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

Contents:

• SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON HARDVER – MAY 31, 2022
• JAM KIRCHICK EXPLOR DC’S GAY HISTORY AN AMB NEW BOOK
• SECRET CY: BEHD THE UNTOLD GAY HISTORY OF DC POLICS
• A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT
• SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON KDLE EDN
• SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON PAPERBACK – MAY 16, 2023
• WHAT MA WASHGTON, D.C., THE “GAYT AND MOST ANTIGAY CY AMERI”
• WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'
• SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON
• ‘THE REAL VILLA IS THE CLOSET’: A NEW HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON DEALS WH SOCIETY AS IT TLY WAS

SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON HARDVER – MAY 31, 2022

”―TIME“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. Much like the gay muny self, the book ntas people om every social class, lor, personaly, and profsn, om disabled and impoverished veterans to the untry's send most powerful preachy, self-nsc, or borg, Secret Cy has raised the bar for the genre, portrayg s subjects and their cy all s ntradictns. In this spellbdg journey om the New Deal to the end of the Cold War, Jam Kirchick draws to the mimon of Gay Washgton: a dangero world swirlg wh rmers, sndal sheets, blacklists, clanste works, and brave fighters for equaly.

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

”―Gee Stephanopoulos"In Secret Cy, Jam Kirchick tells a Washgton DC Cold War story that few have heard: How the polil obssn wh secrecy together wh the fear of munist fluence distorted perceptns not only of gay people, but of realy self. Lovers of Washgton lore will enjoy the pictn of gay life the natn's pal when was entirely unrground, and lovers of jtice will take pleasure the fact that some of the most repulsive characters morn polil history who ed so many liv and reers are brought to jtice the only way they n be now: the historil rerd. Farrell, thor of Richard Nixon: The Life“Kirchick has wrten a mmerizg and movg acunt of gay proximy to power, and the shockg ristance to , Ameri's pal cy long before the morn gay-rights movement began.

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. 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.

SECRET CY: BEHD THE UNTOLD GAY HISTORY OF DC POLICS

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 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. 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.

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.

A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT

“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. 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. )And yet the very skills gay people had to velop to survive — studns, partmentalizatn, discretn, erancy — ma them uniquely skilled, Kirchick pots out, to sensive tasks like pnage or high-level advisg.

Fil, rrponnce, terview transcripts and prs clippgs — you n almost hear the old microfiche sheets tickg by — Kirchick holds the most dited persecutors, some of whom were themselv the closet, to sthg Morigi“Even at the height of the Cold War, was safer to be a Communist than a homosexual, ” he wr.

SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON KDLE EDN

” Later, as tolerance grew (thanks part to the efforts of the Mattache Society, the gay rights anizatn whose evolutn is traced here), some nfirmed bachelors took the important seat once occupied by Perle Mta, the cy’s famed “hosts wh the mosts. It would be bt read at the vlet hour wh a snifter of brandy a wood-paneled library, one of those wh a rollg ladr to brg down some of the fad midcentury bt-sellers rurfaced the pag, like Vidal’s “The Cy and the Pillar” — the narrative perks up nsirably whenever this ntent, urbane wrer arriv on the premis — “Washgton Confintial, ” by Jack La and Lee Mortimer (1951), wh s fabled “Garn of Pansi”; and “Advise and Consent, ” by Allen Dry (1959), which won a Pulzer and was ma to a movie by Otto ’s also a Baeker of important plac (map clud): the rollickg Chicken Hut bar where Teboe met his murrers; the “F Loop” of the Dupont Circle pickup scene that veloped the 1960s; the Cema Folli, the pornographic theater where ne men died a 1977 fire; the “gay rner” of the Congrsnal Cemetery; and, more hopefully, the Lambda Risg is overwhelmgly a gallery of the whe male gaytriarchy, wh lbians and people of lor mostly on the sil.

Wh his new book, “Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton, ” Jam Kirchick tri to retrof the trope to a very specific subset of the District’s famoly diverse LGBTQ muny, ultimately verg a bewilrg amount of old ground whout offerg the rear much that n be lled new. Apart om notable appearanc by a handful of otherwise unrexplored gay and lbian polis — scrappy CIA officer Carmel Offie, Office of Strategic Servic trailblazer Cora Du Bois and Kennedy nfidant Lem Billgs, among others — “Secret Cy” largely foc on the pa experienced by, and at the hands of, faiar gay men like FBI Director J. Most gay voic, however, are drowned out by, even treated as ls credible than, those of homophobic straight people: Gossip lumnists, yellow journalists, embattled prints, nnivg senators, obsequ FBI agents and a rotatg st of ais all are relied upon as primary sourc a history that is not primarily theirs to tell.

Prs rps, how such homophobia has long manifted as mor and nuendo (pag and pag of which are here reproduced), the fluence of such homophobia on an enormo st of almost exclively Whe gay men, and how more than a few of those men played not-signifint rol the GOP’s long march to the far are not unimportant topics.

SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON PAPERBACK – MAY 16, 2023

At one pot, for example, Kirchick attribut a “lack of Black participatn” an early gay rights anizatn, at least part, “to the fact that Washgton’s Black rints were mostly lols … and associatg wh a gay anizatn was signifintly harr while livg the cy where one’s fay rid. Siarly, while “Secret Cy” has ltle to say about lbians, the thor attempts to expla the silence away wh qutnable, and ultimately unstaable, claratns of how “persecutn generally targeted male homosexuals more severely than female on, a nsequence, part, of patriarchal attus privilegg men over women.

Equally troublg is the book’s uneven approach to the plited polics of “the closet, ” lurchg whout warng om requise portrayals of survival-by-secrecy to scribg, language both hackneyed and harmful, the ne gay victims of D. 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.

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

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. In honor of LGBTQ History Month, celebrated every October, here are books that aim to shed light on and clarify signifint historil moments that rmed and shaped the morn lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and queer rights movement. "The Gay Revolutn: The Story of the Stggle" by Lillian FarmanA thorough troductn to the history of the gay and lbian civil rights movements, this book chronicl the early stggl of LGBTQ dividuals om the 1950s to prent day g a pilatn of enlighteng terviews wh policians, ary officials and members of the muny.

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

"When We Rise: My Life the Movement" by Cleve JonThis semi-tobgraphil acunt follows Cleve Jon as he explor his inty as a gay man the 1950s, disvers a muny and a e through his mentor, Harvey Milk, and p wh the ravagg effects of the AIDS epimic. "Sister Outsir: Essays and Speech" by Audre LorA celebratn of tersectnaly, black lbian poet and femist Audre Lor analyz the prence of ageism, sexism, racism, classism and homophobia her own life through a llectn of lyril says and speech. "The Men wh the Pk Triangle" by Hez Heger (Used)In lurid tail, Hez Hager unfolds the te story of Josef Kohout — a man who was imprisoned a Nazi ncentratn mp for beg gay — and effectively remds the world of the torture gay dividuals suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime.

SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON

JohnsonWh the help of classified documents and terview wh ary officials, David Johnson argu that Senator Joseph McCarthy was jt as guilty of promotg anti-Communism paranoia as he was spirg polici that nsired homosexualy a threat to natnal secury. "The Celluloid Closet: Homosexualy the Movi" by Vo RsoPublished 1987, Rso’s analysis of the portrayal of homosexualy film has laid the foundatn for the how we evaluate LGBTQ reprentatn film today and has supported the argument that reprentatn matters. The Uned Stat of Ameri" by Eric CerviWhile many believe the fight for LGBTQ rights began at New York Cy’s Stonewall Inn durg the summer of 1969, actually began wh a grassroots “homophile” movement that has been largely overlooked.

‘THE REAL VILLA IS THE CLOSET’: A NEW HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON DEALS WH SOCIETY AS IT TLY WAS

Cervi documents the work of Frank Kameny and other gay activists durg the late 1950s and ‘60s, illumatg their role layg the groundwork that would lead to the Stonewall NBC Out on Twter, Facebook & Instagram. 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 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.

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.