Category Archives: History

Gay History: The Complete Guide to Every Queer Pride Flag

Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, History, ,

Whether you’re celebrating Pride in New York or Tel Aviv, you’ll be seeing all sorts of flags — and not just those in the traditional rainbow. There are many sexualities in on the queer spectrum, and we’ve identified the flags for each. Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments.

Gilbert Baker Pride Flag

In 1977, Harvey Milk challenged Gilbert Baker, a veteran who taught himself to sew, to come up with a symbol of pride for the gay community. His response? The original Pride flag. Inspired by Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow,” these colors flew at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade celebration on June 25, 1978. Though some dispute whether Baker was the sole creator of the flag that started it all, its symbolism remains. Each color celebrates an aspect of queer Pride:

Hot pink =  Sex

Red = Life

Orange = Healing

Yellow = Sunlight

Green = Nature

Turquoise = Magic/Art

Indigo = Serenity

Violet = Spirit

1978-1999 Pride Flag

After the assassination of Harvey Milk, many wanted the Pride flag he commissioned to commemorate his accomplishments for the community and their personal support. The demand was greater than the available fabric, so the Paramount Flag Company began selling this version of the flag, as did Gilbert Baker, who had trouble getting hot pink fabric.

Traditional Gay Pride Flag

This is the most familiar flag. In 1979, the community landed on this six-color version, which was hung from lampposts in San Francisco. Numerous complications over having an odd-number of colors led to turquoise being dropped, at least according to reports. Read more about the modern flag here.

Philadelphia People Of Color Inclusive Flag

Noting that queer people of color are often not fully included in the LGBT community, the city of Philadelphia added two colors — black and brown — to the Pride flag in their honor. The city had previously faced accusations of racial discrimination in its gay bars, which led 11 queer nightlife venues to take antiracism training. Many white men were outraged by the flag, claiming that rainbow includes all skin colors, but with a star like Lena Waithe donning it at the Met Gala, it seems the design is here to stay.

Progress Pride Flag

This new flag seeks to take Philadelphia’s inclusive approach a step further. Daniel Quasar, who identifies as queer and nonbinary, designed this flag. The white, pink, and light blue reflect the colors of the transgender flag, while the brown and black stripes represent people of color and those lost to AIDS. “When the Pride flag was recreated in the last year to include both black/brown stripes as well as the trans stripes included this year, I wanted to see if there could be more emphasis in the design of the flag to give it more meaning,” Quasar explained on his Kickstarter.

Bisexual Flag

Designed by Michael Page, the flag brings visibility to the bisexual community, showing the overlap of the stereotypical colors for boys and girls. The flag was inspired by an older symbol of bisexuality: the “biangles,” two overlapping pink and dark blue triangles.

Pansexual Pride

Created on the web in 2010, this flag has colors that represent pansexuality’s interest in all genders as partners. The pink represents women, yellow nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people, and the blue is for men.

Asexual Flag

Like the pansexual flag, the asexual flag was created in 2010. Inspired by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network logo, it represents many ace identities, including graysexuals (the fluid area between sexuals and asexuals) and demisexuals (people who don’t experience sexual attraction unless they have an emotional connection with their partners.

Labrys Lesbian Pride Flag

Oddly enough, this sapphic symbol was created by a man. Created in 1999 by gay graphic designer Sean Campbell, the flag has not gained much traction in the lesbian community. It features a labrys, an ax-like weapon used by Grecian amazons.

Polyamory Flag

Featuring the symbol for the infinite numberpi, which shares the first letter of “polyamory,” this flag celebrates the infinite selection of partners available to polyamorous people. The letter is gold to represent the emotional attachment we have with others as friends and romantic partnerss, rather than just our carnal relationships.

Intersex Flag

Designed in 2013 by the organization Intersex International Australia, this flag intentionally features nongendered colors that celebrate living outside the binary.

Transgender Flag

Monica Helms, a trans woman, designed this flag in 1999, and it was first flown at a Pride Parade in Phoenix a year later. “The light blue is the traditional color for baby boys, pink is for girls, and the white in the middle is for those who are transitioning, those who feel they have a neutral gender or no gender, and those who are intersexed,” Helms noted. “The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it will always be correct. This symbolizes us trying to find correctness in our own lives.”

Genderfluid/Genderflexible Flag

Encompassing the fluctuations and the flexibility of gender in genderfluid people, the flag features colors associated with femininity, masculinity, and everything in between. The pink stands for femininity. The white represents the lack of gender. The purple represents the combination of masculinity and femininity. The black symbolizes all genders, including third genders. The blue reflects masculinity.

Genderqueer Flag

Created in 2011 by Marilyn Roxie, the genderqueer flag highlights androgyny with lavender, agender identities with white, and nonbinary people with green. Some people refer to it as a nonbinary flag if they feel queer is a slur.

Lipstick Lesbian Flag

If you want the most feminine pride flag, here it is. Although it’s not a widely used symbol, it celebrates the femmes in the lesbian community, lovingly called “lipstick lesbians.”

Leather, Latex, & BDSM Flag

Whether the kink community should be added in the acronym LGBT is a heated debate, but there is no denying that the community has several of its own flags. This one was designed by Tony DeBlase for Chicago’s International Mr. Leather celebration in 1989. This symbol is not exclusively gay, but rather for the leather and BDSM community. The original flag is on display at the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago.

Bear Brotherhood Flag

Though The New York Times named 2018 “the age of the twink,” only the bears — as gay men lovingly refer to the beefier, more hirsute guys — have their own flag. Craig Byrnes designed it in 1995 for the International Bear Brotherhood. Its colors are to match the fur of bears living in the woods.

Rubber Pride Flag

This symbol is for members of the rubber and latex fetish community and is similar to its predecessor, the leather Pride flag. Peter Tolos and Scott Moats created the design in 1995 “as a means to identifying like-minded men and [it] reflects the sensory, sensual, and mental passion we have for rubber.” They say the black color represents “our lust for the look and feel for shiny black rubber,” the red symbolizes “our blood passion for rubber and rubbermen,” while yellow highlights “our drive for intense rubber play and fantasies.” It also features a literal kink, for obvious reasons.

Polysexual Flag

Polysexuality, unlike pansexuality, is the attraction to multiple genders but not all. A middle ground between bisexuality and pansexuality, it is centered more around attractions to femininity and masculinity rather than gender itself. The pink represents attraction to females; the blue for males. The green is for an attraction to those who don’t conform to either gender.

Agender Flag

While genderqueer people bend the rules of gender, agender people reject a gender completely. For their flag, the black and white stripes represent the absence of gender, while green, the inverse of the gender-heavy purple, represents nonbinary genders.

Aromantic Flag

While asexual flags use purple to show their lack of sexual attraction, aromantic flags use green to celebrate the people who live without romantic attraction.

Non Binary Flag

Created by 17-year-old Kye Rowan in 2014, this flag was a response to nonbinary people feeling improperly represented by the genderqueer flag. This symbol was not to replace Roxie’s creation but sit beside it as an option. The yellow symbolizes gender outside a binary. The white, a mix of all colors, represents those with many or all genders. Purple stands in for those who feel both binary male and female or fluid between them. The black is for the agender community, without sexuality or color.

Pony Flag

Pony play is a distinct fetish where people are treated like horses by wearing hooves, ears, and  saddles and pulling carts. Carrie P created this flag in 2007; it uses black in solidarity with the leather community at large.

Straight Ally Flag

The flag equivalent of “I support LGBT people, but no homo,” this makes everyone feel included at Pride marches, even if they’re celebrating other people’s sexualities.

Reference

Gay History: Unearthing The “Knights of the Clock”.

Article, Gay Interest, History, ,

Enigmatic might be the best word to describe this organization, which was variously called the Knights of the Clock or Clocks. Gay and lesbian historians differ in their reporting of who founded the group, when it was founded, and what its exact name was. The ONE Gay and Lesbian Archives in L.A. maintains that Merton L. Bird, an African-American accountant about whom little is known, was the cofounder, and that it started up around June 1951. The other co-founder was W. Dorr Legg, who used about a dozen pseudonyms throughout his life, and whose name appears in virtually every anthology of gay history. He earned a master’s degree in landscape architecture with a specialty in urban planning, taught at Oregon State University, lived in New York and Florida, and came home to Ann Arbor, Michigan to care for his elderly parents. Legg’s lovers were, for the most part, African-American, and he experienced racial discrimination first hand (though not, according to John D’Emilio, in Detroit’s black community). Some historians hold that Bird and Legg met in Michigan, drove around looking for a comfortable place for interracial gay couples, and landed in L.A. in the late 1940’s. Lillian Fader-man and Stuart Timmons hold that Marvin Edwards, not Bird, went to L.A. with Legg. Timmons interviewed Edwards for their 2006 book, Gay L.A., which includes a very youthful candid photo. Edwards was forced to leave L.A. after a year or so, when his landlady discovered he was gay.

Legg has been variously described as charismatic, charming, poised, witty, intelligent, controlling, inflexible, and opinionated. A Republican in politics, he chose to live off the earnings of younger men (according to an interview in Joseph Hansen’s 1998 biography of Don Slater). In Legg’s 1994 book, Homophile Studies in Theory and Practice, he described Bird as brilliant and gives all credit for the Knights’ founding to Bird. “Hostility and harassment were the daily lot of interracial same-sex couples in 1950. … [Bird’s] idea was that by coming together to form a mutual aid society, the group could at the very least offer each other encouragement. The decision was to form a California nonprofit corporation and call it the Knights of the Clocks, a deliberately ambiguous title.” Many historians, such as Paul Cain, have quoted from Legg’s book, Homosexuals Today; A Handbook of Organizations & Publications (1956), which he wrote under the name of Marvin Cutler, stating that the aim of the Knights was to “promote fellowship and understanding between homosexuals themselves, specifically between other races and the Negro, as well as to offer its members aid in securing employment and suitable housing. Special attention was given to the housing problems of interracial couples of which there were several in the group.”

Although most sources give June 1951 as the Knights’ founding date, others range from the late 1940’s to the early 1950’s. Perhaps the L.A. group known as the Cloistered Loyal Order of the Conclaved Knights of Sophisticracy (or, sometimes, Sophistocracy, and known as the C.L.O.C.K.S.) lent its name to Bird and Legg’s Knights. It may or may not have been formally incorporated. Jonathan Ned Katz was unable to turn up the legal papers when he searched back in the 1970’s, but Edward Sagarin (the pseudonym of Donald Webster Cory) states in what was originally his NYU thesis, later published, that the Knights incorporated in 1950. Three undated typescripts in the ONE Archives’ file on the Knights contain some information about the C.L.O.C.K.S. Their oath of office, following a Masonic-type ritual, was to “practice the arts of sophisticracy diligently, honestly, courteously, amicably, faithfully, and with all of my ability.” At the end of the installation, the installing officer and “honor guard” intoned: “By the authority vested in me by the State of California, and as a duly elected officer of this corporation, I hereby declare you [name of office]. Honi soit qui mal y pense.” This, the motto of the Order of the Garter, founded in mid- 14th-century England, can be roughly translated as “shamed be he who thinks evil of it.” Instead of the usual titles (president, VP, etc.), the C.L.O.C.K.S. used medieval ones: Exalted Knight, Senior Knight, Bursar, and Scribe (who kept a Tablet instead of minutes).

In the ONE’s file, a few handwritten entries beginning on May 24, 1951, were recorded in an unused 1944 calendar from what appears to be an insurance company. On that date, “application forms were passed out,” “minutes were approved as read,” and the “Vice President spoke of aims of Club.” Gone is the mystique of the Cloistered Loyal Order. One of the Knights’ events was planned to take place in June at the Wilfandel Club. According to the still-active club’s website, wilfandelclub.com, it was established on November 21, 1945, by two black women to provide “people of all races with a public meeting place in Los Angeles during the 1950’s.” Another meeting note, dated July 1, listed members who would sing, play an instrument, dance, and make speeches at an upcoming party. (Bird was listed as one of the speech-makers.) On that same date, there was an entry for a rough draft of letterhead, “The C.L.O.C.K.S./Incorporated/Los Angeles/Calif.” The name “Josephine Baker” appears fleetingly in a meeting note, leaving one to imagine all kinds of possibilities.

Yet another event, dated August 4, was to be a “midsummer frolic” beginning at 9 p.m., with draft beer and spaghetti. The last social event mentioned was a Valentine’s meeting with a “social program” planned for Saturday, February 16 [1952]. Events seemed to be admission-by-card only. Other cryptic entries mentioned the Loan Fund, Housing & Employment Committee, the Membership Committee, the Entertainment Committee, and the Legal Aid Committee, of which Bird was chair. “NAACP” is noted without any further comment. Interestingly, Bird’s name is consistently spelled “Byrd” throughout, and C. Todd White’s book lists “M. Byrd” as Merton Bird’s pseudonym. Some members’ names and addresses are written throughout the entries, and there’s an intriguing mention of a seal and articles of incorporation. Sagarin remarked that meetings were originally held monthly, and then semimonthly. Meetings, he said, usually drew about 35 attendees, with a larger group attending the socials.

Reproduced in Legg’s 1994 book and credited to “ONE’s Baker Memorial Library and Archives” is a 1951 invitation, engraved in Gothic script, to a Knights social event: the fourth anniversary party of “Gene and Edward” on May 12, 1951, from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. Legg stated that guests at that event were “a comfortable mix of races and assorted personal relationships including both men’s Beverly Hills employers and their families.” ONE Archives’ handwritten meeting notes do include some female first names, and one name that could possibly begin with “Mrs.”

When did the end come? ONE Archives’ file contains no information about the group beyond a handwritten list, dated February 15, 1952, of fourteen members (including Bird and Legg) who owed dues. On that date, the group had $14.15 in the bank. In 1952, Legg and Bird numbered among the founders of ONE, Inc., a group within the Mattachine that published ONE magazine. White mentions that Bird appeared to have offered the Knights’ charter as a model, or to offer a merger with the Knights, neither of which were accepted. Sagarin noted that “for all practical purposes it had disappeared from the scene” by 1953, though an occasional meeting was held after that date.

A 1966 article in Tangents magazine by Richard Conger implied that the Knights, “formerly of Los Angeles,” were represented at the ONE Institute Midwinter Session, an educational program for gay men and lesbians held on an almost yearly basis in various cities and considered a precursor to today’s academic programs. The Institute was the brainchild of Legg. Sidney Roth-man reported of the Knights: “Its originality lay in its avowed intention to enroll men and women alike and their parents and other relatives on an interracial basis. Its meetings and large social gatherings appear not to have been matched in attendance until this present year (1965) by a few social events staged in San Francisco as the joint effort of several homophile organizations in that city. The Knights continued for three or four years but eventually found themselves overshadowed by another Los Angeles development … The Mattachine.” (Conger and Rothman were, according to Vern Bullough, two of Legg’s pseudonyms.)

When Legg died in 1994 at the age of 89, he was survived by his partner of over thirty years, John (Johnny) Nojima, who died a few years ago. Very little is known at this time about Merton L. Bird.

ONE’s file contains the names and addresses of some of the earliest Knights. Can any of them be traced? Are any of their addresses close to those noted on the map of “significant locations” in White’s book? What might the archives of other California institutions contain? Did any of the Knights’ files migrate to other gay organizations following a very celebrated “heist” of papers in 1965 by another ONE, Inc. founder, Don Slater, due to personal and professional disputes with Legg? Does the NAACP’s L.A. chapter keep records back to the 1950’s? What about the archives of the Wilfandel Club? More research is waiting to be done on this fascinating and pioneering organization.

I’m grateful to the archivists at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives in LA., particularly to Loni Shibuyama. This article would not have been possible without Lillian Faderman ‘s assistance, and I would, also like to thank Philip Clark, Wayne Dynes, Joseph Hawkins, and C. Todd White.

References

  • Bullough, Vern L. Before Stonewall; Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. Harrington Park Press, 2002.
  • Cain, Paul D. Leading the Parade: Conversations with America’s Most Influential Lesbians and Gay Men. Scarecrow Press, 2002.
  • Conger, Richard (pseud.). Where the Mainstream Flows. ONE 14:2, 1966.
  • D’Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States. 1940-1970. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983.
  • Dynes, Wayne. “W. Dorr Legg.” in Gay & Lesbian Biography, edited by Michael J. Tyrkus. St. James Press, 1997.
  • Faderman, Lillian, and Stuart Timmons. Gay LA.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. Basic Books, 2006.
  • Hansen, Joseph. A Few Doors West of Hope: The Life and Times of Dauntless Don Slater. Homosexual Information Center, 1998.
  • Katz, Jonathan. Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the USA.: A Documentary. Crowell, 1976.
  • Knights of the Clock(s) File. ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles. Legg, W. Dorr, ed. Homophile Studies in Theory and Practice. ONE Institute Press, 1994.
  • Rothman, Sidney (pseud.). The Homophile Movement. ONE 13:12, 1965.
  • Sagarin, Edward (pseud.). Structure and Ideology in an Association of Deviants. Arno Press, 1966.
  • White, C. Todd. Pre-Gay LA.: A Social History of the. Movement for Homosexual Rights. Univ. of Illinois Press, 2009.
  • Martha E. Stone, literary editor of this magazine, is a reference librarian by day.

Gay History: The Downfall of the Ex-Gay Movement

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What went wrong with the conversion ministry, according to Alan Chambers, who once led its largest organization

TERRY JOHNSTON / FLICKR

In 2001, Alan Chambers was hired as the president of the world’s largest ex-gay ministry, Exodus International. That same year, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher issued a report that stated, “there is no valid evidence showing that sexual orientation can be changed.”

Like most conservative Christian leaders at the time, Chambers considered the countercultural nature of his work a point of pride. During the latter part of the 20th century, Exodus and similar conservative groups promoted the idea that gay people could—and should try to—become straight. Ex-gay leaders traveled to churches and appeared on television news programs citing a litany of examples of happily married “former homosexuals” to demonstrate that sexual orientation is a choice and that change is possible.

But Chambers would undergo a radical change of heart. In 2013, he publicly apologized to the LGBT community for the “pain and hurt” Exodus had caused and announced that the ministry was permanently shutting down. Chambers’s decision effectively delivered the deathblow to the beleaguered ex-gay movement. And his story of transformation, detailed in a new memoir, My Exodus: From Fear to Grace with a foreword by CNN’s Lisa Ling, will likely resonate with many traditionalists who are searching for new ways to think about LGBT issues.

Chambers, 43, was raised by an ex-military father in a Southern Baptist home and realized he was attracted to other males at a young age. Most of his early sexual encounters with men were anonymous, which bred in him a deep self-hatred. At 19, he connected with an Exodus-affiliated ministry where he hoped to rid himself of same-sex attraction once and for all.

While the ministry did not make Chambers straight, he claims that it saved his life and many others because it provided a “safe space for many” to talk about their sexuality. At the time, there was no national network for LGBT Christians and most churches were not places of sexual transparency. But, he says, Exodus’s emphasis on “change” made it “fatally flawed.”

In 1998, Chambers married his wife, Leslie, with whom he adopted two children. In My Exodus, he recounts his inability to consummate the union for eight months, but he says their sex life is now “good.”

“While many relationships are built on sex, ours just includes sex,” Chambers says. “We love it and value it because we worked hard for it.”

As a former Exodus participant who once lived a “gay lifestyle” but was able to achieve a successful straight marriage, Chambers was the perfect candidate to lead the organization. And by 2001, Exodus needed all the help it could get.

At its peak, Exodus International had an annual operating budget of more than $1 million, had 25 employees, and served as an umbrella organization for more than 400 local ministries across 17 countries. But over the years since its founding in 1976, many of the leaders Exodus’ touted as success stories had become cautionary tales instead.

Cofounder Michael Bussee left the group in 1979 and entered a relationship with another Exodus leader, Gary Cooper. Bussee would later admit, “I never saw one of our members or other Exodus leaders or other Exodus members become heterosexual, so deep down I knew that it wasn’t true.” Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, many former Exodus members became vocal critics of the ministry, claiming it had caused them psychological distress. And in September 2000, Exodus’s chairman John Paulk was photographed cruising for men at a gay bar in Washington, D.C. He was ousted from his position and later confessed, “I do not believe that reparative therapy changes sexual orientation; in fact, it does great harm to many people.”

The movement traditionalists believed would be their saving grace in the fight against LGBT rights was quickly becoming their Achilles’ heel.

Being chosen to lead Exodus in 2001 was like becoming the ex-gay Pope following the Catholic sex-abuse scandals. The ministry’s board knew it could not survive another public scandal, so it questioned Chambers rigorously before deciding to hire him. During the interview process, Chambers recalls a board member asking him what success would look like under his leadership. He replied, “It looks like Exodus going out of business because the church is doing its job.”

Chambers words would later seem prophetic, but he first needed to travel a long road. In 2005, he called homosexuality “one of the many evils this world has to offer.” And in 2006, he lobbied for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. But Chambers admits that during the same year his thinking began to evolve.

“As I heard more stories and evaluated my own realities,” Chambers said, “I realized change in orientation was not possible or happening.”

Though the ex-gay leader was stewing on the inside, he seemed as resolute as ever on the outside. He advocated for California’s Proposition 8, which sought to ban gay marriage in the state. In 2009, he published a book called Leaving Homosexuality: A Practical Guide for Men and Women Looking for a Way Out. He admits to immediately regretting the book’s title and some of its content.

Chambers’s thinking continued morphing until his dramatic announcement that the ministry would shut down in 2013: “Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism. For quite some time, we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical.”

By this point, the ex-gay movement was already in shambles. A 2013 Pew Research poll showed that only 36 percent of Americans believe a gay or lesbian person’s orientation can be changed. As Satcher reported, modern science had delivered crushing blows to the ex-gay movement with peer-reviewed research showing that its ideology was bunk. And a national movement to ban reparative therapy for minors was taking shape and had already been successful in several states.

The closing of Exodus International became the “tipping point” in conservative Christians’ conversations about the nature of sexual orientation. Today, even top Southern Baptist leaders have denounced ex-gay therapy, and the school newspaper for the Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University has editorialized against it.

“Shutting down Exodus dealt a fatal blow to the whole idea that orientation can be changed and that God somehow loves you more because of the choices you make,” Chambers says. “Some ministries still promote this idea, but they are not going to achieve the same level of success that Exodus had. That position is more of a minority than it has ever been.”

The release of Chambers’s memoir this month marks another step in the leader’s evolution. He has voiced his support for President Obama’s effort to ban orientation-change therapies for minors and celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage. And now he even admits that he believes committed, monogamous same-sex relationships can be holy.

“I look at gay and lesbian people who are in committed relationships and I believe they can reflect the image of God,” Chambers says. “That belief has continued to evolve, but heterosexuals don’t have a corner on the market of healthy, holy relationships.”

While many culture-warring conservatives will undoubtedly see Chamber’s openness as a cowardly capitulation, others will call him courageous. The former ex-gay leader chooses to focus on just being honest, instead. As he said in a chapter intended for his memoir but cut by the publisher, “Every part of my life, all of my compartmentalization is reconciled. My message and story are no longer different depending on the group to whom I’m speaking.”

Chambers describes his current sexual orientation as “complicated.” While he is still attracted to men, he also says that he and Leslie have a healthy marriage with a robust sex life. But he no longer claims that every person with same-sex attraction should follow his path.

“For those who cannot reconcile their faith and sexuality, they can be affirmed in their choice of celibacy and devote their lives to causes more life giving than ‘ridding themselves of the demon homosexuality,’” Chambers says. “And the gay Christian community can be affirmed in who they already are: beloved.”

Reference

Gay History: Unearthing The Surprising Religious History Of American Gay Rights Activism

Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, History, Political, , , ,
COURTESY OF THE LGBT RELIGIOUS ARCHIVES NETWORK A press conference in reponse to arrests at a Council on Religion and the Homosexual fundraiser and dance was featured on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle on Jan. 3, 1965.

On New Year’s Day 1965, hundreds of gay San Franciscans arrived at 625 Polk Street in the city’s Tenderloin district for a much-anticipated “Mardi Gras Ball.”

The event organized by gay rights — or, to use the then-common term, homophile — activists was not unlike the thousands of public parties being held this June during Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month: There were drinks and music, hand-holding, flirtatious glances and kisses between friends old and new. But it was also a private affair — $5 tickets had to be bought ahead of time — in a city where gay people regularly faced threats and arrests for gathering together and showing affection.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the San Francisco ball, however, was its purpose beyond merriment: It was held as a fundraiser for pro-gay clergy.

Today, although Americans for and against gay rights cite their religious beliefs, those who oppose same-sex marriage and other civil rights for LGBT individuals have been especially vocal in declaring that God is on their side. That’s not always been the expectation about the faithful. In the mid-1960s, LGBT activists often looked to men of the cloth as allies in their fight for justice and human rights, according to historians.

Just months before the ball, about two dozen Bay Area Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal and United Church of Christ clergy and gay activists had formed the Council on Religion and the Homosexual to promote the “need for a better understanding of human sexuality” and its “broad variations and manifestations.”

On Dec. 7, 1964, a front-page article in the San Francisco Chronicle announced the launch of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual.

Clergy and lawyers for the group had negotiated with police — who had a habit of shutting down LGBT events — to let the dance go forward. But according to contemporary newspaper articles, police still showed up that night, taking pictures of those entering as an intimidation tactic. When the cops demanded to get inside, the lawyers reportedly blocked them. Six people ended up in jail for interfering with the police and disorderly conduct.

The clergy fought back with a press conference the next day. “Angry Ministers Rip Police,” said a front-page headline in the San Francisco Chronicle below a picture of men in clerical collars. The clash mobilized both the city’s gay community and the pastors. The American Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit over the arrests — the first time the ACLU had joined a legal battle over gay rights, according to the LGBT Religious Archives Network.

“That was years before the 1969 Stonewall riots, which is popularly considered the beginning of the gay rights movement,” said Heather White, a visiting assistant professor of religion at the New College of Florida who has spent years combing through LGBT archives for an upcoming book, tentatively titled Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights. “And that’s just one of the best-known stories. There were Councils on Religion and Homosexuality and similar groups in D.C., Pennsylvania, Ottawa, Hawaii.”

White is among a growing group of scholars who have been working to uncover the broad — and for many, surprising — history of religious gay rights activism. The LGBT Religious Archives Network has documented hundreds of stories like that of the San Francisco clergy since it was founded 13 years ago at the United Church of Christ-affiliated Chicago Theological Seminary. The organization is now based in Berkeley, California, at the Pacific School of Religion’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry.

The network’s website offers a series of profiles of and oral history interviews with Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and Pagan LGBT clergy and religious activists, living and dead. Online exhibits cover topics ranging from the Council on Religion and the Homosexual to the 1973 UpStairs Lounge fire in New Orleans, an anti-gay arson incident that killed 32 people, including many members of the city’s gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church, to New York’s Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, which launched in 1973 and calls itself the world’s largest gay synagogue. The network also holds archives on the lives of people like William R. Johnson, who in 1972, as a member of the Golden Gate Association of the United Church of Christ, became the first gay American Protestant to be ordained.

White, who sits on the network’s advisory committee, said expectations about how religion would view gay rights began to change after the 1960s.

“What we know of the face of religion and gay rights has been shaped by a shift that occurred in the 1970s with the rise of conservative Christianity. It’s a consolidated political force that wasn’t in place before then. There were certainly conservative people and religious people who were involved in politics, but in the 1950s and 1960s, homophile organizations saw religious leaders as likely allies,” said White. “That is less of the case today, though things are changing.”

A Pew Research Center survey, released Thursday, found that 62 percent of Americans now say homosexuality should be accepted, rather than discouraged, by society. But clear lines still divide religious Americans when it comes to gay rights, especially same-sex marriage. Polls show that white evangelicals tend to strongly oppose gay marriage. The nation’s largest churches — including the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, the United Methodist Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — officially do not support same-sex marriage.

On the other hand, Catholic Americans as individuals tend to be supportive of gay marriage. And several denominations — including the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and both Reform and Conservative Jews — allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages or blessings.

Some of the biggest gay rights activists and organizations started their work in churches,” said Bernard Schlager, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry and an associate professor of cultural and historical studies as the Pacific School of Religion.

He pointed to the Metropolitan Community Church, which gay rights activist Troy Perry launched in Los Angeles in 1968 to cater to gay people. The relatively small church has 222 congregations worldwide today, but Schlager said its influence was “monumental” in pro-LGBT Protestant movements. Another noted gay rights group, PFLAG — formerly known as Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays — had its first meeting in 1973 at the Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church in New York City’s Greenwich Village (now called the Church of the Village).

Schlager suggested that the widespread, if inaccurate, perception of religion firmly opposing gay rights is also shifting. “It’s come to the point that sometimes people today say it’s more difficult to come out as a person of faith than it is to come out as LGBT in religious circles,” he said.

Melissa Wilcox, an associate professor of religion and gender studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, shared a similar view.

“With the increasing visibility of the marriage rights movement, we have started to see LGBT-supportive groups [within religious communities] being able to get their message out more clearly. That’s a battle for them, but many have been there all along,” said Wilcox, who also sits on the LGBT Religious Archives Network’s advisory committee.

After decades of church activism, for example, the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly last week voted to allow its pastors to officiate gay marriages in states where they are legal. The church’s presbyteries, or regional bodies, are also scheduled to vote on whether to change the definition of marriage to cover “two people,” rather than only a man and a woman.

“A lot of people are still wary of anything you’d call religion. A lot of people have been burned,” said Wilcox. “But there’s a rich history out there of gay religious activism for us to appreciate and uphold.”

Reference

London Ghosts: Ten Weird Things About London At The Time Of The BBC Drama Series “Taboo”

Article, General Interest, History, ,

If you enjoyed the BBC series Taboo – you’re probably wondering what London was really like at that time.

That violent drama is set in 1814, the late Georgian period, and as luck would have it, I own several guides to London from the first two decades of the nineteenth century. One from 1804 is especially descriptive and I’ll quote liberally below.

These books were intended to guide a visitor around the city taking in places of interest, like a prison for example or a mental asylum. Yep, you really could pay to go and gawp at criminals and the insane. So – here’s a selection of oddities from the period of Taboo.

  1. Visiting a prison: You’ve arrived in London and wondering what to go and see. How about a prison? You could pop along to Newgate prison – where the Old Bailey now stands – and pay the “turnkey” two or three shillings to go in and stare at the unfortunates behind bars. One guide I have to London laments the overcrowded part of the prison for debtors, who were treated worse than thieves and other felons. Those who were condemned to death were normally held in irons, which must have been a thrilling sight for the Georgian tourist!
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something to see in London!

  • 2. See somebody condemned to death: Incredibly, you could pay a shilling to a door-keeper at the Old Bailey and watch a trial for a capital crime. The death penalty wasn’t just for murder. There was a whole range of offences that could lead to the rope. These included counterfeiting money or stealing. And children could still be hanged in public at this time. If a trial was high profile, the doorkeepers would increase the entrance fee to as much as a guinea.

    • 3. Then watch a public execution: My 1804 guide bemoans the attitude of Londoners to the growing number of executions. They’d become quite indifferent to them! “Among the many nuisances which disgrace the metropolis, there is not perhaps one which excites more horror than the frequency of public executions. The numbers of unhappy culprits that annually forfeit their existence by violation of the laws, afford sufficient proofs that an ignominious death is no longer our safeguard. Six, eight and ten criminals executed in the public streets, even in the heart of the metropolis, in the broad light of day, before the eyes of the multitude, scarcely excite emotion.”

    4. You’re a victim of crime during your visit to London: There’s no police force at the time of Taboo so having been robbed, beaten up or defrauded by a fortune teller – you could take your case to one of the places where magistrates were in session every day of the week like the Mansion House, Bow Street, Hatton Garden or Guildhall. In a “summary way” they would deal with everything from murder to “disorderly houses”, “persons of ill fame found in avenues to public places with an intent to rob” and “vagabonds”.

  • 5. Pop into a workhouse: In the early 1800s, Dr Hooper was the resident doctor at the St Mary-le-bone Workhouse and was happy to show any gentleman round if they were interested. There was also the St Martin’s Workshouse in Castle Street, near Leicester Square (roughly corresponding to the National Portrait Gallery). In my 1804 guide to London, it’s pointed out that one of the inmates was 104 years old! If you made a proper application to the master of the house or the churchwardens they were prepared to “readily gratify the curious”.. Strange entertainments: Like today, Londoners loved the theatre. Some of it was very bawdy while other houses put on fine operas and plays. Then there was just the plain bizarre. For example, Mr Cartwright could be found at the Lyceum putting on a display of “philosophical fireworks” while Miss Cartwright played the musical glasses. In the absence of movies, you could also go and watch The Phantasmagoria  – also at the Lyceum. Basically, images projected on to a screen from a “magic lantern”. No CGI I’m afraid.f79da947962a9096e88f6373d5d25a77--william-hogarth-anatomy
  • 6. Strange entertainments: Like today, Londoners loved the theatre. Some of it was very bawdy while other houses put on fine operas and plays. Then there was just the plain bizarre. For example, Mr Cartwright could be found at the Lyceum putting on a display of “philosophical fireworks” while Miss Cartwright played the musical glasses. In the absence of movies, you could also go and watch The Phantasmagoria  – also at the Lyceum. Basically, images projected on to a screen from a “magic lantern”. No CGI I’m afraid.
  • 7. Watch a medical operation: If your day in London had proved to be rather dull, it could be enlivened by going to watch a medical operation. The operating table at Guy’s Hospital was circled by viewing galleries where students and the curious could breathe their germs down on the poor afflicted patient. Amputations normally resulted in death due to infection but the removal of kidney stones through the urethra (I’m crossing my legs just thinking of it) had an excellent survival rate
  • 8. Moral societies for bettering Londoners: If you were aghast at the depraved ways of Georgian London, you could join a society to improve things. In one guide to London I own the author recommends The Society for giving effect to His Majesty’s Proclamation against Vice and Immorality founded in 1787. There was also The Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge by distributing books among the Poor and The Society for Preventing Crimes by prosecuting Swindlers, Sharpers and Cheats, based in the Strand.
  • 9. Observe the diseases killing Londoners:  In 1802, Londoners died of an interesting variety of ailments. Nearly six thousand had perished before reaching two years of age; 266 died of apoplexy; 3,503 died of “convulsions”; 559 were spirited away by measles; 1,579 succumbed to small-pox and 107 died of the condition that hit heavy drinkers of port wine – gout.
  • 10. Cheer the chimney sweeps!: Children were still being sent up chimneys at this time. And there were plenty of chimneys to clean with most houses using filthy fossil fuels. There was a growing awareness that this was a terrible thing to do to young kids but nobody seemed to have come up with an alternative. Still, once a year, the chimney sweeps of London – on MayDay – dressed up in their finery (whatever that amounted to) and paraded through the streets to the cheers of London’s citizens. Only to be sent back up the chimneys the following day.

    • Reference

     

    Gay History: ONE, Inc.

    Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, History, Political, , , , , ,

    ONE, Inc. was an early gay rights organisation in the USA.

    The idea for a publication dedicated to homosexuals emerged from a Mattachine Society discussion meeting held on October 15, 1952. ONE Magazine’s first editors included founders of Mattachine Societyand also  The Knights of the Clock, a support group for interracial gay couples that had begun in Los Angeles in 1950.

    ONE Inc.’s Articles of Incorporation were signed on Nov. 15, 1952 and were signed by “Tony Sanchez” (a pseudonym), Martin Block, and Dale Jennings. Other founders were Merton Bird, W. Dorr Legg, Don Slater, and Chuck Rowland. Jennings and Rowland were also Mattachine Society founders.

    In January 1953 ONE, Inc. began publishing ONE Magazine, the first U.S. pro-gay publication, and sold it openly on the streets of Los Angeles. In October 1954 the U.S. Postal Service declared the magazine ‘obscene’. ONE sued, and finally won in 1958, as part of the landmark First Amendment case, Roth v. United States.[1] The magazine continued until 1967. 

    ONE also published ONE Institute Quarterly (now the Journal of Homosexuality). It began to run symposia, and contributed greatly to scholarship on the subject of same-sex love (then called ‘homophile studies’).

    ONE readily admitted women, and Joan Corbin (as Eve Elloree), Irma Wolf (as Ann Carrl Reid), Stella Rush (as Sten Russell), Helen Sandoz (as Helen Sanders), and Betty Perdue (as Geraldine Jackson) were vital to its early success. ONE and Mattachine in turn provided vital help to the Daughters of Bilitis in the launching of their newsletter The Ladder (Magazine) in 1956. The Daughters of Bilitis was the counterpart lesbian organisation to the Mattachine Society, and the organisations worked together on some campaigns and ran lecture-series. Bilitis came under attack in the early 1970s for ‘siding’ with Mattachine and ONE, rather than with the new separatist feminists.

    In 1965, ONE separated over irreconcilable differences between ONE’s business manager Dorr Legg and ONE Magazine editor Don Slater. After a two-year court battle, Dorr Legg’s faction retained the name “ONE, Inc.” and Don Slater’s faction retained most of the corporate library and archives. In 1968, Slater’s faction became the Homosexual Information Center or HIC, a non-profit corporation that survives today.

    In 1996, ONE, Inc. merged with ISHR, the Institute for the Study of Human Resources, a non-profit organization created by transgendered philanthropist Reed Erickson, with ISHR being the surviving organization and ONE being the merging corporation. In 2005, the HIC donated many of its historic materials, including most of ONE Incorporated’s Blanche M. Baker Memorial Library, to the Vern and Bonnie Bullough Collection on Sex and Gender, a special collection within Oviatt Library at California State University, Northridge. 

    A Timeline History of ONE, Incorporated 1947–1967

    This timeline links to several primary documents, such as court records, corporate minutes, letters of resignation, and correspondence between several of the pioneers of the early movement for homosexual rights in the United States. It ends in 1967 after the division of ONE, Inc. was finalized after a grueling two-year court battle.

    White’s book Pre-Gay L.A.: A Social History for the Movement for Homosexual Rights, published by the University of Illinois Press in May of 2009, discusses many of the documents linked to this page.

    1947

    • June: Edythe Eyde publishes Vice Versa: America’s Gayest Magazine, the first regularly published newsletter in the United States dedicated to homosexual issues. The newsletter was typewritten at her employer’s, RKO Studios in Los Angeles. Eyde distributed 16 copies to friends such as Jim Kepner between June 1947 and February 1948. Eyde later became know to readers of The Ladder through her pen-name, “Lisa Ben,” an anagram for Lesbian.
      Note: The HIC secured official right to use Eyde’s true name in print, in the summer of 2015.

    1948

    • Alfred Kinsey et al.’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male is published, asserting that one in three American males had experienced some form of homosexual encounter in their lifetime and that between four and eight percent were exclusively homosexual.
    • February: final (ninth) issue of Vice Versa distributed.
    • August: Harry Hay attends a beer bust near the University of Southern California campus, where the idea is sprung to start a political organization called “Bachelors for Wallace.” Upon returning home that night, Hay began his first draft of a prospectus to form an organization dedicated to the welfare of homosexuals.

    1949

    • Publication of Nial Kent’s The Divided Path.

    1950

    • Physique Pictorial magazine is first published, by Bob Mizer.
    • (Future activist) Betty Berzon moves to Los Angeles.
    • James Barr’s Quatrefoil published by Greenberg.
    • President Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10450, citing “sexual perversions” as reasons for preventing homosexuals from being employed by the federal government.
    • Nov 11: Harry Hay, Rudy Gernreich, Chuck Rowland, Dale Jennings, and Bob Hull meet at Hay’s home in Silver Lake to discuss his Preliminary Concepts for unifying homosexuals into social action. The group meet again two days later, on Nov. 13th.
    • Dec: A Senate subcommittee issues a report stating that homosexuals working within the Federal government could be considered a threat to national security.
    • Dec. 11: First organized discussion group of Hay’s secret society, which would later become known as Mattachine.

    1951

    • Jim Kepner moves to 2141 Baxter Street in Echo Park, where he is to reside for the next 21 years.
    • Donald Webster Cory’s The Homosexual in America—A Subjective Approach is published by Greenberg.
    • Fritz Peters’s novel Finistère is published by Farrar, Straus & Company.
    • April: Lovers Konrad Stevens and James Gruber (christened collectively as “Stim” by Dale Jennings) join Harry Hay’s “Society of Fools.” The organization decides to call itself “Mattachine.” First Missions and Purposes of the Mattachine Society are written.
    • June: Dorr Legg (known as Bill Lambert), Merton Bird, and others found Knights of the Clocks, an organization of interracial homosexuals.
    • July 20: Missions and Purposes of the Mattachine Society are ratified.

    1953

    • UCLA psychologist Evelyn Hooker contacts Mattachine in search of subjects for her study of differences between male homosexuals and heterosexuals.
    • January: Premier Issue of ONE Magazine, edited by Martin Block, Dale Jennings, and Don Slater, with William Lambert as Business Manager and Donald Webster Cory as Contributing Editor.
      • Jim Kepner attends his first Mattachine meeting by invitation of his friend Betty Perdue.
    • February 7 [Sa]: ONE, Incorporated’s Articles of Incorporation filed with the Secretary of State in Sacramento, CA, signed by Martin Block, Dale Jennings, and Tony Reyes, the First Directors of ONE, Inc. Also on this day: a Business Meeting
    • March 21 [Sa]: Business Meeting
    • April 11–12 [Sa–Su]: Mattachine Conference to create a new constitution.
    • Spring: Irma “Corky” Wolf, known in print as “Ann Carl Reid,” begins working for ONE, Inc.
    • May 27 [We]: ONE, Incorporated’s Charter Granted by the State of California.
    • June: Martin Block resigns as editor of ONE magazine; Dale Jennings takes over.
    • June 7 [Su]: Business Meeting
    • August: An issue of ONE magazine dealing with homosexual marriage is confiscated by the Los Angeles Postmaster.
      Attorney       Eric Julber later secures the magazine’s release.
    • Sept: ONE is first distributed in New York City.
    • October 16 [Fr]: By-Laws for ONE, Incorporated are filed with the Secretary of State in Sacramento, California.
    • Nov. 1 [Su]: First Official Board Meeting for ONE, Incorporated. Martin Block is elected Chair, Tony Reyes Vice Chair, and Dale Jennings becomes the Secretary-Treasurer.
    • The cover of the November issue of ONE reads “The Homosexual Magazine” for the first time.
    • Nov. 14 [Sa]: Dale Jennings addresses the Mattachine Society Banquet for having received the 1953 Achievement Award, for his work on ONE magazine
    • By year’s end, Mattachine-like discussion groups are being held throughout Los Angeles and in Long Beach, Laguna Beach, Fresno, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Chicago.

    1954

    • January 22 [Fr]: Annual Business Meeting.
      The Board of Directors of ONE, Incorporated elect       William Lambert as Chairman, Irma Wolf as vice-Chairman, and Dale Jennings as Secretary-Treasurer, each to serve a three-year term.
    • Feb.: Dale Jennings resigns as editor of ONE. Irma Wolf is recruited to the editorial board.
    • March 31 [We]: Don Slater becomes interim director of ONE, Inc.
      Jim Kepner, as “Lyn Pedersen,” publishes his first article in ONE, “The Importance of Being Different.”
    • May: Jim Kepner, as “Lyn Pedersen,” becomes a member of the Editorial Staff for ONE,replacing Ben Tabor.
    • July: Irma “Corky” Wolf, as “Ann Carll Reid,” becomes Managing Editor of ONE magazine.
    • October: Los Angeles Postmaster Otto K. Oleson refuses to deliver the October issue of ONE, calling the content “obscene.” Attorney Eric Julber agrees to help ONE engage Oleson in a lawsuit.

    1955

    • January: ONE’s Education Division, called ONE Institute for Homophile Studies, sponsors its first public meeting, a Midwinter Institute.
    • Feb. 27 [Su]: Date of Jim Kepner’s (first) Letter of Resignation from ONE, Incorporated.

    1956

    • ONE Inc. begins its ONE Institute of Homophile Studies program, lead by Jim Kepner, Merritt Thompson, and W. Dorr Legg. This is the first educational institution in the United States dedicated to the study of homosexuality.
    • ONE Confidential launched and distributed to the Friends of ONE in response to the onslaught of mail and increased public attention.
    • ONE, Incorporated’s Publications Division publishes Homosexuals Today: A Handbook of Organizations & Publications, with William Lambert [Marvin Cutler], as Editor.
    • Jim Kepner contributes over 400 books to ONE Incorporated’s library, more than doubling the size of the collection. Don Slater becomes ONE’s first librarian.
    • Jan. 27–29: Second annual Midwinter Institute. Harry Hay is a featured speaker.
    • March 1 [Th]: Chuck Rowland resigns from ONE’s Social Services Division.
      • Irma “Corky” Wolf, as “Ann Carll Reid,” is promoted to Editor of ONE Magazine.
      • U.S. District Judge Thurmond Clarke rules that the October 1954 issue of ONE Magazine had contained “filthy and obscene material obviously calculated to stimulate the lust of the homosexual reader” and was thus unmailable. ONE’s attorney Eric Julber appeals.

    1957

    • The Wolfenden Report is published, recommending that homosexuality be decriminalized in England.
    • Harry Benjamin coins the word “transsexual.”
    • A Navy committee investigating homosexuals in the military publishes The Crittenden Report, stating that there was no legitimate basis for excluding homosexuals from the armed forces.
    • Federal government astronomer Frank Kameny is fired for being a homosexual.
    • UCLA Psychologist Evelyn Hooker publishes a study proclaiming that homosexual men are just as well adjusted as heterosexual men.
    • Jan. 25–27: Third annual Midwinter Institute.
      Theme: “The Homosexual Answers His Critics.”
      Harry Hay presents a paper titled “The Homophile in Search of an Historical Context and Cultural Continuity.”
    • Dale Jennings, as Jeff Winters, again appears in ONE magazine, as author of the short story “The Little Guy.”
    • March: California’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Barnes, Hamley, and Ross uphold Judge Clarke’s ruling from a year prior that the October 1954 issue of ONE was obscene and thus not mailable. Julber decides to appeal.
    • June 13 [Th]: Eric Julber files a nine-page petition with the U.S. Supreme Court (with appendix) on behalf of ONE, Incorporated.
    • June 24 [Mon]: Supreme Court rules in Roth vs. United States that “obscenity” is not protected by the First Amendment and that “The standard for judging obscenity…is whether, to the average person…the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interests.”
    • Summer: “The Homosexual Viewpoint” first printed on the cover of ONE magazine.
    • Oct. 17 [Th]: Irma “Corky” Wolf resigns as Editor of ONE due to health issues and continued conflicts with W. Dorr Legg [William Lambert].

    1958

    Barbara Gittings founds a Daughters of Bilitis chapter in New York.

    • Jan. 13 [Mo]: The United States Supreme Court rules that the October 1954 issue of ONE Magazine was not obscene and should be protected as an exercise of free speech. The court battle between ONE Inc. and Los Angeles Postmaster Otto Oleson is over.
    • Jan. 31 [Fr]: Annual Business Meeting. Don Slater elected a Director to fill the unexpired two-year term of Ann Carll Reid.
    • Jan. 31–Feb. 2: 4th annual Midwinter Institute. Theme: Homosexuality: A Way of Life.
    • June 6 [Fr]: ONE Institute Quarterly for Homophile Studies first published, by W. Dorr Legg, Merritt M. Thompson, and Jim Kepner.

    1959

    • Jan. 29–31: 5th annual Midwinter Institute.
      Theme: Mental Health and Homosexuality.
    • Sept. 4–7: 6th annual Mattachine Convention in Denver. Theme: New Frontiers in Acceptance of the Homophile. Jim Kepner is a featured speaker. Billy Glover attends and decides to work for the movement.
    • Late December: Jim Schneider contacts Don Slater at ONE’s offices in downtown Los Angeles and becomes an active volunteer for the organization.

    1960

    • Jan. 29–31: ONE’s 6th annual Midwinter Institute.
      Theme: “The Homosexual in the Community.”
    • Feb. 2: [Mon]: Board of Directors Meeting.
      Jim Kepner is elected Chairman, Don Slater Vice Chairman, and William LambertSecretary-Treasurer.
    • Nov. 1 [Tue]: Jim Kepner’s letter explaining his resignation to the Members of ONE, Inc.
    • Nov. 15 [Sat]: Date of Jim Kepner’s second letter of resignation from ONE, Incorporated, and from the editorial board of ONE magazine. Ross Ingersoll takes his place.
    José SarriaJosé Sarria at the Black Cat Bar

    1961

    • Wayne Placek introduces Joseph Hansen to Don Slater, to see if Slater would publish one of Hansen’s poems or short stories.
    • San Francisco drag artist José Sarria becomes the first openly gay person to run for political office in the nation.
    • Jan. 28–29: 7th Annual Midwinter Institute and “Bill of Rights” fiasco.
    • Jan. 27 [Fr]: Fred Frisbie (known as “George Mortenson”) becomes a director of ONE, Incorporated, replacing Jim Kepner, who had resigned the prior November.
    • Jan. 28 [Sa]: Frank Kameny writes to ONE, Inc. advising them of the Writ of Certiorari he had filed with the Supreme Court the day before.
    • July 12 [We]: Stella Rush, known as “Sten Russell,” resigns from ONE magazine’s editorial board in a phone conversation with Don Slater.
    • July 23 [Su]: Date of Stella Rush’s Letter of Resignation from ONE’s board and as Associate Editor of ONE magazine.
    • Dec. 11: Psychologist and long-time friend of ONE Blanche M. Baker dies.

    1962

    • Joseph Hansen joins ONE’s Editorial Board.
    • Jan. 26 [Fr]: 10th Annual Business Meeting for ONE, Incorporated. Fred Frisbie (known as “George Mortenson”) becomes ONE’s Chairman. Don Slater is elected Vice-chair and W. Dorr Legg becomes Secretary/Treasurer. Actor Morgan Farley is elected to membership.
    • Jan. 26–28: 8th Annual Midwinter Institute. Harry Hay is an honored speaker.
    • March: Joseph Hansen makes his debut in ONE.
    • May 1: ONE, Inc., moves to Venice Blvd. after being evicted from its Hill Street office due to earthquake retrofitting.
      Actor Morgan Farley helps to secure the new office for ONE Inc.
    • May 1: Mattachine founder Bob Hull commits suicide.
    • Sep. 7: Fall semester begins at ONE Institute for Homophile Studies, with courses taught by Don Slater, Morgan Farley, and W. Dorr Legg.
    • Dec. 2: Morgan Farley resigns from corporate membership.

    1963

    • John Rechy’s novel City of Night published by Grove Press.
    • The Society for Individual Rights [SIR] founded in San Francisco to help organize the gay community.
    • In Britain, a group of Quakers publish a pamphlet titled Toward a Quaker View of Sex that argued that society “should no more deplore homosexuality than lefthandedness.”
    • Jan. 25–27 [Fr–Su]: 9th Annual Midwinter Institute
    • Jan. 25 [Fr]: ONE Inc.’s Annual Meeting. Monwell Boyfrank becomes a director.
    • Feb. 1 [Fr]: ONE’s election of officers. Joseph Aaron is elected Chairman. W. Dorr Legg is elected Vice-chairman, and Monwell Boyfrank becomes Secretary/Treasurer.
    • Feb. 11 [Mo]: Spring semester begins at ONE Institute for Homophile Studies.
    • May: Harry Hay moves in with Jim Kepner in Echo Park. (They had started dating earlier in the year.
    • May 31 [Fri]: Joseph Arron resigns as Chair of ONE Incorporated’s Promotions Committee. Jim Schneider is installed in his place.
    • July 28 [Sun]: Joan Corbin, known as “Eve Elloree,” is dropped from corporate membership due to poor attendance.
    • Sept: Harry Hay meets John Burnside and the two begin living together two months later. Hay and Burnside remain lovers until Hay’s death on Oct. 24, 2002.
    • Nov. 12 [Tue]: Corporate meeting. ONE, Inc. becomes divided over who should be elected into membership at the next annual meeting in January. Slater, Reyes, and Steinert favor electing Billy Glover to corporate membership; Lambert, Aaron, and Boyfrank reject Glover in favor of others. It is decided to submit the names of Harry Hay, John Burnside, and Billy Glover as candidates.
    • Nov. 22 [Fri]: President John F. Kennedy assassinated in Dallas. Billy Glover meets Melvin Cain later that afternoon, and they become lovers and friends.

    1964

    • Joseph Hansen, as “James Colton,” publishes his first novel, Lost on Twilight Road.
    • Jan. 15: Monwell Boyfrank submits a formal letter of resignation, due to health reasons, at a board meeting chaired by Bill Lambert. Jim Schneider elected to Board of Directors of ONE, Inc.
    • Jan. 25 and 26: ONE Inc.’s Annual Business Meeting, chaired by Joe Weaver (a.k.a. Joseph Aaron). Manuel Boyfrank was Secretary. Other members present: Antonio Reyes, Rudolf Steinert (“Stuart”), Bill Lambert, and Don Slater. Harry Hay and John Burnside are elected to serve as Directors then resign shortly after due to a conflict over whether or not to elect Billy Glover as a director.
      • Don Slater’s account of the 1964, 1965 Elections at ONE, Incorporated.
    • June 26: ONE, Inc., is featured in a Life magazine article titled “Homosexuality in America.”
    • June 28: Erickson Educational Foundation founded by Reed Erickson in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
    • July 4: Louisiana millionaire Reed Erickson contacts ONE Inc. to offer financial assistance to the organization.
    • August 15th: Monwell Boyfrank’s letter to Don Slater stating that no compromise was possible and that ONE Inc. was in deadlock.
      • The Institute for the Study of Human Resources (ISHR) founded by Don Slater, Antonio Sanchez, and W. Dorr Legg.
    • Rudi Steinert’s letter to Chairman Joe Aaron requesting a Corporate Meeting, dated Sept. 9, 1964 (signed “R. H. Stuart”).
    • Sept. 21: ISHR granted exemption from franchise tax by the State of California Franchise Tax Board, as a non-profit organization dedicated exclusively to scientific research and education.

    1965

    • Joseph Hansen, as James Colton, publishes his second novel, Strange Marriage.
    • Jan. 29th and 30th: ONE Inc.’s Annual Business Meeting. Meeting adjourned on the 29thwith no business conducted and resumed on Sat., without quorum Second meeting adjourned with no time or place set for a follow up meeting.
    • Feb. 5: Dorr Legg convenes a meeting as a continuation of the adjourned Corporate Meeting despite Slater’s protest that it was instead a “special meeting,” citing Roberts Rules of Order and the California Civil Code. Slater again protested the 1964 “election” of Winn and Bonham. Legg announced that Rudi Steinert, who was away conducting ONE’s business in Europe, would not be allowed to vote by proxy even though substantial changes in the bylaws were being prepared. Legg further announced that they were going to elect additional members and that Slater would be dismissed as a member of the corporation. Slater withdraws in protest.
    • March 2 [Tu]: Corporate meeting. Tony Reyes attends to address new members, but the chair, W. Dorr Legg, does not allow him the floor.
    • March 7 [Su]: Attorney Stuart Simke presents a lecture on “The California Sex Laws: Prospects for Reform” as part of the 1964–1965 ONE Institute Series.
    • April 12 [Mo]: W. Dorr Legg storms into an editors’ meeting and forces the resignation of the editors of ONE Magazine, telling them they had no right to discuss or attempt to influence corporate policy.
    • April 14 [We]: Ross Ingersoll, known as “Marcel Martin,” resigns as Associate Editor of ONE magazine. Ingersoll had served as an editor since the resignation of Jim Kepner in November of 1960.
    • April 15 [Th]: Don Slater signs a lease for office space on Cahuenga Blvd. in Universal City.
    • April 18 [Su]: Don Slater, Tony Reyes, and Billy Glover move ONE’s library and office from Venice to Cahuenga Blvd. “for the protection of the property of the corporation.” They soon begin calling themselves The Tangent Group, after a regular news column in ONE magazine usually written by Jim Kepner, and maintain that they are indeed “the majority of legally elected board members of ONE.” Kepner and others dub the event “The Heist,” but Slater describes the event as more of a mutiny.
    • April 20 [Tu]: Jim Schneider’s letter to Don Slater expressing concern over the recent split of ONE, Incorporated.
    • April 21 [Wed]: Jim Schneider sends a letter to ONE Inc. members calling for an informal meeting in his home and demanding the resignation or reconciliation of W. Dorr Legg and Don Slater.
    • April 23 [Fr]: Joe Aaron resigns from ONE, Inc. due to “the present corporate dilemma.”
    • April 23 (or 25): Legg’s faction votes in a special meeting to remove Don Slater from membership in ONE, Inc.
    • May 11 [Tu]: Don Slater sends a Letter to “Former Friends and Subscribers” of ONE Magazine, announcing ONE Inc.’s move from Venice to Cahuenga Blvd., in Hollywood and asking for help and “moral support.”
    • May 12 [We]: Jim Schneider sends a letter to Don Slater.
    • May 16 [Su]: Rudi Steinert and Tony Reyes are removed from membership in ONE, Inc. by W. Dorr Legg’s faction.
    • May 18 [Tu]: Monwell Boyfrank’s letter to Jim Schneider advising him that ONE’s board of directors had removed him from membership in the corporation.
    • June 5 [Sa]: The Institute for the Study of Human Resources [ISHR] is incorporated and granted tax exempt status under §501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
      • Don Slater voted off the board of ISHR based on allegations made by W. Dorr Legg.
    • July 27 [Tu]: First public meeting of Mattachine Midwest
    • Sept. 16th [Th]: Don Slater’s deposition taken in the law offices of Hillel Chodos, in Beverly Hills.

    1966

    • Jan. 26 [We]: W. Dorr Legg answers Don Slater’s interrogatories in the law offices of Hillel Chodos, in Beverly Hills.
    • Feb. 19–20: Don Slater attends the National Planning Conference of Homophile Organizations held in Kansas City, Missouri, where it was decided to launch a national campaign to protest the exclusion of homosexuals by the U.S. Military. Forty leaders attend from fourteen different homophile organizations.
      The organizations unite to form NACHO, the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations.
    • March 18 [Fr]: Committee to Fight Exclusion of Homosexuals from the Armed Forces issues a statement and a press release.
    • May 21 [Sa]: Los Angeles Motorcade in protest of the exclusion of homosexuals from the U. S. Armed Forces.
    • Nov. 3 [Th]: Odorizzi v. Bloomfield School District resolved. (This case was sponsored by the HIC.)

    1967

    • Jan. 1 [Su]: Los Angeles Police raid the Black Cat Bar within minutes after midnight New Year’s eve.
      Six male patrons are charged with kissing, and sixteen people are arrested. Several bar-goers are injured, leading to future protests and a legal case.
    • Feb. 11 [Sa]: Rally outside of the Black Cat Bar in Los Angeles. (Jim Kepner helped to organize.)
    • April 25 [Tu]: Agreement of Settlement between the parties to the action of ONE, Incorporated vs. Slater, et al.
    • April 27 [Th]: Dismissal entered for case number 864 824 without prejudice, as to all defendants and cross-defendants, and as to all causes of action in the complaint and in the cross-complaint. The court battle between ONE, Incorporated and Don Slater, et al., is officially over, the organization permanently divided.

  • ROTH V. UNITED STATES

    The U.S. Supreme Court, in Roth v. United States and Alberts v. California, 354 U.S. 476, 77 S. Ct. 1304, 1 L. Ed. 2d 1498 (1957), issued a landmark ruling on obscenity and its relation to the first amendment. The Court held that obscenity was not a protected form of expression and could be restricted by the states. In addition, the Court announced a test for courts to use in evaluating whether material was obscene.

    The Court consolidated the appeals of Samuel Roth and David Alberts. Roth had been convicted of violating a federal statute (18 U.S.C.A. § 1461) that made it a crime to mail obscene advertising and reading materials

    Justice william j. brennan jr., in his majority opinion, reviewed the history of freedom of expression and concluded that not every type of utterance was protected in the thirteen original colonies. libel, blasphemy, and profanity were among the statutory crimes. In addition, that every state and the federal government had obscenity statutes showed that the First Amendment “was not intended to protect every utterance.” Obscenity is denied protection because it is “utterly without redeeming social importance.”

    Having ruled that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press, Brennan noted that sex in art and literature was not, by itself, obscene

    Indeed, “sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life” had interested “mankind through the ages; it is one of the vital problems of human interest and public concern.” In the past, however, mere sexual content was enough to have a novel banned under the test courts used in assessing whether something was obscene.

    For a legal definition of obscenity, U.S. courts looked to the English case of Regina v. Hicklin, L.R. 3 Q.B. 360 (1868). The Hicklin test was “whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.” This test permitted prosecutors and judges to select objectionable words or passages without regard for the work as a whole and without respect to any artistic, literary, or scientific value the work might have.

    Brennan rejected the Hicklin test as being “unconstitutionally restrictive of the freedoms of speech and press.” It was essential that the work as a whole be evaluated before being declared obscene

    Brennan endorsed the test used in both Roth’s and Alberts’s trials: “whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient [lewd or lustful] interest.” The new test was applicable to both state and federal government obscenity prosecutions.

    The Roth test did not settle the question of what is obscenity, however. In fact, the Court was drawn into a long-term inquiry over virtually every element of the new obscenity test. The Court has never reached full agreement on what constitutes an appeal to “prurient interest.” The phrase “redeeming social importance” has also failed to generate a consensus. Nor, in the years immediately following Roth, could the Court agree on whether “community” referred to the nation as a whole or to individual states or localities

    References

    Gay History: Historian Charts Lismore Region’s Hidden Past and Evolution to LGBTIQ Acceptance

    Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, History

    Article originally posted by ABC News North Coast on 29 June 2017, by Samantha Turnbull.

    The Tropical Fruits New Year’s Eve festival begins with a parade through the streets of Lismore. Supplied: Brad Mustow

    Australia’s first gay commune, homophobic newspaper editorials, and one city’s role in the anti-discrimination debate are all part of the hidden history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) community of northern New South Wales.

    Historian Ian Gray has been researching the region’s LGBTIQ community for more than 10 years, and now part of his work has been curated into an exhibition called Lismore Has A Diverse Past: Celebrating 40 Years of Hidden Her/History.

    Mr Gray said while Lismore and northern New South Wales had become regional Australia’s self-proclaimed “gay capital”, it had been difficult to uncover stories more than 40 years old because of past taboos relating to sexuality.

    “We were much more hidden, much more in the closet, and it was much more dangerous to come out in the 1970s and particularly before law reform,” he said.

    “We were only beginning to really find ourselves in the 1970s and 1980s and beginning to talk to each other, let alone putting our stories out to the wider world.”

    Mr Gray said the region’s journey into LGBTIQ acceptance began with the 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival, which was co-organised by gay man Johnny Allen.

    Historian Ian Gray has been charting the LGBTIQ history of northern New South Wales. Supplied: Tropical Fruits

    Queer in the country

    In an article by Mr Gray called Queer in the Country, included in the exhibition, he wrote that many LGBTIQ people decided to move to rural areas as part of the counter cultural movement.

    For those LGBTIQ folk already living in the Northern Rivers in the 70s, being out in towns and especially in the bush was a very risky business.

    There were no organised groups or venues, so spending time with other ‘gays and lesbians’ and being yourself could only occur at occasional house parties and picnics organised within friendship groups.

    The exhibition also includes research about the establishment of LGBTIQ-friendly farms throughout the region, including Australia’s first gay commune Mandala at Uki near Murwillumbah.

    Mr Gray said Mandala was set up by Melbourne film director David Johnstone in 1973.

    The Mandala community was Australia’s first gay commune. Supplied: Lismore Has A Diverse Past

    “He envisaged it as a harmonious, vegetarian, ecologically sound rural resource centre for gay men and their friends,” Mr Gray said.

    “At its peak it had over 540 names on its mailing list and quite a profile in the national, Brisbane and Sydney gay press, which encouraged capital city ‘gays’ to visit.”

    Mr Gray also researched and wrote about a community at Tuntable, near Nimbin, which was a popular home for transgender women in the 1970s and 80s:

    They were escaping from working in Kings Cross and the legendary Les Girls all male revue.

    They were a cohesive tribe and set up their own hamlet Trazadia.

    Clashes with local newspaper editor

    Mr Gray said the former editor of the local daily newspaper, The Northern Star, wrote a series of homophobic editorials in the 1980s that were documented in the exhibition.

    The Northern Star newspaper has gone from running anti-homosexual editorials to articles embracing the LGBTIQ community in northern New South Wales. ABC North Coast: Samantha Turnbull

    “We had a battle with The Northern Star newspaper and editor Jim Brigginshaw, who had a bee in his bonnet about homosexuality,” he said.

    “He ran editorial after editorial really slamming the community in the mid-80s, and then AIDS came along and really got him going.”

    The LGBTIQ community responded with letters, but most were not published. One letter that did make it to print was met with the following editor’s note:

    If ever homosexuality was accepted as being normal and right, the future of the human race is in jeopardy … perhaps the conservationist should be more concerned whether the human species is to become extinct than they are about the future of trees or other aspects of the environment.

    However, Mr Gray said The Northern Star had since evolved into a broad-minded publication and employed several LGBTIQ journalists.

    “There was a change that happened and the newspaper really embraced our community,” Mr Gray said.

    “In 2005 one of the editors put a pink triangle, which is the universal LGBTIQ symbol, on the front page of the newspaper, which was a big moment.”

    Lismore’s role in anti-discrimination

    Mr Gray said much of the local media furore in the 1980s generated increased public interest in the broader issue of discrimination, and in 1984 the Anti-Discrimination Board visited Lismore for three days where it hosted several community meetings.

    At a post meeting press-conference spokesman Greg Tillet was quoted as saying:

    “Lismore is the most cosmopolitan country town in NSW, and an attempt to whip up hostility towards gays generally has clearly been unsuccessful. In general, the people of Lismore appear tolerant and easygoing.”

    The board then released a report into discrimination against homosexuals, and homosexuality was decriminalised in NSW the same year.

    The Tropical Fruits Festival is Lismore’s signature LGBTIQ event. ABC North Coast: Samantha Turnbull

    Looking to the future

    Mr Gray said Lismore now hosted the largest LGBTIQ event in the Southern Hemisphere outside of Sydney’s Mardi Gras — the Tropical Fruits New Year’s Eve Festival — and was marketed to tourists as the Rainbow Region.

    However, he said the region was not completely free from discrimination.

    “There’s still the same issues where it’s still not safe for instance to be out at night and be an overtly open gay or lesbian couple without abuse and that sort of thing,” he said.

    “And most LGBTIQ-identifying young people say their biggest issue is bullying at school.”

    Mr Gray said recording the community’s history was an important part of the process to fostering acceptance.

    “It’s part of building up our own pride in who we are and what we do,” he said.

    “It’s a little bit like Indigenous history — it’s often hidden or changed, and our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex history has been even more hidden I think because we’re not obvious in the community.

    “When we’re hearing our stories we realise we’re not alone, and when younger people hear the struggles we went through it helps them make sense of the world.”

    The exhibition is on at Southern Cross University, Lismore, until Friday.

    Reference

    Gay History: Klick Guide – Sydney Gay What’s On. Early 1980s.

    Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, History, Icons, , ,

    Just looking at the venues in this guide is pretty well a dead giveaway for its year of publication. By the mid-80s, the Roman Baths, 253 Baths, Club 80, the Apollo Bar and Flo’s Palace had closed. Flo’s was to become the Hellfire Club, then the Den Club – both incarnations as men’s sex-on-premises venues. Patchs became DCM. The Link also closed around the same time. KKK Baths closed on 20 May 2012, having opened in 1972. The Exchange Hotel closed in 2015. The Midnight Shift (previously Tropicana) became Universal in 2018. DCM closed around 2009. The Unicorn, The Oxford, The Flinders and The Beresford have undergone a number of incarnation over the decades. The Albury closed in 2000, and has been reincarnated as retail stores. The “Golden Mile” of gay Oxford St, Darlinghurst is a sad excuse now for what used to be a thriving ghetto. It is now a long string of empty premises featuring For Sale, or For Lease, signs.

    Gay History: The Erasure of Eleanor Rykener: A Case Study in Trans- and Bi- Phobia

    Article, biography, Gay Interest, History, , , ,

    The internet informs me that this week is Bisexual Awareness Week (consider: is your cat aware of the bisexual movement? Oh, and on a serious note, visibility matters). Allow me, then, to raise some questions about the way medieval studies has handled and assimilated the fascinating case of John Rykener, a male-cross dressing prostitute. If you took a gender-oriented medieval studies course in the last decade or so, or if you’ve read Karras’ Sexuality in Medieval Europe textbook, you’ve probably met John Rykener’s story in one form or another.

    Allow me to tell you about Eleanor Rykener: assigned male at birth, she fell in with a woman named Elizabeth Broderer, who gave her women’s clothing and called her Eleanor. We do not know if Eleanor sought out Elizabeth, or if Elizabeth identified something in the young man she knew as John Ryknener that she could exploit: but as far as we know, it was with Elizabeth that Eleanor first lived as a woman.

    Elizabeth was conducting a complicated and exploitative business, in which her daughter substituted for Eleanor in bed with men who believed they were sleeping with Eleanor. It is not recorded whether money was involved, but that seems likely. The court record says that Elizabeth’s daughter Alice did this ‘for lust’, but I would not be willing to take that as a given: it seems plausible to me that Eleanor and Alice worked together, willing or unwilling, in a scenario which allowed Elizabeth to maintain her daughter’s public respectability while Eleanor accrued the ill repute of a prostitute.

    Somehow, from there, Eleanor met a woman named Anna, who is referred to by the court transcript as “meretrix quondam cuiusdam famuli domini Thome Blount” (the whore of a former servant of Thomas Blount). It is possible that Anna was a prostitute regularly frequented by this former servant of Thomas Blount, but the various evidence assembled by Karras, in Unmarriages, on the varied roles and statuses of unmarried couples, leads me to think Anna might just as easily have been the mistress or even domestic partner (eg, if the said servant were already married and separated) of this unnamed gentleman. For reasons not given in the record, she taught Eleanor how she might have sex with men ‘in the manner of a woman’: for which we can read, in a receptive position.

    We do not know why Eleanor sought out this information, or why she acted on it. Perhaps she desired a sexual relationship with a man. Perhaps she wished to extract more substantial benefits, material or otherwise, from her work as a prostitute – since she was socially stuck as a prostitute anyway. It seems she was still living with Elizabeth Broderer, and – for one reason or another, bear in mind we do not know her motivations – an individual named Phillip, the rector of Theydon Garnon, would seem to have been her first client. (Or perhaps her non-commercial lover? Bear in mind this is entirely possible: People do sleep with trans women because they like them!) Eleanor seems to have been of limited resources at this time, because she took (was given? stole?) some garments from Phillip. When Phillip demanded their return, she convinced him to back off by asserting that she had a husband who would defend her in court.

    Next, Eleanor seems to have made a break for it: she moved to Oxford, and tried – for five weeks – to establish herself as an independent women in a women’s trade, that of embroidery. She continued to sleep with men (in a marsh, the court record says). Once again, we cannot say whether she sought their company for pleasure or for money. Something may have gone wrong, though, because Eleanor next moved to Burford to work as a tapster. In Burford she continued to sleep with men, but here the court records that only four of her eight lovers paid her. Did she expect payment from the others and not receive it? Perhaps. But it’s equally plausible that she enjoyed and desired sex with men. This possibility I have seen raised in discussion of John (Eleanor) Rykener as a male homosexual.

    Next, in Beaconsfield, Eleanor had sex with two men “as a woman” and one woman, Joan, “as a man”. Now, here I want to stress some things we DO know and some things we DON’T. We DO know that when the medieval record speaks of “ut vir concubuit cum” and ” concubuerunt ut cum femina” (‘[he] as a man lay with [Joan]’ and ‘[they] lay with [him] as a woman’) it does not speak of what clothes Eleanor was wearing at the time, or what name she went by. The issue at hand is who did what to whom, as is nicely demonstrated by the verb forms: he-as-a-man had sex with Joan, they (two franciscans) had sex with him-as-a-woman.

    What we do not know here includes:

    • Whether Joan of Beaconsfield considered herself to be having sex with Eleanor, or with John, Rykener.

    • What Joan and Eleanor did together. Concubere could in fact mean lie down together, and Eleanor did not give her testimony in Latin: we don’t know what she said that she and Joan did which the court records as ‘concubuit‘. Eleanor may have spoken in compatible passive/active terms, or she may not.

    • Assuming that Eleanor and Joan had penis-in-vagina intercourse, that does not tell us why they did so. Even if Joan met and bedded John Rykener, did she know about Eleanor? Was there an experiential difference, for either of them, between Eleanor(?John)’s conduct in bed and that of other men?

    • Conversely, we do not know which identity Eleanor was presenting when she slept with the two Franciscans – but that possibility has already been raised by queer historians, who are generally quite keen to point out that John Rykener’s male lovers could have known exactly who and what they were doing.

    Returning to London, Eleanor committed ‘the aforementioned vice’ with several more churchmen, but the record does not state if they paid her – nor, in this instance, does it specify cum femina. However, it seems her efforts to find more respectable work had not succeeded, because finally, we know that she propositioned one John Britby to commit a ‘libidinous act’ with her in a stall by Soper’s lane, for an agreed-upon-sum. John Britby swore to the court that he thought she was a woman at that time.

    The court record also says that Eleanor had sex cum vir with assorted nuns and married women. This addition lacks the detail of her encounters with men and with Joan, and I would be inclined to suspect it of being an embroidery upon Eleanor’s testimony, designed to both mark out John Rykener as a particularly depraved individual and enforce public perception of him as male by ensuring that everyone knows he could and did have lots of sex cum vir. However, even allowing for the fact that this assertion has less to hold it up than the previous account, I find it curious1 that it tends to appear as a footnote only to the history of John Rykener, when the following comment about numerous priestly clients who pay better than other man gets a fair bit of circulation.

    Eleanor Rykener is rarely cited, despite what her testimony can tell us about women’s lives in marginal professions in the 15th century. (I note that Kim Racon at Notches has also blogged about this lack.2) John Rykener is spoken of, and John/Eleanor, but never Eleanor or Eleanor-John. Whenever I’ve had the pleasure of teaching this topic, I’ve made a point of speaking of Eleanor Rykener and her trial, because… well, it seemed the decent thing to do.3 At the very least, Eleanor Rykener was a cultivated public persona (comparable to a drag act, perhaps?) – and given she seems to have run away and tried to take up a woman’s profession other than prostitution twice, the common summary of her story as ‘male crossdressing prostitute’ is incredibly reductive. Karras herself notes on p. 184 of Medieval Sexualities that the Rykener and a 14th century Venetian prostitute, probably a hermaphrodite, named Ronaldo/Ronaldina, are far from the standard sodomite, who did not normally wear women’s clothing. It is very unlikely that John Rykener was, in modern terms, a sad gay man who found crossdressing the only way to get laid – there’s enough other evidence to suggest that medieval blokes found ways to bang that didn’t involve ladies’ clothes!!

    “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.

    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.”

    References

    Australian Storytelling: Australian Folklore – An Interview with Peter Dargin

    Article, biography, General Interest, History, Icons, ,

    Again, the Captain Pickles mentioned in this interview is my Great Grand Uncle, Captain George Rickinsom Swan Pickhills. The misspelling of his surname was common – and evidently infuriated him.

    A question asked of me at the Mudgee workshop conducted by Helen McKay, was “Where do you get your folklore?”

    Sometimes I take known stories from the universal folklore and adapt them to a local setting. “Swagman’s Stone Soup” is an example. Further to this is the development of stories around a particular Australian theme – bush-rangers. Stories that adapt the history of Outback N.S.W. during the 1870’s-80’s.

    The first introduces Silly Billy Brown. He demolishes the family toilet trying to shoot a crow stealing eggs from the chookyard. Billy runs away on a one-eyed horse (at a similar age and time to Sidney Kidman) to become a bushranger but is bushranged by Captain Twilight. They meet up with Captain Daylight and become the Daylight Gang, living at their secret Rocky Billabong Hideout. This is a traditional use of three characters.

    Extended stories bring in The Three Troopers: Sergeant Flashman, Trooper O’Kane and Trooper Crump. Mrs Kate Brown, Molly Brown and Miss Elizabeth Goodheart, of Dunlop Station, feature as strong characters. Captain Daylight and Sergeant Flashman compete for the heart of Miss Elizabeth Goodheart.

    These characters have their place on a Time Line — from the New Calendar 1752 to the 21st century. It starts in England before the First Fleet: shows the Crimean War, for Sergeant Flashman; the death of Daylight, then follows Silly Billy Brown, who, as William Browne MP, fails in his attempts to get the railway through the Outback. Captain Twilight just fades away, but, there is a link with the present.

    At Terrible Tiny Tilpa, Lizard McGinnis, Old George and a smelly swagman provided volumes of information, mystery and unbelievable history, for a similar volume of ale, when I was researching “Around the Pubs” for ABC 2CR.

    They took me to a long, low, mud house on the banks of the Darling River to meet first child of Daylight and Elizabeth Goodheart. Miss Day (Captain Daylight’s real surname), never married. The young man she loved and her two brothers died in the horrible mess that was Gallipoli.

    She was waiting for the mailman to bring her a telegram from the Queen telling her she was 100 years old.

    Don Day is remembered as a dashing bushman, not as a bushranger. He drowned rescuing a woman and her three children. Their horse bolted tipping them into the river. He rescued the people then dived down to cut the horse from the dray. He never came up. The horse did, more dead than alive, but the Great Grey-green Darling River kept Don Day.

    After shearing, his friends made a memorial at Daylight Point. It’s a sight that brings tears to the eyes and a lump to the throat. I know, because Miss Dianna took me there.

    She sat straight in her side saddle as the horses trotted up a rise overlooking one of the grandest waterholes on the Darling River.

    And there it was, a big black billycan on a fire of bronze logs.

    It sat on a large flat rook, dragged for miles by bullock team. Engraved into the billy can is:-

    “In Memory of Donald Francis Day 1850-1896 — Elizabeth Day, Twilight, Cpt. Rtd. Dianna Day, William Brown, JP Frank Day, Judge Long, Rtd. Gordon Day, Ned O’Kane, Insp.” Little crosses are punched after Frank and Gordon.

    “Even Captain Pickles was here. He brought people down from Bourke on the wandering Jane.”

    I helped Miss Dianna down. The horses trotted into a small broken-down yard, lush with grass. I made a fire, then filled our billy from the river. We had jolly jumbuck, boiled potatoes, johnnycake and billy tea.

    Red cloud bars turned grey. Frogs and night insects started chatting. I dropped another log onto the fire, showering red sparks and stirring the low flames. When I looked up small silver twinkles dotted the sky and Miss Dianna and a curlew were both talking at once.

    She told how Aboriginal women saved her life, and her mother’s, when she was born. How, in the 1890 flood, Joey Quartpot rescued them, one by one, in his bark canoe. Of her brothers, young and wild, riding all the way to Sydney to join the Light Horse to fight for King and Country. And her mother, going to live in a flat in Manly where she knitted socks and made Christmas Puddings for the ANZACS, only to die of a broken heart.

    The past flickered through the flames, as she went further back to tell about Daylight and Twilight.

    She laughed about William Browne MP. “He became rather fat, bald and pompous. But his heart was in the right place. He stuck up for the Outback.”

    The tail of the Southern Cross was hanging low over the river. “I come here every year for the morning of the day Dad drowned.” She walked stiffly to the bronze billy can, lifted the lid then pulled the end off one of the logs. It was hollow.

    Night melted. The first ray of daylight speared down the long waterhole into the bronze log, striking a large crystal in the bottom of the billy can. A shaft of light shot upwards, through the overhanging coolabah, scaring the hell out of the black and red cockatoos and blinding the last stars.

    “Bushranging, booze and battle took the best of our youth, Peter.”

    That night gave me the folk lore and a store of stories – fact, fiction and fantasy – to last me a lifetime.

    Miss Day received her telegram from the Queen. She rests beside the long, low, mud-brick homestead. No one lives there but, at times, a swagman calls, tidies the garden then disappears towards the Tilpa Pub.

    Peter Dargan, Travelling Writer, Dubbo, NSW. © 1995

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