How One Mother’s Love for Her Gay Son Started a Revolutn | The New Yorker

Contents:

• HOW ONE MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER GAY SON STARTED A REVOLUTN
• CANNED CKTAIL ‘GAY WATER’ AIMS TO SH ON BUD LIGHT’S DYLAN MULVANEY DISASTER
• THE RENEWED IMPORTANCE OF THE TEXAS GAY ROO
• THE 10 BEST NEW YORK CY GAY CLUBS & BARSGAY CLUBS & BARS NEW YORK CY
• ‘A FAY LIKE OURS’: PORTRAS OF GAY FATHERHOOD
• SERIAL KILLER DOCERI 'LAST CALL' RECKONS WH NYC'S HISTORY OF ANTI-GAY VLENCE
• STILL HERE AND STILL QUEER: THE GAY RTRANT ENDUR
• GAY RIGHTS
• THE ULTIMATE LGBTIQ+ TRAVEL GUI TO NEW YORK CY: OM QUEER HISTORY TO THE BT GAY BARS
• GAY NEW YORK

HOW ONE MOTHER’S LOVE FOR HER GAY SON STARTED A REVOLUTN

They asked if they uld kiss her; they asked if she would talk to their parents; they told her that they uldn’t image their own mothers and fathers supportg them so publicly, or supportg them at woman’s name was Jeanne Manford, and she was marchg alongsi her twenty-one-year-old gay son, Morty. The anizatn they dreamed up that day, which started as a sgle support group Manhattan, was ially lled Parents of Gays; later, was renamed Parents FLAG, for Parents and Friends of Lbians and Gays; nowadays, is known only as PFLAG.

The same year Avril was born, Morty’s psychiatrist summoned Jeanne and Jul to his office and rmed them that their beloved goln boy and sole survivg son was the bt of her knowledge, Jeanne Manford had never known anyone who was gay.

Polil anizg was virtually impossible—one early gay-rights group that attempted to officially rporate New York was told that s mere existence would vlate state sodomy laws—and posive cultural reprentatn was all but nonexistent; there were no openly gay or lbian policians, punds, relig lears, actors, athlet, or micians the mastream. Newspapers ed the words “homosexual” and “pervert” terchangeably, and the handful of gay people who appeared on televisn to discs their “life style” almost always had their fac hidn shadows or otherwise obscured.

CANNED CKTAIL ‘GAY WATER’ AIMS TO SH ON BUD LIGHT’S DYLAN MULVANEY DISASTER

In 1974, when “The Pat Colls Show” aired a segment on parents of gay children, the host troduced by sayg, “Even if he mted murr, I gus you’d say, ‘Well, he’s still my child, no matter what.

”You uld f most of the solar system to the chasm between how the average Amerin of the era would have reacted that hypothetil suatn and how Jeanne Manford rpond upon learng that Morty was gay. The first time he attend a gay-rights prott, he wore sunglass and turned away om the news meras, but he soon beme, his sister Suzanne (now Suzanne Manford Swan) told me, “unaaid and unstoppable.

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” An eighteen-year-old regular at the Stonewall Inn, Morty was there when a fight broke out between patrons and the police the summer of 1969, an event that talyzed the gay-rights movement.

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The next time Morty wound up jail, Jeanne was woken up by an early-morng phone ll—not om him but om the arrtg officer, who, apparently expectg to Morty’s life, ma a show of askg Jeanne if she knew that her son was “a homosexual. In the sprg of 1972, the New York Daily News ran an edorial, headled “Any Old Jobs for Homos?, ” that referred to “fairi, nanc, swish, fags, lezz” and mend the Supreme Court for cidg that a public universy uld rcd a job offer to a man who applied for a marriage license wh his male partner.

‘A FAY LIKE OURS’: PORTRAS OF GAY FATHERHOOD

) That edorial cid wh the annual Inner Circle dner, a parody show hosted by New York Cy journalists, which that year was slated to clu a mockg sk about a gay-rights bill.

“You would meet Jeanne Manford and you would never a ln years gus what she had her, ” Eric Marc, the thor of the 1992 book “Makg Gay History” and now the host of a podst by the same name, told me. Then she went on to exprs a sentiment never before aired a mastream publitn: “I am proud of my son, Morty Manford, and the hard work he has been dog urgg homosexuals to accept their feelgs. Only the New York Post— s last wang days as a liberal paper, before s purchase, a few years later, by Rupert Murdoch—agreed to publish letter ma Morty realize, fally, that his mother was not jt toleratg her gay son.

To reach parents directly, the Manfords placed an ad the Village Voice; to reach them directly, through their children, Morty and the lbian activist Barbara Love scend on New York Cy’s gay hangouts wh fifteen hundred signs and leaflets, handma and posssg somethg of the timate, supplint look of lost-pet posters. At the vatn of the Reverend Edward Egan, who was later forced to retirement bee he was gay, the meetg was held at the Metropolan-Duane Uned Methodist Church, the Wt Village.

SERIAL KILLER DOCERI 'LAST CALL' RECKONS WH NYC'S HISTORY OF ANTI-GAY VLENCE

In addn to Jeanne and Jul, Morty and Love were prent to answer qutns that the parents attendance might not be fortable askg their own dghters and the time, most parents of gay or lbian children were a supremely difficult posn. They were full of qutns, many of them ignorant but all of them scere: about whether their gay son would get more effemate every year; about how their “betiful blon dghter, jt neteen” uld possibly be a lbian.

When the prcipal of the elementary school where she worked told her that people were startg to talk and asked her to be more discreet, Jeanne rmed the woman that her profsnal life was one thg and her private life was another and that she would do as she, though, the people who reached out to the Manfords and to Parents of Gays were lookg for help or muny or a balm for heartbreakg pa. That was not bee she craved the attentn—“There was nothg pretent about her, nothg fortune-seekg, no love of the spotlight, ” her granddghter Avril told me—but bee she was one of the few people willg to speak out public on behalf of their gay this time, Jul was one of those people, too.

All around the untry, kids were gettg thrown out of their ho when they me out; meanwhile, Jeanne and Jul were welg Morty and his iends, and the Manford hoehold had bee somethg of a home for wayward gays.

STILL HERE AND STILL QUEER: THE GAY RTRANT ENDUR

”) Another early member, Sarah Montgomery, was a generatn olr than Jeanne—she had been born the neteenth century—but had likewise never faltered her love for her gay son. From the begng, one of the goals of Parents of Gays was to persua more and more of those people not jt to make peace wh their queer fay members but to make mon e wh worked. Many early members beme evangelists for the anizatn, spirg siar groups around the untry, and 1979, durg the first Natnal March on Washgton for Lbian and Gay Rights, reprentativ om twenty-five of those groups met to talk about formg a natnal body.

They were planng to ll Parents of Lbians and Gays until one participant raised an objectn: if she attend a group by that name, she would effectively out her closeted dghter.

GAY RIGHTS

And then, once aga, tragedy found the Manford the sprg and summer of 1981, gay men started showg up tensive-re uns New York and San Francis wh a strange form of pnmonia and a rare type of ncer known as Kaposi’s sara. On the strength of a handful of hard-won legal and cultural victori, the gay muny had jt barely begun to believe that the future would be better; stead, got sudnly, existentially worse.

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“I’ve been to AIDS funerals where they got up and nmned the body that was the ff, ” Perry many parents, though, AIDS tght them a ccial lson the harst possible way: the time to love your gay children, like all your children, is immediately and always. Cultural CommentPhed to the Edge by “Be Travail”Our most potent athetic experienc are sometim those for which we are least “Real Life” Is a New Kd of Camp NovelIn his début, Brandon Taylor rejects the ual characters—and clichés—of stunt BoothThe Visceral Satisfactns of a Disabled Photographer’s GazeJoey Solomon’s photographs mount a formal challenge to the cultural law that pels disabled people to image themselv ShoutsTim When I Realized That I Was the Only Homosexual the RoomBs meetgs wh a foc on “tryg to tap to a new dience, ” and other Maria Machado’s Many Hnted Stori of a Toxic RelatnshipIn her new memoir, “In the Dream Hoe, ” Machado achiev a formally ventive reprentatn of a difficult ReviewThe Theory That Jtified Anti-Gay CrimeFifty years after Stonewall, the gay-panic fense seems absurd. But “Gay Water” — which adopts a moniker the gay muny has long given to the simple vodka and soda cktail — has been spired by the dtup to bee even bolr about the dience ’s targetg, founr and CEO Spencer Hodson told The Post.

Gay Water — a nned cktail brand that plays on the gay muny’s lloquialism for the vodka-and-soda mixed drk — lnched on Wednday and promis to unrstand s dience better than Bud Light. “Our missn is to -stigmatize the word ‘gay’ and start to create reprentatn spac that tradnally don’t have queer-owned products, let alone products wh the word ‘gay’ their tle, ” Hodson told The Post.

GAY NEW YORK

“Part of the pot of lnchg outsi of Pri month is to rerce the msage that Gay Water is here to make the LGBTQ+ muny more visible 365 days a year, not jt a sgle month, ” he said. ”But, at a time when the urban-ral divi is as polilly polarized as ’s ever been, fans of gay roo have e to appreciate as a place where ral signifiers—big hats, big tcks, Gee Stra songs—have a different valence.

Participant (and a direct scendant of Wyatt Earp’s brother Virgil) told me that he’s been happy to see the growg number of alli who e to gay roos as participants and spectators.

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