuality, or who are identified with activist homosexual organizations.

That third point was new. Before, courts generally saw that not as a political act, but as “flaunting,” which had long been used to justify firing gay employees. Now California’s highest court said it was a protected political act that applied to all employers in California, public or private.

Unfortunately, the Court agreed with the Fair Employment Practices Commission that the California Fair Employment Act didn’t cover sexual orientation. Which meant that the FEPC was right to deny the gay organizations’ claim. So while that third point was an important ruling that applied to all employers and not just public utilities, it also meant that if a gay man or lesbian had been discriminated against, the only recourse was to hire a lawyer and go to court, rather than  the much less expensive route of filing a complaint with the FEPC. But it was a start. Gay Californians wouldn’t gain full employment discrimination protections until 1992.

Today In History, 1986: Scientists Trace HIV to 1951

The summer of 1986 looked to be another terrible year in the nearly five-year-old AIDS epidemic. To be precise, that should be the five-year-old known AIDS epidemic. The CDC first noted the new disease in 1981 with the death of five young men, “all active homosexuals” whose immune system had been mysteriously and severely compromised. Out of the 23,000 known cases of people with AIDS between 1981 and the end of 1986, 56% were already dead (PDF: 32KB/5 pages).

While anti-gay activists rushed to declare that the so-called “gay plague” was a divinely inspired “terrible retribution,” scientists sought to figure out where the deadly disease came from. It wasn’t long before doctors in Europe and Africa noticed that the new disease first reported in America was remarkably similar to a mysterious illness striking the Congo River basin of Zaire and was already spreading eastward to Uganda. Swedish doctors remembered an infant born in Zaire who had contracted a similar disease in 1975 and finally died in 1982. Others recalled a Danish surgeon who died in 1977 after working in the Congo River region. Preserved blood and tissue samples tested positive for HIV, and this sent scientists scurrying to identify earlier possible samples which may offer clues to the disease’s origin.

On May 31, 1986, a team of American scientists published a letter in the British journal The Lancet announcing that they were able to determine that a blood sample that had been taken from an unknown patient at a Kinshasa hospital in 1959 tested positive for HIV. Nothing was known of the patient — neither a name nor medical records survive — but we can certainly guess at the suffering he or she must have endured. Nevertheless, this finding was an early clue that the epidemic itself was much older than previously thought. Later genetic analysis of the virus in that blood sample would indicate that the virus had actually entered the human population sometime around 1931. And later analysis still would push that estimate back to around 1908. But as early as 1986, it was already clear that it was only the stigma surrounding the disease, and not the disease itself, that was then approaching its fifth birthday.

Born On This Day, 1819: Walt Whitman

(d. 1892) Usually I commemorate famous birthdays by providing a brief biographical sketch. But when describing the life of the great American poet, it strikes me as unseemly to describe a man’s life when he has already written all that needs to be said:

When I Heard At The Close Of The Day.

WHEN I heard at the close of
             the day how my name
             had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol, still it
             was not a happy night for me that follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d,
             still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
             refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in
             the morning light,
When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,
             laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way
             coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food
             nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening
             came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly
             continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to
             me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover
             in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined
             toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast and that night I was
             happy.

This poem was originally part of a sequence titled “Live Oak with Moss,” which tells the story of an unhappy affair with a man. When Whitman published the third edition of Leaves of Grass in 1860, he included then among the forty-five poems of “Calamus,” but re-arranged their order to obliterate the narrative. For the fourth edition of Leaves of Grass, two of the three poems dropped were “Live Oak ” poems, perhaps revealing that Whitman still feared that they told more than he could safely reveal. You can see the reconstructed “Live Oak” series at the Whitman Archive.

Born On This Day, 1918: Bob Hull

(d. 1962) The future co-founder of the Mattachine Foundation grew up near Minneapolis. While a student at the University of Minnesota, Hull met Chuck Rowland (Aug 24) — another future Mattachine co-founder — and they became lovers, briefly. After the war, Rowland became a Communist organizer, and Hull soon followed. In 1948, Rowland left the party and moved to Los Angeles. Hull followed him to L.A., but remained in the party where he met Harry Hay (Apr 7). When Hay discussed his idea for forming a support organization for gay people with Hull, Hull shared the idea with Rowland and Hull’s then-current lover, Dale Jennings (Oct 21). Together with Hay’s lover, Rudi Gernreich (Aug 8), the five met in Hay’s home in the Silver Lake neighborhood and formed what would become the Mattachine Foundation in 1950 (Nov 11).

Hull’s role in the new organization was rather limited. He was best known for leading discussion groups and writing tracts for the group. As Mattachine grew and attracted new members, many of those new members were skittish over its founders’ Communist ties and the Foundation’s high degree of secrecy. Few knew the names of those in leadership positions, and the founders organized the individual discussion groups so that each one was compartmentalized. That way, if the FBI picked up one member  — remember, this was at the height of the McCarthy anti-Communist and anti-gay witch hunts (Feb 28, Mar 14,Mar 21, Mar 23, Mar 24, Apr 14, Apr 18, Apr 26, May 2, May 15, May 19, and May 20) — others in the organization would be protected.

But by 1953, newer members, mostly conservative members from San Francisco led by Hal Call (Sep 20), demanded that the secrecy surrounding the leadership be abandoned and the organization cleared of Communists. Hull voiced concerns that some of those northern members might tip off a Senate Committee that Communists had founded the organization and questioned whether the founders could withstand such an investigation. (In fact, two new members from the Bay area were already FBI informants.) After the Foundation’s first constitutional in April broke down in disagreement (Apr 11), a second meeting was called for May, when Hay, Rowland, and Hull stepped down. The remaining members declared the Mattachine Foundation disbanded and announced the formation of the newly reconstituted Mattachine Society.

When Hull left Mattachine, he also left advocacy behind. He briefly joined up with Rowland’s short-lived gay-affirming Church of One Brotherhood, but Hull’s personal demons soon caught up with him. A lifelong introvert, Hull struggled with depression for which he underwent years of therapy. Just days after his lover left him, Hull killed himself on May 1, 1962.

Emphasis Mine

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S., a day set aside to remember those who gave their lives for this country. With the demise of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 2011, gay and lesbian service members have been able to serve their country openly and with honor and pride. And their civilian spouses and loved ones, can also, without shame or fear, remember and honor the sacrifices of their loved ones. That, in particular, was perhaps one of the cruelest aspects of DADT and prior bans on gays and lesbians serving, and dying, openly. In prior years, loved ones were made to mourn in silence. In 1961, ONE magazine published a poignant letter from one such World War II army veteran who still mourned another who didn’t come home:

Dear Dave:

This is in memory of an anniversary — the anniversary of October 27th, 1943, when I first heard you singing in North Africa. That song brings memories of the happiest times I’ve ever known. Memories of a GI show troop — curtains made from barrage balloons — spotlights made from cocoa cans — rehearsals that ran late into the evenings — and a handsome boy with a wonderful tenor voice. Opening night at a theater in Canastel — perhaps a bit too much muscatel, and someone who understood. Exciting days playing in the beautiful and stately Municipal Opera House in Oran — a misunderstanding — an understanding in the wings just before opening chorus.

Drinks at “Coq d’or” — dinner at the “Auberge” — a ring and promise given. The show for 1st Armoured — muscatel, scotch, wine — someone who had to be carried from the truck and put to bed in his tent. A night of pouring rain and two very soaked GIs beneath a solitary tree on an African plain. A borrowed French convertible — a warm sulphur spring, the cool Mediterranean, and a picnic of “rations” and hot cokes. Two lieutenants who were smart enough to know the score, but not smart enough to realize that we wanted to be alone. A screwball piano player — competition –miserable days and lonely nights. The cold, windy night we crawled through the window of a GI theater and fell asleep on a cot backstage, locked in each other’s arms — the shock when we awoke and realized that miraculously we hadn’t been discovered. A fast drive to a cliff above the sea –pictures taken, and a stop amid the purple grapes and cool leaves of a vineyard.

The happiness when told we were going home — and the misery when we learned that we would not be going together. Fond goodbyes on a secluded beach beneath the star-studded velvet of an African night, and the tears that would not be stopped as I stood atop the sea-wall and watched your convoy disappear over the horizon.

We vowed we’d be together again “back home,” but fate knew better — you never got there. And so, Dave, I hope that where ever you are these memories are as precious to you as they are to me.

Goodnight, sleep well my love.

Brian Keith

[Source: Brian Keith. “Letter to a G.I.” ONE, 9, no. 9 (September 1961): 19.]

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From This Week In Texas, May 28, 1977, page 45. (Source.)

The building at 2400 Brazos in Houston has hosted four different gay bars in the past four decades. The first was the Golden Spur, which opened in the summer of 1974. It had a western/cowboy theme with haylofts and a sawdust floor. It didn’t last long, because in October of 1975, a show bar by the name of Adam’s Image (“featuring Torchy Lane”) opened in its place. Adam’s Image was very short-lived, and was replaced with Levi’s in May of 1976, which brought cowboys back. Levi’s lasted  just under two years, when it became the legendary Brazos River Bottom, which became one of Houston’s top gay bars, and one of the nation’s top cowboy bars, for the next 35 years. The stomping and line-dancing continued right up until it closed in 2013, with the owners citing the tired 100-year-old building’s long list of needed repairs. After a radical transformation, the building today houses a straight bar called the Gaslamp.