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Gay History: John “Eleanor” Rykener, 1395.

May 22, 2021Article, biography, Gay Interest, History1395 cross dressing prostitute, 14th century gay prosecution, Eleanor Rykener:, John “Eleanor” Tykener, John Rykenertimalderman

“We can say that even if we do not know anything about Rykener’s self-identification, hir life as a male-bodied woman was “transgender-like.” — Ruth Mazo Karras and Tom Linkinen

There is a fine line historians must walk between being thoughtful in using contemporary language for historical figures and erasing queer people from history. While someone from ancient Sumer wouldn’t have used the word “bisexual”, for example, we can discuss how their sexuality and experiences fit this modern term. We walk that line with every article, and we try to do so respectfully. There are, however, those who act under the guise of historical accuracy only to deny queer persons our history, particularly those stories of trans women.

Eleanor Rykener is often presented as, well, John Rykener. Little is known about her before her arrest in 1395; everything we know comes from her interrogation. Some years before her arrest, Rykener met a woman named Elizabeth Brouderer. Whether Eleanor was approached by Elizabeth or sought her out is, like many aspects of her life, unknown. There she was given her name and taught embroidery; that’s also where she got into sex work.

Elizabeth had developed an elaborate ruse in which she would trick the men her daughter slept with into believing they had slept with Eleanor. It’s likely that though she forced both women into this work, Elizabeth did not want her daughter to have the poor reputation of a sex worker. That reputation instead went to Eleanor. Another sex worker named Anna later taught Eleanor to have sex “as a woman”, as Eleanor called it.

Eleanor eventually left London for Oxford where she tried to find work as an embroideress. It’s important to note that embroidery was traditionally women’s work; Eleanor continued to dress, work, and live as a woman after leaving London. After finding less embroidery work than she had hoped, she focused on sex work. After a time, finding little to keep her there, she moved on to Burford.

There she found work as a barmaid, another profession held almost exclusively by women. While she continued doing sex work, we know that she was only paid by half of the men she slept with in Burford. Whether she expected payment or had a relationship with any of the men is, again, unknown.

We must pause here to mention how her relationships here have been read by modern historians. Often, we find the issue of straight historians erasing queer identities out of discomfort. Eleanor’s relations with these men cannot be denied—she herself talked at length about several of the men she slept with—so instead they are used to invalidate her gender. She is just a gay man who crossdressed.

Of course, the other side of the coin still exists, and we see that after Eleanor’s move to Beaconshire. Though she slept with two men there, she also slept with a woman named Joan. Though she undoubtedly slept with more men than women, their claim is that she only slept with men for work. Eleanor Rykener is then, in fact, a straight man who crossdressed.

Historians are quick to say that she was a crossdresser and a sex worker, though they aren’t as averse to using slurs when they describe her. They do, however, find the term bisexual problematic. Not because Eleanor didn’t have sex with men and women; we know for a fact that she slept with enough men and women that she wasn’t sure of the number. If we apply this modern label—bisexual—we may then have to acknowledge that in today’s language Eleanor would be called a trans woman. The idea that Eleanor was actually a man who tricked people into sex falls more in line with the idea that trans women are just men in dresses, that they are threats. Her sexuality is leveled against her to prove that she is a man, and that is still very much an issue for trans women today.

These historians also ignore the very real possibility that she presented herself as Eleanor, as a woman, to both the men and women she slept with. The original text of the interrogation mentions “ut vir concubuit cum” and ” concubuerunt ut cum femina”. While it explains that Eleanor had sex with Joan (active), it is careful to say that the two men had sex with her (passive). It’s assumed by most historians that Eleanor had sex with Joan as John, as a man, and had sex with the men as a woman. We don’t actually know this. There is, in fact, very little of the details of her relations that we do know. The interrogation is in Latin, having been translated from Middle English she would have spoken, and therefore does not contain quotes from her as she said things. Because Eleanor didn’t give her testimony in Latin, the intricacies of her testimony are lost.

In December of 1395, bundled against the frigid London winter, Eleanor caught the eye of one John Britby. He propositioned her, and the two made their way behind a nearby church. They were then caught by city officers and taken in for interrogation. She introduced herself as Eleanor Rykener. She readily admitted to everything, agreed with Britby’s account of the events, and hid nothing. She told them of her time with Elizabeth and Anna and her many moves throughout England. She told them of the many men and women she slept with; some married, some nuns and priests. She held nothing back, and she introduced herself as Eleanor.

There is a danger in applying modern labels to historical people. To call Eleanor Rykener a gay man is just as harmful as calling her a straight man. Erasing a queer person’s identity, even for the sake of another queer identity, is harmful. The case of Eleanor Rykener was actually revisited in recent years with the admission that transgender may be a more accurate term for Ms. Rykener. To simply call Eleanor Rykener a crossdresser is reductive; it ignores her life as she lived it. Often, we cannot say exactly how someone would describe themself, because we aren’t able to ask them. Eleanor, however, was asked over and over again. The only document of her life is her take on her womanhood and sexuality. Eleanor Rykener slept with both men and women, she worked as an embroideress, barmaid, and sex worker, and she was a woman.

The Questioning of John Rykener, A Male Cross-Dressing Prostitute, 1395

This document was brought to light by David Lorenzo Boyd and Ruth Mazo Karras in 1995 . It is apparently the only legal process document from late medieval England on same-sex intercourse. Since copyright law precludes presentation of such a recently published text, it was necessary for this web text to secure a copy of the manuscript source, transcribe it, and newly translate it. This has presented an interesting opportunity to show how historians acquire documents: here are presented: first, a translation; second, a transcription of the document; third a facsimile of the document itself.

Karras and Boyd recount how this text escaped notice. A. H. Thomas’ Calendar of Select Please and Memoranda of the City of London A.D. 1381-1412. 3 Vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924-32) is the standard reference work on these particular records. It is a detailed calendar with a massive amount detail about each case. In Vol 3. Thomas began recording only “select pleas and memoranda”, but no longer records, for example, small debt actions. For the Rykener case Thomas recorded only “Examination of two men charged with immorality, one of which implicated several persons, male and female, in religiou orders” (p. 228). This is the only case in which anything but a will or formulaic document is summarized so briefly. And, of course, Thomas succeeds in hiding the homosexual subject matter of the case. Thus this case stands not only as a rare source for the history of tranvestite and homosexually active people in late Medieval England, but as evdience of the suppression of that history by scholarly historians in the 19th and 20th centuries.

As to the outcome of this case, it is not known. Nor is it know if the case was also prosecuted as sodomy in Church courts (since no records survive from the period). It is not even clear that a formal charge was made. For a discussion of the context, see the longer article by Karras and Boyd in Premodern Sexualities.

I: The Questioning of John Rykener 1395: Translation

On 11 December, 18 Richard 11. were brought in the presence of John Fressh, Mayor. and the Aldermen ofthe City of London John Britby of the county of York and John Rykener., calling [himself] Eleanor, having been detected in women’s clothing, who were found last Sunday night between the hours of 8 and 9 by certain officials of the, city lying by a certain stall in Soper’s Lane” committing that detestable unmentionable and ignominious vice. In a separate examination held before the Mayor and Aldermen about the occurrence, John Britby confessed that he was passing through the high road of Cheap on Sunday between the abovementioned hours and accosted John Rykener, dressed up as a woman, thinking he was a woman, asking him as he would a woman if he could commit a libidinous act with her. Requesting money for [his] labor, Rykener consented, and they went together to the aforesaid stall to complete the act, and were captured there during these detestable wrongdoings by the officials and taken to prison. And John Rykener, brought here in woman’s clothing and questioned about this matter, acknowledged [himself] to have done everything just as John Britby had confessed. Rykener was also asked who had taught him to exercise this vice, and for how long and in what places and with what persons, masculine or feminine, [he] had committed that libidinous and unspeakable act. [He] swore willingly on [his] soul that a certain Anna, the whore of a former servant of Sir Thomas Blount, first taught him to practice this detestable vice in the manner of a woman. [He] further said that a certain Elizabeth Bronderer first dressed him in women’s clothing; she also brought her daughter Alice to diverse men for the sake of lust, placing her with those men in their beds at night without light, making her leave early in the morning and showing them the said John Rykener dressed up in women’s clothing, calling him Eleanor and saying that they had misbehaved with her. [He] further said that certain Phillip, rector of Theydon Garnon, had sex with him as with a woman in Elizabeth Bronderer’s honse outside Bishopsgate, at which time Rykener took away two gowns of Phillip’, and when Phillip requested them from Rykener he said that [he] was the wife ofa certain man and that if Phillip wished to ask for them back [he] would make [his] husband bring suit against him. Rykener further confessed that for five weeks before the feast of St. Michael’s last [he] was staying at Oxford, and there, in women’s clothing and calling himself Eleanor, worked as an embroideress; and there in the marsh three unsuspecting scholars – of whom one was named Sir William Foxlee, another Sir John, and the third Sir Walter – practiced the abominable vice with him often. John Rykener further confessed that on Friday before the feast of St. Michael [he] came to Burford in Oxfordshire and there dwelt with a certain John Clerk at the Swan in the capacity of tapster for the next six weeks, during which time two Franciscans, one named Brother Michael and the other Brother John, who gave [him] a gold ring, and one Carmelite friar and six foreign men committed the above-said vice with him, of whom one gave Rykener twelve pence, one twenty pence, and one two shillings. Rykener further confessed that [he] went to Beaconsfield and there, as a man, had sex with a certain Joan, daughter of John Matthew, and also there two foreign Franciscans hall sex with him as a woman. John Rykener also confessed that after [his] last return to London a certain Sir John, once chaplain at the Church of St. Margaret Pattens, and two other chaplains committed with him the aforementioned vice in the lanes behind St. Katherine’s Church by the Tower of London. Rykener further said that he often had sex as a man with many nuns and also had sex as a iman with many women both married and otherwise, how many [he] did not know. Rykener further confessed that many priests had committed that vice with him as with a woman, how many [he] did not know, and said that [he] accommodated priests more readily than other people because they wished to give [him] more than others.

II: The Questioning of John Rykener 1395: Transcription

Corporation of London Records Office, Plea and Memoranda Roll A34, m.2 (1395)

Undecimo die Decembris anno regni regis Ricardi secundi decimo octavo, ducti fuerunt hic coram Johanne Fressh maiore et aldermannis civitatis Londoniensis Johannes Britby de comitate Eboracum et Johannes Rykener, se Elianoram nominans veste muliebri detectus. Qui die dominica ultimo preterita per quosdam dicte civitatis ministros noctanter inter horas octavam et nonam super quoddam stallum in venella vocata Sopereslane inventi fuerunt iacentes, illud vitium detestabile, nephandum, et ignominiosum committentes, pro seperali examinatione coram dictis maiore et aldermannis super premissa fienda et audienda etcetera. Qui quidem Johannes Britby inde allocutus fatebatur quod ipse per vicum regium de Chepe die dominica inter horas supradictas transiens, dictum Johannem Rykener vestitu muliebri ornatum, ipsumque mulierem fore suspicantem fuerat assecutus, petens ab eo, tanquam a muliere, si cum ea libidinose agere possit. Qui ab eo argentum pro labore suo petens sibi consentiebat, invicem transeuntes ad illud complendum usque stallum predictum. Ipsi tamen tunc ibidem per ministros predictos in eorum maleficiis detestabilibus capti fuerunt, carcere vero mancipati hucusque, etcetera. Et predictus Johannes Rykener in veste muliebri hic adductus de materia predicta allocutus cognovit se fecisse in omnibus prout idem Johannes Britby superius fatebatur etcetera. Quesitum fuit ulterius a prefato Johanne Rykener quis ei docuit dictum vitium exercere et quanto tempore, in quibus locis, et cum quibus personis masculis sive feminis illud actum libidinosum et nephandum commisit. Qui in animam suam sponte iuravit et cognovit quod quaedam Anna, meretrix quondam cuiusdam famuli domini Thome Blount, primo docuit ipsum vitium detestabile modo muliebri exercere. Item dixit quod quaedam Elizabeth Brouderer prius vestivit ipsum veste muliebri; quae etiam conduxit quandam Aliciam filiam suam diversis hominibus luxuriae causa, ipsam cum eisdem hominibus in lectis eorum noctanter absque lumine reponens et eandem summo mane ab eisdem recedere fecit, monstrando eis dictum Johannem Rykener veste muliebri ornatum ipsum Alianoram nominantem, asserens ipsos cum ipsa sinistre egisse. Item dixit quod quidam Philippus, Rector de Theydon Gernon, concubuit cum eodem Johanne Rykener ut cum muliere in domo cuiusdam Elizabeth Brouderer extra Bisshoppesgate, quo tempore dictus Johannes Rykener asportavit duas togas ipsius Philippi. Et quando idem Philippus illas petiit a prefato Johanne Rykener, ipse dixit quod fuit uxor cuiusdam hominis, et si ipse illas repetere vellet faceret maritum suum versus ipsum prosequi. Item dictus Johannes Rykener fatebatur quod per quinque septimanas ante festum santi Michaelis ultimo elapsum morabatur apud Oxonium et operatus est ibidem in veste muliebri in arte de brouderer nominans ipsum Alianoram. Et ibidem in marisco tres scolares ignotos, quorum unus nominatur dominus Willielmus Foxlee, alius dominus Johannes, et tertius dominus Walterus, usi fuerunt sepius cum ipso abominabile vitium supradictum. Item fatebatur prefatus Johannes Rykener quod ipse die veneris proximo ante festum sancti Michaelis supradictum venit apud Burford in comitate Oxonium. Et ibidem fuit commorans cum quodam Johanne clerc atte Swan in officio de tapster per sex septimanas proximas sequentes, infra quod tempus duo fratres minores, quorum unus nominatur frater Michael et alius frater Johannes Barry, qui sibi dedit unum anulum aureum, et unus frater carmelitus et sex diversi homines extranei commiserunt cum illo vitium antedictum. Quorum quidem fratrum et hominum supradictorum quidam dabat dicto Johanni Rykener .xii. d, quidam .xx. d, quidam .ii. s. Item fatebatur idem Johannes Rykener quod fuit apud Bekenesfeld et ibidem idem ut vir concubuit cum quadam Johanna filia Johannis Mathew, et etiam ibidem cum ipso concubuerunt ut cum femina duo fratres minores alienigenae. Item fatebatur dictus Johannes Rykener quod post eius ultimum adventum Londoniae quidam dominus Johannes quondam capellanus ecclesiae sanctae Margaretae Patyns et alii duo capellani in venellis retro ecclesiam sanctae Katerinae iuxta turrim Londoniensem commiserunt cum illo illud vitium antedictum. Item dixit dictus Johannes Rykener quod ipse sepius concubuit cum quampluribus monialibus ut vir, et etiam concubuit modo virili cum quampluribus mulieribus, tam maritatis quam aliis, quarum numerum ignorat. Item fatebatur dictus Johannes Rykener quod quamplures presbiteri fecerunt illud vitium cum illo ut cum muliere, quorum numerum ignorat, et dixit quod citius cepit presbiteros quam alios quia plus vellent sibi dare quam alii.

Reference

Eleanor Rykener, Making Queer History, undated, by Dean Strauss https://www.makingqueerhistory.com/articles/2018/4/24/eleanor-rykener
Medieval Sourcebook: The Questioning of John Rykener, A Male Cross-Dressing Prostitute, 1395, Fordham University, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/1395rykener.asp

David Lorenzo Boyd and Ruth Mazo Karras, “The Interrogation of of a Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth Century London”. GLQ 1 (1995), 459-465
David Lorenzo Boyd and Ruth Mazo Karras, “`Ut cum muliere”: A Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth Century London”. In Premodern Sexualities. Edited by Louise Fradenburg and Carl Freccero. (London: Routledge, 1996), 99-116

30 Kinky Terms Every Gay Man Needs to Know

May 21, 2021Article, Gay Interestfetishised, Gay, gay fetish, gay kinks, kink, kinky sex, LGBTtimalderman

If gay life was a giant ballroom (and it kind of is), kinky leathermen have been lingering in the back, in the shadows, for generations. But thanks to the Internet and porn giants like San Francisco-based Kink.com, fetish play has stepped onto the main floor over the last decade. Regardless if you’re kinky or vanilla, knowing some basic terminology will help you navigate Scruff profiles and boost your confidence at your local leather bar. And who knows? You might stumble across a term you didn’t know existed — and something you really want to try.

1. Kink and Fetish

These are the broadest terms on this list because, colloquially, they have become synonymous for most people. But since some kinksters (kinky people) stress their difference, we will define them separately. A kink is an unconventional sexual interest — that’s it. A fetish is a bit more particular. Fetishes are generally considered nonhuman objects that enhance sexual arousal, and for some people, they may be required for sexual arousal. Simply put: A fetish is a particular stimulus (feet, gas masks, certain items of clothing), while a kink is just something you’re into (bondage, spanking, etc.).

2. S&M (also written as S/M)

This stands for sadism and masochism. Sadism is sexual arousal that arises from inflicting pain on others. Masochism is sexual arousal from experiencing painful sensory stimulation. Guys into flogging (see #19) are sadists. Guys who enjoy getting flogged are masochists.

3. BDSM

This acronym stands for bondage, domination/discipline, submission/sadism and, masochism, and is sometimes used as an umbrella term for kink. This can be misleading, however, because someone may have kinks that do not fall under these terms. For instance, a guy may be exclusively into fisting (see #13) or forced tickling. This guy is kinky — he has “unconventional” sexual tastes, at least by vanilla people’s standards — but he is not into BDSM.

4. Dom/Dominant

Most kinks are enjoyed via a dominant-submissive sexual dynamic between two (or more) people. Someone takes charge and the other person submits. The take-charge person is the Dom, or Dominant. Male Dominants usually go by Sir, and may be called Mister, Daddy, Handler, Coach, etc. Female Dominants (also called Dommes and Dominatrixes) may go by Mistress or Lady. Don’t forget to capitalize the first letter!

5. Sub/Submissive

Every particular Dom-sub (typically shortened to D/s) relationship has a slightly different power dynamic, but the sub/submissive is always the one who relinquishes control to the Dominant. Note: sub guys are not exclusively bottom, but this is definitely more common.

6. Switch

A switch is a guy (or girl) who enjoys both domination and submission — the kink version of the ever-elusive, 50/50 versatile bedmate. Naturally, switches pair up best with other switches.

7. Scene

This is a somewhat debated term in the world of kink, but most kinksters agree that a “scene” is one particular kink, the culture surrounding it, and its community of practitioners. For instance, watersports (see #17) is a scene that many people are into. Debate occurs because the term is also used to mean the actual playtime between a Dom and sub. By this second definition, a scene begins when a sub and Dom start to play. While the length of time that scenes last vary based on pre-established limits, scenes typically have defined beginning and end points. (This writer does not encourage beginners to jump immediately into extreme 24/7 scenes, which can be emotionally and psychologically damaging without ample discussion and experience beforehand.)

8. Limits

Limits are important, and every submissive guy’s limits are different. A limit is the point beyond which you do not allow Dominants to go. “Soft limits” are things that you’re mostly against, but in certain circumstances may try. For instance, drinking urine is a soft limit for this writer — an act not done in most circumstances, but perhaps for special occasions (like this year’s Folsom Street Fair). Soft limits may change over time. A “hard limit,” by contrast, is nonnegotiable. This writer’s hard limits are the presence of blood and/or feces. If either one of these appear during a scene, I’m finished, and playtime stops.

9. Safe Word

Safe words are vital for beginners and experienced kinksters alike. A safe word is a word or phrase that submissives use to stop a scene. Like hard limits, safe words are nonnegotiable. If a Dom ignores a safe word, they are considered “unsafe” and will not be welcomed in the kink community. We don’t like unsafe Doms because they can really hurt people. In kink porn, the industry standard safe word is “red,” so that’s what most kinksters use. Since being gagged is one of this writer’s biggest turn-ons, the “safe word” is not a word at all. In this case, a snap of the fingers or a slap on the thigh means “stop right now.”

10. Leather

Leather is the most popular fetishized material, with rubber as a close second. Many guys get excited by the look and feel of leather clothing, boots, harnesses, and other gear. Leather is so commonly fetishized and has been closely linked to BDSM for so many years that many people now see the “leather community” — guys all over the world who enjoy wearing leather and attend leather events and competitions — as synonymous with kink and BDSM.

11. Bondage

Bondage is probably the most basic and widely known feature of BDSM. And it’s unfailingly one of the most erotic. Bondage involves making a submissive helpless and immobilized. This can be done with rope, handcuffs, leather cuffs, chains, stocks, and mummification (see #25).

12. CBT

Cock and ball torture. This includes ball-stretching (stretching the scrotal sac so that it hangs lower by using weights and other devices to pull on it) and ball-bashing, which is exactly what it sounds like: hitting the balls with small paddles and similiar blunt objects. E-stimulation (see #14) is also commonly used for CBT — especially for cock torture.

13. FF

Fisting/fist fucking. This is the practice of slowly stretching open the anus with fingers until the whole hand is inserted. With practice, skilled fisters (guys who give fists) and fistees (guys who take them) can go all the way to the elbow and even the shoulder — or get double-fisted. Novices generally start with toys and dildos and work their way up. Fisting is not for beginners. When done incorrectly, fisting can cause severe injury. If this is something you want to try, go slowly and use lots of lube. You can’t use too much lube in fisting — lube should be everywhere by the time you’re done. While it may sound extreme, fisting is one of the most erotic and intense experiences you can have with someone (and can produce the most mind-blowing orgasms) when done correctly.

14. E-Stimulation/Electrical Play

E-stim involves using electrodes and electric shock during BDSM play. This is another kink that is not for beginners. Professionally made electrical units have to be used.

15. Puppy Play

Puppy play is one scene in the world of kink that is growing rapidly in popularity. Puppy play is part of a group of scenes that fall under the umbrella of Animal Training or Animal Play, in which submissives act like animals. Pony play and kitty play also fall into this category. In puppy play, the Dominant is called the Owner or Handler, and the submissive is called the pup. During the scene, pups stereotypically act like dogs — they bark, walk on all fours, and come when called (when they feel obedient). Handlers give pups “treats” (sexual or otherwise) and discipline them when they misbehave. While there is no standard way to do puppy play, most pups and handlers agree that the power dynamic is very relaxed and playful.

16. Slave/Master

If pups and handlers have a relaxed power dynamic, Master-slave relationships are the opposite. This scene typically involves very hardcore BDSM and domestic service from the slave, with lengthy playtimes — some slaves and Masters practice live-in, 24-7 scenes.

17. Piss Play

Also called watersports, piss play fetishizes urine. Guys into this scene enjoy getting peed on or drinking piss. Since actual (canine) pups pee on everything, a lot of guys into puppy play are also into piss play.

18. Candle Play

Candle play is hardly a scene of its own, but we’re sure that somewhere out there is a sadistic guy exclusively into using candles to drip hot wax on submissives to create a painful sensation that typically does not leave long-lasting marks or long-term damage. Typically, though, candles are used alongside other S&M practices during BDSM scenes

19. Flogging

Flogging is an S&M practice in which a Dominant whips a submissive with a flogger, which is a multi-tailed whip that is typically made out of leather. Depending on the severity, flogging can feel like anything from a back massage to an extremely painful experience. Beyond floggers, other devices commonly used are bull whips and cat o’ nine tails (see #26).

20. Edging

Edging or edge play involves dominant guys withholding orgasm from a submissive. You’ve probably done this to yourself while watching porn: masturbating and barely reaching the point of cumming and then abruptly stopping. This is one of the hottest and most intense “tortures” to experience as a submissive, especially when you are allowed to play for hours and with a skilled Dominant.

21. Nipple Torture

Nipple torture typically involves using devices like nipple clamps, suction clamps, clothespins, needles, and mousetraps on the nipples in order to create a painful sensation, but using hands and teeth work fine too. Chew and suck for hours of enjoyment.

22. Corporal Punishment

Some submissive guys really enjoy the idea of getting “punished” during BDSM scenes. Some even intentionally “disobey” and talk back to their Dominants as part of the scene in order to get punished. Corporal punishment is a BDSM practice in which Dominants use repetitive spankings and paddling (along with interrogation, see #23) to change a submissive’s behavior.

23. Interrogation

Some kinky guys get aroused watching those hot scenes in war movies and spy movies where someone is kidnapped, blindfolded, tied to a chair, and interrogated — so it’s no surprise that interrogation has become a popular practice in BDSM, and one that requires extensive amounts of creativity, imagination, and role play. Remember, however, that everything in kink is consensual. All scenes — even intense and long-lasting interrogation ones — are eroticized pretend games that Doms and subs enjoy together.

24. Chastity

You’ve no doubt seen cock cages and male chastity devices somewhere on the Internet. These devices keep a penis from getting hard, so by extension they keep you from achieving orgasm or pleasing yourself. It’s a form of control that Doms exert over their subs. Some cock cages can only be opened with a key — which naturally belongs on a chain around Sir’s neck.

25. Mummification

This is a particular form of bondage in which the whole body is wrapped in some kind of material – typically plastic wrap. Since this form of bondage is completely immobilizing, it is not for beginners.

26. Cat O’ Nine Tails

This whip — a favorite among old-school S&M practitioners — has nine strands and is known to pack an especially nasty sting.

26. Age Play

Age play is a broad term for any kinky practice that involves the submissive acting younger than they really are or pretending to be a “son,” “baby,” etc. The fetishes of diapers and children’s toys are typically involved.

27. Hanky Code

The hanky code is a longstanding sexual color code that has been around since the 1970s. Long before hookup apps like Grindr and Scruff, gay and bisexual men seeking casual sex wore colored handkerchiefs in their pant pockets indicating what kind of sex they were seeking and whether they were a dominant/top or submissive/bottom. The color code is pretty extensive and includes various kinks and fetishes, and is still used today by gay clothing brands like Nasty Pig and CellBlock 13 — and, obviously, by kinky gay men.

28. Negotiation

When you meet a kinky guy that you are interested in, it is important for you two to talk honestly and clearly discuss what kinks you both enjoy, what you are both looking to do, what limits must be adhered to, and what safe words will be used. This period of discussion is called “negotiation.” For beginners, it is recommended that you do extensive negotiation before your first play session.

29. Contract

Thanks to the cringe-worthy series Fifty Shades of Grey, which thoroughly misrepresents the kink community, many people mistakenly believe that contracts are only used for 24/7, slave-and-master style D/s relationships. This is false. Contracts cannot be legally enforced, and will not hold up in court. They are simply written documents outlining and clarifying the parameters of the relationship, and typically list what safe words and limits will be adhered to.

30. Safe, Sane, and Consensual

This slogan is the golden rule of BDSM. Play should always be safe: long-term damage or injury is not permitted among the vast majority of the international kink community. And above all else, play must be consensual. There is a difference between “rape fantasy,” which is role-play, and actual rape — something the international kink community condemns. This is why safe words and hard limits must be respected: they keep the play consensual and safe and allow submissives to stop whenever the scene ceases to be enjoyable. Keep these three words in mind and you will find yourself part of an awesome community of people into more kinks than you can possibly imagine. Welcome to the ball.

Reference

30 Kinky Terms Every Gay Man Needs to Know, Advocate, 30 December 2016, by Alexander Cheves https://www.advocate.com/love-and-sex/2016/2/12/30-kinky-terms-every-gay-man-needs-know#media-gallery-media-1

Gay History: Gays Remain Minority Most Targeted By Hate Crimes

May 21, 2021Article, Gay Interestfundamentalist churches, Gay, gay hate speech, LGBT, minority discrimination, religious extremismtimalderman

The religious anti-gay right has been knocked back on its heels by gay rights advances. But its hardest core angrily presses on

Four teenagers commit suicide in a three-week span after being bullied, taunted or outed as homosexuals. Seven students — at least four of whom had endured anti-gay bullying — kill themselves over the course of a year in a single Minnesota school district. In New York, 10 suspects are arrested for torturing three gay victims. In Covington, Ky., a series of violent anti-gay attacks shock a trendy neighborhood. In Vonore, Tenn., a lesbian couple’s home, its garage spray-painted with “Queers,” is burned to the ground. A rash of attacks hits Washington, D.C. And in Michigan, a prosecutor harasses a local gay rights student leader for months.

All of this is only a sampling of the anti-gay attacks occurring around the nation, most of it drawn from just the last few months. Although the rash of student suicides drew major media attention for a few days, the reality, gay rights advocates say, is that the LGBT world has been plagued by hate violence for years.

But that’s not the way a hard core of the anti-gay religious right sees it.

Responding to the wave of teen suicides — including, most dramatically, that of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University student who leaped off the George Washington Bridge in New York City in September — anti-gay leaders instead blamed those who sought to protect students from bullying.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association said gay rights activists “pressure these students to declare a disordered sexual preference when they’re too young to know better, [so] they share some culpability.” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a key critic of anti-bullying programs, said gay activists were “exploiting these tragedies to push their agenda.” He said that gay kids may know “intuitively” that their desires are “abnormal” and that the claim, pushed by gay activists, that they can’t change “may create a sense of despair that can lead to suicide.” Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel said those activists want “to use the tragedies to increase pressure on the real victims: Christians.”

Anti-gay ideologues like Tony Perkins (from left to right), Bryan Fischer and Charles Colson were put on the defensive following years of sometimes vicious rhetoric.

In fact, the chief target of these anti-gay ideologues — the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) — has been working to get protection from school bullying for a wide range of racial, religious and sexual minorities, not only LGBT students. It’s extremely hard to see how their efforts are exploitative, or how the “real” victims of bullying are Christians. GLSEN’s mission statement says that it “strives to assure that each member of every school community is valued.”

What’s more, bullying is only the beginning of the violence experienced by gays in American society. The reality is that homosexuals or perceived homosexuals are by far the group most targeted in America for violent hate crimes, according to an Intelligence Report analysis of 14 years of federal hate crime data. The bottom line: Gay people are more than twice as likely to be attacked in a violent hate crime as Jews or blacks; more than four times as likely as Muslims; and 14 times as likely as Latinos.

A Changing Landscape
Remarkably, most Americans today seem to have a sense of the violence that the LGBT community is regularly subjected to, or in any event are increasingly rejecting extreme religious-right narratives about the alleged evils of homosexuality. An October poll by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute found that 65% of Americans believe “places of worship contribute to higher rates of suicide among gay and lesbian youth” (33% said “a lot” and 32% said “a little”). Seventy-two percent said places of worship “contribute to negative views of gay and lesbian people” (40% said “a lot” and 32% said “a little”). (At the same time, the survey found that 44% of Americans still view same-sex relations as a sin.)

This was not always so. In 2003, the legalization of same-sex marriage in most of Canada, plus the U.S. Supreme Court’s striking down of anti-gay sodomy laws in 13 states and a court decision in Massachusetts against gay marriage bans, produced a major backlash. By 2008, fueled by the anti-gay rhetoric and political organizing of religious-right groups, at least 40 states and the federal government had adopted constitutional bans or laws against same-sex marriages.

Since then, the record has been mixed. But it’s clear that public support for same-sex marriage — and opposition to its religious opponents — is on the rise.

Five states now allow same-sex marriage, and another three recognize such unions from other states. California allowed them for some months in 2008, but the Proposition 8 referendum ended that — until a federal judge this fall overturned the proposition, saying it discriminated unconstitutionally against homosexuals. A 2006 federal bill that would have prohibited states from recognizing same-sex marriage failed. By this August, according to a Roper poll, a majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage for the first time. The poll found that 52% said the federal government should recognize such marriages (up from 46% in 2009), and 58% said same-sex couples should be entitled to the same benefits as other couples.

An earlier Gallup poll, released in May 2010, had similar results. It found that Americans now see gay relationships as “morally acceptable” by a 52% to 43% margin — compared to a 55% to 38%unfavorable view just eight years earlier. Every demographic group within the data set grew more accepting — Catholics, for instance, polled as 62% favorable, compared to 46% four years ago.

This fall’s mid-term elections were the first since the 1990s with no measures to ban gay marriage on any state ballot, according to The Associated Press. And although same-sex marriage was an issue at press time in four gubernatorial races, the AP reported, Democratic candidates in Rhode Island and California were vying to become the fourth and fifth openly gay members of Congress.

“We’ve reached a tipping point this year,” said Wayne Besen, founder of TruthWinsOut.com, which monitors the anti-gay right. “The religious right is losing some of its steam. We’re going to win this issue quicker than people think.”

When Focus on the Family pastor Jim Daly made conciliatory moves toward gay activists, the hard-line Illinois Family Institute’s Laurie Higgins accused him of talking like a “homosexualist.”

It may not be only gay rights advocates who think so. Last February, after founder James Dobson retired and pastor Jim Daly took over,Focus on the Family — for years, the powerhouse organization of the anti-gay religious right — markedly softened its anti-gay rhetoric. Daly began meeting with gay rights activists, ended the ministry’s controversial “reparative therapy” for gays and lesbians, and even suggested that legalized same-sex marriage might not be a disaster.

“I will continue to defend traditional marriage, but I’m not going to demean human beings for the process,” Daly told an interviewer. “I want to express respect for everyone, all human beings. It’s not about being highly confrontational.”

Digging In
It is in just such situations — when long-held societal notions about blacks, Latinos, Catholics, homosexuals or other minorities are shifting — that violent backlashes often set in. As groups like Focus on the Family have moderated their positions on homosexuality, a hard core of anti-gay groups, sensing they are being politically marginalized, seem to be growing angrier and more radical still.

The reaction of Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute, may be illustrative. Upon hearing of Daly’s moves, she said the Focus on the Family leader was showing “surprising naïveté,” adding that he instead “better figure out how to stop the pro-homosexual juggernaut.” As to his comments about refusing to “demean human beings,” Higgins said, “The language employed by Mr. Daly here is the kind of language commonly employed by … homosexualists.”

“True conservatives,” Higgins added tartly elsewhere, “need to rethink their cowardly refusal to address the inherent immorality of homosexual practice and their deeply flawed strategy of calling for a moratorium on ‘social issues.’”

A leading criminologist and sociologist of hate crimes, Jack Levin of Northeastern University, sees evidence of the growing radicalization of the fringe in other ways. He says perpetrators of anti-gay hate crimes appear to be getting older. No longer are they dominated by teens engaging in thrill-seeking with predatory gangs of their peers. More and more, he says, lone adults are committing what Levin calls “defensive hate crimes” — crimes carried out in reaction to sweeping social changes that they see as threats to their home, family, religion, culture or country.

The shrinking size of the most virulent parts of the anti-gay religious right was much in evidence at the August “Truth Academy” staged outside Chicago by Peter LaBarbera and his Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. The three-day gathering immediately followed what to many anti-gay activists was a kind of nuclear disaster — the overturning by a federal appeals court judge of Proposition 8, which had temporarily ended gay marriage in California.

And what better motivator than a “homosexual judge” canceling out some 7 million votes against same-sex marriage? But that turned out not to be the case. Subtracting speakers, family members, volunteers and at least four interlopers who attended only to monitor events, the tally of those who paid to hear LaBarbera and the others speak during the first day was almost certainly fewer than 15.

Nevertheless, for many hard-liners, fighting homosexuality is a biblical imperative. They regard being forced to accept uncloseted gays as tantamount to being persecuted as Christians. If same-sex marriage becomes universally legal, the Family Research Council’s Perkins told the “Call to Conscience” rally held in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 4, “In one generation, we will have gone from banning the Bible in public schools to banning religious beliefs in society.”

As a result, the hard core of the anti-gay religious right is digging in. They have gravitated toward three particular tactics: “love the sinner” rhetoric; secular validation; and depicting gays as a global threat.

The Hard-Liners’ New Lines
Not long ago, anti-gay propaganda was remarkable for its vulgar and wild-eyed tone — depicting homosexuals as immoral, feces-eating, disease-ridden pedophiles. And some of that tone, particularly the idea that gays seek to “recruit” children in school, remains in certain quarters. But that kind of approach doesn’t resonate much with younger audiences, who grew up with positive images of openly gay actors, musicians, artists, politicians and business leaders. As gays came out of the closet, others increasingly found they had gay friends and relatives.

Now, more and more groups on the religious right are framing their arguments with words that are meant to show respect for gays and lesbians. There is no better example of that than the Manhattan Declaration, drafted in 2009 by Watergate conspirator-turned-evangelist Charles Colson, Princeton University professor Robert P. George and Beeson Divinity School Dean Rev. Timothy George.

The declaration framed opposition to same-sex marriage as part of seeking an end to the “glamorizing” of promiscuity and infidelity generally. It emphasized that “our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners.” It conceded that “there are sincere people who disagree with us … on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage.” “And so,” it concluded, “it is out of love (not ‘animus’) and prudent concern for the common good (not ‘prejudice’), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage.”

That kinder, gentler language drew the support of many, but not as many as the religious right was used to getting. After setting a goal of obtaining 1 million signatures within 10 days of its Nov. 20, 2009, release, organizers said this Aug. 3 — almost nine months later — that they had amassed 463,000 signatures.

Another emphasis has been in seeking secular validation for anti-gay arguments — scientific evidence of the alleged pitfalls of homosexuality. Many on the religious anti-gay right now frame their arguments almost entirely around the idea that homosexuals present various dangers to children, that they will live short and unhappy lives, that they are more vulnerable to disease, and so on.

Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute has been the source of many of the falsehoods touted by the anti-gay religious right.

The clearest statement of this may have come in late 2008 from Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute: “We can no longer rely — as almost all pro-family organizations do today — on gleaning scientific ‘bits’ from those in liberal academia… . [W]e must subvert the academy by doing original, honest research ourselves and use this to advance the historic Christian faith.”

There’s just one trouble with this approach. Almost all the “facts” trotted out by the religious right about gays turn out to be false or misleading. And no one does more to create these myths than Cameron, whose work has been repudiated by three scholarly associations. (Others who are commonly cited as “researchers” by the anti-gay right include Joe Dallas, John R. Diggs, Joseph Nicolosi and the late Charles Socarides.) In addition, many scholars who do serious work in the area of sexuality say their work is misused by anti-gay groups. In fact, at least 11 legitimate scientists have recorded video statements saying their work was being mischaracterized by the religious right.

Related to this effort has been the creation of “ex-gay” therapies — programs run by the religious right that claim, against the weight of scientific evidence, to be able to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals. The problem is that so few people seem to have made the change — and so many who supposedly did later repudiated it.

A final new emphasis being used by many of the hard-core anti-gay groups is the charge that homosexuals make up, in effect, an active conspiracy whose agenda includes the destruction of Christianity and, ultimately, Western civilization. Sometimes, their propaganda sounds noticeably like Nazi descriptions of Jewish plots.

In a Feb. 6 column headlined “The bitter fruit of decriminalizing homosexual behavior,” for example, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer paraphrased another writer, agreeing that decriminalizing homosexuality had left society facing “a powerful, vicious, and punitive homosexual cabal that is determined to overthrow completely what remains of Judeo-Christian standards of sexual morality in the West.” Fischer adds that, “as [the writer] points out,” gays have received “special protections … which come at the expense of religious liberty, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and freedom of association and lead to the punishment, intimidation and harassment of any who oppose their agenda.”

For his part, reflecting on “the rise of gay power in the culture,” Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s LaBarbera sounded a similar theme during a radio broadcast last summer, saying, “The homosexual activist movement has very strategically insinuated itself into every sphere of power in our society.”

And at the Chicago-area Truth Academy, Robert Knight of Coral Ridge Ministriescited a 2008 Timemagazine article that he said “makes the case that the Democratic Party is a fully owned subsidiary of a group of homosexual billionaires.” (In fact, the article discussed a group of wealthy gay men and their effect on pro-gay politics.) Knight then went a few steps further, saying that homosexuals in the nation’s capital have “blackmail power.”

How is that? So many gays work in the hospitality industry, Knight claimed, that “they see congressmen dallying with their secretaries. They see them with their mistresses, and they let them know if they step out of line on the gay issue, it just might find its way into the wrong hands.” He offered no evidence.

“The gay Mafia in Washington,” he concluded. “It’s very real.”

Facing the Future
In the end, many legal observers have suggested, same-sex marriage — or “marriage equality,” in the words of its backers — may well be legalized across the United States, whether through the actions of the courts or the legislatures. But that doesn’t mean that the hard core of religious resistance is about to disappear.

Frederick Clarkson, an independent journalist who has written about the American religious right for a quarter of a century, notes that the social conflicts set off by Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education continued for decades after the Supreme Court ruled. Moderating public attitudes toward homosexuality, he says, are viewed by the religious right as “symptoms of a society that has fallen away from God’s laws, seriously enough that God is ready to smack the country down.”

After all, to the hard core of that anti-gay religious right, Clarkson says, “homosexuality is a profound capital offense against God’s order.”

The upshot, in all likelihood, is that violence, hatred and bullying of those perceived as homosexual will continue into the foreseeable future. Although leaders of the hard core of the religious right deny it, it seems clear that their demonizing propaganda plays a role in fomenting that violence — a proposition that has sparked a number of Christian leaders to speak out in the wake of the latest series of tragedies.

“The recent epidemic of bullying-related teen suicides is a wake-up call to us moderate Christians,” the Rev. Fritz Ritsch, pastor of St. Stephen Presbyterian Church, wrote in October in the Fort Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram. “To most unchurched Americans — meaning most Americans — the fruit of the church is bitter indeed. … [T]he bullying crisis has put a fine point on the need for moderates to challenge the theological bullies from our own bully pulpits. We cannot equivocate. Children are dying. We need to speak up. If not now, when?”

Reference

GAYS REMAIN MINORITY MOST TARGETED BY HATE CRIMES, Southern Poverty Law Center, 27 February 2011, by Mark Potok https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/gays-remain-minority-most-targeted-hate-crimes

HIV Myths: Virgin Cleansing Myth

May 21, 2021Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, Health Information, HIV/AIDShiv mythology, HIV/AIDS, virgin cleansing mythtimalderman

The virgin cleansing myth (also referred to as the virgin cure myth, virgin rape myth, or simply virgin myth) is the belief that having sex with a virgin girl cures a man of HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases.

Anthropologist Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala says the myth is a potential factor in infant rape by HIV-positive men in South Africa. In addition to young girls, who are presumed to be virgins because of their age, people who are “blind, deaf, physically impaired, intellectually disabled, or who have mental-health disabilities” are sometimes raped under the erroneous presumption that individuals with disabilities are sexually inactive and therefore virgins.

History

The myth was first reported in 16th-century Europe and gained prominence in 19th-century Victorian England as a cure for syphilis and gonorrhea among other sexually transmitted diseases. The origin is unknown, but historian Hanne Blank writes that the idea may have evolved from Christian legends of virgin–martyrs, whose purity served as a form of protection in battling demons.

Prevalence

People all over the world have heard this myth, including in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

A survey by the University of South Africa (UNISA) in South Africa found that 18 percent of laborers thought that having sex with a virgin cures HIV/AIDS. An earlier study in 1999 by sexual health educators in Gauteng reported that 32 percent of the survey participants believed the myth.

According to Betty Makoni of the Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe, the myth is perpetuated by traditional healers advising HIV-positive men to cure their disease by having sex with virgin girls. In Zimbabwe, some people also believe that the blood produced by raping a virgin will cleanse the infected person’s blood of the disease.

In 2002, psychologist Mike Earl-Taylor wrote that the virgin cure myth may explain the staggering rise in child or infant rapes in South Africa, which is facing an HIV/AIDS epidemic. UNICEF has attributed the rape of hundreds of girls to the virgin cleansing myth.

However, it is unknown exactly how common the myth is and to what degree rapes happen because of the belief in it. The claim that the myth drives either HIV infection or child sexual abuse in Africa is disputed by researchers Rachel Jewkes and Helen Epstein, as well as by research on convicted sex offenders in Malawi, where no evidence was found to support the idea that the virgin cleansing myth prompted any rapes.

Importance of education

Ignorance with regards to HIV and AIDS infection serves as a barrier to prevention in numerous African nations.

Education has helped women such as Betty Makoni speak out against the myth and attempt to dissuade people from believing the virgin cleansing myth.

According to UNICEF, culture-based gender roles that prize innocence and ignorance in girls and that accept sexual licentiousness in men promote this myth. Girls may be forced to marry older men, which can increase the likelihood of HIV transmission to girls. The stigma attached to AIDS also stops many people from seeking information or health services to shield their status, contributing to further transmission.

In popular culture

The virgin cleansing myth is referenced in the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon. The minor character Mattumbo is stopped from raping a baby based on the belief that sex with a virgin will cure his AIDS. During the song “Making Things Up Again”, Elder Cunningham tells Mattumbo that raping babies is against God’s will, and invents a passage in the Book of Mormon in which God tells Joseph Smith to instead have sex with a frog to cure his AIDS.

Reference

Virgin cleansing myth, OwlApps, http://www.owlapps.net/owlapps_apps/articles?id=32525556&lang=en

Gay History: Radical Faeries: SF’s Fabulously Weird Progressive Queers

May 21, 2021Article, Gay Interest, Religion/LifestyleGay, LGBT, queer, queer counter culture, the Radical Faueiestimalderman

By Katie Conry; Designed by Nic Buron; Photography by Lauren Crew

Out on a photo walk with friends, we spontaneously decided to climb up to the scenic vista point of Corona Heights. With my pink plastic Holga camera in hand, I snapped shots of my friends against the backdrop of brown boulders and the skyline of San Francisco, when suddenly, a giant purple caterpillar, a gnome in a ball gown carrying a purse, and a man in a fantastic blue dress and feather hat to match appeared at the top of the hill above us. In total awe, I ran up the hill to discover who these magical humans were. A group of 15 or so introduced themselves as the Feyboy Collective, a sect of a larger community called the Radical Faeries. My pals and I had happened upon them in the midst of a magazine photo shoot. A dazzling display of glitter, sass, and some sort of mock ritual sacrifice, these Feyboys were, hands down, the best thing I’ve ever found on top of a hill in San Francisco.

It turns out the Radical Faeries are more than just a handful of beautiful weirdos living in San Francisco. They’re a part of a politically radical movement of gay men who’ve been around since the 1970s, and include millions of members around the world. Through art and pagan-influenced rituals, the Faeries are all about challenging the status quo and creating a culture that celebrates the eccentric. Unsurprisingly, San Francisco harbors the largest and most active groups of these fabulous and progressive queers.

Excited to learn more, I was thrilled by the invitation to check out the HQ — the Feyboy Mansion, which was actually Pinkfeather and fellow Feyboy Kyle’s SOMA apartment. When I arrived, they welcomed me in with a hug, and we began discussing the colorful history of the Radical Faeries. In the ’70s, founder Harry Hay was the first person in the U.S. to recognize homosexuals as an oppressed cultural minority, and the first to promote being gay as a social identity. At the time, many gays thought that in order to gain acceptance, they should imitate heterosexuals. Harry founded the Radical Faeries in 1979 as a way for gays to reject society’s norms. The Radical Faeries spread their message through artistic and ritualistic gatherings and festivals, first all over the United States, and then around the world.

“There’s an aesthetic and vibe to every city. San Francisco Faeries are glittery and fantastically over the top, but also unpolished.” says Pinkfeather. “There’s a theatricality to us. In SF, gays have often been a little more outrageous, a little more gender fuck, a littler weirder.” This proud history of theatricality includes the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, founded by participants in a 1979 Faerie gathering that same year.

Harry Hay was also a communist, and the Faeries have always been class conscious and concerned with social justice. Kyle explained that the very nature of their community is anticapitalist. “We are working toward something more cooperative, something more about resource sharing and support; our very nature is anti-consumerist.”

All of the Faerie events are pay what you can, and no one is turned away for lack of funds. Anyone can stay for free at the Faerie sanctuaries, and Faeries can travel and stay with other Faeries all over the world for free.

DIY and thrift is a big part of the Faerie fashion aesthetic, and all goods and services are traded and bartered when possible. “Any time we can work outside of the capitalist system we do,” says Kyle.

The Feyboy Collective was founded to create an intentional community to help further the cause of the Radical Faeries for the next generation. On the collective’s website, they describe themselves as a “queerdo community center facilitating shared creative space, hosting events from D.I.Y. workshops to sex parties and acting as a launchpad for aspiring SF radical artists and activists.” Pinkfeather comments, “Weird girls like Kyle and myself are sidelined in mainstream gay culture. We moved to San Francisco to find the radical queers. We want to push boundaries of what we can get away with culturally and artistically.”

The Radical Faeries sound like the biggest thing that no one has ever heard of. Pinkfeather and Kyle say that’s somewhat on purpose. The movement, while totally inclusive, is an underground group. They want to maintain a safe space for its members, but they also want to be out in the open, interacting with the community at large. And that’s where their events come in.

The Feyboy Collective plans and hosts Radical Faerie events and funds a variety of art projects. Several years ago they were given a large space on Market and Castro the week leading up to and including Pride. From this blank canvas, Faetopia, was born. Faetopia 2012 included queer cinema screenings, a visual art gallery, burlesque, drag, historical exhibits, a DIY fashion workshop, and sex positive seminars. On Pride Sunday, the Feyboys hosted their signature event, the Faerie Freedom Village, which is one of the largest scale Radical Faerie events of the year.

Faeries from near and far travel to attend the Faerie Freedom Village. The grassy knoll at Civic Center Plaza is walled off and turned into a magical Faerie Garden where Faeries, and anyone else who is game, are welcome to party, dance, and do whatever s/he pleases. I attended this year and surveyed what seemed to be a relaxed garden party with outrageous clothing (or none at all). Two naked kids basked peacefully in the sun with their naked parents. Things got raucous when the drag show began, courtesy of drag group Meow Mix. Nothing says San Francisco like a lip-syncing, gyrating queen a stone’s throw from City Hall.

Harry Hay promoted gay as an identity separate from heteronormativity. What I saw that day was a celebration of that identity, and any identity different from traditional culture and gender roles. The Village is an accepting space created free of any form of capitalism, where a community can come together and connect through radical expression and celebrate their beautiful freakiness.

One of those beautiful freaks celebrated that day was Crumbsnatcher, a queer musician in a little kid’s dinosaur hoodie. Crumbsnatcher strutted onto the stage accompanied by two guys in full animal costume. “This guy is a furry,” the MC declared. “Let me introduce Crumbsnatcher!” While the furry dino rapped, his animal entourage did a freak dance that grew progressively kinkier. Eventually, a partygoer from the audience joined them, until all four were writhing on the stage. This glorious display of weirdness was definitely the highlight of my day. Being yourself can be a radical thing, and performances like this encourage people to be whatever kind of person they want to be.

Later that day my friend met a cute, pixie-ish boy in a black leotard, who she insisted was her spirit animal. He invited us to follow him to the official after-party. Our adventure through wonderland continued and turned out to be a more private version of the same kind of radical expression and celebration of queerness that we saw in the Village. At first glance it seemed like a calm, grown-up party in a nice condo with a wide offering of snacks. But this was no run-of-the-mill condo party. Throughout the night, I caught snippets of heated discussions about radical politics, but it wasn’t just the conversation that was passionate. We witnessed a lot of nudity and some cuddling, and later my friends and I stumbled upon a hot tub filled with naked men and accidentally walked into a sex dungeon complete with whips, chains, swings, and even more naked men.

When my only-in-San-Francisco night ended, I thanked the hosts for helping keep our city radical. As I walked out the door, I looked back at the regalia of dressed-up fabulous freaks and remembered something one of the Radical Faeries had said to me earlier that day: “There’s more to learn from wearing a dress in one day than a suit in a lifetime.”

Gay Spirituality and the Radical Faeries

When developing gay life in America starts to surface in books about the era, gay spirituality will emerge as one of the more fascinating subjects. A significant new book that deals with the subject has just appeared. It is “The Fire In Moonlight: Stories from the Radical Faeries,” edited by Mark Thompson, assisted by Richard Nealy and Bo Young and published by White Crane Books. The book has been nominated as one of 74 LGBT Books for Adult Readers by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association.

Described as “the gay community’s last authentic global grassroots movement,” the Radical Faeries had their inception on a remote site of the American Southwest in 1979. The book honors two men who played a key pioneering role, Harry Hay and Don Kilhefner. That historic “First Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries” gave Hay an opportunity to pronounce: “I am saying to everybody who will hear that now we must begin to maximize the differences between us.” In other words, Hay was talking clearly about “shedding the ugly green frog-skin of hetero imitation.”

Will Roscoe, author of “The Zuni Man-Woman,” which received the Margaret Mead Award of the American Anthropological Association, has written a brilliant Introduction to the new book. “Same-sex love is distinguished from heterosexual love by the sameness and equality of those it united,” he says. Roscoe cites Walt Whitman as a gay teacher of primary significance. He finds that Harry Hay took Whitman’s insights one step further, “giving a name to the distinct mode of awareness this love of sames and equals fosters—subject-SUBJECT consciousness.”

“The Fire In Moonlight” has many remarkable storytellers among its collection of authors. The book is staggering in its scope and depth. Robert Croonquist is a Founder and Program Director of Youth Arts New York. He describes in detail a Faerie Camp gathering. “We circle the grove and call out names.” After many names from within the Faerie community “Others called out Marilyn Monroe, Allen Ginsberg, Judy Garland, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde. The young Faeries, it dawned on me, didn’t know anybody who had died. I kind of felt sorry for them and kind of felt better than them. And kind of, but not really, felt they were lucky.”

William Stewart has embarked on a quest to connect with other gay men who share an aspiration to live together in collective commitment and consciousness. His contribution to this book is a prophetic piece entitled “Stewarding the Future: A Call for Sacred Witness.” He cites “typical gay traits” as “the skills of artists, healers, tricksters, ritual makers, shamans and intermediaries between the worlds.” Stewart believes that Harry Hays’ assertion “that social function rather than sexual preference should be seen as the defining characteristic of our kind is as radical now as when he first conceived of it in the dark days of McCarthyism.”

Another contributor to the book is Allen Page who describes himself as “an intuitive spiritual counselor, channeler, teacher and gay elder.” He writes: “We are fathers, artists, athletes and sissies. We do not fear gentleness and have no need to compete. We believe in the power of contradictions and the magic of laughter. That the quality of energy exchanged in lovemaking is more important than the gender of bodies.”

Mark Thompson poignantly pulls together a description of the historic 1979 Faerie Gathering in Arizona with his personal vision of the future:

“Music was played again and each man made an offering to a basket that was passed around: a feather from Woolworth’s, a stone from the Ganges River, a lock of hair, a handwritten poem. We began to dance with the music and in a few moments noticed we were being joined in our merriment by a large horned bull. Naturally shy, the animal was drawn close in. The bull stood and watched motionless, like some ancient hieroglyphic painted on a cave wall, then he just as inexplicably vanished.
Soon, we too began to drift away into the dark chill air. None of us would ever find again this particular place of red earth that had nourished us so. But even to prompt a return would be missing the point. Our journeys as a new kind of men, having been thusly inaugurated, meant that we would have many destinations, far and wide, still to attend.”

“The Fire In Moonlight: Stories from the Radical Faeries” is a boundless delight to read, a poem that stirs up magic thoughts, and a piece of history as solid as the stone Lincoln

Following the Pansy Path

Forty years after its initial publication, does The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions have anything to offer the queer present?

This post is part of Outward, Slate’s home for coverage of LGBTQ life, thought, and culture. Read more here.

In 1977, author Larry Mitchell formed Calamus Press to self-publish his first book, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions. The slim volume was originally conceived, according to Mitchell, as a children’s book complete with whimsical illustrations by his friend Ned Asta, a fellow member of the Lavender Hill queer commune in Ithaca, New York.

In short, simple passages, the book describes the lives of “the faggots” and their various groups of friends—the “strong women,” the “queens,” the “queer men”—as they attempt to survive and find joy, beauty, humor, pleasure, and freedom in Ramrod, an empire in decline dominated by the oppressive, militaristic “men.” In The Faggots and Their Friends, Mitchell depicted queer life as it was beginning to emerge from the shadows in the late ’60s and ’70s, as communities formed and a movement blossomed. He turned his observations of pre-AIDS gay culture into a kind of parable conveying its values and conventions—such as they were—and imparting lessons meant to sustain future generations of queer people, with the ultimate goal of guiding them toward the social and sexual revolutions Mitchell hoped to see. Here is the queer world, here are its tribes, here is how they managed to survive and even thrive within a system of oppression. Beauty is currency; sexuality is sustenance. But more valuable than that is friendship—which usually involves some degree of sexual intimacy. Pleasure will keep you going. So will humor, possibly more effectively.

Out of print since 1988, a new edition of The Faggots and Their Friends was recently published by Nightboat Books. It is at once heartening and chilling how relevant it remains more than four decades later. The various queer tribes and their individual quirks and characteristics are likely recognizable to anyone with a passing familiarity with contemporary LGBTQ culture (though Mitchell’s characterization of all women as nurturing earth mammas could stand to be complicated). Faggots—whether we embrace the reclamation of the term or not—persist in our pursuit of pleasure. We still cruise; we still create. We still run headlong toward our fantasies and embrace those discarded by mainstream culture, sprinkling them with fairy dust and reviving them as camp. “Some of the faggots are trashy. In fact, with the inspiration of the outcast women, the faggots developed ‘trashy’ into a high form of disruptive behavior.” Yeah, that tracks with the rambunctious queer scenes in places like Bushwick.

The (drag) queens, still fearlessly irreverent, are even more visible today, embraced by a generation of fan girls thanks to VH1. The (radical) faeries still have their gatherings in their mountain retreats. I don’t know that we have a term now for Mitchell’s “queer men,” but you know who they are: The gay suits who concern themselves with respectability politics, who just want to get married, a few of whom probably still think the rest of us are setting a bad example, embodying “stereotypes” with our scantily clad antics at the pride parade. Some of them, corrupted by Reagan-era neoconservatism, probably became today’s Log Cabin Republicans. And it’s hardly a stretch, within Mitchell’s woolly, loving cosmology, to read gestures toward today’s genderqueers and pansexuals of all stripes.

I want to give a Xeroxed copy to Pete Buttigieg.

As much as he relished taxonomy, Mitchell recognized the fluidity of his categories long before we spoke of sexuality and gender as spectrums. “All the men could be faggots or their friends,” he writes. And later: “There is more to be learned from wearing a dress for a day than there is from wearing a suit for a lifetime.” Mitchell is invested in dismantling boundaries—between acceptable and unacceptable behavior, between sexual categories, between gender, but most importantly between people, a project that today’s radical queers continue.

More troublingly, the descriptions of Ramrod’s disintegration and the men’s hostility toward the faggots and their friends are echoed in Trump’s America. “Everyday the faggots and their friends can see, hear, and feel Ramrod’s empire disintegrating as the men lose more and more things they never owned in the first place.” Is it even possible to read that without stressing out over the apparent failures of American democracy or the wave of illiberal populism sweeping Europe? Mitchell recognized that social progress breeds backlash: “The men’s viciousness will grow as their panic increases.” And yet, you have to wonder whether he could have predicted just how bad it would get: the upticks in anti-LGBTQ violence as pro-LGBTQ sentiment increases even among younger conservatives, the push to limit legal protections for queer and trans people post–marriage equality. “It’s been a long time since the last revolutions and the faggots and their friends are still not free.” Word.

Reading The Faggots and Their Friends for the first time in 2019, I am of two minds about the philosophy it imparts. The vision it presents of a different way of being is heartening. I want to believe that we can set aside the master’s tools and open a magic portal within ourselves, to a more peaceful, loving world. The simple language Mitchell employs to convey queer values gives queer culture the weight of wisdom passed down through the ages. In the decades since it was published, bootleg copies of The Faggots and Their Friends were passed around like an occult text. I want to give a Xeroxed copy to Pete Buttigieg.ADVERTISEMENTnull

The artist and activist Tourmaline, who wrote the preface to the new edition, has described The Faggots and Their Friends as “an invitation to be dependent and reliant on each other’s care.” Mitchell’s involvement in queer communes like Lavender Hill was a reaction to the alienation and loneliness of the closet. Before Armistead Maupin wrote his tales of “logical families” filling the void left when LGBTQ people were rejected by their biological relatives, Mitchell was turning the notion of chosen family, of radical queer communities, into a quasi-spiritual wisdom. I can’t think of a more necessary ethos at a time when social media has left us paradoxically more disconnected than ever. The Faggots and Their Friends is a timely reminder that human connection is essential for revolution, not to mention survival. As the strong women advise: “We gotta keep each other alive any way we can ’cause nobody else is goin’ do it.”

At the same time, however, I’m uncomfortable with what seems to me like Mitchell’s ultimate strategy of divestment from the world of the men. “The fairies have left the men’s reality in order to destroy it by making a new one.” When I read that, I can’t help but think of those people who want to terraform Mars instead of passing legislation that could effectively combat climate change. The closing passages of The Faggots and Their Friends seem to suggest a kind of nihilism. “They begin to know … that they cannot be free until this dance is stopped,” Mitchell writes of his queer tribes. “The faggots and their friends and the women who love women can … stop and do no-thing.”

My friend, the performance artist Dan Fishback, points out that queer culture has often flourished most in separatist environments—New York’s ball scene, the leather community, faerie communes. But in 2019, tuning in, turning on, and dropping out—doing “no-thing”—isn’t an option. It’s tempting, for sure; our individual efforts can feel futile in the face of … you know, everything. But we’ve seen what happens when we lose faith in democracy, when we sit out elections, and stop paying attention. It may seem like a revolutionary strategy to retreat to the gardens of the faeries, to unplug and go off the grid. But who gets left behind when we do that? Which of our friends suffer from our disengagement? And how long before the men find their way into those gardens?

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions reads today almost like a sacred text from the queer past. As with any sacred text, our job is not simply to receive its wisdom, but to engage with it (passionately, critically, seriously) and apply it the best way we can to the world as we find it today.

Reference

Radical Faeries: SF’s Fabulously Weird Progressive Queers, The Bold Italic, 11 October 2012, by The Bold Italic editors https://thebolditalic.com/radical-faeries-sf-s-fabulously-weird-progressive-queers-the-bold-italic-san-francisco-ccb0f25283dd
Gay Spirituality and the Radical Faeries, HuffPost, 20 February 2012 Updated 21 April 2012, by Malcolm Boyd https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gay-spirituality-and-radical-faeries_b_1274822
Following the Pansy Path, The Slate, 12 August 2019, by John Russell https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/08/faggots-friends-between-revolutions-reissue-review.html

Gay History: 10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked

May 21, 2021Article, Gay Interest, History, Politicalanti-gay myths, debunking gay myths, Gay, gay agenda, LGBTtimalderman

Battling the ‘homosexual agenda,’ the hard-line religious right has made a series of incendiary claims. But they’re just not true.

Ever since born-again singer and orange juice pitchwoman Anita Bryant helped kick off the contemporary anti-gay movement some 40 years ago, hard-line elements of the religious right have been searching for ways to demonize gay people — or, at a minimum, to find arguments that will prevent their normalization in society. For the former Florida beauty queen and her Save Our Children group, it was the alleged plans of gay men and lesbians to “recruit” in schools that provided the fodder for their crusade. But in addition to hawking that myth, the legions of anti-gay activists who followed have added a panoply of others, ranging from the extremely doubtful claim that sexual orientation is a choice, to unalloyed lies like the claims that gay men molest children far more than heterosexuals or that hate crime laws will lead to the legalization of bestiality and necrophilia. These fairy tales are important to the anti-gay right because they form the basis of its claim that homosexuality is a social evil that must be suppressed — an opinion rejected by virtually all relevant medical and scientific authorities. They also almost certainly contribute to hate crime violence directed at the LGBT community, which is more targeted for such attacks than any other minority group in America. What follows are 10 key myths propagated by the anti-gay movement, along with the truth behind the propaganda.

MYTH # 1
Gay men molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals.

THE ARGUMENT
Depicting gay men as a threat to children may be the single most potent weapon for stoking public fears about homosexuality — and for winning elections and referenda, as Anita Bryant found out during her successful 1977 campaign to overturn a Dade County, Fla., ordinance barring discrimination against gay people. Discredited psychologist Paul Cameron, the most ubiquitous purveyor of anti-gay junk science, has been a major promoter of this myth. Despite having been debunked repeatedly and very publicly, Cameron’s work is still widely relied upon by anti-gay organizations, although many no longer quote him by name. Others have cited a group called the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) to claim, as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council did in November 2010, that “the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a [molestation] danger to children.” A related myth is that same-sex parents will molest their children.

THE FACTS
According to the American Psychological Association, children are not more likely to be molested by LGBT parents or their LGBT friends or acquaintances. Gregory Herek, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who is one of the nation’s leading researchers on prejudice against sexual minorities, reviewed a series of studies and found no evidence that gay men molest children at higher rates than heterosexual men.

Anti-gay activists who make that claim allege that all men who molest male children should be seen as homosexual. But research by A. Nicholas Groth, a pioneer in the field of sexual abuse of children, shows that is not so. Groth found that there are two types of child molesters: fixated and regressive. The fixated child molester — the stereotypical pedophile — cannot be considered homosexual or heterosexual because “he often finds adults of either sex repulsive” and often molests children of both sexes. Regressive child molesters are generally attracted to other adults, but may “regress” to focusing on children when confronted with stressful situations. Groth found, as Herek notes, that the majority of regressed offenders were heterosexual in their adult relationships.

The Child Molestation Research & Prevention Institute notes that 90% of child molesters target children in their network of family and friends, and the majority are men married to women. Most child molesters, therefore, are not gay people lingering outside schools waiting to snatch children from the playground, as much religious-right rhetoric suggests.

Some anti-gay ideologues cite ACPeds’ opposition to same-sex parenting as if the organization were a legitimate professional body. In fact, the so-called college is a tiny breakaway faction of the similarly named, 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics that requires, as a condition of membership, that joiners “hold true to the group’s core beliefs … [including] that the traditional family unit, headed by an opposite-sex couple, poses far fewer risk factors in the adoption and raising of children.” The group’s 2010 publication Facts About Youth was described by the American Academy of Pediatrics as not acknowledging scientific and medical evidence with regard to sexual orientation, sexual identity and health, or effective health education. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, was one of several legitimate researchers who said ACPeds misrepresented the institutes’ findings. “It is disturbing to me to see special interest groups distort my scientific observations to make a point against homosexuality,” he wrote. “The information they present is misleading and incorrect.” Another critic of ACPeds is Dr. Gary Remafedi, a researcher at the University of Minnesota who wrote a letter to ACPeds rebuking the organization for misusing his research.

In spite of all this, the anti-LGBT right continues to peddle this harmful and baseless myth, which is probably the leading defamatory charge leveled against gay people.

MYTH # 2
Same-sex parents harm children.

THE ARGUMENT
Most hard-line anti-gay organizations are heavily invested, from both a religious and a political standpoint, in promoting the traditional nuclear family as the sole framework for the healthy upbringing of children. They maintain a reflexive belief that same-sex parenting must be harmful to children — although the exact nature of that supposed harm varies widely.

THE FACTS
No legitimate research has demonstrated that same-sex couples are any more or any less harmful to children than heterosexual couples.

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry affirmed in 2013 that “[c]urrent research shows that children with gay and lesbian parents do not differ from children with heterosexual parents in their emotional development or in their relationships with peers and adults” and they are “not more likely than children of heterosexual parents to develop emotional or behavioral problems.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in a 2002 policy statement declared: “A growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with one or two gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual.” That policy statement was reaffirmed in 2009 and in 2013, when the AAP stated its support for civil marriage for same-gender couples and full adoption and foster care rights for all parents, regardless of sexual orientation.

The American Psychological Association (APA) noted in 2004 that “same-sex couples are remarkably similar to heterosexual couples, and that parenting effectiveness and the adjustment, development and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation.” In addition, the APA stated that “beliefs that lesbian and gay adults are not fit parents have no empirical foundation.” The next year, in 2005, the APA published a summary of research findings on lesbian and gay parents and reiterated that common negative stereotypes about LGBT parenting are not supported by the data.

Similarly, the Child Welfare League of America’s official position with regard to same-sex parents is that “lesbian, gay, and bisexual parents are as well-suited to raise children as their heterosexual counterparts.”

A 2010 review of research on same-sex parenting carried out by LiveScience, a science news website, found no differences between children raised by heterosexual parents and children raised by lesbian parents. In some cases, it found, children in same-sex households may actually be better adjusted than in heterosexual homes.

A 2013 preliminary study in Australia found that the children of lesbian and gay parents are not only thriving, but may actually have better overall health and higher rates of family cohesion than heterosexual families. The study is the world’s largest attempt to compare children of same-sex parents to children of heterosexual parents. The full study was published in June 2014.

The anti-LGBT right continues, however, to use this myth to deny rights to LGBT people, whether through distorting legitimate research or through “studies” conducted by anti-LGBT sympathizers, such as a 2012 paper popularly known as the Regnerus Study. University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus’ paper purported to demonstrate that same-sex parenting harms children. The study received almost $1 million in funding from anti-LGBT think tanks, and even though Regnerus himself admitted that his study does not show what people say it does with regard to the “harms” of same-sex parenting, it continues to be peddled as “proof” that children are in danger in same-sex households. Since the study’s release, it has been completely discredited because of its faulty methodology and its suspect funding. In 2013, Darren Sherkat, a scholar appointed to review the study by the academic journal that published it, told the Southern Poverty Law Center that he “completely dismiss[es]” the study, saying Regnerus “has been disgraced” and that the study was “bad … substandard.” In spring 2014, the University of Texas’s College of Liberal Arts and Department of Sociology publicly distanced themselves from Regnerus, the day after he testified as an “expert witness” against Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban. The judge in that case, Bernard Friedman, found that Regnerus’ testimony was “entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration,” and ruled that Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Despite all this, the Regnerus Study is still used in the U.S. and abroad as a tool by anti-LGBT groups to develop anti-LGBT policy and laws.

MYTH # 3
People become homosexual because they were sexually abused as children or there was a deficiency in sex-role modeling by their parents.

THE ARGUMENT
Many anti-gay rights activists claim that homosexuality is a mental disorder caused by some psychological trauma or aberration in childhood. This argument is used to counter the common observation that no one, gay or straight, consciously chooses his or her sexual orientation. Joseph Nicolosi, a founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, said in 2009 that “if you traumatize a child in a particular way, you will create a homosexual condition.” He also has repeatedly said, “Fathers, if you don’t hug your sons, some other man will.”

A side effect of this argument is the demonization of parents of gay men and lesbians, who are led to wonder if they failed to protect a child against sexual abuse or failed as role models in some important way. In October 2010, Kansas State University family studies professor Walter Schumm released a related study in the British Journal of Biosocial Science, which used to be the Eugenics Review. Schumm argued that gay couples are more likely than heterosexuals to raise gay or lesbian children through modeling “gay behavior.” Schumm, who has also argued that lesbian relationships are unstable, has ties to discredited psychologist and anti-LGBT fabulist Paul Cameron, the author of numerous completely baseless “studies” about the alleged evils of homosexuality. Critics of Schumm’s study note that he appears to have merely aggregated anecdotal data, resulting in a biased sample.

THE FACTS
No scientifically sound study has definitively linked sexual orientation or identity with parental role-modeling or childhood sexual abuse.

The American Psychiatric Association noted in a 2000 fact sheet available on the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists, that dealing with gay, lesbian and bisexual issues, that sexual abuse does not appear to be any more prevalent among children who grow up and identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual than in children who grow up and identify as heterosexual.

Similarly, the National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization notes on its websitethat “experts in the human sexuality field do not believe that premature sexual experiences play a significant role in late adolescent or adult sexual orientation” and added that it’s unlikely that anyone can make another person gay or heterosexual.

Advocates for Youth, an organization that works in the U.S. and abroad in the field of adolescent reproductive and sexual health also has stated that sexual abuse does not “cause” heterosexual youth to become gay.

In 2009, Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a psychologist at the Christian Grove City College, noted in an analysis that “the research on sexual abuse among GLBT populations is often misused to make inferences about causation [of homosexuality].”

MYTH # 4
LGBT people don’t live nearly as long as heterosexuals.

THE ARGUMENT
Anti-LGBT organizations, seeking to promote heterosexuality as the healthier “choice,” often offer up the purportedly shorter life spans and poorer physical and mental health of gays and lesbians as reasons why they shouldn’t be allowed to adopt or foster children.

THE FACTS
This falsehood can be traced directly to the discredited research of Paul Cameron and his Family Research Institute, specifically a 1994 paper he co-wrote entitled “The Lifespan of Homosexuals.” Using obituaries collected from newspapers serving the gay community, he and his two co-authors concluded that gay men died, on average, at 43, compared to an average life expectancy at the time of around 73 for all U.S. men. On the basis of the same obituaries, Cameron also claimed that gay men are 18 times more likely to die in car accidents than heterosexuals, 22 times more likely to die of heart attacks than whites, and 11 times more likely than blacks to die of the same cause. He also concluded that lesbians are 487 times more likely to die of murder, suicide, or accidents than straight women.

Remarkably, these claims have become staples of the anti-gay right and have frequently made their way into far more mainstream venues. For example, William Bennett, education secretary under President Reagan, used Cameron’s statistics in a 1997 interview he gave to ABC News’ “This Week.”

However, like virtually all of his “research,” Cameron’s methodology is egregiously flawed — most obviously because the sample he selected (the data from the obits) was not remotely statistically representative of the LGBT population as a whole. Even Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has called Cameron’s methods “just ridiculous.”

Anti-LGBT organizations have also tried to support this claim by distorting the work of legitimate scholars, like a 1997 study conducted by a Canadian team of researchers that dealt with gay and bisexual men living in Vancouver in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The authors of the study became aware that their work was being misrepresented by anti-LGBT groups, and issued a response taking the groups to task.

MYTH # 5
Gay men controlled the Nazi Party and helped to orchestrate the Holocaust.

THE ARGUMENT
This claim comes directly from a 1995 book titled The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. Lively is the virulently anti-gay founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and Abrams is an organizer of a group called the International Committee for Holocaust Truth, which came together in 1994 and included Lively as a member.

The primary argument Lively and Abrams make is that gay people were not victimized by the Holocaust. Rather, Hitler deliberately sought gay men for his inner circle because their “unusual brutality” would help him run the party and mastermind the Holocaust. In fact, “the Nazi party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history,” the book claims. “While we cannot say that homosexuals caused the Holocaust, we must not ignore their central role in Nazism,” Lively and Abrams add. “To the myth of the ‘pink triangle’ — the notion that all homosexuals in Nazi Germany were persecuted — we must respond with the reality of the ‘pink swastika.'”

These claims have been picked up by a number of anti-gay groups and individuals, including Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, as proof that gay men and lesbians are violent and sick. The book has also attracted an audience among anti-gay church leaders in Eastern Europe and among Russian-speaking anti-gay activists in America.

THE FACTS
The Pink Swastika has been roundly discredited by legitimate historians and other scholars. Christine Mueller, professor of history at Reed College, did a 1994 line-by-line refutation of an earlier Abrams article on the topic and of the broader claim that the Nazi Party was “entirely controlled” by gay men. Historian Jon David Wynecken at Grove City College also refuted the book, pointing out that Lively and Abrams did no primary research of their own, instead using out-of-context citations of some legitimate sources while ignoring information from those same sources that ran counter to their thesis.

The myth that the Nazis condoned homosexuality sprang up in the 1930s, started by socialist opponents of the Nazis as a slander against Nazi leaders. Credible historians believe that only one of the half-dozen leaders in Hitler’s inner circle, Ernst Röhm, was gay. (Röhm was murdered on Hitler’s orders in 1934.) The Nazis considered homosexuality one aspect of the “degeneracy” they were trying to eradicate.

When Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party came to power in 1933, it quickly strengthened Germany’s existing penalties against homosexuality. Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s security chief, announced that homosexuality was to be “eliminated” in Germany, along with miscegenation among the races. Historians estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality (or suspicion of it) under the Nazi regime. These men were routinely sent to concentration camps and many thousands died there.

Himmler expressed his views on homosexuality like this: “We must exterminate these people root and branch. … We can’t permit such danger to the country; the homosexual must be completely eliminated.”

MYTH # 6
Hate crime laws will lead to the jailing of pastors who criticize homosexuality and the legalization of practices like bestiality and necrophilia.

THE ARGUMENT
Anti-gay activists, who have long opposed adding LGBT people to those protected by hate crime legislation, have repeatedly claimed that such laws would lead to the jailing of religious figures who preach against homosexuality — part of a bid to gain the backing of the broader religious community for their position. Janet Porter of Faith2Action, for example, was one of many who asserted that the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act — signed into law by President Obama in October 2009 — would “jail pastors” because it “criminalizes speech against the homosexual agenda.”

In a related assertion, anti-gay activists claimed the law would lead to the legalization of psychosexual disorders (paraphilias) like bestiality and pedophilia. Bob Unruh, a conservative Christian journalist who left The Associated Press in 2006 for the right-wing, conspiracist news site WorldNetDaily, said shortly before the federal law was passed that it would legalize “all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or ‘paraphilias’ listed by the American Psychiatric Association.” This claim was repeated by many anti-gay organizations, including the Illinois Family Institute.

THE FACTS
The claim that hate crime laws could result in the imprisonment of those who “oppose the homosexual lifestyle” is false. The First Amendment provides robust protections of free speech, and case law makes it clear that even a preacher who publicly suggested that gays and lesbians should be killed would be protected.

Neither do hate crime laws — which provide for enhanced penalties when persons are victimized because of their “sexual orientation” (among other factors) — “protect pedophiles,” as Janet Porter and many others have claimed. According to the American Psychological Association, sexual orientation refers to heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality — not paraphilias such as pedophilia. Paraphilias, as defined (pdf; may require a different browser) by the American Psychiatric Association, are characterized by sexual urges or behaviors directed at non-consenting persons or those unable to consent like children, or that involve another person’s psychological distress, injury, or death.

Moreover, even if pedophiles, for example, were protected under a hate crime law — and such a law has not been suggested or contemplated anywhere — that would not legalize or “protect” pedophilia. Pedophilia is illegal sexual activity, and a law that more severely punished people who attacked pedophiles would not change that.

MYTH # 7
Allowing gay people to serve openly will damage the armed forces.

THE ARGUMENT
Anti-gay groups have been adamantly opposed to allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces, not only because of their purported fear that combat readiness will be undermined, but because the military has long been considered the purest meritocracy in America (the armed forces were successfully racially integrated long before American civil society, for example). If gays serve honorably and effectively in this meritocracy, that suggests that there is no rational basis for discriminating against them in any way.

THE FACTS
Gays and lesbians have long served in the U.S. armed forces, though under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy that governed the military between 1993 and 2011, they could not do so openly. At the same time, gays and lesbians have served openly for years in the armed forces of 25 countries (as of 2010), including Britain, Israel, South Africa, Canada and Australia, according to a report released by the Palm Center, a policy think tank at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The Palm Center report concluded that lifting bans against openly gay service personnel in these countries “ha[s] had no negative impact on morale, recruitment, retention, readiness or overall combat effectiveness.” Successful transitions to new policies were attributed to clear signals of leadership support and a focus on a uniform code of behavior without regard to sexual orientation.

A 2008 Military Times poll of active-duty military personnel, often cited by anti-gay activists, found that 10% of respondents said they would consider leaving the military if the DADT policy were repealed. That would have meant that some 228,000 people might have left the military the policy’s 2011 repeal. But a 2009 review of that poll by the Palm Center suggested a wide disparity between what soldiers said they would do and their actual actions. It noted, for example, that far more than 10% of West Point officers in the 1970s said they would leave the service if women were admitted to the academy. “But when the integration became a reality,” the report said, “there was no mass exodus; the opinions turned out to be just opinions.” Similarly, a 1985 survey of 6,500 male Canadian service members and a 1996 survey of 13,500 British service members each revealed that nearly two-thirds expressed strong reservations about serving with gays. Yet when those countries lifted bans on gays serving openly, virtually no one left the service for that reason. “None of the dire predictions of doom came true,” the Palm Center report said.

Despite the fact that gay men and lesbians have been serving openly in the military since September 2011, anti-LGBT groups continue to claim that openly gay personnel are causing problems in the military, including claims of sexual abuse by gay and lesbian soldiers of straight soldiers. The Palm Center refutes this claim, and in an analysis, found that repealing DADT has had “no overall negative impact on military readiness or its component dimensions,” including sexual assault. According to then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in 2012, the repeal of DADT was being implemented effectively and was having no impact on readiness, unit cohesion or morale. Panetta also issued an LGBT Pride message in 2012.

MYTH # 8
Gay people are more prone to be mentally ill and to abuse drugs and alcohol.

THE ARGUMENT
Anti-LGBT groups want not only to depict sexual orientation as something that can be changed but also to show that heterosexuality is the most desirable “choice,” even if religious arguments are set aside. The most frequently used secular argument made by anti-LGBT groups in that regard is that homosexuality is inherently unhealthy, both mentally and physically. As a result, most anti-LGBT rights groups reject the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. Some of these groups, including the particularly hard-line Traditional Values Coalition, claim that “homosexual activists” managed to infiltrate the APA in order to sway its decision.

THE FACTS
All major professional mental health organizations are on record as stating that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.

The American Psychological Association states that being gay is just as healthy as being straight, and noted that the 1950s-era work of Dr. Evelyn Hooker started to dismantle this myth. In 1975, the association issued a statement that said, in part, “homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, reliability or general social and vocational capabilities.” The association has clearly stated in the past that “homosexuality is neither mental illness nor mental depravity. … Study after study documents the mental health of gay men and lesbians. Studies of judgment, stability, reliability, and social and vocational adaptiveness all show that gay men and lesbians function every bit as well as heterosexuals.”

The American Psychiatric Association states that (PDF; may not open in all browsers) homosexuality is not a mental disorder and that all major professional health organizations are on record as confirming that. The organization removed homosexuality from its official diagnostic manual in 1973 after extensive review of the scientific literature and consultation with experts, who concluded that homosexuality is not a mental illness.

Though it is true that LGBT people tend to suffer higher rates of anxiety, depression, and depression-related illnesses and behaviors like alcohol and drug abuse than the general population, that is due to the historical social stigmatization of homosexuality and violence directed at LGBT people, not because of homosexuality itself. Studies done during the past several years have determined that it is the stress of being a member of a minority group in an often-hostile society — and not LGBT identity itself — that accounts for the higher levels of mental illness and drug use.

Richard J. Wolitski, an expert on minority status and public health issues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, put it like this in 2008: “Economic disadvantage, stigma, and discrimination … increase stress and diminish the ability of individuals [in minority groups] to cope with stress, which in turn contribute to poor physical and mental health.”

Even as early as 1994, external stressors were recognized as a potential cause of emotional distress of LGBT people. A report presented by the Council on Scientific Affairs to the AMA House of Delegates Interim Meeting with regard to reparative (“ex-gay”) therapy noted that most of the emotional disturbance gay men and lesbians experience around their sexual identity is not based on physiological causes, but rather on “a sense of alienation in an unaccepting environment.”

In 2014, a study, conducted by several researchers at major universities and the Rand Corporation, found that LGBT people living in highly anti-LGBT communities and circumstances face serious health concerns and even premature death because of social stigmatization and exclusion. One of the researchers, Dr. Mark Hatzenbuehler, a sociomedical sciences professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said that the data gathered in the study suggests that “sexual minorities living in communities with high levels of anti-gay prejudice have increased risk of mortality, compared to low-prejudice communities.”

Homosexuality is not a mental illness or emotional problem and being LGBT does not cause someone to be mentally ill, contrary to what anti-LGBT organizations say. Rather, social stigmatization and prejudice appear to contribute to health disparities in the LGBT population, which include emotional and psychological distress and harmful coping mechanisms.

MYTH # 9
No one is born gay.

THE ARGUMENT
Anti-gay activists keenly oppose the granting of “special” civil rights protections to gay people similar to those afforded black Americans and other minorities. But if people are born gay — in the same way that people have no choice as to whether they are black or white — discrimination against gay men and lesbians would be vastly more difficult to justify. Thus, anti-gay forces insist that sexual orientation is a behavior that can be changed, not an immutable characteristic.

THE FACTS
Modern science cannot state conclusively what causes sexual orientation, but a great many studies suggest that it is the result of both biological and environmental forces, not a personal “choice.” A 2008 Swedish study of twins (the world’s largest twin study) published in The Archives of Sexual Behavior concluded that “[h]omosexual behaviour is largely shaped by genetics and random environmental factors.” Dr. Qazi Rahman, study co-author and a leading scientist on human sexual orientation, said: “This study puts cold water on any concerns that we are looking for a single ‘gay gene’ or a single environmental variable which could be used to ‘select out’ homosexuality — the factors which influence sexual orientation are complex. And we are not simply talking about homosexuality here — heterosexual behaviour is also influenced by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors.” In other words, sexual orientation in general — whether homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual — is a mixture of genetic and environmental factors.

The American Psychological Association (APA) states that sexual orientation “ranges along a continuum,” and acknowledges that despite much research into the possible genetic, hormonal, social and cultural influences on sexual orientation, scientists have yet to pinpoint the precise causes of sexual orientation. Regardless, the APA concludes that “most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.” In 1994, the APA noted that “homosexuality is not a matter of individual choice” and that research “suggests that the homosexual orientation is in place very early in the life cycle, possibly even before birth.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics stated in 1993 (updated in 2004) that “homosexuality has existed in most societies for as long as recorded descriptions of sexual beliefs and practices have been available” and that even at that time, “most scholars in the field state that one’s sexual orientation is not a choice … individuals do not choose to be homosexual or heterosexual.”

There are questions about what specifically causes sexual orientation in general, but most current science acknowledges that it is a complex mixture of biological, environmental, and possibly hormonal factors but that no one chooses an orientation.

MYTH # 10
Gay people can choose to leave homosexuality.

THE ARGUMENT
If people are not born gay, as anti-gay activists claim, then it should be possible for individuals to abandon homosexuality. This view is buttressed among religiously motivated anti-gay activists by the idea that homosexual practice is a sin and humans have the free will needed to reject sinful urges.

A number of “ex-gay” religious ministries have sprung up in recent years with the aim of teaching gay people to become heterosexuals, and these have become prime purveyors of the claim that gays and lesbians, with the aid of mental therapy and Christian teachings, can “come out of homosexuality.” The now defunct Exodus International, the largest of these ministries, once stated, “You don’t have to be gay!” Meanwhile, in a more secular vein, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality describes itself as “a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality.”

THE FACTS
“Reparative” or sexual reorientation therapy — the pseudo-scientific foundation of the ex-gay movement — has been rejected by all the established and reputable American medical, psychological, psychiatric and professional counseling organizations. In 2009, for instance, the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution, accompanied by a 138-page report, that repudiated ex-gay therapy. The report concluded that compelling evidence suggested that cases of individuals going from gay to straight were “rare” and that “many individuals continued to experience same-sex sexual attractions” after reparative therapy. The APA resolution added that “there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation” and asked “mental health professionals to avoid misrepresenting the efficacy of sexual orientation change efforts by promoting or promising change in sexual orientation.” The resolution also affirmed that same-sex sexual and romantic feelings are normal.

A very large number of professional medical, scientific and counseling organizations in the U.S. and abroad have issued statements regarding the harm that reparative therapy can cause, particularly if it’s based on the assumption that homosexuality is unacceptable. As early as 1993, the American Academy of Pediatrics stated that“[t]herapy directed at specifically changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving change in orientation.”

The American Medical Association officially opposes reparative therapy that is “based on the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based on an a priori assumption that the person should change his/her homosexual orientation.”

The Pan-American Health Organization, the world’s oldest international public health agency, issued a statement in 2012 that said, in part: “Services that purport to ‘cure’ people with non-heterosexual sexual orientation lack medical justification and represent a serious threat to the health and well-being of affected people.” The statement continues, “In none of its individual manifestations does homosexuality constitute a disorder or an illness, and therefore it requires no cure.”

Some of the most striking, if anecdotal, evidence of the ineffectiveness of sexual reorientation therapy has been the numerous failures of some of its most ardent advocates. For example, the founder of Exodus International, Michael Bussee, left the organization in 1979 with a fellow male ex-gay counselor because the two had fallen in love. Other examples include George Rekers, a former board member of NARTH and formerly a leading scholar of the anti-LGBT Christian right who was revealed to have been involved in a same-sex tryst in 2010. John Paulk, former poster child of the massive ex-gay campaign “Love Won Out” in the late 1990s, is now living as a happy gay man. And Robert Spitzer, a preeminent psychiatrist whose 2001 research that seemed to indicate that some gay people had changed their orientation, repudiated his own study in 2012. The Spitzer study had been widely used by anti-LGBT organizations as “proof” that sexual orientation can change.

In 2013, Exodus International, formerly one of the largest ex-gay ministries in the world, shut down after its director, Alan Chambers, issued an apology to the LGBT community. Chambers, who is married to a woman, has acknowledged that his same-sex attraction has not changed. At a 2012 conference, he said: “The majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation or have gotten to a place where they could say they could never be tempted or are not tempted in some way or experience some level of same-sex attraction.”

Reference

10 ANTI-GAY MYTHS DEBUNKED, Southern Pverty Law Center, 27 February 2011, by Evelyn Schlatter and Robert Steinback https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/10-anti-gay-myths-debunked

Gay History: Has Orange Juice Turned Bluto And Popeye Gay?

May 20, 2021Article, Fiction, General Interest, Humour, IconsBluto, garish commercials, Gay, LGBT, Minnie Maid orange juice, Popeye the sailor mantimalderman

Classic cartoon enemy musclemen Popeye and Bluto haven’t kissed but they have made up in this animated campaign behind Minute Maid orange juice. The two have overcome their differences to such a degree that some in the gay community (and the straight media too, such as Slate.com ad reviewer Rob Davis) have wondered if the sailors are supposed to suddenly be romantic partners.

The two play like school children on a swing, a see-saw, bury each other in sand on the beach, and get tattoos together that say “Buddies for Life.” At the end, they ride a two-person bicycleùpassing usual romantic interest Olive Oyl, who calls out “Oh, boys!” and they ride past her without notice. She offers a confused, if not suspicious, look as they pedal away.

An ironic development for Minute Maid, given the anti-gay “Save Our Children” crusades by former Florida Orange Juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant in the 1970s.

Before the campaign was conceived, Dave Linne, the Popeye ad’s creative director at ad agency Leo Burnett Co says the concept is “the opposite of the clich? of getting up on the wrong side of the bedö where people wake up in a good mood.

Linne came up with about 12 conceptual examples of people acting out of character and being nicer than normal, including an elementary school cafeteria line that resembles a Depression-era soup kitchen — except for one cheery server. Another example has a husband doing “wifely” weekend activities such as laundry and brings breakfast in bed to his wife to her surprise as she wakes up.

They also wanted an example of classic enemies who become friends. “We looked at movie villains and there are so many arch enemies, so we thought, ‘Let’s do an animated spot.’ We looked at lots of cartoon characters and we liked Popeye and Bluto for two reasons: I haven’t seen them in a commercial before, and they’re human characters instead of animals.”

So as they were making the ad, the creative team decided to put Popeye and Bluto in various playful situations. “The only reason we put them on a two-person bicycle was because it seemed so stupid,” Linne says. As they pass Olive Oyl, who Linne notes “is usually the catalyst to make them fight” not even she can get between them this time.

Linne says gay innuendo was not intentional but is intrigued about its possibility. “I think it’s interesting if you can read it both ways. I guess it’s working on all kinds of levels,” he mused.

While Linne seems impressed that his work can be read into by the gay community, the same cannot be said for officials at Minute Maid headquarters. “We’re not going to go there,” says Dan Shafer, a spokesman for Houston-based Minute Maid. “Any intent to draw a (gay relationship) parallel would be wrong. Anyone who knows Popeye and Bluto understands that’s not the case, there’s no intent like that.”

Commercials: Out of the Closet

Is Popeye gay? An ad company using the cartoon sailor’s likeness says no, but the commercial is still being featured on a new site of gay-themed ads.

POPEYE AND BLUTO may be the most recent celebrity couple to be outed by the media.

In a recent Minute Maid orange juice ad, the pair is seen palling around on a swing-set, burying each other in sand on the beach and riding a bicycle built for two as they gleefully pass by a scorned Olive Oyl. They even get matching tattoos that say “Buddies for Life.”

The animated spot, created by the ad agency Leo Burnett, is one of the latest additions to The Commercial Closet, an online museum of gay-themed ads from around the world, which launched Monday.

CommercialCloset.org compiles video clips and storyboard stills of hundreds of commercials featuring gay characters or themes, including several that never made it on the air. The archive includes ads representing 150 different ad agencies and 250 major advertisers, including American Express, Coca-Cola, Nike and the Gap.

Ranging from innocuous to offensive, the ads are grouped into four major categories: positive, negative, neutral and gay vague; and 50 subcategories such as “hustlers/ pornographers/murderers/pedophiles” and “sissies and queens.”

Michael Wilke, a former reporter for Advertising Age, created the site to promote awareness of the “evolution in the portrayal of lesbians and gays in advertising as it reflects the public’s perception of them,” and to raise money for a documentary film he’s making to further explore that theme.

Over the past 30 years, “there’s been an evolution from complete invisibility to popular stereotypes to more neutral and positive portrayals of gays in advertising,” Wilke said.

While there’s an increasing number of gay-themed ad campaigns cropping up today, according to Wilke, it’s still a mixed bag. “There’s definitely an increase in gay-positive ads, but the negative stereotypes continue to be a popular source of comedy in commercials,” he said.

Transgendered individuals in particular almost always end up the butt of the joke in commercials, which earned them their own sub-category in Wilke’s archive, called “(Straight) Dude Looks Like A Lady.”

But not all ads in this category are negative. Some manage to cast transgender characters in funny situations without making them out to be villains or clowns.

A 1996 Australian commercial for air-freshening spray Domestos, for instance, riffs off the cult classic Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, featuring a Terrance Stamp look-alike who asks to use the ladies’ room in a roadside bar. Finding it filthy, she pulls Domestos out of her purse and clears the air. Later she proclaims the bathroom “fit for a queen.”

“It’s not that transgendered people can’t be funny,” Wilke said, “but there’s a difference between laughing at someone and laughing with them.”

Although there may be more gay-themed ads on the air today, there’s a popular misconception in the media about who gay people are and what motivates them as consumers, according to Kathy Renna, a director at the media advocacy organization Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

“There’s the perception that gays and lesbians are very affluent, own three cars and buy 100 CDs,” Renna said. “That’s not reflective of the whole gay community. One thing that is true is that it’s a very loyal demographic.”

Companies with gay-positive reputations include American Airlines, Absolut vodka and Coors, she said.

But while marketing to gays and lesbians is an important priority for many corporations, advertisers and ad agencies must still walk a fine line when depicting them in ads.

Today, ads featuring gay people among other minorities in a happy-people world are relatively safe bets for corporations wanting to project a multicultural image.

A 1994 Ikea ad about a gay couple buying a dining table together, for instance, was controversial as one of the first gay-positive commercials by a major corporation.

Part of a three-part ad campaign depicting people in alternative lifestyles buying furniture -– the other two being a single mom and a white couple with an adopted Asian baby -– the ad was meant to “reflect real life and real people and not the middle-of-the-road all-American family,” according to Kathy Delaney, the executive creative director at Deutsch, the agency that made the ad.

But while homosexuality remains a touchy subject fraught with political correctness, that doesn’t mean advertisers should only approach it with kid gloves, Wilke said. Still, many agencies and advertisers would rather avoid the topic altogether than open a can of worms.

Then there’re companies such as Calvin Klein, Diesel and Benetton that, instead of shying away from controversy, promote a fashion-forward or youth-oriented brand and deliberately provoke people with their ads.

A notorious example is Benetton’s 1992 “Pieta” print ad depicting AIDS activist David Kirby on his deathbed. The emaciated Kirby, surrounded by his friends and family, bore an eerie resemblance to Jesus, which sparked controversy among Christian groups and AIDs activists who were uncomfortable with the religious tone used in association with the disease and, ultimately, to sell clothes.

On the other hand, the ad was also one of the first in many countries to show AIDs in the context of real human suffering and compassion. Although it was singularly criticized, the ad was part of a larger, ongoing campaign for AIDs prevention and awareness that included the distribution of condoms in Benetton stores.

Some companies, by contrast, seem reluctant to acknowledge any controversy their ads may create.

The Popeye and Bluto spot, for instance, is included in the “Gay Vague” category, because the advertiser’s message related to gay people isn’t very clear. In fact, there’s no substantial proof that the two adversaries are in fact lovers, as they are never seen kissing.

In a interview with Wilke, the creative director for the Popeye ad seemed pleasantly surprised at the suggestion that it implied a relationship between the two erstwhile foes, and that the spot was simply meant to show two enemies who become friends, supposedly transformed by drinking Minute Maid orange juice.

Minute Maid, meanwhile, firmly denied that Popeye and Bluto are an item.

“Any intent to draw a (gay relationship) parallel would be wrong,” Minute Maid spokesman Dan Shafer told Wilke. “Anyone who knows Popeye and Bluto understands that’s not the case, there’s no intent like that.”

Ad Report Card: Minute Maid Makes You Gay! (Happy, That Is)

Some months ago the Ad Report Card devoted not one but two installments to commercials that turned on references (oblique or otherwise) to homosexuality. Often the reference served as a punch line of one sort or another, and in some cases I was critical of the way in which this or that advertiser used gayness as a joke. Responses were many and spirited. Some suggested I was being ridiculous, seeing gay themes where there were none. Others, some claiming to have inside knowledge of the ad business, argued I was naïve, overlooking the benign influence of gays who work in “ad creative.” I have no way of checking the latter claim, but both critiques came to mind when a couple of people e-mailed me recently about a Minute Maid orange juice spot featuring Popeye and Bluto. The ad is part of a series, the theme of which is that drinking Minute Maid makes you gay.

As in happy.

Now, some observers have suggested that, in addition to promoting the happy-making power of Minute Maid, the Popeye spot might just be an example of “gay vague,” along with another commercial that I haven’t seen, which is airing in Europe—read this for more. You can see the spots in the U.S. campaign below: the Popeye one, another featuring Bobby Knight, a third about a “helpful hubby,” and a fourth centered on a suspiciously cheerful lunch lady. My main focus is the Popeye spot.

Popeye The ad: Here they are, two of the most famous rivals in cartoondom, playing happily together on a swing and then a seesaw. Popeye good-naturedly pats sand over Bluto on the beach; sappy pal music plays. The pair gets matching “Buddies for Life” tattoos. What’s going on? An announcer says cheerfully: “Somebody had their Minute Maid this morning. It takes a minute, but the feeling”—the unbridled joy and affection we’re seeing here—“lasts all day.” Popeye and Bluto pedal along on a tandem bike. Olive Oyl waves (“Oh boys!” she calls), but they ride straight past, blithely ignoring the object of their traditional erotic rivalry.ADVERTISEMENThttps://39598048fe002d9e70fc861e576fdf63.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Coach Hmmm. Perhaps it’s ridiculous of me to ask, but what exactly is it that’s preventing these Minute-Maid-drunk boys from including Olive in their fun? On the other hand, what is it that makes it inevitable that almost any prominent male pair is inevitably subject to some kind of what-if-they-were-gay speculation—good-natured, homophobic, or somewhere in between? (Perhaps you’ve heard spurious gossip about the relationship between Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Or read my Slatecolleague David Plotz’s exploration of the fan fiction subgenre devoted to the imagined couplings of Kirk and Spock, among others. Or recall a New Yorkercartoon that one of my correspondents remembers, featuring none other than Popeye and Bluto holding hands, having finally figured out “where all that anger was coming from.”)

Bed What about the other Minute Maid spots? You could say that they all play it straight. Hothead basketball coach Bobby Knight, having had his Minute Maid, coddles and dotes on his players, bursting into the post-game locker room to ask “Who wants a treat?” A spot featuring a surprisingly helpful husband has him forsaking football to bustle around neatening things up, heading off to “market,” and setting his iron for chiffon. A chipper lunch lady minces through a school cafeteria asking, “Who wants tiramisu?”

School Anyway, subtext or no subtext, this is a pretty good campaign. All the spots, but especially the Popeye one, are attention-getting and make a clear case for the alleged powers of a morning glass of Minute Maid. The helpful hubby installment is the weakest, but the Bobby Knight one is hilarious. Mushing together grades for all four into one composite score, I’d give them a solid B. When I watch these ads, I feel … happy.

Reference

https://www.glaad.org/advertising/library/friendly-rivalspopeye
Commercials: Out of the Closet, Wired, 5 August 2001, by Aparna Kumar https://www.wired.com/2001/05/commercials-out-of-the-closet/
Ad Report Card: Minute Maid Makes You Gay! (Happy, That Is), The Slate, 7 May 2001, by Rob Walker https://slate.com/business/2001/05/ad-report-card-minute-maid-makes-you-gay-happy-that-is.html

Gay History: NOT The Only Gay In Village! Plans Revealed For ‘No Straights’ Commune

May 20, 2021Article, Gay InterestGay, gay communes, gay hoaxes, Gay Village project, LGBTtimalderman

A PLAN to build a “gays only” gated housing estate “with all mod cons” has been revealed as an elaborate hoax.

ALL ABOARD: Would a gays only commune be of any benefit at all to society? [GETTY]

The Gay Village project described itself as a scheme to create a prejudice-free community in Tilbery, Netherlands, complete with a cooking school and tennis courts.

The plan was endorsed by officials, estate agents and developers when it looked like building may go ahead.

Tilburg mayor, Peter Noordanus, welcomed the plan.https://get-latest.convrse.media/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailystar.co.uk%2Fnews%2Flatest-news%2Fgay-only-commune-in-netherlands-18734601&cre=top&cip=6&view=web

He said: “A tolerant city is pleased to have a gay community within its borders.”

It later emerged that the officials were persuaded to play along by the Roze Maandag (Pink Monday) foundation which hosts an annual day at the Tilburg Fair, dedicated to LGBT issues.

HOAX: The plan for the housing estate was an elaborate joke to raise awareness [GETTY]

Roze Maandag posted on its website stating: “Although Gay Village is not real, intolerance against the gay community is.”null

The website explained how they were inspired to act by recent surveys showing that nearly a quarter of all gay men in the Netherlands – regarded as one of the most tolerant countries in the world – did not feel safe in their own neighbourhoods.

Despite being a hoax the story was met with intense criticism when it was first revealed.

Many argued that by “ghettoising” itself the LGBT community were doing nothing to help tackle homophobia and transphobia.

The group said it was pleased that the story gathered negative attention, stating: “to the effect that a gay village is indeed ‘ridiculous’”.

A spokesperson told the Netherlands Times: “We are happy with the thousands of negative, and the fewer positive, reactions.

“It is great to hear that the majority is against the idea. All we wanted was to create an awareness, and we are certain that we succeeded in this.”

EQUAL: The hoax highlighted the need for society to be more inclusive of all members of all communities [GETTY]

Reference

NOT the only gay in the village! Plans revealed for ‘no straights’ commune, Daily Star, 19 June 2014 Updated 10 May 2015, by er https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/gay-only-commune-in-netherlands-18734601

Gay History: The Orange Juice Boycott That Changed America

May 20, 2021Article, Gay Interest, History, Political, Religion/Lifestyle, Short StoryAnita Bryant, Anita Bryant Ministries, Bob Green, discrimination, Florida Orange Juice, gay hate speech, homophobiatimalderman

How a breakfast table staple sparked solidarity and protest in the queer community

EC: assets%2Fmessage-editor%2F1482347233909-anita-bryant-orange-juice-hero-illo — CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION BY LAUREN KOLM

As she heeded the call to come on down, descending the Price Is Right’s audience riser wearing a headscarf with juicy swirls of lemon, tangerine, and lime, Yolanda Bowsley’s breasts jiggled out of her tube top. Producers flashed a thick blue bar over the contestant’s naked bits, people in the studio howled, but Bowsley looked neither freaked nor ashamed. Meanwhile, on ABC’s new sitcom Three’s Company—a show with double entendres about three-ways and casual lust—a pair of tangy orange throw pillows on the set’s central couch visually throbbed, the implied accoutrements of seduction. Sexual freedom in 1977 tended to express itself in fearless, provocative hues of citrus.

But not for the queen of orange juice herself. Not for Anita Bryant, who wore shirt-dresses the color of lemon meringue pie filling and tangerine cap-sleeve bodices as if they were the armor of the righteous in battle. Bryant saw sexual openness as a challenge to God’s order, a threat to what she liked to call “straight and normal America.” It lacked decency. It corrupted children. It had to be stopped.

Bryant had been Miss Oklahoma once, beautiful, with pale skin and dark eyes. She was Jackie Kennedy with a hard-spray flip and a soft country twang, raised on church suppers and sticky flour gravy. As a tightly poised pop singer in the early ‘60s, she’d built a shortstack of hits, earning three gold records. She married her manager, Bob Green, a hunk with a handsome mess of sandy hair who knew how to pair a blazer with a turtleneck. They were a dream couple, country stylish like Elvis and Priscilla but without the obvious diet pills and demons. They lived in a six-bedroom mansion on Miami Beach’s North Bay Road, where palms rustled and clouds billowed like Rococo scrollwork, framing a crystal blue sky.

In 1969 Bryant began her second and most lucrative career—the Florida Citrus Commission, a politically powerful consortium of the state’s largest growers, crowned Bryant the Sunshine State’s official OJ Sweetheart. She became the star of TV spots and magazine ads, a lifestyle ambassador for frozen concentrated orange juice.

In an early commercial, Bryant strolls a sunny citrus grove, stabs a spigot in a dangling orange and sings a loping jingle, “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree,” as a five-foot glass fills with juice. She tugs the spigot out and collects the last golden sluice in a tumbler of normal size. She sips. And in an Oklahoma drag that’s genuine, gentle, and perfect, with just enough post-production echo to make it sound infallible, Bryant drops the tagline: “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”

Orange juice was, in a way, the Sun Belt’s symbol: healthy, wholesome, and optimistic, like… well, sunshine. Anita was its avatar. Then she became its avenging angel.

Per capita American OJ consumption would end up just about filling the Citrus Commission’s mighty sloshing prop glass. Houseware manufacturers like Libbey included pony-size juice tumblers in starter sets. Bars invited in a back squad of OJ party cocktails—Screwdrivers and Tequila Sunrises—to soak up the glut of concentrated juice. They invented the Alabama Slammer and the Harvey Wallbanger to keep things percolating in fern bars and fairway lounges.

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There was something else bending in OJ’s favor: a cultural tilt south. Starting in 1969, the collapse of the Rust Belt—factories in the Northeast and Upper Midwest closing, towns boarding up, labor unions shrinking—became an unavoidable narrative for papers and the evening news. The Sun Belt, a made-up political projection encompassing a westward sweep of the map from Jacksonville to San Diego, was where a new conservatism was spreading like the creep of subdivisions in the desert near Phoenix. Orange juice was, in a way, the Sun Belt’s symbol: healthy, wholesome, and optimistic, like… well, sunshine. Anita was its avatar. Then she became its avenging angel.

The year Bryant stabbed that orange with a spigot, 1969, was a year of events more tumultuous billowing up north. At New York City’s Stonewall Inn, demonstrations smoldered for days following a routine bust of queers, trans women, and drag queens that set off a riot, the official start of the gay liberation movement. In spite of an ambient distaste for homosexuals and the lack of even one openly gay or lesbian elected official anywhere in the nation, by the end of 1976, legislative bodies in 40 cities and counties and one state (Pennsylvania) had passed LGBT nondiscrimination laws in some form. An enlightened consensus was jelling. It said citizens shouldn’t be fired, or evicted, or denied service because they were gay, all standard under the old rules, when America discriminated righteously to thwart sodomy and other acts of moral degeneracy. But righteousness didn’t evaporate in the heat of Stonewall. Righteousness festered, biding its time.

As 1977 dawned in South Florida, liberals on the Miami–Dade County Commission passed a pretty standard homosexual nondiscrimination ordinance. Religious conservatives, including Bryant, representing her church, drew a line in the pale, sugar-fine sand. They spoke against the ordinance at a Commission hearing, arguing that the ordinance violated her rights as a person of faith. When it passed anyway, Bryant promised retribution, spinning a metaphor that, consciously or not, conjured a vision of Florida orange groves choked by a homosexual radicalism inching its sinister tendrils toward Washington and the Constitution. “The seed of sexual sickness,” Bryant said, “that germinated in Dade County has already been transplanted by misguided liberals in the U.S. Congress.”

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Bryant’s retribution came weeks later, when she and her allies delivered, in an enormous bulging old suitcase wheeled into the county registrar’s office on a dolly, signatures in favor of calling a special referendum on the Miami-Dade ordinance. Bryant and her allies launched Save Our Children, to urge voters to bury the homosexual nondiscrimination ordinance with a special referendum in June. Children were the true victims of the ordinance, which enabled homosexuals (and especially gay teachers) to bend the innocent ones toward a mincing evil. “Gays can’t reproduce,” Bryant would say—often—in variations on the line, “so they have to recruit.”

Gay and lesbian political groups nationally saw what was happening: Suddenly, Miami was America’s test case for the strength of the nascent homosexual civil rights movement. And they were going up against a star, a woman with a national profile, with the strength of one of Florida’s major industries tacitly, at least, behind her. They were up against the queen of frozen concentrated orange juice herself.

Some raised money to send to activists in Miami defending the ordinance. Jim Toy, an LGBT-rights pioneer in Michigan, remembers driving from Ann Arbor to Detroit to make the round of gay bars with a donation jar. Others tried to hurt Bryant at the source of her fame. “We didn’t know any way to get back at her,” says Wayne Friday, who in 1977 was president of San Francisco’s Tavern Guild, a powerful association of gay bar owners and employees. “So we just targeted orange juice.”

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Weeks after the Miami-Dade special referendum was called, gay bars across the U.S. were boycotting orange juice from the Sunshine State, and activists including Harvey Milk, a vocal organizer in the new queer scene in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, were urging people to drop it at breakfast. Consumer boycotts were a persuasive tactic of the left, starting with farm labor organizer César Chávez’s call in 1966 for shoppers to shun California grapes and lettuce. In 1977, organized labor called for a boycott of Coors beer to protest the company’s labor practices, its union-busting and alleged racism and homophobia. But the Florida orange juice boycott was the first organized by gay and lesbian activists. They called it a gaycott. And it was strongest in what was, in 1977, the gayest city in America.

In April, San Francisco’s Tavern Guild printed up notices on orange construction paper for its member bars to post. The signs didn’t state so much as throw down: “TO PROMOTE HUMAN RIGHTS this establishment DOES NOT SERVE FLORIDA ORANGE JUICE or orange juice from CONCENTRATE.”

Wayne Friday says the public boycott started at a Polk Street bar, the N’Touch. Friday tended bar there. “Bars up and down Polk Street,” Friday says, “they’d have a thing where they’d say, ‘Okay, at 11 in the morning everybody pour out your orange juice in the street.’ We even got some non-gay bars to do it. The police would get a little mad but the city would just wash down the street.”

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In some bars you could get a Screwdriver for half price if you brought in your own sack of oranges and squeezed them yourself, on little hand squeezers set out on the bar. You could bring in your own juice, but you had to know what you were carrying. “God help you if you brought a bottle of orange juice that was from Florida,” Friday says. “I’ve seen a bartender take it off the bar, look at the label, and pour it right down the drain.” Other bars pushed Greyhounds (vodka and grapefruit juice). Dan Perlman, a member of Ann Arbor’s Gay Student Union during the boycott, remembers a horrible grapefruit Tequila Sunrise, though a grapefruit Alabama Slammer tasted better (and still tastes better, he says) than the OJ original.

In his April 14 column for the Bay Area Reporter, a weekly gay newspaper, Harvey Milk urged readers to switch to pineapple juice for breakfast. “Some say that ONE can of OJ won’t make any difference,” he wrote. “Before Bryant becomes more powerful, remember that your ONE can adds up to millions of ONE cans throughout the nation. The only way to stop this bigot is to have a fully effective economic boycott.”

A queer cottage industry of anti-Anita protest gear popped up, with oranges as symbols of active (and sometimes passive) defiance: “Anita, Dear… Cram It”; “Stop V.D. Fuck Oranges.” People wore orange buttons that said “Squeeze Anita!” “A Day Without Human Rights Is Like a Day Without Sunshine,” read a popular T-shirt in all-caps bold, under a rough-skinned orange lurking like the Death Star.

Bryant spent the five months of the Miami-Dade campaign defiant, showing up at her church school to sing “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” with kindergartners as props. “Anita Bryant was once known as an orange juice saleswoman,” the local Miami NBC affiliate reported. “Not anymore. With a religious fervor that has made her the nation’s most controversial woman overnight, she has been selling her Save Our Children group.”

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Bryant portrayed her own martyrdom at the hand of the gaycott. “They’re coming, attacking my livelihood,” Bryant told a TV reporter, “and it has undermined a 10-year relationship with Florida citrus of goodwill. But I feel strongly, and I have great faith in God, that he’s going to take care of me. I’m not afraid. I have not been moved in that respect. And I do not believe that the product and the people I represent will be intimidated by that kind of a force.” She vowed to fight on, even if what she called her livelihood (in 1977 the Florida Citrus Commission paid her $100,000; adjusted for inflation that’s a little over $400,000 today) was stripped from her.

“We’re dealing with a vile and a vicious and a vulgar gang,” a young Jerry Falwell, Bryant’s supporter, said of Save Our Children’s foes.

The gays and their allies were simply outplayed. Save Our Children hired a Republican political consultant to produce a devastating ad, contrasting Miami’s annual Orange Bowl Parade with the San Francisco Pride march. The image of a baton twirler at the Orange Bowl, a girl with rosy cheeks, in a white, stylized military uniform, gives way to washed-out footage from San Francisco of a shirtless man in worn jeans and feathered hair, pelvic-thrusting on a float with a sad-looking palm tree, then cuts to another man in a black jockstrap and studded leather halter.

“The Orange Bowl Parade,” you hear a man say in voiceover, “Miami’s gift to the nation, wholesome entertainment. But in San Francisco, when they take to the streets, it’s a parade of homosexuals, men hugging other men, cavorting with little boys. The same people who turned San Francisco into a hotbed of homosexuality want to do the same thing to Dade County.” The dystopian gay metropolis appears furtive and frantic, fueled by speed and menace.

They never really had a chance, the gays and lesbians on OJ pickets at supermarkets or arguing their case at grocery co-op meetings, squeezing oranges or passing donation jars in gay bars. They thought the cause of civil rights, pretty much alone, would rally voters of conscience. They expected easier grounds for common cause with other minorities who’d suffered oppression.

As election news from 3,000 miles away seeped in through TVs, bars bumping Thelma Houston and Donna Summer emptied onto the streets of San Francisco’s burgeoning gay neighborhood that chilly night in June. By a two-to-one margin, voters in Dade County had killed the nondiscrimination ordinance. At an event she called the Lord’s victory supper, Anita Bryant was gleamingly triumphant. She vowed to take the fight to every city, county seat, and state capitol in the nation with laws protecting gay people.

The crowd in San Francisco marched from the Castro to Polk Street, chanting, carrying candles in Dixie cups.. They milled around City Hall, returned to the Castro, and sat down in a busy intersection. Harvey Milk marched at the head of the crowd; later he spoke. Nobody had seen such a large and spontaneous takeover of the streets by so many calling themselves “faggots” and “dykes.” “I feel like the bill of rights has been wadded up on a cheap piece of paper and thrown in the wastebasket,” a woman told a radio reporter that night. You could hear her anger.

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Others glimpsed a measure of victory in defeat. Bob Kunst, Bryant’s opponent on the ground in Miami, said the ordinance fight had galvanized world opinion. “She gave us every access to world media,” Kunst said from the post-referendum party in a quietly reflective at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. “We had over 50,000 news clippings, this was the turning point where ‘gay’ became a household word, and we opened up the entire debate on human sexuality.”

For Milk, defeat was a reckoning, a reminder that gays and lesbians had to unify, to organize, and most of all to come out. Later that year, Milk would become the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in America. Just 17 months later he’d be assassinated, shot by a former cop, but not before he’d inspired a more active national LGBT movement and urged every one of the estimated 15 million queer Americans to come out to President Jimmy Carter, by letter. It wasn’t until 1998, 20 years later, that Dade County passed a new gay and lesbian rights ordinance. It’s still in effect, though conservative groups tried to repeal it in 2002.

The orange juice gaycott went on after the referendum, petering out gradually. Bryant continued the work of Save Our Children; she was met with picket lines and protests everywhere she went. In Iowa, a protester nailed her with a cream pie. It is, perhaps, the enduring image of Anita, flicking pie crust out of one eye, praying for the man who threw it.

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“At first the Florida Citrus Commission was bombarded,” Bryant told the Miami Herald after the referendum. “I guess people had nothing better to do than to write and to boycott. Then the mothers of America retaliated, I think. Sales are up 15 percent over last year. The citrus people say I’m a private citizen, that I can express my views.” It was an exaggeration, or wishful thinking. Two weeks after the referendum the public relations spokesman for Florida citrus said he wished Bryant would resign. At the end of 1978, in the same month Milk was assassinated, Bryant was fired. In 1980 she and Bob Green divorced. She experienced bankruptcy and decline. In 1990, trying to make a comeback with a new album, Bryant told Inside Story she had no regrets about what she did in Dade County in 1977. “I don’t regret it because I did the right thing.” She now lives quietly in Oklahoma.

On the night of the referendum, people called in to Fruit Punch, a gay radio show broadcast across the bay from San Francisco in Berkeley, to express their anger, fear, or despair. “I just about broke down in tears, something like this happening in our country,” a woman said in a weary tone. Another seemed almost chipper in her resolve. “I’m not gay myself,” she explained. “I just want to say that Anita Bryant has made me really mad because she’s wasting her time on negative things.”

She said she had a solution, said it with the optimism of the perpetually just. “We are giving up orange juice.”

Bob Green, Anti-Gay Bigot, Dies As Resentful As He Lived

Most people have no idea who he was. You can’t blame them. He was just a speed bump on the road toward equality of rights. Behind the scenes, however, he played an important role in creating the “culture war” that still plagues this nation.

Anita Bryant, the anti-gay crusader, was his wife. He didn’t play the role of sidekick; he was the power behind the throne.

Bryant was a would-be beauty queen, a Miss America runner-up who tried a singing career. She managed a small number of songs in the top 100 but was never star material. Green met her when he was a radio station DJ and escorted her to a music industry convention. They married in 1960, and he took control of Anita’s career.

Her career peaked when the Florida Citrus Commission hired her as a spokeswoman. Her commercials hawking orange juice made her a familiar face in American living rooms, something she used to her advantage in 1977 when she and Bob launched their anti-gay campaign. The couple trotted out all the usual anti-gay stereotypes, right down to naming their organization Save Our Children.

Their campaign resulted in numerous copycats working to repeal anti-discrimination laws around the country — but only those anti-discrimination laws that protected the LGBT community. Jerry Falwell rushed to Miami to support her but stole the lucrative anti-gay issue from under her by forming his Moral Majority.

In addition to pushing the usual stereotypes, Bryant even claimed that her “ministry” was capable of “curing” gay people through prayer. Save Our Children originated most of the talking points still used by the religious right in regard to gay people.

I made my way to Indianapolis on Oct. 7, 1977 to witness Bryant and Green in action. They were there to promote a “Right to Decency” bill introduced by Rep. Don Boys, a fundamentalist minister. Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell were the draw for an evening rally. Earlier, her fundamentalist followers held a march in support of the bill. Some carried protest signs demanding that gay people be executed. Others seriously told me that the presence of homosexuals caused droughts. I jokingly asked if it were possible to control flooding by busing homosexuals, and one person seriously told me it would work.

Bryant had a concert/rally scheduled in South Bend on the Oct. 27, so I called the sponsoring minister and persuaded him to allow me to spend the day at the auditorium with Bryant and Green. It was eye-opening. Bryant was practicing, but between numbers she and Green would talk with me. When they weren’t talking to me, I was watching them.

Anita was plastered in make-up, though she was only 37 at time. Green, nine years her senior, dominated her completely.

Through the rehearsal he’d chastised her, pointing out every error or flaw. He wasn’t kindly, either. He barked at her. She didn’t talk back, but her body language was unmistakable. She tensed when he neared; her eyes shot barbs of contemptuous anger in his direction. Theirs was obviously a terminally ill marriage. Having experienced an abusive father at home, I was sensitive to the signs. I wondered how much worse it was behind closed doors, without a stranger watching.

At first, Save Our Children was rolling in money. But Falwell and other hate-mongers jumped into the market. Falwell’s television empire easily pushed Save Our Children out of the cash-generating limelight. Bryant’s records weren’t going to make her rich, and by publicly taking a political position, Bryant was poison as a spokeswoman. In 1979 the Florida Citrus Commission didn’t renew her expiring contract.

The final straw was a 1980 divorce. She claimed emotional abuse as the reason. Green insisted that they were still married according to the Bible and opposed her, publicly urging her to return to his side. The messy public divorce angered fundamentalists, her last source of support, guaranteeing her a well-deserved decline into obscurity. And when she was no longer in the public eye, Bob Green became a nobody. It took the media over a month to notice he had died.

Green remained bitter until the end. Bryant had told the world what I already knew, that their marriage “was never much good to begin with.” He never took responsibility for the decline and fall of Anita Bryant. He blamed gays, saying, “Blame gay people? I do. Their stated goal was to put her out of business and destroy her career. And that’s what they did. It’s unfair.” But Bob Green was the one who managed her into obscurity. He encouraged the crusade that lost her the spokeswoman career, and they couldn’t out-compete Falwell in the anti-gay market.

In The Miami Herald Steve Rothaus wrote, “For more than 30 years, Mr. Green lived quietly, alone and resentful.” He didn’t take responsibility for the choices he made. He convinced himself that it was all the fault of “the gays” and his ex-wife. Anita told Rothaus, “Bob internalized a lot of his own anger and frustration and disappointments. … I tried to be his friend, but you can only go so far.”

Reference

The Orange Juice Boycott That Changed America, My Recipes, 13 February 2018, by John Birdsall https://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/the-orange-juice-boycott-that-changed-america
Bob Green, Anti-Gay Bigot, Dies As Resentful As He Lived, HuffPost, 27 February 2012 Updated 6 December 2017, by James Peron https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bob-green_b_1300792

Gay History: A Queer Bushranger

May 19, 2021Article, biography, Gay Interest, General Interest, HistoryAndrew George Scott, bush rangers, Captain Moonlight, Captain Moonlite, James Nesbitt, The Wantabadgery Bushrangerstimalderman

Darlinghurst Gaol record of AG Scott, alias Captain Moonlite, November 1879. Image courtesy of State Records NSW

The tale of Captain Moonlite

I first learned of Captain Moonlite from the historian Graham Willett. In Secret Histories of Queer Melbourne, a book Willett co-edited, Moonlite features “as the bushranger most likely to qualify as queer”.

Andrew George Scott – George to his friends – was born in 1845 (some records say 1843) to a wealthy family in Ireland. He emigrated with them to New Zealand in 1861, where his father served as a clergyman and magistrate. Arriving in Australia six years later, the young Scott, too, became a lay preacher, before turning to crime. In 1879, he held up a cattle station in New South Wales. Two of his associates were killed when the police arrived, as was a constable – and Scott was hanged in Sydney at the start of the following year.

But it was Scott’s relationship with James Nesbitt, one of his gang members, that attracted Willett’s attention. “Nesbitt and I were united by every tie which could bind human friendship,” wrote Scott (underlining and all) during his final incarceration. “We were one in hopes, one in heart and souland this unity lasted until he died in my arms.” Awaiting execution, Scott wore a ring made from Nesbitt’s hair, and pleaded with his gaolers to bury him with the younger man in the graveyard at Gundagai.

“I long to join him where there shall be no more parting,” he wrote.

The request wasn’t granted, of course, but Willett’s account concludes by explaining how, in 1995, “a group of [Scott’s] admirers persuaded the government to surrender Moonlite’s body to be re-interred in the Gundagai cemetery”.

That struck me as entirely remarkable. Exhumation requests are seldom granted. Given the context, I’d assumed Moonlite’s “admirers” to be queer agitators. One of them was a woman called Christine Ferguson, who was definitely an activist – but her activism centred on the National Party, of which she’d been federal president until earlier this year.

What was going on? Why had a leader of a staunchly socially conservative party gone to such trouble to re-bury an executed murderer next to the man he loved?

I found the phone number of the cattle and sheep station Ferguson runs near Gundagai. Oh, yes, she said, she’d love to talk about Moonlite.

When Scott landed in Victoria in 1868, he may well have been fleeing a scandal concerning his military service in New Zealand. Regardless, the Bishop of Melbourne offered the well-spoken newcomer a plum post as a lay preacher in the Bacchus Marsh settlement. At the time, worshippers there were still gathering each Sunday in a building known as the Iron Church, one of many pieces of prefabricated infrastructure imported during the Victorian gold rush. In archival photos, it looks like a corrugated-iron shed, unflatteringly supplemented with a steeple.

Such was the colony at the time: a still fluid society in which the stone certainties of Anglicanism were replicated with ersatz materials entirely unsuited to the local climate. The setting suited Scott, who emerges from Paul Terry’s authoritative biography In Search of Captain Moonlite as charming, self-centred, and almost entirely amoral.

The Reverend WH Cooper of Bacchus Marsh presented the recruit to his flock “as a young warrior who now has a firm grip on the sword of righteousness”. And, at first, Scott justified Cooper’s faith. The archivist at Bacchus Marsh’s present-day Holy Trinity Church showed me a weathered ledger where Scott’s beautiful copperplate signature repeatedly appeared alongside the number of parishioners he attracted – generally, close to 100 each week.

But in early 1869 a man called Robert Crook faced the Bacchus Marsh Court House accused of breaking a neighbour’s fences and stealing his cattle. Scott had ingratiated himself with the Crook clan, one of the grandest families in the parish, and obligingly provided the young squire with an alibi. Unfortunately, it was immediately contradicted by one of his Sunday school students, who swore she’d seen Scott and Crook loitering near the crime scene.

Naturally, the court believed a churchman over a teenage girl. But the acquittal did not quell the Anglican hierarchy’s unease about its lay preacher, who was abruptly banished to the isolated mining town of Mount Egerton.

The remains of the Iron Church were sold for scrap in the 1870s to make way for a stone chapel, but the archivist directed me to a decaying house on the corner of Waddell and Graham streets where pieces had been dumped. In the knee-high grass of the backyard I found rusted slabs of iron – remnants of the church – now crudely fashioned into a garden shed. Wasps were nesting on one panel; there was a strong smell of rot coming from inside.

It felt, perhaps fittingly, like a crime scene.

In dusty Mount Egerton, Scott befriended the few respectable people he could find, including a 17-year-old banker, Ludwig Julius Wilhelm Bruun, and the town’s schoolteacher, James Simpson.

On 8 May 1869, Bruun told authorities that a masked man had forced him to open the bank’s safe and hand over its gold. The intruder left a note: “I hereby certify that LW Bruun has done everything within his power to withstand this intrusion and the taking of money which was done with firearms.”

It was signed “Captain Moonlite”.

The whole implausible story was probably a fabrication, a scam cooked up by Scott, Bruun and Simpson. Their friendship, however, had soured, and Bruun said he recognised the gunman as his former friend, tying Scott to the Moonlite moniker. Scott hotly denied the charge and threw the blame back at Bruun and Simpson, who were sent to trial (and later acquitted); Scott departed hurriedly, taking himself to Fiji and then to Sydney, where he began spending the wealth he’d mysteriously acquired.

In late 1870, he was arrested for passing bad cheques. Confined in Maitland Gaol, he feigned madness and was transferred to the more comfortable Parramatta Lunatic Asylum, where the medical registry described him as a “civil but … unprincipled fellow without a spark of honour or decency to him”.

Upon his release in 1872, Scott was charged with the Mount Egerton robbery. While on remand, he dug through the brickwork in his cell and scaled the walls of the gaol. He was quickly recaptured. Redmond Barry (the judge who later sentenced Ned Kelly to death) sentenced Scott to ten years in Melbourne’s Pentridge prison for the robbery, adding one for his attempted escape.

As a criminal, Scott was always more urban hustler than highwayman. But he was handsome and athletic, had reportedly seen heavy combat in the so-called Maori Wars, and was a skilled rider and crack shot. The Captain Moonlite sobriquet, with its irresistible hint of midnight romance, took on a life of its own. His attempted escape further popularised the reputation of the bold and dashing Moonlite. “Brave to the verge of recklessness,” a journalist wrote, “cool, clear-headed and sagacious, and with a certain chivalrous dash, he is the beau ideal of a brigand chief.”

The press thought him a bushranger – and a bushranger he would become.

It was a long drive from Bacchus Marsh to Gundagai. The spring rain had left the wheatfields a deep green and those of canola garishly yellow. The landscape tramped by George Scott and James Nesbitt and their four young companions, in drought-stricken 1879, must have been very different.

Scott met Nesbitt – a petty criminal from Carlton – in Pentridge, where the younger man was once disciplined for “taking tea to Prisoner Scott”. As biographer Terry says, it’s an affectingly tender infraction.

Upon Scott’s release in March 1879, the men shared a rundown house in Fitzroy. But how would they live? Scott tried lecturing on prison reform but, though he drew huge crowds, theatres often refused to book him, particularly with the press linking the notorious Moonlite with every unsolved crime. Police warned potential employers against him; he was dragged in for questioning about the most preposterous allegations.

Scott resolved to walk to New South Wales in search of work and a new start. He took with him a coterie of young men from the slums of inner Melbourne. Like Nesbitt, Thomas Rogan was 21. Frank Johns, Graham Bennett and Augustus Wernicke were in their teens. Exiled from polite society, the 34-year-old Scott basked in the admiration of these youths, to whom, as an urbane intellectual, he seemed like a visitor from another world.

The journey proved an utter disaster, a weary trudge along a hot and inhospitable track. The privations were exacerbated by constant police harassment.

“As long as our money lasted,” Scott explained later, “we bought bread, and when our money was gone we sold our clothes and bought bread, with what we obtained for them. We tried to get work, but could not, and we fasted day after day.”

They’d been living on damper and tea and koala meat – and then no food at all – when they approached Wantabadgery Station, near Gundagai. The property was known for its hospitality but, unbeknown to Scott, it had recently changed hands and the new owner harboured little sympathy for itinerants.

Abruptly ordered to leave, Scott snapped.

“Misery and hunger produced despair,” he wrote later, “and in one wild hour we proved how much the wretched dare.” He retreated into the bush and then returned with gun in hand – transforming, at last, into the persona that had been created for him.

The men with Scott had never previously left the city, let alone ridden a horse. Suddenly, though, they too were bushrangers.

Scott acquired nothing of value at the station. Instead, he demanded food and drink. Leaving his men, he then bailed up the Australian Arms Hotel and detained everyone inside before forcing them back to Wantabadgery: he was more concerned about playing the gentlemanly host than planning an escape.

Inevitably, the police arrived; inevitably, a gunfight ensued.

Scott and his small gang then decamped to a nearby farmhouse, which was soon surrounded by troopers. “Come and fight!” Scott yelled, even though the rest of his gang could barely hold a rifle. Poor Tom Rogan spent the whole shootout hiding under a bed.

Wernicke was mortally wounded. “I am only fifteen,” he cried. A short time later, Nesbitt was shot in the head. A journalist of the time described how, as Nesbitt died, Scott “wept over him like a child, laid his head upon his breast, and kissed him passionately”.

In the exchange of fire, Senior Constable Edward Webb-Bowen took a bullet in the spine – his subsequent death sealed Scott’s fate. The surviving “bushrangers” were tried for murder. With the Kelly Gang still at large, the court set an example, handing down death sentences to all. Johns and Bennett received an eventual commutation on the grounds of their youth; Scott and Rogan (who hadn’t even fired a shot) walked to the gallows on 20 January 1880 and were buried at Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery.

I drove to Kimo Estate, about 20 minutes from Gundagai, where a troop of dogs romped up to greet me. A minute later, Christine Ferguson roared into view on a ride-on mower. She was wearing a pullover emblazoned with a Captain Moonlite logo.

“G’day,” she said, wiping clean her hands. “You find the place all right?”

Kimo’s house dates back to the 1870s, and is pleasantly weathered. In spite of recent renovations for the bed-and-breakfast trade, Kimo is still a working farm. We sat in a lounge room crowded with books and framed photos, and talked about the exhumation in 1995.

Ferguson confirmed that disinterring a corpse wasn’t easy.

“We were actually the first people who weren’t relatives or the state to get a body exhumed. The only reason it was possible was because of Moonlite’s last letter, in which he wished to be buried in Gundagai next to his friends.”

But why had Ferguson gone to such trouble? “Here you are putting money and time into re-burying a convicted murderer who seems to have been involved in a same-sex relationship. It does seem, well, a bit strange.”

“Well, it was really only after the whole event that people raised that he might be gay,” Ferguson explained. “For a long time, we said, ‘Look, we believe they were just good mates, good friends.’ Just recently Sam Asimus, my partner in crime in the whole affair, told me she’d done some more research and she thinks Scott might have been bisexual. But who knows?”

As well as exhumation approval from the state, the women needed permission from the Anglican Church – eventually, both were granted. Ferguson’s team enlisted a local undertaker (“He was terribly excited!”), and they brought an ornate horse-drawn hearse to Gundagai on the back roads. The pallbearers wore period costumes.

“The locals here aren’t terribly excited about anything much,” Ferguson said, shrugging. “But when it was all done and it didn’t cost them any money, they did get into the swing of things. We had people lining the roads to watch.”

I still wanted to talk about sexuality. I’d learned about Moonlite from Willett and other gay historians, I explained. “Here was someone saying in those last letters, ‘I love this man, I want to be buried with him.’”

“He actually didn’t say that,” Ferguson said, then corrected herself. “Well, he did say it – in a way. But it was a long time ago, and mates were mates. We don’t know if he was gay or not. It comes down to your interpretation of ‘mate’ and what ‘mateship’ would have meant at the time.”

Fair enough. But mateship was a lot queerer than most people thought. In his 1958 book The Australian Legend, which popularised the concept as a national trait, Russel Ward suggested that, in the masculine environment of the frontier, the typical bushman satisfied himself sexually with prostitutes and indigenous women, then assuaged his “spiritual hunger” with “a sublimated homosexual relationship with a mate, or a number of mates”.

Was that how to think about Scott? In Bacchus Marsh, he seems to have been involved with a woman named Mrs Ames, who felt strongly enough about Scott to visit him regularly before his execution. Yet she barely registers in Scott’s death-cell writings, in which he returns again and again to Nesbitt.

“He died in my arms,” Scott wrote. “His death has broken my heart.”

That didn’t seem sublimated.

In one of his letters, Scott ended his plea for burial alongside Nesbitt with a quotation:

Now call me hence by thy side to be:
The world thou leavest has no place for me.
Give me my home on thy noble heart,
Well have we loved – let us both depart.

The lines came from a Felicia Hemans poem entitled ‘The Lady of Provence’.

“The original was about the feelings of a woman for her dead lover,” I mentioned to Ferguson. “So here’s Scott including what seems to me clearly a love poem to a man.”

“Well, that was never brought up at the time,” she said. “But, again, we don’t have the evidence. Do homosexuals now write poems to each other? It’s an odd thing to do, writing poems – not something people do these days.”

Until quite recently, I’d been the editor of Overland, a literary journal that regularly publishes poetry. Nevertheless, I took the point. The more I read about sexuality in the 19^th century, the more it seemed both strikingly familiar and disconcertingly strange.

During Scott’s criminal career, the police in Victoria had been led by Chief Commissioner Frederick Standish. He was a gambler and libertine, who, at one notorious dinner, decorated the room with naked women seated on black chairs to better show off their white bodies. When Prince Alfred, the second son of Queen Victoria, toured Melbourne in 1867, Standish acted as royal pimp, escorting the prince to Sarah Fraser’s brothel in Stephen Street.

But, as Willett says in Secret Histories of Queer Melbourne, the commissioner was also infatuated with men – in particular with Frank Hare, another policeman chasing the Kellys. “It was almost pathetic to see …” wrote one of their contemporaries, “how restless and uneasy [Standish] became were Hare out of his company. I have seen Standish on the top rail of a fence watching anxiously for Hare’s return from a short ride.”

And then there was the story of Edward Feeney, who, eight years before Scott’s execution, was put to death at Melbourne Gaol for his part in a bizarre suicide pact.

In March 1872, Feeney had accompanied Charles Marks into Melbourne’s Treasury Gardens, where, according to a pre-arranged plan, they attempted to shoot each other. Feeney’s gun fired; Marks’ didn’t. This left Feeney on trial for murder.

Feeney refused to offer any explanation. But the court heard that he and Marks exchanged letters about their passionate love for each other. A bar owner testified that they regularly cuddled in his premises, sometimes laying their heads on each other’s laps. In her article about the case, historian Amanda Kaladelfos points out that while the proprietor believed their behaviour unusual, “he expressed no malice toward Marks and Feeney; nor did he give evidence that he ever asked them to stop showing their affections in his place of business”.

“Men often slept together in the same beds,” historian Clive Moore explains in his study of sexuality on the frontier, “without raising the slightest suspicion that they were involved in what we would call a homosexual affair, were physically affectionate, had romantic crushes, wrote lovingly to each other and fretted when they were apart … For most of the 19^th century there was no clear social, medical or legal concept of homosexuality; homosexual acts were recognised, particularly sodomy, but not a personal disposition or social identity.”

Today, of course, matters are very different.

“Is there a gay community in Gundagai?” I asked Christine Ferguson.

“Hmm. I know one who’s come here, used to be with Qantas and he’s here … I’ve only met him once but I know he’s here. A couple of others in town who are probably bachelors but most people say they are [gay]. But that’s about it.”

“Do they have a hard time?”

“No, I don’t think so. You really wouldn’t know. They’re not openly living with a bloke or anything. Gundagai is conservative but I don’t think it’s really bothered by homosexuality.”

“Would the town be open to the tourist potential of Moonlite as a gay icon?”

“No, I didn’t think Gundagai would be into that,” Ferguson replied. “A lot of the old people want to keep Gundagai how it is and how it has been in the past. They don’t see … they’re not very progressive.”

She told me that she and Samantha Asimus had wanted to establish a bushrangers and police museum in the old gaol, when a property there became available. They’d had plans for holograms; they’d spoken to the Justice & Police Museum in Sydney about borrowing exhibits.

“We thought it would be fabulous for the town. But no, no one was interested.”

We talked for a little while about politics in general – Ferguson is close friends with Tony Abbott and struggled to sound enthusiastic about Malcolm Turnbull – and then she showed me through the station.

“I like to have a project,” she said. “I like to keep myself busy.”

And that, it seemed, helped to explain her involvement in the re-burial, a cause she’d taken on almost because of its inherent difficulty.

In his cell, Scott had described the headstone he wanted:

[A] rough unhewn rock would be most fit, one that skilled hands could have made into something better. It will be like those it marks, as kindness and charity could have shaped us to better ends.

The words were now carved into a suitably craggy stone located at the very edge of the North Gundagai Cemetery.

In some ways, the sentiment seemed less apposite for Scott (who, in his early life at least, had scarcely been deprived of opportunities) than for the slum kids who died with him.

Ever since I stumbled upon Edward Feeney and Charles Marks’ story, I’d been thinking about the inner-city origins of Moonlite’s unhappy gang, and the strange visual connection between the past and present. Before Marks and Feeney went to the Treasury Gardens to kill each other, they’d posed for final portraits in a Bourke Street photographer’s studio. The resulting images are utterly compelling. In one picture, they’re holding hands – and, with their bushy whiskers and cloth trousers, they look disconcertingly contemporary. You would not blink an eye to see them strolling in Fitzroy or Carlton today.

On the scaffold, Feeney had issued a statement denying he’d been “improperly intimate” with Marks. The doctors who dissected his body inspected his rectum for signs of sodomy. In that posthumous indignity, we can detect, Amanda Kaladelfos says, the beginning of the modern science of sexuality, which in the decades to come would establish “homosexuality” as a distinct and all-consuming pathology.

A second photo of Marks and Feeney depicts them with pistols against each other’s breast. The photographer had suggested they pose as “bushrangers”, a comment that made me wonder if, by the 1870s, the life of the outlaw gang was seen as representing a kind of male intimacy that the cities were beginning to exclude.

Was Feeney gay? Was Moonlite? In one sense, asking such questions is almost silly, the projection of contemporary categories onto a past where they did not belong. Yet, in another sense, the rediscovery of men who loved other men (as both Feeney and Moonlite clearly did) matters a great deal.

I’d also asked Christine Ferguson whether, in today’s Gundagai, men who wrote love poems to other men would be welcome in the local pub.

“Yeah, they probably wouldn’t go to the pub,” she replied, amused at the thought. “The pubs in here are pretty blokey.” She didn’t drink in them much herself, and nor did many women.

Surely that was the value of the Moonlite story. It revealed the traditional masculinity enforced in public bars, sporting clubs and other bastions of heterosexuality to be neither innate nor eternal.

Scott had designed his own epitaph. He’d wanted it to read “This stone covers the remains of two friends”. He’d then written Nesbitt’s name and his own, with Nesbitt’s death listed as the date the pair were “separated”, and his own execution recorded as when they were “united by death”.

The exact location of Nesbitt’s body in this cemetery is no longer known. When Scott’s body was re-buried, the tombstone noted that he had been “laid to final rest near his friends James Nesbitt and Augustus Wernicke who lie in unmarked graves close by”.

The inscription diffused Scott’s passion for one man into a more conventional friendship with two.

The morning was starting to warm, but Scott’s grave was pleasantly shaded by a beautiful old gum tree. Its slight separation from the rest of the cemetery gave it an unmistakeable prominence – a gesture that the always-vain Scott would have liked.

Why bushranger Captain Moonlite died with a lock of hair in his hand

HISTORY
Moonlite: The True and Tragic Love Story of Captain Moonlite and the Dying Days of the Bushrangers
Garry Linnell
Michael Joseph, $34.99

In the annals of bushranging, Andrew George Scott (aka Captain Moonlite) is not as familiar a name as Ned Kelly, though arguably he was just as complex and interesting a character as well as being similarly accomplished as a horseman. Scott was Irish – technically more so than Kelly, having been born there – but he came from a very different background from the leader of the Kelly Gang, being well-educated and Protestant. But both had occasion to be tried in a courtroom presided over by Sir Redmond Barry, also an Irishman.

The grave of Captain Moonlite. CREDIT:LUKE WATSON

The story of the life and misadventures of Captain Moonlite is recounted with gusto in this book.

The front cover boldly announces “A New Era of Australian Storytelling”, with Garry Linnell explaining that he tried to write a work of non-fiction “in a style that borrows heavily from novels and movies – using character development, pacing, dialogue and sub-plots” to enliven material drawn exclusively from archival sources.

Linnell consciously departs from the conventions of popular history by declaring “I despise footnotes” and questioning whether anyone ever reads them.

The armour notwithstanding, Kelly was not as showy as Scott, who created the legend of Captain Moonlite, dressing himself in a black crepe mask and cape-like coat as though he was a stage villain in some provincial melodrama.

Captain Moonlite was frank about his feelings for James Nesbitt.

For all its theatricality, the criminal persona was somewhat effective in obscuring Scott’s true identity. The performance was designed to instil fear and awe in Moonlite’s victims though it did have an absurd aspect, since Scott had a limp that tended to give him away no matter how impressively he tried to present himself to the world as a swashbuckling land pirate.

These days Kelly is regarded by many Australians as a prototypical bogan who, if he had been born a century or more later, would have worn flannelette and performed burnouts in a stolen Commodore. By contrast, Captain Moonlite was the nearest thing to a dandy highwayman in the tough yet surprisingly sentimental frontier culture that produced the bushrangers and their networks of supporters. We can imagine Kelly enjoying AC/DC while Scott might have preferred to listen to Adam and the Ants.

Like so many of the misfits and ne’er-do-wells from privileged families in Britain and Ireland that fetched up in far-flung colonies, Scott tried different careers but could not settle down to anything respectable. Linnell speculates that Scott, who pleaded insanity at a trial for fraud and was confined to the Parramatta Lunatic Asylum, was bipolar. The authorities concluded that Scott was feigning mental illness while plotting to escape and had him transferred to a regular prison.

Like Kelly, Scott’s career as a bushranger was curtailed in part by the then new modern technology of the telegraph and the railway, as well as more effective policing.

Perhaps the most compelling section of Moonlite features the extraordinary tenderness with which Scott regarded his last partner in crime and the love of his life, James Nesbitt, whom he met while both men were doing time in Pentridge. Scott was disarmingly frank about his feelings for the younger man, especially in an era during the 19th century when sex was not discussed publicly and homosexuality was harshly suppressed by the state.

Scott was captured following a deadly shootout and condemned to be executed. Linnell writes that at the end of his troubled life he thought only of Nesbitt, who had died in his arms during the last stand of Captain Moonlite.

“When they finally hauled Scott to his feet, handcuffed him and led him away, Scott took with him a lock of Nesbitt’s hair. In the years to come, as legend and myth and fact all merged into one, it would be said that Captain Moonlite went to the gallows with that lock of hair forming a ring on the wedding finger of his left hand.”

Reference

A queer bushranger, The Monthly, November 2015, by Jeff Sparrow
Why bushranger Captain Moonlite died with a lock of hair in his hand, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December 2020, by Simon Caterson https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/why-bushranger-captain-moonlite-died-with-a-lock-of-hair-in-his-hand-20201204-p56knq.html