$5.95 US & Canada May–June 2022 The Brits and Beautiful Men by Andrew Holleran Sylvia Beach & Shakespeare & Co. by Charles Green The People’s Harvey Fierstein by Felice Picano Peter Tatchell Radical Pursuits PETER TATCHELL Britain’s Long Road to Freedom JENN THOMPSON The Rebel Dykes Live On! MARTIN DUBERMAN Can the Left Be Counted On? MALCOLM LAZIN Stopping the Madness G LR k
LGBTQ+ Scholarship Martin Duberman Visiting Scholars Program The Martin Duberman Visiting Scholars are funded by the generous support of Martin Duberman. The Martin Duberman Visiting Scholar program at The New York Public Library promotes excellence in LGBTQ+ studies by supporting scholars engaged in original, archivally based research. The fellowship is open to established and emerging scholars, academics and independent scholars. The award recipient will receive $25,000 to fund their research at the Library. Applications for 2022–23 are dueJune 30, 2022. Learn more: nypl.org/duberman
The Gay & Lesbian Review May–June 2022 • VOLUME XXIX, NUMBER 3 The Gay & Lesbian Review/WORLDWIDE®(formerly The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, 1994-1999) is published bimonthly (six times per year) by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational corporation located in Boston, Mass. Subscriptions: Call 844-752-7829. Rates: U.S.: $35.70 per year (6 issues). Canada and Mexico: $45.70(US). All other countries: $55.70(US). All non-U.S. copies are sent via air mail. Back issues available for $12 each. All correspondence is sent in a plain envelope marked “G&LR.” © 2022 by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. All rights reserved. POEMS &DEPARTMENTS “We resolved to chart our own course.” 12 PETERTATCHELL David Wickenden talks with a British icon of LGBT rights How Three Activists Stopped the Madness 17 MALCOLMLAZIN Direct action got the APA to cut the “mental illness” diagnosis Rebel Dykes Took On All Foes 20 JENNTHOMPSON Their actions in the ’90s set the tone for today’s queer culture Can the Left Be Counted On? 24 MARTINDUBERMAN Of the Communist and Socialist Parties, one has been a steady ally The Mainstreaming of Harvey Fierstein 29 FELICE PICANO First came the writing, but the lure of the limelight was irresistible The Golden Age of British Masculinity 32 ANDREWHOLLERAN The Empire revered male beauty, an ideal that evolved over time CONTENTS FEATURES REVIEWS Guest Opinion — Social Media Censorship Is About to Get Worse 5 ANDREWLEAR CORRESPONDENCE 6 IN MEMORIAM— Stephen Sondheim: A Private Public Figure 7 JACKSONCOOPER IN MEMORIAM—When Lars Eighner Finally Settled Down 9 RAYMOND-JEANFRONTAIN BTW 10 RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. POEM— “Emily Dickinson” 16 JANE BARNES POEM— “Tiepolo’s Ceiling” 28 JAMES MCGRATH ART MEMO — Drag Shows and Illicit Love in a 1959 Novel 40 MICHAEL SCHWARTZ POEM— “My Mother’s Wife” 45 ALICE JAY AUTHOR’S PROFILE— Sebastian Stuart Can Remember the ’60s 46 WILLIAMBURTON CULTURAL CALENDAR 48 ART MEMO — Climbers and Creepers of the High Chapparal 49 DANIEL A. BURR Kerri Maher —The Paris Bookseller 35 CHARLES GREEN Helen Little, editor —David Hockney: Moving Focus 36 MICHAEL QUINN Marlon B. Ross – Sissy Insurgencies: A Racial Anatomy of Unfit Manliness 37 REGINALDHARRIS BRIEFS 38 Alan Cumming —Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life 39 COLINCARMAN Joseph Allen Boone —Furnace Creek 41 LEWIS DESIMONE Shana Goldin-Perschbacher —Queer Country 41 TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER Fatima Daas —The Last One: A Novel 42 ANNE CHARLES Elias Rodriques —All the Water I’ve Seen Is Running 43 PHILIP MOORE Julie R. Enszer and Elena Gross, eds. —OutWrite 44 MARTHAE. STONE Billy Porter —Unprotected 44 MICHELE KIRICHANSKAYA Sebastian Meise, director —Great Freedom 50 ALLENELLENZWEIG WEBSITE: www.GLReview.org • SUBSCRIPTIONS: 847-504-8893 • ADVERTISING: 617-421-0082 • SUBMISSIONS: Editor@GLReview.org Editor-in-Chief and Founder RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. ____________________________________ Literary Editor MARTHAE. STONE Poetry Editor DAVIDBERGMAN Associate Editors SAMDAPANAS PAULFALLON JEREMYFOX MICHAELSCHWARTZ Contributing Writers ROSEMARYBOOTH DANIELA. BURR COLINCARMAN ALFREDCORN ALLENELLENZWEIG CHRIS FREEMAN PHILIP GAMBONE MATTHEWHAYS ANDREWHOLLERAN IRENE JAVORS JOHNR. KILLACKY CASSANDRALANGER ANDREWLEAR DAVIDMASELLO FELICE PICANO JAMES POLCHIN JEANROBERTA VERNONROSARIO Contributing Artist CHARLES HEFLING Publisher STEPHENHEMRICK Webmaster BOSTONWEBGROUP Web Editor KELSEYMYERS ____________________________________ Board of Directors STEWART CLIFFORD ART COHEN(CHAIR) EDUARDOFEBLES DONALDGORTON(CLERK) ROBERT HARDMAN DAVIDLAFONTAINE ANDREWLEAR RICHARDSCHNEIDER, JR. (PRESIDENT) MARTHAE. STONE THOMAS YOUNGREN(TREASURER) WARRENGOLDFARB(SR. ADVISOR EMER.) WORLDWIDE The Gay & Lesbian Review® PO Box 180300, Boston, MA 02118 Radical Pursuits WORLDWIDE May–June 2022 3
has never gone away. In this issue we explore some of its major figures and memorable moments. On the cover is a man who embodies this comprehensive view of social change, Peter Tatchell, an icon of the LGBT movement in Britain who has no equivalent in the U.S. Since the 1970s, he has led thousands of protests and demonstrations, has been arrested numerous times, and has also served in Parliament. Staying in the UK, Jenn Thompson discusses here a cultural movement of the 1990s known as “rebel dykes” that never organized officially but managed to stage numerous rallies, exhibits, demonstrations, and guerilla events against homophobia, Thatcherism, gender inequality, and so on. Back in the U.S., a piece by Malcolm Lazin describes how the American Psychological Association was pressured to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness, which began with a bit of agitprop at the APA’s 1972 convention, fifty years ago this year. The action was spearheaded by Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny, two activists known for moderation who became increasingly radicalized after Stonewall. Martin Duberman is back with a piece that looks at the relationship between the LGBT rights movement and the Communist and Socialist Parties. Focusing on two individuals, Dorothy Healey and David McReynolds, Duberman concludes that only the Socialist Party has been a reliable ally over the years. RICHARDSCHNEIDERJR. WHAT’S “RADICAL” is always defined in relation to prevailing attitudes and norms. The idea of same-sex marriage was so radical in the 1970s—at the height of the Gay Liberation era—that it wasn’t even discussed; but by the time marriage equality was finally achieved in 2015, it was considered “assimilationist” and conservative by many LGBT activists, who argued that we should be questioning the whole institution of marriage and its patriarchal foundations. This debate points to a division in the LGBT movement that has existed pretty much from the start. The first “homophile” organization was led by Harry Hay, a card-carrying Communist who promoted a broad agenda of social change. But soon the Mattachine Society was deeply divided, with a large faction splitting off to pursue a more limited gay rights agenda without the social revolution. Two decades later, in the years after Stonewall, something similar occurred when the Gay Activists Alliance split off from the Gay Liberation Front—which was very much a creature of the New Left—in order to focus on gay rights rather than every social injustice. The argument continues today, though on somewhat different terms now that we’ve achieved basic legal equality. Critics argue that these gains—marriage, military service, employment protection—have all been achieved within a social system that’s rife with racism, sexism, and gross inequality. The moderate agenda of the HRC may have prevailed, but the radical critique Pride Issue: ‘Radical Pursuits’ FROM THE EDITOR 4 The G&LR University of Minnesota Press Available at better bookstores or to order call 800-621-2736 • www.upress.umn.edu “Hil Malatino delivers a powerful trans reckoning for feminist, queer, and affect studies.” —JULES GILL-PETERSON, author of Histories of the Transgender Child Outrageous! THE STORY OF SECTION 28 AND BRITAIN’S BATTLE FOR LGBT EDUCATION Paul Baker New from REAKTION Distributed by the University of Chicago Press www.press.uchicago.edu “Lucid, clear-eyed, warmly personable, and peppered with deliciously wry commentary.” —Attitude Cloth $22.50
May–June 2022 5 slightest hint of it. Even shirtless men were deemed obscene! In fact, clearly their algorithm also flags the words “gay” and “LGBT” as obscene. One time they rejected an ad that displayed only the plaque on the building where Christopher Isherwood lived in the 1920s and wrote The Berlin Stories. That time I decided to complain, and I happened to get a manager on the phone. Predictably, all I got was a runaround. Even when the algorithm has clearly made a mistake, they’ll just direct you to reread the policy that you did not in fact violate. But all this will soon seem quaint, as LGBT+ organizations will not be able to inform their fans about their offerings at all. In Facebook’s current manual, they explain that you should not use the term “LGBT+” in your ads. Instead, “Take this as an opportunity to distinguish the unique accomplishments of your group and communicate future plans so interested individuals can become involved.” But if what distinguishes your group is inseparable from its involvement with the LGBT+ community, you’re pretty much out of luck. Perhaps we’ll figure out ways to sneak our information to the public—we’ve been there before. But if there are LGBT+ organizations whose offerings you like, you’ll need to check their websites and Facebook pages regularly. The information will not come to you any more. Andrew Lear is the founder and director of Oscar Wilde Tours. Social Media Censorship Is About to Get Worse ANDREWLEAR DO YOU get your information about LGBT organizations, events, books, and so on from social media? I hate to break the news, but that will soon be much harder. It seems the social media companies have decided that ads will no longer be allowed to imply anything “sensitive” about the customer, i.e., their race, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. So, while you’ve always been able to find out about, say, events for gay seniors, this will no longer be possible. Sure, organizations will still be able to post events on their Facebook page, but they won’t appear on your newsfeed. Facebook in particular has long been known for censorship in some areas, permissiveness in others. They’re okay with disinformation campaigns that swing U.S. elections or enable antiMuslim lynch mobs to organize in India, but they prohibit any hint of nudity or sexual content, including in artistic works (despite claims to the contrary). Facebook has been sued for blocking a classic painting by Courbet and called out by the Belgian Travel Authority for disallowing a Rubens painting. As the owner of two tour companies, one focused on LGBT+ history and the other on women’s history, however, I can attest that the gay company is treated far more harshly by Facebook. We may get away with a bit of nudity in our women’s history ads, but the ones for LGBT+ events have been disallowed for the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
6 The G&LR When Coward Came Out on American TV To the Editor: Regarding Andrew Holleran’s article titled “Mad about the Boy” on Noël Coward and his song of the same name (March– April 2022), it may interest your readers to learn that in his television special “Together with Music,” which aired live on CBS in 1955, Coward sang what he called his “own personal version” of the Scottish ballad “Loch Lomond.” While he sang the first verse “straight,” i.e. without altering the lyrics, in the second verse he sang of “my new love, my true love, my little sugar daddy” wearing “his wee bitty kilt of Caledonian plaiddy.” How anyone could have missed that the singer was gay from that is beyond me, but the show, which also starred Mary Martin, got good reviews and life in the United States went on as before. Annette King, Adelphi, MD Sargent, Too, Left Plenty of Clues To the Editor: Whether John Singer Sargent was a homosexual, given that the term wasn’t in general use when he was alive, seems to me less important than the fact that he was a great realist artist and his subjects were often handsome men. What’s more, his interest in naked men and boys was not restricted to the excellent painting of Thomas McKeller that appears on the cover of the [Sept.–Oct. 2021 issue of] The G&LR. The discovery of his watercolors of male nudes only adds to our suspicion. Then there’s the quotation attributed to Jacques-Émile Blanche declaring that “Sargent’s gay sex life in Paris and Venice was positively scandalous. He was a frenzied bugger.” That is more than suggestive and puts it out there quite explicitly. Sargent is not alone as we wonder at the work of other artists who have been featured in recent issues. Painters like Thomas Eakins, Grant Wood, and Henry Scott Tuke hinted at more than their canvases reveal, given the constraints under which they worked. As Ignacio Darnaude observes in his Sargent piece, we will probably never know the artist’s true desires, but we as LGBT viewers have a special reason to enjoy his fantastic art. John S. Lloyd, Pompano Beach, FL The Calla Lilies Are in Bloom To the Editor: Thanks for the wonderful article about the two magnificent women artists (a painter and a novelist) who were also great gardeners: Frida Kahlo and Vita Sackville-West [March-April 2002 issue]. The author reports that Kahlo’s favorite plants included “elephant ears ... yucca, and canna lilies.” However, the final reference is incorrect. Cannas are not actually lilies, though it’s a common mistake. The author may have meant calla lilies, which is correct. Bill Busse, Fairmont, MN Correction In the March-April 2022 issue, the reviewer of a book titled Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory, was given incorrectly in several places. The reviewer’s name is Mitchel Civello (not Michael). In the piece itself, in an almost comical (if not so embarrassing) error, the first name of philosopher Michel Foucault was also changed to Michael. For that one we blame Autocorrect. In any case, Mitchel Civello has our deepest apologies. Correspondence
the other hand, was curious about where psychotherapy could lead him. He continued to date women well into his thirties, never coming to terms with his true self. Instead, he seems to have ignored it entirely, repressing any temptation for a romantic liaison with another man—or so it appeared. He officially came out at around age forty but waited until he was 61 to live with another man. This was Peter Jones, a fan of Sondheim who’d met him shortly after Assassins opened. The two lived together in Sondheim’s Turtle Bay house for several years before separating in 1999. Little has been written about Peter Jones, who remained involved in the theater as a music director and composer. It was with Jeff Romley that Sondheim found true companionship. They married in 2017 and lived together until the composer’s death. “[He] is a great joy in my life,” Sondheim recounted. “Once I had tasted the joys of living with someone, I wanted to live with someone else.” Romley himself was a theater professional, working as a theater rep for the William Morris Agency before producing and working on shows such as The Producers and Porgy and Bess. A glimpse into their relationship is provided by home videos of Romley and Sondheim on vacation in Europe. Romley holds the camera at times, prompting the master wordsmith to describe the sights. “This is the Forum,” Sondheim points at the bustling Italian square before looking at Romley behind the camera. A giddy smile comes across his face: “A funny thing happened here.” Over the years, Sondheim’s works have gained a following within the LGBT community. Gay men have adopted songs written for Sondheim’s female characters as anthems for explaining their own feelings toward another man, such as “Losing My Mind,” a lament by a person who’s hopelessly in love. In the most recent revival of Company, Sondheim worked closely with the show’s director to update the married couples (and their respective songs) to more modern sensibilities. Director Marianne Williamson and Sondheim transformed Amy into Jamie, played to chaotic perfection by Matt Doyle, turning “(Not) Getting Married Today” into a gay declaration. And this wasn’t the first time Sondheim depicted a gay story in his shows. During the rewrites of Bounce/Road Show/Wise Guys, he and collaborator John Weidman decided to re-assign the love song “The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened to Me” from the older brother and his lady friend to the younger brother singing it to his male love interest. Stephen Sondheim died in Jeff Romley’s arms on November 26, 2022. The cause was cardiovascular disease. He left us just days before the release of the filmtick, tick…BOOM!, which memorializes Jonathan Larson’s deep debt to Sondheim. The aforementioned revival of Companyis set to run on Broadway through the end of this year. It is far from the last revival of his many great musicals that we can anticipate as the years roll merrily along. Jackson Cooper, gift manager at Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, is an adjunct instructor at the U. of North Carolina, Greensboro. Stephen Sondheim: A Private Public Figure JACKSONCOOPER FOR AMAN of many words, Stephen Sondheim (1930– 2021) rarely gave interviews. When he did, he spoke eloquently and intensely about the craft of composition, the life of the theater, and the true depth of humanity that he wrestled with in writing his musical works. The composer passed away at the age of 91 last November, leaving behind a huge body of work that’s credited with “reinventing” musical theater in the U.S., filling Broadway theaters (and many others far from Broadway) for many decades, as it still does today. In reading the multitude of obituaries and memorials on Sondheim, one is struck by how little has been said about his personal life. Despite his seismic presence in the theater community, a life in the public spotlight never appealed to him. He kept his personal affairs so private that one collaborator early in his career concluded that he was asexual. In her comprehensive biography of the composer, author Meryle Secrest discussed his struggle with his identity as a gay man and the social pressures of the times. “I was never easy with being a homosexual, which complicated things,” Sondheim admitted in an interview with Secrest. To be sure, social attitudes and his own self-acceptance evolved over the years. During his long life he witnessed homosexuality move from being classified as a mental illness to being seen as a social disorder and, finally, to the state of general acceptance that we have today, ratified by the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015. Coming of age at a time when homosexuality was medically diagnosed as a disease, Sondheim underwent psychotherapy, which seemed the only solution. He had seen his fellowWest Side Story collaborators all grappling with their sexuality as gay men. Arthur Laurents, Jerome Robbins, and Leonard Bernstein all underwent some form of psychotherapy related to their conflicted sexual feelings. The latter two were said to have attended daily sessions. For Laurents, there was shame attached even to attending such sessions. Sondheim, on IN MEMORIAM Stephen Sondheim explaining the music in Into the Woods for a Musical Theatre International Conversationpiece. May–June 2022 7
Eric Anderson & Thomas Depriest James Hess & In memory of Charles Michael Manganiello Roger Beck Robert Hardman Robert Herald S. Longcope Jr. The Shilts Literary Trust Bill Arning Michael Barrett In memory of Wade S.Bentson Ken Borelli Samuel D. Brown Denis Cagna & Carlos Medina Mike Carson & Ron Steigerwalt, PhD Richard Abram & Paul Chandler Eric Allman & Kirk McKusick William E. Arndt Bruce Arnold & James Labi Gary Arthur Scott Bane Kenneth C. Beachler Richard Bekins Allen W. Bernard Charles Bjorklund & Sted Mays Michael K. Boe Rodney Boren Jerry A. Boyd Dale Boyer & Scot O’Hara Peter Cannon Linton Carney & Jay Welch Jim Cassaro Paul Cellupica Robert Chaloner Gary Clinton Robert Cloud Steve Coe Ray Coe Anonymous (2) Stanley Abercrombie John Healy Adams Alan Ahtow Iory Allison Richard Alther James Doig Anderson William Arndt Dr. Mark S. 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Johnson Richard A. Barker & Matthew E. Schlansky Matthew Black David B. Bockoff, MD John Bogner Alfred Brown Kevin Burns Stewart Clifford John Hager Leland Hall John Hudson Jeffrey Johnson Daniel Jones William Kux David LaFontaine William Lauch Paul Loeffler & Mike Sullivan Robert Giron John P. Gooding Bill Gorodner James Gother Patrick Gourley William J. Gracie Jr. & Daniel J. Fairbanks Mikel Gray Clifford L. Gregory & Thomas T. Bishop Michael Craft Stanley Cushing & Daniel Lyons Michael Denneny Robert Dockendorff Ed Donahue Martin Duberman John Finley & Stan McGee Kenneth Fulton Marc Geller Joseph Melillo Al Monetta & Bruce Voss Brian Oleksak & Gonzalo Avila Jack Padovano & Phillip Baker Bertram Parker In memory of Larry Phillips Robert Roehm Ron Seidle David Peckman & Michael Baffa Allan Phillips Charles Popper William R. Powell Terence Quirk Luana Rathman Charles Roberts & Craig Combs Rex Roberts Harry M. Rosenberg G. Louis Rowles William Rubenstein Stephen T. Russell Paul Schilling Jan Schoenhaus Mit Seiler & Marshall Lee Laurence Senelick Dr. E. C. Sheeley A. V. Shirk Harvey Silberman Joel Simkins Donald Mitton Smith Richard C. Snider John O. Snyder David Lane & Grayson Less Malcolm Lazin Gary Lea John Lloyd Robert Lobou Gregory Manifold Gerald Markovitz Vic Marriott Alberto Martin & Jerry Popolis Raymond Matta M.D. Steven McCollom Kevin McNamara In memory of Jason T. McVicker Evan Mogan James Moore Stephen T. Moskey David Murdock Gordon Nebeker Michael G. O’Connell III Roderick F. O’Connor M.A. Ortiz & N.J. Cassun Roger Parris & Michael Longo Daniel A. Pavsek, PhD Thomas J. Gormly Ken Greenstein Garth Greenwell Michela Griffo Michael Hammett Bob Hellwig & Gordon Whitaker James Hendrick Ted Higginson Steve Hoffmann Dr. Jeffrey Hudson-Covolo Thomas Huish & John Mathewson Ronald Hunt Scott Hunter Alice Jay Kent Johnson, PhD Michael R. Kauth, PhD Michael Kelly Joseph Kerr Brian Kieley Clay M King & Iain J King David J. Klein Steven Kowalik Gary Krivy Peter Cohen & Jeff Sposato In memory of Bill Costley Jud Coveyou Mark Davis Gary Domann G. Dryvynsyde & M. Porta Bill Dubay Carl Duyck Bradley Paul Edin Irv Englander Bill Evans Eduardo Febles Fred Fejes Michael S. Flier & David E. Trueblood Robert G. Florand Kirk Frederick David Furland & Gary Werchak Michael Galligan David Garrity Tom Genson Thomas Gerber Robert Gordon Michael Neisen Earl Nelson Bart O’Brien Terrence O’Sullivan & Gary Vena Kurt Ollmann Jerry Olson Joseph Ortiz & Paul Hinkle Dean Papademetriou Michael A. Pargee Ron Pehoski Richard L. Penberthy Andy Perry & John Sistarenik D. Judith R. Phagan Ted Pietras Stan J. Pogroszewski Bruce Pray Kurt Proctor & Joe Welsch Thomas Raffin James Ramadei Glen W. Redman Jesse Reed Ed Reeves & Bill Fish Jerry Rehm Mark Reisman Stuart Rich Bruce Eric Richards Rodger Robb Gary Rod Robert Ross Daniel Ross Stephen Rutsky Michael Ruvo Joseph Ryan Gerald M. Mager Massimo Maglione Gary L. 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DeAngelo George Dearani Blase DiStefano Jack Dodson Karen Doherty Ronald Durnford Edward E. Eliot Davis Elliott & Tim Jolley J. Yusuf Erskine Carlton D. Evans Lillian Faderman Jason Fichtel Charles Fischetti & Michael Chalmers Joseph T. Flynn, MD FRIENDS OF THE REVIEW FRIENDS OF THE REVIEWare readers who donated $150+ toThe Gay & Lesbian Review, a 501(c)(3) educational corporation, in 2021. All gifts are fully tax-deductible. SUSTAINERS ($600–1,199) BENEFACTORS ($1,200–4,999) SUPPORTERS ($150–299) SPONSORS ($300–599) LEADERSHIPCIRCLE($5,000+) Neil Spisak Andrew Stancliffe Jodie Stanton Dennis P. Stradford Bill Strong Dan Studer John Thomas Morris Thompson Paul Travis Andrew Turrisi Robert Walker Stewart Watson Jr. Martin Webb & Charles Venable Richard Weeks & Robert Shavin Michael Weidemann Marc Weiner John Weingartner Lyndon Wester Charles Whelan Allan Wing & Frank Barringer Jeffrey Ryan Robert Saltzman Sam Sanders Steven Sayers Kevin Schack Thomas Schoff Darrell g.h. Schramm Michael Schwartz George Seeber Darcy Seezaday Doug Serafin Camilla Serrano George N. Shardlow Jeffrey Sharlach Nicolas Shumway James Sie Stephen Silha John Silva & Lloyd Ogden Lynn Sipe James Skibo Eric Slater George Smart Andy Smith Douglas Smith Ray Smythe Dennis Sondker David Staats Robert Starshak Joanne Staton J. Scott Strayer William Strong Larry Stuckey II Charles Studen Jerry Sullivan & Bob Benzel Jerl Surratt Kevin Taylor David Teeter John Tekian Robert Teller Ken Thompson Kenneth Tom James Uhrig Glenn Underwood Dr. R.O. Valdiserri Melissa T. Vesperman Ralph Virkler John Wade Richard Wagner Stephen Wall Bryce Ward Michael Warmuth & Michael McAdam Allan Weinreb Samuel Welker Robert Wennersten Diana Westbrook David Westmoreland & Michael Mushar Chuck White George E. Wolf Lawrence Wolf Paul Wolfson Keith Wolter W. Preston Woodall, Jr. DO Gene Woodling Gary Wright Mark Wyn George Yahnel Jr. Joe Young Mark Zelinsky John S. Shaffner In memory of Victor Shargai Wayne Skala Winthrop Smith Jim Stepp & Peter Zimmer John Sullivan Andrew Thompson & Peter Staaf Lyle Timpson Rusty Wyrick
filtrate Holy Word of God University and Technical Institute in neighboring Oklahoma, whose founder, Reverend Brother Earl Richards, is using his radio station to launch a particularly vicious campaign against gay people. Waves of comically outrageous mayhem ripple through the multiple layers of plot, climaxing when a cavalcade of motorcycle-riding Hell’s Fairies rescues Agnes, Jim, and their party from a posse of gun-toting evangelicals. “God save the nelly queen!” cries the Court at novel’s end, undercutting the deeply closeted Brother Earl’s earlier claim that “You can’t flout society’s standards. Whatever you think, whatever the theories, society will never, never permit men to be lovers. All you can do is rock the boat.” Agnes triumphs because, in larger-thanlife Texas fashion, she’s incapable of paying lip service to society’s standards; it’s by rocking the boat that she ensures that men are free to love other men. And that is, in part, the legacy of her creator, Lars Eighner, as well. Raymond-Jean Frontain is professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas. When Lars Eighner Finally Settled Down RAYMOND-JEANFRONTAIN LARS EIGHNER, gay novelist, memoirist, and chronicler of the lives of the homeless, passed away on December 23 in Austin, Texas. He was 73. Born in Corpus Christi in 1948, he grew up in Houston, attended Rice University, and spent time in Los Angeles before returning to Texas. Soon after gay marriage was legalized in 2015, he married his longtime companion Clint Hexamer. Eighner came to prominence in 1991 with an article titled “On Dumpster Diving” that recounted his experience “foraging the refuse of others” after losing his job as a hospital attendant and finding that his own medical problems rendered him unemployable and homeless. Impressed by his wry analysis of how well the poor can survive on what middle-class society discards, St. Martin’s Press commissioned the memoir that becameTravels with Lizbeth(1993), about his life on the road with his dog Lizbeth as his only companion. In 2017 the Times praised the book as “the finest first-person writing we have about the experience of being homeless in America. It is not a dirge ... but an offbeat and plaintive hymn to life.” In 2019 a panel of book critics named it one of the fifty best memoirs of the last fifty years. But Eighner may be remembered best by gay readers for his comic novel Pawn to Queen Four, which was written in the 1980s but didn’t find a publisher until 1995. Following the success of Travels with Lizbeth, St. Martin’s published it as one of Michael Denneny’s groundbreaking Stonewall Inn Editions. Moving between the drag culture of Austin and a homophobic evangelical university in Oklahoma, Pawn to Queen Four satirizes the backlash suffered by the gay and lesbian rights movement in the 1980s when religious conservatives rallied to reverse the progress made by gay people following Stonewall. But it also mocked the ideology of assimilationists within the gay movement who wanted to marginalize drag queens and leather enthusiasts in an attempt to make homosexuality less threatening to mainstream America. Pawn to Queen Four remains—along with Edward Swift’s Splendora (1978) and Principia Martindale (1983)—one of the best examples of gay comic writing about Texas. Like Swift, Eighner enjoyed the contradiction in Texan discourse between the broad assertion of personal liberty and the right of evangelical authorities to police people’s behavior. The contradiction is made more outrageous by the claim that everything is bigger in Texas: big cars, big hair, and—as Swift and Eighner demonstrate—big bigotry. In the novel, Agnes McKinney is a six-foot-seven, 300pound drag artist who serves as Queen of the Imperial Court of the Jade Chimera. Dedicated to the preservation of her people, Agnes recruits a handsome young man named Jim to inIN MEMORIAM May–June 2022 9 Lars Eighner in 1983 history of a politic provocative rom A ally divisive era. ance set against the Monsieur .com BuckJones
“feminine” to be studious (while eschewing sports), a put-down that the gay guys tend to shrug off, presumably because they’ve already relinquished any BMOC aspirations. They even cite the “Best Little Boy in the World” role that many gay boys adopt as they strive to prove their worth with good grades. The phrase “toxic masculinity” crops up to help explain straight boys’ failures—though this seems a little harsh. So much of what (straight) teenage guys do is driven by the instinct to compete for teenage girls, who really are in the driver’s seat when it comes to defining what’s masculine. Once the gay guys have bowed out of that game, it frees up a whole lot of time and energy for other pursuits (not all of them academic). Woke Up toHedwig Actor-singer John Cameron Mitchell, the star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has come out as nonbinary! The announcement was treated as big news byPridemagazine, but anyone who’s seen the musical or the movie probably isn’t stunned. The shocker would have been Mitchell announcing that he’s not nonbinary, though we do appreciate the clarification. In thePrideinterview, he revealed that he’s received some belated blowback for playing the part of Hedwig, a transwoman, while not being trans himself. His new status as nonbinary will presumably help to rectify that faux pas. And yet, is there not a possible risk to insisting that a nonbinary role can only be played by a nonbinary actor? Can we not imagine someone coming along and insisting that a cisgender role can only be played by a cisgender actor, a straight role by a straight actor, and so on? Accepting that logic would seem to restrict trans actors to playing exclusively trans roles, among other implications that Tucker Carlson will no doubt twist to maximal advantage. Erroneous Zones Van Taylor, a Republican rep in the Texas House with a strong “family values” record who has a wife and three daughters, has ended his re-election campaign now that the public knows about a series of raunchy sexts he sent while having an extramarital affair with Tania Joya, the widow of an Islamic State fighter. So far it’s a garden-variety case of infidelity and hypocrisy—though the ISIS bit is odd—but the devil is always in the details where sex is concerned (remember Monica Lewinsky’s feather?). One of Taylor’s fondest requests was that Tania perform anilingus on him before performing oral sex. Anilingus? This of course is the Latinate coinage for “rimming,” and we’re pretty sure this practice originated in the gay community. Apparently it has spread, as it were, at least in fantasy, deep into the interior of this great land. Amy, Congrats! We’ve yet to comment on the extraordinary winning streak of Amy Schneider onJeopardy! this past winter. The fact that she was the first openly transgender contestant in the show’s history was newsworthy, but her forty-day winning streak was epic. Schneider was entirely gracious in victory and open about her gender status during the interview portion of the show—which didn’t stop some people from attacking her on social media on any pretext they could find. Of course, the real motive was simple bigotry, usually linked to a right-wing religious affiliation. So it must have really given these folks heartburn when the contestant who finally defeated Schneider, Rhone Talma, turned out to be a (very) openly gay man. Lady Vlad It was a tiny victory amid a colossal human tragedy, and we may have run this image before, but it is priceless, and it resurfaced just as Vladimir Putin was entering Ukraine. It first appeared on a poster in 2013 as part of an unsuccessful effort to derail Putin’s “anti-gay propaganda” law—Russia’s version of “Don’t say gay”—and it did its job by really getting under his skin, so much so that in 2017 he banned the image for presenting “alleged nonstandard sexual orientation of the president of the Russian Federation.” In the recent incident, hackers took over Bulgarian media, targeting the largest broadcasters, which are allowed to stream content inside Russia. The hackers gained control of these sites for twenty minutes, during which they displayed the image and the words “MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR.” Our only purpose here is to reprint the send-up one more time, just because Putin hates it so much. A Chechnyan in Kyiv The adage about living and dying “by the sword” is undoubtedly as quaint as sword-fighting itself, and yet things still seem to work out that way in a surprising number of cases. For example, the person most responsible for the horrific LGBT purge in Chechnya starting in 2016, Magomed Tushayev, an adviser to the murderous head of state Ramzan Kadyrov, has been killed while fighting for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. The sword of justice in this case was a deadly missile that struck Tushayev’s armored vehicle as he was leading a motorized regiment in its effort take over a cargo airport near Kyiv. Indeed the transition from hatchet man (almost literally) in the persecution of gay Chechens to soldier in the murder of innocent Ukrainians seems a fairly seamless one. Of course, true poetic justice would have a survivor of the Chechen purge firing the fatal missile, but that would be asking a lot. Best Little Boys Another study has found that gay students do significantly better academically than their straight peers and go on to greater educational attainment. Published inAmerican Sociological Review, the study found that over fifty percent of gay men finish college compared to 35 percent of straight men, and gay men are fifty percent more likely to hold an advanced degree. The finding made it to NBC News, where commentators sought an explanation in the cultural stereotype that it’s BTW 10 The G&LR
David Wickenden talks with a British icon of LGBT rights SIMPLY STATED, Peter Tatchell is the doyen of the LGBT rights movement in the UK. Since his arrival in England (from Australia) in 1971, he has been instrumental in founding and energizing a number of key organizations, including Britain’s Gay Liberation Front and OutRage! His commitment to LGBT and broader human rights causes has involved him in over 3,000 nonviolent direct action protests, including many that have put his personal safety at risk, such as his protests in Moscow against the crackdown on LGBT rights in Russia and his two attempts to conduct a citizen’s arrest of Robert Mugabe. I first became aware of Tatchell’s work when, as a closeted eighteen-year-old, I followed his campaign to be elected to Parliament as a member of the Labour Party. His opponents’ leveled homophobic attacks upon him as an out gay candidate made the national press and helped to cement his status as an icon of the LGBT movement—a perennial thorn in the side of those who opposed equal rights for all. I was fortunate enough to meet Peter Tatchell on several occasions when we shared the platform at various LGBT events in the UK over a decade ago. He would be there to deliver the keynote speech, and I would be there with my band to sing a few disco hits at the end of the rally. He was always incredibly kind, interested, and gracious toward us. This interview was conducted via Zoom late last year. David Wickenden: If you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to when you first arrived in the UK, which I believe was 1971, a couple of years after the Wolfenden Report, legalization of homosexuality in the UK, and a couple of years after Stonewall. What was it like to be a gay man in the UK at that time? Peter Tatchell: Can I just make it absolutely clear that it was a partial decriminalization of male homosexuality in 1967, and in fact the number of arrests of consenting adults for same-sex behavior increased by 400 percent in the few years after 1967. Full decriminalization didn’t happen in England and Wales until 2003, not in Northern Ireland until 2009, and not in Scotland until 2013. DW: Thank you for clearing that up. Well, what was it like to be a gay man in those days in the UK? PT: Well, most aspects of gay male life were still criminalized, despite the partial decriminalization of 1967. So sex was only lawful if it took place between two consenting adults civilians, INTERVIEW PETER TATCHELL David Wickenden is a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus on LGBT rights and representations in middle and high schools. aged 21 or over, in the privacy of their own home with doors and windows locked and closed and with no other person present in any part of the house. There were no public figures who were openly LGBT. The only time LGBT+ people were ever mentioned was when they were exposed as spies, child sex abusers, or mass murderers. You know the medical and psychiatric professions still designated homosexuality as an illness and supported various cures, including electric shock aversion therapy, funded by the National Health Service. DW: What were your priorities then at that time as an activist? PT: Well, I was very quickly involved in the newly formed Gay Liberation Front in London. Our agenda was really to take on the establishment over its homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia, so this included campaigns for an equal age of consent. We also had campaigns against the medical and psychiatric professions and did zaps of Harley Street [London’s medical district] against well-known psychoanalysts and psychiatrists who were advocating the curing of homosexuality. I staged a protest at Saint Thomas’s Hospital in London during a lecture ‘We resolved to chart our own course.’ 12 The G&LR Peter Tatchell in 2015. Own work.
by Professor Hans Eysenck, who was then one of the world’s most famous psychologists. He was justifying the use of electric shock therapy. I was dragged out of the meeting and beaten up by doctors and medical students. The Gay Liberation Front also did big protests against Festival of Light, which was a Christian-led morality campaign targeting abortion, pornography, and homosexuality. The leading lights of that campaign were very hostile to LGBT rights, so among other things, we invaded their launch meeting at Westminster Central Hall and disrupted it with nuns in drag. We released mice into the audience, and others of us stood up and held a same-sex kiss-in. DW: So many of your forms of protests demonstrated incredible courage and bravery but also theatrics as well, which I think is a particular kind of phenomenon in the LGBT community. What impact would you say that Stonewall had on the gay community in Britain? PT: Well, I think people heard about the Stonewall riots and subsequent gay liberation protests in NewYork and other cities, and that was partly the inspiration for the formation of the Gay Liberation Front in the UK. In fact, two young students, Bob Mellors and Aubrey Walter, went to the U.S. in the summer of 1970 or ’71 and joined a GLF protest in New York. They also attended the Black Panthers Revolutionary People’s Convention in Philadelphia, where Huey Newton welcomed LGBT people into the liberation struggle. So, they returned to Britain inspired by these experiences, and they were the ones who called the first meeting of what was to become the GLF in London at the London School of Economics in October 1970. DW: I guess the whole pride movement sprang out of that as well in subsequent years. PT: Right. The GLF took the initiative in organizing Britain’s first-ever Pride parade, which took place in London on the 1st of July 1972. I was one of about thirty people involved in organizing and publicizing the Pride event. We had no idea what to expect, because in those days most LGBT+ people were closeted. They wouldn’t dare show their faces, so we were very pleasantly surprised when about 700 to 1,000 people turned out. We rallied in Trafalgar Square and then marched to Hyde Park, where we had a gay day. I’ve got to say that the police presence was extraordinarily heavy. There was almost one police officer for every marcher and some of the officers hemmed us in, shoved us, and openly abused us. DW: What was the response from people in the streets? PT: About a third of the public was clearly hostile. They shouted abuse, and some even threw cans and coins. About a third was just sort of disbelieving and gaping. They couldn’t believe that gay people would dare show their faces. The other third was actually quite supportive, so we had cheers and applause as well. It wasn’t all negative. That gave us great hope and gave us the confidence to keep fighting. DW: And what would you say would be the legacy of Stonewall for the gay community in the UK? PT: I think Stonewall’s legacy is actually quite limited. It was something that happened in the U.S. We acknowledged it, we appreciated it, but we were determined to chart our own course based upon our own circumstances, history and traditions. DW: I’m going to move forward the 1980s, which of course were dominated by the AIDS crisis. How did that emerge for you as someone who lived through it? PT: The first we heard was in late 1981, early 1982, that gay men were dying of some new mysterious disease, and there was very little knowledge or awareness. We very much looked to the U.S., where these cases had been reported, for a lead. So, the gay press here—Capital Gay, Gay Times, Himmagazine— really took the lead in publicizing what information was available. When the first person died of HIV in Britain in 1982, that led to the formation of the Terrence Higgins Trust, which is still the main HIV charity in Britain. We were very conscious of the need to inform and educate our community. Initially the advice was: Don’t have sex with Americans. I and others knew that was not an adequate response. Almost certainly the virus was present in Britain by the time we became aware of it, so we had to think about what other measures could be taken to protect oneself. So the obvious thing was to use condoms, but there was quite a lot of resistance within the gay male community to condom use. Many people regarded them as a spoiler. But eventually, as sexual transmission became verified by medical research, condom use became the norm. We also had the government of Margaret Thatcher, which was indifferent to AIDS, and we had a vast public hysteria and May–June 2022 13 BRIGH NEW FROM T LEAF “Scott Bane shows the an example of how two painter Russell Cheney a . O. Matthiessen and th F elationship between r s e The Magicia author of international best-sellin —Colm Tóibí past.” knowledge of the gay His book enriches our of the 1930s and 1940s. other in the America together and love each and passionately—live ecariousl men could—pr vel n: g n, y ww An imprint of Universit 1-800-621-2736 .umasspress.com/brightleaf w BOOKS THAT ILLUMINATE LEAF RIGHT y of Massachusetts Press A No B
panic, which resulted in AIDS being dubbed the “Gay Plague.” There was a huge escalation in threats, abuse, and violence against LGBT+ people. DW: You mentioned the indifference by the Thatcher administration. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Was is it indifference, or were they more overtly opposed to taking action? PT: Until the first heterosexual person died of AIDS, the government basically did nothing. As long as just gay and bisexual men were dying, they looked the other way, so the Terrence Higgins Trust really struggled to get even meager funding. I think eventually it got something like £35,000, which was a drop in the ocean. So we felt that this was clearly a government that was not recognizing a looming medical emergency and that was allowing its judgment to be clouded by homophobia. This was a time, of course, when the Thatcher government had two consecutive campaigns. The first was for a return to Victorian values and the second was for family values. And in both those campaigns there was no recognition of LGBT+ people. On top of that, we did have in the late 80s Section 28, the first new anti-gay law in Britain for a century, which prohibited the so-called promotion of homosexuality or same-sex relationships. This led to a huge mass of censorship, mostly by local councils and education authorities, but also by some local health authorities. It led to gaythemed plays being withdrawn from schools, gay-themed books being taken off library shelves. It led to violent attacks upon theaters that were independent and were performing gaythemed plays. It was a very hostile and quite violent time. The number of gay and bisexual men arrested for consenting adult same-sex behavior skyrocketed. Simultaneously, the number of gay and bisexual men who were being murdered escalated dramatically. Between 1986 and 1991, I identified 51 murders of men where the circumstances pointed to a homophobic motive, and that’s just the cases that were drawn to my attention. I’m sure the real figure was even higher. It was on a level with race attacks and race murders, but it was almost unreported, and the police were the perpetrators, not the protectors. DW: Do you think that in some respects this backlash served to galvanize the LGBT community? PT: Well, the formation of Stonewall, the parliamentary lobby group, and OutRage!, the direct action protest group, were direct consequences of this escalating homophobic atmosphere— escalating police arrests of gay and bisexual men and the failure to investigate the murders of gay men. DW: I believe that OutRage! initiated a dialogue with the police at that time to try to change policing methods towards the gay community. Can you tell us a little bit about that? PT: We very much issued an ultimatum to the police. We want protection, not persecution. And we mounted a series of highprofile public protests against police harassment, including the use of agents provocateurs. These were young, attractive officers who dressed up in a gay style, then went into a public toilet, park, or cruising area and gave gay men the come-on, and any man who then responded would be arrested. This is clearly police entrapment. So we did a number of things, including picketing police stations, invading police stations, and interrupting police press conferences. We also photographed police agents provocateurs and put their pictures on toilet doors and toilet cubicle doors or strapped them on trees in cruising areas. We were all about exposing what we said was a misuse of police resources and public money. DW: And could you feel public opinion swinging the way of the gay community through this process? PT: It did. OutRage! had a very sophisticated campaign. We really professionalized protest, producing slick news releases that were very authoritative, quoting exact laws, giving examples of individuals who were victims, and offering them to the media to be interviewed. Journalists really praised us at the time, saying that we were incredibly efficient, effective, and professional, and that gave them the confidence to take our news releases and report them, because they knew that we could be relied upon in terms of accuracy and honesty. So, we got masses of coverage in the press and on radio and TV. I and other OutRage! spokespeople would be on TV news programs, discussion programs, radio talk shows, etc., day after day. Through this process we were able to change hearts and minds. It wasn’t an accident. Our strategy was to do imaginative, exciting, daring, provocative protests that would get media coverage. And through that media coverage we would raise public awareness about the scale of anti-LGBT discrimination and violence. DW: You mentioned some of the more spectacular stunts that you pulled with OutRage! Can you talk about a few of them? PT: Well, some of the spectacular OutRage! protests included the kiss-in in Piccadilly Circus in the early 1990s, which was to challenge the way that the police were arresting and securing the 14 The G&LR Tatchell being arrested by the Moscow police in Red Square in 2018. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP.
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