Category Archives: History

July 26, 2013

Remembering Rock

By Joe

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On July 25, 1985, HIV/AIDS was given a global spotlight when it was announced that screen icon Rock Hudson was suffering from the disease.
Looking gaunt and almost unrecognizable, rumors began to circulate about his health earlier in the summer when the actor had made a public appearance to promote a new cable series of his friend and former co-star Doris Day.
After collapsing in Paris in July 1985, he was diagnosed with AIDS and given treatment with the drug HPA-23, which at the time was unavailable in the United States. It was while he was in the hospital that it was announced to the public that Hudson had AIDS:

“According to publicist Yanou Collart, who acted as his spokeswoman in Paris, the decision was Hudson’s. ‘The hardest thing I ever had to do in my life was to walk into his room and read him the press release,’ says Collart. “I’ll never forget the look on his face. How can I explain it? Very few people knew he was gay. In his eyes was the realization that he was destroying his own image. After I read it, he said simply, ‘That’s it, it has to be done.’ “

Hudson passed away at the age of 59, on October 2, 1985, less than three months after the announcement, in his Beverly Hills home. In his last weeks he was visited by many famous friends such as Carol Burnett, Roddy McDowell and Elizabeth Taylor, who upon his death was reported as saying “Please God, he did not die in vain.”
Hudson’s AIDS diagnosis put the disease into the headlines and changed the way the public thought of AIDS patients, as well as gay stereotypes. Before his death he created the Rock Hudson AIDS Foundation, donating the $250,000 he received from an advance of a biography to the foundation.
Hudson’s death is also credited with jumpstarting Elizabeth Taylor’s fundraising crusade to fight AIDS and Chairman of California’s AIDS Advisory Board Committee Bruce Decker said upon Hudson’s death: “His illness and death have moved the fight against AIDS ahead more in three months than anything in the past three years.”
Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin was quoted as saying: “I’m sure Rock’s coming out will stand as a landmark in the gay community.”

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Coming Out, Gay Icon, History

July 4, 2013

Independence

By Joe
John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
The Declaration of Independence is arguably one of the most influential documents in American History. Other countries and organizations have adopted its tone and manner in their own documents and declarations. For example, France wrote its ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’ and the Women’s Rights movement wrote its ‘Declaration of Sentiments’. However, the Declaration of Independence was actually not technically necessary in proclaiming independence from Great Britain.
A resolution of independence passed the Philadelphia Convention on July 2. This was all that was needed to break away from Britain. The colonists had been fighting Great Britain for 14 months while proclaiming their allegiance to the crown. Now they were breaking away. Obviously, they wanted to make clear exactly why they decided to take this action. Hence, they presented the world with the ‘Declaration of Independence’ drafted by thirty-three year old Thomas Jefferson.

The text of the Declaration has been compared to a ‘Lawyer’s Brief’. It presents a long list of grievances against King George III including such items as taxation without representation, maintaining a standing army in peacetime, dissolving houses of representatives, and hiring “large armies of foreign mercenaries.” The analogy is that Jefferson is an attorney presenting his case before the world court. Not everything that Jefferson wrote was exactly correct. However, it is important to remember that he was writing a persuasive essay, not a historical text. The formal break from Great Britain was complete with the adoption of this document on July 4, 1776.

Jefferson wrote the Declaration in a way that was meant to be read aloud.  The first two paragraphs are some of the most powerful words ever written.  Each year when I teach about the Declaration in my Civics, Government, and history classes, I make sure that it is read aloud so that the students get the full effect.  The most popular way to do this is to play the following video:  http://youtu.be/jYyttEu_NLU.  My students tend to pay more attention to the famous actors who read the Declaration of Independence.
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY, MY FELLOW AMERICANS!

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July 2, 2013

Paul Revere’s Ride

By Joe

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Paul Revere’s Ride
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,–
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”
Then he said “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,–
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, —
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
When be came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,–
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,–
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
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Thursday is Independence Day, so I thought I would post a patriotic poem.  Though the events of this poem occurred on April 18-19, 1775, over a year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it is one of the most famous events of the American Revolution.  In 1774 and the Spring of 1775 Paul Revere was employed by the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety as an express rider to carry news, messages, and copies of resolutions as far away as New York and Philadelphia.
 
On the evening of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere was sent for by Dr. Joseph Warren and instructed to ride to Lexington, Massachusetts, to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were marching to arrest them. After being rowed across the Charles River to Charlestown by two associates, Paul Revere borrowed a horse from his friend Deacon John Larkin. While in Charlestown, he verified that the local “Sons of Liberty” committee had seen his pre-arranged signals. (Two lanterns had been hung briefly in the bell-tower of Christ Church in Boston, indicating that troops would row “by sea” across the Charles River to Cambridge, rather than marching “by land” out Boston Neck. Revere had arranged for these signals the previous weekend, as he was afraid that he might be prevented from leaving Boston).
 
On the way to Lexington, Revere “alarmed” the country-side, stopping at each house, and arrived in Lexington about midnight. As he approached the house where Adams and Hancock were staying, a sentry asked that he not make so much noise. “Noise!” cried Revere, “You’ll have noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out!” After delivering his message, Revere was joined by a second rider, William Dawes, who had been sent on the same errand by a different route. Deciding on their own to continue on to Concord, Massachusetts, where weapons and supplies were hidden, Revere and Dawes were joined by a third rider, Dr. Samuel Prescott. Soon after, all three were arrested by a British patrol. Prescott escaped almost immediately, and Dawes soon after. Revere was held for some time and then released. Left without a horse, Revere returned to Lexington in time to witness part of the battle on the Lexington Green.
 
The events of that night were immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to commemorates Revere’s actions. Longfellow’s poem is not historically accurate but his “mistakes” were deliberate. He had researched the historical event, using works like George Bancroft’s History of the United States, but he manipulated the facts for poetic effect.  He was purposely trying to create American legends, much as he did with works like The Song of Hiawatha (1855) and The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858).  Longfellow was inspired to write the poem after visiting the Old North Church and climbing its tower on April 5, 1860. He began writing the poem the next day. It was first published in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. It was later re-published in Longfellow’s Tales of a Wayside Inn as “The Landlord’s Tale” in 1863. The poem served as the first in a series of 22 narratives bundled as a collection, similar to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and was published in three installments over 10 years.
 
The poem is spoken by the landlord of the Wayside Inn and tells a partly fictionalized story of Paul Revere. In the poem, Revere tells a friend to prepare signal lanterns in the Old North Church to inform him if the British will attack by land or sea. He would await the signal across the river in Charlestown and be ready to spread the alarm throughout Middlesex County, Massachusetts. The unnamed friend climbs up the steeple and soon sets up two signal lanterns, informing Revere that the British are coming by sea. Revere rides his horse through Medford, Lexington, and Concord to warn the patriots.
 

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in History, Poetry

February 20, 2013

Joan of Arc

By Joe
Emmanuel Frémiet’s statue of Joan of Arc, in military attire, stands outside the Place des Pyramides, Paris.
Joan of Arc (Fr: Jeanne d’Arc), a French revolutionary executed by the English for heresy in 1431, is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. Joan shunned the traditional roles and garb of women in her era for the lifestyle and dress of a soldier, ultimately providing a pretense for her conviction and execution. Whether her crossdressing and lifestyle have implications for her sexuality or gender identity is debated.

Kelly DeVries notes that, “No person of the Middle Ages, male or female, has been the subject of more study than Joan of Arc. She has been portrayed as saint, heretic, religious zealot, seer, demented teenager, proto-feminist, aristocratic wanna-be, savior of France, person who turned the tide of the Hundred Years War and even Marxist liberator.”[1] Due to such widely differing interpretations of her life and its meaning, many interpretations of the implications of her adoption of a male dress and lifestyle have been debated.

As Susan Crane notes, “Joan of Arc wore men’s clothes almost continually from her first attempts to reach the Dauphin, later crowned Charles VII, until her execution twenty-eight months later. In court, on campaigns, in church, and in the street she cross-dressed, and she refused to stop doing so during the long months of her trial for heresy. Joan’s contemporary supporters and adversaries comment extensively on her clothing, and the records of her trial provide commentary of her own, making her by far the best-documented transvestite of the later Middle Ages”[2]

After her capture while protecting the French retreat at Margny, Joan was sold to the English, imprisoned, and subsequently tried for heresy. Despite the attempts of the judges to get her to repent for her donning of male attire, Joan repeatedly defends the wearing of them as a “small matter” that was “the commandment of God and his angels.” As Pernoud and Clin note, “Other questions about her mode of dress provoked only repetitions of these answers: She had done nothing that was not by the commandment of God. Probably not even Cauchon could then have guessed the importance that her mode of dress would come to assume.”[3] As Beverly Boyd observed, “The issue was, of course, [Joan’s] voices .. but the emblem of the heresy was her wearing of men’s clothing.”[4]

Joan signed a cedula, possibly without understanding, indicating that she would no longer wear men’s clothing, only to “relapse” later, giving the court justification to have her executed (“Only those who had relapsed — that is, those who having once adjured their errors returned to them — could be condemned to death by a tribunal of the Inquisition and delivered for death.”)[5] On May 30, 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.

Notes:

  1. DeVries, Kelly (1996). Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc / A Woman As A Leader Of Men. Garland Publishing. pp. 3.
  2. DuParc, Pierre (1977). Procès en Nullité de la Condamnation de Jeanne d’Arc, Volume 1. Société de l’Histoire de France. pp. 289-290.  Another translation is given in: Murray, T. Douglas (1902). Jeanne d’Arc, Maid of Orleans: Deliverer of France. pp. 223.
  3. DuParc, Pierre (1977). Procès en Nullité de la Condamnation de Jeanne d’Arc, Volume 1. Société de l’Histoire de France. pp. 306. Another translation is given in: Pernoud, Régine (1994). Joan of Arc By Herself and Her Witnesses. Scarborough House. pp. 39.
  4. DuParc, Pierre (1977). Procès en Nullité de la Condamnation de Jeanne d’Arc, Volume 1. Société de l’Histoire de France. pp. 426.
  5. BAN Lat. 1119 f.47r; Proces… Vol I page 220,221

More information can be found at: “Cross-dressing, gender identity, and sexuality of Joan of Arc”

4 Comments | posted in History

August 24, 2012

MEDIA RELEASE: New Exhibitions Reveal Untold Stories of Queer History

By Joe

New Exhibitions at GLBT History Museum to Highlight Queer

Asian Pacific Islander Women, Early AIDS Prevention Efforts       

San Francisco — Two new shows opening in September at The GLBT History Museum highlight  evocative untold stories from the recent history of San Francisco. An exhibition in the Front Gallery will trace the emergence of organizing by queer and transgender women in the city’s Asian Pacific Islander communities. In addition, a small, focused exhibit in the museum’s Corner Gallery will focus on the pioneering role of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in promoting safer sex during the early years of the AIDS crisis.  

“For Love and Community: Queer Asian Pacific Islanders Take Action, 1960-1990s” recounts the creation of the Asian Pacific Islander queer women’s and transgender community. Many of its members were born in the city, with deep roots in San Francisco Chinatown. Others moved to the Bay Area as adults, working to build support networks and advocate for change. The exhibition features photographs from these organizers that tell a story of family, community, activism and love, and audio clips from oral history interviews that give voice to a history that has never been heard.  
“API queer women and transfolks have been out and working towards social change in San Francisco since at least the 1960s,” notes curator Amy Sueyoshi. “What’s most incredible is that this movement reflects activism en masse. It’s inspiring to see so many people taking action to make a more compassionate world accepting of difference. In a city of rich legacies from both API and queer communities, this exhibition finally reveals the organizing at their intersection.”   
  
“For Love and Community” opens Tuesday, September 18, with a public reception from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Many of the women whose stories are told in the exhibition will attend. Partial funding for the exhibition was provided by the Cesar Chavez Institute at San Francisco State University. 
“Play Fair! The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Make Sex Safer” sheds light on a modest brochure that broke new ground by launching the gay community’s sex-positive response to the AIDS crisis. Since 1979, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have transformed GLBT politics, activism and volunteerism. One major contribution is the long-running Play Fair campaign, one of the first gay safe-sex initiatives.

In 1982, six sisters produced the initial Play Fair brochure, designed to get the gay community talking about prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections in a language free of judgment and guilt. The first edition came out just as GLBT people began to grapple with what would become the AIDS epidemic. In the 30 years since, the brochure has been updated twice while retaining all its original potency, humor and vitality.

Produced in partnership with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Inc., the “Play Fair!” exhibit will open with a public reception on Friday, September 28, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
ABOUT THE GLBT HISTORY MUSEUM
The GLBT History Museum is the first full-scale, stand-alone museum of its kind in the United States. The museum is a project of the GLBT Historical Society, a research center and archives founded in 1985 that houses one of the world’s largest collections of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender historical materials.

Admission to the museum is $5.00 general; $3.00 for California students; and free for members. For more information, visit www.glbthistory.org.

For more details on “For Love and Community,” download the PDF of the curators statement and exhibition credits by clicking here.

For more information on the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Inc., visit the Sisters’ website.

The following photographs may be reproduced in conjunction with coverage of the exhibitions at The GLBT History Museum. The full photo credits given in the captions are required.    

Asian/Pacific Lesbians marching in the 1989 San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade. Photo: Cathy Cade at www.cathcade.com; courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

Produced by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in 1982, the “Play Fair!” brochure launched the safer sex movement. Photo courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society.

Leave a comment | posted in History, News

August 2, 2012

Kiss Mor Chiks

By Joe

Thousands of supporters of fast food restaurant Chick-fil-A made their way to restaurants all over Alabama and the United States Wednesday to stand in long lines in support of the restaurant chain.   Customers packed dining rooms and found themselves wrapped in lines outside restaurants in Montgomery, Prattville, Auburn, Dothan and many other locations around the state and country. Cars snaked around the buildings all day and stretched great distances beyond parking lots.  By early evening, some of the restaurants reported they’d exhausted their food supply and were preparing to close.

The day was billed by conservatives, and credited to talk show host and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, as an unofficial “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” in support of the company. CFA said it had nothing to do with the event’s organization.   CFA President, Dan Cathy, recently sparked a nationwide controversy following remarks that he does not support same-sex marriage. Cathy told a Baptist magazine that he believes in the Biblical definition of marriage, a union between a man and a woman. The family-owned company’s 1,600+ outlets remain closed on Sundays for religious reasons. Cathy’s remarks have made his company the target of multiple boycotts. The Jim Henson Company pulled its toys from the company’s kids’ meals. Mayors of several large cities, including Boston and Chicago, have also said the company isn’t welcomed, although its unlikely the company’s permits will be denied.

Protestors are planning a nationwide event, scheduled for Friday, at which point they’re planning to show their public displays of affection at area restaurants by kissing as same-sex couples.  Opponents of Cathy’s stance have planned “Kiss Mor Chiks” for Friday, asking people of the same sex to show up at Chick-fil-A locations and kiss each other.  Does anyone want to meet me at a Chick-fil-A for the kiss of a lifetime? Actually, I don’t think that the “Kiss Mor Chiks” event is the best way to deal with the situation.  A complete and total boycott of Chick-fil-A is my plan. I’ve always liked Chick-fil-A’s food, but I will not be supporting their restaurants. There are plenty of restaurants with better chicken.

I had not planned on blogging about this, but two things changed my mind. First, I heard my sister, who does not know I am gay, say that she would go to Chick-fil-A on Wednesday to show her support.  Before I could tell her that I would never go back to Chick-fil-A, she had already changed the subject, and I just let the comment slide (not something I am proud of).  The second thing was the massive amount of coverage about “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” on the local news.

As churches struggle with the issue of homosexuality, a long tradition of same sex marriage indicates that the Christian attitude toward same sex unions may not always have been as “straight” as is now suggested. A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine’s monastery on Mt. Sinai.
It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman pronubus (best man) overseeing what in a standard Roman icon would be the wedding of a husband and wife. In the icon, Christ is the pronubus. Only one thing is unusual. The husband and wife are in fact two men.

The very idea seems initially shocking. The full answer comes from other sources about the two men featured, St. Serge and St. Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who became Christian martyrs.

While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly close. Severus of Antioch in the sixth century explained that “we should not separate in speech [Serge and Bacchus] who were joined in life.” More bluntly, in the definitive 10th century Greek account of their lives, St. Serge is openly described as the “sweet companion and lover” of St. Bacchus.

In other words, it confirms what the earlier icon implies, that they were a homosexual couple who enjoyed a celebrated gay marriage. Their orientation and relationship was openly accepted by early Christian writers. Furthermore, in an image that to some modern Christian eyes might border on blasphemy, the icon has Christ himself as their pronubus, their best man overseeing their gay marriage.

The very idea of a Christian gay marriage seems incredible. Yet after a twelve year search of Catholic and Orthodox church archives Yale history professor John Boswell, and author of Same Sex Unions In Pre-Modern Europe, has discovered that a type of Christian gay marriage did exist as late as the 18th century.

Contrary to myth, Christianity’s concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has evolved as a concept and as a ritual.

Professor Boswell discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient church liturgical documents (and clearly separate from other types of non-marital blessings of adopted children or land) were ceremonies called, among other titles, the “Office of Same Sex Union” (10th and 11th century Greek) or the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century). That certainly sounds like gay marriage.

Boswell found records of same sex unions in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, Istanbul, and in Sinai, covering a period from the 8th to 18th centuries. Nor is he the first to make such a discovery. The Dominican Jacques Goar (1601-1653) includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek prayer books.

It sounds to me that the so-called “traditional” definition of marriage as between one man and one woman is not so traditional.  It is based on verses in the Old Testament, which also states that King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. 

10 Comments | posted in History, Politics, Religion

July 30, 2012

The Ancient Olympics

By Joe

ancient-olympics When I took my first history class in college, I did a research project on the Ancient Olympics. I had always been fascinated with the thought of athletes competing in the nude, but I also was in by the Summer Olympics that year, which were being held in Atlanta. My family and I actually went to the Olympics that year since it was close by and had a great time. I was thinking today about doing another history post and I was thinking about all the conversation we have been having about circumcision, and the idea of the Ancient Olympics came to me.

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One of the things I learned during that research project on the Ancient Olympics is that men were not allowed to compete if they were kynodesmecircumcised, which meant that during that time Greek Jews were not allowed to compete in the Ancient Olympics. I also learned that in order to protect their penis during wrestling matches and other contact sports, the men would tie a string around the tip of their foreskin enclosing their glans, thus keeping them safe. The kynodesme was tied tightly around the part of the foreskin that extended beyond the glans. The kynodesme could then either be attached to a waist band to expose the scrotum, or tied to the base of the penis so that the penis appeared to curl upwards.

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The ancient Olympics were rather different from the modern Games. There were fewer events, and only free men who spoke Greek could compete, instead of athletes from any country. Also, the games were always held at Olympia instead of moving around to different sites every time.

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Like our Olympics, though, winning athletes were heroes who put their home towns on the map. One young Athenian nobleman defended his political reputation by mentioning how he entered seven chariots in the Olympic chariot-race. This high number of entries made both the aristocrat and Athens look very wealthy and powerful.
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There are numerous myths about how the Olympics began. One myth says that the guardians of the infant god Zeus held the first footrace, or that Zeus himself started the Games to celebrate his victory over his father Cronus for control of the world. Another tradition states that after the Greek hero Pelops won a chariot race against King Oenomaus to marry Oenomaus’s daughter Hippodamia, he established the Games.

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Athletic games also were an important part of many religious festivals from early on in ancient Greek culture. In the Iliad, the famous warrior Achilles holds games as part of the funeral services for his best friend Patroclus. The events in them include a chariot race, a footrace, a discus match, boxing and wrestling.

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The footrace was the sole event for the first 13 Olympiads. Over time, the Greeks added longer footraces, and separate events. The pentathlon and wrestling events were the first new sports to be added, in the 18th Olympiad.
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Click on any of the event names to see a description of a particular sport:

olive-wreath-ancient-olympicsThe victorious olive branch. The Ancient Olympic Games didn’t have any medals or prizes. Winners of the competitions won olive wreaths, branches, as well as woolen ribbons. The victors returned home as heroes – and got showered with gifts by their fellow citizens.
Here are two videos the History Channel did about the Ancient Olympics. Too bad, they have them wearing modesty pouches.

By the way, for those interested, here is an explanation of women’s role in the Ancient Olympics:
Married women were banned at the Ancient Olympics on the penalty of death. The laws dictated that any adult married woman caught entering the Olympic grounds would be hurled to her death from a cliff! Maidens, however, could watch (probably to encourage gettin’ it on later). But this didn’t mean that the women were left out: they had their own games, which took place during Heraea, a festival worshipping the goddess Hera. The sport? Running – on a track that is 1/6th shorter than the length of a man’s track on the account that a woman’s stride is 1/6th shorter than that of a man’s! The female victors at the Heraea Games actually got better prizes: in addition to olive wreaths, they also got meat from an ox slaughtered for the patron deity on behalf of all participants! Overall, young girls in Ancient Greece weren’t encouraged to be athletes – with a notable exception of Spartan girls. The Spartans believed that athletic women would breed strong warriors, so they trained girls alongside boys in sports. In Sparta, girls also competed in the nude or wearing skimpy outfits, and boys were allowed to watch.
Another side note, Spartan marriage rituals are quite fascinating, if any one is interested I will do a straight post about Spartan sexuality and the marriage rituals. It will have some about gay sex, these were the Spartans after all.

7 Comments | posted in Art, History, Nudity, Video

July 23, 2012

The History of the Movement in One Man’s Life

By Joe

Credit: Rink Foto / HBO

 

To LGBT people who came of age in the 1970s and ’80s, Vito Russo is an icon. But among younger generations, Russo is barely known — and that’s something Jeffrey Schwarz set out to change with his comprehensive, affecting documentary Vito, premiering tonight on HBO. 

“I felt like making a documentary could help introduce him to a new generation,” says Schwarz, producer and director of the film about the man who was author of The Celluloid Closet, a key player in ACT UP, and so much more.

Schwarz, 42, never met Russo, who died in 1990 at age 44, but the filmmaker has a long history with his subject nonetheless. “Vito has always been a beacon to me,” says Schwarz. “One of the first things I did when I was coming out was read The Celluloid Closet,” Russo’s landmark 1981 book about gay and lesbian images in film.

This was in the late 1980s, but Schwarz had been aware of Russo for several years before that. In 1982, when Schwarz was 12, he saw an episode of the movie-review show Sneak Previews, then hosted by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, about gay-themed films coming out that year, and the critics mentioned Russo and The Celluloid Closet.

Later, after Schwarz had been through film school and fallen in love with the documentary form, he heard that Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman were making a movie of The Celluloid Closet, and he asked to work on it. That 1995 documentary, for which Schwarz was apprentice editor, was his first job in the movie business, and the gig gave him access to archives through which he got to know Russo well.

Vito, which Schwarz began planning about five years ago, will give audiences the opportunity to know Russo well. Through archival footage and interviews with family members, friends, and a veritable who’s who of the modern gay rights movement, the film traces his love of movies along with his anger over their negative portrayals of gays; his development as an activist; his outgoing, outsize personality; and his struggle with AIDS, which eventually took his life, but not before he fought tirelessly for awareness and treatment as a member of the direct-action group ACT UP. Russo’s life is essentially a history of the gay movement from Stonewall through ACT UP, says Schwarz.

In one piece of archival footage, Russo says, “Everything I’ve done I’ve chosen to do. This is the life I wanted. I’m one of the very few people I know who can say I never did anything I didn’t want to do, and I always did exactly what I pleased. Very few people can say that about their lives.”

Born in 1946, Russo spent his early life in New York City and developed a passion for film early on, often tagging along with his cousin Phyllis Antonellis on her movie dates, then recounting the plots to his family. He also developed a passion for men, and “never once for a second believed that it was wrong to be gay,” as he observes in the film, despite his Catholic upbringing. In 1961 his family moved to Lodi, N.J., a suburban town he hated for many reasons, including the bullying he received from high school jocks, but he discovered other gay kids and formed a support system.

He returned to New York as soon as he turned 18, and he was a witness to the Stonewall riots of 1969, but he didn’t become politicized until after a raid on another bar, the Snake Pit. He joined the Gay Activists Alliance, an early gay rights group, and participated in many protests, including one for marriage rights in 1971, with an “engagement party” for Russo and his then-lover, Steve Krotz, at the New York marriage bureau. He also started movie nights for the GAA, showing classic films with gay-beloved divas like Judy Garland and Bette Davis.

As the 1970s progressed, Russo made a living and a name as a journalist for The Advocate and other publications, interviewing celebrities such as Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, and worked in the film department at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where he discovered many vintage movies with both coded and explicit gay and lesbian images. Out of this came “Celluloid Closet” lectures and eventually the book, documenting how gay characters were consistently either villains or objects of ridicule, and often died in the end.

“He was the first person to write about how Hollywood treated homosexuals,” says writer Bruce Vilanch in the film. Other well-known interviewees include Larry Kramer, Armistead Maupin, Malcolm Boyd, Gabriel Rotello, Jenni Olson, David Ehrenstein, former Advocate editor Mark Thompson, Tomlin, Epstein, and Friedman, along with many others who knew Russo, including members of his supportive family, such as Antonellis (everyone’s favorite, says Schwarz) and his brother Charlie.

“The film couldn’t have been made without Charlie Russo and other people in the family, like cousin ‘Perky’ [Antonellis],” Schwarz says. His first call when he decided to make the film, he says, was to Charlie. In the film, Charlie recalls the strong bond between Vito and their mother as well as the party atmosphere that reigned among the extended Russo family whenever Vito came to visit.

Other “angels” who helped make the film a reality include Bryan Singer, who came on as executive producer, and HBO executives such as Sheila Nevins. HBO got on board after Schwarz showed network officials a 20-minute sample of the film. “I’m still pinching myself that HBO is our partner in this,” Schwarz says. “It’s kind of a stamp of quality when a documentary airs on HBO.”

Schwarz, who has created many short documentaries used as bonuses on DVD releases, has also made feature-length ones on subjects including porn star Jack Wrangler and horror-film producer-director William Castle. By the end of the year, he hopes to finish I Am Divine, a doc about John Waters’s biggest star. Next up is a documentary on gay actor Tab Hunter, then one on antigay activist Anita Bryant and her infamous Save Our Children campaign.

Right now, he’s thrilled to be bringing Vito Russo to a new audience. In addition to making the film, he’s edited a two-volume collection of Russo’s writings, Out Spoken: A Vito Russo Reader,published by White Crane Books.

He was gratified, he notes, by the reception Vitoreceived as the opening-night attraction this month at Outfest, Los Angeles’s LGBT film festival. “The greatest thing about making this film is everyone is talking about Vito Russo,” he says. “It’s going to get people talking about our history. I hope it will inspire young people to go out there and live a life Vito would be proud of.”

Vito premieres tonight at 9 Eastern/Pacific on HBO. 

1 Comment | posted in History, Movie Review

June 29, 2012

Stonewall Uprising

By Joe

Stonewall Uprising . American Experience . WGBH | PBS

When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City on June 28, 1969, the street erupted into violent protests that lasted for the next six days. The Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world.

In this 90-minute film, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE draws upon eyewitness accounts and rare archival material to bring this pivotal event to life. Based on David Carter’s critically acclaimed book, Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, Stonewall Uprising was produced by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner.

For more information about the beginnings of the Gay Rights Movement in the United States and the Stonewall Riots, please check out my series of post on Stonewall.

Leave a comment | posted in History, Movie Review, Stonewall

June 23, 2012

Alan Turing: 100 Years After His Birth

By Joe

Instead of my usual “Moment of Zen” this Saturday, I am going to honor Alan Turing, who was born 100 years ago today. As a gay man and a blogger, it is only natural for me to post about Turing today. I’m sure I am joining many bloggers who will celebrate his centenary today. He was a hero of the Second World War, one of history’s great geniuses, and a tragic figure in the quest for GLBT equality. If you go to Google’s homepage today, you will see that the Google Doodle is in honor of Turing and his contribution to computer science.

From the day he was born one hundred years ago today—23 June 1912—Alan Mathison Turing seemed destined to solitude, misunderstanding and persecution.  Alan Turing is a name with which a great many people are familiar, but probably not enough. His name was nearly erased from history sixty years ago, though partially revived in the 1970s.  A highly accomplished mathematician, codebreaker and computer scientist, he has been hailed as a pioneer and hero in the fields of modern computing and sexual politics. And while you might not think that those two subjects necessarily complement each other in true strawberries-and-cream style, both are vital to understanding and appreciating the man who helped crack the Enigma code during World War II (and pretty much invented robots).

Turing’s world was markedly different from the one in which we live today. In fact, much of the technology which we now take for granted can be traced back to him in some way. Ever heard of an algorithm? You can thank Alan Turing for that little gem, who originated the concept in a paper while at Kings College, Cambridge.

Best remembered for his work at Bletchley Park in wartime, Turing devised the electromechanical Bombe, which was able to find settings for the Enigma machine, enabling encrypted German messages to be deciphered – which proved to be an invaluable resouce.

After the war, Turing went on to explore the possibilities of artificial intelligence, publishing papers on the subject and creating the “Turing Test”, which determined whether the responses of an artificial intelligence could be told apart from the responses of a human being.

But Alan’s highly celebrated career was marred and ultimately cut short by a tragic personal life. In January 1952, Turing met a man called Arnold Murray outside a cinema in Manchester. After a lunch date, Turing invited Murray to spend the weekend with him at his house, an invitation which Murray accepted although he did not show up. The pair met again in Manchester the following Monday, when Murray agreed to accompany Turing to the latter’s house. A few weeks later Murray visited Turing’s house again, and apparently spent the night there.

After Murray helped an accomplice to break into his house, Turing reported the crime to the police. During the investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray. Homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time, and so both were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.

Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted chemical castration via injections of stilboestrol, a synthetic estrogen hormone.

Turing’s conviction led to the removal of his security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British signals intelligence agency that had evolved from GCCS in 1946. At the time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents, because of the recent exposure of the first two members of the Cambridge Five, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, as KGB double agents. Turing was never accused of espionage but, as with all who had worked at Bletchley Park, was prevented from discussing his war work.

Unfortunately, the fact that Turing had helped save countless lives and secure a win for the Allies during the war did not prevent him from becoming utterly ostracized by his government and peers. He was relieved of his security clearance and forbidden from continuing his work at the Government Communications Headquarters. Two years later, Alan Turing was found dead.

On 8 June 1954, Turing’s cleaner found him dead; he had died the previous day. A post-mortem examination established that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning. When his body was discovered an apple lay half-eaten beside his bed, and although the apple was not tested for cyanide, it is speculated that this was the means by which a fatal dose was consumed. An inquest determined that he had committed suicide, and he was cremated at Woking Crematorium on 12 June 1954. Turing’s mother argued strenuously that the ingestion was accidental, caused by her son’s careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in an ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability.  Hodges and David Leavitt have suggested that Turing was re-enacting a scene from the 1937 film Snow White, his favourite fairy tale, both noting that (in Leavitt’s words) he took “an especially keen pleasure in the scene where the Wicked Queen immerses her apple in the poisonous brew.”

LGBT campaigners are still petitioning for an official pardon of Turing’s indecency charges, although as yet the answer is “no”, with Lord McNally defending the government’s decision by stating that he was rightly prosecuted under the law of the era. But while a pardon may not be immediately forthcoming, John Graham-Cumming did at least succeed in procuring a public apology from then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009.

Brown responded by writing about Turing at length in a piece in the Telegraph, stating: “Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour.” Harder still to believe, as we celebrate all that is great about Britain this year with the Diamond Jubilee and Olympic Games, that a man could suffer so much at the hands of his own country, when it owed him such a debt.

The word “legacy” can be bandied around and overused from time to time, but in this instance it could not be more apt: not just for the debt of thanks we all owe to Alan Turing for his wartime work but also for the opportunity that his life story offers; the opportunity to learn from the mistakes and prejudices of the generations that came before us, and ensure that they are never repeated.

In the words of Gordon Brown: “On behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.”

12 Comments | posted in Gay Icon, History