Contents:
- JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS' KEV MAXEN IS FIRST AMERIN MALE PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY
- ACTIVISTS NMN VLENCE AGAST LGBTQ MUNY ST. VCENT, WHERE GAY SEX IS ILLEGAL
- GAY WBOYS? ‘POWER OF THE DOG’ DO NOT STAND ALONE GOG THERE
JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS' KEV MAXEN IS FIRST AMERIN MALE PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY
Gay Erotic Stori. Such adult men ed the pretext of a srcy of women to tablish enforced homosexual relatnships remote mps and ranch parable to the relatnships for which today's prisons are notor. The high cince of perasty and homosexual rape is the great dirty secret of the Old Wt ontier--and yet this is not om any lack of ntemporary acunts which document or ht at , cludg the famed woodcuts of men dancg wh boys, scriptns of the practic of multiple men sleepg sgle beds (as if there wasn't room enough out Wt for everyone to throw down his own bedroll), jok about turns the barrel, and the lyrics of certa Old Wt songs which young men seem to be given women's nam.
who to fd through takg swimmg lsons that beg a homosexual. story of his first gay sexual enunter at fourteen, wh his fifteen.
(Image cred: Alamy)The actor Sam Elltt's ntroversial recent ments cricised The Power of the Dog's 'allns to homosexualy', but queer readgs of wterns stretch back s, and Zachariah is a prime example, wr Sean the ialistic 1960s gave way to the cynil 1970s, US cema began servg up creasgly nihilistic and psychologilly plex stori, all wh sour endgs to match. Zachariah ptur the overlap between anti-Vietnam War, rock mic, sexual liberatn, femism, the emergence of gay rights, civil rights, environmentalism – they're all alcg – Gary NeedhamZachariah's screenplay was rewrten many tim. In all s Firign-fuelled youth-culture provotn, Needham tells BBC Culture, the film "ptur the overlap between anti-Vietnam War, rock mic, sexual liberatn, femism, the emergence of gay rights, civil rights, environmentalism – they're all alcg" wtern was a predomant mo through which mascule performance was tght, pecially to young whe Amerin menThe boys' embrace at the end of Zachariah, then, is an earnt rebuttal of the toxic, vlent mascule mor on which the wtern genre was built.
ACTIVISTS NMN VLENCE AGAST LGBTQ MUNY ST. VCENT, WHERE GAY SEX IS ILLEGAL
So is Zachariah a gay wtern?
The gay prs asked the same qutn. Wh Don Johnson gracg s ver, the March 1971 edn of The Advote, the US's olst LGBT publitn, featured a review wh the headle "Are they gay?
On the homosexual implitns of the iendship, he wrote, "I'm aaid that's all is – iendship, " addg that the film's script leads to the brk of homosexualy only to back away before be explic. " Gay people will be posive that the boys were lovers, and the straights will be left wh only spicns. The New York Tim' Roger Greenspun looked closer (too close, perhaps), ncludg that the film "propagandised homosexual love".
GAY WBOYS? ‘POWER OF THE DOG’ DO NOT STAND ALONE GOG THERE
In his book Idol Worship: A Shamels Celebratn of Male Bety the Movi (2003), Michael Fergon refers to Johnson at this stage of his reer as "an stant h wh gay dienc", and "sold as chicken feed and pecked at wh light". Nu stills om his works were regularly prted gay magaz, and Johnson was, says Fergon, "extremely gay-iendly and gay-thankful". When Zach first approach Matthew, he’s shirtls and sweaty, wearg ltle but a blacksmh's smock, Fergon wrote: "the homoerotic possibili of this exchange [might] turn to the first gay wtern sce Andy Warhol's Lonome Cowboys (1969)".
But the sequence speaks to the experienc of many gay men too. Red River (1948), a film laced wh nuendo which John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, a closeted gay man, admire each other's firearms, was labelled a queer touchstone – alongsi Calamy Jane (1953) and Johnny Guar (1954), which also upend genr rol – Vo Rso's 1981 book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexualy the Movi, and the documentary of the same name (1995). Andy Warhol's Horse (1965) and Lonome Cowboys (1969) make clear the nnectns between stume, Amerin male inty and homosexualy.