GLR January-February 2025
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Strange Fruit GLR k
January–February 2025
Mother Nature Is Perverse BY A NDREW H OLLERAN A Suffragist in Love
BY W ENDY L. R OUSE Momentos of Desire BY G ERVAIS M ARSH
L AURENCE S ENELICK Sodomy at the Court of Louis XIV W ILLIAM B ENEMANN Bottom-Shamed by Mark Twain M ARGARET V ANDENBURG Rise and Fall of the “Pansy Craze” R ONALD V ALDISERRI A Novel from a Darkening Time
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The Gay & Lesbian Review January–February 2025 • VOLUME XXXII, NUMBER 1 WORLDWIDE
C ONTENTS
Editor-in-Chief and Founder R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R . WORLDWIDE The Gay & Lesbian Review ® PO Box 180300, Boston, MA 02118
Strange Fruit
F EATURES
Literary Editor M ARTHA E. S TONE Poetry Editor D AVID B ERGMAN Associate Editors S AM D APANAS P AUL F ALLON J EREMY F OX M ICHAEL S CHWARTZ Contributing Writers R OSEMARY B OOTH D ANIEL A. B URR C OLIN C ARMAN A NNE C HARLES A LFRED C ORN A LLEN E LLENZWEIG C HRIS F REEMAN P HILIP G AMBONE M ATTHEW H AYS H ILARY H OLLADAY A NDREW H OLLERAN I RENE J AVORS J OHN R. K ILLACKY C ASSANDRA L ANGER
Sodomy at the Court of Louis XIV 12 L AURENCE S ENELICK
A secret society of noblemen forswore all sexual contact with women
Bottom-Shamed by Mark Twain 15 W ILLIAM B ENEMANN
That burlesque in HuckFinn was originally much bawdier, and gayer
Rise and Fall of the “Pansy Craze” 19 M ARGARET V ANDENBURG
The Roaring Twenties saw a subculture of drag in major U.S. cities
A Novel from a Darkening Time 22 R ONALD V ALDISERRI
Butterfly Man visited a creepy demimonde that the author knew well
Momentos of Desire 24 G ERVAIS M ARSH
Patric McCoy immortalized Chicago’s gay Black men in the ’80s
Consider the Common Cockchafer 28 A NDREW H OLLERAN
Homosexuality is the least of the animal kingdom’s perversities
R EVIEWS
R. Tripp Evans — The Importance of Being Furnished 31 M ICHAEL Q UINN Mickalene Thomas — Mickalene Thomas: All About Love 32 R EGINALD H ARRIS David Evans Frantz, et al. — Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects 33 V ERNON R OSARIO B RIEFS 34 Cait McKinney — I Know You Are, But What Am I? On Pee-wee Herman 35 M ATTHEW H AYS Will Tosh— Straight Acting 36 C HARLES G REEN Colm Tóibín — On James Baldwin 37 A LAN C ONTRERAS Allen Bratton — Henry Henry 38 J EAN R OBERTA Alan Contreras — The Gay Imagination 38 P HILIP G AMBONE Mikkya Hargrove — Mama 39 A NNE C HARLES JoyLadin— Family: Poems and Once Out of Nature 40 E LI A NDREW R AMER Oliver Radclyffe — Frighten the Horses 41 B RIAN A LESSANDRO James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance (exhibition) 45 C ASSANDRA L ANGER Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody ; To My Friends at Horn (exhibitions) 46 P HILIP C LARK Andrea Arnold, writer-director — Bird 48 A LLEN E LLENZWEIG Brian Jordan Alvarez, creator — English Teacher 50 C OLIN C ARMAN Thomas Grattan — InTongues 42 D ALE B OYER MiloTodd— The Lilac People 42 H ANK T ROUT
A NDREW L EAR F ELICE P ICANO J AMES P OLCHIN J EAN R OBERTA V ERNON R OSARIO Contributing Artist C HARLES H EFLING Publisher S TEPHEN H EMRICK Webmaster B OSTON W EB G ROUP WebEditor A LLISON A RMIJO ______________________________ Board of Directors
P OEMS & D EPARTMENTS
A RT C OHEN ( CHAIR ) E DUARDO F EBLES R OBERT H ARDMAN S TEPHEN H EMRICK H ILARY H OLLADAY D AVID L A F ONTAINE J IM J ACOBS A NDREW L EAR
G UEST O PINION — Election Aftermath: Silver Linings 5 LGBT Media C ORRESPONDENCE 6
I N M EMORIAM — Three Who Made a Difference Remembered 8
BTW 10 R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R .
P OEM — “Closet Space” 18 J AMES G AYNOR H ISTORY M EMO — Alice Morgan Wright: Suffragist, Sculptor 26 W ENDY L. R OUSE P OEM — “I Watch the Porn Stars” 43 C RAIG C OTTER C ULTURAL C ALENDAR 44 P OEM — “Mary Jo and Sappho” 47 M ARY J O B ANG A RT M EMO — Why Did a Classic Novel Disappear? 49 N ILS C LAUSSON
R ICHARD S CHNEIDER , J R . ( PRESIDENT ) T HOMAS Y OUNGREN ( TREASURER ) S TEWART C LIFFORD ( CHAIR EMER .) W ARREN G OLDFARB ( SR . ADVISOR EMER .)
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. Subscription rates : U.S.: $41.70 per year (6 issues). Canada and Mexico: $51.70(US). All other countries: $61.70(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.” ISSN: 1077: 6591 © 2025 by Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. All rights reserved. W EBSITE : www.GLReview.org • S UBSCRIPTIONS : 847-504-8893 • A DVERTISING : 617-421-0082 • S UBMISSIONS : Editor@GLReview.org
January–February 2025
3
Now Is the Winter...: ‘Strange Fruit’ FROM THE EDITOR
T HE TITLE of this issue borrows a phrase from Billie Hol iday’s signature song, “Strange Fruit,” but without the lurid imagery (the song is about a lynching). Repurposed, the phrase refers to the qualities of both strangeness and fruiti ness that these articles seem to share. The term “fruit” has long associations with the gay community—a slur, but surely the least noxious one—and as for strangeness, read on… Taking these articles chronologically, we start with Laurence Senelick’s exposé of a secret society of “highborn sodomites” in the court of Louis XIV in 17th-century France. The strangeness of these guys is perhaps a function of the society in which they lived, where the everyday attire was so over-the-top that they really had to go all out to make a fashion statement. Their creed was the avoidance of all sexual contact with women, which left open the pursuit of each other, and above all young men and boys, with whom they did not confine their activities to what we would call “plain vanilla” sex. Scandal ensued, and only the King himself could eventually put a stop to it. Leaping ahead two centuries, readers may be surprised to discover an article on Mark Twain, whose heterosexual creds seem unassailable. Sure, the relationship between Huck and Jim has raised some eyebrows. And then there’s that bizarre inci dent in Huckleberry Finn when two traveling hucksters come to town and sell tickets to a bawdy show “for men only.” William Benemann reveals that the original version was far raunchier,
going back to a stage performance that Twain had seen in his youth titled “The Burning Shame” that involved male nudity and simulated buggery. Wiser heads prevailed, and this passage in the novel was dialed way down. Moving into the 20th century, Margaret Vandenburg takes us to a phenom later dubbed the “Pansy Craze” or “Queer Craze,” which forms the basis for her new novel Craze . It hap pened during the “Roaring Twenties”: the era of Prohibition, speakeasies, and a spirit of “anything goes” in cities like New York and Chicago. Among the permissible diversions were what we would call drag shows, though the sight of cross-dressing men was not confined to the stage but spilled into the city streets. It also spilled into the literature of the time, from a highbrow novel like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando to a weekly New York tabloid called Broadway Brevities . The arc of permissiveness is carried forward by Ronald Val diserri in a piece about a 1934 novel titled Butterfly Man , by Lew Levenson. By now the culture had entered the darker period of the Depression and the Hays Code and a backlash against the “loose morals” of the previous decade. Levenson’s novel dives into the gay demimonde of this era but turns it into a cautionary tale. It’s clear that Levenson was part of this world and knew it well, only now it was de rigueur to present it as ugly and dan gerous and ultimately fatal for those who went there. R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R .
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PL?O >OO6 8L3036N :12M %'2117O9 @2L=O2T 369OO9M * ",ON$L= .012236 LM N2OL0P1QRO 3R 36 SL6NQLNOTR 0P2LSSM UPO 7618R L 8129 0Q26R :SORP 3601 ON2ORR; 2O69O2R L6L01<= L61 $GG$ & '()*.0''( 024 -/)10''( *22/305*36 67!'/)05*/2 /- 46#*)6 024 *5# ./#5 $%&'*&,*. 1+- (709 )>7 +-AMBB C>7 +DAMEF G>7 +DHMEE I29O2 :21< =1Q2 :L?1230O >117ROSSO2 12 YLSS KBBVFHXVFZKX 12 ?3R30 8ORS@2ORRM12N TheG & LR 4 GUEST OPINION Election Aftermath: Silver Linings T HE RESULTS of the November election are both too sweeping and too dismal to cover in a single op-ed piece. Here are a few takes on the election as excerpted from LGBT media sources soon after November 5th. T HE A DVOCATE person voters. The survey involved 22,509 respondents.) If the Edison exit poll in 2024 is an accurate reflection of LGBTQ + people’s voting patterns, then it shows a strong shift to the left in the LGBTQ + population in the last four years. This could be because of the nonstop attacks on LGBTQ + people coming from the right in the form of attacks on transgender youth’s rights to healthcare and equal education. GLAAD Ballot Measures Strengthened the Freedom to Marry Alongside the presidential race and major races in U.S. Con gress and state legislatures, Americans voted to enact ground breaking ballot measures that will improve LGBTQ lives. Voters in Colorado, California, and Hawaii passed ballot measures en shrining freedom to marry protections into their state Consti tutions. The 61% majority of California voters who said Yes to marriage equality in 2024 is an especially meaningful leap in public opinion in contrast to the passage of Proposition 8 in 2008, which banned marriage equality. Twenty years ago, opposing marriage equality was a win ning political wedge issue for Republicans. In 2004, more than a dozen state-level constitutional amendments flooded the country seeking to preemptively prohibit marriage equal ity, and President George W. Bush ran on a platform of ban L GBTQ + Political Wins in an Otherwise Devastating Election There were a number of notable victories for LGBTQ + candi dates and causes in Tuesday’s election. Some highlights: • Sarah McBride, currently a Delaware state senator, won elec tion as the state’s sole representative in the U.S. House. She will be the first out transgender member of Congress. She is a Democrat, as are all the LGBTQ + politicians mentioned here. • Tammy Baldwin won reelection as a U.S. senator from Wis consin in a tight race over Republican challenger Eric Hovde, who ran a campaign marked by thinly veiled homophobia. • Emily Randall was elected to the U.S. House from Wash ington state’s Sixth Congressional District. Randall, a lesbian, will be the state’s first LGBTQ + member of Congress, and the first LGBTQ + Latina elected to that body from any state. She is currently a state senator. • Julie Johnson, was elected to the U.S. House from Texas’ 32nd Congressional District. An out lesbian, she will be the first LGBTQ + member of Congress from any Southern state. • All incumbent LGBTQ + U.S. House members won reelec tion: Becca Balint of Vermont, Chris Pappas of New Hamp shire, Ritchie Torres of New York, Eric Sorensen of Illinois, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, Angie Craig of Minnesota, Sharice Davids of Kansas, and Robert Barcia and Mark Takano of Cal ifornia. Their reelection plus the election of three new repre sentatives brings the number of LGBTQ + House members to twelve, an all-time high. LGBTQ NATION . COM Exit Poll Shows 86% of LGBT People Voted for Harris LGBTQ + people voted Democrat more in 2024 compared to 2020, according to this poll. Edison Research, the firm that conducts national election exit polling for CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC, found that 86% of respondents who identified as “gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender” voted for Kamala Har ris, while 13% voted for Donald Trump. (Note that the poll was only conducted in ten “key” states and sampled only early in &BOOKLOVERS READERS ATTENTION Tim’s Used Books 242 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA timsusedfilms@gmail.com | 508-487-0005 | Open year-round. Are TIM’S USED BOOKS of Provincetown has been traveling throughout the Northeast since 1991, buying book collections, large and small. Scholarly, gay interest, the arts—all genres. Immediate payment and removal. A novel, a play, a poem … an experience! StarLate Rising Bold! A genre-bending reading and theatrical experience that challenges sophisticated readers on many levels. Three male actors—two of whom are gay—along with a middle aged alcoholic actor who is trying to make a comeback, assist the narrator in weaving a complex story that honors readers as intelligent meaning-makers. Available Now Dorrance Publishing and Major Online Booksellers January–February 2025 5 Correspondence President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign, and those run by other Republican candidates, spent tens of millions on anti trans ads leading up to the election, a messaging strategy that ning marriage for same-sex couples at the federal level. Cur rently, according to 2024 Gallup polling, a near-record high of more than two-thirds of Americans support the freedom to marry—compared to 27% of Americans who did so when Gallup first started polling about the topic in 1996, and 68% who did not. W ASHINGTON B LADE Dems Must Not Abandon Trans People after Trump’s Win As Democrats look inward following Vice President Kamala Harris’ electoral defeat, the party must not abandon transgen der people or cede the fight to expand rights and protections for the community, National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund Pres ident Kierra Johnson told the Washington Blade . has been credited with energizing the conservative base and ultimately defeating Democrats like U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (D Texas), who ran for Ted Cruz’ (R-Texas) U.S. Senate seat. Oth ers doubt whether the issue had much, if any, impact on the elections, especially the presidential race, arguing that the re sults are better explained by headwinds like the post-pandemic disadvantage faced by incumbent leaders around the world, or by a realignment of the American electorate. Challenging the theory that the anti-trans advertising was effective, Johnson said, is: (1) the success of so many LGBTQ candidates like Delaware State Sen. Sarah McBride, who made history with her election to become the first transgender mem ber of Congress; and (2) the fact that Trump and his allies did not just leverage anti-trans messaging in their campaigns, but also leaned into other forms of bigotry, from fear mongering about immigrant communities to racist attacks focused on Har ris’s biracial identity. thoughtful gift the book Sebastian’s Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dalí and Federico Garcia Lorca (2005), edited and translated by Christopher Maurer of Boston University. Chris was a friend and colleague of my late mother, Audrey Lumsden-Kou vel, and it was she who knew it would be of much interest to her gay son. I most highly recommend this collection of love letters ex changed between Lorca and Dalí to any reader who wants to delve deeper into this fascinating episode of our shared history. Alex Kouvel, Palmares, Costa Rica Gisèle Freund’s History of Photojournalism To the Editor: Regarding the Art Memo on photogra pher Gisèle Freund in the September-Octo ber 2024 issue: missing from Emily L. Quint Freeman’s otherwise solid overview of Freund’s life and career is any mention of her landmark study on the history of docu mentary photography, Photography & Soci ety , which was published in English in 1980 by David R. Godine, Boston. First pub lished in France in 1974, the book would be translated into German, Danish, and Japan ese editions before finally emerging in Go dine’s English edition. It as an illustrated history that investigates the origins of docu mentary photography in France in the 1840s and continues through to the birth of photo journalism in Germany and its explosion of in American mass media magazines like Life and Time . Freund was an excellent writer and au thor of several other historical studies, in cluding La photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle ( Photography in France in the Nineteenth Century ) and James Joyce in Paris: His Final Years . I hold Gisèle Freund in great esteem. I met her when she exhibited her photographs at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, where I worked in the mid- to late 1970s. We remained in touch for a number of years into the 1980s. She was a great and some times combative intellect, full of amusing anecdotes about her professional life, but more reserved when discussing her personal life, although I never doubted her affilia tions were woman-centered. Thanks to her, I was invited to a gathering at the Manhat tan apartment of Natalia Danesi Murray, whose recently published book, Dar linghissima: Letters to a Friend , was drawn from the private correspondence Murray had over four decades from her intimate friend, NewYorker journalist Janet Flanner. Longtime transatlantic cosmopolitan that she was, Gisèle Freund marveled that in all those years she had herself only just met Natalia Danesi Murray. I felt I was witness ing a moment of lesbian history. Allen Ellenzweig, New York, NY Correc ti on In the November-December 2024 issue (page 19), an illustration showing Federico Lorca and Salvador Dalí in intimate em brace is apparently a fake, the work of a clever Photoshopper. Whether a product of wishful thinking or a desire to smear one or both men—or perhaps it’s legitimate, who knows?—the picture has appeared in numer ous outlets over the years. For the record, there are other photos of the two men em bracing that have not been challenged, so the author’s case for the intimate nature of their relationship remains intact. Lorca’s Remains Were Found To the Editor: I have just finished reading, with much interest, the essay by Ignacio Darnaude in the November-December issue, “The Love Song of Lorca and Dalí.” The subject is of particular interest to me for a couple of rea sons, one being the fact that during a semes ter I spent at the Universidad de Granada at the end of 2009, a number of lengthy arti cles were published in the local paper re garding the disinterment of a body from an unmarked grave situated in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada just outside the city. By all accounts, these were indeed the remains of the celebrated local poet, Federico García Lorca, who “disappeared,” or rather was ex ecuted, during the fascist regime that took over the country in the mid-1930s. Although in her Art Memo, “What Lorca and Dalí Almost Had,” Emily L. Quint Free man maintains rightly that “the fascists hated that Lorca was queer and socialist,” regarding her assertion that “his remains were never found,” I beg to differ. This violent episode that occurred nearly one hundred years ago remains controversial and uncannily prescient of this moment we are living through now. In the USA today, as in Spain just fifteen years ago, the alt-right fights to rewrite the past, situating them selves as the heroes of society. The incon venient truths of murdered queer and trans bodies, then and now, remain viciously hid den from the light of day. The other connection that I have to the love story between these two avant-garde Iberian artists of the last century is less mor bid. A few years back, I received as a TheG & LR 6 F R I E N D S O F T HE R EVIEW F RIENDS OF T HE R EVIEW are readers who donated $150+ to The Gay & Lesbian Review , a 501(c)(3) educational corporation, in 2023. All gifts are fully tax-deductible. 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Eliot Davis Elliott & Tim Jolley Mark Zelinsky George Zuber James Moore Gerald Morin Alexander Roche Steven Roehling Daniel Ross & Michael Davidson IN MEMORIAM Three Who Made a Difference Remembered I N KEEPING WITH TRADITION, we take time to remem ber of few of the notable LGBT people who died during the previous year. Here are three figures of national stature who left a lasting legacy. —R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R . writing under the nom de plume that would soon become quite well known, churning out poetry, essays, and movie reviews that launched his career as a mainstay of the Village art scene. He would later be hired as art critic for The Village Voice , but by then the AIDS crisis was in full swing, and much of his writing cen tered on the growing epidemic. While his early literary output consisted mostly of plays that he directed and acted in—he also landed parts in a num ber of indie movies in the 1980s—it was with his novels that Indiana emerged as an important voice in gay literary fiction. Two of the most prominent were Horse Crazy (1989), about a 35-year-old art critic who falls in love with a man who’s hand some, charismatic, drug-addicted, and clinically insane; and Gone Tomorrow (1993), which is narrated by a drifter who takes an acting job in Colombia and enters a world of illicit sex, intrigue, and AIDS, plus there’s a serial killer on the loose. Indiana died from lung cancer in the East Village apartment where he’d lived for many years, at age 74. D AVID M IXNER was an activist whose achievements would have been recognized no matter what, but he happened to be a long time “FOB” or “Friend of Bill”—Clinton, that is—so for a time he was probably closer to a president than any out gay person in history. But his influence was short-lived: Mixner was bitterly opposed to the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that Clinton en campus, and soon he was mounting protests in support of work ers’ right to unionize. Organizing people and protests became Mixner’s superpower as the Vietnam War dragged on. He was a force in the McCarthy campaign in 1968 and organized the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. By 1978, he was fully engaged with LGBT causes and successfully organized to de feat the Briggs Amendment (Prop 6) that would have barred gay people from teaching in California schools. He became an important AIDS activist in the 1980s, helping to defeat Prop 64, which called for PWA’s to be quarantined. In the early ’90s, he reconnected with Clinton and soon threw himself into his presidential campaign, in part on the be lief that his friend would lift the ban on LGBT military service. Following his break with Bill, he quit party politics, though he continued to organize for the cause on various fronts. And he started to write, producing two memoirs and a series of per formance pieces that became known as “The Mixner Trilogy.” He wrote two feature articles for this magazine: “Knowing When (Not) to Compromise” (Summer 2000) and “Obama’s Year of Missed Opportunities” (March-April 2010). David Mixner died of long Covid at his Manhattan home at the age of 77. dorsed early in his presidency, and it led to a permanent rupture in their friendship. Mixner’s decision to go down on prin ciple was in keeping with his MO as an ac tivist going back to the 1960s, when he was a student at Arizona State. When Gen eral Westmoreland came to speak, he or ganized a protest that rocked the Tempe D OROTHY A LLISON came ready-made with the two things that any storyteller needs to become a great writer: a gift for language and a story to tell. The gift is always a mys tery, but the story she told in much of her fiction was that of a girl who grew up poor in South Carolina, where she was sexually abused by her stepfather over a period of years. That did not prevent her gift from emerging. Breaking all family traditions, she finished high school and attended college (Florida Presbyterian), where she was radicalized by the ’60s, joined a feminist collective, and studied urban anthropology. While surviving on odd jobs, she brought out two books of poetry in the ’80s, plus an award-winning collection of stories ti tled Trash (1989), before publishing Bastard Out of Carolina in 1992, which was met with critical acclaim and booming sales. It would later be made into a film (1996) directed by Anjelica Hus ton. Set in Allison’s hometown of Greenville in the ’50s, the novel begins with the birth of Bone to her fifteen-year-old mother, who remains a central figure in a drama that explores their complex relationship against a backdrop of poverty, un deremployment, and failed marriages to abusive men. Allison continued to write fiction, notably the novel Cave dweller (1998), but much of her subsequent writing was non fiction, including the essay collections Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature (1994) and Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1996), both of which were reviewed in these pages. Her influence as an LGBT activist and philosopher—particu larly in lesbian-feminist circles, where she became something of a cult figure—can scarcely be overstated. She died on the day after the November election following a brief battle with cancer. She is survived by her son Wolf. G ARY I NDIANA was a prolific writer one of whose novel’s titles, White Trash Boulevard , captures both his love of paradox and his alienation from mainstream society. It was this sense of es trangement that afforded him the perspective from which to scrutinize and satirize modern life. He skewered the New York art scene that he came to know well, but also the national media culture that brought us the Menendez brothers (in prison for murdering their parents) and Andrew Cunanan, who assassi nated designer Gianni Versace. Born in 1950, his chaotic childhood in cluded an alcoholic father and brutal bully ing at school. He left home at age sixteen and headed to the West Coast (it was 1966), where he became a hippie, attended Berke ley but didn’t graduate, moved to L.A. and did odd jobs, and finally decided, in 1987, to move to New York City. By then he was TheG & LR 8 IN MEMORIAM Jack Sansolo Took the Message to Big Business J ONATHAN R OTENBERG A DEAR FRIEND and mentor to me and many others, Jack Sansolo departed our world last October at age 81. The inimitable “Dr. Jack” had been living in L.A. in recent years with his husband Dean. He was diagnosed last year with Stage 4 prostate cancer. 1991, he became the most openly gay executive in America. The “Gay in Corporate America” story changed the lives of tens of thousands of LGBTQ employees. It launched the forma tion of Employee Resource Groups worldwide, where minor ity employees from all different backgrounds could find support among their colleagues. It started a sea change in cor porate human resources management, which began to under stand that all employees are more effective if they can bring their full selves to work and show up authentically. Nevertheless, Jack himself paid a high price for coming out so publicly. In the high-stakes, conservative world of corporate marketing at the time, the response was mixed. The CEO of the American division of a top Japanese car manufacturer was so incensed that he wanted Jack to be removed from the com pany’s account, even though Jack had led its brand launch. Hav ing started with Hill Holliday in Boston and later moved to their L.A. office, he left the company in 1993 when the agency’s L.A. office was closed. He had fallen in love with Southern Califor nia, where he remained, starting up his own consulting firm. Jack and his husband Dean loved traveling and appreciat ing great art, design, and music around the world. Jack became an avid yoga practitioner and kept at it well into his seven ties. Jack continues to be a wonderful inspiration to me and so many others every day. _______________________________________________________ Jonathan Rotenberg is a clinical social worker and LGBTQ activist. In 1991, Jack was in the highly visible position of senior vice president for the Boston-based advertising giant Hill Holliday when Fortune magazine approached him to be interviewed for a groundbreaking story on gay people in corporate America. No major business magazine had ever written about gay employees before. Homophobia was rampant in the business world in 1991; companies could fire employees simply for being gay; and there were no laws protecting gay people from discrimination. To Jack’s surprise, an editor at Fortune told him a week be fore publication that they planned to feature him on the cover of this issue. He knew that some of his senior executive clients held negative stereotypes about gay people. The smartest ca reer decision would have been to decline Fortune ’s offer. But Jack had been deeply affected by the backlash against Black and female employees at AT&T in the 1970s. He realized that progress would be impossible for gay people in the workplace unless senior executives started to come out and set an example for others. So, Jack said Yes to Fortune . His boss, Jack Con nors, was fully supportive of this decision. On December 16, CHRISTOPHER BRAM full of gentle shocks of r messy and real, like life Andy’s story is emotion for rock concerts, sex, p and trips to gay Greenw sey in197 d s lungesu r p M uthor of F th f F k t (ada Au — t i recognition.” fi itsel . This ne rst novel is fi f nal and sex , un y and tender, y, f n photo shoots, and love. wich Village in its party years 78, with his bes riend Elena, t f us deep inside An y Pollock’s d nste ) rs 0 1F551G K1HG 7F58 40/G KE IK 45EFIJ4 36 1KK2FIJ 3KE JKFIJLM /0EEFGH /0I E 6I E9 0'0F10:1G 3EK/ 0/0 <=-B%>OQ &( -=Q! S"$Q &< "&+ =OQ =( ?=O; ")$CD N5" :OQ S"$Q &( Q") +$- QO;-< Q 0*KI 0IH :0EIG4 , IK:1G &QD "&< @$-AQ >) P=R)!# <$?< Q") =OQ Q= >) <= "=Q ?=O @$-AQ B)Q January–February 2025 9 W HEREAS this is basically a humor column, or at least one that cherishes irony; and whereas the November election sucked all the oxygen out of the cybersphere and left little to laugh about… We bring you a few reruns from past issues that seem apropos for this political moment. Busted! We knew the jig was up for the National Organiza tion for Marriage (NOM), the major backer of anti-gay mar riage initiatives across the USA, when a secret internal document surfaced that began: “The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks.” On it went to outline a grandiose media campaign featuring artic ulate black spokesmodels and celebrities to carry the anti-gay message. (They also had a plan for Hispanics.) This was be fore President Obama came out in favor of marriage equality, and before this document was exposed, both of which could throw a small wrench into the plan. July-August 2012 Outside of Convention The Republican National Conven tion seemed equally divided between vitriol and wrath, but at least some of the delegates were having a good time, and the result was a huge upsurge in business for Cleveland’s male sex workers. One hustler reported that his income surged six-fold during the four-day event; another took in an unheard-of $800 per day. The great thing was, they didn’t need to travel all over the city but could remain right around the Quicken Loans Arena. Commenting on the delegates who hired them, escorts reported that most were married, many were in their forties, a lot came from Texas, and most were first-timers. Trying to account for the large number of clos eted Republicans, one escort mused: “When it comes to any thing people aren’t supposed to be doing, they like to do it”—a nice précis of a conclusion that it took many pages for Freud to reach. Once you make something taboo, it’s all peo ple can think about; it takes on a life of its own. Curiously, fe male prostitutes reported a downturn and even a collapse in demand during the Republicans’ big week. The best expla nation is that most of the delegates, unlike the usual conven tioneers who come to Cleveland, brought their wives along and couldn’t get away—except for those who could. September-October 2016 Karma Time Among the Democratic victories on election day in November was that of Danica Roem, who became the first transgender legislator in Virginia (anywhere?) by de feating Republican incumbent Bob Marshall for a seat in the House of Delegates. The poetic justice of it all! Marshall wasn’t just anti-gay; he described himself as Virginia’s “ho mophobe in chief.” Nor was this an idle claim: it was Mar shall who introduced an anti-transgender “bathroom bill” into the House. His aggressively transphobic campaign in BTW THE POWER O Y MIDLIFE OFGAY e d i o l h m TheG & LR 10 cluded frequent use of the wrong pronoun to refer to Ms. Roem. By all accounts, the Democrat ran a brilliant cam paign, making herself as visible and available as possible, even as her opponent refused to debate. Had they done so, Roem may have been forgiven for uttering those immortal words: “I’m your worst nightmare.” January-February 2018 The End of Sex A prominent white nationalist, Nick Fuentes is telling his male supporters that having sex with women is— wait for it—gay! He makes this astonishing assertion thus: “Having sex in itself is gay. ... Think about it this way: What’s gayer than being like ‘I need cuddles. I need kisses. I need to spend time with a woman.’ That’s very sus[pect].” In other words, the sex act is a girly thing, so by abstaining totally, Fuentes boasts: “That makes me really more heterosexual than anyone.” A leader of the right-wing “Groyper Army,” a vio lently racist, anti-Semitic group that participated in the Jan. 6th uprising, Fuentes has admitted that he once kissed a girl in high school, but after that he never wanted to kiss a girl again. At some point he starts to sound like General Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove , whose disgust over spilling Nick Fuentes his “essence” with a woman leads him to start a nuclear war. It’s tempting to see Fuentes’ views as bizarre and unprecedented, but really it’s an old obsession he has stumbled upon, a rejec tion of (heterosexual) sex because of its association with women and the values they represent (love, nurturance, compassion). From the Puritans to the Nazis to today’s white nationalists, it’s baked into authoritarian movements past and present. July-August 2022 Banning Books Is Bo tt omless A school district in Texas actu ally banned the Bible itself for a time—along with Toni Mor rison’s The Bluest Eye, The Diary of Anne Frank , andmany other titles that were found to be in violation of the Keller dis trict’s guidelines on sex and violence. The Bible was banned for its “sexual content, violence, including rape, murder, human sacrifice,” and so on. Some of the 41 banned books were later reinstated, but the point was made: any book is fair game if you look hard enough for something to be offended by, including the very book whose religious teachings these school boards are ostensibly trying to uphold. Needless to add, the book-banning effort in Keller is part of a movement in red states across the U.S., and the resonance with past episodes of book-banning is obvious. Today such bans are a largely sym bolic gesture, since kids find out about sex and gender on the Internet and not at the library. But it has always been about the symbolism. What the Nazis were saying when burning whole libraries was: “If we can burn your books, we can burn you.” And that’s a sobering message in any age. November-December 2022 Also available at yo MAC To learn more a e. our favorite bookstor .com CinSF der online: and toor January–February 2025 11 ESSAY Sodomy at the Court of Louis XIV L AURENCE S ENELICK T HE MAN IN THE IRON MASK never existed. A prisoner of state under Louis XIV, he spent 34 years in the Bastille and may have been made to wear a velvet mask. Seventy years later, Voltaire alleged that the mask was iron and the prisoner had been the king’s elder, illegitimate brother. But it was Alexandre Dumas in the last novel in his D’Artagnan trilogy, Le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1840), who added the twist that the masked inmate was the King’s twin brother Philippe. In its adaptations, Hollywood distorted Louis into a tyrant who had to be replaced by his virtuous sibling with the aid of the mus keteers. Louis Hayward was convincing in the double role in 1939, Leonardo DiCaprio less so in 1998. M ONSIEURAS M ADAME L OUIS XIV DID INDEED have a younger brother named Philippe, but the king was never at risk of being supplanted. Philippe I, Duc d’Orléans, known as Monsieur, is one of history’s most notorious effeminates, whose affections and fortune were lav ished on male favorites, from courtiers to opera dancers. In an age of fluctuating sexual identities and noblesse oblige , hewas dutifully married twice and sired several children. Neverthe less, “the silliest woman in the world,” as he was called, was never taken seriously politically. From childhood, he was mad about female fripperies but did not dare dress as a woman in public because of his rank. Short and tubby, he wore as many rings, bracelets, precious stones, and ribbons as fashion al lowed; his wig was enormous, black, and powdered, and rouge was discreetly applied. In private, he would put on lace caps, earrings and beauty spots, losing no opportunity to “drag it up” at costume balls, where his greatest pleasure seemed to derive from being humiliated, threatened, and mocked by his current paramour. His relationship with the Chevalier de Lorraine has been characterized as basically sado-masochistic. Unscrupulous, nar cissistic, and notoriously jealous, Lorraine kept making greater and more brutal demands while Philippe delighted in the abase ment and abjection. Ultimately, Louis had Lorraine locked up in a chateau in Lyon and then in the remote Château d’If (famous from The Count of Monte Cristo ). Philippe blamed his young wife for insisting on his favorite’s imprisonment, and when she died the next year, rumor ran (falsely) that she had been poi soned by Lorraine. The Chevalier was recalled from exile. Louis himself had a strong appetite for women and was fond of his bastards, ennobling them and promoting their careers. He often expressed his detestation for sodomites. Nevertheless, when his confessor urged him to evict them from his court, the King sighed: “Where am I to begin? With my own brother?” So he often turned a blind eye to Philippe and the many courtiers who shared his tastes. Following the Affair of Poisons, which revealed the aris tocracy to be riddled with crime and debauchery, the king fi nally decided to purge society of vice. The highborn sodomites began to panic, including those in the entourage of Monsieur, who moved his residence from Versailles to Paris. The Church was calling for heads, and Louis, turning toward piety as he aged, was inclined to comply. However, his Minister of War Louvois showed more political savvy and dissuaded Louis from punishing the sodomites. “It would be better for His Majesty than if they loved women, for when they have to go to war and battle, we couldn’t detach them from their mistresses ... while, if they have other inclinations, they would be quite ready to leave the ladies and go on campaign with their male lovers.” Besides, he pointed out, if the vice were to be punished, they would have to start with the Jesuits. Whether or not Louvois was thinking of the famous Sacred Band of Thebes, Louis realized that he could not deprive his Laurence Senelick is author of The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre and editor of Lovesick: Modernist Plays of Same-sex Love . Philippe d’Orléans, “Monsieur,” brother of Louis XIV. Portrait by Pierre Mignard. TheG & LR 12 stopped loving her once she had an affair with his valet. All three were appointed along with the Marquis de Biran. This foursome drew up the statutes of the order in a country house and, two days later, back in Paris, they presented their constitution. Its articles stipulated that all candidates for admission had to be “visited” by the four “grand priors” to guarantee that their bodies are sound and can “support the austerities.” Any sexual re lationship with a woman will mean immediate expul sion. Any rank may be admitted. One remains a novice only “until the beard appears on the chin.” Marriage is allowed only for reasons of property and begetting an heir, but the member must not love his wife and will be allowed to sleep with her only once a week. All private affairs must be shared, but the “mysteries” of the order must not be revealed to anyone other than potential can didates. The grand priors get first pick of the guests and the others “must be contented with the leftovers from their table.” Through the back channels of gossip, their secret was soon out. In summer 1682 a pamphlet declared “France is become Italian” and stated that there existed a confraternity of noblemen calling itself “The Holy Congregation of Glorious Pederasts”: “All the ladies had made their charms so accessible that the young men despised them ... debauchery reigned in court more than anywhere else in the whole land and although the king had on several occasions expressed an inconceivable horror of these sorts of pleasures, that was the only case in which he was disobeyed.” Princes of the blood and distinguished gentlemen rushed to be admitted. Among the first was the Comte de Vermandois, Louis XIV’s illegitimate son by Louise de la Vallière. In 1681, he was fourteen and as beautiful as his mother, and had been named Admiral of France. Rumor had it that he had first been debauched by Monsieur’s lover Lorraine. Vernandois was ad mitted, but, as an illegitimate child of the King, he requested that the rites of initiation be dispensed with. This was not al lowed, but as a special favor he could choose which of the pri ors he preferred for his “visitation.” He was also permitted to designate his “partner in pleasure” from among the brothers. In gratitude, Vernandois spread word of the brotherhood to drum up candidates. This caused such an eagerness in high society to enter the order that word of it came to the King’s ear. N OBLEMEN B EHAVING B ADLY Before the Sun King got wind of these goings-on, rumors about these extra-curricular activities had already scandalized the pub lic. During one spree in a brothel, the Chevalier de Tilladet, the Marquis de Biran, the Duc de La Ferté, and the son of Finance Minister Colbert sodomized their favorite female prostitutes, bound one of them to a bed, placed a fuse in her vagina, and set it alight, deaf to the screams of their victim. They then caroused drunkenly through the streets all night, breaking lanterns. Stop ping at the wooden bridge that led to the Ile de la Cité, they tore down its crucifix and tried in vain to set it on fire. These depredations caused a great to-do. At first the may hem was attributed to valets, no one “believing that men of rank army of its best generals—such as the burly Huxelles, who pro moted good-looking junior officers and well-built man-servants; or Vendöme, who boasted far and wide of his preference to be buggered by farmhands, chair-bearers, and stable boys. Louis even congratulated him on surviving two operations for syphilis. They were but a few of the sodomites who had won battles, conquered towns, and gained the favor of the mob, like Prince Eugene of Savoy, one of the greatest strategists of his time. The Prince was known as “Madame Puttana” for making himself available to any interested young man. F RANCE T URNED I TALIAN A ROUND 1678, an exceptionally bold group of adolescent lords, including Guy-Armand Gramont, Comte de Guiche, an intimate of Monsieur, decided to found a secret society whose statutes in cluded total abstinence from women (but for less noble reasons than the gentlemen in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost ).They wore a badge showing a man trampling a woman at his feet in imitation of the order of St. Michael, with the angel trampling the devil. This misogyny was partly for fear that women, born gossips, would give away their secrets. There was a struggle for primacy among the founders. The Marquis de Manicamp claimed to have the most experience at the practice; the Duc de Gramont, Guiche’s brother, pulled rank as a duke and pointed to his reputation as the greatest sodomite in the land. The Chevalier de Tilladet pointed out that he was a Knight of Malta, itself an advanced degree in debauchery. Gra mont was accused of loving his wife too much; he said he The Chevalier de Lorraine, portrayed as Ganymede, catamite and cupbearer of Zeus. Portrait by Baldassare Franceschini. January–February 2025 13
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