Washgton, D.C.'s hidn gay history is unvered 'Secret Cy'

Contents:

• WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'
• A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.
• GAY WATER, A NEW NNED CKTAIL, WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BUD LIGHT
• THE REVOLUTNARY WAR HERO WHO WAS OPENLY GAY
• A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT
• JAGUARS ACH OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR U.S.-BASED PRO LEAGU
• WAS GEE WASHGTON GAY? CONSIR THE EVINCE
• THE GAYT PLACE AMERI?
• GAY SPOKANE TRAVEL GUI
• LGBTQ+ SUPPORT GROUPS WASHGTON
• GAYT PLAC IN WASHGTON FOR 2020
• WASHGTON’S HUNDRED-YEAR WAR ON GAYS
• GAY WASHGTON STATE

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.

“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.

A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.

“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. ” 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.

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

The bsman and his wife, Melissa, first plaed to the Front Porch proprietors about pre-dawn vendor liveri 2019, not long after the nservative Christian uple moved their fancial firm right next door to the rtrant, which fli a gay Pri flag. (Front Porch Market and Grill)What’s more, the Washers say, the ad rat was jt one more sult that the uple, who once planted an “all liv matter” sign their ont yard, have endured sce movg next door to a rtrant owned by a gay uple.

THE REVOLUTNARY WAR HERO WHO WAS OPENLY GAY

They married 2020, five years after they opened the Front Porch, which quickly beme a statn The Front Porch has been flyg a Pri flag on s pat sce 2016, not long after a gunman killed 49 people a gay bar Orlando.

A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT

“I had so many threats agast me that even the Dallas police statned squad rs outsi our home, ” Waybourn an activist, Waybourn says, his goals were clear: same-sex marriage, gays and lbians the ary, accs to lifavg medic. “I have que a few gay iends, clients and a fay member, and I have patronized a gay-owned rtrant for years, ” he whether the Washers are tryg to remake The Plas to their image of Ameri — Whe, nservative, Christian — Melissa said, “I n see where you’re g om. “The key issue that Bud Light tapped to was the fact that they didn’t unrstand their re dience and know enough about them, ” Hodson, a gay man, told CNN about the ntroversy that began when the Anhser-Bch beer brand sent fluencer Dylan Mulvaney a n of beer.

Gay Water might not have the ep pockets pared to s petors, like Whe Claw, but “even at small sle, pani of many siz are havg succs makg spir-based seltzers and premixed cktails, ” Bryan Roth, an analyst for Feel Goods Company and edor of the alhol beverage newsletter, Sightl+, told CNN. “There’s lots of space the spir-based seltzer tegory which Gay Water n play, pecially if the brand n offer a cultural or emotnal nnectn that will feel more excg than the prospect of another peapple-flavored vodka seltzer om natnal or ternatnal rporatns, ” Roth said.

JAGUARS ACH OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR U.S.-BASED PRO LEAGU

Of urse, other drks e the word “gay, ” too, cludg Gay Beer and So Gay Rosé, Hodson noted, which are also tryg to reach the queer muny and offer them an alternative the straight-domated space.

WAS GEE WASHGTON GAY? CONSIR THE EVINCE

)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. ” 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. Kirchick wr of Nancy Reagan: “Her own persona is pably, irreprsibly gay, embodied by the retue that signed, drsed, rted, entertaed, flattered, hoed, humored, pampered, styled and tillated her.

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.

THE GAYT PLACE AMERI?

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.

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.

GAY SPOKANE TRAVEL GUI

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.

LGBTQ+ SUPPORT GROUPS WASHGTON

Riemer is a -thor of “We Are Everywhere: Prott, Power, and Pri the History of Queer Liberatn” and a -creator of the onle rource CyThe Hidn History of Gay WashgtonBy Jam KirchickHenry Holt. As Kramer knows, the terms "heterosexual" and "homosexual" were ed the late neteenth century, and many will dismiss the book bee he appears to be a bad historian by assertg morn ias about the past. Assertg that Gee Washgton was gay garners headl bee Amerins thk they know that Gee Washgton was as straight as uld be -- a visn that partly reli on the tradnal image of virtuo, Amerin manhood.

The natnal average is jt unr 1 of my first observatns about my new cy was the throngs of gay men I would see over the urse of a typil day all over town — walkg their dogs my neighborhood before work, ridg the Metro, workg the halls of Congrs.

GAYT PLAC IN WASHGTON FOR 2020

“There’s an openly gay prence that mak you thk you’re the Castro or Wt Hollywood, and wasn’t always the se, ” Robert Raben, an assistant attorney general durg the Clton admistratn who was one of several openly gay people appoted by Print Clton, told me.

Vansa Vick for The New York TimSuch ubiquy isn’t jt an abundance of gay bars, though there are at least six wh walkg distance of my hoe the Logan Circle neighborhood of Northwt Washgton.

On the days I make the 20-mute walk om home to my office near the Whe Hoe, I will pass one example after another of this cy’s thrivg gay enomy: a Mchell Gold & Bob Williams furnure store; a clothg retailer whose wdow displays regularly feature bare-torso, well-endowed mannequs nothg but ty briefs; three CrossF gyms; the offic of two gay newspapers, The Washgton Bla and Metro Weekly (most ci nnot even sta one); a bathhoe; and the natnal headquarters for the Human Rights walkg through the Dupont Circle neighborhood the other night would have found themselv fightg for siwalk space wh the hundreds of spectators — many of them straight — who had gathered to watch the 17th Street High Heel Race, an annual sprt for drag queens who tear down the block heels. And when I tried to make plans a few weekends ago, I found most of my iends were booked solid bee they were attendg one of two huge gay-themed events: the Human Rights Campaign annual black-tie dner, featurg Jennifer Lopez as the ma event; or the Miss Adams Man drag pageant, which is such a large productn tak over the Washgton our feral district is measured agast other ci wh large gay populatns, a parison that experts say is better than parg to stat, still ranks at the top of the list.

WASHGTON’S HUNDRED-YEAR WAR ON GAYS

The numbers pture only those who acknowledge beg a same-sex gay man or lbian I spoke to for this article had a horror story about what was like workg the closet, fearg they would be found out. That meant orr to be nsired for many high-level jobs volvg accs to classified rmatn, gays and lbians had to nct a web of li about their personal Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who worked on Capol Hill for years, scribed how he and his gay iends had to make sure they all gave the same referenc to ernment agents vtigatg their backgrounds, an surance policy so that if the qutn of their sexual orientatn me up, they uld be certa no one unpredictable would spill the Rosen, a longtime Democratic lobbyist, told me that the 1980s she once unsuccsfully tried to persua Senator Orr G.

Richard Soris, a lawyer who was one of Print Clton’s openly gay appote, said that the early 1990s when he was applyg for a job on Capol Hill the office of Senator Tom Hark, Democrat of Iowa, one of the senator’s associat said that Mr. Sean Bugg, executive director of the Next Generatn Learship Foundatn and edor emer of Metro Weekly, relled beg a reporter verg tax issu on Capol Hill 1990 when he bumped to another reporter he regnized at the Dakota Cowgirl, a popular gay bar at the time.

GAY WASHGTON STATE

Bar scene today, wh old stalwarts like JR’s, wh s one-for-every-taste clientele, and newer addns like Number 9, which n feel like perpetual happy hour for the cy’s gay polil-media plex. Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Commtee, told me an pecially amb young man once hunted him down on the dance floor of a lol gay bar and hand him his résumé. Gradually, they have fanned out om Dupont Circle, which is now full of heterosexual fai, all across the of the anecdot and statistics raise a puzzlg qutn about the District’s gay and lbian populatn: Why are they all here?