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

Contents:

• WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'
• A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT
• MOVG TO LGBT WASHGTON DC? HOW TO FD YOUR PERFECT GAY NEIGHBORHOOD!
• FIRG OF GAY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER ULD TT LATT SUPREME COURT LG
• THE GAYT PLACE AMERI?
• GAY WATER, A NEW NNED CKTAIL, WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BUD LIGHT
• ‘A QUEER CAPAL: A HISTORY OF GAY LIFE WASHGTON, D.C.’ BY GENNY BEEMYN
• JAGUARS ACH OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR U.S.-BASED PRO LEAGU

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.

Those stori lurked the background out of necsy: The st of g out as gay — or, more likely, beg outed agast one’s will — was enormo profsnally and socially. “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.

A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT

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.

MOVG TO LGBT WASHGTON DC? HOW TO FD YOUR PERFECT GAY NEIGHBORHOOD!

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. “Secret Cy” ends wh the princy of Bill Clton, who said a mpaign speech ont of a largely gay dience Los Angel 1992, “I have a visn, and you are a part of . ” 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.

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.

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

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. 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.

THE GAYT PLACE AMERI?

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. 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. 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.

LGBTQIA+ Pri Month is steeped a ep history of prott, parti and paras, stemmg back to the Stonewall uprisg New York, which beme the cradle of the morn gay rights movement. The book is a lively history of black and whe gay muni and dividuals, atttg to the vibrant cultural and tellectual life of a cy sometim believed to be neher. Coverg black and whe dividuals and muni, and nsirg the effects of race, genr, and class, this book explor how lbians, gay men, and bisexuals built muni, survived anti-gay mpaigns, and anized to mand equal rights"--.

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

The geography of same-sex sire: cisg men Washgton the late neteenth and early twentieth centuri -- "Sentiments exprsed here would be misnsted by others": the same-sex sexual liv of Washgton's black ele the early twentieth century -- Race, class, genr, and the social landspe of the pal's gay muni durg and after World War II -- The policg of same-sex sire postwar Washgton -- LGBT movements the pal the mid to late twentieth century: three historic moments -- Epilogue: " Tyra's memory" -- Appendix: list of narrators. 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.

‘A QUEER CAPAL: A HISTORY OF GAY LIFE WASHGTON, D.C.’ BY GENNY BEEMYN

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.

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

Like other large ci the USA like Chigo, New York Cy, Los Angel, Miami and San Francis, there is an active and often overwhelmg queer scene here – which is why a gay realtor Washgton DC is worth their weight gold as they n help you navigate as you fd your new perfect home here the most gay-iendly neighborhood. While the queer muny is wele across the entire cy, the epicenter of gay life here is undoubtedly the Logan Circle gaybourhood fills wh chic ffee shops, trendy boutique stor, fabulo gay bars, and nightclubs… and a seemgly endls array of gay-orientated events.