On Saturday morng, I received word that Charley Shively died. Shively was a pneerg gay liberatn activist on the sle, if not wh the name...
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FOR CHARLEY SHIVELY, GAY LIBERATN WAS ABOUT SEX AND REBELLN, NOT EQUALY
For Charley Shively, Gay Liberatn Was About Sex and Rebelln, Not Equaly. Shively was a pneerg gay liberatn activist on the sle, if not wh the name regnn, of Harvey Milk. He was a journalist, a poet, and a foundg edor of one of the most important gay newspapers the 1970s; but as I read more tails about his ath, I realized how many people had never heard of him.
Part of the problem is that LGBTQ people nnot jt be add to history textbooks like women sufagett or black eedom fighters bee the history of gay liberatn is not jt about fightg for equaly. As Shively’s life shows, gay liberatn often sistepped ncerns about state-sanctned rights; fact, Shively and many others of his generatn fundamentally rejected the pillars of Amerin society—relign, palism, and the fay. Shively spent his reer wrg about how gay people unrstood their bodi, relatnships, and sex.
For him, wrg about sex was polil; he once wrote a seri on oral sex as a revolutnary act, addrsg the unacknowledged guilt and shame many gay men faced engagg . History books tend to lnize gay men sweaty street protts fightg for legal regnn as the epome of liberatn, but Shively terrogated the sex that propelled them to bee polil the first place. He shed light on the taboos that many gay men were too uneasy to discs public: the mechanics of sex, timacy between men, the qutn of promiscuy.