Tag Archives: LGBT

Gay History: Haggard’s Law

Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, ,

“The louder and more frequent one’s objections to homosexuality are, the more likely one is to be a homosexual.”

Haggard’s Law is an adage named after Pastor Ted Haggard — despite his not being gay in any way, shape or form. It is used as a purely sarcastic musing that people who strongly object to homosexuality may be likely to engage in homosexual activities, and is based on the numerous public scandals of famous figures who oppose homosexuality and homosexual behavior.

Instances of Haggard’s Law are gleefully spread by the media for an audience that revels in such scandalous behavior.

“Racists never imagine what it’s like to be like the person they hate, homophobes imagine it in graphic detail for hour upon hour.” – Bob Schooley

Haggard’s Law made its first published appearance in an article, written by Dennis DiClaudio of Comedy Central fame and is named after American evangelical preacher Ted Haggard. It was created after and is reference to a scandal involving prostitute and masseur Mike Jones who alleged that Haggard had paid Jones to engage in sex with him for three years and had also purchased and used crystal methamphetamine. Although Haggard denied using methamphetamine or having sex with Mr. Jones, the scandal has caused many evangelicals to view Haggard as extremely hypocritical about his spoken views, as he was known to publicly preach against homosexuality.

Original quote by author Dennis DiClaudio

Haggard’s Law — The likelihood of a person harboring secret desires to engage in sexual and/or romantic activities with members of the same sex is directly proportional to the frequency and volume of said person’s vocalized objections to homosexuality.

The “law” is more generally used to reference hypocrisy in public figures who lead the moral opposition of homosexuality, and then are discovered to have partaken in homosexuality or homosexual behavior.

Is Haggard’s law true?

So far, there are no scientific evidences supporting Haggard’s law which, therefore, should be taken only as an ironic term describing some hypocritical homophobes. In fact, testing scientifically if there is some truth in Haggard’s law is quite hard, because of the following reasons:

• There is no easy way to know with certainty the sexual orientation of a person. Statistical studies which rely on the sexual orientations reported by the subjects are hardly useful, since of course no homophobe would reveal their homosexuality. Methods measuring sexual arousal via biometrics are also problematic, because they measure only a physical response to a stimulus, not sexual orientation, and it is possible that similar physical responses are due to completely different psychological reasons. Probably, the only sure way to know the sexual orientation of a person would be spying on them to see if they actively look for and engage in heterosexual or homosexual activities, but of course that poses both ethical and practical problems.

• The scandals behind the history of Haggard’s law, although numerous, are statistically irrelevant with respect to the whole number of homophobes, who have never been caught in homosexual activities. Indeed, believing in Haggard’s law because of such scandals is an instance of the Toupée fallacy.

Penile plethysmography

In a 1996 study, 64 men were assessed by the “homophobia index” and split into two groups: “homophobic” and “non-homophobic.” Then, their arousal by homosexual and heterosexual images were measured via penile plethysmography, a rubber gauge used to measure erectile responses. In the “non-homophobic” group, 66% showed no arousal yet in the “homophobic” group only 20% managed to restrain themselves from getting aroused – and significantly underestimated their own arousal.

However, it should be noted that what was measured as arousal may have been the result of the uncomfortable feelings the homophobic group were feeling on seeing homosexual imagery. As pointed out by the authors of the study: “It is possible that viewing homosexual stimuli causes negative emotions such as anxiety in homophobic men but not in nonhomophobic men. Because anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection, this theory would predict increases in erection in homophobic men. Furthermore, it would indicate that a response to homosexual stimuli is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se.” Hence, this confounding factor may explain the results more consistently.

Implicit measures

Studies that rely on implicit measures both to gauge a subject’s same-sex attractions as well as their level of homophobia do give credence to the suspicion that there is something to Haggard’s law.

Statistics

By a 2011 survey, 33% of the USA population believes that “homosexuality is a way of life that should not be accepted by society”. On the other hand, another 2011 report estimates that about 8.2% of Americans have engaged in same-sex sexual behaviour.

On the basis of said polls, no more than 24.8% of those 33% of American homophobes — i.e. one in four active gay bashers — could be a closeted homosexual. This means that a literal interpretation of Haggard’s Law (e.g. ‘homophobe perfectly implies homosexual’) fails in at least 75.2% of cases.

However, this conclusion is flawed, as the 8.2% figure only considers those who have admitted to same-sex sexual activity.

Ethical calculus

It’s entirely possible to be raised to believe that homosexuality is evil yet still turn out to be homosexual. There are many ways for the human mind to rationalize this away, where everyone else is a “sinner” but you are unique, or some other cognitive dissonance. But one way to justify “sinning” is to remove more “sin” than you cause, sort of like how every third house fire fighters save they get to light one up for funzies. So if a politician or preacher manages to convince other people to avoid or give up homosexuality, then surely they have made the world “less sinful” and are thus still “good”, right?

Bisexuality?

Haggard’s Law could sometimes be a bit of a misnomer as the newly-outed may not only be attracted to their own sex, but “swing both ways.” Haggard himself insists that he can still “exclusively have sex with my wife and be permanently satisfied.”

Some instances of Haggard’s Law

• Ken Adkins, a notoriously anti-homosexual pastor who made the news for attacking the victims of the Orlando shooting, was arrested in August 2016 for not merely being gay, but having molested a young boy who was a member of his church. Ironically, one of his chosen lines of attack seems to have been that all gay and trans people were paedophiles, as he was banned by court order from using the phrase “child molester” without proof after numerous attacks on a local school board member via social media.

• Gary Aldridge, pastor at Thorington Road Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, was found dead of autoerotic asphyxiation while wearing two complete rubber wetsuits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask, reportedly with one dildo in the anus covered with a condom. You read that correctly.

• Bob Allen, anti-gay Florida politician.

• Ernest Angley, internationally known televangelist, sued for sexual abuse by a former pastor, and caught on tape admitting to a homosexual encounter.

• Roy Ashburn, Californian anti-gay politician caught on a DUI after picking a man up at a gay bar.

• Larry Craig was a Republican Senator from Council, Idaho who is not gay and never has been gay. He is best known for his hardcore theocratic bent and for pleading guilty to “lewd conduct” in an airport restroom. He is totally not gay.

• Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines and homophobe, says he “cured himself” of homosexuality.

Official photo of Mark Foley. “What, me? That kid? Naw, never!

• Mark Foley is a former United States Representative (R-FL). He is famous for validating Haggard’s Law after he sent sexually explicit emails to young male congressional workers. Rep. Foley resigned from Congress when his particular scandal broke. The irony was that Foley was on House committees to protect children from exploitation and fought against child pornography, as well as promoting causes like sex offender registration and requiring FBI fingerprint/background checks for adult volunteers and employees of child groups like Boy Scouts of America. While being against gay marriage and gay adoption, he had previously donated to LGBT causes and was endorsed by the Log Cabin Republicans. He has since come “out” and is now selling real estate in Palm Beach.

• Wes Goodman, Republican state legislator for Ohio, resigned after being caught having sex with a man in his office.

• Marc Goodwin, sent to prison for murdering a gay man in a homophobic attack, later became one of the first two men to receive a gay marriage in a British prison.

• Ted Haggard, duh

• Dennis Hastert, possibly, although the target of his affections appear to have been students on his high school wrestling team.

• Eddie Long was the senior clergyman at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a 25,000 member megachurch in Lithonia, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. In what has become an almost timelessly classic Christian story line, in September 2010 the homophobic minister was accused of coercing young men into sexual activity. Several plaintiffs brought suit against the heretofore triumphant exponent of the prosperity gospel. Describing Long as a ‘monster’ in an interview with WAGA-TV in Atlanta, one of Long’s victims alleged that he offered “holy scripture to justify and support the sexual activity.”

• Pastor Matt Makela, a married father of five, reportedly routinely argued gay people should sublimate their same-sex desires—while he was simultaneously chatting up guys on Grindr.

• Possibly Omar Mateen, the 2016 Orlando nightclub gunman. Multiple media outlets have reported that he had a gay dating app on his phone, and was a regular patron of the gay nightclub he later attacked.

• Jonathan Merritt, son of James Merritt, former leader of the Southern Baptist Convention.

• Matt Moore, who claimed to be ex-gay thanks to religion, was found using gay hook up services.

• Matthew Dennis “Denny” Patterson, pastor of Nolensville Road Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee, was arrested in 2018 for molesting multiple children, mostly boys, over the course of his 20 year ministry.

• Possibly Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, according to former church member Lauren Drain.

• Timothy Lee Reddin, anti-gay pastor from Turner Street Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, was arrested in August 2018 for soliciting what he thought was a 14-year-old boy for sex online.

• George Rekers is a Southern Baptist minister and typical religious right activist who has written numerous books about the evils of homosexuality. Rekers has long been affiliated with James Dobson and the Family Research Council, as well as appearing as an “expert” witness in several court cases espousing how homosexuals aren’t fit to raise children, and so should be prohibited from adoption. He also testified on behalf of the Boy Scouts of America in support of their gay ban. When a judge was suspicious of Rekers’ testimony, describing it as “extremely suspect” and said that Rekers “was there primarily to promote his own personal ideology”, Rekers went on a tantrum describing the trial as “utterly corrupt”. In May of 2010, he was spotted returning to Miami International Airport with a young Hispanic gentleman hired “to carry his bags”. Like all baggage assistants, the young man had been hired from a website entitled “Rentboy.com”. Much hilarity ensued, of course, with Rekers even admitting he had hired the boy from the escort website—while still insisting he had only hired him for “baggage handling”. At UCLA in the early 1970s, Rekers ran “The Sissy Boy Experiment”, a reparative therapy program. The program came under intense media scrutiny following the suicide of Kirk Murphy, whose parents enrolled him in the program when he was five years old. Murphy suffered physical abuse as part of the plan to cure him of his feminine behavior. Murphy’s family blames the program for his depression and eventual suicide.

• Bill Sanderson, a family values conservative Christian Republican lawmaker from Kenton, Tennessee, resigned his seat on the same day it was revealed that he was allegedly using the online dating service Grindr to hook up with gay men.

• Gaylard Williams, (possibly) former) pastor of Praise Cathedral Church of God in Seymour, Indiana, arrested for battery after soliciting gay sex at a park. After he was arrested, police discovered a gay porn DVD in his vehicle.

In fiction

The 1999 film American Beauty

Reference

Gay History: They Built It. No One Came.

Article, biography, Gay Interest, General Interest, , , , , ,

They built a commune but nobody came

“It was a dream, and it was a good dream,” Zephram said. “Though it broke our spirits that we had no one to share it with. Now, it doesn’t matter that we didn’t have brothers. It doesn’t matter if the place survives. We carry it with us, in the moment. The work we did. What we felt.”

PITMAN, Pa. — They slept in the barn their first winter, on a straw mattress with antique linen sheets and a feather tick. There was no electricity, heat or plumbing, so they made their own candles, used a chamber pot and drew water from a spring.

They were born Michael Colby and Donald Graves, but once there, on 63 acres in the Mahantongo Valley, a bowl of land in central Pennsylvania, they changed their names to Christian and Johannes Zinzendorf and called themselves the Harmonists, inspired by a splinter group of 18th-century Moravian brothers who believed in the spiritual values of an agrarian life.

Their ideals were lofty but simple: They would live off the land, farming with Colonial-era tools, along with a band of like-minded men dressed in homespun robes wielding scythes and pickaxes. They would sleep in atmospheric log cabins and other 18th-century structures that they had rescued from the area and that they began to reconstruct, painstakingly, brick by crumbling brick and log by log.

But what if you built a commune, and no one came?

It turns out it’s not so easy to cook up a utopia from scratch. There are 1,775 so-called intentional communities listed in the Fellowship for Intentional Community’s United States directory: eco-villages, pagan co-ops, faith-based retreats and everything in between. But how do you advertise, organize and thrive? “Don’t ask us,” Johannes said. “We failed that class.”

Inspired by a splinter group of 18th-century Moravian brothers who believed in the spiritual values of an agrarian life, Johannes Zinzendorf, 64, left, and Zephram de Colebi, 65, arrived in Mahantongo Valley, a bowl of land in central Pennsylvania, in the late 1980s. Back then, they went by Michael Colby and Donald Graves. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

It was a raw, bright afternoon in April. Christian and Johannes, or to be accurate (stay with me here) Zephram and Johannes (Christian changed his name again when he realized the hoped-for brotherhood was never going to materialize, and his new last name is de Colebi), are now 65 and 64. And they have reconfigured their life here for the third time in three decades.

The 25 buildings that dot the landscape are mostly dormant, save for Zephram’s house and Johannes’s house. The two have been living separately, so to speak, for a decade, individual housing being an unlooked-for boon when their commune went to pieces and they ceased to be a couple.

They’ve sold most of their antique tools, save for a handful, which they’ve added to the collection of furniture, housewares, paintings, textiles and other Pennsylvania Dutch relics they’ve amassed over the years. The two have turned the whole lot — thousands of artifacts — into a museum, filling the cavernous barn where they spent their first winter with exhibits.

They’ve written a memoir, tragicomic, of course, and are looking for a publisher.

Their ideals were lofty but simple: They would live off the land, farming with Colonial-era tools, along with a band of like-minded men dressed in homespun robes wielding scythes and pickaxes, sleeping in atmospheric log cabins and other 18th-century structures that they had rescued from the area and that they began to reconstruct. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

It’s their second book. “The Big Book of Flax,” the story of linen processing (in history, legend and song!), came out in 2011 from Schiffer Publishing, a Pennsylvania house whose publishing motto is “Find your niche and scratch it!”

Johannes Zinzendorf feeding cattle in their early days on the farm.

Johannes and Zephram met in the 1970s at a gay-consciousness-raising group in Salt Lake City, where both were attending college. They were each dabbling in various spiritual practices: Zephram was circling around the Wiccans, attracted by their earth-centered rituals, and Johannes was sampling Hinduism.

When you’re gay, Zephram pointed out, it is not always the case that traditional religions will welcome you. So alternatives beckon.

Salt Lake City was changing, they said; they could see their future mapped out there, and it was not an appealing one. “Successful urban gays, buying property, having cultural weekends in San Francisco,” Johannes said. “Save us.”

Inspired in part by the Mormons, they began to turn over the idea of starting an intentional community in a rural setting. But how to organize? What would be the guiding principle?

They toyed with creating a gay Scottish clan (Johannes is from Texas and Zephram from Maine, and both have Scottish forebears) or starting their own version of the Radical Faeries, a vaguely pagan, spiritually based queer counterculture movement from the mid-1970s.

They moved to Bethlehem, Pa., that hotbed of Moravian culture (crafts and agriculture, mostly), where Zephram worked as a teacher and Johannes as a reporter. There they learned of a curious local offshoot of a brotherhood started in Europe in the 18th century.

As Johannes, left, and Zephram learned, it’s not so easy to cook up a utopia from scratch. After a series of success and failures, and an unrealized brotherhood, they  have rebranded themselves as curators of the Mahantongo Heritage Center, open to the public from May through October. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

Its leader was the charismatic son of a patron of the Moravian Church, who believed in a spiritual communion through sex and agricultural practice. It was not a wildly popular concept 300 years ago, and contemporary rural Pennsylvania was perhaps not the best place to resurrect its tenets, even with the sex part edited out.

Also, as Johannes pointed out: “Neither one of us is very charismatic. That was a problem.”

But they were young and eager. They bought 63 acres for $63,000 in Pitman, a tiny community in Eldred Township, and they began to rescue period cabins and structures in the area and move them to the site.

Filled with Colonial zeal, they bought an antique letterpress and began printing brochures to advertise their concept. Dressed in their homespun linen garments, made from flax they had planted and sewn themselves, they set up tables at gay-pride festivals, living-history farms and farming museums.

“People would look at us and say, ‘Oh, so you’re gay Amish?’ ” Johannes said.

They did get a few takers: a man who was interested in the culture of the early German settlers, but preferred to observe its customs rather than pitch in; a guy they called “the Primitive man,” who set up a lean-to on the property and wore loincloths in the summer (he stayed the longest but turned out to be mentally ill).

Then there was the man who brought his accordion and offered to play while they worked. Indeed, the farming chores seemed to mystify most of their would-be brothers.

“Everyone just wanted to watch us work, and that got old real fast,” Johannes said.

“We weren’t good at being able to explain the spiritual part, either. People would say: ‘Let’s write down your philosophy. Let’s create some commandments.’ But that didn’t come naturally. When we tried to explain our beliefs — spirits living in springs, the earth as mother — people just thought we were weird.”

They filled the cavernous barn where they spent their first winter with exhibits of furniture, housewares, paintings, textiles and other Pennsylvania Dutch relics they’ve amassed over the years. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

Farming the Colonial way requires lots of hands. While Zephram worked full time as a teacher in a neighboring town, which paid their mortgage and costs, Johannes was alone on the farm, having been fired from his reporting job.

“I wasn’t able to do two full-time jobs at once,” Johannes said. “I remember the first time I cut hay, seven acres that had been planted by the previous owner. I’m there with my scythe, and I started cutting, and I quickly realized that what made the brotherhood we were emulating successful is that they had 88 men, and we were only two.”

Yet the work was holy to him, he said. “I loved getting out there.”

They had cattle, sheep and goats; turkeys, geese, ducks and chickens; and cats and dogs. A pair of oxen, Star and Bright, took over the plowing duties, with a handmade plow the local auto mechanic would fix when the oxen grew balky and mangled its metal parts.

They acquired much of their livestock before building the appropriate fencing, which meant that the animals would wander off, enraging the neighbors. “They were so incredibly tame, and we loved them,” Johannes said. “We had Edward Hicks and ‘The Peaceable Kingdom’ in our mind. But for ruminants, you know, the grass is always greener.”

Their older neighbors were impressed by their work ethic and shared their folklore and practices. “These Dutch couples in their 80s had lived the lifestyle we were living,” Johannes said. “They didn’t care who we were, they just saw how hard we worked. They taught us how to broadcast seed, how to tie the corn shocks to dry the corn.” And how to sharpen their scythes on the stone walls that Zephram had built.

Early on, a woman appeared with a gift, a heavy heirloom quilt stitched with pieces of her husband’s uniform from World War II. “This kept my husband and I alive one winter,” she told them.

This building is their weaving and spinning studio. The men are known locally as the Flax Brothers, for their expertise in growing and processing flax into linen. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

There were moments of incredible joy. The day they completed the reconstruction of what they called the community house, an 18th-century log cabin with a marvelous peaked roof that they rescued from an industrial park and that took 10 years to remake. Eating outside with the animals. (“They were like our family,” Johannes said. “But they did eat all the flowers.”)

But there was menace, too. This rural township was not overwhelmingly welcoming to two young gay men and their dreams to populate a fledgling farm. They always knew when the bars closed. They would hear engines revving, and the shouts would begin: “We’re going to kill you.” “Go home.”

Johannes took to sleeping in his truck, hoping to chase the perpetrators and write down their license-plate numbers. One night, a cow was shot.

Eventually, self-sufficiency and exhaustion trumped the Colonial lifestyle. They put in a satellite phone, dug a well.

Harvesting by hand gave way at first to Star and Bright’s efforts, and then they sold the team to buy a tractor. They bought a generator and power tools, including a jigsaw. “That was fun — we put gingerbread trim on everything,” Johannes said.

They tried wind power, then solar. “You might get 40 minutes a day, and then it would crash,” he said. “Lightning storms would hit and blow up the transformer.” Four years ago, they hooked up to the power grid.

Zephram explaining the differences between various spinning wheels. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

In the wake of the unrealized brotherhood, they tried artists’ retreats, residencies and other gatherings. Worn out, they decided their empty commune would be a hermitage. “We would be hermits, each in his hermit house,” Johannes said.

Now, they raise only poultry, because the birds are easier to take care of. They turned the bunkhouse into a library; along with a collection of local religious texts, there is a prodigious array of “Star Trek” paperbacks. (In anticipation, they christened it the Brokeback Bunkhouse, and decorated its crossbeams with saddles.)

Zephram retired from his teaching job and began painting. “We try to live in the spirit,” Johannes said. Some days are easier than others.

Then one day in early 2012, their turkeys vanished. They found them beaten to death, their body parts strewn over a field and a bloody crutch tossed nearby.

It had been years since Zephram and Johannes had been threatened. The viciousness of the attack stunned them. Though they say they know the assailant, no one was charged with the crime. Yet something shifted after that day.

“People came up to us and apologized,” Johannes said. “It traumatized not just us, but the town.”

Jim Hepler, a sixth-generation farmer and Pitman native, called it a turning point. “When they arrived, people said, ‘Oh, no, we’ve got a gay community beginning here in the valley, and it’s going to be awful,’ ” he said. “That wasn’t my feeling, but there was tension. Here we are 30 years later, and it’s still two men minding their own business.”

Pieces from Zephram’s collection of artifacts. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

The turkey beating, he said, “was an awful thing.”

“It was senseless, and it was bad,” he continued. “I think the community came together then in support of them.”

Johannes and Zephram have rebranded themselves, too, as curators of the Mahantongo Heritage Center (that’s the barn with its exhibits), open to the public from May through October.

Zephram paints vibrant animistic canvases in his studio; Johannes frets about the maintenance on their copious collection of structures. In a tour of the property accompanied by their enormous bellowing turkeys (they have replenished the flock), he pointed out the peeling paint on the window trim of his hillside house.

Up on a ridge, a few art installations (a grain silo embellished with fins to look like a spaceship, and a cow-size dog made from rusty pipes) give the place a goofy DiaBeacon feel.

“It was a dream, and it was a good dream,” Zephram said. “Though it broke our spirits that we had no one to share it with. Now, it doesn’t matter that we didn’t have brothers. It doesn’t matter if the place survives. We carry it with us, in the moment. The work we did. What we felt. Star and Bright and all the animals.

“It’s not a lonely place. It’s just jumbled.”

The 25 buildings that dot the landscape are mostly dormant, save for Zephram’s house and Johannes’s house. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times
When Johannes and Zephram first began spreading the word about their concept, they set up tables at gay-pride festivals, living-history farms and farming museums. “People would look at us and say, ‘Oh, so you’re gay Amish?’” Johannes said. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times
One of Zephram’s vibrant, animistic paintings. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times
Over the course of their years living in Mahantongo Valley, self-sufficiency and exhaustion trumped the Colonial lifestyle. They put in a satellite phone, dug a well. They bought a generator, and power tools, including a jigsaw. They tried wind power, then solar. Four years ago, they hooked up to the power grid. But they still use this wood stove. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times
Now, they raise only poultry, because the birds are easier to take care of. They turned the bunkhouse into a library; along with a collection of local religious texts, there is a prodigious array of “Star Trek” paperbacks. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times
Johannes in his home. Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

Reference

Gay History: The Only Major Player To Openly Admit He Was Gay During His Career Also May Have “Invented” The High-Five!

Article, biography, Gay Interest, General Interest, , , , , ,

“They can’t say that a gay man can’t play in the Majors, because I’m a gay man and I made it.”- Glenn Burke

Major League Baseball has been going strong now for well over a century. Many thousands of players have taken the field since the beginning of organized professional baseball, but only one, Glenn Burke, ever “came out of the closet” during his playing career, letting managers, teammates, and owners know he was gay.  Burke also is noted as being the man who popularized, and possibly invented, the high-five.

Burke was born in 1952 in Oakland, California.  By the age of 18, he was voted Northern California’s high school “basketball player of the year”.  A highly gifted athlete, Glenn could reputedly dunk a basketball with either hand- quite a feat considering he was just over six feet tall.  But he soon turned all his attention to baseball.

An outfielder, he was drafted by the L.A. Dodgers and, as so often happens with young “toolsy” prospects when scouts are trying to hype them, he was quickly compared to one of the greats of all time- touted as “the next Willie Mays”.

Burke made his MLB debut on April 9, 1976.  From the word go, Burke made no secret of the fact that he was gay, freely talking about it with teammates and management.  As a result of this, during his time with the Dodgers, then General Manager Al Campanis offered to treat Burke to a lavish honeymoon (actually offering him $75,000), if Burke would just agree to get married- no doubt worried that the fact that Burke was gay would be leaked or discovered by the media at some point with how open Burke was about it.  Burke responded to this marriage request by saying, “I guess you mean to a woman?”  He refused the offer.

Despite management apparently being uncomfortable about Burke’s sexual preferences, players didn’t seem to feel the same way.  Burke was often described in his Dodger days as “the life of the clubhouse”.

While things were great with his teammates, problems arose with manager Tommy Lasorda.  The issue started when Burke befriended Lasorda’s gay son, Tommy “Spunky” Lasorda Jr.  According to Burke’s sister, Burke and Spunky were just very close friends, not intimate.  In Burke’s 1995 autobiography, Out At Home,  he purposefully didn’t go into details about the extent of his relationship with Lasorda’s son, saying that it was “my business”.

Regardless, Lasorda Sr. and Burke’s relationship quickly soured. Lasorda Sr. was in denial that his son, Spunky, was gay, at least publicly, despite the fact that Lasorda Jr. made no great secret of the fact. (Sadly, Spunky died in 1991 at the age of 33 from pneumonia and was thought to be suffering from AIDS at the time).

Whatever he actually believed, Lasorda Sr. was not happy at all about Burke and his son being friends.  Given Lasorda Sr.’s position on the subject, it’s probably for the best that they abandoned a prank Spunky and Burke were going to play on Lasorda Sr. The two dressed up in drag and showed up at Lasorda Sr.’s house for dinner.  When they got to the door, Burke said they chickened out and just went home without knocking.

Even without showing up to dinner in drag, Lasorda Sr.’s liking for Burke completely soured and Burke’s clubhouse antics, which Lasorda used to love for keeping the team loose, now were no longer appreciated by the skipper resulting in a major chewing out of Burke after one particular dugout incident.  Burke’s sister, Lutha Davis, later said,

Glenn had such an abundance of respect and love for Tommy Lasorda.  When things went bad at the end, it was almost like a father turning his back on his son.

This all came to a head in 1978, when the Dodgers suddenly traded Burke away to the Oakland Athletics for Billy North. One L.A. sportswriter stated after the fact that “[the trade] sucked the life out of the Dodger’s clubhouse.”  He even claimed to have seen a couple of the players crying when they heard Burke was traded.

When Burke arrived in Oakland, his welcome was not good. A’s manager Billy Martin supposedly introduced him as a “faggot” in front of his teammates and reportedly referred to him that way several times.  Further, there were rumors that many of his new teammates would not take showers or undress if Burke was around.

With this added strain, Burke’s play on the field suffered greatly and was later compounded by a knee injury. He went down to the Minor Leagues once his knee healed up, playing in 25 games there, but then decided to call it quits.  “It’s the first thing in my life I ever backed down from,” Burke said.  “Prejudice just won out.”

In his 4-season career (1976-1979), Burke, who showed some promise when he first came up and was a very hyped prospect, ended up hitting just .237 in 523 at-bats, including 38 RBI’s, 2 home runs and 35 stolen bases.

Besides being the first MLB player to come out during his playing career, at least with teammates and management, Glenn Burke is also often credited with being the guy who invented the high-five. To be clear, “low-fives” had been around for several decades at this point, particularly within the African American community, and there are a few people who claim to have “invented” the high-five.  Perhaps they really did perform a high-five first at some point- it being not exactly a complicated extension of the already popular low-five.  The reason Burke is so often given credit is there is substantial documented evidence of his first high-five, unlike so many other claimants. Further, after he started doing this, it caught on with the Dodgers and later throughout baseball and the world.  So even if he was not really the first person to have the bright idea to convert the low-five to a high-five (which seems likely), he at least was integral in popularizing the switch.

This “first” momentous high-five happened in 1977 when Burke ran onto the field to congratulate his Dodger teammate Dusty Baker who’d just hit his 30th home run.  Rather than do a low-five, Burke raised his hand over his head as Baker jogged home from third base.  Baker got what Burke was going for and slapped Burke’s hand, thus “inventing” the high-five.  After retiring from baseball, Burke used the high five as a symbol for gay pride, even at the same time the Dodgers were selling trademarked “high-five” symbol t-shirts due to the tradition of high-fiving teammates started by Burke.

As tragic as Glenn Burke’s baseball career may seem, it was a picnic compared to his post-baseball life.  At first things went well for him.  He became a star shortstop in his local gay softball league and led his club to the Gay Softball World Series.  He said of this:

I was making money playing ball and not having any fun. Now I’m not making money, but I’m having fun.

He also competed in the Gay Games in 1982 and 1986 in basketball and a few running events.  He even took home medals in the 100 and 200 meter sprints in 1982.  He also initially had aspirations of trying to pick back up his once promising basketball career and perhaps become the first openly gay NBA player, with that distinction, of course, now going to Jason Collins.

One of Burke’s gay friends, Jack McGowan, said of Burke at this time,

He was a hero to us. He was athletic, clean cut, masculine. He was everything that we wanted to prove to the world that we could be.

However, things soon took a turn for the worse.  For reasons known only to him, Burke started doing drugs… a lot of them.  Things got even worse when, in 1987, his leg and foot were crushed when he was hit by a car in San Francisco.  Struggling to find work and now thoroughly addicted to cocaine, he found himself on the streets.  During this period, he was also arrested for drug possession and grand theft.  To add a healthy dose of lemon juice to his cuts, in 1993, he tested positive for HIV.  Just two years later, now living with his sister in Oakland, Burke passed away from complications due to AIDS on May 30, 1995 at the age of just 42.

Bonus fact

Since Burke, one other Major League Baseball player has announced to the world that he is gay, though he waited to tell anyone until after his career was finished.  The man is Billy Beane… No, not the current Money Ball GM of the Oakland Athletics.  William Daro “Billy” Beane who played for the Tigers, Dodgers, Padres from 1987 to 1995, and also played in Japan one year during that span.  In 1999, four years after retiring, Beane announced to the world that he is gay, and later wrote a book, Going the Other Way: Lessons from a Life in and out of Major League Baseball.

Reference

Gay History: The Queer Nation Manifesto

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

Text of a manifesto originally passed out by people marching with the ACT UP contingent in the New York Gay Pride Day parade, 1990.

How can I tell you. How can I convince you, brother; sister that your life is in danger. That everyday you wake up alive, relatively happy, and a functioning human being, you are committing a rebellious act. You as an alive and functioning queer are a revolutionary. There is nothing on this planet that validates, protects or encourages your existence. It is a miracle you are standing here reading these words. You should by all rights be dead.

 Don’t be fooled, straight people own the world and the only reason you have been spared is you’re smart, lucky, or a fighter. Straight people have a privilege that allows them to do whatever they please and f— without fear. But not only do they live a life free of fear; they flaunt their freedom in my face. Their images are on my TV, in the magazine I bought, in the restaurant I want to eat in, and on the street where I live. I want there to be a moratorium on straight marriage, on babies, on public displays of affection among the opposite sex and media images that promote heterosexuality. Until I can enjoy the same freedom of movement and sexuality, as straights, their privilege must stop and it must be given over to me and my queer sisters and brothers.

 Straight people will not do this voluntarily and so they must be forced into it. Straights must be frightened into it. Terrorized into it. Fear is the most powerful motivator. No one will give us what we deserve. Rights are not given they are taken, by force if necessary.

 It is easier to fight when you know who your enemy is. Straight people are you enemy. They are your enemy when they don’t acknowledge your invisibility and continue to live in and contribute to a culture that kills you.

 Every day one of us is taken by the enemy. Whether it is an AIDS death due to homophobic government inaction or a lesbian bashing in an all-night diner (in a supposedly lesbian neighborhood), we are being systematically picked off and we will continue to be wiped out unless we realize that if they take one of us they must take all of us.

An Army of Lovers Cannot Lose

Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public, to just be who we are. It means everyday fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites and our own self-hatred. (We have been carefully taught to hate ourselves.) And now of course it means fighting a virus as well, and all those homo-haters who are using AIDS to wipe us off the face of the earth.

 Being queer means leading a different sort of life. It’s not about the mainstream, profit-margins, patriotism, patriarchy or being assimilated. It’s not about executive directors, privilege and elitism. It’s about being on the margins, defining ourselves; it’s about gender-f— and secrets, what’s beneath the belt and deep inside the heart; it’s about the night. Being queer is “grass roots” because we know that everyone of us, every body, every c—, every heart and a– and d— is a world of pleasure waiting to be explored. Everyone of us is a world of infinite possibility.

 We are an army because we have to be. We are an army because we are so powerful. (We have so much to fight for; we are the most precious of endangered species.) And we are an army of lovers because it is we who know what love is. Desire and lust, too. We invented them. We come out of the closet, face the rejection of society, face firing squads, just to love each other! Every time we f—, we win.

 We must fight for ourselves (no else is going to do it) and if in that process we bring greater freedom to the world at large then great. (We’ve given so much to that world: democracy, all the arts, the concepts of love, philosophy and the soul, to name just a few of the gifts from our ancient Greek Dykes, Fags.) Let’s make every space a Lesbian and Gay space. Every street a part of our sexual geography. A city of yearning and then total satisfaction. A city and a country where we can be safe and free and more. We must look at our lives and see what’s best in them, see what is queer and what is straight and let that straight chaff fall away! Remember there is so, so little time. And I want to be a lover of each and every one of you. Next year, we march naked.

I’m Angry

The strong sisters told the brothers that there were two important things to remember about the coming revolutions. The first is that we will get our a–es kicked. The second is that we will win.

 I’m angry. I’m angry for being condemned to death by strangers saying, “You deserve to die” and “AIDS is the cure.” Fury erupts when a Republican woman wearing thousands of dollars of garments and jewelry minces by the police lines shaking her head, chuckling and wagging her finger at us like we are recalcitrant children making absurd demands and throwing a temper tantrum when they aren’t met. Angry while Joseph agonizes over $8,000 a year for AZT which might keep him alive a little longer and which does make him sicker than the disease he is diagnosed with. Angry as I listen to a man tell me that after changing his will five times he’s running out of people to leave things to. All of his best friends are dead. Angry when I stand in a sea of quilt panels, or go to a candlelight march or attend yet another memorial service. I will not march silently with a f—ing candle and I want to take that goddamned quilt and wrap myself in it and furiously rent it and my hair and curse every god religion ever created. I refuse to accept a creation that cuts people down in the third decade of their life. It is cruel and vile and meaningless and everything I have in me rails against the absurdity and I raise my face to the clouds and a ragged laugh that sounds more demonic than joyous erupts from my throat and tears stream down my face and if this disease doesn’t kill me, I may just die of frustration. My feet pound the streets and Peter’s hands are chained to a pharmaceutical company’s reception desk while the receptionist looks on in horror and Eric’s body lies rotting in a Brooklyn cemetery and I’ll never hear his flute resounding off the walls of the meeting house again. And I see the old people in Tompkins Square Park huddled in their long wool coats in June to keep out the cold they perceive is there and to cling to whatever little life has left to offer them, and I think, ah, they understand. And I’m reminded of the people who strip and stand before a mirror each night before they go to bed and search their bodies for any mark that might not have been there yesterday. A mark that this scourge has visited them. And I’m angry when the newspapers call us “victims” and sound alarms that “it” might soon spread to the “general population.” And I want to scream “Who the f— am I?” And I want to scream at New York Hospital with its yellow plastic bags marked “isolation linen,” “ropa infecciosa” and its orderlies in latex gloves and surgical masks skirt the bed as if its occupant will suddenly leap out and douse them with blood and semen giving them too the plague. And I’m angry at straight people who sit smugly wrapped in their self-protective coat of monogamy and heterosexuality confident that this disease has nothing to do with them because it only happens to “them.” And the teenage boys who upon spotting my “Silence = Death” button begin chanting “Faggots gonna die” and I wonder, who taught them this? Enveloped in fury and fear, I remain silent while my button mocks me every step of the way. And the anger I feel when a television program on the quilt gives profiles of the dead and the list begins with a baby, a teenage girl who got a blood transfusion, an elderly Baptist minister and his wife and when they finally show a gay man, he’s described as someone who knowingly infected teenage male prostitutes with the virus. What else can you expect from a faggot? I’m angry.

[Untitled]

Since time began, the world has been inspired by the work of queer artists. In exchange, there has been suffering, there has been pain, there has been violence. Throughout history, society has struck a bargain with its queer citizens: they must pursue creative careers, if they do so discreetly. Through the arts queers are productive, lucrative, entertaining and even uplifting. These are the clear-cut and useful by-products of what is otherwise considered anti-social behavior. In cultured circles, queers may quietly coexist with an otherwise disapproving power elite.

 At the forefront of the most recent campaign to bash queer artists is Jesse Helms, arbiter of all that is decent, moral, christian and amerikan. For Helms, queer art is quite simply a threat to the world. In his imaginings, heterosexual culture is too fragile to bear up to the admission of human or sexual diversity. Quite simply, the structure of power in the Judeo-Christian world has made procreation its cornerstone. Families having children assures consumers for the nation’s products and a work force to produce them, as well as a built-in family system to care for its ill, reducing the expense of public healthcare systems. All non-procreative behavior is considered a threat, from homosexuality to birth control to abortion as an option. It is not enough, according to the religious right, to consistently advertise procreation and heterosexuality … it is also necessary to destroy any alternatives. It is not art Helms is after … It is our lives! Art is the last safe place for lesbians and gay men to thrive. Helms knows this, and has developed a program to purge queers from the one arena they have been permitted to contribute to our shared culture.

 Helms is advocating a world free from diversity or dissent. It is easy to imagine why that might feel more comfortable to those in charge of such a world. It is also easy to envision an amerikan landscape flattened by such power. Helms should just ask for what he is hinting at: State sponsored art, art of totalitarianism, art that speaks only in christian terms, art which supports the goals of those in power, art that matches the sofas in the Oval Office. Ask for what you want, Jesse, so that men and women of conscience can mobilize against it, as we do against the human rights violations of other countries, and fight to free our own country’s dissidents.

If You’re Queer, Shout It!

Queers are under siege.

 Queers are being attacked on all fronts and I’m afraid it’s ok with us.

In 1969, Queers, were attacked. It wasn’t ok. Queers fought back, took the streets.

Shouted

In 1990, there were 50 “Queer Bashings” in the month of May alone. Violent attacks. 3,720 men, women and children died of AIDS in the same month, caused by a more violent attack – government inaction, rooted in society’s growing homophobia. This is institutionalized homophobia, perhaps more dangerous to the existence of queers because the attackers are faceless. We allow these attacks by our own continued lack of action against them. AIDS has affected the straight world and now they’re blaming us for AIDS and using it as a way to justify their violence against us. They don’t want us anymore. They will beat us, rape us and kill us before they will continue to live with us. What will it take for This not to be ok? Feel some rage. If rage doesn’t empower you, try fear. If that doesn’t work try panic.

Shout It! 

Be proud. Do whatever you need to do to tear yourself away from your customary state of acceptance. Be free. Shout.

 In 1969, Queers fought back. In 1990, Queers say ok.

Next year, will we be here?

[Untitled]

I hate Jesse Helms. I hate Jesse Helms so much I’d rejoice if he dropped down dead. If someone killed him I’d consider it his own fault.

 I hate Ronald Reagan, too, because he mass-murdered my people for eight years. But to be honest, I hate him even more for eulogizing Ryan White without first admitting his guilt, without begging forgiveness for Ryan’s death and for the deaths of tens of thousands of other PWA’s – most of them queer. I hate him for making a mockery of our grief.

 I hate the f—ing Pope, and I hate John f—ing Cardinal O’Connor, and I hate the whole f—ing Catholic Church. The same goes for the Military, and especially for Amerika’s Law Enforcement Officials – the cops – state sanctioned sadists who brutalize street transvestites, prostitutes and queer prisoners. I also hate the medical and mental health establishments, particularly the psychiatrist who convinced me not to have sex with men for three years until we (meaning he) could make me bisexual rather than queer. I also hate the education profession, for its share in driving thousands of queer teens to suicide every year. I hate the “respectable” art world; and the entertainment industry, and the mainstream media, especially The New York Times. In fact, I hate every sector of the straight establishment in this country – the worst of whom actively want all queers dead, the best of whom never stick their necks out to keep us alive.

 I hate straight people who think they have anything intelligent to say about “outing.” I hate straight people who think stories about themselves are “universal” but stories about us are only about homosexuality. I hate straight recording artists who make their careers off of queer people, then attack us, then act hurt when we get angry and then deny having wronged us rather than apologize for it. I hate straight people who say, “I don’t see why you feel the need to wear those buttons and t-shirts. I don’t go around tell the whole world I’m straight.”

 I hate that in twelve years of public education I was never taught about queer people. I hate that I grew up thinking I was the only queer in the world, and I hate even more that most queer kids still grow up the same way. I hate that I was tormented by other kids for being a faggot, but more that I was taught to feel ashamed for being the object of their cruelty, taught to feel it was my fault. I hate that the Supreme Court of this country says it’s okay to criminalize me because of how I make love. I hate that so many straight people are so concerned about my goddamned sex life. I hate that so many twisted straight people become parents, while I have to fight like hell to be allowed to be a father. I hate straights.

 Where Are You Sisters?

Invisibility is Our Responsibility

I wear my pink triangle everywhere. I do not lower my voice in public when talking about lesbian love or sex. I always tell people I’m a lesbian. I don’t wait to be asked about my “boyfriend.” I don’t say it’s “no one’s business.”

 I don’t do this for straight people. Most of them don’t know what the pink triangle even means. Most of them couldn’t care less that my girlfriend and I are totally in love or having a fight on the street. Most of them don’t notice us no matter what we do. I do what I do to reach other lesbians. I do what I do because I don’t want lesbians to assume I’m a straight girl. I am out all the time, everywhere, because I want to reach you. Maybe you’ll notice me, maybe start talking, maybe we’ll become friends. Maybe we won’t say a word but our eyes will meet and I will imagine you naked, sweating, openmouthed, your back arched as I am f—ing you. And we’ll be happy to know we aren’t the only ones in the world. We’ll be happy because we found each other, without saying a word, maybe just for a moment.

 But no.

 You won’t wear a pink triangle on that linen lapel. You won’t meet my eyes if I flirt with you on the street. You avoid me on the job because I’m “too” out. You chastise me in bars because I’m “too political.” You ignore me in public because I bring “too much” attention to “my” lesbianism. But then you want me to be your lover, you want me to be your friend, you want me to love you, support you, fight for “our” right to exist.

Where Are You?

You talk, talk, talk about invisibility and then retreat to your homes to nest with your lovers or carouse in a bar with pals and stumble home in a cab or sit silently and politely by while your family, your boss, your neighbors, your public servants distort and disfigure us, deride us and punish us. Then home again and you feel like screaming. Then you pad your anger with a relationship or a career or a party with other dykes like you and still you wonder why we can’t find each other, why you feel lonely, angry, alienated.

Get Up, Wake Up Sisters!!

Your life is in your hands.

 When I risk it all to be out, I risk it for both of us. When I risk it all and it works (which it often does if you would try), I benefit and so do you. When it doesn’t work, I suffer and you do not.

 But girl you can’t wait for other dykes to make the world safe for you. stop waiting for a better more lesbian future! The revolution could be here if we started it.

 Where are you sisters? I’m trying to find you, I’m trying to find you. How come I only see you on Gay Pride Day?

 We’re out. Where the f— are you?

[Untitled]

When anyone assaults you for being queer, it is queer bashing. Right?

A crowd of 50 people exit a gay bar as it closes. Across the street, some straight boys are shouting “Faggots” and throwing beer bottles at the gathering, which outnumbers them by 10 to 1. Three queers make a move to respond, getting no support from the group. Why did a group this size allow themselves to be sitting ducks?

 Tompkins Square Park, Labor Day. At an annual outdoor concert/drag show, a group of gay men were harassed by teens carrying sticks. In the midst of thousands of gay men and lesbians, these straight boys beat two gay men to the ground, then stood around triumphantly laughing amongst themselves. The emcee was alerted and warned the crowd from the stage, “You girls be careful. When you dress up it drives the boys crazy,” as if it were a practical joke inspired by what the victims were wearing rather than a pointed attack on anyone and everyone at that event.

What would it have taken for that crowd to stand up to its attackers?

 After James Zappalorti, an openly gay man, was murdered in cold blood on Staten Island this winter, a single demonstration was held in protest. Only one hundred people came. When Yusef Hawkins, a black youth, was shot to death for being on “White turf” in Bensonhurst, African Americans marched through that neighborhood in large numbers again and again. A black person was killed because he was black, and people of color throughout the city recognized it and acted on it. The bullet that hit Hawkins was meant for a black man, any black man. Do most gays and lesbians think that the knife that punctured Zappalorti’s heart was meant only for him?

 The straight world has us so convinced that we are helpless and deserving victims of the violence against us, that queers are immobilized when faced with a threat. Be outraged! These attacks must not be tolerated. Do something. Recognize that any act of aggression against any member of our community is an attack on every member of the community. The more we allow homophobes to inflict violence, terror and fear on our lives, the more frequently and ferociously we will be the object of their hatred. Your body cannot be an open target for violence. Your body is worth protecting. You have a right to defend it. No matter what they tell you, your queerness must be defended and respected. You’d better learn that your life is immeasurably valuable, because unless you start believing that, it can easily be taken from you. If you know how to gently and efficiently immobilize your attacker, then by all means, do it. If you lack those skills, then think about gouging out his f—ing eyes, slamming his nose back into his brain, slashing his throat with a broken bottle – do whatever you can, whatever you have to, to save your life!

Why Queer?

Queer!

 Ah, do we really have to use that word? It’s trouble. Every gay person has his or her own take on it. For some it means strange and eccentric and kind of mysterious. That’s okay; we like that. But some gay girls and boys don’t. They think they’re more normal than strange. And for others “queer” conjures up those awful memories of adolescent suffering. Queer. It’s forcibly bittersweet and quaint at best – weakening and painful at worst. Couldn’t we just use “gay” instead? It’s a much brighter word. And isn’t it synonymous with “happy”? When will you militants grow up and get over the novelty of being different?

 Why Queer …

 Well, yes, “gay” is great. It has its place. But when a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we’ve chosen to call ourselves queer. Using “queer” is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world. It’s a way of telling ourselves we don’t have to be witty and charming people who keep our lives discreet and marginalized in the straight world. We use queer as gay men loving lesbians and lesbians loving being queer. Queer, unlike gay, doesn’t mean male.

 And when spoken to other gays and lesbians it’s a way of suggesting we close ranks, and forget (temporarily) our individual differences because we face a more insidious common enemy. Yeah, queer can be a rough word but it is also a sly and ironic weapon we can steal from the homophobe’s hands and use against him.

No Sex Police

For anyone to say that coming out is not part of the revolution is missing the point. Positive sexual images and what they manifest saves lives because they affirm those lives and make it possible for people to attempt to live as self-loving instead of self-loathing. As the famous “Black is beautiful” changed many lives so does “Read my lips” affirm queerness in the face of hatred and invisibility as displayed in a recent governmental study of suicides that states at least 1/3 of all teen suicides are Queer kids. This is further exemplified by the rise in HIV transmission among those under 21.

 We are most hated as queers for our sexualness, that is, our physical contact with the same sex. Our sexuality and sexual expression are what makes us most susceptible to physical violence. Our difference, our otherness, our uniqueness can either paralyze us or politicize us. Hopefully, the majority of us will not let it kill us.

[Untitled]

Why in the world do we let heteros into queer clubs? Who gives a f— if they like us because we “really know how to party?” We have to in order to blow off the steam they make us feel all the time! They make out wherever they please, and take up too much room on the dance floor doing ostentatious couples dances. They wear their heterosexuality like a “Keep Out” sign, or like a deed of ownership.

 Why the f— do we tolerate them when they invade our space like it’s their right? Why do we let them shove heterosexuality – a weapon their world wields against us – right in our faces in the few public spots where we can be sexy with each other and not fear attack?

 It’s time to stop letting the straight people make all the rules. Let’s start by posting this sign outside every queer club and bar:

 – Rules of Conduct for Straight People

1.  Keep your displays of affection (kissing, handholding, embracing) to a minimum. Your sexuality is unwanted and offensive to many here.

2. If you must slow dance, be an inconspicuous as possible.

3. Do not gawk or stare at lesbians or gay men, especially bull dykes or drag queens. We are not your entertainment.

4. If you cannot comfortably deal with someone of the same sex making a pass at you, get out.

5. Do not flaunt your heterosexuality. Be discreet. Risk being mistaken for a lezzie or a homo.

6. If you feel these rules are unfair, go fight homophobia in straight clubs, or

7. Go f— Yourself.

I Hate Straights

I have friends. Some of them are straight.

 Year after year, I see my straight friends. I want to see them, to see how they are doing, to add newness to our long and complicated histories, to experience some continuity.

 Year after year I continue to realize that the facts of my life are irrelevant to them and that I am only half listened to, that I am an appendage to the doings of a greater world, a world of power and privilege, of the laws of installation, a world of exclusion.

 “That’s not true,” argue my straight friends. There is the one certainty in the politics of power: those left out of it beg for inclusion, while the insiders claim that they already are. Men do it to women, whites do it to blacks, and everyone does it to queers.

 The main dividing line, both conscious and unconscious, is procreation … and that magic word – Family. Frequently, the ones we are born into disown us when they find out who we really are, and to make matters worse, we are prevented from having our own. We are punished, insulted, cut off, and treated like seditionaries in terms of child rearing, both damned if we try and damned if we abstain. It’s as if the propagation of the species is such a fragile directive that without enforcing it as if it were an agenda, humankind would melt back into the primeval ooze.

 I hate having to convince straight people that lesbians and gays live in a war zone, that we’re surrounded by bomb blasts only we seem to hear, that our bodies and souls are heaped high, dead from fright or bashed or raped, dying of grief or disease, stripped of our personhood.

 I hate straight people who can’t listen to queer anger without saying “hey, all straight people aren’t like that. I’m straight too, you know,” as if their egos don’t get enough stroking or protection in this arrogant, heterosexist world. Why must we take care of them, in the midst of our just anger brought on by their f—ed up society?! Why add the reassurance of “Of course, I don’t mean you. You don’t act that way.” Let them figure out for themselves whether they deserve to be included in our anger.

 But of course that would mean listening to our anger, which they almost never do. They deflect it, by saying “I’m not like that” or “now look who’s generalizing” or “You’ll catch more flies with honey … ” or “If you focus on the negative you just give out more power” or “you’re not the only one in the world who’s suffering.” They say “Don’t yell at me, I’m on your side” or “I think you’re overreacting” or “Boy, you’re bitter.”

 – Let Yourself Be Angry

 They’ve taught us that good queers don’t get mad. They’ve taught us so well that we not only hide our anger from them, we hide it from each other. We even hide it from ourselves. We hide it with substance abuse and suicide and overachieving in the hope of proving our worth. They bash us and stab us and shoot us and bomb us in ever increasing numbers and still we freak out when angry queers carry banners or signs that say Bash Back. For the last decade they let us die in droves and still we thank President Bush for planting a f—ing tree, applaud him for likening PWAs to car accident victims who refuse to wear seatbelts. Let yourself be angry. Let yourself be angry that the price for visibility is the constant threat of violence, anti-queer violence to which practically every segment of this society contributes. Let yourself feel angry that there is no place in this country where we are safe, no place where we are not targeted for hatred and attack, the self-hatred, the suicide – of the closet.

 The next time some straight person comes down on you for being angry, tell them that until things change, you don’t need any more evidence that the world turns at your expense. You don’t need to see only hetero couple grocery shopping on your TV … You don’t want any more baby pictures shoved in your face until you can have or keep your own. No more weddings, showers, anniversaries, please, unless they are our own brothers and sisters celebrating. And tell them not to dismiss you by saying “You have rights,” “You have privileges,” “You are overreacting,” or “You have a victim’s mentality.” Tell them “Go away from me, until you change.” Go away and try on a world without the brave, strong queers that are its backbone, that are its guts and brains and souls. Go tell them go away until they have spent a month walking hand in hand in public with someone of the same sex. After they survive that, then you’ll hear what they have to say about queer anger. Otherwise, tell them to shut up and listen.

Reference

 

Gay History: The ‘Macaroni’ Scandal of 1772: ‘Gay’ Trial A Century Before Oscar Wilde

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

Much derision was directed toward aesthetes in the late 19th century, who, led by Oscar Wilde, declared their devotion to beauty in all its forms. That moment in the history of men and their fashions is remembered today because of the fate of Wilde, imprisoned for what was then the crime of “gross indecency”. But this was not the first sensational trial of a high-profile homosexual. That had happened long before, such as in the notorious “macaroni” case of 1772.

Over the centuries, all manner of dandies have attempted to make their place in society. Wilde’s predecessor, George Bryan “Beau” Brummell became an arbiter of men’s fashion in Regency England despite his obscure social origins and lack of interest in women. Part of the secret of his success was his cultivation of a refined but understated style that avoided the kind of flashiness that could get a man condemned for “effeminate” flamboyance.

In the 1760s and 1770s, there was an explosion of public interest in the “macaronis”, fashionable society gents who were given that name because, in the eyes of the penny press of the day, they committed such cardinal sins as rejecting good old English roast beef for dainty foods from continental Europe – such as pasta. Those finicky eaters, who also sported excessive French fashions in clothing, were in some ways the predecessors of Wildean aesthetes, but they have largely been forgotten today.

Wilde, by contrast, is remembered because of his talent and for the way he was treated by the British legal system. In the 1980s and 1990s, he became a kind of “gay icon” with a new relevance to a generation struggling with the horrors of the AIDS epidemic. His disgrace at the end of the 19th century was reinterpreted as a kind of queer martyrdom that presaged later struggles for lesbian and gay liberation.

Queer theory

Enthusiasm for Wilde on the part of lesbian and gay activists in the late 20th century was connected to the rise of a new form of cultural and literary analysis known as “queer theory”. This development was heavily influenced by the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault on the ways in which textual discourse operates. The focus was no longer on identifying gay men or lesbians in past centuries but on identifying when and why those terms were used.

It was this thinking that led the prominent scholar of Alan Sinfield, a leading British queer theorist, to identity the Wilde trials of 1895 as a “queer moment” when dandyism became linked with same sex desire.

Print: ‘How d’ye like me’, Carington Bowles, London, 1772.

The stereotypical proto-homosexual man emerged as a being that was attracted to younger men, who was theatrical rather than understated, effeminate rather than manly, and artistic rather than sporting. But it was not true that Wilde became obvious as a homosexual during the course of his trial – for the simple reason that the term “homosexual” was not reported in the British media until the time of another scandal, that surrounding the Prussian Prince of Eulenburg, that unfolded between 1906 and 1909.

And the fact is that Wilde was far from the first allegedly effeminate “sodomite” or “bugger” – and here I use terms that were widely employed at the time – to be disgraced in court.

The scandal of Captain Jones

Hester Thrale (1741 – 1821) was a member of the literary circle surrounding the famous encyclopediast Dr Samuel Johnson. She kept a fascinating diary in which she noted a wide variety of sexual foibles and eccentricities in the society circles of her time. She had a striking ability to recognise homosexuals (both male and female). Thus, in the entry for March 29, 1794 she discussed “finger-twirlers” as being a “decent word for sodomite”. In one passage, recorded in late March or early April 1778, she recalled the time six years earlier when a certain Captain Jones had been convicted of crimes against nature, and sentenced to die:

He was a Gentleman famous for his Invention in the Art of making Fireworks, and adapting Subjects fit to be represented in that Genre; & had already entertained the Town with two particular Devices which were exhibited at Marylebone Gardens & greatly admired: viz: the Forge of Vulcan in the Cave of Mount Etna, & the calling of Eurydice out of Hell – If he is pardoned says Stevens, He may shew off the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; it will have an admirable Effect.

Jones was a man of fashion in society who had been convicted at the Old Bailey for sodomising a 13-year-old boy. The link that Thrale made between camp dandyism and same sex scandal was rife in the papers of the time. As one correspondent put it in a letter to the Public Ledger on August 5, 1772, Captain Jones was “too much engaged in every scene of idle Dissipation and wanton Extravagance”. He was referred to as this “MILITARY MACCARONI [original emphasis]”. And, the writer concluded, “therefore, ye Beaux, ye sweet-scented, simpering He-She things, deign to learn wisdom from the death of a Brother”.

Arguments were brought forward that the boy’s testimony was unreliable and Jones was granted a royal pardon on the condition that he left the country. Members of the public seethed with indignation at the thought of an establishment cover-up and a variety of men fled to the Continent.

The macaronis have, however, been remembered for their style rather than for imputed sexual notoriety. We remember the uncouth revolutionary soldier who was originally mocked by the British as a “Yankee Doodle” for having “Stuck a feather in his cap / And called it macaroni”. But we’ve forgotten how queerly peculiar such an act may have seemed in the wake of a trial that bears comparison with those endured by Wilde a century later. That Americans could appropriate the song as a patriotic air implies a degree of innocence or, perhaps, of convenient forgetting.

Reference

Gay History: Send in the Clones

Article, Gay Interest, History, , , ,

I was an 80s Clone…many would have said an arch-Clone! I lived the life, and the look. Levi’s jeans, “Bonds” tee-shirts and singlets, plaid flannelette shirts, “Blundstone” boots (Blunnies), or Doc Martins, huge handlebar moustache, a transient beard in any of a number of styles, short or buzz-cut hair, an “Akubra” cowboy hat. I lived in pubs like The Oxford, and danced…half naked…in nightclubs like “Mandate” (Melbourne), and “Midnight Shift” or “Stronghold” in Sydney. I sniffed Amyl, blew whistles, banged tambourines, ingested LSD & Speed when the mood took me, sprinkled talc on dancefloors, and danced in a jockstrap on occasion. Leather vests, belts, armbands and cockrings. Pierced ears, pierced nipples, tattoos. I loved it…though many other gay men, especially older “dinner party” gays, hated it and thought we leaned too heavily on straight stereotypes for our look. What they couldn’t see was that this extreme stereotyping WAS gay! That at THAT time, THEY were the stereotype…along with the effeminate, lisping, limp-wristed stereotype that was the general impression of gay men…was what we were trying to move away from, by presenting a more “macho” type of gay men…that we wanted to be seen as men, not as a parody of! The Clone look, along with Hi NRG dance music became looks and sounds that very much defined the 80s.

Don’t ask me why it started, but by the beginning of the 80’s ‘the clone’ was beginning to become a universal phenomenon (and I don’t mean Dolly the sheep!).

Some commentators suggest the first clones appeared in San Francisco’s Castro Street; others that they came from New York’s ‘Village’. Either way, by the 80’s the look had been adopted by gay men around the world.

The most obvious elements were the (obligatory) moustache and ‘the uniform’. Depending on where you lived, the latter would be based on a Lacoste sports shirt, chinos and ‘loafers’ (USA) or checked shirt, jeans and trainers (UK). These minor national differences notwithstanding, the overall look was an overt and unambiguous statement – not just about dress sense but also masculinity and sexuality.

The Clone Ranger. Extract from gay club advert.

This was an extremely significant act for that time – not least because gay men were, on the whole, still largely closetted. Yet, in spite of this, here were large groups of gay men choosing an image – and a highly sexualised one at that – for themselves. Prior to this, the only ‘sexualised’ images of gay men were as predators – of ‘defenceless’ straight men and, of course, children since we were all paedophiles. And, needless to say, they weren’t images of our choosing.

Within the UK this was also another indication of the Americanisation of gay men or, perhaps more accurately, the gay identity. In a sense, it was almost inevitable, given the sustained hostility to all things gay in the UK (e.g. Mary Whitehouse’s attacks on Gay News, the raiding of Gay’s the Word and other bookshops). The USA was the principal source of many gay resources – from porn to political material. (I shall cover this in more detail in a later blog.)

Get a room! Gay hotel ad.

It could be argued that it was the clones who started to put the sex into homosexual: there are certainly some commentators who believe that they paved the way for other groups such as leather men and bears. Certainly, the collective visibility of so many self-defined gay clones can only have helped put us on the map as a population that was much larger – and a lot less apologetic – than many people had imagined.

Of course, there were always some queens who took it all a bit too seriously. Thankfully, there were others who managed to combine the playful and political elements of the clone. No one in the UK did this more successfully than the artist David Shenton, through his character ‘Stanley’, who appeared regularly in Gay News and then Capital Gay.

Stanley (second from right) pops into his local gay bar. Taken from ‘Stanley and the Mask of Mystery’ by David Shenton. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist. World copyright © David Shenton

I’m not sure if the clone has totally disappeared from the gay scene or simply merged into one of the other diverse ‘identities’ our community now has. But it would be a shame if we were to forget what was our first, ‘home-grown’ positive gay stereotype.

A letter I wrote to “Campaign”…a gay newspaper popular in the 70s & 80s…in response to someone criticising the Clone look – then in its starting phase
The blogger in Clone days circa 1986/87

Remaking the Castro Clone

Levis 501 jeans. Skin tight. Sanded down at the knees and crotch for that perfectly worn-in look. Third button unbuttoned to create a bit of allure. T-shirt, also skin tight. A Levis snap-front plaid. That was the uniform of the Castro clone, the gay fashion icon spawned in the 70s that — with surprisingly minor evolution or alteration — can still be seen on the streets of San Francisco today.

Danny Glicker, thankfully, is in love with the look. As the costume designer on Milk, Gus Van Sants biopic of the slain civil rights leader Harvey Milk, Glicker had to outfit hundreds of actors, from leading men Sean Penn, James Franco and Emile Hirsch to an army of extras, all dressed to span a full decades worth of fashion dos and donts.

Period films always present challenges to their costumers, but those based on true stories are that much more complicated. Glicker was saddled with another great expectation while preparing the highly anticipated film: Milks characters are not only real, they lived during a time many viewers can still recall themselves. And Milk owned a camera shop and lived an incredibly well documented life, which took some of the guesswork out of the equation, but also meant that there would be no excuse with eagle-eyed fans for anything less than absolute authenticity.

Simply recreating the clothes wouldnt have been sufficient — the bodies on todays actors are more defined and muscled than those of the leaner Milk and his comrades. Instead Glicker had to tailor the clothes to look as if they were hanging off of a 70s frame.

We created these enormous books of research that specifically address each character within the timeline, says Glicker, a young, unassuming, bespectacled man with a head of thick black curls whose previous work include Transamerica, Thank You For Smoking and HBOs True Blood. It was sort of overwhelming, because after awhile it was hard to edit down the material. I was very interested in recreating outfits exactly as they were, partially because I knew that Gus was going to be incorporating so much archival footage into the movie, and I didnt know exactly where.

Given access to the archives of the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society, Glicker and his team managed to get their hands on a fair amount of Milks actual clothing. Then they went shopping. Glicker, who prefers vintage pieces, combed hundreds of stores and amassed a huge collection of items, which he then authenticated using his research books before altering to fit the actors. No tiny detail of the evolution of fashion went unchecked — there are, after all, key differences between a 1976 shirt and a 1978 shirt (such as the collar width), and Glicker was determined to be accurate.

What couldnt be bought was recreated (and sometimes what was bought was still recreated so that spare sets were available), including T-shirts from now-defunct Castro bars, protest Ts found in the archive, and the suit Milk was killed in, which they had viewed at the Historical Society. That was a very, very meticulous recreation, says Glicker, who had to wear cotton gloves while handling the suit, which is kept in a temperature and light controlled environment and wrapped in acid free tissue. We were measuring everything from the lapels to the belt loops and leg openings. The fabric, every aspect of the fit, it was all done to match as closely as possible.

And when the thrift stores and archives didnt have what he needed, Glicker went to Levis corporate headquarters in San Francisco. The uniform of choice for Harvey Milk, his friends and many in the LBGT community at the time was the Levis 501 button fly jean, says Robert Hanson, President of Levi Strauss & Co.s Levis Brand Division. If you saw anything but Levis in the film it would have been wrong.

Levis gave me a tremendous amount of access to both their archive and retail store, says Glicker. Hanson (who is gay) and Levis, an early pioneer and longtime stalwart supporter for gay causes, thought the film was a perfect match for the brand. The movie is really about a very specific movement at a specific time in the city, Glicker says. These people wore Levis. It was what they were about and where they were. Its more than just a brand of clothes in this case, its an iconic part of America and the Castro.

When I started reading about what people wore, adds screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. I thought, What was that Levis clone look about? It didn’t take much to realize that it was about a group of people who had been called pansies and fags reclaiming their masculinity and being men.

That held true even when going butch went beyond the basics. I remember reading someone complaining that the guys were actually going too far with it — trying to be too butch, actor James Franco, who plays Milks longtime lover, Scott Smith, told Black in his Out cover interview. I saw a lot of guys from the Castro where they [actually] looked like construction workers.

Thats why the Castro clone, Glicker says, is actually a deceptively simple look. It has to be perfectly played, he says. In order to make it look good, you have to find the perfect fit and you have to feel great in it to be able to sell the outfit. It was a uniform because it was accessible for everybody. It wasnt out of peoples grasp. It was about the wearer more than the means of the wearer. And whether or not Milk launches a vintage resurgence, the basic elements havent been put out to pasture. I see the influence of it everywhere. Its not going anywhere. Its like the gay communitys little black dress.

The gay clone, illustrated.
Leather enthusiasts at the 1978 San Francisco Gay Day Parade.

2001 Michael Tolliver is wearing jeans, with an opened flannel shirt to show off his body. This look depicts the Castro Clone style of the 1970s.

Reference

Gay History: The Complete Guide to Every Queer Pride Flag

Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, History, ,

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

Gilbert Baker Pride Flag

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

Hot pink =  Sex

Red = Life

Orange = Healing

Yellow = Sunlight

Green = Nature

Turquoise = Magic/Art

Indigo = Serenity

Violet = Spirit

1978-1999 Pride Flag

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

Traditional Gay Pride Flag

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

Philadelphia People Of Color Inclusive Flag

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

Progress Pride Flag

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

Bisexual Flag

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

Pansexual Pride

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

Asexual Flag

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

Labrys Lesbian Pride Flag

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

Polyamory Flag

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

Intersex Flag

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

Transgender Flag

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

Genderfluid/Genderflexible Flag

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

Genderqueer Flag

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

Lipstick Lesbian Flag

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

Leather, Latex, & BDSM Flag

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

Bear Brotherhood Flag

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

Rubber Pride Flag

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

Polysexual Flag

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

Agender Flag

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

Aromantic Flag

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

Non Binary Flag

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

Pony Flag

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

Straight Ally Flag

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

Reference

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

Article, Gay Interest, History, ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

Gay History: The Unbelievably True Story of Jobriath, Music’s First Openly Gay Rock Star

Article, biography, Gay Interest, General Interest, , , , , , ,

Imagine watching the Empire State Building suddenly transform into giant spurting penis to ejaculate a figure dressed in a major King Kong look across a stage. Now, imagine this mysterious figure shedding the ape costume and emerging as the most fabulous Marlene Dietrich you’ve ever seen.

No, this isn’t the fever dream of a Hell’s Kitchen gay after watching Kong: Skull Island. This flamboyant and provocative series of events almost happened. The performance, set to take place at the Paris Opera House in 1973, would’ve introduced the world to glam rock’s first openly gay rock star. Through a sea of glitter, the crowd was to feel a potent mix of astonishment and arousal before whispering his name: Jobriath.

That you’re almost certainly wondering who the hell Jobriath is should betray the fact that his grand entrance never happened, but to dismiss Jobriath as yet another failed rock star would do a disservice to his legacy. The truth is, for all his failures, Jobriath paved a path for queer musicians. Without rock’s self-proclaimed “true fairy,” artists like ILoveMakonnen, Frank Ocean, PWR BTTM, Mykki Blanco and everyone in between might not be around to queer up the music industry.

Decades ago, in an era punctuated by the queerbaiting antics of Lou Reed and David Bowie, Jobriath’s star power proved to shine too bright, too fast—he was the Icarus of glam rock with a gloomy ending to match. Spanning multiple identities, enough tragedy to fill a Lifetime Original Movie, and a wealth of ideas that would never come to pass, this is the story of America’s first gay rock star.

The Adolescence and Abandonment of Bruce Wayne Campbell

You’d be forgiven if you thought the story of Jobriath’s adolescence was written by an overeager fiction writer. After all, his name shares similarities with both Batman and the star of Evil Dead and hails from a town that sounds like a history book. Yet, Bruce Wayne Campbell of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania really did exist. And he was even something of a child prodigy on the piano.

The Film Collaborative

Born the son of an Army man in the dirt track town, Campbell spent his youth moving from army base to army base with his family. It was a childhood light on friends and heavy on a blooming sexual identity that infuriated his family. It was an existence that wasn’t meant to last and, after a brief stint in the Army that ended with him going AWOL, he ran away to start a new life as Jobriath Salisbury in the sun-soaked streets of Los Angeles.

Detours and the Discovery of Jobriath Salisbury

Like any great glam rock origin story, Jobriath’s rise began with a little bark and a lot of hair follicles. A short time after arriving in LA, he accompanied his friend to the audition for the notoriously outlandish musical Hair. Despite only going to help the friend with lines, he was cast into the role of Woof and was soon performing to sold out crowds every night. Under the bright lights, he got a taste of stardom that changed his life.

Though as talented as he may have been in his role, he wasn’t immune to the vices of the 1960s. A cocktail of drugs strong enough to tranquilize a herd of buffalo mixed with his overinflated ego and he eventually left Hair in a blaze of glory—taking two of his costars with him to start a band called Pidgeon. You know, because it was 1969 and naming your band after sky rats was glam. The trio recorded a strange, baroque folk album that sounded like a chipper nightmare before the band promptly fell apart.

It was from this point that Jobriath’s AWOL status caught up to him and he was detained by military police. He was thrown into a military psychiatric hospital, suffered his first big breakdown, and then broke away from the padded walls to take on California one last time. It didn’t take long for him to pick up his old habits As he recalled years later, “I was floating down in the gutter. I didn’t eat. I just drank beer all the time. With no money, I hustled for booze and drugs.”

While he hustled, a new chapter in Jobriath’s story was being written thousands of miles away in New York. It was there that Jerry Brandt, legendary manager of Carly Simon, sat in the offices of Columbia Records’ Clive Davis listening to Jobriath’s demo tape. To his ears, he’d found the star he was waiting for.

The Film Collaborative

Jobriath Boone and Jerry Brandt’s Big, Gay American Disaster

The year was 1972 and Jobriath had just shed his steak-themed last name and emerged as Jobriath Boone—–just in time for Brandt to change his life forever. After search through LA to find him, Brandt quickly whisked the burgeoning star back to New York, got him a record contract with Elektra Records rumored to be worth $500,000, and began one of the most ambitious advertising campaigns of the decade.

“Jobriath is going to be the biggest artist in the world. He is a singer, dancer, woman, man. He has the glamour of Garbo. He is beautiful,” Brandt explained to Melody Maker before telling Music Week: “It’s Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles, and now Jobriath.” To Brandt, Jobriath was glam rock’s gay, glittered Jesus Christ and he wanted the world to know his name.

Jobriath’s face was plastered across full page ads in Vogue, Penthouse, and Rolling Stone and put on posters on hundreds New York City buses. For Brandt’s pièce de résistance, a 41’ by 43’ billboard high atop Times Square was erected featuring Jobriath naked and posed as a Roman statue broken at the base and crawling across the floor.

The AV Club

When it came time to record the album, Brandt convinced Elektra Records to book them at Olympic Studios, the famed recording studio favored by bands like The Rolling Stones. It was within these soundproofed walled that a 55-piece orchestra accompanied Jobriath on a glam rock journey through the eleven tracks that made up his self-titled debut album. Despite the aggressively sexual S&M ballad “Take Me I’m Yours” and the swaggering bravado of “I’m a Man,” reviews were warm and encouraging.

The problem was that outside of the industry, Jobriath’s flagrant sexuality produced a product the public just wasn’t ready for. By the time the giant wave of marketing finally crashed down, Jobriath’s overhyped debut had become a disastrous joke. A debut concert at the Paris Opera House with a $200,000 price tag and the Empire State building ejaculating the star was quickly scrapped.

He made his television debut in an unforgettable yet restrained performance on a prominent nightly show called The Midnight Special. It was notable for his outlandish costume that could best be described as ‘spaceman by way of hamster tunnel tubing’ and was restrained because, after being barred from performing his S&M jam “Take Me I’m Yours” by producers, he instead performed “Rock of Ages” and his single “I’m a Man.” Late night just couldn’t handle a glitter-dipped gay rocker singing, “Any day you could buy me or tie me up.”

Alongside his TV debut, he headlined two sold out shows at The Bottom Line in all his unsheathed, gay glory to modest, 400-person crowds. The positive response brought some hope to Jobriath and Brandt but that momentum crashed down at a follow-up concert at Nassau Coliseum. There, the crowds immediately bombarded him with shouts of “faggot” as trash was thrown until he fled the stage. Elektra Records quickly pushed out the second and final album, Creatures of the Street, shortly after that disastrous show with leftover material from the Jobriath recording sessions and dropped him from their label.

With no future at Elektra, Jobriath embarked on one final tour and severed his partnership with Brandt. Like any good rock star though, Jobriath went out with a bang. His final show at the University of Alabama led to five encores that ended when the excited crowd pulled the fire alarm and sent the fire department rushing in. It was glorious moment that showcased the star Jobriath could’ve become had the country been ready to embrace that courageous homosexuality of rock’s first true fairy but ultimately signaled the end to his life as Jobriath.

The Downfall and Death of Cole Berlin

In 1975, high above the iconic Chelsea Hotel in a pyramid-topped apartment, Jobriath Boone was laid to rest alongside his brief career. From his ashes, the character of Cole Berlin emerged. When he wasn’t hustling or auditioning for the role of Al Pacino’s lover in Dog Day Afternoon, Cole spent his nights performing 1930s cabaret songs at The Covenant Gardens restaurant. His existence, perhaps for the first and only time, appeared restrained and mundane for a few years. It wasn’t until 1979 that the façade of normality was ripped away in an interview with Omega One magazine.

“Jobriath committed suicide in a drug, alcohol and publicity overdose. That whole hype just drove him crazy,” Cole said of his former identity. It was the statement of a broken man and, as the interview continued, he didn’t hesitate to talk about his personas as if they were a polyamorous family he’d moved in with. “Schizophrenia is my lifestyle. I think everybody is schizophrenic but they’ll all fighting it,” he explained. “I, or should I say we, are not fighting it. Come over. I’ll ask some of us to come out and play.”

Years after the interview, his lifestyle on the streets caught up with him and he soon contracted AIDs. On the Chelsea Hotel’s 100th anniversary in November 1982, he played his last public performance and, on the morning of August 4, 1983, police broke up the front door of his rooftop apartment and found his dead body. A decade after towering over Times Square, he died alone and abandoned—–his body decaying for four days before anyone found him.

The Great, Rock Resurgence of Jobriath

As tragic as his career and life were, time has ultimately been kinder to Jobriath. In the years following his death, the glamorous singer has become ingrained in the rock and roll folklore thanks to one of rock’s most iconic queer artists. In one of the strangest twists in Jobriath’s story, rock legend Morrissey of The Smiths has become integral in establishing the singer’s legacy.

In 1992, Morrissey expressed interest in having him as the opening act for his “Your Arsenal” tour–—unaware that the singer had died nearly ten years ago. It was a tragic request but, ultimately, served as a catalyst for Jobriath’s revitalization. In the two and a half decades since Morrissey first took an interest in rock’s first true fairy, a wealth of information and music has unearthed his story. Previously unreleased music filled Lonely Planet Boy in 2004 and As the River Flows in 2014; his first two albums saw a rerelease in 2008; and, finally, a documentary by Kieran Turner called Jobriath A.D. came out in 2012.

Four decades after crooning for audiences to let him be who he was on the track “I’m a Man,” the repercussions of Jobriath’s fearless embrace of his sexuality, Empire State Building ejaculation and all, are finally being celebrated.

Reference

Gay History: The Downfall of the Ex-Gay Movement

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

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

TERRY JOHNSTON / FLICKR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reference