GLR May-June 2023

to obtain special dispensation to access restricted files of mem bers who were “disciplined” and purged from the Party. The book is theoretically savvy, yet with the accessibility and warmth of an oral history. Indeed, Aptheker frequently returns to her personal activist zeal and psychological angst as a clos eted lesbian. Given her multigenerational experience in the Party, she enlivens her narrative with fond recollections of many of the activists she has known since childhood. A central dilemma of the book is this: Why did Aptheker and others remain closeted members of a homophobic Com munist Party? One reason she assumes as a given: until the late 20th century, the vast majority of same-sex-loving people were secretive about their sexuality, since they risked blackmail, dis missal, prosecution, and social opprobrium. (Sadly, many peo ple remain closeted today for all these reasons.) However, maintaining Communist Party membership—despite the sex ism and homophobia of its leaders—had special value. Aptheker’s deep affection for her closeted comrades demon strates the abiding political and social companionship the CPUSA provided. As journalist Vivian Gornick argued in The Romance of American Communism (1977), the Party gave many pro gressive Americans a shared intellectual community, a power ful rhetoric, and a global confederacy for serving the downtrodden and for improving society. It reminds me of the many gays and lesbians who became physicians, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts despite the professions’ homophobia and active pathologization of homosexuality until the 1970s. They all left their sexuality in the home closet in order to serve a higher mission.

HY AP GR OIBO UT A AN OR CK ALB OT AIL TR Y CK O O H AP GR OIBO UT A AN ,Y

TRAILTO BLACKROCK

HNS OJSA UGL O D O Y WENT T T FIRS N SO YEARS NE O

THE

N AIN T OM ANIID BS O UN

FE, A SANT

OC MEXI

W NE

m • 505-470-7760 60

.co ud lo

l n555@ic o s hn o js al ug do

mosexuality, something which was inherently dangerous at the time. During this period, Ives came to believe passionately that since homosexuals were not accepted by society, they should be allowed to have their own form of society in which they could commu nicate and express themselves freely. To this end, he founded the Order of Chaeronea in 1897, which he named after the site of the battle fought by the Sacred Band of Thebes, made up entirely of male lovers. Far from being a network used to make romantic or sexual liaisons, the Order actually frowned upon members being in relationships with each other. Instead the Order focused on challenging the prejudices they faced as ho mosexuals, both socially and legally. To gether, under Ives’ leadership, they targeted laws that criminalized their sexuality, as well as ones that forbade the use of birth control, criminalized abortion, and demonized those who suffered from STDs. Its manifesto was written by Ives and poet ically states: “We believe in the glory of pas sion. We believe in the inspiration of emotion. We believe in the holiness of love.” Ives was very much an idealist and this ap pealed to many who were tired of having no way to express themselves or seek to improve their situation. Members included men such as the poets Charles Jackson and John Gam

bil Nicholson, the reforming priest Samuel Cottam, and the gay rights activist Edward Carpenter, who would become a lifelong friend and political ally. Always seeking a way to “naturalize” ho mosexuality, in 1914 Ives founded, along with Carpenter and others, the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology. He initiated correspondence with leading scientists of the day and also conducted his own research. To gether, they sought to find a way that homo sexuality could be proven as a natural state, arguing that men should not be criminalized for their nature. They turned to studying the classics to help bring wider attention to the fact that homosexuality was, in Ives’ words, an “eternal and historic truth.” In 1926, he published a book titled Græco-Roman View of Youth as a vehicle for advancing this fun damental thesis. While reforming the laws that criminal ized homosexuality was a priority for Ives, he was also deeply involved in campaigning for prison reform. He was appalled by the conditions in which people of both sexes were kept and the minor offenses for which they were condemned. Ives visited prisons all over Europe, writing and lecturing exten sively on the subject. These campaigns, and the organizations that he founded, gave Ives something that he

had always craved: a sense of family. Histo rian Matt Cook suggests that Ives “imagina tively reworked the form of his family to meet the extraordinary demands of his life ... asserting both his masculinity and sexual identity” through his development of the Order of Chaeronea, and by financially sup porting, at various times, friends and distant family members, thus creating his own un conventional surrogate family. In 1917, he wrote that his household, consisting of his valet Kit and his family, “is my little circle in the world,” and later that through his “broth erhood of men” he had been able to find un derstanding and take comfort. Later in life, he was well known and re spected as a tireless campaigner for a range of progressive causes. Historian Andrew Lycett proposes that he was the model for the charac ter Raffles, the gentleman thief who was cre ated by Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law and appears in one of Doyle’s own titles. Ives would not live to see the decriminalization of homosexuality in Britain, nor the prison re forms he fought for so passionately. However, his early advocacy of tolerance for sexual mi norities at a time when it was dangerous to be openly gay deserves to be recognized. Rebecca Batley is a historian with a special interest in LGBT art and culture.

May–June 2023

29