Secret Cy: behd the untold gay history of DC polics | Books | The Guardian

Contents:

• WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'
• SECRET CY: BEHD THE UNTOLD GAY HISTORY OF DC POLICS
• JAM KIRCHICK EXPLOR DC’S GAY HISTORY AN AMB NEW BOOK
• WHAT MA WASHGTON, D.C., THE “GAYT AND MOST ANTIGAY CY AMERI”
• NFL ACH KEV MAXEN MAK SPORTS HISTORY BY G OUT AS GAY
• GAY WATER, A NEW NNED CKTAIL, WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BUD LIGHT
• KEV MAXEN, JAGUARS ASSISTANT STRENGTH ACH, OUT AS FIRST OPENLY GAY MALE ACH NFL
• GAY WASHGTON DC
• FIRG OF GAY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER ULD TT LATT SUPREME COURT LG

WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'

“Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton, " by Jam Kirchick, is a 654-page tome that took years of rearch and an exhstive vtigatn to printial archiv, historil terviews and once-classified ernment rerds.

SECRET CY: BEHD THE UNTOLD GAY HISTORY OF DC POLICS

“I realized that all the stori I was readg, and the personali and phenomena, whether was McCarthyism or the Reagans, FDR or JFK, that there were the gay stori lurkg the background, ” Kirchick said. “It was the specter of homosexualy that provoked the first and only suici by a member of Congrs his Capol Hill office, ed Lyndon Johnson to et that his historil lead would evaporate, and seized the paranoid md of Richard Nixon send only to the plots of his ever-expandg enemi list, ” Kirchick wr. ” Rumors of homosexualy were tastrophic to those who were acced of , but Kirchick also asks the rear to nsir the broar human and societal impact of such wch hunts on gay Amerins workg ernment.

“To asss the full sle of the damage that the fear of homosexualy wrought on the Amerin polil landspe, one mt take to acunt not only the reers ed and the liv cut short, but somethg vaster and unquantifiable: the possibili thwarted, ” Kirchick wr. Although openly LGBTQ people have ma their way to the hight ranks of ernment today, was not long ago that spected homosexuals workg for the feral ernment were hunted down, publicly huiated and termated wh the full force of the ernment.

There were whispers that Reagan was possibly participatg “homosexual nduct, ” and some Republins saw Reagan’s potential nomatn as a “danger to the Republin Party and the untry. The possibily that Kemp uld jo the ticket was evince that there was a “homosexual rg” around Reagan and that he was “the ventriloquized pawn of shadowy and sister forc, ” Kirchick wr. ” Wh those words, Clton would do somethg that would have seemed unfathomable to most, if not all, of his precsors: make an explic appeal to gay Amerins for their support a printial electn.

JAM KIRCHICK EXPLOR DC’S GAY HISTORY AN AMB NEW BOOK

This historic appotment has s roots an extraordary moment 1957 when Frank Kameny, a young astro-physicist, cid to stand his ground when the feral ernment dismissed him om his job for beg gay. In The Deviant’s War, Cervi firsthand acunts, classified FBI rerds, and personal documents, predomantly om the Frank Kameny Papers at the Library of Congrs, to give the rear an sight to the 1960s when the Mattache Society of Washgton, the group Kameny found, beme the first anizatn to prott the systematic persecutn of gay feral employe.

As reviewed Washgton History, this volume b Kameny’s own words, cludg approximately 150 documents om his personal papers om 1958 to 1975, wh ntextual analysis and mentary to explore the evolutn of gay rights strategy.

Johnson explor the the experienc and ristance of the DC gay muny at the ontl of the ernment’s attempt to purge LGBT people om the Civil Service both before and durg the McCarthy era. Addnal llectns have been acced and/or ma accsible sce this gui’s creatn, cludg the digal llectns available through The People’s Archive, DC Public Library: Digized edns of the Washgton Bla, DC’s prcipal LGBT newspaper sce s first issue October 1969; and digized edns of Blacklight, an pennt newspaper servg DC’s Black gay muny. This is te of Amerin polics, where the 20th century saw numero gay and lbian dividuals participatg at the hight levels of power, yet almost wholly effaced om the tellg of our natn’s history.

WHAT MA WASHGTON, D.C., THE “GAYT AND MOST ANTIGAY CY AMERI”

In the new book Secret Cy, historian Jam Kirchick attempts to scribe to the historil rerd the homosexual men and women who have served and ntributed to their untry Washgton DC, throughout the 20th century.

”Kirchick first beme trigued by the ia of a gay history of Amerin power polics 2007, when he moved to DC and realized that was suffed wh a vivid gay cultural life and history.

Kirchick astutely pots out that the fear of homosexualy has been a driver of printial polics, functng siarly to other historilly regnized forms of prejudice like antisemism and purg of so-lled munists. This prejudice got kickstarted wh the revelatns of the Ksey Reports 1948 and 1953, when people sudnly realized that the gay populatn was far larger than anyone had gused. This fear of “the gay next door” fueled stereotyp of gays beg disloyal to the Uned Stat, as well as the belief that they were herently nspiratorial – “if you have three homosexuals the room, ’s tomatilly a nspiracy, ” said Kirchick.

NFL ACH KEV MAXEN MAK SPORTS HISTORY BY G OUT AS GAY

Bt-known for beg forced to rign amid a sex sndal while on the brk of succeedg Newt Ggrich as Speaker of the Hoe durg the impeachment of Bill Clton, Livgston 1980 beme nvced that the gay men legimately workg for Ronald Reagan were fact a sister bal secretly ntrollg him.

GAY WATER, A NEW NNED CKTAIL, WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BUD LIGHT

Kirchick entw this lurid tale, which fueled an effort to scuttle Reagan’s 1980 printial nomatn, wh a number of gay nspiracy theori attached to the Reagan admistratn (cludg one that Reagan himself had sex wh another man). Regardls of all the trigue, Kirchick also reports that Reagan’s admistratn proved to be “the gayt of any printial admistratn yet”, monstratg two pots central to Secret Cy: the growg acceptance of gays throughout the 20th century and their great value ernment, even a macho, hard-right one like Reagan’s. It is an irony mon to stori of LGBTQ+ rilience that the very thgs that opprsed gay and lbian dividuals – such as the need to lead a double-life, or the isolatn that me om not beg permted to marry – were ma advantageo both to the pursu of their liberatn and their polil reers.

“In the perd documented this book, ” Kirchick said, “closets were good at producg gay people wh skills that ma them preternaturally equipped to functn Washgton – they were good at keepg secrets, had no fay life to distract them, and they were more loyal to people power.

”Throughout Secret Cy, Kirchick do a masterful job of nveyg the flavor of homophobia each historil era, while g impecble rearch to vividly characterize the dozens of var dividuals at play the stori. This is a book not jt about how polil power was brought to bear on the liv of gay men and women; even more, nveys the texture of an ever-evolvg world that nstantly kept gay people check.

KEV MAXEN, JAGUARS ASSISTANT STRENGTH ACH, OUT AS FIRST OPENLY GAY MALE ACH NFL

It shows how social forc shaped gay liv through nstant implic and explic threats, the very language that homosexuals had to scribe their inty and experience, and stern ntrol over the ways they uld accs the sexual practic that were ma so central to their inty as human Hudson wh Nancy and Ronald Reagan 1984 Photograph: Courty Everett Collectn/REXBee of this rich attentn to tail, Secret Cy also offers a vivid chronicle of the wav of liberatn and backlash that characterized the growg acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights the 20th century. Across the sweep of Secret Cy, we see homosexualy transform om an absolute reer-enr to somethg policians n be refully open wav ntue today Republin efforts to slanr LGBTQ+ people as “groomers” and erase the gas trans people have ma accs to medil re and social cln.

Although Kirchick is well aware of the ugly polics of the prent, as well as the agily of the gas LGBTQ+ people have ma society, he ends Secret Cy on a note of triumph, celebratg the transformative acceptance of gay people as a “massive acplishment of the liberal society”, and a qutsentially Amerin succs story. A brief asi Jam Kirchick’s sweepg new book, Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton, reunts how a Dupont Circle der beme a midcentury gay haven: Two men were vertly holdg hands unr the table, and a bartenr me over to tell them they didn’t have to hi.

Throughout Secret Cy, such tails bump up agast momento historil events: Kirchick trac how homosexualy affected the Alger Hiss trial and the Iran-Contra affair, while makg the se that Washgtonians were the vanguard of anizg for equal rights. Your book lays out an tertg ethil tensn between rpectg people’s personal privacy if they want to rema the closet and the tactil utily of outg gay people, generally to shame them for advancg an anti-gay agenda their profsnal life while beg secretly gay. There’s also the moment your book when Harvey Milk outs Oliver Sipple, the man who saved Gerald Ford om an attempted assassatn, bee Milk wanted the public to see an example of gay heroism.

GAY WASHGTON DC

Blick arrived to share telligence about a new threat, one that, he suggted, uld stabilize Amerin natnal secury om wh: the existence of gay staffers at the hight levels of began by explag that “a well-known pnage tactic” entailed lurg female ernment staffers “to the munist unrground by volvg them lbian practic. Blick said that he had intified forty to fifty female ernment employe who had participated the “sex i, ” and that many more were likely to surface: five thoand homosexuals lived D.

Blick kept the list locked a metal safe at police ’s gay list quickly took on mythic stat, a now largely fotten rollary to Joseph McCarthy’s famo “list of nam” of Communists the State Department. Edgar Hoover, followg a basels tip om a begdged strategist, began vtigatg Richard Nixon for allowg a “rg of homosexualists” to operate at the “the hight levels of the Whe Hoe. Ngrspeople, eager to stop Ronald Reagan om wng the Republin Printial nomatn, gathered to discs whether a “homosexual rg” ntrolled the “Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton” (Henry Holt & Co.

(Relayg the fear exprsed by the Republin senator Bob Livgston 1980 that a “bal of right-wg gay hmen” was on s way to assassate him, for stance, Kirchick not that this “may seem far-fetched” to the ntemporary rear. C., was “simultaneoly the gayt and most antigay cy Ameri, ” a place which queer people were omniprent—but so, too, was the risk of you went lookg for the prototypil queer staffer among the book’s st of characters—Kirchick helpfully lists the dramatis personae at the ont of the book—you might settle on Carmel Offie, who, spe a most background, got a job wh the Ambassador to Honduras when he was jt twenty-two, the early neteen-thirti. A lleague of Offie’s once lled him “as homosexual as you n get, ” and Kirchick reunts mors that Offie, who reportedly scribed his bedroom as “the playg fields of Eton, ” had a romantic relatnship wh William Bullt, the Ambassador to the Soviet Unn, for whom he eventually went to work.

FIRG OF GAY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER ULD TT LATT SUPREME COURT LG

Though not que to the level of a “homosexual rg, ” a notable ntgent of high-level gay iends and staffers worked for Reagan, for stance, and queer people ma up a signifint share of other Admistratns throughout the middle and latter parts of the twentieth century. Roosevelt vociferoly fend his iend and the Unr-Secretary of State, Sumner Well, followg revelatns that Well was a homosexual, askg for Well’s rignatn only unr mountg prsure om his Republin rivals.