Book review of Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton by Jam Kirchick - The Washgton Post

Contents:

• SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON HARDVER – MAY 31, 2022
• A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT
• JAM KIRCHICK ON WHY HIS NEW BOOK TELLS THE QUEER HISTORY OF WASHGTON THROUGH A WHE GAY LENS
• CALIFORNIA STILL HAS AN ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE LAW ON THE BOOKS. VOTERS ULD REMOVE NEXT YEAR
• GAY WASHGTON DC
• BEG GAY WAS THE GRAVT S WASHGTON
• JAGUARS ACH OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR U.S.-BASED PRO LEAGU
• SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON
• BRYAN WASHGTON: 'MY NEXT BOOK IS A GAY SLACKER DRAMEDY'
• FIRG OF GAY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER ULD TT LATT SUPREME COURT LG

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. [Secret Cy] exam the unknown or barely known liv of gay people workg and livg our natn’s pal, a cy known for s mix of power and example of the triumph of LGBTQ people Ameri.

Tracg the strand of how the pal’s big shots treated gays across the s, Kirchick provis a pellg acunt of how the bloodls, btal Washgton power game has always worked. ”―The Cipher Brief “There's never been a book like Secret Cy which documents over a half-century of the gay polil and social scen of the U.

A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT

”―The Gay & Lbian Review“Kirchick rehgly portrays the gay Washgton unrground as a parallel and central world to the seat of Amerin power stead of merely a gay ghetto. 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. This book serv to be placed alongsi Chncey’s Gay New York and Shilts’ And the Band Played On as a semal exploratn of an sential Amerin history.

JAM KIRCHICK ON WHY HIS NEW BOOK TELLS THE QUEER HISTORY OF WASHGTON THROUGH A WHE GAY LENS

”―Commentary“In this absorbg and well-documented book, Kirchick engaggly draws attentn to a variety of gay histori that have been largely lost to mastream history. 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. ”―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. 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.

CALIFORNIA STILL HAS AN ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE LAW ON THE BOOKS. VOTERS ULD REMOVE NEXT YEAR

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. Edgar Hoover (who Kirchick curly avoids intifyg as homosexual), McCarthye and Tmp mentor Roy Cohn, and famo New Right lobbyist Terry Dolan.

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. Kirchick promis to show “the wi-rangg fluence of homosexualy on the natn’s pal, on the people who dwelled wh , and on the weighty matters of state they nducted. ” But “Secret Cy” might more accurately be scribed as a surface-level glimpse at the promence of homophobia the feral ernment and the D.

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. Gay history, after all, is olr and bigger than one rt, one prott or one iology, and we should always wele stori that unsettle popular narrativ.

GAY WASHGTON DC

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.

BEG GAY WAS THE GRAVT S WASHGTON

”) There are other mystifyg scriptns, like that of Whaker Chambers, who, Kirchick wr, “was (at least for a time) a homosexual.

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. But there’s no realy nflatg homophobia wh homosexualy, there’s no joy nfg the difficult wh the tragic, the ignored wh the secret. 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.

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

Published May 22, 2022Updated May 23, 2022When you purchase an penntly reviewed book through our se, we earn an affiliate CITYThe Hidn History of Gay WashgtonBy Jam Kirchick826 pag. )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.

”)Kennedy’s and Reagan’s first ladi were both tightly encircled by gay urtiers, though loyalty both directns uld easily waver. 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.

SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON

The top motive, ced 64 percent of the picture-book plats, was a wish to prevent children om readg about lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, nonbary and queer liv.

At the same time, 77 percent of Amerins say they are “extremely” or “very” ncerned by book rtrictns schools, acrdg to a March poll om Fox is also the se, said Skidmore College profsor Cathere Goln, who teach a class on 19th-century children’s lerature, that objectns are surgg bee the number of visual-rich picture books portrayg what ’s like to have gay parents or be transgenr has explod. Print Richard Nixon was sometim perceived as gay bee of “that funny, unordated way he mov, ” acrdg to staffers close to him. He was also embroiled sndal on the eve of the 1980 Republin Natnal Conventn, which ferred that Reagan was beg ntrolled by a right-wg gay work, manipulatg him as a Manchurian-like ndidate.

BRYAN WASHGTON: 'MY NEXT BOOK IS A GAY SLACKER DRAMEDY'

There was no evince to support the claims, and his admistratn employed more gay dividuals (ually closeted) than any other prev printial history. The remrs and revelatns are a mere thumbnail of scenars explored Jam Kirchick’s book Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton (2022).

In , he prents a tailed retrospective of gay dividuals who walked the natn’s hight polil rridors, workg for and wh ernment agenci while keepg their own liv hidn. Wrg for the Atlantic 2019 on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall rts, Kirchick suggted that “For the gay movement to persist s current mo risks prolongg a culture war that no longer needs to be fought bee one si — the gay si — has already prevailed.

Kirchick further wrote, “Across wi swaths of the pla, homosexualy self — or even the advocy of equal rights — is crimalized, and societal acceptance lags far behd that found the liberal mocratic Wt.

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

Secret Cy opens wh an overview of gays polil power om Gee Washgton onwards but then starts to get more specific wh Frankl Delano Roosevelt to Bill Clton.

I cid that World War II should be the begng bee that is when homosexualy transforms om beg merely a s and a mental disorr to beg a natnal secury threat. There are all the phemisms that I e across that people e to scribe homosexualy bee the ncept is jt “too loathsome to mentn” as one senator said 1942. There’s a fear that gays n be blackmailed so ’s about the rise of the natnal secury state and the securizatn of homosexualy.

Obvly, there’s a lot, but jt terms of the official prohibn on gay people workg Washgton, and this beg a real liabily and a danger. You wre that many gay and lbian dividuals had a dual life and that beg secretive would be beneficial sce they are pable of partmentalizg.