The director of Call Your Father says his attractn to olr guys exposed a rarely discsed universal tth about gay men.
Contents:
DICK LESCH’S GUI TO SEVENTI GAY SLANG
While hazg the lennials durg a meetg today, several of them nfsed to not knowg the basic lexin of gay slanguage. This is for them and everyone else who needs a reher. * gay old time saying *
Dick Lesch, an early gay-rights activist, who is now his eighti, arranged to donate his old workg fil to the archiv of the New York Public Library.
”In 1959, when Lesch was twenty-four, he left his fay home, Kentucky, for New York Cy, where he found work as a pater, a bartenr, a rator, a journalist, and as the unpaid print of the Mattache Society, one of the first gay-rights anizatns. When the Stonewall rts broke out, three years later, he was the only openly gay reporter on the scene, verg the event for a new gay-focsed magaze lled The a recent Friday eveng, Lesch’s buzzer rang. In 1959, he left Kentucky for New York Cy, where he beme the print of the Mattache Society, one of the first gay-rights anizatns.
A py of a 1976 gay guibook, wrten by Lesch, along wh his origal typewrten mancript. “This rd file is great, ” he said, flippg through a set of four-by-six x rds on which Lesch had neatly typed out gay slang terms om antiquy. ” Some of the fns were more nuanced: an “ntie, ” Lesch had wrten, was “an ageg or middle aged homosexual, offtim effemate character, ” or “a person of settled meanor who utns agast temperate acts.
OUTRAGE OVER THE FLTSTON “GAY OLD TIME”
Defn of a gay old time It's a very old fashned way of sayg "a great time" * gay old time saying *
Lesch ed to llect mentns of the “homophile movement, ” a term that preced the morn gay-rights vobulary. Lesch holds up a plastic toy school b, ma the neteen-sixti by the Gay Toy Company.
GAY OLD TIME
Photograph by Rebec FudalaNext up was Lesch’s llectn of magaz and newsletters, cludg After Dark (“Oh, bls you—they’re real llector’s ems, ” Bmann said); Christopher Street (“We have the archiv”); Female Mimics (“That’s fabulo”); the 1969 Time issue on homosexualy (“Cute”); and the monthly bullet for the Mattache Society.
A 1971 issue of Gay featured an terview that Lesch had nducted wh a twenty-five-year-old Bette Midler. This week, public outcry reached afeng levels as the classic ABC animated s The Fltston was lambasted for s perceived tolerance and sensivy towards homosexuals and their liftyl.
“For over a half century now, The Fltston theme song has valierly touted that when you’re wh them you will have a ‘gay old time, '” CNN anchor Anrson Cooper said on the air Tuday. “This sort of flip treatment of the homosexual liftyle, and that uld possibly apply to a fay the stone age, is offensive and outrageo.