Box Turtle Bulletin

Emphasis Mine

Hal Call (Sep 20), who took over the Mattachine Society in 1953 after ousting the old guard who founded the organization (Apr 11), recalled to James T. Sears his year of studying journalism at the University of Missouri after his discharge from the Army following World War II, and the scandal that broke out after he graduated (see below):

There were scandals, yes. E.K. Johnston was a professor and in line for the deanship of the journalism school at the University of Missouri. He was held in high regard and taught us the whole science of advertising and newspaper promotion, merchandising, and direct sales. He was also a faculty counselor — my counselor.

… No, not with me, but he was involved in homosexual activities with some students after I graduated. That spread over Missouri like wildfire.

He had to resign. I was up in Brookfield running a newspaper. Some of the merchants I called on for advertising knew I was a graduate from the school. They teased me about “taking that sex course from old E.K.” I was able to laugh it off. Secretly, I was embarrassed that they were attacking him. But what could I do?

[Source: James T. Sears. Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Hal Call Chronicles and the Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation (New York: Routledge, 2011 ed.): 38, 40.]

Today In History, 1948: “Homosexual Ring Broken Up” At Mizzou

From page 1 of The St. Joseph (MO) News-Press, May 27, 1948.

A veteran University of Missouri journalism professor was arrested and charged with sodomy as Prosecutor Howard B. Lang, Jr. described to reporters fantastical tales of “mad homosexual parties” and “abnormal orgies” in Columbia, Missouri. According to the Associated Press on the day of his arrest:

The prosecuting attorney said he had issued a warrant for the arrest of E.K. Johnston, for 24 years a member of the faculty of the university’s school of journalism, after a long investigation into abnormal sex orgies here and other central Missouri cities. Two other men were held in the Boone County jail on similar charges. They are Willie Coots, a gift shop employee here, and Warren W. Heathman, 35, Rolla, Mo., an itinerant instructor for the Veteran Administration’s farm training program.

Lang said both had signed statements, implicating Johnston as a principal in what he called a homosexual “ring” at Johnston’s apartment which Coots had shared for the last 15 or 16 years. At least of score of University of Missouri students and other residents here, Lang said, also are implicated in the ring. No charges have been filed against any one except Coots, Heathman and Johnston, but several are being held in jail for investigation or as material witnesses.

Heathman, Lang reported, told a near-fantastic story of “mad parties” at Johnston’s apartment and at a cabin near Salem, Mo., in which as many as 30 members of the “ring” gathered to boast of conquests and to indulge in homosexual practices.

Johnston was released after posting a $3,500 bond (that would be nearly $35,000 in today’s money), and the university fired him the next day. Other students were subsequently arrested — some were beaten by police — then released, only to be dismissed by the university and sent home to their parents, who were told why they were expelled. One of the students committed suicide.

Johnson initially pleaded not guilty to the charge of sodomy, but after Coots and Heathman testified against him, he changed his plea to guilty. His attorney then called ten character witnesses in a bid to get Johnston sentenced to probation rather than a prison term. One witness, Dr. Edwin F. Gildea, head of the psychiatric department at Washington University in St. Louis, testified, “I examined him specifically for an hour this morning to find out of he would be a mecance to society. I do not believe that he is.” Other character witnesses included the dean and two professors from the Mizzou’s school of journalism. The testimony paid off, and Johnston was sentenced to four years’ probation under a $2,000 bond. Terms of the probation included “cessation of homosexual practices.” The others also pleaded guilty and were placed on probation.

Johnston was just one of a large number of students and faculty who were caught up in a wider anti-gay witch hunt then taking place on the UM campus, spearheaded by the university’s vice president Thomas A. Brady. In the late 1940s, the university had gained a reputation as a “safe haven” for gay people, and the state legislature exerted pressure to get them out of the university. The university set up an investigative committee under Brady’s guidance, and the committee set about identifying gay students and faculty based on the interviews with those who were offered immunity in return for testifying against the others. That investigation led Johnston’s arrest along with several other students. Decades later, some of those students recalled what those times were like:

“Phillip,” a former MU student interviewed by Jim Duggins of the GLBT Historical Society, describes running into a gay friend who’d been caught “at a party out in the woods in Salem, Mo., in a cabin, having a wild time.”

“The university got rid of everyone,” Phillip says. “Each student who had been involved had his transcripts stamped, ‘This student will not be readmitted to the University of Missouri until he is cleared of charges regarding homosexual activities.’ That’s why one kid killed himself right away, and others killed themselves during the ensuing months. It was just tragic.”

Phillip and the other interviewees also discuss the 1948 dismissal of MU advertising professor E.K. Johnston. “E.K. Johnston had been at the party,” Phillip says. “He was immediately dismissed; the chancellor of the university, or whoever it was, said, ‘We had no idea. Such a respected man,’ though Johnston had been talked about for years.”

The pall of those investigations, and the attitudes toward gay people that they engendered, hung over Mizzou for decades afterward. Bob Callis, who became dean after Brady’s retirement, wrote in a 1966 memo: “The record does show rather clear evidence that several incidences of homicide and suicide were a direct outgrowth of the activities of homosexual rings in operation at that time. Damage to human life and welfare of less serious proportion than suicide and homicide is also evident from the record.”

In 2006, after UM students approved a $63 million expansion and renovation of the student union building which had been named for Brady when it first opened in 1963, a campus controversy erupted when several students uncovered Brady’s anti-gay investigations and publicized them on campus. The students formed a group called Not My Brady and called for renaming Brady Commons. After all, they argued, it would essentially become an entirely new building for a new era, and keeping Brady’s name on it, given his anti-gay policies, was no longer appropriate. The university President and Chancellor both made it clear that they wouldn’t consider the change. But when the building opened in 2010, Brady’s name was quietly dropped. It is now officially the MU Student Center.

After his arrest and conviction in Columbia, Professor Johnston moved to Kansas City, where he lived until his death in 1990.

Today In History, 1960: Daughters of Bilitis Hold First National Convention

Daughters of Bilitis Convention Program.

When Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, the tiny group only had eight members (see Oct 19). Five years later, and the Daughters were large enough to hold its first biennial convention at the Hotel Whitcomb in San Francisco. The DoB’s press release announcing the convention was met mostly with silence, with a few sprinkles of condescension here and there. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Herb Caen typified the latter when, while referring to a gay-baiting mayoral campaign the previous autumn (see Oct 7), he wrote, “Russ Wolden, if nobody else, will be interested to learn that the Daughters of Bilitis will hold their nat’l convention here May 27-30. They’re the female counterparts of the Mattachine Society — and one of the convention highlights will be an address by Atty. Morris Lowenthal titled ‘The Gay Bar in the Courts.’ Oh brother. I mean sister. Come to think of it, I don’t know what I mean.”

Two hundred women and men attended the convention, whose theme was “A Look At The Lesbian.” he convention began on Friday night with a cocktail party at Martin and Lyon’s home. The main convention occurred at the hotel on Saturday, with panels of speakers, a lunch, and a cocktail reception and banquet that night.  Just as lunch was about to be served, a detail from the San Francisco police department also showed up to have their own look at the lesbians, specifically to make sure the ladies were wearing ladies’ clothing. SFPD had a long history of harassing lesbians dressed in slacks, jeans, or shirts with the buttons on the wrong side. As the Daughters had long emphasized outward conformity in the hopes that it would put larger society at ease, they were already prepared for the inspection. Del Martin brought the police inside so they could verify that everyone — the women, anyway — were wearing dresses, stockings and heels.

The convention went off without further disruptions from police, but the same couldn’t be said about some of the invited speakers. As Helen Sandoz (see Nov 2) reported in the DoB’s newsletter, The Ladder:

Saturday was a day to remember. We started out with the usual panel … the pat on the head… the understanding… the back-up by professionals. So, another homophile convention was under way in the usual manner. Then lunchtime came. An Episcopal minister served up our dessert with damnation.

Stella Rush provided more details about the brimstone delivered by Rev. Fordyce Eastburn, Episcopal chaplain at San Francisco’s St. Luke’s Hospital:

Having admitted that homosexuality was an unknown island to him, Rev. Eastburn proceeded to inform us that he felt that homosexuality was a “primary disorder of the Divine Plan.” …Homosexuals, he told us, were: 1, afflicted with a disorder of nature; 2, must attempt to stay away from their sources of temptation; and 3, should take therapy and attempt to make a heterosexual adjustment to life. (If you can’t make number three, I presume that leaves you celibate, presuming further that you’re capable of remaining  celibate and retaining your sanity.) …Well, it was a real different kind of luncheon, you had to admit that!

The gathering remained polite, despite the seething anger building in the crowd. Martin had invited Eastburn in the hopes if “open(ing) a door to communication with the church.” But Rush remembered, “It was awful — once more we were being told we were sinners. The men and women activists held up well, for they had come to accept themselves. But a gay boy I knew in L.A., who had no ties or experience in ONE, Inc., or the Mattachine and had come at my invitation, was harmed rather than helped. I lost his friendship over it.”

Things calmed down a bit, only to heat up again during a mid-afternoon debate between opposing lawyers in a gay bar case. Sidney Feinberg, North Coastal Area Administrator of the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, defended the ABC’s practice of arresting gay bar patrons who propositioned undercover officers. One man at the convention rose up to ask a simple question:

“Sir,” the man asked timidly, “What is wrong with the person so approached saying ‘no’?” Mr. Feinberg asked in thundering tones whether the young man realized what he was asking. He was implying that to be protected all anyone had to do was say “No.” (Yes, it appeared as if that was what the young man was saying.) Such an implication seemed to inflame Mr. Feinberg greatly; certainly it was clear that such a thesis would put the ABC out of the job it said it wanted to be put out of. Mr. Feinberg expostulated that a man di d not have to accept the proposition of a prostitute either, did the questioner mean to imply that there should be no repression of prostitutes? There was a sprinkling of affirmations from the audience of those who believed there should be no such repression, and Mr. Feinberg became even more agitated. He stated in effect that if the audience did not even see eye-to-eye with the Law on something like that, that we would pursue two parallel lines in discussion and never come to any understanding.

Another queried, “Sir, would it be considered ‘indecent’ in a bar for men to be dancing together?” Mr. Feinberg opined that it would. The young man asked, “Why?” Mr. Feinberg said that such at hing was offensive. Another male member of the audience asked rather curtly, “Offensive to whom?” Mr. Feinberg became even more agitated, and the tension in the audience rose proportionately. “Offensive to the public.” Someone else asked, “Who decides what is offensive to the public? You?”

Finally it was Morris Lowenthal’s turn to speak. Lowenthal was a San Francisco attorney who successfully defended a gay bar that the ABC had tried to shut down. As Lowenthal detailed the ABC’s many attempts to shut down gay bars solely on the basis of the makeup of its clientele — as “resorts for sex perverts,” as ABC policy put it. The heated exchange that followed not only shocked the audience, but even made it into the Sam Francisco newspapers. Again, Rush described what happened:

Mr. Feinberg, who had been crouched over the table all this time, obviously fuming, erupted with a demand that he be allowed rebuttal time at the end of Mr. Lowenthal’s discourse.  …Mr. Feinberg was almost incoherent with fury until he calmed down a bit and tried to refute Mr. Lowenthal. Unfortunately he did not use facts, but sheer passion and sound decibles. I felt a rumble which literally rose from the floor, a very frightening feeling to one who has never been in such a position before. Mr. Feinberg attacked Mr. Lowenthal as having accused State officials of corruption, bribery and blackmail.

The audience, which had borne patiently the fireworks up to that point, became angered at tactics which it felt were not only unfair, but untrue. Also the audience was much impressed by the fact that whatever the merits of anybody’s case, Mr. Lovlenthal had at no time raised his voice, shouted or become angry.

Del Martin managed to calm the waters before open rebellion broke out, and was undoubtedly relieved when the time came to bang the gavel and move the convention to the next item on the agenda. The rest of the convention went on without interruption or aggravation. That night, they even gave out honorary S.O.B.’s — a “Sons of Bilitis” award to nearly a dozen male activists and allies. By Sunday night, while Lisa Ben (see Nov 7) delighted the crowd with her gay-themed songs and parodies, the organizers and attendees were overjoyed at the convention’s success. Sandoz ended her report in The Ladder with a note of thanks to everyone who attended, including those who were uninvited or otherwise less than welcome:

Those of us who attended will never forget the excitement, the living proof of our worth. It was a timely shot in the arm when so much is adverse in so many areas. Thank you, DOB, ABC (California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control); Vice Squad, professional folk… thank you all for letting us see you and letting you see us.

[Sources: Sten Russell and Helen Sanders (pseudonyms for Stella Rush and Helen Sandoz). “Convention Highlights.” The Ladder 4, no. 9 (June 1960): 5-6, 25.

Sten Russell (pseudonym for Stella Rush). “DOB Convention: A Look At The Lesbian.” The Ladder 4, no. 10 (July 1960): 6-25.

Marcia M. Gallo. Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006): 60-66.

Today In History, 1969: “One Profession Frowned Upon In Hollywood”

Vernon Scott, UPI’s Hollywood correspondent, filed this breaking news item:

Ask a man what he does for a living in Hollywood — or Tulsa — and if he answers “interior decorator, a deadly silence ensues. He would be better off admitting he is a safecracker or even an actor.

An interior designer is immediately suspect. Any guy who makes a bock matching puce draperies with vermillion carpets and Louis XIV breakfronts must defend his manhood, or at least stake a claim to it, or be classified as, er… well, sissy.

In most cases interior decorators would have a tough time passing ink-blot tests, much less the marine psychological examination.

This state of affairs — the overwhelming number of effeminate men in the decorating business — infuriates a red-bearded Englishman named Ian Phillips who designs interiors for movie and television personalities. Phillips has decorated the homes of such luminaries as Annette Funicello, Glenn Campbell, Mike Landon, Rod Taylor and Barbara Eden, and Mike Ansara.

“I’m fighting the control the homosexuals have over interior decoration in this town and in other major cities,” Phillips said, pounding the table. “How can these creatures express a truly masculine attitude in a home, or a really feminine touch? They’re lost somewhere in between.”

Phillips finds himself swearing lustily and throwing references into his conversation about his four years as a British naval commando to remove the onus his profession forces on him. “This profession is badly in need of young people who can bring in new ideas. But they don’t want to be tagged as something less than men because the limp-wrist characters have taken over.”

The only reference to Ian Phillips that I can find online is that he was hired as Special Interior Decorator for the 1965 film, How to Stuff A Wild Bikini, starring Annette Funicello and Dwayne Hickman. The New York Times called it “an answer to a moron’s prayer.”

Today In History, 1993: Russia Decriminalizes Homosexuality

President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree which repealed the law forbidding male homosexuality on this date. For several years, Moscow gay rights advocates tried to commemorate the anniversary of this historic event by conducting a gay pride march in Moscow. And every year, Moscow authorities have suppressed the march, usually violently. In 2013, Russia upped the ante when President Vladimir Putin signed into law a measure which ostensibly bans distributing “pro-homosexual propaganda” to minors, but which is so broadly written as to ban virtually all pro-LGBT advocacy anywhere in Russia.

Born On This Day, 1927: Marijane Meaker

The American novelist and short story writer is known among lesbian pulp fiction fans as Vin Packer, and among fans of young adult fiction as M.E. Kerr. Her 1952 paperback, Spring Fire, is often considered to be the first lesbian pulp novel. Maker worked on the novel while working as a proofreader at Gold Medal Books. She got Spring Fire published there by posing as a literary agent representing an author named “Vin Packer.”

Spring Fire, was a hit, but the nature of the audience caught Gold Medal Books by surprised. “Spring Fire was not aimed at any lesbian market,” Meaker said in 1989, “because there wasn’t any that we knew about. I was just out of college. We were amazed, floored, by the mail that poured in. That was the first time anyone was aware of the gay audience out there.” Thrilled with Spring Fire’s success, Gold Medal sought more stories from Vin Packer, who proceeded to produce twenty pulp fiction novels between 1952 and 1969.

Inspired by Donald Webster Cory’s groundbreaking book The Homosexual in America (see Sep 18), Meaker’s second persona, Ann Aldrich, published a series of nonfiction works to describe the the lesbian experience in 1950s America. We Walk Alone appeared in 1955 to mixed reviews. While it was an eye opener to general audiences, lesbians weren’t so taken with it, with many of those criticisms being played out in the pages of the Daughters of Bilitis’ newsletter The Ladder. Aldrich’s 1958 follow-up, We, Too, Must Love (1958), did little to win over her lesbian critics who, in the 1950s, were desperate to see lesbians portrayed in a much more ordinary and “adjusted” (read: unobjectionable) manner as possible. Del Martin (see May 5) wrote:

Your intentions are admirable, Miss Aldrich, but somehow we feel that you have not reached your objective. You have glossed over that segment of the Lesbian population which we consider to be the “majority” of this minority group. We refer to those who have made an adjustment to self and society and who are leading constructive, useful lives in the community in which they live. While we will grant you that the “average” Lesbian, like any other “average”, makes dull reading, you must concede that without inclusion of this group you have not painted a well-rounded and true picture of Lesbian life. …Lesbian life which you have depicted may be likened to a similar study of heterosexual life in which only the Skid Road characters and the well-to-do are delineated. …Surely in your 18 years of Lesbian experience you have met those capable of carrying on an intelligent conversation.”

Meaker became a successful young adult fiction writer under the pseudonym M.E. Kerr, beginning in 1972, covering topics which weren’t usually covered by books for that audience: racism, absent parents, homosexuality and, later, AIDS. Her first book as M.E. Kerr, 1972’s Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, had as a central character an overweight girl, and was listed by the School Library Journal as one of the 100 most significant books for children and young adults. She also wrote four books for younger audiences under the pseudonym Mary James.

Meaker had a contentious relationship from 1959 to 1961 with the eccentric author Patricia Highsmith (see Jan 19), which Meaker wrote about in the 2003 memoir, Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s. Meanwhile, a whole new audience has rediscovered her pioneering pulp fiction work, with collectors driving up prices on original paperbacks. Cleis Press re-released a large number of titles since 2011 in paperback and for Kindle.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Today In History, 1697: Massachusetts Colony Revises “Buggery” Law

After the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies were united into the new Massachusetts Colony, a revision to the Massachusetts Bay Law of 1672 revised its old sodomy law. The death penalty remains, but now “Buggery” is defined to include bestiality as well as sodomy:

For avoiding of the detestable and abominable Sin of Buggery with Mankind or Beast, which is contrary to the very Light of Nature; Be it Enacted and Declared … That the same Offence be adjudged Felony … And that every Man, being duly convicted of lying with Mankind, as he lieth with a Woman; and every Man or Woman that shall have carnal Copulation with any Beast or Brute Creature, the Offender and Offenders, in either of the Cases before mentioned, shall suffer the Pains of Death, and the Beast shall be slain and Burned.

Massachusetts abolished the death penalty for sodomy and bestiality in 1805.

Born On This Day, 1951: Sally Ride

(d. 2012) When she flew onto orbit on the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983, Sally ride became the first American woman and the third woman worldwide in space (behind Soviet cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982). She was thirty-two at the time, which made her the youngest American to travel to space — that record still stands. She repeated that trip again the next year, also aboard Challenger.

On the flight deck during her first Challenger mission.

The Los Angeles native had always been interested in science. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and physics at Stanford, where she also earned a master’s and Ph.D. in physics while studying X-rays in interstellar space. She answered an ad that NASA placed in the Stanford student newspaper seeking applicants. Out of 8,000 applicants, she was chosen in 1978. When she was selected for STS-7 in 1983, her gender was quite a novelty, with clueless reporters asking, “Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?” and “Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?”

With members of the Presidential Commission investigating the Challenger explosion.

She was scheduled for a third flight in 1986, but that flight was cancelled after the Challenger disaster. Instead of flying into space, Ride joined the investigation, heading the subcommittee on operations where she discovered key information regarding the ill-fated O-rings.

Ride left NASA in 1987 to work at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Arms Control. In 1989, she became a physics professor at U.C. San Diego and served as the director of the California Space Institute. She was also heavily involved with NASA’s outreach to school children, and co-founded a company that developed science programs for elementary and middle school students, with a particular emphasis on getting girls interested in science. In 2003, NASA asked her to join the Columbia accident investigation, making her the only person to investigate both shuttle disasters.

Ride had married fellow astronaut Steve Hawley in 1982, but they divorced in 1987. After that, Ride was extremely circumspect about her private life. After she died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer, her official obituary said that she was survived by her mother, sister, a niece, a nephew, and “Tam O’Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years.” That’s how she came out. Her sister, Bear Ride, confirmed that Sally was a very private person and said, “We consider Tam a member of the family.” She added, “I hope it makes it easier for kids growing up gay that they know that another one of their heroes was like them.”

In 2013, President Barack Obama honored Ride with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Dr. O’Shaughnessy is currently the Executive Director of Sally Ride Science at UC San Diego, a nonprofit which focuses on professional development for teachers “to help educators build students’ STEM literacy” for K-12 students.

Born On This Day, 1987: Sakia Gunn

(d. 2003) If she were alive today, she’d be celebrating her twenty-ninth birthday. Instead, she didn’t quite make it to sweet sixteen. On May 11, 2003, she and her friends were waiting for the #1 New Jersey Transit bus in downtown Newark when they were propositioned by two men. The girls rejected their advances by declaring themselves to be lesbians. The men attacked, and when Gunn fought back, one of the attackers stabbed her in the chest. After both attackers fled, Gunn was rushed to the hospital where she died. The murder became the subject of several protests in Newark, and more than 2,500 people attended her funeral.

One of the attackers, Robert McCullough, was arrested and charged with murder. In a tale that could have come from a bad comedy sketch, McCullough claimed that Gunn died after she ran into his knife. He eventually agreed to a plea bargain in which the murder charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea for manslaughter, aggravated assault and bias intimidation. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From Michael’s Thing, November 11, 1979, page 35.

Irish brewer James Everard opened the Everard Baths in 1888 in an old renovated church building. He had bought it in 1886 and turned it into a music hall known as “The Regent.” It flopped a few months later. It reopened again as “The Fifth Avenue Music Hall,” but that, too, closed soon after. Everard renovated it again, and on May 7, 1888, he opened it as a Turkish bath.

Everard died in 1913, and the property was sold to Meyer Smolowitz, who in 1921 sold it for the princely sum of $175,000 to a lawyer by the name of Abraham Harawitz. Harawitz announced that he would spend another $100,000 on renovations for the “bathhouse and dormitories.  By then, it had already become popular with gay men and picked up the nickname “Everhard.” Police raided the premises in 1919 and arrested nine customers and the manager for lewd behavior, and arrested fifteen more in another raid in 1920. But despite those raids, the Everard Baths remained a major gay venue through the succeeding decades. Well-known patrons over the years included Gore Vidal, Rudolf Nureyev, Lorenz Hart, Truman Capote and Ned Rorem.

In 1977, a fire broke out in the Everard, killing nine customers and injuring ten more (see below). The fire destroyed the top two floors of the four-story building. After the building was rebuilt, the Everard reopened in 1979, and remained open for another seven years. It finally closed for good in April 1986 in a city-wide campaign by New York mayor Ed Koch to shut down all of the city’s bathhouses in response to the AIDS epidemic. The building is still there and houses the Yung Kee Wholesale Center.

Today In History, 1895: Oscar Wilde Convicted of “Gross Indecency”

Author, poet and playwright Oscar Wilde was the toast of London. He made his mark in literature in The Picture of Dorian Gray (an annotated edition with some of the more homoerotic themes restored was released in 2011). His essays made him a respected man of letters, while his popular plays (Salome, A Woman of No Importance, and especially The Importance of Being Earnest) burnished his reputation for sophisticated wit.

But the wild success of Earnest, which premiered February 14, 1895, was quickly eclipsed by Wilde’s conviction and sentencing for homosexuality. Four days after the premiere of Earnest, Wilde was denounced as a homosexual by the Marquess of Queensberry (see Feb 18). Wilde, who was involved with the Marquess’s son, Alfred Douglass, ignored the advise of his friends and sued the Marquess for libel. That proved disastrous. During cross-examination, Queensberry’s lawyer asked Wilde whether he had ever kissed a particular young man, Walter Grainger, in greeting. “Oh, dear no,” Wilde replied, “He was a peculiarly plain boy. He was unfortunately extremely ugly. I pitied him for it.” Queesnbury’s lawyer pounced on Wilde’s admssion for not kissing Grainger: it wasn’t that Wilde didn’t like kissing men, but that he didn’t want to kiss this particular “ugly” man.

In short order, Wilde lost the case (see Apr 5). The next day, he was arrested and charged with gross indecency. His first trial began on April 26, with Wilde pleading not guilty. It was during that trial that Wilde uttered these famous lines under cross-examination:

Charles Gill (prosecuting): What is “the love that dare not speak its name”?

Oscar Wilde: “The love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as “the love that dare not speak its name,” and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.

Despite that admission, Wilde’s first trial ended in a hung jury. But a second jury on May 25 found him and another friend guilty. Justice Alfred Wills sentenced them to the maximum sentence allowed by law: to two years of hard labor:

Justice Wills: Oscar Wilde and Alfred Taylor, the crime of which you have been convicted is so bad that one has to put stern restraint upon one’s self to prevent one’s self from describing, in language which I would rather not use, the sentiments which must rise in the breast of every man pf honor who has heard the details of these two horrible trials. That the jury has arrived at a correct verdict in this case I cannot persuade myself to entertain a shadow of a doubt; and I hope, at all events, that those who sometimes imagine that a judge is half-hearted in the cause of decency and morality because he takes care no prejudice shall enter into the case, may see that it is consistent at least with the utmost sense of indignation at the horrible charges brought home to both of you.

It is no use for me to address you. People who can do these things must be dead to all sense of shame, and one cannot hope to produce any effect upon them. It is the worst case I have ever tried. that you, Taylor, kept a kind of male brothel it is impossible to doubt. And that you, Wilde, have been the center of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind among young men, it is equally impossible to doubt.

I shall, under the circumstances, be expected to pass the severest sentence that the law allows. In my judgment it it totally inadequate for a case such as this. The sentence of the Court is that each of you be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for two years.

[Cries of “Oh! Oh!” and “Shame!”]

Oscar Wilde: And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?

The court adjourned.

Today In History, 1913: The Redl Affair

Col. Alfred Redl was a Galician native from a poor family in what is now Ukraine but was then a part of the Austrian Empire. He joined the Austrian army where his keen intelligence and facility with languages outweighed his poverty-stricken background and opened doors into the officer corps. That was a rarity, since officers were nearly uniformly drawn from the rich and the politically well-connected. Redl was appointed to the counter-intelligence service, and his innovations quickly led the way to a series of promotions which led to his becoming the service’s chief in 1907. In 1911, Redl was honored with the Expression of Supreme Satisfaction, which was a personal honor bestowed by Emperor Franz Josef himself.

But while that was happening, Redl was also an spy for Russia, starting probably around 1903 (although the Austrian Empire’s official rendition of events had him starting only in 1912). How he became a spy for the Austria’s arch enemy isn’t clear, but we do know that Russia became aware of Redl’s homosexuality as early as 1901, and it is believed that Redl was blackmailed. Before World War I broke out, Redl handed over Austria’s plan for invading Serbia, revealed the names of Austrian agents in Russia, and underestimated Russia’s military strength to the Austrian military. The results were disastrous for Austria. With Russia and Serbia knowing Austria’s moves ahead of time, it is estimated that Redl may have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Austrian soldiers and civilians.

Ironically, Redl’s innovations in Austria’s counter-intelligence service proved to be his undoing. When Redl was promoted up and out of the counter-intelligence service, his successor and protégé, Major Maximilian Ronge, became aware of some suspicious envelopes, stuffed with cash but no note, being delivered to the Vienna post office for a Herr Nikon Nizetas for General Delivery (in other words, with no address; the post office was to hold the envelopes for Nizetas to pick up). Because of the large sums of money involved and evidence that the envelopes may have come from Russia, Ronge personally led the investigation. To Ronge’s surprise, it was Redl who arrived at the post office to claim the envelopes. When Ronde and a group of officers confronted Redl at the Hotel Klosmer where Redle was staying, Redl cordially invited them into his room and admitted his crimes. Redl then asked to borrow a revolver. Knowing what would come next, Ronge and his men left a Browning pistol and left, waiting outside the hotel for the sound of the gunshot. Redl removed his uniform, wrote one last farewell letter, and shot himself.

At first, Emperor Franz Josef tried to keep the circumstances behind Redl’s suicide under wraps, but Redl’s death soon became a rallying point for a number of factions within the government. Aristocrats pointed to Redl’s humble background to demand that the officer corps be returned to its all-aristocratic foundations. His Galician upbringing brought all Slavs in the officer corps under suspicion, despite the fact that Redl was ethnically German. And a rumor that Redl was Jewish, despite his Roman Catholic upbringing, stoked yet another wave of anti-Semitism in central Europe.

But more crucially, the Redl Affair became a worldwide symbol of the vulnerability of high-level government officials to blackmail, particularly where homosexuality was concerned. During the Cold War, the Redl Affair, along with the 1951 defection to the Soviet Union of British spies Guy Burgess and Don MacLean, reinforced the argument that gay people could not be trusted in government, and during McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade in the 1950s, homosexuality and communism were further linked as twin threats to national security.

Today in History, 1961: Florida Legislative Committee Calls Schools “Veritable Refuge for Practicing Homosexuals”

Rep. William G, O’Neill (D-Ocala), chairman of the Legislative Investigations Committee.

That charge was levied in a report by the Florida Legislative Investigations Committee, which was Florida’s homegrown version of the McCarthy Red and Lavender Scares from a decade earlier. Known popularly as the Johns Committee for its first chairman, state Senator and former acting Governor Charley Johns, it was established in 1956 to investigate alleged communist links to the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1957, the Legislature broadened the committee’s mandate to investigate gays in the state’s colleges and universities. In 1961, just as that mandate was about to expire, the Johns committee issued a biennial report to the Legislature which claimed that it found evidence that eight men in Miami were operating a “call ring” which put teenage boys “through what amounts to a regular course in training in homosexual acts. When properly trained they are made available to older homosexuals the same as female prostitutes.”

The report, filed by Rep. William G, O’Neill (D-Ocala), the committee’s chair, alleged that the men “converted” school boys between 13 and 17 years old to “homosexual practices” by the use of pornography, liquor, and “narcotic drugs.” It also said that three of the eight men had been arrested. This investigation, the report added, was “one of the most important and serious investigations it (the committee) has ever made, but disclosure of details now would destroy the work.” ONE magazine was skeptical of the charges:

It seems to this reporter that there have been entirely too much acceptance of alleged happenings as reported by investigative bodies or individuals who are never required to give absolute and irrefutable proof. We have for years been hearing about supposed homosexual “rings” and “clubs” that serve their memberships play-boy style. I defy anyone to show me one.

ONE was right to be skeptical, as no such case has ever hit Florida’s newspapers as far as I’ve been able to determine.

The report was far from finished however. Under the heading, “Homosexual Conduct on the Part of State Employees, Particularly in the Field of Education,” the report reminded the Legislature that since July 1, 1959, 39 teachers’ certificates had been revoked, and there were another 14 cases pending before the State Board of Education. “The committee is in possession of sworn testimony concerning homosexual conduct in excess of 75 additional public school teachers,” the report said (see Apr 22 for the case of five teachers from St. Petersburg). “Practicing homosexuals,” the report warned, “almost invariably turn to the recruitment of young people as sex partners… Practically all children are susceptible to being recruited into homosexual practices at one stage or another of their development… [and a] homosexual teacher, having direct supervision over numerous children, can and does do tremendous damage to quite a large group of children when the teacher turns to the recruitment of young sex partners.”

The report then scolded school administrators, saying that “with few exceptions, there is an almost uniform inability or unwillingness on the part of the responsible administrators to cope actively, aggressively and effectively with the problem. … The combination of administrators ignoring the problem and his [administrator’s] lenient dealing with the individual when caught makes the public education system in Florida a veritable refuge for practicing homosexuals.”

The committee’s report had its intended effect: the Florida Legislature approved an additional appropriation of $75,000 to the Johns Committee and renewed its charter for another two years and added a mandate  to look into “the extent of infiltration of agencies supported by state funds by practicing homosexuals and the policies of state agencies in dealing therewith.” Now, the Committee was specifically authorized to do what it had been doing all along without legislative authorization. And the following year, 1962, Florida saw the second highest number of teacher investigations on record. In 1963, the Committee said that its work still was not done so the Legislature renewed its charter again for two additional years. In 1964, the fruits of that “exhaustive investigation” were finally made public when the Johns Committee issued its final report, “Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida” (Mar 17). Known as the “purple pamphlet” for the abstract purple cover that was added to obscure the more provocative photos inside, the report was blasted as an exercise in taxpayer-funded pornography. The Legislature responded to the controversy by finally pulling funding for the committee and forcing its disbanding.

[Sources: Karen L. Graves. And They Were Wonderful Teachers: Florida’s Purge of Gay and Lesbian Teachers (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009).

“Del Mcintire” (pseudonym for Don Slater).  “Tangents” column. ONE 9, no. 7 (July 1961): pages 18-19.

Associated Press. “Committee Reports: State School System A Homosexual Refuge?” Ft. Pierce News Tribune (May 25, 1961): page 1.

United Press. “Legislative Probe Group Requests Crackdown on School Homosexuals.” St. Petersburg Times (May 26, 1961): page 10A.

Today In History, 1977: Everard Bathhouse Fire Kills Nine

Fire officials ordered the  Everard to install a sprinkler system in 1976. They were installed by May 1977, but they hadn’t been hooked up to a water supply yet when, during the very early hours of Wednesday morning, a mattress fire broke out. Occupants went through several fire extinguishers trying to put out the flames before finally calling the fire department.

By the time firefighters arrived, about 80 to 100 occupants had managed to flee the building, many of them clad only in towels or robes. Others clung to windows awaiting rescue by the more than 200 firefighters who arrived at the scene. Nine customers didn’t make it.. Seven died from smoke inhalation, one from respiratory burns, and one from injuries sustained after jumping from an upper floor.

Identification of the victims was complicated by the fact that many of them had registered under assumed names. Friends wound up identifying them rather than family. They were: Hillman Wesley Adams, 40, South Plains, NJ; Amado Alamo, 17, Manhattan; Anthony Calarco, age unknown, The Bronx; Kenneth Hill, 38, Manhattan; Brian Duffy, 30, address unknown; Patrick Knott, 38, Manhattan; Ira Landau, 32, Manhattan; Yosef Signovec, 30, a Czech refugee whose address was unknown; and James Charles Stuard, 30, Manhattan, who was a well-known DJ at the club 12 West.

George Ames, manager of the Club Baths in Boston, was on the premises when the fire broke out. He told reporters later that the customers remained calm, although “the young employees… were hysterical. … The management at the Everard showed no regard for the customers. They are just a bunch of straight people coining money at the expense of the gay community.” Ames criticized the club for its lack of sprinklers, fire escapes, and emergency lighting. The National Gay Task Force’s Bruce Voeller (May 12) described the Everard as a “shabby, dreadful place, run down and grubby beyond words.” He pointed out that there had been a fire five years earlier, and there was nothing more than a “cosmetic renovation,” of the facility. The only reason the Everard was still popular, he said, was because of its long history and its location in a safe neighborhood.

(Note: This video of the fire erroneously give the year as 1975.)

The fire destroyed the top two floors. They were rebuilt and the Everard reopened in 1979 — this time with sprinklers — only to close again in 1986 during a campaign by New York mayor Ed Koch to close all of the city’s bathhouses in response to the AIDS epidemic.