Box Turtle Bulletin

Born On This Day, 1878: Eileen Gray

Eileen Gray, with the Bibendum chair and the E1027 table.

(d. 1976) She was born the youngest of five children to an aristocratic family near Enniscorthy in southeastern Ireland. Her father was a painter who encouraged his children’s artistry and independence. Eileen studied painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, and in 1900 she went to the Exposition Universelle in Paris, where she became enthralled with the works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. She then moved to Paris to continue her studies and became immersed in lacquer design in particular, and in designing furnishings in general.

One of the many projects she collaborated on was the design of a modern home called E-1027. That 1924 project is where her most famous design, the E1027 table, emerged. It was also during this period when she mixed in lesbian company in Paris, while she herself was bisexual. But her life and her work was interrupted by World War II, and when she returned to Paris at war’s end, she led a mostly reclusive life. Much of her work was forgotten until 1968, when a magazine article revived interest in her work. The E1027 table, the Bibendum Chair, and several more of her designs went into production once again and became modern furniture classics. She died in Paris in 1976. In 2009, an armchair she designed between 1917 and 1919 was sold at auction for over $28 million, setting an auction record for 20th century decorative art.

Born On This Day, 1958: Amanda Bearse

The director and comedian is best known for her role as the highly annoying Marcy D’Arcy on Married… with Children, which ran on Fox between 1987 and 1997. She also appeared in a few films, including 1985’s Fright Night and 1995’s Here Come the Munsters. But it was during her time on Married… With Children that she was able to indulge her interest in TV and film directing. She wound up directing more than 30 episodes from 1991 to 1997, and she also directed episodes of more than a dozen other television sit-coms since then.

When she came out publicly in 1993 in an interview for The Advocate for National Coming Out Day, she became the first prime time actress to do so: “I know that sounds sort of clichéd, but it really was very liberating. That one thing, that one big secret is out. For a lot of people, it was just a confirmation of what they thought about me. I mean, I look like the girl next door, but I was always kind of off-center.”

Born On This Day, 1959: Michael Kors

The American designer of women’s sportswear launched his namesake line at the precocious age of 22 for Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, and other top line department stores. In 1997, he became the creative director for the French fashion house Celine, but left six years later to focus on his own line, a move that has paid off handsomely. He dressed a trove of celebrities, including Jennifer Lopez, Catharine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Garner, Joan Allen, and Alicia Keys. Michelle Obama wore his black sleeveless dress for her official portrait as First Lady. He added menswear to his collection in 2002.

Kors had been a judge for the Bravo reality television series Project Runway, but he decided to leave after ten seasons. Kors married his partner, Lance LePere, in August 2011 in New York.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

Emphasis Mine

In 1974, the Portland, Oregon-based Northwest Gay Review profiled an openly gay managing editor for the University of Oregon’s daily newspaper, The Oregon Daily Emerald. That editor was Randy Shilts:

“Right now, my identity is more wrapped up in being a journalist than being Gay,” said Shilts, 23-year old former chairer (sic)  of Eugene Gay People’s Alliance who is a senior in English and journalism at the University of Oregon. “I think being gay affects me as a journalist inasmuch as I think the media should pay more attention to gay people — they’ll be sorry if they don’t.”

…”My involvment in the gay movement over the past two years has not been as political as much as it has been personal.” said Shilts, a Democratic precinct committeeman in Eugene. “I first decided to do the student government trip after I met a person who had decided to totally repress his sexuality because he wanted to be a politician. I really pitied him a lot probably because he reminded me of myself before I came out.”

“I decided that if I could do something to stop just one person from leading such a repressed life, I’d do it. That was all I was trying to accomplish.” Shilts concluded.

After graduating from the university next June. Shilts plans to try to find work on a northwest newspaper or try his hand at freelancing. According to Emerald editor Drex Heikes, the man who appointed Shilts as managing editor, his homosexuality has been more of an asset than a liability to his journalistic work.

“If anything, the fact that Randy’s gay makes him handle his job better,” Heikes told the Gay Review. “It’s kind of like he’s had to develop a gregarious approach to life because he’s gay. Randy is pretty much in charge of personnel at the Emerald and what better person for the job than someone who treats everyone the same — as equals . He accepts everyone.”

“I’m a little skeptical,” Shilts said. “The journalistic world is very conservative, no matter how qualified I am, I might get the shaft. They’d rather have an alcoholic than a gay.”

[Source: “The Message Is In the Media: Randy Shilts.” Northwest Gay Review (December 1974):6-7.

Today In History, 1924: World’s First Known Lesbian Magazine Published

Die Freundin (The Girlfriend) began publishing in Berlin on August 8, 1924, by the Bund für Menschenrecht (League for Human Rights). The BfM had been established by Friedrich Radszuweit, partly as a gay rights organization and partly as a publishing house. By the time he began publishing Die Freundin, Radszuweit had already founded several other publication aimed at Germany’s gay communities.

While Die Freundin was the world’s first magazine to target a specifically-lesbian audience, it wasn’t written exclusively by women. Nevertheless, Die Freundin provided a vital forum for Germany’s lesbians, who were typically excluded from the male-dominated homosexual movements of the era. It published articles on lesbian history, the problems faced by lesbian in contemporary Germany, news about the homosexual movement, scientific articles speculating on the origins of homosexuality, fiction, poetry, and reviews of books, plays and movies. Die Freundin‘s stated goal was to “defend the equal rights of women in social life” and to “foster ideal friendships by publishing articles by our readers, and we invite every woman who feels qualified to send articles and works that they feel are suitable.”

A number of articles and letters focused on the plight of lesbians outside of Berlin. One letter went like this: “How I envy my comrades and my friends in Berlin! It must not be too difficult for them to meet a nice girl. There are so many meeting places , cafés, clubs… My only solace is that there are even more women who are abandoned, like me. With longing, I still await my best friend.” Not all lesbians were so unfortunate. One married woman with an understanding husband who allowed her to spend time with her girlfriend, wrote, “I wish that other women, like me, might meet with such understanding with their husbands with respect to their homosexual inclinations and thus be able to live in friendship, tying their life to that of their friend for eternity.”

Unsurprisingly, probably the most important feature in Die Freundin were its personal ads, which allowed women who were either uncomfortable with lesbian bars or who lived outside of the major cities to find other women. Examples included: “Cologne: a woman in the professions, brimming with life, loves, swimming, seeks partner.” Or: Berlin, nurse seeks parter to chat at tea time.” Or: Modern couple, 38-42 years, with comfortable house, seeks a similar couple in Koenigsberg to get acquainted.”

Through its personal ads, articles, ad paid advertisements of cafes, bars and restaurants, Die Freundin provides a rare window into the life of Germany’s lesbians before the rise of Nazism. While political articles were rare during the 1920s, by 1928 Die Freundin began noting, with alarm, a rise in police harassment against gays and lesbians. That year coincided with the Weimar Republic’s enactment of the Law to Protect Youth Against Trash and Smut to counter growing conservative worries over the nations’ moral health. Pressure against Die Freundin and other gay publications only grew worse as the Nazis began enjoying growing political influence. In 1931, Die Freundin published an odd appeal to Adolf Hitler, asking him to explain his remarks on homosexuality (“When we are in power, they will all be hanged or expelled.”), and suggesting that if Hitler’s party adopted a pro-gay platform, “several hundred thousands of homosexuals will be grateful to you.” That humiliating plea obviously fell on deaf ears. By 1932, the classified were gone, and stories of suicides and stepped-up police activity against gay establishments and institutions chronicled an alarming trend. Die Freundin’s last issue came out on March 8, 1933, just a month after Hitler came to power.

[Sources: Florence Tamagne. A History of Homosexuality In Europe: Berlin, London, Paris, 1919-1939 Volume 1 & II. (New York: Algora Publishing, 2006): 77-80.

Clayton J. Whisnant. Queer Identities and Politics in Germany: A History, 1880-1945 (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2016): 114-118]

Today In History, 1963: Congress Holds Hearings on Mattachine Society

Rep. John Dowdy (D-TX)

“If these people are a charitable organization promoting homosexuality, I’ve grown up in a wrong age,” Rep. John Dowdy (D-TX) said as he opened a meeting of the House Subcommittee for the District of Columbia. The meeting was called to consider his bill to strip the Mattachine Society of Washington of its fundraising permit. The permit had been granted by D.C. officials in August 1962 when MSW demonstrated that it qualified for the permit under the Charitable Solicitations Act. MSW president Frank Kameny (May 21), who was always on the lookout for chances to engage political leaders and government officials in the quest for equal rights for gay people, sent a statement to members of Congress announcing his group’s existence along with excerpts from the Society’s constitution. Noting that gays were barred from federal employment, military service and security-sensitive positions in the private sector, Kameny blasted federal laws as “archaic, unrealistic, and inconsistent with basic American principles. … Policies of repression, persecution, and exclusion will not prove to be workable ones in the case of this minority, any more than they have, throughout history, in the case of other minorities.”

Kameny’s letter ended with an offer to meet with members of Congress. Dowdy reacted in July by introducing a bill which specifically singled out the Mattachine Society for revocation of its permit. A second section of the bill prohibited future solicitation permits unless the District’s Commissioners determined that the “solicitation which would be authorized by such certificate would benefit or assist in promoting the health, welfare and morals of the District of Columbia.”

As Dowdy chaired the subcommittee’s hearing on August 8, city officials joined the District Republican Committee in opposing the first provision on constitutional grounds. They also opposed the second measure, but only due to somewhat more practical considerations. They worried that the required hearings on all permit applications would impose “a heavy and difficult burden” on the District, although District officials were quick to add that their opposition “is not be construed as approving homosexual practices.”

Dowdy found the objections inconceivable. “You contrast that with permitting the solicitation of funds for perversion and morality. Which is more important to the community?” Noting that Congress had passed laws designed to curb the Communist Party, he continued, “As far as I know, all the security risks that have deserted the United States have been homosexuals. Do you place them on a higher plane than communists?” Rep. Basil Whitener (D-NC) joined the fray, asking if the Commissioners “want to repeal the section of the Criminal Code dealing with sodomy.” Kameny was also there. He was just beginning to read a prepared statement when the hearing was suddenly adjourned due to a quorum call on the House floor. His testimony would resume the following day.

[Source: John M. Goshko. “‘Morality’ Talk Slows Sex Hearing.” Washington Post (August 9, 1963): C2.]

Today In History, 1990: David Wojnarowicz Successfully Sues the American Family Association

David Wojnarowicz (see Sep 14)

The University of Illinois art gallery hosted a retrospective of David Wojnarowicz’s collages called Sex Series, in which, interspersed among larger scenes depicting social control and violence, were smaller images of sexual activity. While the series was called, Sex Series, the sexual content was hardly the point. “The images I use are just naked bodies, sometimes engaged in explicit sex acts,” he explained. “I know that they are loaded images but I’m not just putting sex images on a wall, I’m surrounding them with information that reverberates against whatever the image sparks in people.”

Untitled, from Sex Series, 1990. The small image at the upper right corner depicting a man performing oral sex on another man appeared in Wildmon’s flyer. Click to enlarge.

A $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts paid for part of the cost of the show’s catalogue. Shortly after the show closed, the American Family Association’s Donald Wildmon sent out about 200,000 flyers to Congressional representatives, Christian radio stations, and AFA supporters, titled “Your Tax Dollars Helped Pay For These ‘Works of Art’,” with fourteen images identified as Wojnarowicz’s “works of art.” The “works” were actually small, selected details from the Sex Series, cut from the context of the larger images and the overall work. The flyer also included a small detail of another of Wojnarowicz’s 1979 collage Genet. That detail depicted Christ shooting up with a needle and tourniquet. To add to the mailing’s drama, the flyer was sealed in a separate envelope marked “Caution — Contains Extremely Offensive Material.”

In the process, Wildmon effectively became a collage artist in his own right, appropriating isolated details of images from Wojnarowicz’s works to create a separate work of his own. That was the basis Wojnarowicz’s lawsuit, charging Wildmon with slander and copyright infringement. In his court affidavit, Wojnarowicz charged that “the images represented in the Pamphlet to be my work have been so severely mutilated that I could not consider them my own.” He also told the Washington Post that the AFA had “creat(ed) pieces of their own. They’re not even my pieces, when they’ve gotten through with them.”

The check. (Click to enlarge.)

In David Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association and Donald E. Wildmon, Federal District Judge William C. Connor ruled in Wojnarowicz’s favor. The Judge ordered the AFA to send a “corrective mailing,” as approved by the Court, to everyone they sent the original pamphlet to, explaining the misleading nature of the original mailing. But because Wojnarowicz was unable to demonstrate any financial repercussions stemming from the AFA’s mailing, the judge only awarded him damages of $1. It would be the first time that an artist successfully sued a right-wing organization. Wojnarowicz insisted on a hand-signed check from Don Wildmon personally, with the idea of using the check in a future collage. Wojnarowicz never found a suitable work for the check, but he never cashed it either. Today, that check is housed in the Special Collections of the Fales Library at New York University.

[Source: Richard Meyer. Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002): 255-261.]

Born On This Day, 1922: Rudi Gernreich

(d. 1986) Born in Vienna as the only child of a well-to-do Jewish family, he was already drawn to fashion when, on a 1924 family trip to Italy, “I trailed around after a lady who was obviously of ill repute. … Her attire was outrageous, and I was terribly attracted to her.” Back home, he was already spending a lot of time at his aunt’s dress shop, drawing designs and learning about fabrics. His father committed suicide in 1938, and when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Rudi and his mother fled to California. At sixteen, he took a job in a mortuary washing bodies. “I grew up overnight,” he later recalled. “I do smile sometimes when people tell me my clothes are so body-conscious I must have studied anatomy. You bet I studied anatomy.”

He began studying art at Los Angeles City College and the Los Angeles Art Center School, but soon abandoned art for dance and joined Lester Horton’s dance troupe. He danced and made costumes for the company, while also freelancing as a fabric designer for Hoffman California Woolens. His work with the dance company would also be influential later, as it taught him about how clothing moves on a body.

It was at about this time that Gernreich entered a brief foray into gay rights. In 1950, he began a relationship with Harry Hay (Apr 7). Gernreich had just been convicted in an entrapment case, and so he was eager to become one of the five founding members of the Mattachine Society later that year (Nov 11). In 1952, he met his partner, Oreste Pucciani, who was chairman of UCLA’s French Department (and who was instrumental in popularizing Sarte among American academics), and the two remained partners for the rest of Gernreich’s life. By 1953, Gernreich had dropped out of the Mattachine Society just as his fashion career started to take off.

Gernreich’s approach to fashion can be seen as an unrelenting campaign to free women from the constraints of traditional sex roles as well as the literal constraints clothing placed on women’s bodies. He invented the idea of unisex clothing for men and women, and he designed the first t-shirt dresses, see-through blouses, and thong bathing suits. While most of his designs — their bright colors, their innovative fabrics and patterns, and their easy comfort — were highly influential trendsetters in the 1960s, his more famous designs were those draping women in less rather than more. Writing for the New York Times, Christopher Petkanas remarked, “When Gernreich designed a mini, he meant it.” His 1964 inventions — a topless bathing suit he called a Monokini, and an unpadded see-through bra called the “no bra” — presaged the braless and topless women’s liberation movement almost a decade later. But they also looked downright Victorian when, twenty years later, he invented the Pubikini, with a low-cut “V” to reveal that down there. It came out just four weeks before he died of lung cancer. Pucciani, who survived him, created an endowment in Gernreich’s memory to the American Civil Liberties Union for the advancement of gay rights.

Born On This Day, 1951: Randy Shilts

65 YEARS AGO: (d. 1994) The pioneering gay journalist came out relatively early, while still in college at the age of 20, when he ran for student government at Portland Community College with the slogan “Come Out for Shilts.” That was in 1971, when coming out was still something of a novelty. In 1972, he transferred to the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he chaired Eugene’s Gay People’s Alliance. His run for student Senate in 1973 with a Chicano activist running mate drew the attention of the New York Times and radio commentator Paul Harvey, who commented on the unlikely coalition between gay people and Latinos. While at the U of O, Shits was managing editor for the campus paper, the Oregon Daily Emerald, which also happened to be Oregon’s third largest morning daily.

After graduating in 1975, he had trouble finding a job despite his tenure at the Emerald and graduating at the top of his class. After working freelance, including writing several articles for The Advocate (which was then a Los Angeles-based monthly newspaper), Shilts was finally hired in 1981 by the San Francisco Chronicle as perhaps the first openly gay reporter in the American mainstream press. The following year, he published The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, the critically acclaimed biography of the slain San Francisco Supervisor and personal friend, Harvey Milk.

When he went to work for the Chronicle, he was given the gay beat. But this quickly proved to be no ordinary ghetto beat, because that very same year a new disease was stalking the gay community. Shilts would wind up devoting much of his career to covering the disease and its impact on medicine, politics, society and, specifically, the gay community itself. His second book, 1987’s And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic brought him international fame. Shilts was justly praised for bringing mainstream attention to the AIDS crisis, and for providing a exhaustive and lasting chronicle of one of the most important chapters in gay history.

But he was also rightly criticized for popularizing the mythology surrounding “patient zero,” an Air Canada flight attendant by the name of Gaëtan Dugas (Feb 20), who was unfairly portrayed as the central figure in allegedly spreading AIDS across North America. Shilts’s book didn’t make that allegation directly, but Shilts’s naming Dugas as the so-called Patient Zero and tying him to rumors of a handsome man deliberately infecting unsuspecting tricks in bathhouses across the continent turned Dugas into one of the book’s more notorious villains. In 2013, Shilts’s editor admitted that he convinced Shilts to make Dugas the “first AIDS monster” as an attention-getting literary device.

“We lowered ourselves to yellow journalism. My publicist told me, ‘Sex, death, glamour, and, best of all, he is a foreigner, that would be the icing on the cake,'” said Shilts’ editor, Michael Denneny, in an interview. “That was the only way we could get them to pay attention. … Randy hated the idea. It took me almost a week to argue him into it.”

It worked. When the book first came out, the New York Times, Newsweek and other publications said they weren’t interested in reviewing a book that criticized the Reagan administration’s and medical establishment’s response to the AIDS crisis. But when new publicity materials focused on Dugas as  “the Quebecois version of Typhoid Mary” (quoting Shilts’s description of him in the book), the New York Post jumped all over it with the headline, “The Man Who Gave Us AIDS.”

And the Band Played On shot to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List and stayed there for five weeks, and was nominated for a National Book Award. Despite criticisms of its treatment of Dugas, And the Band Played On proved to be a monumentally important work. Before its release, AIDS activists and researchers struggled to draw attention to the growing epidemic. The book is credited for adding thousands of new activists to the growing AIDS movement. And despite its deplorable treatment of Dugas, it is still, thirty years later, the single most important account of the AIDS epidemic in America, and is likely to remain so for generations to come.

Shilt’s third book, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays & Lesbians in the U.S. Military, was released in 1993, just as the fight over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was heating up. But by then, Shilts was already ill from the disease he covered in And the Band Played On. In fact, he had been tested for HIV while writing And the Band Played On, but he declined to be told the result, concerned that knowing it would interfere with his objectivity. He became ill with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a common opportunistic disease, in 1992, and developed Kaposi’s sarcoma a year later. He dictated the last chapter of Conduct Unbecoming from his hospital bed, but he lived long enough to see that book make it to print and to see And the Band Played On made into an HBO movie. He died in 1994.

Today’s Agenda Is Brought To You By…

From New Gay Life (Philadelphia, PA), July 1977, page 23.

Philadelphia’s New Gay Life ran this profile of the Leff Bank:

Miki Leff (Rt.) with Rosalind Russell at Carroll”s in Paris.

Twenty-three years ago, Miki and Niki, the women owners, were living together in Philadelphia. Miki had a chance to go to Paris to work for three months, but she stayed twenty-two years. She became partners in the famous Paris club, Carroll’s, where entertainers like Eartha Kitt got their start. In all that time Niki’s family kept in touch with her.

“I told the people that I had an Italian family in New Jersey,” said Miki.

After her partner died, Miki came back to the United States to New York. She called Niki’s family to say hello. A few hours later her phone rang.

“It was Nlki,” she said. “She said, ‘Hold on, I’ll be right there.’ And she came to pick me up, and we’ve been together ever since.”

Now Miki and Niki are back together again and the Leff Bank is their joint venture. It’s a lovely place. Miki brought many of the furnishings from Carroll’s in Paris antique light fixtures, posters and water colors of the fin de siecle, French gourmet tables of wrought iron and wood that grace the bar.

The back room has been opened and made into a restaurant and lounge with comfortable booths and tables. The lunches and dinners are inexpensive and delicious.

The Leff Bank used to be a neighborhood hangout of local working people and Two Streeters and they have not deserted their favorite place. You’ll find an interesting mixture of locals and gays all day and into evening. There are many lesbians, both in front of and in back of the bar; and the local men are polite, almost chivalrous, in their dealings with them.

“We have been up front with the people here,” Miki said. “And they respect us and our new clientele. They love Niki because she is a neighborhood person.”

The Leff Bank intends to stay as mixed as possible one look at the juke box will tell you that. You can hear everything from the Andrews sisters to Engelbert Humperdinck to “Who Dun It?” On weekends there is both a male and a female bartender to serve you. Drinks are inexpensive and the draft beer is downright cheap.

The Leff Bank also provides fine entertainment (and no cover) each night. You can hear Pat at the piano and on guitar singing a mixture of originals and old favorites. Pat has appeared at Poulcari’s in New Market and Head House Tavern . Soon, local favorite Nancy Lee wi ll be entertaining on weekends and Wednesday evenings.

Perhaps it took Miki and Niki twenty-two years to get together, but the Leff Bank is a guaranteed immediate hit as the most different place to open this year.

[Source: “Getting Around With Matilda” New Gay Life (July 1977): 3]

Today In History, 1964: J. Edgar Hoover Demands His Name Be Removed From Mattachine Mailing List

J. Edgar Hoover

Frank Kameny was not one to shy away from directly confronting the powerful in Washington, D.C. (May 21). He was also not one to shy away from publicity. Just the year before, Kameny became the first gay rights activist to appear before a Congressional committee (Aug 8, Aug 9), where he refused to comply with a Congressman’s demands that he turn over the membership list of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. (MSW). Kameny took the opportunity to lambast Congressional efforts to strip his organization of its tax-exempt status and, further, to argue forcefully for the full equality for all gay and lesbian Americans.

Frank Kameny

One of MSW’s early efforts was to keep its own members informed of issues and events through a typewritten and mimeographed newsletter called The Gazette. The newsletter was also sent out to other interested and uninterested parties, including the Supreme Court Justices, members of Congress, the President, the Attorney General and other members of the President’s cabinet, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. In July, an FBI agent wrote an internal memo objecting to the Society’s adding Hoover to their mailing list without his consent. “This Society attempts to legalize the activities of homosexuals and carries on an active campaign to have these persons admitted to employment in the United States Government and elsewhere,” he wrote. “This material is disgusting and offensive and it is believed a vigorous objection to the addition of the Director to its mailing list should be made.” He recommended that two FBI agents contact Kameny and impress upon him “that Mr. Hoover objects to receiving this material and his name should immediately be removed from their mailing list.”

Hoover concurred with the recommendation with a handwritten notation at the end of the memo: “Right – H.” On August 6, the FBI contacted Kameny, and he and Gazette editor Robert King met with the agents at FBI headquarters. The agents told them that Hoover’s inclusion in the mailing list “was considered offensive” and demanded his name be removed. Kameny and King explained that they sent the newsletter to government officials as part of a larger educational effort. Kameny also pointed out that as an organization working for the civil rights of gays and lesbians, they “have a right to communicate with government officials.” But Kameny and King did agree to take the FBI’s request back to the MSW executive board. They also asked the agents to convey to Hoover an invitation to attend a homophile convention that was to be held in Washington later that year (Oct 10, Oct 11, Oct 11 again). According to another FBI memo, “This invitation was emphatically and immediately declined.”

When the MSW executive board met, they decided to accede to the FBI’s request on one condition: if the director personally assured MSW, in writing, that the FBI had destroyed all of its files about the MSW. Their decision was sent in a letter to the FBI on October 1. FBI agent M.A. Jones wrote in an internal memorandum, “This letter is a blatant attempt to open a controversy with the Bureau. Any further contact with them will be exploited to the Bureau’s disadvantage. It is apparent they are attempting to involve government officials in their program for recognition and any further contact by the Bureau will only serve their ulterior motives.” The FBI declined to respond to the letter, and Hoover continued to receive the Gazette.

[Source: Michael G. Long (ed.) Gay is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny (Syracuse, New York; Syracuse University Press: 2014): 75-76.

You can read a copy of the Gazette from the spring of 1964 here.]

Today In History, 1968: Philadelphia’s Homophile Action League Founded

Barbara Gittings (left) holds a Homophile Action League banner.

Five months had passed since Philadelphia police raided Rusty’s, a bar that was popular with local lesbians (Mar 8). The Daughters of Bilites had organized a chapter in the City of Brotherly Love the year before, and chapter members were furious at their treatment during the raid. They were eager to confront the city’s political establishment, but the national organization’s rules dictated that the national board had to approve all activities deemed “political,” especially if protests were involved. Ada Bello recalled, “It was difficult to get authorization from the administration of DOB. We couldn’t find the president — remember, it was before cell phones and email — and we felt that it was hampering our ability to react… And so we thought, ‘Why not start another organization — one whose middle name is Action!'”

On August 7, 1968, the Philadelphia DOB chapter voted to dissolve itself and re-form as the Homophile Action League, or HAL. Bello and Carole Friedman announced the organization’s purpose in the first HAL newsletter:

This newly formed group, open to both men and women, has adopted the name “Homophile Action League,” and has as its main purpose “to strive to change society’s legal, social and scientific attitudes toward the homosexual in order to achieve justified recognition of the homosexual as a first class citizen and a first class human being. … “We are not a social group. We do not intend to concentrate our energies on “uplifting” the homosexual community, for such efforts would be sadly misplaced. It is our firm conviction that it is the heterosexual community which is badly in need of uplifting.

Pioneering gay rights advocate Barbara Gittings (Jul 31), who later joined HAL, recalled that “there hadn’t been any really concerted effort on the political scene until HAL was organized and began to attract some men.” HAL would become the main representative of the gay community to the city’s power brokers until the early 1970s, when it was displaced by the more aggressive Gay Liberation Front.

Born On This Day, 1928: James Randi

Known as “The Amazing Randi,” the Canadian-born magician turned debunker took up magic while spending thirteen months in a body cast following a bicycle accident. He dropped out of school at 17 to join the carnival circuit and performed as a psychic in Toronto nightclubs. But when he recognized that some of the tricks of the trade were being presented as supernatural, he decided to blow the lid off of the scams.

Among his earlier revelations was in the late 1960s, when he “wrote” a successful astrological column by cutting up other astrological columns and randomly assigning those predictions to astrological signs and dates. In 1972, Randi seized the skeptics’ spotlight by publicly challenging the claims of Uri Geller, a popular performer of the television talk show circuit, famous for supposedly bending spoons telepathically. Randi claimed Geller used standard magic tricks to perform his paranormal feats and demonstrated how Geller performed his stunts. Geller sued Randi for $15 million for defamation, and lost.

Randi founded the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, later renamed the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Over the years, he has tackled psychics, UFOs, faith healers, psychic surgeons, and other charlatans. In one bizarre episode, when Randi was demonstrating Geller’s spoon-bending tricks, an audience member shouted, “You’re a fraud because you’re pretending to do these things through trickery, but you’re actually using psychic powers and misleading us by not admitting it.” An atheist, Randi has a special empathy for victims of religious scams and faith healers, and was instrumental in exposing televangelists W.V. Grant, Earnest Angley, and Peter Popoff, who Randi exposed live on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show in 1986. However, he’s characteristically careful with how he describes his atheism:

I’ve said it before: there are two sorts of atheists. One sort claims that there is no deity, the other claims that there is no evidence that proves the existence of a deity; I belong to the latter group, because if I were to claim that no god exists, I would have to produce evidence to establish that claim, and I cannot. Religious persons have by far the easier position; they say they believe in a deity because that’s their preference, and they’ve read it in a book. That’s their right.

Randi became a U.S. citizen in 1987. Since then, he’s recovered from two major bouts with cancer, and in 2010 he came out as gay after seeing the 2008 biopic Milk. During an appearance at an annual skeptics’ convention in 2013, Randi announced that he and his partner of 27 years had just gotten married in Washington D.C.

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From the American Journal of Urology and Sexology, January 1920.

File this under: Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger.