Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJune 26th, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations Today: Antwerp, Belgium; Barcelona, Spain; Chicago, IL; Columbia, SC (Black Pride); Dublin, Ireland; Harlem, NY; Mexico City, DF; New Orleans, LA; New York, NY; Oklahoma City, OK; Oslo, Norway; Outer Banks, NC; Panama City, FL; San Francisco, CA; São Paulo, Brazil; and Wichita, KS.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
Life Magazine’s “Homosexuality In America”: 1964.
“Homosexuality shears across the spectrum of American life — the professions, the arts, business and labor. It always has. But today, especially in big cities, homosexuals are discarding their furtive ways and openly admitting, even flaunting, their deviation. Homosexuals have their won drinking places, their special assignation streets, even their own organizations. And for every obvious homosexual, there are probably nine nearly impossible to detect. This social disorder, which society tries to suppress, has forced itself into the public eye because it does present a problem — and parents especially are concerned. The myth and misconception with which homosexuality has so long been clothed must be cleared away, not to condone it but to cope with it.”
Over the next fourteen pages, Life magazine explored what they called the “sordid world” of the gay community. The articles provide interesting vignettes and photos of gay life in the pre-Stonewall era, but reading through them today probably tells us more about society’s revulsion towards gay people than it does about gays themselves. At one point, author Paul Welch accompanies a Los Angeles police officer acting as a decoy to try entrap a gay man into propositioning him. Even if the proposition involves going to a private home for the evening — the same type of invitation being made in straight bars all across Los Angeles that very same night — it would end badly with an arrest and possible lifetime registration as a sex offender.
One education pamphlet compiled for Los Angeles police warned that what gay men really want is “a fruit world.” Welch continued: “Although the anti-homosexual stand taken by the Los Angeles police is unswervingly tough, it reflects the attitude of most U.S. law-enforcement agencies on the subject.” On January 1, 1967, gay Angelenos would reach their breaking point and the Black Cat riots would become the high water mark in police harassment in Los Angeles — more than two years before the Stonewall rebellion in New York.
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JohnInGa
June 26th, 2011
Thanks, Jim, for posting this, especially on Pride weekend. I hadn’t heard about the Black Cat raid before, and I thought I knew our history pretty well.
These posts are a real service to our community!
RobNYNY1957
June 26th, 2011
I collect old magazine articles about homosexuality, and I suspect that Henry Luce’s two big magazines, Time and Life, represent his views (and his efforts to shape society’s views) more than the views of society itself.
As the New Yorker put it in 1967 (behind a subscrption wall):
“One thing you could say for Henry Luce — when you picked up one of his magaziness, especially Time, you really felt his presence. … It’s not just that he owned those magazines, he inhabited them.”
As late as 1966, Time was calling homosexuality a “pernicious sickness”:
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,835069,00.html
Then Luce died in 1967, and the tone changed completely. From 1969:
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,839116,00.html
As early as 1963, Harper’s Magazine had a long article about the lives of middle class gay men in NYC that basically said that gay men life in a ghetto, but are otherwise boringly normal. (Unfortunately behind a subcription wall.) It freely uses the word “gay” (and only once in quotation marks) and describes bars, businesses and entertainment in an even-handed and calm tone. Oddly, the author for some reason seems to think that the back rooms at bars were used for clandestine dancing(!).
MattNYC
June 27th, 2011
@RobNYNY1957
Oddly, the author for some reason seems to think that the back rooms at bars were used for clandestine dancing(!).
Rob–in those days many were. One of the crimes charges during the raids like the one at Stonewall were for dancing. New York has had some strange laws on the books and I know people (straight, gay) in more recent times who were issued citations for dancing at a club that did not have a “cabaret” license (and the bars could be shut down for not doing enough to discourage dancing).
I imagine that these type of laws were used extensively — especially against same-sex dancing in the 60s. So it is very possible that the backrooms were mostly for this purpose. I think only in more modern days, post-Stonewall–did these emerge as alternatives to bath-houses as places to engage in public sex.
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