Tag Archives: homophobia

Gay History: The Orange Juice Boycott That Changed America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reference

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

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

May 18, 2021Article, Gay Interest, History, Politicalgay discrimination, homophobia, Lavender Scaretimalderman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reference

9 Things To Know About ‘The Lavender Scare’, Out, 26 April 2013, by Out.Com Editors https://www.out.com/entertainment/popnography/2013/04/26/9-things-to%C2%A0know-about-lavender-scare

Gay History: Being Gay In Britain In The 1930s

May 17, 2021Gay Interest, General Interest, History, Politicalgay in the 1930s, homophobia, homosexualstimalderman

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

May 17, 2021Article, Gay Interest, History, Political1960s gay discrimination, homophobiatimalderman

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

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

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

Reference

Watch the Scary 1961 Anti-Gay PSA – “Boys Beware” – Video, Back2Stonewall, 16 May 2021, by Will Kohler http://www.back2stonewall.com/2021/05/watch-the-scary-1950s-anti-homosexual-psa-boys-beware-video.html

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

May 13, 2021Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, PoliticalGay, gay death penalty, Gay hate, gay lifestyle, gay marriage, gay rights, homophobia, LGBTtimalderman

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

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

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

The state of marriage rights

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet more than half of European Union members have not.

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

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

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

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

How have countries legalised same-sex marriage?

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

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

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

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

Only one country, Ireland, put the change to a people’s vote. A referendum was legally required, held in May 2015, and overwhelmingly passed.
Parliaments legalised same-sex marriage in 20 countries.
Court rulings prompted the change in five countries.

Gay rights supporters celebrate after a US Supreme Court ruling that same-sex couples have the right to marry

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

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

Where is being gay illegal?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In India it is an offence to “voluntarily [have] carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal”.
In Mauritius, it is a crime to commit “sodomy or bestiality”.
In Uganda, a law provides for a seven-year jail term for anyone who conducts a same-sex marriage ceremony.

Kenyan MP Irungu Kang’ata leads an anti-gay caucus protest in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
Reuters: Thomas Mukoya

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where do LGBT people risk the death penalty?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Some same-sex male couples circumvent laws against homosexuality by getting a doctors’ certificate to say that one half of the couple is a trans woman. Supposedly, this is meant to be followed up with surgery, but that isn’t necessarily carried through.
“Pakistan has had a ‘third gender’ option on the national ID card for a few years now [and] Iran has one of the highest rates of male-to-female trans surgery in the world.”

What other forms of harassment take place?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are things getting better for LGBT people?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reference

Pride, prejudice and punishment: Gay rights around the world, ABC News, 15 November 2017, by Paul Crossley, Colin Gourlay, and Ben Spraggon https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-04/gay-lesbian-mardi-gras-rights-around-the-world/8126828?nw=0

Gay History: Violence is No Stranger to the LGBT Community: David Mixner

November 3, 2019Article, Gay InterestGay, Gay hate, gay violence, homophobia, LGBTtimalderman

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

From “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats

Not since June 24, 1973 when a madman fire-bombed the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans has the LGBT community suffered such slaughter at the hands of hate. On that horrible day, 43 years ago, 32 of our own were burned to death. No one was ever charged or punished for that crime. Ever since, unfortunately, random violence has shadowed our journey to freedom. Over a dozen MCC churches have been burned to the ground. Every one of us knows someone who has been gay-bashed. Many have been beaten so badly that they never regain their ability to function in the world. None of us will ever forget Matthew Shepard crucified on a fence in the barren and desolate prairie of Wyoming.

For the LGBT community, the news that terrorists aim to kill us is certainly not new. We have recoiled time and time again as videos show our brothers and sisters in the Middle East stoned to death or hurled off the tops of buildings. In Africa we see members of our community burned to death encased in the infamous ‘neckless’ (a burning tire around their neck). A generation of us witnessed first hand as our brothers endured a prolonged and brutal death from AIDS while our own government turned its back on us. American preachers have called for the death sentence for LGBT Americans and dispatched missionaries overseas to urge third world nations to inflict hate and violence on their own LGBT citizens.

For the most part we have suffered all this amid the silence of others; it has almost become a way of life for us. The lack of outrage or even coverage of the repression and terror directed toward us from the media is striking. Also, the fact that thirteen nations have the death penalty simply for being homosexual — and many of them are American allies. As ACT UP said so eloquently, silence really does equal death.

Now another place, another name has joined the long list: Pulse. Ironically the name of the Orlando bar is the means to ascertain if a person is still alive.

Oh yes, we are still alive. They have not invented a bullet, a gun or firebomb that can come close to murdering our spirit or our determination to be free. For every one of our fallen there are ten to take their place.

The slaughterhouse in Orlando hits close to home. I have spoken there at a community event. Every city in America has a bar like Pulse. We have all danced to the same music! We all know it can happen anywhere, anytime in our community. We are all always at risk.

President Obama rightly called the slaughter in Orlando both a terrorist act and a hate crime. The two can’t be separated.

Let’s be honest. Not only was this twisted terrorist inspired by ISIS; he had plenty of permission here in America to hate us.

There are precincts of American politics filled with rhetoric against our community, our rights, our very being. Pastors advocate hate from their pulpits and legislation is submitted and enacted to demean us and sanction anti-LGBT discrimination. There are states passing laws to permit our fellow citizens to deny us a meal in a restaurant, a place to sleep at night, or even access to a restroom. Do these agents of bigotry really believe their cynical fear-mongering and attempts to write hate into the stature books did not contribute to the massacre at Pulse? Really?

What can we do in the face of such horror?

For years to come and without question we will have to continue fighting our oppressors in the streets and at the ballot box. We cannot rest until every hate-filled law is overturned. The best memorial to the dead of Orlando is a new birth of freedom.

In the short term, many of the killed or injured are poor and they and their families need our financial assistance. Equality Florida has established a “Go Fund Me” page for us to help pay for funerals and medical expenses.

The LGBT community in Texas — and all decent citizens –have a special obligation and that is to remove Lt. Governor Patrick from office for his hateful tweet: “You reap what you sow.” He dishonors his office and America.

The Republican Party must stop exploiting gay-baiting as a tool to turn out their base.

Finally, we must stand tall, proud and open. All of us are sickened and angered by the mass execution of our brothers and sisters, but we are not bowed and not defeated. Never!

Reference

Violence is No Stranger to the LGBT Community: David Mixner, Towleroad, 12 June 2016, by David Mixner https://www.towleroad.com/2016/06/orlando-david-mixner-2/

Gay History: Johnny Mathis on the Long Road to Gay Rights: ‘People Are Stubborn; There’s a Waiting Period Until They Catch Up’

August 29, 2019Article, Gay Interest, General InterestGay, gay rights, homophobia, Johnny Mathis, LGBTtimalderman

At his penthouse in Beverly Hills, Johnny Mathis has no objection to a 9 a.m. interview — he has been up for five hours already, and at the gym for a long-standing regime of pulley stretching and leg lifts. “Anything to get the juices flowing and also get me into my stage clothes,” says the 81-year-old singer. “I look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘Well, not bad,’ ” he adds with a laugh.

Mathis has been donning those stage clothes all year, on a tour marking the 60th anniversary of his debut album. He is a singular vocalist whose classic hits from the 1950s — “Chances Are,” “Misty,” “It’s Not for Me to Say” — established an enduring style of pop romance. In Barry Levinson’s Oscar-nominated 1982 film Diner, set in the postwar era, the character Eddie Simmons memorably asks his pals, “When you’re making out, which do you prefer, Sinatra or Mathis?”

Paul Drinkwater/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Mathis with Johnny Carson in 1979.

A native of Texas, raised in California and the fourth of seven children, Mathis caught his father’s passion for music at a young age. He began vocal lessons, including classical and operatic styles, at age 13. Yet, in high school, he also was talented enough at track and field to get an athletic scholarship to San Francisco State University and, later, an invitation to try out for the U.S. team heading to the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

Around that same time, however, while performing at a San Francisco nightclub, Mathis caught the ear of George Avakian, head of jazz A&R at Columbia Records, who was vacationing in the city. “Have found phenomenal 19-year-old boy who could go all the way,” Avakian telegrammed his label. “Send blank contracts.”

In the six decades since, Mathis has charted 43 hit singles and sent 74 titles, including numerous Christmas releases, onto the Billboard 200. In 2003, The Recording Academy presented Mathis with a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. It was recognition for an artist who has long sung of romance— but also has supported civil rights and gay rights, from singing with activists at the Salute to Freedom concert in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 to acknowledging his own sexual orientation two decades later.

The 74 titles Mathis has charted on the Billboard 200 have included numerous Christmas albums.

You were part of a generation of racial pioneers in pop in the ’50s who crossed over to white fans. What’s your perspective on Black Lives Matter and race relations today?

The world changes. The world is completely different now from when I was growing up. Back then you didn’t say things like they say now out loud, about race and things. But that’s just progress. When are we going to find out that we’re all the same, we’re all absolutely, without a doubt, the same? It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or straight or gay.

You’ve seen a lot of change in attitudes toward being gay since you were getting death threats in the 1980s. [The threats followed a 1982 interview in Us Weekly in which Mathis was quoted as saying, “Homosexuality is a way of life I’ve become accustomed to.”]

Things take time. People are stubborn about what they perceive to be the right thing or the wrong thing, and it takes a long time to filter this human condition. There’s a waiting period until people catch up. But if you have patience — which it takes when someone thinks differently from you — everybody always catches up. That patience is a wonderful virtue.

You have declined to talk about your own relationships, and it seems that you prefer to lead by your presence rather than speaking out.

I’ve been very happy to see some of the success that I’ve had along the way in opening the eyes of people, especially people who listen to music.

Looking back, what do you remember about George Avakian discovering you at San Francisco’s 440 Club?

I didn’t realize he was in the audience, and unfortunately he had a bad case of poison oak or poison ivy. So he was not in a very good mood. But he heard me sing and said, “I think you’re ready to make your first recording.” George is still with us; He’s now 102 years old, and I saw him not too long ago. He counseled me for many years.

Reference

Johnny Mathis on the Long Road to Gay Rights, Billboard, 12 December 2016, by Gary Graff https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/7617724/johnny-mathis-anniversary-interview

Gay History: Mitt Romney’s Teen Years: A Time of Homosexual Panic in America

August 29, 2019Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, Political1950s Scare, anti-gay, discrimination, homophobia, Mitt Romney, Tea & Sympathytimalderman

Whether or not what Mitt Romney did as a teenager matters now, the way some conservatives are defending him, you’d think homosexuals didn’t exist until Halston, Calvin Klein, and Liza were discovered dancing at Studio 54 circa 1978.

“For those to the premises more recently arrived, a quick primer on 1965, when this occurred,” wrote syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, responding to critics who’ve described Romney’s forcible cutting of the dyed-blond hair of a nonconforming student as anti-gay bullying. “Nobody knew who was or wasn’t ‘gay,’ a word that wasn’t yet in popular circulation as a noun and generally meant ‘merry.’ Homosexuality wasn’t on most high-school kids’ radar, period. If anything, Romney may not have liked Lauber’s ‘hippie’ locks, which is the more likely case given the era.”

Really? Check out the synopsis for the 1956 film by a much earlier Minnelli, Liza’s dad Vincente. Tea and Sympathy was adapted from the popular 1953 Broadway play of the same name, and Romney and his prep school buddies might as well have been acting out the plot: “Tom Robinson Lee, a 17-year old student at a boy’s prep school, is at odds with the other boys who like sports, talking about girls, and listening to pop music. Tom prefers classical music, reads books, can sew, goes to the theater, and generally seems to be more at ease in the company of women. The other boys torment him for his ‘unmanly’ qualities and call him ‘sister boy.’”

I don’t know what kind of sheltered life Kathleen Parker led, but homosexuality has been on high-school kids’ radars — particularly the radars of high-school boys — for as long as masculinity has been on their radars, which in Western culture would take us back to the ancient Greeks and the Roman gladiators, I imagine. But even if we don’t want to go back that far, suffice it to say that queer boys were defined in American culture surely since Oscar Wilde was carted off to prison for being a “sodomite” in 1895.

While there were times in the early part of the 20th century when homosexuality was more accepted in some cities (as historian George Chuancey describes in Gay New York, in which he also shows that the word “gay” most certainly existed then), the 1950s saw a homosexual panic that gripped American politics, media, and culture. In 1950 Sen. Joseph McCarthy began his investigations that led to the purging of alleged Communists and homosexuals from the government. In 1951 a popular book called Washington Confidential, co-written by New York Mirror columnist Lee Mortimer, captured the tenor of the time in a chapter titled, “A Garden of Pansies”:

If you’re wondering where your wandering semi-boy is tonight, he’s probably in Washington. The good people shook their heads in disbelief at the revelation that over 90 twisted twerps in trousers had been swished out of the state department. Fly commentators seized on it for gags about fags, whimsy with overtones of Kinsey and the odor of lavender. We pursued the subject and found that there are at least 6000 homosexuals on the government payroll, most of them known, and these comprise only a fraction of the total of their kind in the city.

Tea and Sympathy premiered on Broadway and was made into a film in the midst of that panic. (And you can read all about the context in this paper by film historian David Gerstner, who also happens to be my partner). The McCarthy era and the targeting of homosexuals spurred the first gay and lesbian activists, like the recently deceased pioneer Frank Kameny, who was ejected from the Army Map Service for being gay in 1957.

That first brave but tepid organizing only escalated the panic, which continued well into the 1960s. In 1963, two years before Romney’s prep school “prank,” the anti-gay metro editor of The New York Times, Abe Rosenthal, became alarmed after returning from overseas and seeing so many gay men on the streets of Manhattan. In response he commissioned a piece that was put on the front page of the paper of record, which blared with this headline: “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern.”

Those years, the mid-‘60s, were in fact a critical time for the gay-rights movement: It was going to either burst forth, as it eventually did in 1969, with the Stonewall riots, or be suppressed further by the kind of attitudes that empowered high-school boys of the time to hold down a kid perceived as gay and forcibly cut his hair.

It matters today what Mitt Romney did then, even as a high-school student, because the country has moved on from that time of panic into a different place. It would tell us a lot about him, and the kind of leader he would be, if, rather than denying it or suppressing it, he were able to explain how he moved on and, as others have said, if he were able to use his story to shed some light on the anti-gay bullying we still see today.

Reference

Mitt Romney’s Teen Years: A Time of Homosexual Panic in America, HuffPost, 14 May 2012, by Michelangelo Signorile https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mitt-romneys-teen-years-a_b_1514542

Gay History:, 25 Violent Attacks at Gay Bars That Preceded Orlando’s Horrific Nightclub Massacre

August 16, 2019Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, Historydiscrimination, Gay, Gay hate, gay massacres, gay violence, homophobia, LGBT, transphobiatimalderman

This litany of gay hate, murder and violence goes on everywhere in the world. Here in Australia alone there are, in Sydney, about 80 unsolved gay murders from the 80s alone. It is not a pleasant subject, but it’s a reality, and whether we like it or not, like war, it is part of our history. This article only goes up to June 2016 – it would be frightening to know the further extent of this awful violence since that date. It is a constant reminder to us that even in what we consider gay-safe spaces…we are not safe!

When a radiant President Obama declared June LGBTQ Pride month, he told the American people that “despite the extraordinary progress of the past few years, LGBT Americans still face discrimination simply for being who they are.” Nobody could have imagined how that statement would take on a tragic enormity just days later.

Sunday, Obama addressed the American LGBTQ community and the rest of the nation again to talk about the worst mass shooting in our history. He talked about the unthinkable contrast of the horror that happened in the early hours of Sunday morning in Orlando: “The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live. The place where they were attacked is more than a nightclub — it is a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.”

Less than two weeks before the country prepares to celebrate one year of marriage equality, the sight of two men kissing on the street is terrifying enough to someone that a hatred-fueled massacre we experienced at the Pulse in Orlando can be the result.

Unfortunately, Orlando is hardly the first major deadly attack against an LGBT bar or landmark.

Until today, the deadliest attack had been in New Orleans, over 40 years ago. On the week when the LGBT community celebrated its fourth Gay Pride — four years after Stonewall — an arsonist set fire to the Upstairs Lounge at the French Quarter, killing 32 people on June 24, 1973. No suspect was ever charged.

On Nov. 18, 1980 a man named Ronald K. Crumpley opened fire outside the Ramrod bar in Greenwich Village in New York City. He said he believed gay men were agents of the devil, stalking him and ”trying to steal my soul just by looking at me.” His father, a minister, said in his testimony that Crumpley maybe had a ”a homosexual problem himself.”

On April 28, 1990 at Uncle Charlie’s, another gay bar in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, three men were injured in an explosion possibly caused by a pipe bomb. The police didn’t immediately arrest anyone for the crime. Five years later, federal prosecutors accused El Sayyid A. Nosair for bombing Uncle Charlie’s, planning to blow up New York City landmarks and killing a rabbi in 1990. They said Nosair, a muslim, attacked the bar because he objected to homosexuality on religious grounds according to report from the New York Times. In 1996, he was convicted of planning to wage a “war of urban terrorism” and was sentenced to life in prison.

Jon Christopher Buice is serving a 45-year sentence for the killing of Paul Broussard in Houston, Texas on July 4, 1991. Buice and nine of his friends tried go into several bars in a gay area of Montrose, but they were refused entry. They then attacked Buice and two other friends with nail-studded wooden planks, a knife, and steel-toed boots outside Heaven, a gay bar in the city’s heavily LGBT Montrose district.

On Feb. 21, 1997 a nail-laden device exploded at the Otherside Lounge, a lesbian nightclub in Atlanta. Five people were wounded. Eric Rudoplh confessed to the Otherside Lounge bombing, as well as the Atlanta Olympics bombings, and abortion clinics in Atlanta and Birmingham. “Homosexuality is an aberrant sexual behavior,” he wrote in a statement. “Like other humans suffering from various disabilities homosexuals should not attempt to infect the rest of society with their particular illness.”

Two people were killed and 81 were injured after a bomb exploded in a gay bar in London’s Soho, on April 30, 1999. The blast happened at the busy Admiral Duncan pub in the center of London’s very gay neighborhood at the start of a holiday weekend. Just like the Orlando tragedy, the attack happened in a place where people go to socialize and escape. Peter Tatchell, spokesman for the gay rights group OutRage!, said: “A lot of gay people saw the Old Compton Street area as a safe haven.They felt able to relax and hold hands without fear of attack. This outrage has destroyed that cosy assumption.”

In Roanoke, Virginia on Sept. 22, 2000, a man called Ronald Gay asked directions to a gay bar so he could “shoot some people.” He then walked calmly into the Backstreet Cafe on a Friday night, ordered a beer, and opened fire. He killed one person and injured six. Gay told police he didn’t like being called Gay. He also said it was his mission to make all gays move to San Francisco, which he thought would end AIDS. “He said he was shooting people to get rid of, in his words, ‘faggots,’” Lieutenant William Althoff of the Roanoke police was quoted as saying. He was sentenced to four life terms.

18-year-old Jacob D. Robida walked into a bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts in the evening of February 2, 2006. He asked the bartender if he was at a gay bar, ordered a couple of beers, and moved to the back of the bar, watching a game of pool briefly before taking out a hatchet — a small ax the size of a hammer. The bartender told CNN the man “started swinging the hatchet on top of this customer’s head”. He also struck a second patron with the hatchet, pulled out a gun and shot the first victim in the face and the second twice in the head, Phillip said. A third person also was shot in the abdomen. He killed himself three days later.

At the San Diego Gay Pride festival in July 30, 2006, six men were attacked with baseball bats and knives after leaving the Pride festival. The attackers used anti-gay slurs as they beat the victims. One almost died. Four men pleaded guilty in connection with the attacks and received prison sentences from two years and 11 months to 11 years.

20-year-old Sean William Kennedy was walking to his car outside Brew’s Bar in Greenville, South Carolina on May 16, 2007 when a car approached him. A young man got out, called him a faggot and punched him in the face so hard that caused his brain to disconnect from his brain stem.The killer, 19-year-old Stephen Moller, left the scene and let Kennedy die from his injury. He was sentenced to five years for involuntary manslaughter, but his sentence was reduced to three, because he was father. His mother said he later “left a message on one of the girl’s phones who knew Sean, saying, ‘You tell your faggot friend that when he wakes up he owes me $500 for my ‘broken hand!’”

Osvan Inácio dos Santos was leaving a gay bar in Arapicara a small city in the Alagoas, Northeast of Brazil with a group of friends, after he won a local ‘Miss Gay’ competition on Sept. 15, 2007. On the way home, he got separated from the group. They tried contacting him, but he didn’t answer. His body was found a day later. He’d been raped and beaten to death. Tedy Marques, president of the Alagoas Gay Group, said that “Homophobia is one of the worst problems Brazil faces. It is unacceptable that every other day in our country a homosexual is brutally murdered.”

Lance Neve was with his boyfriend and another friend at Snuggery’s Bar in Spencerport, New York on March 7, 2008 when a man named Jesse D. Parsons approached the group. He said he wanted to shake Neve’s hand because he had never shaken a gay man’s hand before, but Neve refused. Parsons then beat him up and left him unconscious. He was transported to an area hospital, where he was treated for a fractured skull, nose, left eye socket and upper jaw bone and blood on the brain. During his hearing, he told the court that “while he didn’t mean to hurt Neve as badly as he did, Neve deserved it.” He was sentenced to five years and a half in jail, and was ordered to pay $24,000 for Neve’s medical expenses.

Tony Randolph Hunter, was beaten outside the Be Bar Nightclub in Washington DC by 19-year-old Robert Hannah. He later died from the injuries on September 7, 2008. Hannah was sentenced to 6 months in jail and ordered to pay $50 in court costs.

On March 1, 2009, three friends threw concrete blocks at patrons inside Robert’s Lafitte Bar, in Galveston, Texas injuring two men. One of the victims, Marc Bosaw, required 12 staples in his head. One of the three suspects later told police their intent was to target homosexuals, said Galveston Police Department Lt.D.J. Alvarez. The trio also hurled homophobic insults, authorities said.

On April 11, 2009 Justin Goodwin was attacked at a bar in Gloucester, Massachusetts by as many as five people, who were using anti-gay remarks. The bashing left him blind in one eye, and deaf in one year. He committed suicide two years later.

On August 29, 2009 a shooting took place at a LGBT youth center in Tel Aviv. Two people died, 15 were injured. Most of them minors. A man named Hagai Feliciano was indicted for murder and a hate crime in 2013, but the charges were dropped in 2014. While not technically a bar, it is the equivalent for LGBT youth – a place of sanctuary and empowerment.

In New York City, a man named Frederick Giunta was charged and arrested on October 17, 2010 for allegedly attacking and assaulting people in two bars in Greenwich Village: Ty’s Bar on Christopher Street and nearby Julius Bar on W 10th St hurling anti-gay remarks. According to NYPD officials, Giunta has a history of committing crimes by targeting men at gay bars. The attack happened two weeks before the NYPD arrested two men on charges they attacked a patron inside the bathroom at Stonewall Inn.

In October of 2010, two men were arrested after attacking a man in the bathroom at the iconic Stonewall Inn in New York City. The suspects reportedly told the man, “We don’t like gay bars, and we don’t piss next to faggots” before the assault began. He later refused to apologize to the victim, because he has no regrets. “I’m not going to say sorry, because I don’t know what I should be sorry for,” said Francis, who also insisted he’s not a homophobe. “I don’t hate gay people. I don’t hate anybody.”

On October 25, 2011 a man sprayed 21-year-old Russel Banks with liquid fuel and threw a lit match at him at the Rainbow and Dove gay bar in Leicester City, England. Banks suffered third degree burns to 20 percent of his body.

On the first minutes of New Year’s Day, 2014 a man named Musab Masmari poured gasoline in a stairway to the balcony at the Neighbours Nightclub in Seattle, where 750 had gone to celebrate the New Year. An unidentified informant told the FBI that, in the numerous conversations after their first meeting, Masmari often expressed a “distaste for homosexual people,” and that Masmari “opined that homosexuals should be exterminated.” He was arrested a month later, and sentenced for 10 years in prison.

On June 1, 2014 two friends were killed after they left R Place, a gay club in Seattle. Ali Muhammad Brown confessed to the killings. He contacted the men via a hook-up app like Grindr, met them after they left the club and then shot them multiple times and killed them. Brown told the police the murders were a “bloody crusade” to punish the U.S. government for its foreign policies.

After months of violent anti-gay attacks, Central Station, Russia’s largest gay club closed its doors on March 27, 2014. The club was considered one of the only symbols of freedom for Russian’s LGBT community.

On October 1, 2014 a man named Wayne Odegard shot a man at the Salon, a popular gay bar in Minneapolis. He was passing by the bar when he saw two men kissing. He grabbed his gun, yelled “f**cking faggots,” and shot at them, injuring one. Odgegard admitted to police he said ‘faggots’ before the shooting, and said that seeing men kissing pisses him off.” He also recited a passage from Deuteronomy.

On March 22, 2016 a transgender woman was sexually violated inside a bathroom at the Stonewall Inn. According to the NYPD, she said that a man came into the bathroom claiming he only needed to wash his hands, but then proceeded to grope and rape her.

On April 8, 2016, an employee of a popular West Hollywood gay bar was attacked as he left the bar walking towards his car on an apparent hate crime. The person who attacked him took his wallet, but never used his credit card.

A few hours after the Pulse massacre in Orlando, on the West Coast the LAPD might have stopped another tragedy before it happened. 20-year-old Wesley Howell, a man from Indiana, was arrested on his way to attend the LA Pride festival, allegedly with an arsenal of weapons. Officials found him in a car with three assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, ammunition and a 5-gallon bucket with chemicals that could be used to create an explosive device.

These attacks should remind us all that we must remain vigilant while there are still people out there who remain so threatened by the sight of two men having a simple kiss that they will resort to violence to stop it.

References

25 Violent Attacks at Gay Bars That Preceded Orlando’s Horrific Nightclub Massacre, Towleroad, 13 June 2016, by Muri Assuncao https://www.towleroad.com/2016/06/gay-bar-attacks/

Gay History: Running A Gay Bar in the 1950s

August 13, 2019Article, Gay Interest, History1950s, 19t0s gay bars, gay bars, homophobia, secret lives, sub-culturestimalderman

Back in 1950s Hollywood, a hole-in-the-wall neighborhood gay bar offered an attractive mix of fizz, friends and fabulousness. But the proprietor ran a tight ship, unlike any gay bar you might drop into today.

She didn’t allow anyone to buy a drink unless she knew them or a regular vouched for them. No kissing was allowed, and no hanky-panky in the restroom either. And she banned all effeminate behavior: absolutely no prancing around or wearing makeup.

As bar owner Helen P. Branson wrote in her 1957 memoir “Gay Bar,” she needed to lay low by keeping her standards high. Authorities from the police to the alcohol board preferred to keep gays from congregating anywhere, so she made sure to not draw attention.

But as her affectionate and perceptive book shows, Branson still managed to provide a safe and cozy place for men who liked men.

“Gay Bar” spent 60 years in obscurity. But then a Milwaukee author heard about it and brought it back to life in the newly published “Gay Bar: The Fabulous, True Story of a Daring Woman and Her Boys in the 1950s.”

In an interview, I asked author Will Fellows to describe what he discovered about gay life in Southern California more than six decades ago. I also rang up a local historian to learn about the history of gay bars in San Diego.

Randy Dotinga: What makes this book so unique?

Will Fellows: Helen Branson had many gay friends in the 1940s and 1950s, and she was an extraordinary straight ally at a time when being a straight ally of homosexuals was unheard of.

It occurred to me that a revival of the book seemed warranted. It struck me as a kind of curious, quaint and somewhat charming period piece of a book. Then I gradually began to realize it was more significant than that. It was a pretty groundbreaking book: by my estimation, the first book by a straight person that depicts the lives of gay people positively.

Q: What surprised you about the book and her story?

A: It was just really remarkable that a woman like Helen would have been courageous enough, or bold enough, to publish this book with her real name attached to it. She was writing this book when Senator McCarthy was still ranting and raving about things, a climate of what we could all call homophobia — great antagonism toward homosexuality and homosexuals, perversion and deviants, and all that sort of stuff.

Here she is working as a small bar proprietor, trying to make enough to live on until she could make it to retirement and Social Security checks. It would have been very reasonable and understandable if she would have elected to use a pseudonym, and she didn’t.

Q: What was her gay bar like?

Gay Bar in Philadelphia – Rittenhouse Square, 1953. John J. Wilcox Jr. LGBT Archives

A: There was nothing fancy, nothing high end about it. It was not a cocktail bar. It was bottled beer, bottled soft drinks and various things to munch on. She really saw it as a kind of public living room.

She had a lot of gay friends she’d developed since her divorce in the 1930s, and she had managed other gay bars for other owners. She didn’t like some of the practices that she had to go along with in managing the other establishments. She was able to do things her own way, in a way that created a hospitable, friendly and inviting atmosphere but still maintained safeguards against problems with law enforcement and hustlers and people who were not necessarily out to treat her gay friends well.

Q: Why did she have such a strong policy against acting too gay?

A: At that time, there some gay men who in their self-presentation, because of feeling so oppressed and belittled and beleaguered and trapped in their lives, they kind of acted out in almost wildly flamboyant ways, carrying on in ways that were more than just authentic expressions of maybe an degree of effeminacy on their parts.

These kinds of individuals — the screamers — were really a problem for these early homosexual rights organizations because they were just bad p.r. Many leaders of homosexual organizations tried to distance themselves from these people, whom they viewed as excessively flamboyant types.

There’s another thing that’s a fascinating dimension of homosexual thought at that time: even early gay rights organizations were very intent on enforcing pretty traditional standards of dress for men and women. In some ways, it’s similar to some of the early black civil rights organizers in the African-American population who felt the way to win acceptance was to be as white as possible in how you lived your life. Many gay men and lesbians had a similar kind of perspective: what we need to do is conform.

Q: It’s amazing how Branson discusses issues that are still big today: Can gays have healthy long-term relationships? (She said yes and proved it.) Does nature or nurture create homosexuality? Were you surprised by how modern the book sounds?

A: When I first read the book, I was kind of blinded by some of the things that rubbed me the wrong way. But I missed how she was insightful and progressive in some ways.

She had a real interest in finding patterns in life. When she realized that the men she found most appealing as friends when she was working as a palm reader in Los Angeles in the 1940s were gay, she became really intrigued by that.

She didn’t put gay men up on a pedestal and suggest they are paragons of virtue. But she points out that gay men are real people who have a fascinating mix of things going on in their lives, with various strengths and weaknesses.

In some ways, she’s very insightful. Some might read what she says and think she’s indulging in stereotypes, but I think some of the things are more like archetypes. There are some patterns that really hold up under modern-day scrutiny.

•••

Did San Diego have gay bars in the 1950s? Written sources suggest that it did indeed. “They were the one place where queer people could meet and come together,” said Frank Nobiletti, who teaches history at San Diego State and serves as president of the Lambda Archives of San Diego.

The bars were typically run by straight people, however, and were often less than fancy. “The drinks were watered down, and the places were not attractive,” Noblietti said. “It wasn’t until Lou Arko opened up the Brass Rail that someone really tried to create a bar that was worthy of its clientele.”

The Brass Rail, which opened its doors in Hillcrest in 1960 (after apparently moving from downtown), is still a gay bar — it’s now known for its ethnically diverse clientele — and sits at the corner of Robinson and Fifth. It’s said to be the oldest gay bar in the city.

Arko, a straight man who opened several gay bars in the city, died in 2009 at the age of 1992.

During the latter decades of his life, gay bars went from rarities in San Diego to common sights that serve a variety of types of gay people.

Unlike the past, kissing is most definitely allowed. And, as always, fabulousness is encouraged.

Reference

But as her affectionate and perceptive book shows, Branson still managed to provide a safe and cozy place for men who liked men.

Randy Dotinga: What makes this book so unique?

Will Fellows: Helen Branson had many gay friends in the 1940s and 1950s, and she was an extraordinary straight ally at a time when being a straight ally of homosexuals was unheard of.

Q: What surprised you about the book and her story?

Q: What was her gay bar like?

Q: Why did she have such a strong policy against acting too gay?

A: When I first read the book, I was kind of blinded by some of the things that rubbed me the wrong way. But I missed how she was insightful and progressive in some ways.

•••

Arko, a straight man who opened several gay bars in the city, died in 2009 at the age of 1992.

During the latter decades of his life, gay bars went from rarities in San Diego to common sights that serve a variety of types of gay people.

Unlike the past, kissing is most definitely allowed. And, as always, fabulousness is encouraged.

Reference

Running A Gay Bar in the 1950s, KPBS, 13 May 2011, by Randy Dotinga https://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/may/13/running-gay-bar-1950s/