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
• ‘THE REAL VILLA IS THE CLOSET’: A NEW HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON DEALS WH SOCIETY AS IT TLY WAS
• #LGBTQ: ‘SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON’ SHOWS DC HAS ALWAYS BEEN A QUEER CAPOL
• SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON
• WHAT MA WASHGTON, D.C., THE “GAYT AND MOST ANTIGAY CY AMERI”
• 'SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON'

WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'

A new book exam the unknown or barely known liv of gay people workg and livg our natn’s pal, a cy known for s mix of power and secrets. “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.

A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT

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.

Even beg associated wh a spected homosexual uld e the untry’s most powerful men to quiver. “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. 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. “I don’t thk people unrstand or realize that was more dangero to be gay than was to be a munist.

‘THE REAL VILLA IS THE CLOSET’: A NEW HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON DEALS WH SOCIETY AS IT TLY WAS

But one man said Waldron had “homosexual tennci” and shared a story about Waldron’s makg a pass at him. ”There was not one person whose power uld not be danger of beg promised if there was even a whisper of possible homosexualy activy. 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.

Y., a former Buffalo Bills and San Diego Chargers quarterback, to be his vice printial nng mate — another person mored to be gay. 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.

When a ngrsman later asked Reagan’s munitns ai about the loss of the nomatn for Kemp, he reportedly said, “It was that homosexual thg, ” Kirchick wr.

#LGBTQ: ‘SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON’ SHOWS DC HAS ALWAYS BEEN A QUEER CAPOL

“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.

SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON

When the book begs, queer people are visible, ’s illegal to be gay, and the medil tablishment nsirs LGBTQ people to be mentally ill. 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.

WHAT MA WASHGTON, D.C., THE “GAYT AND MOST ANTIGAY CY AMERI”

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. Edgar Hoover (who Kirchick curly avoids intifyg as homosexual), McCarthye and Tmp mentor Roy Cohn, and famo New Right lobbyist Terry Dolan. 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. ” But “Secret Cy” might more accurately be scribed as a surface-level glimpse at the promence of homophobia the feral ernment and the D.

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. Gay history, after all, is olr and bigger than one rt, one prott or one iology, and we should always wele stori that unsettle popular narrativ.

'SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON'

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. ” This claim, however, fli the face of even the quickt glance at Black gay life, to say nothg of the many D. 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.

”) There are other mystifyg scriptns, like that of Whaker Chambers, who, Kirchick wr, “was (at least for a time) a homosexual. 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. But there’s no realy nflatg homophobia wh homosexualy, there’s no joy nfg the difficult wh the tragic, the ignored wh the secret.

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. AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTJam Kirchick’s new book talli the st of homophobia on liv and reers Washgton, D. 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.