Mattachine Research Articles

The Costume of My Trade

Despite a number of excellent queer labor histories, the historiography of lesbian, gay, and trans people and the historiography of work and workers have remained relatively uninfluenced by each other. This is puzzling in some obvious ways: the Mattachine Society was founded by a communist, and class questions were right there at the origin of the field of queer history with John D'Emilio, Leslie Feinberg, Joanne Meyerowitz, and George Chauncey. D'Emilio and Feinberg were Marxists and Meyerowitz began as a labor historian, while Chauncey had the legendary historian of work David Montgomery for one of his advisors. Enumerating his graduate cohort in the acknowledgments of Gay New York, Chauncey names a string of Montgomery's advisees, now eminent labor historians, followed on the next page by Edward and Dorothy Thompson, with whom Chauncey spent a postdoctoral year at Rutgers. More substantively, a central analytic move of Gay New York, itself building on and developing D'Emilio's classic intervention, is to understand the urban gay world in much the same way that, say, Herbert Gutman understood the worlds of working-class immigrants (with which gay social worlds overlapped to a great degree): as a “counterpublic,” although Gutman would not have used the term.

James Obergefell Honored at John Fryer Anniversary Event

James Obergefell Honored at John Fryer Anniversary Event

Isherwood in Transit

Isherwood in Transit

From the Mattachine Society to Megan Rapinoe: Tracing and Telegraphing the Conformist/Visionary Divide in the LGBT Rights Movement

From the beginning of the LGBT civil rights movement, there has been an intracommunity debate concerning strategies and tactics to effect legal and social change. On one end of the spectrum, the lesbian and gay organizations of the 1950s--the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis--advocated an assimilationist strategy that sought tolerance rather than full acceptance and integration. The tactics to affect this strategy are best described as conservative and conventional--to look and act as “straight” as possible in order to convince courts, legislatures, and the public that lesbians and gay men should be left alone rather than fired from their jobs and criminalized for their intimate conduct. On the other end of the spectrum, the protesters at the Stonewall Inn on June 27, 1969, advocated for liberation along many axes-- gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, class. The Gay Liberation Front, inspired by the Stonewall Riots and formed shortly thereafter, embodied this liberation-based strategy. Its tactics are best described as confrontational, intersectional, and anti-assimilationist. This Article will refer to these two approaches as Conformist and Visionary. Presumably, both the Conformist and the Visionary approaches shared the general end goal of equality for LGBT people; what *800 equality looked like to each group reflects the differences between them. The differences between their strategies and tactics can be generalized as ones of imagination and vision. The Conformist and Visionary divide has permeated the LGBT community’s civil rights campaign through the present day, as has the debate among scholars and advocates about the “best” approach to effect lasting change. While most scholars discuss the benefits and drawbacks of these two approaches vis-a-vis the law and society writ large and propose that one take precedence over the other, this Article explores how this decades-long intracommunity divide--the conversation among activists and scholars within the LGBT community--might shape the future of the movement. Rather than attempt to settle on the “best” approach, then, this Article instead focuses on the impact of the dynamic created by the intracommunity debate vis-a-vis the law and society writ large. It asks and answers the questions: What work did the Conformist and the Visionary approaches do to support the rise of LGBT rights in the United States? And, what work do they continue to do today, so that we may anticipate the growth and impact of LGBT rights on education law and employment law in the future? In doing so, it does not make a normative or strategic judgment concerning either approach. Rather, its goal is to expose and explore what this Article calls the transcommunity dialogue--a communicative pathway between the LGBT community and society at large, which is informed by the Conformist-Visionary dynamic.

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Mattachine Society’s Use of Loose Coupling as a Strategy for Covert Political Action

AbstractCovert political organizing is a vital means by which subordinate groups express grievances against authorities or elites. This article develops an understanding of the process of covert organizing to show how the selection of an organizational structure is a strategic decision. Using original, archival data from the Mattachine Society, a homosexual organization founded in 1950, and the affiliated Mattachine Foundation, I show how the structure of the organizations enabled leaders to segment their audiences and adapt to challenges from outside and inside the group. In particular, I use the concept of a loosely coupled system, emphasizing relations between organizations, to show how organizations can work with varying degrees of discretion. Moreover, building off analytically similar cases in the literature, I demonstrate that a loosely coupled system enables both organizational flexibility and covert political action.

Freedom Summer “Homos”: An Archive Story

Abstract This “archive story” documents how the infamous Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission harnessed homophobia to crush gay civil rights activists at historically black Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi, during “Freedom Summer” in 1964. New information uncovered by the author, a self-described “archive activist” from the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., reveals how the Sovereignty Commission, working directly with the governor of Mississippi, accused and exposed students and faculty at Rust as “homos” and “queers” in pursuit of a single objective: convincing the Rust Methodist Board of Trustees to fire its activist president, Dr. Earnest Smith. The piece further explores how the reason for Dr. Smith’s departure from Rust remained enshrouded in silence for so many years. It ends by connecting the political use of homophobia in 1964 to the words of Judge Carlton Reeves on the challenges facing LGBTQ Mississippians today.

Placing Newton Arvin in Queer History

Placing Newton Arvin in Queer History

Gay Men of Wisdom: A Group-Centered Approach to Helping Gay Men Value Their Distinct Gifts

Gay Men of Wisdom: A GroupCentered Approach to Helping Gay Men Value Their Distinct Gifts Raymond L. Rigoglioso1 issn 0362-4021 © 2018 Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society group, Vol. 42, No. 4, Winter 2018 355 1 Founder and Executive Director, Gay Men of Wisdom, Hudson, NY. Correspondence should be addressed to Raymond L. Rigoglioso, BA, ACC, 72 Summit Street, Hudson, NY 12534. E-mail: ray@gaymenofwisdom.org. For more than a century, there has been a tradition among gay men of exploring the meaning and purpose of being gay. This tradition involves an extensive literature, dating back to Edward Carpenter’s seminal 1908 book The Intermediate Sex, Donald Webster Cory’s The Homosexual in America in 1951, and Mark Thompson’s (1987, 1994, 1997) influential trilogy Gay Spirit, Gay Soul, and Gay Body. While these books provide intellectual fodder and inspiration for gay men who seek to answer questions about their nature and purpose, the real work happens when they gather in groups. Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Foundation in 1950 (later the Mattachine Society) and leader of the modern gay rights movement, gathered men in circles and explored three questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? What are we for? In 1979, he cofounded the Radical Faeries, with an explicitly spiritual purpose to explore and celebrate the very different (“faerie”) nature of gay men. In 1999, Christian de la Huerta published Coming Out Spiritually and formed Q-Spirit, an international network of gays and lesbians in spirituality. Toby Johnson , author of numerous books on gay spirituality, including one by that very title (Johnson, 2004), led groups in Austin, Texas, toward a similar purpose. In 2002, David Nimmons published The Soul Beneath the Skin: The Unseen Hearts and Habits of Gay Men and formed the nonprofit Manifest Love, which, in addition to 356 rigoglioso staging “loving disturbances,” gathered gay men in workshops around the country to explore their natures. From the beginning—for reasons that still puzzle this author—this inquiry has taken place on the margins of the community of men-who-love-men. Even Harry Hay found himself the focus of resistance in the Mattachine Society for his emphasis on cultural transformation and, for several reasons, was forced to leave. Mattachine eventually chose a much more political direction. Still, the drive to understand gay men’s nature and purpose persists, even if among a subset of gay men. It decidedly requires gathering in groups. In 2012, I began a project inspired by this lineage of inquiry that I call Gay Men of Wisdom. In 2015, I published a book, Gay Men and the New Way Forward, which I describe in more detail later. Mark Thompson attended my book reading and workshop in Palm Springs in October 2015. Afterward, he took me out to dinner and grilled me: “Who are you? Why are you doing this? How did you come to this?” Mark was arguably the most influential author in the genre and one of the guardians of this work in his generation. He attended the first Radical Faeries gathering in 1979 and counted Harry Hay as a personal friend. By the end of our time together, he had given me his blessing. I became the de facto leader of this inquiry for my generation. Mark died the following August. A COMMUNITY-BASED NARRATIVE OF SOCIAL PURPOSE I have always believed that this line of inquiry is extraordinary: A community forced to the margins of society gathers each generation to explore its very nature and purpose. This community generates a narrative about what makes its members different—by virtual, if not complete, consensus. It explores the distinct contributions —gifts—that these differences enable its members to make to society. This inquiry is all the more remarkable for its singularity among LGBT people. To my knowledge (I welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong), lesbians, bisexuals , and transgender people have not developed narratives of social purpose. Some might argue that the existing literature includes L, B, and T people, but a closer look reveals otherwise: All of the books in the genre, with the exception of Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds, written by Judy Grahn in...

“A Source of Great Embarrassment to The Bureau”: Gay Activist Jack Nichols, his FBI Agent Father, and the Mattachine Society of Washington

In August 1961 a new and different kind of gay rights organization formed in Washington, DC. Called the Mattachine Society of Washington (MSW)—which was actually the second and more significant inc...

“Some Africans Gave Full Approval of Homosexuality”: Representations of Africa in the U.S. Homophile Press, 1953–1964

ABSTRACTThis essay explores representations of Africa in the three primary U.S. homophile periodicals of the 1950s and early 1960s. It considers 130 articles, letters, and stories in Mattachine Review, ONE, and The Ladder that mentioned Africa or Africans. In doing so, it explores and analyzes the ways that Africa was referenced and represented to understand how those periodicals, their writers, and the U.S. homophile movement understood and were influenced by Africa (or by their perceptions of Africa). The essay argues that views expressed in The Ladder, Mattachine Review, and ONE reflected broader thinking about Africa in the 1950s and early 1960s in focusing on Egypt, relying on U.S. accounts of Africa, and eroticizing the bodies of Africans. But homophile publications also differed from their mainstream counterparts by presenting various African cultures as superior to U.S. culture in their liberal views of and approaches to sexual and gender variance.

Sex With Neighbors: Canada and Canadians in the U.S. Homophile Press

ABSTRACTThis article examines U.S. homophile magazine contributions from and representations of Canada from 1953 to 1964. Drawing on 240 articles, letters, and other items that were published in ONE, Mattachine Review, and The Ladder, the essay first reviews Canadian-authored materials and then shows that U.S. gay and lesbian movement periodicals depicted Canada as more sexually conservative than the United States in three ways and more sexually liberal in one way. The magazines presented Canada as more sexually conservative in its failure to develop an organized gay and lesbian movement, its policies and practices of sexual censorship, and its opposition to progressive homosexual law reform. They portrayed Canada as more sexually liberal in the ways that its mainstream media covered homosexuality. The essay argues that U.S. homophile representations of Canada participated in the ongoing construction and reconstruction of U.S. nationalism. In demonstrating that the magazines generally represented Canada as more sexually conservative than the United States in the years from 1953 to 1964, the essay also shows that more recent depictions of Canada as more sexually liberal are relatively new.

Homonationalism Before Homonationalism: Representations of Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union in the U.S. Homophile Press, 1953–1964

This essay focuses on representations of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe in U.S. homophile periodicals from 1953 to 1964. Extending the application of Jasbir Puar’s concept of homonationalism to the Cold War period, the essay examines 128 articles and other items that were published in ONE, Mattachine Review, and The Ladder and demonstrates that these periodicals often engaged in homonationalist discourses when constructing the Russian, Soviet, and Eastern European “other.” Negative constructions of these regions were sometimes used to affirm the political alignment of the homophile authors with the American nation. At other times, negative constructions were used in comparative assessments that critiqued both the United States and the Soviet and Eastern European regions. In contrast, positive constructions of Russian, Soviet, and Eastern European peoples and cultures were used as evidence that non-heteronormative desires and bodies had legitimate places in many “primitive” cultures and existed across all nations and periods.

“But Oh! What Tales”: Portraying the Middle East in U.S. Homophile Periodicals of the 1950s and 1960s

ABSTRACTThis essay examines Middle East representations in U.S. homophile periodicals from 1953 to 1964. The essay uses more than 120 Middle East–related items that were published in ONE, Mattachine Review, and The Ladder to address the periodicals’ engagement with the region (particularly ancient history and biblical themes) and discuss the types of sexual “knowledge” that the homophile periodicals created about the region. It then assesses the role of periodicals as a genre in the creation of a transnational homophile community, showing both their potential for democratizing participation in this community and their limits. The essay argues that the periodicals made visible the process of assembling a homosexual identity and the fragmentary nature of the parts it strove to unify. Though the views of key U.S. homophile organizations became hegemonic in the international gay rights movement, the periodicals show a more complex, ambivalent, and contested process.

Imperial Queerness: The U.S. Homophile Press and Constructions of Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific, 1953–1964

ABSTRACTThis essay examines the ways in which U.S. homophile magazines represented and constructed Asia and the Pacific from 1953 to 1964. Through an analysis of 209 items that referenced Asia and the Pacific in ONE, Mattachine Review, and the Ladder, the essay argues that U.S. homophiles referenced the region in three primary ways: first, to create relationships, allies, and exchanges with people living in the region; second, to highlight the inferiority of the East and superiority of the West; and, third, to reveal the cross-cultural and transhistorical nature of homosexuality. These references were influenced by Orientalism, colonialism, and the Cold War, which framed Asia and the Pacific as both sexually and culturally backward, but also as a potential tourist destination for gay men and lesbian women.

“The Madness of the Carnival”: Representations of Latin America and the Caribbean in the U.S. Homophile Press

ABSTRACTThis essay examines representations of Latin America and the Caribbean in U.S. homophile periodicals from 1953 to 1964. The 120 items in ONE, Mattachine Review, and The Ladder that referenced this region depicted Latin America and the Caribbean as different from the United States in a number of ways, in particular as more sexually repressive or more sexually liberal. These representations typically conformed to the general homophile movement tendency to challenge U.S. anti-homosexual campaigns during the “Lavender Scare,” while arguing for acceptance based on rights claims. The representations also were based on Cold War, colonial, racist, nationalist, and imperialist frameworks. The essay argues that although the magazines generally affirmed the dominant homophile discourses of respectability and domesticity, they also challenged these discourses by presenting Latin American and Caribbean cultures as gender-nonconforming and sexually promiscuous.

Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music by Nadine Hubbs

<i>Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music</i> by Nadine Hubbs

Hoover's War on Gays: Exposing the fbi's “Sex Deviates” Program

Hoover's War on Gays fills an important gap in the history of the gay rights movement by providing a comprehensive account of the five-decade campaign of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi) to intimidate and harass gay men, lesbians, and organizations that sought to advance their rights. Douglas M. Charles, an associate professor at Penn State University–Greater Allegheny, describes how fbi director J. Edgar Hoover's obsession with homosexuals began in 1937 with the kidnapping and murder of a young boy in Tacoma, Washington. As the fbi became involved in the hunt for a “sexual pervert,” the investigation triggered a “sex panic” that fueled public prejudice and intolerance of homosexuals. The topics of two sections of the book have garnered little attention from historians. Charles draws from fbi documents to describe Buell Dwight Huggins, who was expelled from the University of Illinois in 1940 after he was accused of soliciting a fellow student. Huggins later worked for the federal government and formed the predecessor organization of the Washington Mattachine Society in 1954. We also learn that the controversial homophile activist Edward Sagarin, under the pseudonym Donald Webster Cory, formed the short-lived Homosexuals Anonymous, which led to the formation of the Mattachine Society of New York in 1955.

Race, the Homosexual, and the Mattachine Society of Washington, 1961–1970

Race, the Homosexual, and the Mattachine Society of Washington, 1961–1970

The uncut version: The Mattachine Society’s pornographic epilogue

Countering dominant historical narratives of the Hal Call-led Mattachine Society (a homophile organization dating from the 1950s) as ‘conservative’ or ‘respectable,’ this article examines the organization’s 1970s evolution into a porn theatre and sex club known as the Cinemattachine (later the Circle J Cinema). Arguing for continuities between the 1970s Cinemattachine and prior Mattachine tactics, Call’s own publishing business ventures, and discourses of sexual education, this article suggests that the organization continued to negotiate evolving sexual politics through the exhibition of pornography.

Canonizing Homophile Sexual Respectability

This essay considers the archival practices, historiographic habits, and political orientations that might explain the resistance to or rejection of the notion that sex radicalism, defined broadly to include various challenges to sexual respectability, was an important component of US homophile activism in the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, the essay asks why important historical and archival projects, including the early work of Jonathan Ned Katz and John D'Emilio and the recent EBSCO LGBT Life digitized database, have paid little attention to Drum, a widely circulating homophile movement periodical that promoted gay sexual liberation, and instead have highlighted the significance of more respectable periodicals such as ONE, Mattachine Review, and the Ladder. In exposing the historical erasure of North America's most popular homophile movement periodical of the 1960s, this essay suggests new ways of thinking about gay and lesbian history, queer memory, and sexual archives.