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HISTORY
"The mind and time are two things that are not easily categorized. We separate the past from the future, but time is an amalgam of both. We separate good from evil, but the mind is an amalgam of both." - Isaac Asimov
Introduction
The years since Stonewall have proven to be a time of many changes and advances in the gay right's movement. The last five years of the 90's also proved this to be true, with homosexuality being given more public visibility than ever before. The proliferation of gay culture in the forms of mass media, such as sitcoms, movies, and the establishment of a gay club culture in which all, regardless of sexual orientation are welcomed to participate, are a hallmark of the nineties and the progressive Clinton era. A lot of this growth began taking place within the major cities of this country and even more sweepingly in places, dubbed by Michelangelo Signoreli in his social critique of gay society Life Outside, as "gay urban ghettoes," which are areas that are predominately gay neighborhoods that are run for, and mostly, by gay people, most notably: Chelsea and the West Village in New York City; South Beach in Miami Beach, FL; and Castro Street and its surroundings in San Francisco. It seems that with all of this visibility, our civil rights movement should almost be coming to a close and that we are at the threshold of an era that, at least theoretically, accepts homosexuality as a valid and healthy lifestyle warranting neither praise nor prejudice. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Although the law no longer marginalizes homosexuals to the fringes of society, a trend which reached its apex in the fifties with rampant McCarthiism declaring homosexuals and communists as public enemy number one, there are still legal impediments for homosexuals in some states. The most widely known example is of course, nowhere are gays allowed to marry. Nineteen states still criminalize sodomy between consenting adults and six of them target same sex sodomy. Some states deny custody rights to gay parents and three prohibit gays from adopting. The armed forces no longer excludes homosexuals, but its "don't ask don't tell" policy implicitly stigmatizes homosexual behavior as wrong or unacceptable or at the very least, to something that should not be spoken about. Some states prohibit gays from employment as teachers, police officers, or even firefighters and several require that schools either avoid teaching about homosexuality or that they teach it is outright unacceptable. Antidiscrimination laws and other civil liberties legislation have been circumscribed to exclude homosexuals from protection (see Eskridge 1999, p.140). These laws are all examples of what Eskridge calls "the law's persistent tendency to demand segregating and hiding ones gender or sexual conformity as a condition of citizenship, freedom, and employment (Eskridge, p.7).
This type of legislation draws its precedence from the laws instituted at the turn of the 20th century, which through intentional manipulation, came to target homosexuality almost exclusively by the fifties. Some people might be shocked to find, that there have been previous periods of burgeoning homosexual culture that predate the Stonewall movement. The establishment of homosexual communities in London, Paris and Amsterdam bears some mentioning, as well as the German Homosexual Liberation movement which began with Magnus Hirschfeld in the 1910's and 20's and was ended abruptly with the National Socialist's victory in 1931. The experiences in the United States though, at the turn of the century are distinct from those movements and it is this distinction that allows for the initial conception of a gay rights movement, as well as contributes to the mechanism that keeps it from expanding into a completely integrated system of civil rights. Although Europe began in the same key as the United States, its ballad of universal civil rights is almost finished, while the US is just singing the same old song (to continue with the metaphor). Ironically enough, the 60's and its tone of reform hailed the beginning of the gay right's movement, yet, while conducting research for this project, the Netherlands effectively ratified an amendment that allowed homosexuals to marry and granted them the same rights as heterosexual marriages. It is just one country out of many in the EU, but it is certainly a step and one which will encourage the other countries to reconsider their own stances on the same-sex marriage issue. How far behind we are in grappling with these socially pertinent question has yet to be seen, but one should never make the assumption that law only leaps forward. As we will see, the persecution of homosexuals in the United States and the biases that gave birth and legitimacy to these laws are still present to a lesser extent in the American pathology of the legal system and that it had its beginnings in the early part of the twentieth century along with the formation of a gay culture, with its own nuances, subtleties, and arts.
Up until 1900, "most suppression of sexual and gender variation was accomplished outside of the state, through family and social pressure," (Eskridge, p.18). The turn of the century also marked a growth of urban centers due to industrialization. Among those streaming in were homosexuals, who invariably suffered the same fate as everyone else. The exodus from small towns however, had a particular impact on that 'subculture' or group, in that they were leaving environments where their proclivities had to be suppressed or even go unacknowledged and traveling to cities that facilitated these encounters. Growing Up Before Stonewall chronicles the lives of ten gay men, each one showing the vast spectrum of ways in which people reacted with their "coming out" stories, to employ a metaphor not widely used at that time. Some thought they were the only ones with such feelings. Others had 'normal' relationships with women, suppressing their own homosexuality until either realizing their true preference or finally finding themselves in a situation that would allow for sexual experimentation outside of the norm. Big cities offered just this possibility.
Although, the people interviewed in these accounts, were born in the late twenties and after and they come from very diverse backgrounds and families, but their experiences are probably similar to the experience of many young men that made the move in previous decades. These examples are true for many urban centers at the time, but New York was unquestionably at the forefront of the development of a homosexual subculture and will serve as an analogy for the larger trend appearing throughout other American cities, although the individual circumstances may vary. For many immigrants New York City was their first stop in this country and consequently many ended up staying. "Many Italians, Jews and other immigrants," mostly males of working age, were crowded into the working class neighborhoods that had developed around the Bowery after the Civil War, "replac[ing] the Irish, Germans, and native born white 'Americans' as the largest working class communities in that area of New York," (Chauncey, p. 34). The streets of the Bowery and the Tenderloin, another major working class neighborhood that ran from Twenty-third to Fortieth Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, were often lined with amusements for the working class including: "institutions of commercialized sex," such as "tenement brothels and assignation hotels that served the sexual interests of the unmarried workingmen and married immigrants, unaccompanied by their wives," (Chauncey, p. 35).
Saloons and other amusements gave the working-class a place where they could relax from the harsh realities of work and from their crowded tenements. Saloons became a place among the working class where they could congregate, talk about issues collectively; they functioned as informal labor and information exchanges, they offered financial services and amenities to the working class who had no recourse to financial institutions or plumbing. Lastly, but not necessarily most importantly, saloons also served as a place for them to engage in sexually heated behavior. Part of the usual layout of such a place, included private rooms, usually in the back part or above the main lounge. These rooms were rented out by the hour to the prostitutes, who "worked" at the saloon and their patrons, who did not generally have a private room themselves. "Fairies" and their partners used these back rooms in much the same way as their heterosexual counterparts did and they made themselves at home in this particular public sphere. It seems logical that fairies should be more accepted here than elsewhere. These places were condemned by the wealthy and middle-class of that era and those that visited there were obviously seeking out sexual favors.
In all actuality, homosexual practices were probably just as mundane there as all the other goings on would seem to anyone with enough exposure to such behavior. Many of the men that were enticed into this underworld, discovered that these resorts were "the most famous element of an extensive, organized, and highly visible gay world," where certain men "sat for company," and acted as catalysts for the planning of "social events, such as the Walhalla ball, and had its own regular meeting places, institutions, argot, norms, and traditions," (Chauncey, p.41).
The saloon was just as much an integral part in the gay scene as it was to heterosexual men. These were not justout-of-towners 'slumming' through seedy underworld of New York, considered one ofthe worst in the world, but also gay uptowners and persons belonging to the middle- class who used the anonymity that the city provided to lead 'double lives' as Ralph Werther put it in his personal account (Chauncey, p. 44).That these saloons flourished and without much friction, "reveals the degree to which gay culture was tolerated by - and integrated into - working-class culture and the degree to which social and sexual interactions between queer' and 'normal' men were essential to gay life," (Chauncey, p.45). As previously stated, 'fairies' constituted the most visible facet of gay life, came to be recognized as the symbol for homosexuals or 'inverts' as they were then known and "stood at the center of the cultural system by which male-male sexual relations were interpreted," (Chauncey, p.47). The justification by which straight men explained their sexual activity with the 'fairies,' (and from a more modern standpoint; by which they excused or explained their having sex with men at all) is located in the prevailing social view of the latter. Unlike today, where sexuality is determined by the an individuals sexual-object choice, i.e. if you are a man that has sex with women, whatever the method or practice, then you are considered heterosexual, as a man that has sex with men, regardless of passive or active role, is considered homosexual. People saw themselves through a different social lens, which affected how they interpreted their behavior.
The social construct of sexuality at that time was really unrelated to choice and more distinctly characterized by "the gender persona and the status they assumed," as dictated by an amalgam of an individual's "sex, gender, and sexuality," (Chauncey, p.47) . This meant behaving in a custom that is prescribed by the different values that one's sex is supposed to imbue upon him or her. More specifically, sex, a scientific fact, determined your gender - which more aptly describes the behavioral practices of each sex and this is reflected in your sexuality or the role you play in sexual relations. Under these pretenses, a working-class man that engaged in sex with another man, but played the masculine role, was not necessarily considered a fairy. "Sexual desire for men was held to be a woman's desire," and just one characteristic expressed by fairies along with their adaptation of dress and mannerism that caused them to 'invert' their gender (Chauncey, p.48). Their behavior signaled that they played the traditionally feminine, passive role in sex, making them attractive to the men, who preferred not to have their masculinity questioned, free of any social stigma. Those who adapted this sort of lifestyle, did so to "establish the cultural script that would govern their social and sexual interactions and reaffirm the cultural distance between them and the men they sought;" to facilitate sexual interactions between themselves and the 'trade' or rather, 'normal' men that they sought (Chauncey, p.56). Mostly though, they adopted a "double life" in the sense that they still maintained an outward appearance of sexual conformity. This was due to necessity; men discovered to be leading a 'double life' were often ostracized from their families and it would mean certain blacklisting among their peers. Many of these men took measures to remain anonymous or discreet. "Adopting a woman's name not only announced a gay man's identity, but it marked his transition from the straight world to the gay [and] emblematized their participation in a double life," as well as keeping their real identities hidden (Chauncey, p.51).
It was not a requirement that a fairy dress in women's attire either. A man could just as easily make himself known to be a fairy by dressing unconventionally. Cues like: "green suits, tightly cuffed trousers, flowered bathing trunks and half length flaring top coats," served to alert anyone that noticed where your proclivities lay (Chauncey, 52). If the occasion required more subtlety than that, a person could express his sexual orientation with an act as simple as wearing a red tie or certain jewelry. Although not customary for the time and recognized by those aware of the signs, to mean that the wearer is 'gay;' in situations where those assumptions are not being made, a red tie and similar adaptations only made the wearer seem odd or unconventional at most. These nuances in dress carry a greater significance than just allowing for easy recognition, it "highlight[s] the pervasive character of gender surveillance in working-class street culture;" the little room that men had to maneuver if they wanted to conform to their gender persona and the ease with which they could hint the contrary (Chauncey, p.55).
These developments - the growth of prostitution both male and female, the highly visible nature of homosexuality in certain circles and the nature of the sexual encounters that occurred between 'normal' men and homosexuals, constituted almost a direct affront to the pervading middle-class prudish sensibilities. Social pressure was no longer sufficient to keep the "subcultural communities," from developing or from public recognition, and "concerned citizens turned to the law," (Eskridge, p.18).
The Law Becomes a Suppressive Force
The new legal institution that emerged from this period "represented society's coercive effort to normalize human relationships around 'heterosexuality,'" (Eskridge, 18). A vestige from its puritanical conception, one of the basic tenets of American law has always been to regulate morality and to "suppress vice." In 1882, the law stated that "disorderly conduct," was a criminal offense. Many of these laws were instigated and implemented by the various Comstock Societies that were formed in most states at this time. Even before the turn of the century or the roaring 20's there existed laws that were geared towards preventing sexual acts that would not lead to reproduction and chiefly to curb prostitution. Urbanizing states, such as New York and California reformed these laws so that they would include "gender benders," and same-sex relations in their jurisdiction. New York State expanded the meaning of vagrant in section 887(4) to include: "[any person] who loiters in or near any thoroughfare or public or private place for the purpose of inducing, enticing or procuring another to commit lewdness, fornication, unlawful sexual intercourse or any other indecent act," (Eskridge, p.29). By 1919 it was expanded again to assure that it included male as well as female "degenerates," and was applied specifically to cases of male sexual inverts.
Other states, once confronted with this situation usually followed the lead of larger states and eventually these laws became part of every state's legal code.
During the Prohibition years, homosexuals "acquired unprecedented prominence throughout the city, taking a central place in its culture," (Chauncey, p.301). This development was probably fueled by the reluctance of many to give up their booze and it made them start to question the law more.
If the governing bodies could outlaw something that the majority of Americans approved of and partook in, then the justifiability of many laws and practices came into question. These laws dismantled the working-class saloons under the guise of public sociability laws, because these institutions "seemed so threatening to middle class and rural Americans," but it resulted in the growth of deviant subcultures and made them increasingly difficult to police. By the 1930's, the growth of gay subcultures and in particular the extent to which they made themselves visible, became the "biggest regulatory concern," for legislators of this period and "[g]overnment, police, medics and licensors worked, episodically, to suppress homosexuality from the public awareness . . . [hoping] people could be deterred from being homosexual," (Eskridge, p.43-44). The laws that were came to target homosexuals and homosexual acts exclusively, as well as prostitution, but to a lesser degree. The government barred homosexuals from immigrating into the country with the Immigration Act of 1917, which at its conception in 1875 barred prostitutes and men that associated with them, but which was expanded to include persons with "constitutional psychopathic inferiority," a blanket-euphemism that included homosexuality. Army Regulation 40-105 of 1921 stated that recruits could be barred from service for "serious affectations," like "degeneration, diagnosed by anatomical and functional stigmata, marked by diminished stature and inferior vigor and the body conformations of the opposite sex," (Eskridge, p.34). The trend was moving away from morality and looking to medicine to justify their believes scientifically.
In the thirties, during the Depression, people blamed the twenties and its depravity for the hardships of the era. This came with a serious backlash against homosexuals in particular. With the end of Prohibition, the State Liquor Authority (SLA) became the means to control them. The state made it difficult for gay men and women to associate at bars at all. The licensing expanded the states reach; unlike the period of Prohibition, where everyone went underground, they learned that by the same token they can make the rest of the community the police for them. "The genius of the licensing mechanism," rested in the fact that a bar owner could have his license revoked simply by allowing degenerates to be at his bar and "forced the proprietor to uphold those regulations on behalf of the state," (Chauncey, p.336). Proprietors sought to "protect themselves by excluding from their premises anyone suspected of being gay," (Chauncey, p.348). Gay men and women were then forced to create their own bars where they could be themselves, but these were susceptible to constant raids and subsequently, they were all forced into cycles of closing and reopening somewhere else. The "grapevine," established at the saloons became a means for them to find out where the parties and bars were and where they should not go. Gay life continued, albeit at the fringes of society, because of the force that this community exerted.
The fact that gay men and women had to go underground rendered them invisible, but"invisibility does not impede all forms of speech, so the refusal to identify one's personal interests can facilitate other kinds of gay statements," (Van Leer, p.19). These statements very often took place right under the noses of those that tried to oppress them. Here is where the symbolism in the arts and writing began to be of great importance to homosexuals. It is a way in which they were able to identify themselves within the context of a society that acted hostilely towards them. They appropriated icons, and other works, many of them from artists widely known to be gay and who "produced work that fairly bristled with gay meanings," (Chauncey, p.288). Among those that became prominent symbols with whom homosexuals could identify, or rather raised to icons of a distinctly homosexual culture are: Cole Porter, NoÎl Coward, Bette Davis, and Greta Garbo to name a few. These "subcultural codes," which intentionally left out the majority of the heterosexual audience served to make gays "more visible than they were supposed to be," empowering them over their surroundings, by turning those surroundings into unwillingly, gay, meeting places (Chauncey, p.288). In these situations, whether knowingly or not, "homosexuals and heterosexuals together create[d] meaning, and distinguish[ed] what is truly hidden from what is simply unseen, that which is never spoken to that which is seldom heard (Van Leer, p.20). The power of community was not only apparent in the Stone Wall Movement of the late sixties, it was also evident in our "exploration and reshaping, [of society's] silencings for our own purposes," (Van Leer, p.5). This need to explore, located in the development of camp and other such manners of expression explain "how such a flagrant parody of heterosexual mores might function within the gay subculture - reinforcing the self-esteem of those thought their nontraditional sexuality a rebellion against the conventionalism of late Victorianism," and by giving them a voice in times of socially imposed oppression (Van Leer, p.29).
Development of public areas that tolerated homosexual interaction between themselves and among 'normal' men, where the beginnings of a distinct homosexual culture and community. Communities are generally characterized by their shared "perceptions, ideas, priorities," and a shared history, as well as "its relationship with its environment," all of which is important in the "building of effective affinities," (Queers in Space, p.4).
This period helped to establish a lot of these factors in addition to creating a sense of solidarity among homosexuals. The development of highly systemized cues allowed homosexuals to continue "forging their identity," despite all of the hindrances imposed by the law. Much of these cultural facets persist, but were changed and molded to fit the changing face of society. Hanky codes, bar rags, like Hot Spots and HX and rainbow flags all serve to let the new kid on the block know where to go look for others like themselves and their friends. Our visibility today is a reaction to a time when we all had to stand more or less alone. The visibility is a way in which we continue to fight people who will try to stigmatize kids into not coming out and to let others know that there is indeed a place for us.
Similarly, at the turn of the century the law underwent changes, fueled by society to suppress the vice, the homosexuality, that they felt endangered the integrity of this country. The law, as an almost entirely self-regulating body, failed then to recognize the offenses committed against homosexuals, because it had effectively stripped them of any rights.
The adaptation of laws to target primarily homosexuals was one way to marginalize them. To exclude them from immigrating, to stigmatize them in the army, to disallow them from associating amongst others or even themselves was meant to stigmatize them and weaken their position in society and amongst themselves. The reconstruction of laws to target individuals or certain crimes is still alive and well today; as any drug offender will tell you, where are his Fourth Amendment Rights against unlawful search and seizure? The government has the power to redirect the aims of laws and the fact that it still leaves the rights of homosexuals outside of the fold by not granting sexual minorities any status under the Civil Rights Acts and not recognizing same-sex marriage, is emblematic of their reluctance to accept us as an integral part of society or of their desire to keep us from ever becoming such. Even "don't ask, don't tell," is suspect, because it implies that this is something that should not be spoken about, that it is wrong or that it has no place there. It does nothing to protect those in the military from anti-homosexual hazing or sexism. If one comes out, then they are discharged, and here it fails to take that step that says it is okay to be who you are. It makes it evident (to me anyway) that the possibility still exists for the system to be redirected again. Our era resembles that of the Pansy Craze of the twenties. We could very well go from being affable to being public enemy number one again and the only thing that we have to protect us are the lessons from history. It is imperative for the survival of our American society to make itself aware of these attacks on Civil Liberties. If homosexuals are not safe from an encroaching moralistic law, then who is? Our only defense is to become more politicized, to question authority, to learn not to tolerate injustice against any group, not just those that affect us most directly. When we have done this, then we are all truly free.
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