Category Archives: Political

Gay History: 9 Things To Know About ‘The Lavender Scare’

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(Above, right, powerful and closeted gay lawyer Roy Cohn was instrumental in creating anti-Communist fervor.)

Filmmaker Josh Howard discusses his forthcoming documentary on dark days in American history.

Tomorrow’s a lamentable anniversary for the United States: it was 60 years ago, on April 27, 1953, that President Eisenhower put his John Hancock an executive order demanding all gay and lesbian government employees be fired. Not really something you want to celebrate, right? But it is something you should know about, which is why director Josh Howard began production on The Lavender Scare, a documentary based on Dr. David Johnson’s book of the same name. It’s also the first cinematic account of how our government tracked down gays and lesbians in the mid-20th Century.

This project began in 2009, when Howard, a former Emmy-winning producer for CBS’ 60 Minutes and later CNBC, stumbled across Johnson’s book. He hadn’t intended on turning it into anything, and certainly didn’t intend on leaving his job to direct a documentary, but as he read on, and researched on his own, the subject gripped him.

Unable to shake the feeling that there was more story to tell, Howard approached Johnson, now a professor at the University of South Florida, about optioning the book. Johnson agreed, and for the past two years Howard has tracked down as many sources as possible to fill in the gaps, including Frank Kameny, a government astronomer fired who was fired for being gay in 1957 and went on to lead the first public protests against the anti-American policy.

Howard also managed to find a few of the government agents tasked with spearheading the anti-gay witch hunt. One remains particularly unrepentant. “The people that I got rid of, they were faggots,” he says, under the cloak of darkness, inthe film’s trailer, included below. “I didn’t give a hoot; get rid of the son of a bitch. Put him in the bread line.”

As far away as this may all seem, keep in mind that lawmakers and activists are still fighting for Employment Non-Discrimination, policies that would finally create federal laws making illegal to fire LGBT people. (As you know, it’s legal in 29 states to fire gay and lesbian employees and legally acceptable in 34 to do the same for transgender people as well.) And this isn’t simply about homophobia or jobs. It’s about the nagging, tenacious ability of Americans to participate in or turn a blind eye to injustice, a trait foreign observer EM Forster saw right away. Whether it’s scapegoating gays during then Lavender Scare or Muslims after 9/11 or Japanese-Americans during World War II, this a completely unattractive and persistent quality, and it’s one that Howard hopes this film can help eradicate.

To get to that point, though, Howard and his team need to finish editing and licensing the bundle of archival materials they hope to include, and that requires money. Supporters can give them a little greenback love at Kickstarter. They’re shooting for $50,000 and donations end on May 21, which would have been Kameny’s 88th birthday.

Here, Howard offers us the basics on The Lavender Scare, the policies it spawned, what happened to those policies and why this son of a bitch story still matters.

(Left: Frank Kameny can be seen toward the left in this picture from a 1965 White House picket he helped organized. Right: an older Kameny poses with one of those signs.)

1. WHAT IS THE LAVENDER SCARE? It’s the first feature-length film documentary to tell the story of the U.S. government’s decades-long campaign to fire every federal employee found to be gay or lesbian. In what became the most successful witch hunt in American history, thousands and thousands of federal workers lost their jobs. More than a few, with their careers in ruins and unable to find work, committed suicide.

2. WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN, AND WHY? In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy ignited the Red Scare with his allegations that Communists had infiltrated the U.S. government. He then added the claim that gay men and lesbians were even more dangerous than Reds, because they were susceptible to blackmail by foreign enemy agents and would give up government secrets in order to keep their sexual orientation from being exposed. The fear of this supposed homosexual menace became known as the Lavender Scare.

3. HOW MANY HOMOSEXUALS ACTUALLY GAVE UP SECRETS IN ORDER TO AVOID BEING EXPOSED? After several investigations over many years, not a single case was ever found.

4. WERE LGBT PEOPLE ALWAYS FEARED IN WASHINGTON? No! In fact, in the 1930s and 40s, there was a vibrant and very open gay community in Washington. A large number of new government jobs were created after the Great Depression, and many of the people who came to Washington to fill those jobs were gay men and lesbians. They were eager to make a new life in the growing city, and the government was eager to hire them. Same sex couples could be seen holding hands on the trolley or even kissing on the grounds of the Washington Monument. They enjoyed a comfortable work environment and a lively social life. No one could have anticipated the devastating events that were to come.

5. WAIT, WHY IS THE DATE APRIL 27, 1953 IMPORTANT? That is the day President Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which made it official government policy that gay and lesbian employees were to be hunted down and fired. More than a thousand federal agents – a couple of whom are interviewed in our film -were assigned to the task of determining who was a homosexual. People were subjected to grueling interrogation: “Who do you live with? Who are your friends? What bars do you frequent? Would you like us to call your family back home and ask these questions?” People were ordered to give up the names of their gay and lesbian friends. Most chose to resign immediately, rather than face continued pressure or further scrutiny.

6. DID ANY GOOD COME OF THIS? Yes! In 1957, Dr. Franklin Kameny, a Harvard PhD who had been working for the U.S. Army Map Service, was fired from his job when the government found out he was gay. But unlike the thousands who had been fired before him, he fought back! The purges created a sense of anger and militancy in the gay community that sowed the seeds of the gay rights movement. In 1965, years before Stonewall, Kameny and a small band of brave men and women staged a picket in front of the White House, in what is believed to be the first gay rights demonstration in the country. Kameny went on to devote his entire life to the fight for LGBT rights, and just before his death saw his achievements honored by President Obama.

7. HOW LONG DID THE BAN ON GAY AND LESBIAN WORKERS REMAIN IN EFFECT? People continued to lose their jobs simply through the 1950s, ‘60s, 70s, and 80s. In 1995, President Clinton officially rescinded the policy that had been put in place by President Eisenhower in 1953, and for the first time in four decades, LGBT people could freely work for the civilian agencies of the federal government. Of course, the ban on service in the military continued for many years beyond that.

8. DOES THIS STORY HAVE ANY PRESENT DAY RELEVANCE? Oh, definitely. There are still 29 states in the country in which it is perfectly legal to fire people simply because they are LGBT – a direct result of our government’s homophobic policies that were put in place in the 1950s. We think the story of The Lavender Scare will help educate people about the need for laws on both the state and national level to protect LGBT people from employment discrimination. The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would extend job protection to LGBT people nationwide, has just been re-introduced in Congress – ironically enough. just as we’re marking the 60th anniversary of the start of the government’s anti-gay witch hunts.

9. WHY DO SO FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS? This is a classic example of the way in which the struggles and contributions of gay men and lesbians are ignored in the telling of American history. It is shocking that with all the books and films about the Cold War and the Red Scare, the story of the Lavender Scare is almost completely ignored. The Lavender Scare will be the first film to shine a light on this important subject – if we can raise the funds to finish production. As philanthropist and activist Jim Hormel has said, “If LGBT people don’t take the lead in preserving our history, who will?”

Reference

Gay History: Watch the Scary 1961 Anti-Gay PSA – “Boys Beware” – Video

Article, Gay Interest, History, Political,

Boys Beware was a short PSA film produced by Sid Davis productions in 1959 on the suggestion of the Inglewood Police Department in Southern California. It was ostensibly was made to warn young boys of the danger of predatory men on purpose.

What Jimmy didn’t know was the Ralph was sick. A sickness not visible like smallpox, but no less dangerous and contagious- a sickness of the mind. You see Ralph was a homosexual, a person who demands an intimate relationship with members of their own sex.”

At one point in time Boys Beware was required viewing for males in many school districts across the country.

Reference

Gay History: John F. Kennedy Had A Gay Best Friend Who Even Had His Own Room At The White House

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

The book “Jack and Lem: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship,” details the extraordinary relationship between two unlikely friends.

JFK, or ‘Jack’ as he was known by his close friends and family, had a gay best friend named Lem Billings, who he met in prep school when Kennedy was 15 and Lem was 16.

The pair became the best of friends who wrote letters to each other when they were apart, traveled to Europe together and were so close that Joseph Kennedy Sr. thought of Billings as another son, according to GregInHollywood.

The book details JFK’s angry reaction to Lem after he made a sexual advance towards him, saying: “I’m not that kind of boy.” But this misunderstanding did not end the duo’s relationship.

Writes GregInHollywood:

From the time he and Kirk LeMoyne “Lem” Billings met at Choate, until the President’s assassination thirty years later, they remained best friends.

Lem was a virtual fixture in the Kennedy family who even had his own room at the White House.

The book about their friendship draws on hundreds of letters and telegrams between the two, Billings’s oral history and interviews with family and friends like Ben Bradlee, Gore Vidal, and Ted Sorensen.

It was a friendship that endured despite an era of rampant homophobia.

Billings was a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School and was an advertising executive at the Manhattan advertising firm Lennen & Newell. He put his business career on hold to work on Kennedy’s campaign for president.

Bradlee says in the book: “I suppose it’s known that Lem was gay….It impressed me that Jack had gay friends.”

Billings obviously never came out but did once say: “Jack made a big difference in my life. Because of him, I was never lonely. He may have been the reason I never got married.”

Kenneth Hill of WoolfAndWilde, conducted a fascinating interview with David Pitts, the author of ‘Jack and Lem’, to uncover some more details about the extraordinary relationship between the two unlikely friends:
Kenneth Hill: How would you characterize the friendship between JFK and Lem Billings?

David Pitts: The way I would characterize it is that is was a very close, deep, friendship across sexual orientation lines.

KH: You said that this was the story of a friendship that crossed sexual orientation lines, which I think is really an interesting element of it, but talk a little bit about the depth of this friendship. The fact that it started when they were very young and, from what I read in the book, they were basically inseparable for the rest of their lives except when circumstances had them in distant cities.

DP: Yes, indeed. I think there were a number of elements to it. First of all, there were a series of bonding events early on. One was the fact that they both hated that school [Choate] in which they met. And were engaged in all kinds of pranks which almost got them expelled twice. That was obviously a bonding phenomenon. Secondly, they roomed together for part of the time at the school.

Thirdly, and I think this is really important, John Kennedy was so sick most of his life, far earlier than when most people think, including when he was at Choate, and Lem was the person at boarding school — his mother and father did not come to the school when he was ill; Lem was there. Lem was the person who was always there for him and took care of him. And then fourthly, there was the two month trip to Europe that they took, just before WWII in 1937, just the two Americans at that pivotal time, I think that was obviously a very strong bonding event.

And then over and above these issues, I would say this — and this is kind of a complicated thought because we really don’t have language to express these kinds of relationships — and that is, I’m firmly convinced after working on this book that John Kennedy’s sexual interests were in women. We don’t need much evidence of that, the evidence is all over the place. But his strongest emotional attachments were to men — and principally, to Lem. We don’t have a word for that, right? Somebody who prefers the opposite gender for sexuality, and the same gender for deep, emotional attachments.

KH: We don’t really have a word for that. I guess “man’s man” used to sort of mean that, but JFK took it so much further in a way because he loved being around men, he knew some men were attracted to him and even seemed to enjoy it. He liked the stimulation of those relationships, there was nothing sexual about it, but there was something about that male-male dynamic that fed him.

DP: I think that’s exactly right. There was one reviewer who wrote, “What’s the big deal here? This guy’s writing that JFK was comfortable with gay men, so big deal, we all knew that.” But of course it’s not the fact that he had a friend named Lem Billings who was gay. This was the closest person in all the world to him outside of his family for 30 years. He wasn’t just “a gay friend” on the side.

KH: One of the very surprising facts that comes out in this book is that Lem had his own room at the White House?

DP: Yes, that’s one of the revelations in the book that’s really surprising. And actually some of the people who were working in the White House very close to JFK didn’t know it. For example, Ted Sorensen whom I interviewed for the book, perhaps the closest aide to JFK, saw Lem around the White House all the time, but he told me he didn’t know that he’d had his own room there and was staying there so much of the time. But yeah, that’s another indication of the depth of the attachment.

One thing I was intent on doing when I wrote this book, because I thought it would be open to various forms of attack, is that I never went beyond what the documents said. The book is a lot of quotes from documents, or that interviewees said. This friendship might have contained a lot of things that I wasn’t able to find out because I didn’t want to enter the area of speculation.

KH: It seems without a doubt that Lem was in love with JFK. But it’s never stated explicitly because you don’t have any record of his ever saying that.

DP: No, I think the closest … I mean, these were more sedate times, especially where homosexuality is concerned. Even in the various documents, Lem is never overt in his statements. But there was one statement from one of the documents, and I have it in front of me here, that I think is just expresses his feelings. Here’s the quote: “Jack made a big difference in my life. Because of him, I was never lonely. He may have been the reason I never got married.”

This is somewhat of a difficult thought as well, but I think gay people had a way back then of telegraphing to future generations what their feelings were that they could not express candidly at the time. And anybody who reads some of these words today would have no doubt what Lem’s feelings were, but in the context of that time it was not obviously understood.

Reference

Gay History: Pride, Prejudice and Punishment: Gay Rights Around The World

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

Australians have voted in favour of legalising same-sex marriage — but elsewhere in the world gay people can struggle to simply stay out of jail.

Being openly gay is effectively illegal in more than 70 countries — and can result in severe punishment, sometimes even death.

See how Australia’s position on same-sex marriage compares around the world.

The state of marriage rights

Voters’ ‘yes’ response to the SSM postal survey is Australia’s latest step towards allowing same-sex couples to marry, and may prove close to the culmination of a long campaign.

Campaigners have suggested Australia is lagging behind rest of the world.

It is fair to say that most countries with similar cultural backgrounds to Australia have now legalised same-sex marriage, but based on total country numbers, Australia remains part of the majority in restricting marriage to couples made up of a man and a woman.

Out of 209 countries the ABC examined, only 24 allow same-sex couples to marry.

There is no same-sex marriage in Asia or the Middle East, and South Africa is the only country in Africa to have legalised it.

In Europe, the legal status of same-sex marriage is mixed. The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001, with other Western countries including the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany following it.

Yet more than half of European Union members have not.

Mima Simic and her girlfriend Marta Sisak vote in Croatia’s referendum on defining marriage as a “union of man and woman”.
Reuters: Antonio Bronic

Some countries in Eastern Europe have recently sought to amend their constitutions to entrench the “traditional definition” of marriage:

  • Hungary brought in a new constitution in 2011 that specifically restricts marriage to heterosexual couples.
  • Voters in Croatia (2013) and Slovakia (2015) voted to change the definition of marriage in their constitutions so that it applies only to a union of a man and a woman, although the Slovakian referendum was invalid due to a low turnout.
  • In December 2015, Slovenian voters rejected the legalisation of same-sex marriage in a referendum.

Australia made a similar amendment to its Marriage Act in 2004, adding a definition of marriage as “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others”.

How have countries legalised same-sex marriage?

In Australia, Parliament can legalise same-sex marriage by amending the Marriage Act but the Government’s policy has been that its MPs will only be able to vote for same-sex marriage if a majority of Australians support the change via a plebiscite.

The Government’s compulsory plebiscite proposal was defeatedin the Senate. Instead, the non-compulsory Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey was run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics between September 12 and November 7.

After the survey returned a yes outcome, a private member’s bill will now be debated in Parliament to legalise marriage between people of the same sex.

Out of the countries that have legalised same-sex marriage:

  • Only one country, Ireland, put the change to a people’s vote. A referendum was legally required, held in May 2015, and overwhelmingly passed.
  • Parliaments legalised same-sex marriage in 20 countries.
  • Court rulings prompted the change in five countries.
Gay rights supporters celebrate after a US Supreme Court ruling that same-sex couples have the right to marry

The highest-profile court decision was in the United States in 2013, when the Supreme Court effectively legalised same-sex marriage by finding the Defence of Marriage Act was unconstitutional.

Most recently, in April 2017, the Constitutional Court of Taiwan (Republic of China) ruled that the Taiwanese law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman was unconstitutional. It ordered that a change in the law had to occur within two years. At the time of writing, same-sex marriage is still unavailable in Taiwan.

Where is being gay illegal?

Marriage is an important issue in Western countries but elsewhere in the world, LGBT people can struggle to simply stay out of jail.

There are more than 70 countries where homosexual acts are illegal.

The countries shaded in the map above are those where there is a law that prohibits homosexual acts in part or all of the country.

Most of these countries fall within two main categories — just over half are former colonies mostly in Africa that inherited discriminatory laws but never repealed them, while the others are majority-Muslim countries.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) publishes an annual report of “state-sponsored homophobia”.

What exactly is outlawed varies from country to country. Twenty-eight states only prohibit relations between men.

A common formulation is a prohibition of “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”.

Sometimes gay sex is placed in the same category as bestiality.

  • In India it is an offence to “voluntarily [have] carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal”.
  • In Mauritius, it is a crime to commit “sodomy or bestiality”.
  • In Uganda, a law provides for a seven-year jail term for anyone who conducts a same-sex marriage ceremony.
Kenyan MP Irungu Kang’ata leads an anti-gay caucus protest in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
Reuters: Thomas Mukoya

Not all the countries with these laws actually enforce them for consensual sex at home.

The Singapore Penal Code prohibits “any act of gross indecency with another male person” in “public or private”, with a maximum penalty of two years in prison.

But National University of Singapore Assistant Professor Lynette Chua says the ban has “seldom been applied in private, consensual situations and [is] typically used in non-consensual situations or cases involving minors”.

Similarly, Shakira Hussein of the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne suggests that in Islam “on all sexual matters … it isn’t the act itself that is to be punished but the public commission of it”.

“Some sharia scholars say that the laws against illicit sex should basically be regarded as laws against public indecency, since they require four witnesses.”

Even if bans aren’t strictly enforced, they often still have a harmful impact on LGBT people.

Achim Hildebrandt of the University of Stuttgart says such bans “represent an ever-present threat of blackmail and public disgrace … they drive gays and lesbians out of public life and prevent them from demanding more far-reaching reforms such as the outlawing of discrimination in the workplace and the housing market”.

Where do LGBT people risk the death penalty?

The death penalty is in place for same-sex sexual acts in at least 11 countries.

According to the IGLA, the death penalty applies in Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen and in parts of Nigeria and Somalia.

In theory the death penalty could also be imposed in Mauritania, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emiratesthrough sharia law, but this does not appear to have occurred in practice.

Information on when the death penalty has been carried out is not readily available.

The “Erasing 76 Crimes” blog, which advocates for the repeal of anti-LGBT laws around the world, indicates that only Iran and Saudi Arabia have actually carried out executions for same-sex activity in recent times.

The blog’s founder, Colin Stewart, says that in Saudi Arabia“beheadings have been imposed for homosexual behaviour in the past, including three men in 2002, but imprisonment and lashings are a more common punishment”.

“Iran is second in the world for frequency of executions [after China], including executions for homosexual activity, although the facts about the offences being punished are often unclear or misrepresented in news accounts.”

Pakistanis rally in Peshawar in support of a trans woman who was arrested at her wedding.
Reuters: Fayaz Aziz

At the same time, Dr Hussein points out the existence of established trans communities in Iran and Pakistan. She tells the ABC:

“Some same-sex male couples circumvent laws against homosexuality by getting a doctors’ certificate to say that one half of the couple is a trans woman. Supposedly, this is meant to be followed up with surgery, but that isn’t necessarily carried through.

“Pakistan has had a ‘third gender’ option on the national ID card for a few years now [and] Iran has one of the highest rates of male-to-female trans surgery in the world.”

What other forms of harassment take place?

Intimidation of LGBT people is not restricted to the threat of jail or death.

Homosexuality is legal in Russia but in recent years the Government has imposed laws that ban “promotion” of “sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism”.

Omar G Encarnacion of Bard College in New York suggests thatRussia’s law “is so broad that it outlaws gay pride parades, public displays of affection by same-sex couples, gay symbols such as the rainbow flag, and even a public admission of homosexuality, unless made in the way that casts homosexuality in a negative light”.

A Russian police officer detains a man who planned to place a tribute to the victims of a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando in front of the US Embassy in Moscow.
Reuters: Maxim Zmeyev

Closer to home, Singapore takes a tough line on “promotion” of LGBT issues — on paper at least.

According to Assistant Professor Chua, “Singaporean media are banned from carrying content that “promotes”, “justifies” or “glamorises” “lifestyles such as homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexualism, transsexualism [and] transvestism”.

In mid-2014, the National Library of Singapore announced it would pulp its copies of three children’s books with LGBT themes. According to the Government-linked Straits Times Newspaper:

“And Tango Makes Three is based on the true story of a pair of male penguins who raise a chick together; The White Swan Express features adoptive parents such as a lesbian couple; and Who’s In My Family highlights different family structures and includes same-sex parents.”

After a public outcry, two of the books were returned to the library but placed in the adults’ section.

In June 2016, the Singapore Government announced that“foreign entities should not fund, support or influence” Pinkdot, an annual LGBT event held in a Singapore park.

Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, suggests“Singapore’s demand that foreign companies stop sponsoring PinkDot encourages corporations to discriminate against LGBT people”.

Singapore’s annual Pink Dot event promotes acceptance of the LGBT community.
Reuters: Edgar Su

Leaders in other countries freely use discriminatory language against LGBT people: 

  • In 2015, the mayor of Budapest in Hungary described the city’s Gay Pride rally as “repulsive”.
  • In Africa, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni has describedhomosexual people as “disgusting”.

The ABC has recently reported on LGBT Ugandans fleeing the country as refugees.

Members of a breakaway faction of the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe protest against homosexuality in Harare.
Reuters: Philimon Bulawayo

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has previously said that:“Homosexuals are worse than dogs and pigs; dogs and pigs will never engage in homosexual madness,” and followed this up in 2013 by stating that LGBT people were “worse than pigs, goats and birds”.

In 2016 the ageing ruler vowed that Zimbabwe would reject any foreign aid that is “given on the basis that we accept the principle of gay marriages”.

Are things getting better for LGBT people?

With LGBT harassment and criminal penalties continuing in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and parts of Europe, the picture may seem bleak.

But veteran campaigner Peter Tatchell, who famously attempted a citizen’s arrest of Robert Mugabe in March 2001 and was then beaten by the president’s bodyguards, is more optimistic.

“There are rays of hope [in Africa], with the Seychelles, Mozambique and Sao Tome & Principe recently decriminalising homosexuality [and] in 2014, the African Commission on Human Rights and People’s Rights urged member states to protect LGBT people against discrimination and violence,” he says. 

Ty Cobb from Human Rights Campaign said: “We have seen great progress with regards to global LGBTQ rights in recent years, with three countries decriminalising same-sex activity just [in 2016], 20 countries and certain jurisdictions in Mexico have marriage equality and more and more countries are taking measures to improve the lives of trans individuals.”

At the same time, Mr Cobb notes that anti-LGBT movements continue to work against the community.

“Extremists have organised marches against marriage equality efforts in Mexico, American evangelicals have resorted to exporting their dangerous messages of hate from Eastern Europe to Africa, and [Islamic State] continues to target and kill members of the LGBTQ community throughout the Arab world,” he says.

In Singapore, there are signs of increased cultural acceptance of the LGBT community, with the 2016 release of home-grown web drama People Like Us taking place with no real backlash.

Telling the stories of four gay men in Singapore, the series has been well-received by the local community.

Filmaker Leon Cheo says apart from some “thumbs-down” on YouTube, “we haven’t received flak or negative emails or comments from Singaporeans at large”.

Mr Cheo says while the situation for LGBT people in Singapore is improving, “challenges such as censorship of neutral and positive LGBT news, film and TV, and archaic anti-sodomy laws still exist”.

“One of our creative objectives was to portray Asian gay men neutrally or positively [so that the] series could play a part in changing the hearts and minds of the citizens and government of Singapore,” he says.

In the Middle East, LGBT rights remain strongest in Israel although it is unclear whether or when same-sex marriage might be legalised there.

Reference

Gay History: Sodomy; The Law in England, 1290-1885

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

There was no royal or parliamentary law against homosexual activity in England until 1533, but a number of medieval legal sources do discuss “sodomy:.

Fleta, xxxviii.3: Those who have dealings with Jews or Jewesses, those who commit bestiality, and sodomists, are to be buried alive after legal proof that they were atken in the act, and public conviction” 

[Fleta, seu Commentarius Juris Anglicani, (London: 1735), as trans in Derrick Sherwin Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition, (London: Longmans, Green, 1955), 145] 

Bailey notes that it is improbable that the penalty or burial alive was ever inflicted in medieval times [although Tacitus refers to it among ancient Germans in Germania 12].

Britton, i.10: “Let enquiry also be made of those who feloniously in time of peace have burnt other’s corn or houses, and those who are attainted thereof shall be burnt, so that they might be punished in like manner as they have offended. The same sentence shall be passed upon sorcerers, sorceresses, renegades, sodomists, and heretics publicly convicted” 

[Britton, ed. F.M. Nichols, (Oxford: 1865), Vol 1:41-42 and Bailey, 146]

Bailey notes that this implies a process in which ecclesiastical courts made the charges and convictions and the state put them into effect. There do not seem, however, to have been serious efforts made to put theory into practice. The preamble to the 1533 Law seems to make this clear.

25 Henry VIII. C6

Le Roy le veult
“Forasmuch as there is not yet sufficient and condign punishment appointed and limited by the due course of the Laws of this Realm for the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with mankind of beast: It may therefore please the King’s Highness with the assent of the Lords Spiritual and the Commons of this present parliament assembled, that it may be enacted by the authority of the same, that the same offence be from henceforth ajudged Felony and that such an order and form of process therein to be used against the offenders as in cases of felony at the Common law. And that the offenders being herof convict by verdict confession or outlawry shall suffer such pains of death and losses and penalties of their good chattels debts lands tenements and hereditaments as felons do according to the Common Laws of this Realme. And that no person offending in any such offence shall be admitted to his Clergy, And that Justices of the Peace shall have power and authority within the limits of their commissions and Jurisdictions to hear and determine the said offence, as they do in the cases of other felonies. This Act to endure till the last day. of the next Parliament” 

[Bailey, 147-148, and H. Montgomery Hyde, The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name: A Candid History of Homosexuality in Britain, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970) [British title: The Other Love] 

Note that the law only ran until the end of the next Parliament. The law was reenacted three times, and then in 1541 it was enacted to continue in force for ever. In 1547, Edward VI’s first Parliament repealed all felonies created in the last reign [I Edw. VI. C.12]. In 1548 the provisions of the 1533 Act were given new force, with minor amendments – the penalty remained death, but goods and lands were not forfeit, and the rights of wives and heirs were safeguarded. Mary’s accession brought about the repeal of all Edward’s acts in 1548 [1 Mar c.1]. It was not until 1563, that Elizabeth I’s second Parliament reenacted the law [5 Eliz I. C.17] and the law of 1533 (not 1548) were given permanent force. 

In 1828, the statute of 1563 was revoked by a consolidating act, but the death penalty was retained. In 1861 life imprisonment, or a jail time of at least ten years, was substituted for the death penalty. All these laws were against buggery, and indeed the law of 1828 had discussed matters of proof in terms of penetration. Note that other sexual activities were not specifically criminalised.

In 1885 Mr. Labouchere introduced an amendment to the Criminal Amendment Act of 1885. It read:-

48&49 Vict. c.69, 11: “Any male person who, in public or private, commits or is party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the Court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour” 

So for the first time private acts were brought under the scope of the law, as were acts other than anal penetration. This became the famous blackmailer’s charter, and was the law used to convict Oscar Wilde.

[for all the above see Bailey 145-152]

It was the Act of 1533, then, which first made buggery an offense under English criminal law. This law survived in various forms England until 1967, although it was amended in 1861 to substitute life imprisonment for the penalties of death and forfeiture of property. 

But the direct effects of this law were not restricted to England. Because of England’s success as a colonial power, and its tendency to impose its entire legal structure on the ruled areas, legal prohibitions against homosexual activity derived from this law extended well outside England. In Scotland, for instance, (which has a separate legal system) the law was not changed until 1979. In many American states “sodomy” laws are still on the books, as also in former British colonies in the Caribbean.

The original document of 1533 survives – select the link for a a jpg image

.
[ref. H. Montgomery Hyde, The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name: A Candid History of Homosexuality in Britain, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970)

Reference

Gay History: J. Edgar Hoover: Gay or Just a Man Who Has Sex With Men?

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

J. Edgar Hoover led a deeply repressed sexual life, living with his mother until he was 40, awkwardly rejecting the attention of women and pouring his emotional, and at times, physical attention on his handsome deputy at the FBI, according to the new movie, “J. Edgar,” directed by Clint Eastwood.

Filmgoers never see the decades-long romance between the former FBI director, and his number two, Clyde Tolson, consummated, but there’s plenty of loving glances, hand-holding and one scene with an aggressive, long, deep kiss.

So was the most powerful man in America, who died in 1972 — three years after the Stonewall riots marked the modern gay civil rights movement — homosexual?

Eastwood admits the relationship between Hoover, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and Clyde Tolson, played by Armie Hammer, is ambiguous.

“He was a man of mystery,” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America” last week. “He might have been [gay]. I am agnostic about it. I don’t really know and nobody really knew.”

In public, Hoover waged a vendetta against homosexuals and kept “confidential and secret” files on the sex lives of congressmen and presidents. But privately, according to some biographers, he had numerous trysts with men, including a lifelong affair with Tolson.

Dissociation — denying homosexuality, but displaying sexual behavior — is “not uncommon,” according to Dr. Jack Drescher, a New York City psychiatrist who is an expert in gender and sexuality.

Men with strong attractions to other men can have different degrees of acceptance from being fully closeted to being openly gay. And even if they are homosexually self-aware, they can embrace it or reject it publicly.

“We confuse sexual orientation with sexual identity,” said Drescher. “Some men do not publicly identify as gay, regardless of their sexual behavior.”

Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks a group that is not labeled “gay” but “men who have sex with men.“

Roy Cohn, the lawyer who served as chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his anti-communist campaign of the 1950s and who successfully convicted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg of espionage, denied he was gay, despite an attraction to men.

Cohn, who died of AIDS in 1986, was a contemporary of Hoover and according to one biography, the two attended sex parties together in New York in the 1950s.

Cohn was characterized in a scene from Tony Kuschner’s play, “Angels in America,” speaking to his doctor: “…you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that … Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who f****s around with guys.”

Hoover’s degree of self-awareness may have been the same as Cohn’s. Despite his same-sex dalliances, he occasionally sought a “Mrs. Hoover” and even courted — albeit uncomfortably — actress Ginger Rogers’ mother and actress Dorothy Lamour.

Hoover and his constant companion for decades, Clyde Tolson. Getty Images

Hoover’s neuroses were likely rooted in childhood: He was ashamed of his mentally ill father and was dependent on his morally righteous mother, Annie, well into middle age. Until her death in 1938, Hoover had no social life outside the office.

In the film, Annie chastises her powerful son as he wilted before some of his FBI critics, telling him, “I’d rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son.”

In a 2004 biography by Richard Hack, “Puppetmaster,” which was culled from the notes of Truman Capote, who had begun interviews on Hoover and Tolson’s relationship, the author says Hoover was not gay, but suggests the man was vicariously turned on by the smut he collected on others.

One 200-page secret document was on the extracurricular activities of Capote himself, who was openly gay.

But Anthony Summers, who exposed the secret sex life of Hoover in his 1993 book, “Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover,” said there was no ambiguity about the FBI director’s sexual proclivities.

“What does Clint Eastwood know about it?” he asked ABCNews.com. Summers collaborated with historians and conducted 800 interviews for the book, including nieces and those who were young enough at the time to have known the man personally.

“We were able to get a close view of the man as an individual and as a human being — as close as anybody who had not been afraid of him since he died,” said Summers.

With interest in the Eastwood film, publishers in the U.S. and in Britain are issuing a remake of the book.

One medical expert told Summers that Hoover was “strongly predominant homosexual orientation” and another categorized him as a “bisexual with failed heterosexuality.”

J. Edgar Hoover with child film star Shirley Temple. Getty Images

Hoover often suppressed his urges, but would break out in lapses that could have destroyed him — alleged orgies in New York City hotels and affairs with teenage boys in a limousine, according to interviews conducted by Summers.

“He was a sadly repressed individual, but most people, even J. Edgar Hoover, let go on occasion,” he said.

Hoover as a Cross-Dresser Is Controversial

One short scene in the film showed the FBI director in anguish over his mother’s death, putting on her dress and beads, a nod to Summers expose that Hoover had been a cross-dresser.

The Washington Post recently dismissed that account because of a discredited source, but Summers maintains he had two other independent sources from different periods in Hoover’s life.

Hoover often frequented New York City’s Stork Club and one observer — soap model Luisa Stuart, who was 18 or 19 at the time — told Summers she saw Hoover holding hands with Tolson as they all rode in a limo uptown to the Cotton Club in 1936.

“I didn’t really understand anything about homosexuality at the time,” said Stuart. “But I’d never seen two men holding hands. And I remember asking Art [Arthur] about it in the car on the way home that night. And he just said, ‘Oh, come on. You know,’ or something like that. And he told me they were queers or fairies — the sort of terms they used in those days.”

Hoover promoted men inclined to homosexual indiscretions, including Tolson, who had barely 18 months experience with the FBI when he became Hoover’s deputy.

The pair used to make “saucy jokes” about some of the other agents, like Melvin Purvis, who was a hero for arresting John Dillinger, according to Summers.

Purvis’s son shared his father’s 500-letter correspondence with Hoover, who teased the good-looking, blond-haired agent as “the Clark Gable of the FBI,” even though he was heterosexual.

Many were intimate and one was highly charged with innuendo, as Hoover referred to himself as the “Chairman of the Moral Uplift Squad.”

Ethel Merman, who had known Hoover since 1938, knew his sexual orientation, according to Summers. In 1978 when the actress was asked to comment on Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaign, Merman told the reporter, “Some of my best friends are homosexual. Everybody knew about J. Edgar Hoover, but he was the best chief the FBI ever had.”

Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations, confirmed that Hoover and Tolson sat in boxes owned by and used exclusively by gay men at their racing haunt Del Mar in California.

“They were nodded together as lovers,” he told Summers.

Another FBI agent who had gone on fishing trips with Hoover and Tolson revealed that the director liked to “sunbathe all day in the nude.” Even novelist William Styron told Summers that he once spotted Hoover and Tolson in a California beach house — the director painting his friends toenails.

But, according to Summers, “Nobody dared say anything, he was so powerful.”

The author interviewed the widow of respected Washington, D.C. psychiatrist Dr. Marshall de G. Ruffin, who treated Hoover in 1946 after his general practitioner had been “puzzled by a strange malaise in his patient.”

Monteen Ruffin told Summers that Hoover was “very paranoid” about anyone finding out, and he eventually stopped seeing the psychiatrist. She said her husband burned the evidence.

“He was definitely troubled by homosexuality,” she said in 1990, “and my husband’s notes would have proved that … I might stir a kettle of worms by making that statement, but everybody then understood that he was a homosexual, not just the doctors.”

As the movie depicts, after Hoover’s death, his loyal secretary Helen Gandy destroys the “official and confidential” files.

When Hoover died in 1972, President Richard Nixon ordered his “dirty tricks man” Gordon Liddy to scour the FBI director’s office for files. But when they arrived, someone had taken “drastic action,” said Summers. Nothing but tables and chairs remained.

Summers said he is often asked, but rarely answers the question about what he personally thought of Hoover as a human being.

“Yes, I had sympathy for somebody who has to bury their real preferences through a long life in the public eye,” he said. “But not sympathy for the way in which he was dictatorial, the way he behaved politically and personally to people right from the beginning in his late teens and early 20s.

“He was totally self-serving and the way in which he was a repressed homosexual didn’t require him to abuse individual rights and human liberties the way he did,” said Summers. “It does not begin to justify his behavior toward blacks and concoct an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King and suggest he end it all and kill himself.”

Psychiatrists have concluded that Hoover “no doubt” had a narcissistic personality disorder, perhaps because of his dependency on a forceful mother who had “great expectations for her son,” he said.

“Studies suggest that people with such backgrounds block their feelings and cut meaningful relationships,” according to Summers, who said Hoover would have been a “perfect high-level Nazi.”

However, Eastwood, who is a Republican, contends that J. Edgar Hoover was “probably good for the country,” and whether he was homosexual or not makes no difference.

“I don’t really know and nobody really knew,” he told ABC. “It’s definitely a love story. You can love a person and whether it goes into the realm of being gay or not, is here nor there.”

A younger generation of gays was moved by the film precisely because it portrayed such an iconic figure’s struggle with his sexuality.

“The audience I was in clearly rooted for Hoover to be gay and to have happiness in his sex and love life,” said Ben Ryan, a 33-year-old novelist from New York City. “In a pivotal scene between DiCaprio and Hammer in which the two men engage in the classic brawl-leads-to-furious-kiss, everyone got so excited when they finally locked lips.”

“Anyone in their right mind would see this movie and say, ‘Oh, well, of course Hoover was gay,'” he said. “The more suspicious among us might think that the filmmakers were still afraid of Hoover’s ghost suing them for libel if they just put it right out there that he was gay.”

Still, he said, the film is a “tragic story that should hopefully teach society lessons about how dangerous sexual repression is.”

Reference

Gay History: All The Kings And Queens Who Were Allegedly LGBTQ+

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

For much of history, LGBTQ+ royalty needed to hide their identities. Even though some societies embraced homosexuality, most refused to accept a gay monarch. But before we talk about LGBTQ+ kings and queens, let’s start with the history of sexual identity.

The terms heterosexual and homosexual didn’t exist until the 1860s. And until the 1930s, heterosexual meant an abnormal attraction to the opposite sex. For centuries, many societies didn’t see sexuality in binary terms at all. Ancient Greeks and Renaissance Florentines took both male and female lovers. King Edward II of England openly kissed his male lover on his wedding day. And the Roman emperor Hadrian named a city after his male lover. Many kings and queens needed to keep their sexuality quiet, but others defended their lifestyle openly.

Queen Anne Was Clos4 With Her “Lady Of The Bedchamber”

Photo: Charles Jervas / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

The last of the Stuart monarchs, Queen Anne of Great Britain maintained a long-term relationship with Sarah Churchill in the early 1700s. Anne wrote to Sarah, “I hope I shall get a moment or two to be with my dear… that I may have one dear embrace, which I long for more than I can express.”

Anne has been called England’s lesbian queen because of her close relationship with Churchill, who served as “Lady of the Bedchamber.” But when Queen Anne pulled back, Sarah publicly accused the monarch of choosing another woman over her. Anne stayed above the fray, however, and remained popular through her death in 1714.

Pope Julius III Named His Lover A Cardinal

Photo: Girolamo Sicciolante / Wikimedia Commons / Public Doma

Pope Julius III ran the Catholic Church from 1550 to 1555. He also created a scandal thanks to his young male lover. Julius met Innocenzo, a 15-year-old beggar, in 1548, when Innocenzo was fighting with his pet ape on the street. The future pope swept the boy away and named him a cathedral provost.

When Julius became pope two years later, he convinced his brother to adopt Innocenzo, and later named his alleged lover a cardinal. Julius’s enemies called Innocenzo “Cardinal-Monkey” and complained the boy shared the pope’s bed.

Edward II Kissed His Male Lover In Front Of His Bride

Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Most stories about a royal’s sexuality were only mentioned in secret and whispers. That’s not the case for King Edward II of England, who openly showed affection for his male lover, Piers Gaveston. When Edward married Isabella of France, he showered kisses on Piers in front of the entire court. 

As chroniclers wrote at the time, Edward’s affection for Gaveston was “beyond measure and reason,” “excessive,” and “immoderate.” One writer even said, “I do not remember to have heard that one man so loved another.” The relationship didn’t end well: Edward’s barons beheaded Gaveston.

Queen Elizabeth’s Partying Sister Allegedly Had A Female Lover

Photo: David S. Paton / Wikimedia Commons / Public Doma

The younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, was known for being a party girl. In addition to multiple affairs, she married bisexual photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, who explained, “I didn’t fall in love with boys, but a few men have been in love with me.”

Royal reporter Noel Botham claimed in his book Margaret: The Last Real Princess that Margaret had an affair with the American ambassador’s daughter, Sharman Douglas, known as Sass. One of Douglas’s close friends told Botham that Sass confessed to being the princess’s lover in the 1950s.

Richard The Lionheart Shared His Bed With France’s King

Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Richard the Lionheart became King of England in 1189. Today, he’s famous for his role in the Third Crusade and his alleged association with Robin Hood. To others, though, Richard I is a gay icon. The king chose not to marry and never fathered an heir. Instead of having a queen by his side at his coronation, Richard invited his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, to play the role of his partner. 

According to historical documents written at the time, Richard shared a bed with King Philip II of France. One chronicler even wrote the men were so close that “at night the bed did not separate them.”

Prince George Had A Ménage A Trois With An Ambassador’s Son

Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Prince George was the son of George V and the brother to Edward VIII and George VI. Called “the most interesting, intelligent and cultivated member of his generation” by biographer Christopher Warwick, George also allegedly carried on multiple bisexual affairs.

Married to Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, Prince George never stopped partying. In the 1920s, George became addicted to morphine and cocaine during an affair with American socialite Kiki Preston – known as the girl with the silver syringe. George reportedly had a ménage à trois with Kiki and Jorge Ferrara, the son of Argentina’s ambassador. George died in 1942 in a tragic plane crash.

Hadrian Named A City After His Male Lover

Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domai

Roman emperor Hadrian is best remembered for building Hadrian’s Wall, marking the northern border of his empire. And although Hadrian married around the year 100 CE, he also had a male lover. Hadrian’s partner was a young Greek named Antinous. When his lover drowned, Hadrian founded a city in Egypt and named it Antinopolis in his honor. 

The Romans didn’t care about men taking male lovers. It was only important what part a man played during sex:

older men always needed to take a dominant, active role.

Alexander The Great Had Sex With A Eunuch

Photo: Meister der Alexanderschlacht / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Alexander the Great conquered enough land to rule one of the largest empires in ancient history. During a whirlwind military campaign, Alexander toppled the Persian Empire and invaded India. But where did he fall on the spectrum of sexual identity? Historians still debateAlexander’s sexual preferences, but most agree he had sex with men and women.

Alexander’s most likely male lover was Bagoas, a eunuch. Being a eunuch, the Greeks didn’t see him as a man – instead, he was in a third category, between man and woman. Many also believe Alexander maintained a relationship with his companion Hephaestion. The ancient Greeks were very open-minded about homosexuality.

James I Defended His Right To Love Other Men

Photo: John de Critz / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domai

When James I of England took the throne in 1603 after the death of Elizabeth, he had big shoes to fill. England loved Elizabeth, and they remained uncertain of the Scottish ruler with a reputation for homosexual love affairs. In his early years, his new subjects circulated a Latin phrase which translates to “Elizabeth was King: now James is Queen.”

As James rode through the streets of London, people yelled out “Long live Queen James!” James himself defended his right to love other men in 1617, in a speech to his Privy Council: 

I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.

The Last Medici Ruler Lost Tuscany Because He Wouldn’t Have Sex With His Wife

Photo: Franz Ferdinand Richter / Wikimedia Commons / Public Dom

The last Medici to be Grand Duke of Tuscany, Gian Gastone, knew if he didn’t issue a male heir, his domain would go to the Bourbon rulers of Spain. Gian Gastone’s sister arranged his marriage to a German princess, but she refused to move to Florence. Gian moved to her small village, but eventually ignored her and spent his time with a male groom, Giuliano Dami, who reportedly became his lover. 

Gian Gastone also allegedly paid young male prostitutes for sex. They became known as the Ruspanti, after the coins (ruspi) Gastone gave them. Needless to say, Gian Gastone never produced an heir and the Spanish seized Tuscany when he died.

Henry III Of France Was Called A Buggerer And A Sodomite

Photo: Francois Quesnel / Wikimedia Commons / Public Dom

King Henry III of France was the son of Catherine de Medici and the last Valois king of France. In 1589, one of his subjects called the king “Henry of Valois, buggerer, son of a whore, tyrant.” During his lifetime, Henry was attacked for sexual deviancy, and people blamed the calamities of his reign on his sexuality. 

Although Henry endured repeated accusations of sodomy, most historians believe they were just rumors. As Nicolas Le Roux argued, “It is less the supposed or real sexual practices of the king and those close to him that interests the historian than the image of illegitimacy conveyed by the discussion of sex.” In short, regardless of his sexual identity, Henry’s enemies used slurs to attack his masculinity.

King William II May Have Had An Affair With A Bishop

Photo: Matthew Paris / Wikimedia Commons / Public Doma

The third son of William the Conqueror became King of England in 1087. William II, also known as William Rufus, was his father’s favorite, explaining why William the Conqueror skipped over his older sons to make him king. 

For centuries, rumors swirled about William Rufus’s sexuality. The king never married or fathered a child. His close advisor, Ranulf Flambard, is considered a possible sexual partner. William appointed Flambard as the Bishop of Durham in 1099. As William’s reign was over a thousand years ago, however, historians don’t have much to extrapolate from, other than the king’s close friendship with Flambard and his reputation for surrounding himself with attractive men.

Louis XIII Of France Might Not Be The Sun King’s Father

Photo: Philippe de Champaigne / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Most famous for his son, the Sun King, Louis XIII of France became king at 9 and helped transform France into a major European power. He married Anne of Austria at 14, and loathed her. Many assume Louis XIII was gay, and believe Louis XIV might not have been his son at all.

According to rumors, Louis carried on relationships with two men: Charles d’Albert, Duke of Luynes and Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis de Cinq-Mars. While little proof remains that Louis had sexual relationships with these men, many generally accept the king did not enjoy sex with women.

Reference