Gay History: History of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Social Movements

Article, Gay Interest, History, , ,

Most historians agree that there is evidence of homosexual activity and same-sex love, whether such relationships were accepted or persecuted, in every documented culture.

A brief history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender social movements/Bonnie J. Morris, PhD

On June 12, 2016, the popular gay dance club Pulse in Orlando was the site of a mass shooting by one assailant. With at least 49 dead and another 50 injured, this hate crime is being called the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. It occurred during what was LGBT Pride weekend for towns and cities in and beyond the United States. The immediate, caring response from mayors, police and FBI authorities, local and national politicians, and the President of the United States, who reached out to express outrage and concern, demonstrates the enormous shift toward acceptance and public support for the LGBT community. Although the LGBT community and individuals remain targets for hate violence and backlash throughout the world, the hard work of activists and allies made it possible to reach this era, where the perpetrators of violence, not the victims, are condemned as sick.

Social movements, organizing around the acceptance and rights of persons who might today identify as LGBT or queer, began as responses to centuries of persecution by church, state and medical authorities. Where homosexual activity or deviance from established gender roles/dress was banned by law or traditional custom, such condemnation might be communicated through sensational public trials, exile, medical warnings and language from the pulpit. These paths of persecution entrenched homophobia for centuries—but also alerted entire populations to the existence of difference. Whether an individual recognized they, too, shared this identity and were at risk, or dared to speak out for tolerance and change, there were few organizations or resources before the scientific and political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. Gradually, the growth of a public media and ideals of human rights drew together activists from all walks of life, who drew courage from sympathetic medical studies, banned literature, emerging sex research and a climate of greater democracy. By the 20th century, a movement in recognition of gays and lesbians was underway, abetted by the social climate of feminism and new anthropologies of difference. However, throughout 150 years of homosexual social movements (roughly from the 1870s to today), leaders and organizers struggled to address the very different concerns and identity issues of gay men, women identifying as lesbians, and others identifying as gender variant or nonbinary. White, male and Western activists whose groups and theories gained leverage against homophobia did not necessarily represent the range of racial, class and national identities complicating a broader LGBT agenda. Women were often left out altogether.

What is the pre-history of LGBT activism? Most historians agree that there is evidence of homosexual activity and same-sex love, whether such relationships were accepted or persecuted, in every documented culture. We know that homosexuality existed in ancient Israel simply because it is prohibited in the Bible, whereas it flourished between both men and women in Ancient Greece. Substantial evidence also exists for individuals who lived at least part of their lives as a different gender than assigned at birth. From the lyrics of same-sex desire inscribed by Sappho in the seventh century BCE to youths raised as the opposite sex in cultures ranging from Albania to Afghanistan; from the “female husbands” of Kenya to the Native American “Two-Spirit,” alternatives to the Western male-female and heterosexual binaries thrived across millennia and culture. These realities gradually became known to the West via travelers’ diaries, the church records of missionaries, diplomats’ journals, and in reports by medical anthropologists. Such eyewitness accounts in the era before other media were of course riddled with the biases of the (often) Western or white observer, and added to beliefs that homosexual practices were other, foreign, savage, a medical issue, or evidence of a lower racial hierarchy. The peaceful flowering of early trans or bisexual acceptance in different indigenous civilizations met with opposition from European and Christian colonizers.

In the age of European exploration and empire-building, Native American, North African and Pacific Islander cultures accepting of “Two-Spirit” people or same-sex love shocked European invaders who objected to any deviation from a limited understanding of “masculine” and “feminine” roles. The European powers enforced their own criminal codes against what was called sodomy in the New World: the first known case of homosexual activity receiving a death sentence in North America occurred in 1566, when the Spanish executed a Frenchman in Florida. Against the emerging backdrop of national power and Christian faith, what might have been learned about same-sex love or gender identity was buried in scandal. Ironically, both wartime conflict between emerging nations and the departure or deaths of male soldiers left women behind to live together and fostered strong alliances between men as well. Same-sex companionship thrived where it was frowned upon for unmarried, unrelated males and females to mingle or socialize freely. Women’s relationships in particular escaped scrutiny since there was no threat of pregnancy. Nonetheless, in much of the world, female sexual activity and sensation were curtailed wherever genital circumcision practices made clitoridectomy an ongoing custom.

Where European dress—a clear marker of gender—was enforced by missionaries, we find another complicated history of both gender identity and resistance. Biblical interpretation made it illegal for a woman to wear pants or a man to adopt female dress, and sensationalized public trials warned against “deviants” but also made such martyrs and heroes popular: Joan of Arc is one example, and the chilling origins of the word “faggot” include a stick of wood used in public burnings of gay men. Despite the risks of defying severe legal codes, cross-dressing flourished in early modern Europe and America. Women and girls, economically oppressed by the sexism which kept them from jobs and economic/education opportunities designated for men only, might pass as male in order to gain access to coveted experiences or income. This was a choice made by many women who were not necessarily transgender in identity. Women “disguised” themselves as men, sometimes for extended periods of years, in order to fight in the military (Deborah Sampson), to work as pirates (Mary Read and Anne Bonney), attend medical school, etc. Both men and women who lived as a different gender were often only discovered after their deaths, as the extreme differences in male vs. female clothing and grooming in much of Western culture made “passing” surprisingly easy in certain environments. Moreover, roles in the arts where women were banned from working required that men be recruited to play female roles, often creating a high-status, competitive market for those we might today identify as transwomen, in venues from Shakespeare’s theatre to Japanese Kabuki to the Chinese opera. This acceptance of performance artists, and the popularity of “drag” humor cross-culturally, did not necessarily mark the start of transgender advocacy, but made the arts an often accepting sanctuary for LGBT individuals who built theatrical careers based around disguise and illusion.

The era of sexology studies is where we first see a small, privileged cluster of medical authorities begin promoting a limited tolerance of those born “invert.” In Western history, we find little formal study of what was later called homosexuality before the 19th century, beyond medical texts identifying women with large clitorises as “tribades” and severe punishment codes for male homosexual acts. Early efforts to understand the range of human sexual behavior came from European doctors and scientists including Carl von Westphal (1869), Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1882) and Havelock Ellis (1897). Their writings were sympathetic to the concept of a homosexual or bisexual orientation occurring naturally in an identifiable segment of humankind, but the writings of Krafft-Ebing and Ellis also labeled a “third sex” degenerate and abnormal. Sigmund Freud, writing in the same era, did not consider homosexuality an illness or a crime and believed bisexuality to be an innate aspect beginning with undetermined gender development in the womb. Yet Freud also felt that lesbian desires were an immaturity women could overcome through heterosexual marriage and male dominance. These writings gradually trickled down to a curious public through magazines and presentations, reaching men and women desperate to learn more about those like themselves, including some like English writer Radclyffe Hall who willingly accepted the idea of being a “congenital invert.” German researcher Magnus Hirschfeld went on to gather a broader range of information by founding Berlin’s Institute for Sexual Science, Europe’s best library archive of materials on gay cultural history. His efforts, and Germany’s more liberal laws and thriving gay bar scene between the two World Wars, contrasted with the backlash, in England, against gay and lesbian writers such as Oscar Wilde and Radclyffe Hall. With the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich, however, the former tolerance demonstrated by Germany’s Scientific Humanitarian Committee vanished. Hirschfeld’s great library was destroyed and the books burnt by Nazis on May 10, 1933.

In the United States, there were few attempts to create advocacy groups supporting gay and lesbian relationships until after World War II. However, prewar gay life flourished in urban centers such as New York’s Greenwich Village and Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. The blues music of African-American women showcased varieties of lesbian desire, struggle and humor; these performances, along with male and female drag stars, introduced a gay underworld to straight patrons during Prohibition’s defiance of race and sex codes in speakeasy clubs. The disruptions of World War II allowed formerly isolated gay men and women to meet as soldiers and war workers; and other volunteers were uprooted from small towns and posted worldwide. Many minds were opened by wartime, during which LGBT people were both tolerated in military service and officially sentenced to death camps in the Holocaust. This increasing awareness of an existing and vulnerable population, coupled with Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s investigation of homosexuals holding government jobs during the early 1950s outraged writers and federal employees whose own lives were shown to be second-class under the law, including Frank Kameny, Barbara Gittings, Allen Ginsberg and Harry Hay. Awareness of a burgeoning civil rights movement (Martin Luther King’s key organizer Bayard Rustin was a gay man) led to the first American- based political demands for fair treatment of gays and lesbians in mental health, public policy and employment. Studies such as Alfred Kinsey’s 1947 Kinsey Report suggested a far greater range of homosexual identities and behaviors than previously understood, with Kinsey creating a “scale” or spectrum ranging from complete heterosexual to complete homosexual.

The primary organization for gay men as an oppressed cultural minority was the Mattachine Society, founded in 1950 by Harry Hay and Chuck Rowland. Other important homophile organizations on the West Coast included One, Inc., founded in 1952, and the first lesbian support network Daughters of Bilitis, founded in 1955 by Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin. Through meetings and publications, these groups offered information and outreach to thousands. These first organizations soon found support from prominent sociologists and psychologists. In 1951, Donald Webster Cory published “The Homosexual in America”, asserting that gay men and lesbians were a legitimate minority group, and in 1953 Evelyn Hooker, PhD, won a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study gay men. Her groundbreaking paper, presented in 1956, demonstrated that gay men were as well-adjusted as heterosexual men, often more so. But it would not be until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as an “illness” classification in its diagnostic manual. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, gay men and lesbians continued to be at risk for psychiatric lockup as well as jail, losing jobs, and/or child custody when courts and clinics defined gay love as sick, criminal or immoral.

In 1965, as the civil rights movement won new legislation outlawing racial discrimination, the first gay rights demonstrations took place in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., led by longtime activists Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings. The turning point for gay liberation came on June 28, 1969, when patrons of the popular Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village fought back against ongoing police raids of their neighborhood bar. Stonewall is still considered a watershed moment of gay pride and has been commemorated since the 1970s with “pride marches” held every June across the United States. Recent scholarship has called for better acknowledgement of the roles that drag performers, people of color, bisexuals and transgender patrons played in the Stonewall Riots.

The gay liberation movement of the 1970s saw myriad political organizations spring up, often at odds with one another. Frustrated with the male leadership of most gay liberation groups, lesbians influenced by the feminist movement of the 1970s formed their own collectives, record labels, music festivals, newspapers, bookstores, and publishing houses, and called for lesbian rights in mainstream feminist groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW). Gatherings such as women’s music concerts, bookstore readings and lesbian festivals well beyond the United States were extraordinarily successful in organizing women to become activists; the feminist movement against domestic violence also assisted women to leave abusive marriages, while retaining custody of children became a paramount issue for lesbian mothers.

Expanding religious acceptance for gay men and women of faith, the first out gay minister was ordained by the United Church of Christ in 1972. Other gay and lesbian church and synagogue congregations soon followed. Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), formed in 1972, offered family members greater support roles in the gay rights movement. And political action exploded through the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign, the election of openly gay and lesbian representatives like Elaine Noble and Barney Frank, and, in 1979, the first march on Washington for gay rights. The increasing expansion of a global LGBT rights movement suffered a setback during the 1980s, as the gay male community was decimated by the AIDS epidemic, demands for compassion and medical funding led to renewed coalitions between men and women as well as angry street theatre by groups like AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and Queer Nation. Enormous marches on Washington drew as many as one million gay rights supporters in 1987 and again in 1993. Right wing religious movements, spurred on by beliefs that AIDS was God’s punishment, expanded via direct mail. A New Right coalition of political lobby groups competed with national LGBT organizations in Washington, seeking to create religious exemptions from any new LGBT rights protections. In the same era, one wing of the political gay movement called for an end to military expulsion of gay, lesbian and bisexual soldiers, with the high-profile case of Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer publicized through a made-for- television movie, “Serving in Silence.” In spite of the patriotism and service of gay men and lesbians in uniform, the uncomfortable and unjust compromise “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” emerged as an alternative to decades of military witch hunts and dishonorable discharges. Yet more service members ended up being discharged under DADT.

During in the last decade of the 20th century, millions of Americans watched as actress Ellen DeGeneres came out on national television in April 1997, heralding a new era of gay celebrity power and media visibility—although not without risks. Celebrity performers, both gay and heterosexual, continued to be among the most vocal activists calling for tolerance and equal rights. With greater media attention to gay and lesbian civil rights in the 1990s, trans and intersex voices began to gain space through works such as Kate Boernstein’s “Gender Outlaw” (1994) and “My Gender Workbook” (1998), Ann Fausto-Sterling’s “Myths of Gender” (1992) and Leslie Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors (1998), enhancing shifts in women’s and gender studies to become more inclusive of transgender and nonbinary identities. As a result of hard work by countless organizations and individuals, helped by internet and direct-mail campaign networking, the 21st century heralded new legal gains for gay and lesbian couples. Same-sex civil unions were recognized under Vermont law in 2000 and Massachusetts became the first state to perform same-sex marriages in 2004; with the end of state sodomy laws (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003), gay and lesbian Americans were finally free from criminal classification. Gay marriage was first legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Canada; but the recognition of gay marriage by church and state continued to divide opinion worldwide. After the impressive gains for LGBT rights in post-apartheid South Africa, conservative evangelicals in the U.S. began providing support and funding for homophobic campaigns overseas. Uganda’s dramatic death penalty for gays and lesbians was perhaps the most severe in Africa.

The first part of the 21st century saw new emphasis on transgender activism and the increasing usage of terminology that questioned binary gender identification. Images of trans women became more prevalent in film and television, as did programming with same-sex couples raising children. Transphobia, cissexism and other language (such as “hir” and “them”) became standardized, and film and television programming featured more openly trans youth and adult characters. Tensions between lesbian and trans activists, however, remained, with the long-running Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival boycotted by national LGBT groups over the issue of trans inclusion; like many woman-only events with a primarily lesbian base, Michfest had supported an ideal of ingathering women and girls born female. The festival ended after its fortieth anniversary in August 2015.

Internet activism burgeoned, while many of the public, physical gathering spaces that once defined LGBT activism (bars, bookstores, women’s music festivals) began to vanish, and the usage of “queer” replaced lesbian identification for many younger women activists. Attention shifted to global activism as U.S. gains were not matched by similar equal rights laws in the 75 other countries where homosexuality remained illegal. As of 2016, LGBT identification and activism was still punishable by death in ten countries: Iran, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda and Yemen; the plight of the LGBT community in Russia received intense focus during the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, to which President Obama sent a contingent of out LGBT athletes. Supportive remarks from the new Pope Francis (“Who am I to judge?”) gave hope to LGBT Catholics worldwide.

Perhaps the greatest changes in the U.S. occurred between spring 2015 and spring 2016: in late spring 2015 Alison Bechdel’s lesbian-themed Broadway production Fun Home won several Tony awards, former Olympic champion Bruce Jenner transitioned to Caitlyn Jenner, and then in June of 2015, the Supreme Court decision recognized same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges). By spring 2016 the Academy Awards recognized films with both lesbian and transgender themes: Carol and The Danish Girl. And the Supreme Court had avowed that a lesbian family adoption in one state had to be recognized in all states. However, the United States also saw intense racial profiling confrontations and tragedies in this same period, turning LGBT activism to “intersectionality,” or recognition of intersections issues of race, class, gender identity and sexism. With the June 12 attacks on the Pulse Club in Orlando, that intersectionality was made plain as straight allies held vigils grieving the loss of young Latino drag queens and lesbians of color; with unanswered questions about the killer’s possible identification with ISIS terrorism, other voices now call for alliances between the LGBT and Muslim communities, and the greater recognition of perspectives from those who are both Muslim and LGBT in the U.S. and beyond. The possible repression of identity which may have played a role in the killer’s choice of target has generated new attention to the price of homophobia –internalized, or culturally expressed— in and beyond the United States.

Reference

  • History of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Social Movements, American Psychological Association, 2009, by Bonnie J. Morris, PhD George Washington University Washington, D.C. https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/history
  • Article References
    • Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Houghton Mifflin, 2006
    • Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaws: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, Routledge, 1994
    • Michael Bronski, A Queer History of the United States, Beacon Press, 2011
    • Devon Carbado and Dwight McBride, eds. Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual African-American Fiction, Cleis Press, 2002
    • David Carter, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution, Macmillan, 2004
    • Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell, Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality, Harper Collins Publishers, 2016
    • Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, Simon & Schuster, 2015; and To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America – A History, Houghton Mifflin, 1999
    • Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors, Beacon Press, 1996
    • Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality and Spirituality, University of Illinois, 1997
    • David Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, University of Chicago Press Books, 2004
    • Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Persephone Press, 1981
    • Daphne Scholinski, The Last Time I Wore a Dress, Riverhead Books 1998
    • Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, St. Martin’s Press, 1987
    • Donn Short, Don’t Be So Gay! Queers, Bullying, and Making Schools Safe, UBC Press, 2013
    • Ryan Thoreson, Transnational LGBT Activism, University of Minnesota Press, 2014
    • Urvashi Vaid, Virtual Equality, Anchor Books, 1995

    Gay History: February 12, 1976: Actor Sal Mineo Murdered In West Hollywood

    Article, biography, Gay Interest, General Interest, ,

    Salvatore  Mineo Jr. better known to the world as Sal Mineo, was the baby-faced American actor whose legend and cult following largely stems from his iconic role as the doomed ‘Plato’ in Nicholas Ray’s 1955 classic of ‘switchblade cinema’ – ‘Rebel Without A Cause’. In the movie Mineo played a troubled high-school kid who emulates (actually as far as 50’s cinema could push that envelope)  falls in love with James Dean’s character Jim Stark, although there are reports of a real-life love affair between the two off-set).This was the role for which he would earn the first of two Academy Award nominations.

    In 1962 Jill Haworth Mineo’s “girlfriend” kicked open Mineo’s closet door, catching the 35-year-old actor bedding his buddy Bobby Sherman. (Yes. thatBobby Sherman.)  “But he didn’t stop,” she said. “He kept going at it.” Rumors of Mineo’s sexuality circulated. He found serious work even more difficult to procure, predominantly because filmmakers saw him as an embarrassing relic of the 1950s.

    On the night of February 12, 1976, actor Sal Mineo returned home following a rehearsal for the play P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. After parking his car in the carport below his West Hollywood apartment, the 37-year-old actor was stabbed in the heart by a mugger who quickly fled the scene. At first, the e police  suspected that Mineo’s work for prison reform had put him in contact with a dangerous ex-con. Then their focus shifted to Mineo’s personal life. Investigators had discovered that his home was filled with pictures of nude men. But the gay pornography also failed to turn up any leads and later became the basis for a hotbed of rumors that Mineo was killed by a “trick gone wrong”

    Out of the blue, Michigan authorities reported that Lionel Williams was arrested on bad check charges and was bragging to everyone that he had killed Mineo. Although he later retracted his stories at about the same time Williams’ his wife back in Los Angeles told police that he had come home the night of the murder drenched in blood. However, there was one major discrepancy in the case, Williams was black with an Afro and all of the eyewitnesses had described the perpetrator as a white man with long brown hair.

    Fortunately, the police were able to unearth an old photo of Williams in which his hair had been dyed brown and processed so that it was straight and long. In addition, the medical examiner had made a cast of Mineo’s knife wound and police were able to match it to the description of the knife provided by Williams’ wife. Lionel Williams was eventually convicted and given a sentence of life in prison. He was paroled in the early 1990s but rearrested after committing other crimes. Today, Williams whereabouts is unknown or weather or not he is still even alive.

    ***NOTE:  Because of the time period many are unsure of Mineo’s true sexuality.  Some have said that Mineo was “bisexual” but because of the time period in the 1970’s many gay men used the claim of bisexuality as a stepping stone to fully “coming out”.

    Reference

    The Cursed, Buried City That May Never See The Light of Day

    Article, General Interest, History, , , ,

    It was the biggest set ever built for a Hollywood film in the 1920s, and then it was buried in the sands of the California Coast. The real story begins when a young filmmaker embarks on a decades-long attempt to excavate it.

    Thirty-three years ago, Peter Brosnan heard a story that seemed too crazy to be true: buried somewhere along California’s rugged Central Coast, beneath acres of sand dunes, lay the remains of a lost city. According to his friend at New York University’s film school, the remains of a massive Egyptian temple, a dozen plaster sphinxes, eight mammoth lions, and four 40-ton statues of Ramses II were all supposedly entombed in the sands 150 some-odd miles north of Los Angeles.

    “It was an absolutely cockamamie story,” Brosnan says. “I thought he was nuts.” The ruins weren’t authentic Egyptian ones, of course. They were the 60-year-old remains of a massive Hollywood set—the biggest, most expensive one ever built at the time. The faux Egyptian scenery had played the role of the City of the Pharaoh in one of Hollywood’s first true epics, Cecil B DeMille’s 1923 film The Ten Commandments. The set had required more than 1,500 carpenters to build and used over 25,000 pounds of nails. The production nearly ruined DeMille and his studio. When the shoot wrapped, the tempestuous director supposedly strapped dynamite to the structures and razed the whole set, burying it in the sands near Guadalupe, California, to ensure no rival director could benefit from his vision.

    “If 1,000 years from now archaeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe,” the director teased, “I hope they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization…extended all the way to the Pacific Coast.”

    Bullshit, Brosnan thought. But then his buddy pointed him to a line in DeMille’s posthumously published autobiography. “If 1,000 years from now archaeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe,” the director teased, “I hope they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization…extended all the way to the Pacific Coast.”

    By 1982, Brosnan had graduated from film school and was earning a living as a freelance journalist, but he couldn’t shake his friend’s story. The film student in him was enchanted by the idea of uncovering and preserving a forgotten bit of Hollywood’s history. That summer, Brosnan and his friend drove across the country, from New York City to a stretch of coast near Santa Barbara, to see the ruins for themselves. The whole affair, he thought, would make for a hell of a documentary.

    “We were young, wannabe filmmakers, and I thought this was golden,” Brosnan says today. “We’ll find some archeologists, we’ll find the set, we’ll dig it up. The story writes itself.”

    The City of the Pharaoh was not so much a movie set as it was a monument to the man who built it. DeMille was already a towering star in the early days of Hollywood, but in 1922 he was recovering from a streak of critical flops. He had gained a reputation for his sense of spectacle in films like Joan the Woman and Male and Female, and The Ten Commandmentswas to be his comeback.

    Delivering DeMille’s blockbuster meant deploying a barrage of special effects, at least by the standards of the day. In 1923, set design was the only way to visually transport viewers to the Sinai in the time of Moses. The “desert” DeMille chose for his Israelites to wander, while certainly more convenient than filming on location in Egypt, presented a logistical nightmare. There were no nearby cities, no paved roads, and no place for his cast of thousands to stay. The 22,000 acres of sand dunes that separated the small farming town of Guadalupe from the Pacific Ocean was harsh and desolate. The sharp-grained sand that gives the wind there its added sting is devoid of nutrients, and, combined with constant salt sprays from the sea, makes life a rarity in the dunes. For DeMille, it was perfect.

    The sphinx on set in 1923. (Photo: Courtesy of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center)

    “Your skin will be cooked raw,” DeMille told his army of 3,500 actors and extras, according to a Los Angeles Times reporter on the scene. “You will miss the comforts of home. You will be asked to endure perhaps the most unpleasant location in cinema history. I expect of you your supreme efforts.”

    The costs were mounting even before DeMille arrived in Guadalupe to begin shooting. Preproduction expenses were already approaching $700,000—an astronomical sum in the early days of Hollywood. More than a million pounds of statuary, concrete, and plaster were used to construct the 120-foot-tall, 800-foot-long temple and surrounding structures, and whole plaster sphinxes were sculpted and loaded onto trucks bound for the dunes. Every day on location meant feeding and housing the thousands of workers and animals. DeMille drove his construction team to work faster. Paramount Studios, the film’s backer, began sending DeMille increasingly desperate letters demanding that he cut costs. One receipt, for $3,000 spent on a “magnificent team of horses” for the pharaoh, pushed the studio over the edge, according to Sumiko Higashi, a professor emeritus at The College at Brockport, SUNY, and author of Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: the Silent Era, a biography of DeMille.

    “You have lost your mind,” telegraphed Adolph Zukor, founder of Paramount Pictures. “Stop filming and return to Los Angeles at once.” DeMille refused. He took out a personal loan and waived his guaranteed percentage of the movie’s gross to ensure the production continued. “I cannot and will not make pictures with a yardstick,” he wired back to the studio. “What do they want me to do?” he was rumored to have said, according to Higashi. “Stop now and release it as The Five Commandments?”

    Despite the warnings, DeMille pushed on. Bugles sounded every morning to 4:30 a.m. to wake the 5,000 workers and actors that populated the 24-square-mile tent city he’d built in the dunes. (It earned the nickname the City of DeMille.) His workers raised the 109-foot-tall Great Gate—an archway covered in intricate busts of rearing stallions—and buttressed it with two 35-foot-tall clay-and-plaster statues of the Pharaoh. They erected a “city wall”—built 750 feet long because DeMille refused to work with painted backgrounds or limit his cinematic choices. Five mammoth sphinxes, weighing over five tons each, lined the entrance to the ersatz Egyptian city.

    Filming was done at a madcap pace and condensed into a mere three weeks, according to Scott Eyman’s biography, Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille. But even with the Exodus in the can, one more problem loomed. According to a prior agreement with the landowners, DeMille’s monumental set had to be dismantled before he left. Production costs had already ballooned to over $1.4 million, more than any other film previously made. DeMille considered reneging on the deal, Brosnan says, but likely worried about another issue: If he left is city standing, rival directors from other studios could easily swoop into Guadalupe and produce an epic on the cheap. DeMille would not have that. Rather than pay workers to take the set down, he settled on a faster method. Dynamite was supposedly strapped to the great temple he had built, and the City of the Pharaoh was brought down. According to legend, he ordered bulldozers to mound sand over the scattered remains and quickly left town.

    Sixty years later, in 1983, Brosnan arrived at the dunes like the Children of Israel before him—completely lost. He knew the set was buried somewhere, but the dunes stretched nearly 30 miles, across two counties. Looking for clues, he called the Air Force base that occupied much of the coastline. (“Sir,” he says the sergeant on the other end of the line told him, “There is no Egyptian city buried at Vandenberg Air Force Base.”) He haunted local libraries. He hounded municipal politicians. No one could provide hints about the set’s exact location.

    Then he stumbled upon an old ranch hand at a local tavern who had run cattle through the dunes for decades. On a cold and dark morning, after a savage storm had rearranged the topography of the dunes, Brosnan and the rancher hiked the sea of hundred-foot-high peaks, making their way a mile toward the pounding surf of the Pacific. Eventually they spied what locals called “the dune that never moves”—the sandy tomb that covered DeMille’s set—and saw a chunk of Plaster of Paris statuary poking through.

    The sphinx before excavation. (Photo: Courtesy of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center)

    The discovery made headlines around the world and Brosnan fielded calls from The New York Times, NBC Nightly News, andPeople magazine. His documentary idea, which had seemed pie-in-the-sky a few months earlier, looked promising. And his pitch—that the lost city is the oldest existing Hollywood set left; that props from more modern shoots have already been preserved for posterity; that early set design was, in a sense, an American art form—struck a chord in the industry. Brosnan tentatively called his documentary project The Lost City.

    Charlton Heston, star of DeMille’s 1956 remake of the film, publicly wished the project well, and local archaeologists volunteered their time to help in the excavation. A curator at the Smithsonian expressed interest in acquiring some pieces, once the dig wrapped. Promises for funding came in from Paramount Pictures and Bank of America. Brosnan moved to Hollywood with the intention of pursuing a career in the ‘biz. But first, he had to start digging.

    “This will be a scientific exploration by highly trained personnel,” said a Cambridge-educated archaeologist who signed on in 1983. “Not a case of simply digging up stuff like potatoes. And if we’re serious about documenting movie history, then let’s do it properly.”

    Excavating the City of the Pharaoh. (Photo: Courtesy of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center)

    The excavation and documentary progressed, but Brosnan constantly faced two problems: funding and permitting. When he had the money, the county wouldn’t let him touch the environmentally sensitive area. (The western snowy plover, a federally protected species that nests along california’s coast, keeps the dunes off limits to people for half the year during breeding season.) By the time he got permission to dig, seven years later, funding had dried up. In 1990, several organizations, including the Smithsonian and the DeMille Family Trust, agreed to partially fund the project, and Brosnan and an archeologist used ground-penetrating radar to show that much of the set remained intact. But he couldn’t raise enough money to excavate the actual ruins. He needed $175,000 for an archeological dig to recover 60-year-old fake relics. “We don’t see this as a fake Egypt,” Brosnan told a reporter at the time. “We see this as real cinema history.”

    But by the mid-1990s, Brosnan had been scraping by in the movie business for a decade, writing scripts and directing small projects. Lacking the money, he gave up the dig.

    That DeMille’s ruins have survived intact to this day, albeit buried in the sands, is a quirk of geography. The dunes, which cover some 35 square miles of the coast here, formed about 15,000 years ago, according to Doug Jenzen, executive director of the non-profit Dunes Center in Guadalupe. Jenzen and his team run a small museum out of a craftsman on the town’s main (and only) drag and head up conservation efforts for the Dunes preserve. It’s a charming little museum that seems out of place among the shuttered movie theater and boarded up buildings of Guadalupe, but the Dunes and DeMille are the only source of tourism dollars in this largely agricultural area, Jenzen says.

    Thousands of years ago, rivers swept mineral-dense rocks and boulders from the nearby coastal range down to the sea, eventually pummeling the earth into fine grain sand. “One of the reasons the movie set is preserved so well is because of the minerals in the sand,” Jenzen says. “You know how when you order something mail order and it comes with the silica packets? The sand actually acted as a natural desiccant that preserved the plaster for the statues.”

    For 15 years, the ruins were left undisturbed. Every few years a reporter or a researcher would call and Brosnan would humor him or her with details of his odyssey in the dunes. Each time, he hoped the new round of publicity would inject dollars into the effort, but nothing ever came through.

    In October 2014, archeologists preserve decaying remains from wind-blown sand at Guadalupe Dunes. (Photo: AP)

    In 2010, though, after the Los Angeles Times ran yet another piece on his unfinished dig, a woman—who wishes to remain anonymous—contacted Brosnan and offered to put up the money needed to finish the film. But by then he was married with children and had been away from the project for two decades. “My first response was a moment of panic,” Brosnan says. “There’s no way I could do this.”

    But Brosnan hired a producer and an editor, and last fall, with the help of a Santa Barbara County grant, a team of archeologists excavated most of a sphinx. Brosnan was on hand to film it. “We had always wanted to end with a shot of the sphinx being found. And we got it,” he says. Using his early footage shot in the 1980s, Brosnan has pulled together a rough cut and has an editor working on a final draft. He says he’s looking for distributors and considering the film festival circuit soon.

    In the Dune Center, Jenzen and his team display parts of one of the large plaster sphinxes and smaller relics that have been successfully pulled from the sand. “All of the statues were made of plaster,” he says. “They were built to last two months—92 years ago. I don’t think this could have happened anywhere else on earth.”

    However, Jenzen says the ruins may not survive another 92 years. Powerful storms in the last few years have shifted the sands of the dunes dramatically—more of the set is now exposed to the elements than ever before. The Dunes Center needs $100,000 to unearth another sphinx to add it to the display, Jenzen says, before it’s too late. “It’s disappearing so fast,” he says, “Archeologists originally thought it’d last until 2090—but every time we go out, more is gone.”

    Reference

    Buddhism 101: The Dharma Wheel (Dharmachakra) Symbol in Buddhism

    Article, Religion/Lifestyle,
    Frankhuang / Getty Images

    The dharma wheel, or dharmachakra in Sanskrit, is one of the oldest symbols of Buddhism. Around the globe, it is used to represent Buddhism in the same way that a cross represents Christianity or a Star of David represents Judaism. It is also one of the Eight Auspicious Symbols of Buddhism. Similar symbols are found in Jainism and Hinduism, and it is likely the dharmachakra symbol in Buddhism evolved out of Hinduism. 

    A traditional dharma wheel is a chariot wheel with varying numbers of spokes. It can be in any color, although it is most often gold. At the center, there may be three shapes swirling together, a yin-yang symbol, a second wheel, or an empty circle.

    What the Dharma Wheel Represents 

    A dharma wheel has three basic parts: the hub, the rim, and the spokes. Over the centuries, various teachers and traditions have proposed diverse meanings for these parts. Here are some common understandings of the wheel’s symbolism:

    • The circle, the round shape of the wheel, represents the perfection of the dharma, the Buddha’s teaching.
    • The rim of the wheel represents meditative concentration and mindfulness, which hold practice together.
    • The hub represents moral discipline. The three swirls often seen on the hub are sometimes said to represent the Three Treasures or Three Jewels: Buddha, dharma, sangha. They may also represent joy.

    The spokes signify different concepts, depending on their number:

    • When a wheel has eight spokes, the spokes represent the Eightfold Path. An eight-spoke wheel is the most common form of the wheel in Buddhism.
    • When a wheel has ten spokes, the spokes represent the ten directions—in effect, everywhere.
    • When a wheel has twelve spokes, the spokes represent the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination.
    • When a wheel has 24 spokes, the spokes represent the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination plus the reversing of the Twelves Links and liberation from samsara. A 24-spoke dharma wheel is also called an Ashoka Chakra.
    • When a wheel has 31 spokes, the spokes represent the 31 realms of existence from ancient Buddhist cosmology.
    • When a wheel has four spokes, which is rare, the spokes represent either the Four Noble Truths or the four dhyanas.

    The wheel often has spokes protruding beyond the wheel, which we might imagine are spikes, although usually, they don’t look very sharp. The spikes represent various penetrating insights.

    The Ashoka Chakra 

    Among the oldest existing examples of a dharma wheel are found on the pillars erected by the Ashoka the Great (304–232 B.C.E.), an emperor who ruled much of what is now India and beyond. Ashoka was a great patron of Buddhism and encouraged its spread, although he never forced it on his subjects.

    Emperor Ashoka the Great. Heritage Images / Getty Images

    Ashoka erected enormous stone pillars throughout his kingdom, many of which are still standing. The pillars contain edicts, some of which encouraged people to practice Buddhist morality and nonviolence. There is typically at least one lion on the top of each pillar, representing Ashoka’s rule. The pillars also are decorated with 24-spoke dharma wheels.

    In 1947, the government of India adopted a new national flag, in the center of which is a navy blue Ashoka Chakra on a white background.

    Other Symbols Related to the Dharma Wheel 

    Sometimes the dharma wheel is presented in a tableau, supported on a lotus flower pedestal with two deer, a buck, and a doe on either side. This recalls the first sermon given by the historical Buddha after his enlightenment. The sermon is said to have been given to five mendicants in Sarnath, a deer park in what is now Uttar Pradesh, India.

    According to Buddhist legend, the park was home to a herd of ruru deer, and the deer gathered around to listen to the sermon. The deer depicted by the dharma wheel reminds us that the Buddha taught to save all beings, not just humans. In some versions of this story, the deer are emanations of bodhisattvas.

    Typically, when the dharma wheel is represented with deer, the wheel must be twice the height of the deer. The deer are shown with legs folded under them, gazing serenely at the wheel with their noses lifted.

    Turning the Dharma Wheel 

    “Turning the dharma wheel” is a metaphor for the Buddha’s teaching of the dharma in the world. In Mahayana Buddhism, it is said the Buddha turned the dharma wheel three times.

    The first turning was the sermon in the deer park, after the Buddha’s enlightenment. Here, the Buddha explained the Four Noble Truths. The second turning was the introduction of the perfection of wisdom teachings on the nature of sunyata (emptiness). The third turning was the introduction of the doctrine of Buddha Nature.

    Reference

    O’Brien, Barbara. “The Dharma Wheel (Dharmachakra) Symbol in Buddhism.” Learn Religions, Aug. 28, 2020, learnreligions.com/the-dharma-wheel-449956.

    Gay History: An Organiser of the Black Cat Protest Revisits That Fateful Night

    Article, Gay Interest, History, Political, , , ,
    Outside the Black Cat on February 11, 1967 Photograph: Courtesy ONE Archives at the USC Libraries

    On New Year’s Eve in 1966, undercover officers at the Black Cat Tavern in Silver Lakebegan to handcuff and beat the patrons and staff as everyone was exchanging celebratory midnight kisses. An estimated 14 people were arrested, many charged with lewd conduct and forced to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

    Other Silver Lake gay bars, including New Faces, a few doors down, were targeted the same evening. Two years before the Stonewall uprising, more than 200 people came together outside the Black Cat for one of the earliest U.S. LGBTQ-rights demonstrations. Picketers gathered on February 11, 1967, to peacefully protest the police raids that had been conducted weeks before. Alexei Romanoff, a former owner of New Faces, describes the Black Cat demonstration as a turning point. During a time in which homosexuality was illegal in most states, LGBTQ people developed elaborate codes and survival strategies to avoid arrest. But that February night, Romanoff says, the community stood up and fought back.

    Now 82, he is the last surviving organizer of Personal Rights in Defense and Education (P.R.I.D.E.), one of the groups that helped stage the 1967 stand. We traveled back to that monumental moment with Romanoff.

    Romanoff in 1968 Photograph: Courtesy Alexei Romanoff

    How were the protests organized?

    We didn’t have computers, we didn’t have cell phones, but what we did have was called a phone tree. One person would immediately call another 10 people and tell them what had happened, and then each of them would call 10 more people. It took us about two weeks to organize the protest. The Hub Bar [in Alhambra] was the only place that allowed us to meet. We were cautious. We kept moving the demonstration up and down the block so we couldn’t be charged with loitering. We had flyers printed up. People would ask what was going on. We’d give them a flyer, and if they dropped it, we would rush over, grab it and pick it up so we wouldn’t be considered to be littering.

    What was the protest like?

    If you look at the pictures, none of the regular news media covered us. They were all from the Free Press at the time. They were the only ones that covered the demonstration. A couple of years ago, I met with [former] police chief [William J.] Bratton, and we were looking at the pictures, when I said, “Do you see anybody smiling there?” He said no. And I said, “That’s because [the protesters] were all terrified to do this, but they knew they had to.” It took place in the evening because they had jobs they would likely lose the next day.

    What were the risks?

    If the major news media would have covered that demonstration, their faces would have been in the newspapers, but the newspapers didn’t think it was very important because it was only those “unhappy homosexuals.” At that time, we could be put into a sanitarium for being gay. And our families could have us committed if they were embarrassed by us. There, you were subject to shock treatments and chemically castrated. We were afraid, but we couldn’t take it anymore. You couldn’t just come in, beat us up and take us to jail because we were who we were.

    What was the aftermath of the protests?

    Once you let the cat out of the bag, there’s no stopping it. I started an organization, Santa Monica Bay Coalition for Human Rights. In 1970, we were marching in the LA Pride parade, and we had this big banner. I was in the front, and there were mounted police officers. I was nervous, but one of them turned his horse away from all the rest and gave me a V-for-victory sign. I knew we were going to be okay.

    And what was the legacy at the Black Cat?

    We got the Black Cat designated as a historic landmark. There’s a plaque on the front of the building now. When I went back one time, there was a note that was attached to the plaque, and all it said was “thank you.” That was enough for everything.

    Romanoff discussed the evening’s events with Time Out, and his account has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

    Reference

    Woody Harrelson: My Father, The Contract Killer

    Article, General Interest, ,

    Woody Harrelson plays psychopaths brilliantly. It couldn’t be anything to do with his dad’s day job, could it? He talks about coming to terms with the terrible truth and his new film, Rampart

    Woody Harrelson: ‘He wasn’t the greatest husband. Or father. But…’ Photograph: Luke Stephenson for the Guardian. Click on image for full portrait

    I’m not looking forward to meeting Woody Harrelson. I’m a bit scared, to be honest. I’ve just seen Rampart, his new movie in which he plays a racist, psychopathic police officer. Harrelson is terrifying in it. Terrifying when he’s chasing villains, bullying juniors, beating the crap out of innocents, stalking the mothers of his children. He’s even terrifying when he’s making love. His body, specially slimmed-down and muscled-up for the part, pulses with a tension permanently on the cusp of violence.

    It’s not as if this is a one-off – there’s his sickening Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers (“At birth, I was cast into a flaming pit of scum”), deranged killer Tallahassee in Zombieland, Charlie in the forthcoming Seven Psychopathswhose title says it all, and we’ve barely started. Even when he plays it nice, like he did in Cheers all those years ago as dopey bartender Woody, there’s something in the goofy smile that makes you worry – for his sanity, and your safety. And it’s not as if the weird stuff is just confined to acting – there are numerous stories of him hitting photographers or police officers or taxi doors.

    It’s Sunday afternoon and when I arrive at the London hotel, there’s no sign of Harrelson. His publicist apologises and says the bad news is he’s still in bed, but the good news is he’s woken up. A few minutes later he arrives, looking a little the worse for wear. He stretches, gulps from a hefty bottle of water, and drawls a lazy Texan apology. “I tied one on last night,” he says, “I drank too much.” Where did he go? “We went to a few places… but I’m waking up now and everything seems nice and, erm, Victorian in this room.” Harrelson takes another swig, and as he does, I’m again thinking of the crazed cop in Rampart

     Even when Harrelson plays it nice, like he did in Cheers all those years ago as dopey bartender Woody, there’s something in the goofy smile that makes you worry. Photograph: NBCUPHOTOBANK/Rex

    Doesn’t it take a lot out of him making a film like that – after all, he’s in virtually every scene, inflicting damage of one sort or another? “It was an intense time,” he says. “The problem was being seeped in paranoia because that was so much the attitude of the character. That really affected me because I don’t normally do paranoia.” He pauses. “Well, sometimes, of course. But it’s an emotion I try not to affect myself with. I had weird shit happening.” What weird shit? “Not stuff I’d care to talk about. But being aggressive and strange with friends who had not been offensive, but I took it as offensive. A couple of friends said, ‘I can’t wait till you’re done with this role because I know this ain’t you doing it.’ “

    What messed with his head more, Rampart or Natural Born Killers? The latter film, directed by Oliver Stone, was blamed for a series of copycat killings after it was released in 1994. “I’d say this, but then when I was doing Natural Born Killers I was doing some weird shit, too.” I tell him I can’t bear watching it; that it freaks me out. He smiles. “Really, it’s a misunderstood romantic comedy.” And now his smile is truly worrying. “It’s a dark comedy.” Pah. I tell him I reckon Natural Born Killers features more Hollywood headcases than any film made – Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Sizemore, Tommy Lee Jones, Juliette Lewis. “I know, it was a mad little time. After we’d been working on it for a while, I felt I was the sanest guy in it. I really did. This has never happened… I’m the sanest guy in the whole deal.” He whoops at the very idea. Who was the most insane? “Tom and Juliette went a little crazy. Yeah. I felt in a way Oliver encouraged madness. He needed to create that mayhem because that’s what was on the screen.”

    Harrelson, 50, is one of Hollywood’s most interesting actors. It’s not only the roles he plays (he has often worked outside the mainstream with directors such asMichael Winterbottom in Welcome To Sarajevo and Milos Forman in The People Vs Larry Flynt) and the way he plays them, it’s his whole backstory – disturbing family history, sexcapades of youth, militant veganism, political 

    campaigning (not all of it for the legalisation of marijuana). It’s the multiple contradictions and what-ifs that make him fascinating.

    He could, for instance, easily have ended up as a minister of the church. His mother is a religious presbyterian and so was he through his childhood. Did he see it as a calling? “I did a little bit.” He studied theology alongside drama at university, and it was only then that his belief system started to collapse. “I remember Dr Matthews; a great teacher teaching progressive ideas. I started seeing through the way the Bible got constructed. For example, there were two angels outside the tomb when Jesus rolled back the stone and rose from the dead. Why? Because in Jewish law there had to be two witnesses for it to be legal. But when it was first written it was one, so little things like that.”

    Talk to Harrelson and you might think his reverse Damascene conversion was the first significant event in his life. But it wasn’t – by a long stretch. In the past, he’s been surprisingly private about his family life. He would talk about the love for his mother, his two brothers, growing up in Texas and Ohio, and it seemed a pretty regular childhood. I’ve read that Harrelson’s father was a contract killer but assume it’s an urban myth – one of those apocryphal stories actors come up with when bored. I ask him how he got on with his father. “Pretty good,” he says. “They separated young, he was not around too much.” Then nothing. He ended up in prison? “Yeaah,” he says slowly as if chewing on a tobacco leaf. “Yes. That explains his absence.” He laughs wryly, and waits for the subject to change.

    You’re the first star I’ve interviewed whose dad was a professional killer, I say. No comment. I tell him I recently interviewed a woman whose son became a serial killer, and that she had been suicidal as a result. He looks interested. “Ah man, that must have been devastating for her. You never really think of that shit when you hear these stories,” he says quietly. He tells me a bit more about his father. “I think they separated when I was seven. But he was gone a lot before that, in prison. Away and back. Away and back. It wasn’t like he was there all the time prior to that.”

    “They call him a contract killer in the cuttings,” I say. “Is that a glamorisation or simplification of what he did?” Harrelson chews some more on the imaginary tobacco. “Yeah, I mean that’s probably a fair, erm…” He stops. Fair job summary? “Yeah, job summary. I was 11 or 12 when I heard his name mentioned on a car radio. I was in the car waiting for a lady who was picking me up from school, helping my mum, and anyway I was listening to the radio and it was talking about Charles V Harrelson and his trial for murder and blah blah blah blah and I’m sitting there thinking there can’t be another Charles V Harrelson. I mean, that’s my dad! It was a wild realisation. Then the woman got in the car and saw my face and realised something was up. She was a very kind lady.”

    He says he went home, in shock, and tried to talk to his mother about it. But there was little to say – the truth was out there, on the radio and in the papers. Did your mum know what he did for a living? “Oh yeah, she was pretty hip to all that.” Did she love him? “Well, no, she was well out of love with him. You know, I’ve got to give her credit because she never really soured us on him, she didn’t talk negative about him, never, ever. And she could have – he wasn’t the greatest husband. Or father. But…”

    Charles V Harrelson was jailed in 1973 for the murder of grain dealer Sam Degelia Jr. He was sentenced to 15 years, but released after five for good behaviour. In 1981 he was given two life sentences for the assassination of district judge John H Wood – the first murder of an American judge in the 20th century. At times, he also claimed to have assassinated John F Kennedy.

    It was in 1981, after he heard his father had been arrested for killing the judge, that Woody tried to get in touch with him, aged 20. Were they ever reconciled? “Oh yeah, oh yeah. I tried for years to get him out. To get him a new trial.” Why did you think he deserved a new trial? Harrelson stops, and thinks about it as if for the first time. “I don’t know he did deserve a new trial… just being a son trying to help his dad. Then I spent a couple of million beating my head against the wall.” A couple of million, I say, astonished. “Easily. Lawyers upon lawyers…”

    Do you see much of your father in you? “Quite a bit… I was born on his birthday. They have a thing in Japan where they say if you’re born on your father’s birthday, you’re not like your father, you are your father, and it’s so weird when I would sit and talk with him. It was just mind-blowing to see all the things he did just like me.” Such as? “Idiosyncratic things. The way he laughed. The face, very similar.”

    Did it scare you that you were so similar? “No, no.” He laughs, uncertainly.

    Charles V Harrelson died in prison in 2007. Were they friends by then? “Yeah, we got along pretty good. When you can’t hang out and go to a pub, you know what I mean, it’s hard.”

    Harrelson in Rampart, his latest film. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex

    It’s difficult to imagine that Harrelson’s character has not been shaped to some degree by his father – the early religion, the subsequent hell-raising, the campaigning (against environmental devastation, testing on monkeys, unethical energy, defence spending). He says if it were down to him, he’d scrap the defence budget and reallocate it. “The first thing I’d do is buy up every bit of rainforest or ancient forest – you could buy it all up with $2.5tn, no problem.”

    It’s funny that you make such a convincing redneck, I say, when you are famous for your lefty-liberal views. He grins, and says it wasn’t always like that. “I was a freshman in college in 1980, the year that Reagan was elected, and I went around badgering people to vote for him.” What? Why? “I was part of the Young Republicans and bought all the bullshit. I’m embarrassed to tell you this because I really think he’s one of the worst presidents in history. I was 18 when he went into office. Then almost immediately I noticed these cuts to the aid that I had to go to school – Reagan’s first thing was to cut all the social shit.”

    By his early 20s, Harrelson had long given up on God and Reagan – he was starring in Cheers, had been introduced to environmental politics by fellow actor Ted Danson, and was having a wild time. He had a voracious appetite for pretty much everything. At one point, he was quoted as saying he slept with three women a day. Was that true? “No, no, no, no, not at all.” He realises he might be protesting slightly too much, and starts again. “There was definitely a time of, what would you call it… of Satyricon. A time of definite excess, but I like to think everybody in that situation is probably going to go through that. I’ve always believed the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” He goof-grins. “It’s been one of those thoughts that consoles me.”

    One of the many surprising things about Harrelson is that he has been with the same woman for 22 years. You wouldn’t expect it, I say. “None of my friends did either. It is kind of shocking.” Then he shocks me even more by telling the lovely, soppy story of how he and his wife got together. Laura was his assistant, and it was only over time he realised he was in love with her. “I went to Africa and I’m sitting around the fire out there, in Nairobi, thinking about her, fantasising about her.” He looks embarrassed. “She’s my assistant. It’s baaaad! I came back from Africa and I couldn’t even say I was in love with her because I was so nervous. I’d been sitting there with a guitar, so I wrote this song to her, and I sang it to her and at the end of it she goes, ‘Woody, I’ve been in love with you for the last two and a half years.’ Then I picked her up and carried her in.” He and Laura finally married in 2008.

    Harrelson takes out his phone to show me photos of Laura and his three daughters. “They are the best thing going. The oldest has just gone off to college. It was one of the single most difficult experiences of my life when it was time to separate and she walked off to the dorm and we drove away. I bawled my eyes out.”

    Twelve years ago the family moved to Hawaii. He’d been introduced to America’s 50th state by the country singer Willie Nelson. “I went to see Willie play and at the end up comes Annie his wife and she goes, ‘Willie wants to hang with you on the bus.’ We open the door, and I see through the fog this guy holding up a big fatty. So I go in and start hanging with the Willie and I don’t know this is going to become one of my best buddies in life.” Nelson invited him to his home in Hawaii, Harrelson and Laura discovered Maui, the remote part of the island, and that was that. For three years he didn’t make a movie – he just got on with remaking a life, hanging with the Willie on his porch, strumming guitar, smoking big fatties and writing (his play, Bullet For Adolf, co-written by Frankie Hyman, premiered in Toronto in 2003).

    Are the hell-raising days over, then, or is he going to walk out of here and smack another photographer? “Oh yeah. I will never, ever even touch a cameraman. Never.” It’s funny how your sweet and scary sides happily coexist, I say. “Yeah. Heh! Heh! Heh! Heh!” And now he really does laugh like crazy. “Hey, man, the paparazzi, they will make you angry, that’s their whole thing. It’s a better picture. I’ve had a lot of expensive lessons on that score.” With anger or the paparazzi? “The combination.” Did something change in you? “No, I still have emotions bubble up, but I think I probably have a better rein on them. My whole thing now is I put my head down and keep walking.”

    A man comes into the room carrying two huge green smoothies.

    “Hey, buddy!” Harrelson says.

    “Hey, buddy!” the man says.

    “This is Simon,” Harrelson says. “This is Stan the man.” He tastes the smoothie. “That is just awesome, the best smoothie on earth. Lots of berries, kale, kiwi, plum, pineapple, cinnamon, hemp seed.” Harrelson eats mainly raw food. “There’s a spoon right there, have some.”

    So I do, and it tastes wonderful.

    “Wo, I can see you transforming in front of me,” Harrelson says.

    “It’s good. Did you say that was kiwi in it?” I say.

    “No,” says Stan the man. “Ki-weed!”

    “I forgot to tell you, it’s spiked!” Harrelson says. And the pair of them fall about laughing.

    As he finishes his smoothie, I say to Harrelson that he seems to have had a pretty amazing life. He nods and slurps. “It’s quite a dichotomy,” he says and he tells me one last story. “I was in a taxi the other night, and we started talking about life and the taxi driver goes, ‘Chaos and creativity go together. If you lose one per cent of your chaos, you lose your creativity.’ I said that’s the most brilliant thing I’ve heard. I needed to hear that years ago.”

    Buddhism 101: The Vajra (Dorje) as a Symbol in Buddhism

    Article, General Interest, Religion/Lifestyle, ,
    Thomas L. Kelly / Getty Images

    The term vajra is a Sanskrit word that is usually defined as “diamond” or “thunderbolt.” It also defines a kind of battle club that achieved its name through its reputation for hardness and invincibility. The vajra has special significance in Tibetan Buddhism, and the word is adopted as a label for the Vajrayana branch of Buddhism, one of the three major forms of Buddhism. The visual icon of the vajra club, along with the bell (ghanta), form a principal symbol of the Vajrayana Buddhism of Tibet.

    A diamond is spotlessly pure and indestructible. The Sanskrit word means “unbreakable or impregnable, being durable and eternal”. As such, the word vajra sometimes signifies the lighting-bolt power of enlightenment and the absolute, indestructible reality of shunyata, “emptiness.”

    Buddism integrates the word vajra into many of its legends and practices. Vajrasana is the location where the Buddha attained enlightenment. The vajra asana body posture is the lotus position. The highest concentrated mental state is vajra samadhi

    Ritual Object in Tibetan Buddhism 

    The vajra also is a literal ritual object associated with Tibetan Buddhism, also called by its Tibetan name, Dorje. It is the symbol of the Vajrayana school of Buddhism, which is the tantric branch that contains rituals said to allow a follower to achieve enlightenment in a single lifetime, in a thunderbolt flash of indestructible clarity.

    The vajra objects usually are made of bronze, vary in size, and have three, five or nine spokes that usually close at each end in a lotus shape. The number of spokes and the way they meet at the ends have numerous symbolic meanings.

    In Tibetan ritual, the vajra often is used together with a bell (ghanta). The vajra is held in the left hand and represents the male principle—upaya, referring to action or means. The bell is held in the right hand and represents the female principle—prajna, or wisdom.

    A double Dorje, or vishvavajra, are two Dorjes connected to form a cross. A double Dorje represents the foundation of the physical world and is also associated with certain tantric deities.

    Tantric Buddhist Iconography 

    The vajra as symbol predates Buddhism and was found in ancient Hinduism. The Hindu rain god Indra, who later evolved into Buddhist Sakra figure, had the thunderbolt as his symbol. And the 8th-century tantric master, Padmasambhava, used the vajra to conquer the non-Buddhist gods of Tibet.

    In tantric iconography, several figures often hold the vajra, including Vajrasattva, Vajrapani, and Padmasambhava. Vajrasttva is seen in a peaceful pose with the vajra held to his heart. Wrathful Vajrapani wields it as a weapon above his head. When used as a weapon, it is thrown to stun the opponent, and then bind him with a vajra lasso.

    Symbolic Meaning of the Vajra Ritual Object 

    At the center of the vajra is a small flattened sphere which is said to represent the underlying nature of the universe. It is sealed by the syllable hum (hung), representing freedom from karma, conceptual thought, and the groundlessness of all dharmas. Outward from the sphere, there are three rings on each side, which symbolize the three-fold bliss of Buddha nature. The next symbol found on the vajra as we progress outward are two lotus flowers, representing Samsara (the endless cycle of suffering) and Nirvana (release from Samsara). The outer prongs emerge from symbols of Makaras, sea monsters. 

    The number of prongs and whether they have closed or open tines is variable, with different forms having different symbolic meanings. The most common form is the five-pronged vajra, with four outer prongs and one central prong. These may be considered to represent the five elements, the five poisons, and the five wisdoms. The tip of the central prong is often shaped like a tapering pyramid.

    Reference

    • O’Brien, Barbara. “The Vajra (Dorje) as a Symbol in Buddhism.” Learn Religions, Aug. 27, 2020, learnreligions.com/vajra-or-dorje-449881.

    Why is There No Gay Men’s Body Liberation Movement?

    Article, Gay Interest, , ,
    Photo by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash.

    “Gay Fat”

    “You’re not fat fat, but you are gay fat,” said the guy I was dating at the time when I expressed that I felt like I didn’t particularly fit into gay culture.

    These words, which at the time were deeply hurtful, continued to bother me for years. They illustrate the ridiculous, restrictive, and unattainable body norms that govern gay male culture. I often ponder what exactly it means to be “gay fat.” “Fat” is a social construction, a term that often functions as a general category in which we place anyone who does not meet cultural standards of size and/or appearance. The notion of being “gay fat,” as opposed to simply “fat,” illustrates that gay male culture and Western culture have different body standards.

    I call this ideal gay male type the normate gay: the slim, toned, appropriately masculine, appropriately hairy, white, cisgender, and able-bodied gay man who embodies the collection of characteristics gay culture values most. The bodies of gay men who have less social and sexual capital because they are regarded as “deviant” — those who are of color, trans, disabled, fat, or fem — are defined in contrast to the body of the normate gay. The normate gay does not, in fact, exist, but is an idealized and unattainable cultural figure. Though some gay men may embody the normate gay to a large extent, appearance standards are set to create a constant state of lack that aligns with consumer capitalism in the form of diet culture. As sociologists Nathaniel C. Pyle and Noa Logan Klein observe:

    “The prevalence of these media representations [the body promoted by mainstream gay media] creates an enormous pressure on gay men to conform to this narrow ideal body type, much like the beauty standards that are imposed on women and have been thoroughly analyzed by feminists. Rates of eating disorders and other body image disturbances are high among gay men, which may be taken as evidence that body image ideals exert pressures on gay men similar in strength to those faced by heterosexual women.”

    Gay men clearly suffer from a host of body image issues, disordered eating, and full-blown eating disorders. Yet, despite existing similarities between appearance standards for women and gay men, there is no gay men’s body liberation movement to the extent that one exists within contemporary feminism. In gay men’s culture there is little discussion of diet culture, body positivity, the concept of “health at every size,” or feminism.

    The absence of a sorely needed gay men’s body liberation movement is the product of cultural ideas of toxic masculinity — aspects of masculinity that produce socially harmful effects such as domination, misogyny, homophobia, and violence — and toxic gay masculinity, a subcategory of toxic masculinity that describes aspects of masculinity within gay male culture that are similarly detrimental.

    Toxic masculinity, as a set of cultural standards for what men should be or do, is not monolithic. Gay men can simultaneously be victimized by toxic masculinity, as expressed by straight men, and perpetuate toxic masculinity against other marginalized men. Toxic gay masculinity functions around the desire to embody the normate gay type and to police those who fall outside the parameters of this cultural ideal, thereby reinforcing structural forms of oppression such as sexism, cissexism, racism, lookism, sizeism, and ableism.

    I prefer the terms “body liberation” and “body justice,” as opposed to the more popular term “body positivity,” because body positivity is increasingly co-opted by the weight loss and diet industry. Some diets, for example, market themselves as involving “body positive weight loss.” Body positivity as a feminist concept stemming from the Fat Acceptance Movement, however, is about radically accepting and making peace with one’s body as is. “Body positive weight loss” is therefore at odds with the original intentions of body positivity.

    The now widespread use of the term may also prevent us from seeing sizeism as a social justice issue. It is not enough to feel “positive” about one’s own body or the bodies of those one interacts with on a daily basis. The word “positivity” can prevent us from seeing body liberation as a civil and human rights issue and that body size should be a protected category similar to race, gender, sexual orientation, and ability. The terms “liberation” and “justice,” which imply the need for systemic change where body size is concerned, are, by nature, more radical and less co-optable by diet culture.

    There is no gay men’s body liberation movement because norms of masculinity prevent gay men from seeing and addressing the extent to which diet culture and gay male culture are enmeshed.

    A Brief History of the Gay Male Body

    When the gay liberation movement emerged in the United States in the late 1960s, body standards for gay men were not the gym-toned aesthetic of today, but the thin, androgynous hippie style often adopted by New Left men of the period. As the Gay Rights Movement progressed, and gay people became more socially and culturally visible and enmeshed within emerging forms of consumer capitalism, body standards for gay men became more idealized, unattainable, and rigid. The expansion of gay gyms, bathhouses, sex clubs, and porno theaters represented the co-optation of the philosophy of gay liberation by capitalists.

    The normative body type that emerged during the mid-to-late 1970s is what some have referred to as the “Castro clone,” or, the sexualized image of the ideal white, working-class gay man. This look grew out of the Castro district of San Francisco, which became a gay mecca as urban gay communities expanded during the post-Stonewall period. The “Castro clone” often sported masculine fabrics such as denim and leather and typically wore form-fitting plaid shirts or t-shirts and Levis jeans, worn tight to emphasize the crotch area. A mustache or facial hair often topped off the hyper-masculine look. Some have also likened the “Castro clone” to the image of the Marlboro Man, a character of a rugged, working-class man used to market Marlboro cigarettes, who first appeared in advertising in 1954.

    Body norms for gay men shifted with the arrival of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s to an even further idealized slim, toned, white, and able-bodied aesthetic. The amplified masculinity of the rugged “Castro clone” was replaced by an imperative to be smooth, hairless, and clean shaven. Though scientifically inaccurate, AIDS was described by medical professionals and the media as an explicitly gay disease or “gay cancer” (the initial name used for the condition by the Centers for Disease Control was GRID, or, Gay Related Immune Deficiency). In contrast to prevailing notions that gay men were diseased, the ideal body aesthetic of the time was one that connoted health, cleanliness, and physical fitness in the form of muscularity.

    Activist and journalist Michelangelo Signorile, in his 1997 book Life Outside, argued that the muscular gym imperative heightened during the early years of the epidemic because doctors recommended steroids to HIV-positive gay men to combat wasting and other physical signs of illness. Signorile famously observed that, at this time, the most physically beautiful men were often those who were the most ill. Though doctors prescribed steroids with the intent to help patients combat the symptoms created by AIDS, steroid use in response to the epidemic further solidified gay culture’s masculine muscular ideal.

    The anti-identity movements of the 1990s, such as third wave feminism and radical queer and transgender movements, which questioned the efficacy of the gender binary and other gender and sexual norms, led, in part, to the emergence of bear and twink subcultures, though the gay gym aesthetic still predominated in the mainstream. Gay culture and sexuality remain taboo and attaining an ideal physique is a way for gay men to visually demonstrate their morality, virtue, and control in the face of a society that regards non-heteronormative ways of being as deviant and shameful. Due to internalized homophobia, some gay men might regard their sexual desires and practices as “excessive” and seek to mitigate shame by disciplining and exerting control over their body size and shape.

    Some historians trace the beginnings of contemporary diet culture to the work of the nineteenth-century social reformer Sylvester Graham. Graham argued that one’s appetite and morality were linked and that one could use food as a path to moral virtue. He prescribed a bland diet as a way for men to control their desires and exercise sexual restraint. It is therefore unsurprising that during the HIV/AIDS epidemic the ideal gay body type shifted from simply thin to a physique that was lean, sculpted, and hairless. The ideal gay male body type has developed over time to represent not just morality and virtue, but moral virtue on hyperdrive. Consumer capitalism, including gay media, further employs the precepts of diet culture to prey upon gay men’s desires to be socially and sexually worthy.

    Dear Gay Men, You Are On a Diet

    Lookism, or the personal, institutional, and social privileges and benefits conferred upon persons whose physical appearances align with cultural preferences, is rampant in gay male culture. The term was first coined during the 1970s by activists within the Fat Acceptance Movement. Michelangelo Signorile defines this concept as follows:

    “the setting of a rigid set of standards of physical beauty that pressures everyone within a particular group to conform to them. Any person who doesn’t meet those very specific standards is deemed physically unattractive and sexually undesirable. In a culture in which the physical body is held in such high esteem and given such power, body fascism then not only deems those who don’t or can’t conform to be sexually less desirable, but in extreme sometimes dubbed lookism also deems a person completely worthless as a person, based solely on his exterior. In this sense it is not unlike racism or sexism, or homophobia itself.”

    Lookism, then, does more than position someone as merely unattractive. It denies one’s very humanity on the basis of culturally-determined aesthetic standards. In gay male culture, it is not enough to be thin; rather, one must embody a set of idealized aesthetic characteristics in order to be considered desirable and worthy. Sizeism and lookism combine to create an ideal that is impossible for most to achieve.

    Diet culture is hard to recognize within the context of gay male culture because it often appears dressed in a masculine guise to make its precepts more palatable to gay men. Gay men talk about “fitness journeys,” “gyming,” “gym goals,” and “meal prepping” — not dieting. But as Harrisonexplains, diet culture also “masquerades as health, wellness, and fitness.” This facet of diet culture is only amplified within the masculinized space of mainstream gay male culture.

    Gay men may also engage in “clean eating” — another form of dieting under the guise of “health” — as a way to manage the stigma of being gay through appeals to bodily cleanliness and moral superiority. The assumption is that if we eat foods that are “clean,” we are, by extension, “clean,” and if we eat “unhealthy” foods we are therefore “contaminated” or “dirty.” I admit that for awhile I got into “clean eating,” in part, as a way to feel morally superior to other gay/queer men. My thought process was that if I didn’t have the ideal body aesthetic, I could at least feel better about myself because I was eating “cleaner” in comparison to others. In reality, food holds no moral value outside the value a culture — in this case Western diet culture — ascribes to it.

    The invisibility of diet culture within gay male culture also results in some gay men seeing the end results of their personal “fitness journeys” as something all gay men can attain through discipline and hard work. The message is that anyone can achieve acceptance within gay culture if only they hit the gym and eat “healthy.” Such messages are diet culture dressed up as “fitness inspiration.” They may further be seen as anti-homophobic messages — not diet messages — because gay men may link their “fitness journeys” to overcoming bullying, harassment, and internalized shame.

    The majority of these men, in the words of Harrison, “were born on third base but think they batted a triple.” Genetic privilege allows them to more easily conform to the normate gay ideal. Feminist activist and educator Warren Farrell refers to this phenomenon as “genetic celebrity,” or, the largely unearned adoration we bestow upon those whose physical appearances, based upon random combinations of genetic factors, fall within the parameters of what a particular culture deems “attractive” and thus desirable and worthy.

    While thin or “fit” gay men may also suffer from body image issues that intersect with experiences of homophobia, they should simultaneously acknowledge their thin privilege and the fact that they do not have to face the pervasive stigma and stress experienced by those who live in larger bodies. Put differently, there is no system of oppression that marginalizes thin people in the ways sizeism and lookism oppress those who are larger.

    Pointing out the extent diet culture and gay male culture are enmeshed is challenging because it unsettles notions gay men have long held as truths. It is difficult for some gay men to acknowledge and surrender the social and sexual privileges conferred by normate gay status and to work towards collective body liberation.

    Riot, Not Diet

    The Stonewall Inn Riots of 1969 are often cited as the origin myth of modern gay liberation (though, in fact, the Gay Rights Movement began several decades prior and a liberationist mentality developed across the United States simultaneous to Stonewall). Our gay ancestors, nevertheless, rioted, fought, and died so we would have the right to exist proudly and without shame. This includes the liberation of our bodies — not just sexually — but in all ways.

    The solution is not for women and fems to prioritize the inclusion of gay/queer men within ongoing body liberation movements. Gay men must do it themselves, must create their own movement informed by existing critiques, and must give up the hesitance to address diet culture and body liberation because dismantling long-held ideals means relinquishing the status and privilege that comes from normative masculinity. An essential first step is to recognize where and how diet culture operates within gay male culture. We must, as our gay predecessors did, and as a popular third-wave feminist slogan tell us:

    “Riot, not diet. Get up, get out, and try it.”

    Reference

    Gay History: Trio Of Drag Queens Saves Man From Being Bashed, Then Starts On The Attackers

    Article, Gay Interest, , , , ,

    WHEN Ivan was decked by a coward punch in Sydney he thought he might die. He prayed for a hero, and got three drag queens.

    A MAN who was decked by a coward punch while on a night out in Sydney, and said he feared for his life, was rescued by a trio of unlikely saviours. 

    Ivan Flinn, 34, from Surry Hills, said that during the attack earlier this month he hoped someone would come to his rescue. Help did arrive but not in the form he expected.

    “I am a bit religious and I really thought I was going to die, I was praying for a hero and I got three angels,” he told news.com.au.

    Those “angels” were three drag queens by the names of Coco Jumbo, Ivy Leaguee and Vybe. They stepped in after a night performing on the stages in Sydney’s neighbourhood of Darlinghurst, known for its large gay population and venues.

    Luke Karakia, who performs under the name Ivy Leaguee, ended up getting injured scuffling in the middle of the road with one of the alleged attackers. Nevertheless, his frocked-up alter ego didn’t think twice before stepping in.

    “Those boys sh*t themselves, they weren’t ready for some drag queens on top of them”.

    Ivan Flinn say he was the victim of a homophobic assault on Sydney’s Oxford Street. Picture: Benedict BrookSource:Supplied

    Mr Flinn is so grateful to the three for racing in to his rescue he’s helped raise $1000 to help them pay for their wigs and high heels that were damaged in the fracas.

    The IT project manager, originally from New Zealand, said he had left a local bar on the famous gay strip of Oxford Street after midnight on August 6 and had headed to a local kebab shop to get some sustenance for the trip home.

    Almost immediately he noticed a group of rowdy people behind him. “There were heaps of homophobic slurs, ‘you f**king f*ggot, you queer c**t,” all the slurs you can possibly imagine.”

    “I said ‘dude, don’t ever use the word f*ggot and specially not on Oxford Street of all places’”

    The advice did not go down well. Mr Flinn alleges one of the man then attacked him, ripped his shirt and punched him, dislocating his jaw.

    From left to right, drag queens Coco Jumbo, Vybe and Ivy Leaguee came to the rescue. Picture: FacebookSource:Supplied

    “He was really abusive, he had intent to assault.

    “After the punch I was stunned but the next thing I knew Ivy went in and was scrapping with the guy who punched me. They’re in the middle of the road, cars swerving around them, tooting, and I saw the guy rip her wig off.

    “They were bashing each other and she’s still wearing her high heels.”

    Ivy told news.com.au she was with her fellow performers getting an after work kebab when she noticed “dick heads being dick heads” shouting homophobic slurs

    One man turned to Ivy, she claims, and called her a freak. “I said, ‘I am a freak, I’m one of the freaks of Oxford Street, now get out of this shop’.

    “And then little Ivan walked into the middle of it.”

    The attack happened on Oxford Street, Sydney’s LGBTI heartland. Picture: Jeremy PiperSource:News Corp Australia

    Ivy said she saw Mr Flinn get attacked and she wasn’t having it. “I said, ‘you want to pick on little guys, you’ll need to fight the big freak. I’m a man underneath all of this, so let’s go.”

    Luke Waqa, who performs as Coco Jumbo, also piled in.

    “A guy pushed Ivy so I picked him up and threw him into the gutter.

    “I don’t think they knew what they were getting themselves into. I used to play rugby league. Plus I have an older brother,” Coco said.

    “He tried to run away and I chased him into the oncoming traffic. I’m surprised my wig didn’t come off.”

    Ivy’s wig certainly did come off in the scuffle — it was destroyed — while she said she sustained injuries on her leg as the two of them grappled on the road.

    She thought the attackers came off worse though. “These big burly guys couldn’t even throw a punch, all they could do was pull hair and run.”

    Mr Flinn, the trio of performers and the alleged attackers all spoke to police at the scene.

    A NSW Police spokeswoman confirmed to news.com.au officers broke up an attack in Darlinghurst earlier this month involving up to seven people.

    “Police are continuing to investigate the incident, including a possible motivation of homophobic bias.

    “NSW Police treats all matters of violence extremely seriously, including bias crimes motivated by sexuality or gender.”

    Ivy said she wasn’t afraid of what she might be getting herself into.

    “I don’t have a problem defending myself. Growing up gay, I’ve been picked on and bullied and there comes a time when you fight back and you don’t care if you’ll get hurt or what happens to your wig.

    vy Leaguee (centre) said she didn’t think twice about stepping in.Source:News Limited

    “I may be gay but I’m a man and if you’ll hit me I’ll hit you back,” she said.

    Mr Flinn said he was amazed by the three of them.

    “I really thought I was going to die that night if he had kept punching me.

    “Everyone was silent but they reacted so quickly. The drag queens fought my fight for me, they are my heroes.”

    He said he started the GoFundMe fundraising drive to try and replace some of the damaged clothes. He is due to hand over the proceeds this weekend.

    “Drag queens are the strongest people in the LGBTI community. They stand there and say this is who I am and I’m proud.

    “They saved my life, I wanted to thank them”.

    Ivy said it was “disgusting” some people came to Oxford St to cause trouble. However, she said there had been very few incidents in her seven years on the scene and the community looked after its own.

    “There are idiots everywhere but don’t come to our street and expect us to just take it.”

    Coco said she had a simple message for the homophobes: “Don’t mess with gay people. Let alone two men dressed as women. Silly boys.”

    She said they weren’t fazed by the damaged outfits and were touched by Mr Flinn’s fundraising.

    “It’s all just materials at the end of the day, there’s no use crying over split lace.

    “We’re just glad Ivan’s OK”.

    Reference

    Gay History: How a Long-Forgotten ‘Confirmed Bachelor’ Informs Our History

    Article, Gay Interest, History, , ,
    Image: State Library of Queensland

    When Robert Herbert and John Bramston sailed home to England after six years in the new colony of Queensland, John’s younger brother remained. A ‘confirmed bachelor’, Henry Bramston played a prominent role in Brisbane life but was quickly forgotten after his death.

    Robert Herbert, private secretary to Sir George Bowen, arrived in Brisbane in November 1859 to prepare the official welcome for Bowen in his role as Queensland’s first Governor. On his arrival, Bowen appointed Herbert to head the government of the new colony. John Bramston arrived next in January 1860. He had lived with Herbert since they met at university a few years before. Bramston took over as Bowen’s private secretary and later stood for election to parliament himself. Finally, Bramston’s younger brother Henry disembarked in Brisbane in February. Sailing from England to Australia took about three months at the time, indicating the threesome planned their staggered arrivals.

    Henry Bramston

    In 1864, Henry and a friend bought a property out in the bush near Roma with Robert Herbert and John Bramston as partners. The next year, the same year that his brother became Attorney-General, Henry received a very convenient government appointment as magistrate at Roma. Such blatant nepotism did not always provoke the same indignation then as now. Henry remained in the public service until the end of his life.

    Despite various rural appointments, he mainly lived in Brisbane. He proved a more social animal than either his brother or Herbert. That pair preferred the splendid isolation of their 50-acre farm. However, they were rarely alone at Herston. Robert Herbert and John Bramston welcomed a constant stream of similarly upper-class Englishmen who like themselves favoured boating, fishing, hunting and camping over elegant soirées.

    The local squattocracy generally laid on lavish social events in honour of unmarried British gentry resident in the colony. They seized on the opportunity to enhance their social standing by marrying their daughters to toffs. However, it seems the local nobs quickly discerned that Robert Herbert, John Bramston and younger brother Henry had little interest in vows of matrimony.

    Herston

    Herston Robert Herbert John Bramston gay premier henry bramston confirmed bachelor
    Herston with Robert Herbert, left and John Bramston. Images: State Library of Queensland

    A busy man

    Henry Bramston was a man about town and something of a dandy — an immaculate dresser and partial to fine jewellery.

    He served on the Acclimatisation Society, Philharmonic Society, Hospital and Turf Club committees and on the board of the National Association which ran the annual exhibition. He also worked tirelessly to raise funds for the construction of Fortitude Valley’s Holy Trinity Anglican Church.

    Henry owned a house opposite where the Normanby Hotel now stands. His gardens were much celebrated, particularly his potted plants and flowering ornamentals.

    He was a busy man.

    The Brisbane Courier records him ‘donning the pink’ to act as Clerk of Course at the races and organising balls at the School of Arts. He both supervised the Horticultural competition at the Ekka and won many of the prizes in that same competition.

    At the 1878 Ekka, he won 21 of the 39 awards for ornamental plants. Although he did not enter any pansies in the competition, he encouraged others to cultivate the large-flowered hybrid. He donated ten shillings for the best three pansies; the same for the best single pansy; and £1 for the best collection of five pansies.

    Dear Sir…

    Henry’s voluminous correspondence at times made the Letters column of the Brisbane Courier seem like his personal Facebook page. He reached for his quill to compose comments on any and every topic. Among his favoured subjects — hospital rules. Henry enthralled readers with lengthy treatises seemingly designed to smother with micro-management any patients who survived their ailments.

    Henry did not tolerate dissent. Only courageous souls dared propose concepts contrary to the Bramston Manifesto. First and foremost, he objected to charitable endowments that resulted in free treatment for the hoi-polloi. He abhorred benevolence toward a class of people he insisted ‘would never work for what they could get by begging’.

    A bit rich coming from a bloke who owed his position in life to a family connection.

    He took particular offence at a proposed children’s hospital, concerned that tending to sick children would encourage the lower classes to breed.

    A frequent postscript epitomised his routine tone.

    Crave pardon

    “I have written plainly… and if I have offended or hurt anyone’s feelings, I can only crave pardon for so doing.”

    Crave pardon as he might, Henry tolerated neither dissension nor any slight against his esteemed self — nor his prized bay gelding.

    When Henry entered the horse in the harness competition at the Ekka, Prince took second place. That bewildered a newspaper editor who thought the prize undeserved. He ridiculed Prince as using ‘his forelegs as though they were a pair of crutches’ and likened the horse to a cockroach.

    How very dare he! Henry dashed off an outraged response.

    “I must crave permission to take exception to your remarks.”

    Henry Bramston eventually ran into financial difficulties. He overspent during the construction of a grand mansion on 20 acres at Ascot and was forced to sell everything, including his prize-winning pot plants.

    He then moved to Newstead and died in 1891 in a private hospital on James St.

    Following his death, the newspapers eulogised Henry Bramston as ‘a very old citizen of Brisbane’. But Henry was only 55 years of age. He merely seemed old because of his constant fussing and ‘fuddy-duddy’ nature.

    Mayfield

    confirmed bachelor henry bramston john bramston robert herbert
    Mayfield: The mansion Henry Bramston built at Ascot later hosted Edward VIII when he visited Brisbane as Prince of Wales. The house, which burned down in the 1930s, gave its name to Mayfield St, Ascot.

    Bitchy old New Farm Queen

    In truth, Henry would fit easily into Brisbane’s inner-city suburbs today. We may loathe to admit it, but most Brisbanites have either said or heard the phrase, ‘bitchy old New Farm queen’.

    Unlike the elder brother he followed to Queensland, there is no evidence beyond stereotype to indicate his sexuality.

    Assuming Henry Bramston was gay because he fitted a stereotype would now arouse angry indignation. We insist emphatically — and correctly — that our communities are diverse. Not all gay men are effeminate, and not all lesbians are butch.

    But stereotypes did not simply emerge from the ether. Something inspired them.

    Stereotypes arose because of the commonalities manifested by people the general public became aware were same-sex attracted. The most obvious were generally effeminate men and butch women. While not representative, the individuals who refused to conform to heteronormativity were our public face.

    Their visibility promoted tolerance of difference long before we dared advocate for law reform.

    Sir Robert Helpmann

    Lifesavers once dumped Bobby Helpmann in the surf for daring to promenade on Bondi Beach with plucked eyebrows and painted fingernails. However, the openly gay ballet dancer later became Australian of the Year. How do we quantify the acceptance achieved via the social prominence of that celebrated queen of high camp?

    Likewise, many now disparage the mincing Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served? as a derogatory stereotype. Yet, mainstream television audiences of the 1970s and early 80s loved the character. They laughed with him, not at him.

    Here’s a little secret!

    LGBTIQ+ people also loved him. He gave us visibility, and the show promoted acceptance. While amused by the camp eccentricities of Wilberforce Humphries, his co-workers never displayed the slightest intolerance towards his sexuality.

    Lilian Cooper also warrants mention as Queensland’s pioneering female doctor and one half of a same-sex couple who lived together openly for half a century. Few accounts of Lilian fail to mention her butchness — both in dress and manner. Yet Lilian Cooper and Josephine Bedford became revered Brisbane citizens for their considerable civic contributions.

    In our commitment to repudiating stereotypes, we should not deny their role in advancing our cause. In an era of persecution and prosecution, likeable but stereotypical gay men and women bequeathed our communities visibility and increased acceptance.

    Queensland’s arch-homophobe Phyllis Cilento clearly recognised their impact. She admonished her readers on the subject in 1953.

    “The danger now is that after the first revulsion of feeling against homosexuality, people will become used to the idea, and take it for granted as ‘just one of those things’…

    “They will look around… and find homosexuals among men they formerly admired for their intellectual and artistic achievements or liked for their friendly and gentle manner, and they will feel that really this cannot be so heinous a crime.”

    Bachelors and spinsters

    The generation of Brisbane bachelors who followed Henry came of age at a time of increased wealth and more frequent social opportunities. Newspapers documented the social lives of nattily dressed ‘eligible bachelors’. Admiring belles surrounded the elegantly attired young men at every garden party, picnic race or masquerade ball. Their ranks included Claude Musson, the stock and station agent who orchestrated the city’s ‘gayest’ balls. And also ‘pretty Willie Morse with his golden curls’, whose father owned the Orient Hotel. Joining their coterie was George Love Warry, scion of a wealthy storekeeping family.

    With a wink and a nod, the papers wryly noted that as the years rolled by, some of the town’s most popular single men moved from the column of ‘eligible bachelor’ to that of ‘ineligible bachelor’.

    So was the general public as unaware and intolerant of LGBTIQ+ people as commonly asserted?

    Or was discussion of LGBTIQ+ people suppressed — and the hatred towards us directed — by the usual suspects? Were they the same people who cause us grief today — clerics insistent on universal submission to their personal god, politicians thirsting for notoriety and sensationalist media?

    Let us not forget that those same people acted as arbiters of our history. ‘History is written by the victors.’ But only temporarily. As time goes by, locked archives are accessed and previously hidden memoirs published. However, to some degree, queer history remains hostage to the people who refused us any input into the chronicles of our existence. We were, after all, ‘unfit for publication’.

    They told us, for example, how much ‘normal’ people despised homosexuals and illustrated their point with evidence such as the prosecution of Oscar Wilde.

    But wait a moment!

    Did the public actually despise Oscar Wilde? They continued to buy his books and attend his plays. Decades later, students continued to study Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest as part of the Queensland high school English curriculum. That was despite Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen banning gay teachers in his quest to eradicate the scourge of homosexuality.

    In recent years, as researchers gained access to previously ignored or hidden archives, we learned the stories of less famous LGBTIQ+ people.

    We now know that Yorkshire’s Anne Lister, the notorious ‘Gentleman Jack’, managed to live an open, if not publicly discussed, life as a lesbian in the 1830s.

    In Brisbane, Lilian Cooper and Josephine Bedford lived together as a couple, worked together as a couple and were invited to social events together which they then attended as a couple. Did no one ever think, “Hold on? I wonder if this couple is a couple?’

    Likewise, did no one quietly ponder the living arrangements of Robert Herbert and John Bramston? Just a decade later, Queensland’s elite did not hesitate to employ homophobia against the foppish Governor Cairns. But Herbert and Bramston supported policies which enriched the local nobs. Cairns, on the other hand, advocated for Aboriginal people to have the same legal rights as anyone else. He fought against their dispossession and murder and was aghast at the enslavement of South Sea Islanders. The local establishment attacked the Governor not because of his sexuality but because of his insistence on fair and proper governance which would impact their profits.

    The Elephant in the Room

    Were we actually the social pariahs we’ve always thought?

    Certainly, members of our communities did risk prosecution even if surprisingly few actually faced it. Definitely, we suffered prejudice, as we still do. We were sometimes subjected to violence, as we still are.

    But with increased access to secrets of the past, we learn of LGBTIQ+ people who did not lead furtive and sorrowful lives: people who benefitted from tolerance in their communities even if their difference remained unstated.

    Perhaps we were just another elephant in the room.

    Public discussion ignored plenty of other social phenomena in days gone by. Issues like domestic violence, child abuse, alcoholism, teenage pregnancy and others remained taboo in polite society.

    Holy f***!

    One night in the 1990s, I partook of a few drinks with my mother and grandmother. We reminisced about life in my small rural home town in the 1960s. Our memories travelled house to house as we discussed people we remembered. I mentioned an out of the way house which I knew nothing of except that a single man in his early thirties lived there alone — unusual in a small country town.

    I once waited in the car while my father popped in there for some reason.

    “Ah yes,” they told me, “The barman. That’s where men went when their wives weren’t putting out.”

    Holy f***!

    I always assumed that only heterosexual sex ever occurred in our remote rural outpost — that even the cattle copulated exclusively in missionary position and with the lights off.

    But no! In rural Queensland in the 1960s, gay sex occurred and the entire bloody town — except me apparently — knew about it and tolerated it.

    Reference