Book review of Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton by Jam Kirchick - The Washgton Post

Contents:

• A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT
• WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'
• WHAT MA WASHGTON, D.C., THE “GAYT AND MOST ANTIGAY CY AMERI”
• SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON
• SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON HARDVER – MAY 31, 2022
• SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON PAPERBACK – MAY 16, 2023

A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT

Fil, rrponnce, terview transcripts and prs clippgs — you n almost hear the old microfiche sheets tickg by — Kirchick holds the most dited persecutors, some of whom were themselv the closet, to sthg Morigi“Even at the height of the Cold War, was safer to be a Communist than a homosexual, ” he wr. ” Later, as tolerance grew (thanks part to the efforts of the Mattache Society, the gay rights anizatn whose evolutn is traced here), some nfirmed bachelors took the important seat once occupied by Perle Mta, the cy’s famed “hosts wh the mosts.

It would be bt read at the vlet hour wh a snifter of brandy a wood-paneled library, one of those wh a rollg ladr to brg down some of the fad midcentury bt-sellers rurfaced the pag, like Vidal’s “The Cy and the Pillar” — the narrative perks up nsirably whenever this ntent, urbane wrer arriv on the premis — “Washgton Confintial, ” by Jack La and Lee Mortimer (1951), wh s fabled “Garn of Pansi”; and “Advise and Consent, ” by Allen Dry (1959), which won a Pulzer and was ma to a movie by Otto ’s also a Baeker of important plac (map clud): the rollickg Chicken Hut bar where Teboe met his murrers; the “F Loop” of the Dupont Circle pickup scene that veloped the 1960s; the Cema Folli, the pornographic theater where ne men died a 1977 fire; the “gay rner” of the Congrsnal Cemetery; and, more hopefully, the Lambda Risg is overwhelmgly a gallery of the whe male gaytriarchy, wh lbians and people of lor mostly on the sil. 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. 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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. 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. “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.

“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. Blick arrived to share telligence about a new threat, one that, he suggted, uld stabilize Amerin natnal secury om wh: the existence of gay staffers at the hight levels of began by explag that “a well-known pnage tactic” entailed lurg female ernment staffers “to the munist unrground by volvg them lbian practic.

SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON

C., was “simultaneoly the gayt and most antigay cy Ameri, ” a place which queer people were omniprent—but so, too, was the risk of you went lookg for the prototypil queer staffer among the book’s st of characters—Kirchick helpfully lists the dramatis personae at the ont of the book—you might settle on Carmel Offie, who, spe a most background, got a job wh the Ambassador to Honduras when he was jt twenty-two, the early neteen-thirti. A lleague of Offie’s once lled him “as homosexual as you n get, ” and Kirchick reunts mors that Offie, who reportedly scribed his bedroom as “the playg fields of Eton, ” had a romantic relatnship wh William Bullt, the Ambassador to the Soviet Unn, for whom he eventually went to work.

Though not que to the level of a “homosexual rg, ” a notable ntgent of high-level gay iends and staffers worked for Reagan, for stance, and queer people ma up a signifint share of other Admistratns throughout the middle and latter parts of the twentieth century. For years, the prs went along wh this discretn, but that mutually assured silence began to unravel durg Roosevelt’s third term, when a New York Post article that acced the Massachetts senator David Walsh of visg a “hoe of gradatn”—the Post never ed the word “homosexual”—gurated outg as a polil weapon.

SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON HARDVER – MAY 31, 2022

Kirchick posns “Secret Cy” as a lightly revisnist work, notg that “most narrativ of the movement for gay equaly” emphasize the Stonewall uprisg, the assassatn of Harvey Milk, and the mpaign agast the antigay activist Ana Bryant before sistg that “the spark for the revolutn was l, and s flame was tend, Washgton, DC. Kameny subsequently built up the cy’s first staed gay anizatn and is rightly regard as a pneer for equal the tth most clearly revealed by Kirchick’s foc on Washgton is one that queer historians have emphasized for years: that change was prompted not by those the halls of power but by activists workg well outsi of them.

The high pot of his si fightg seems to have arrived 1982, when Dolan wrote to the Admistratn to cricize the Fay Protectn Act, which banned any anizatn that st homosexualy as an “acceptable life style” om receivg feral fundg, and a month later, when he apologized for g antigay language his N. 1, 859 reviews42 followersAugt 8, 2022*Overdrive app * Narratn: 4 stars ? Comtent: 4 stars ? 1, 718 reviews72 followersAugt 17, 2023Here's a part of a Poli story based on the bookhere are the more tertg agmentsThe Plot to Out Ronald ReaganPoliMay 27, 2022 — A group of Republins tried to stymie what they alleged was a nefar homosexual work wh the mpaign of their own party’s standard-bearer. More than 40 years later, the story n fally be was 3:15 on the morng of June 26, 1980, and Congrsman Bob Livgston was extraordarily dnk, hidg the ngrsnal gym beneath the Rayburn Hoe Office Buildg, petrified that a team of highly traed right-wg homosexual assasss workg on behalf of Ronald Reagan was about to kill acunt of the alleged “homosexual rg” that ntrolled Ronald Reagan, and the efforts to expose on the eve of the 1980 Republin Natnal Conventn that nomated him for the princy, is piled om terviews wh several of the survivg participants and documents unvered the papers of former Washgton Post Executive Edor Ben Bradlee.

”“That stuff, ” or what Kemp adviser Ju Wanniski termed “the homosexual thg, ” had dogged the upstate New York ngrsman and former profsnal football player sce the fall of 1967, when the syndited newspaper lumnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anrson published a piece lkg Kemp to a “homosexual rg” operatg wh Reagan’s gubernatorial office. ” The “slanr” and “old lumny” that the virile ex-football pro and father of four might be gay, journalists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak wrote at the time, was a “vic nard, ” the sort of “poisono” “garbage” one found “submerged the polil sewers” and other “gutter munitns” that “not only do gross jtice to their victims but also mean and pollute mocratic ernment. Behd those closed doors, McCloskey suggted strongly that the possibily of Kemp as a nng mate was proof that the “homosexual rg” around Reagan, long dismissed as mor, might be somethg all too Livgston was ncerned about the potential polil liabily for his party’s impendg nomee, McCloskey was worried that Reagan himself reprented a danger to the Republin Party and the recent weeks, McCloskey explaed to the other ngrsmen huddled his office, he had been ntact wh a lol televisn news reporter named Bill Bt who ed to work the Bay Area and had been active California GOP polics durg the late 1960s.

SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON PAPERBACK – MAY 16, 2023

The prence of a closeted homosexual, Peter Hannaford, a potential Reagan admistratn uld pose a threat to natnal secury, McCloskey believed, and so he took his ncerns directly to Reagan’s longtime adviser and mpaign chief of staff, Ed Mee.

In light of this rerd, his last-dch effort to torpedo Ronald Reagan wh a tale portrayg him as the dupe of a right-wg homosexual nspiracy looks like jt another episo a reer spent tiltg at wdls — his unlikely iend John Ehrlichman scribed him as “a latter-day Don Quixote” — though one much ls honorable than challengg Richard Nixon for the the whole farrago of mor and nuendo about the gay Reagane nspiracy e to light durg the mpaign, ’s difficult to say what effect would have had on the electn. In June, jt as the Post vtigatn was about to unfold, Carter led Reagan 35 percent to 33 percent a natnal Gallup poll, and few predicted anythg near the landsli Reagan ultimately four s later, the plot to out Reagan vividly monstrat the extent to which the specter of homosexualy st a pall over Amerin polics.

It would have been more succsful if each chapter foced on one proment dividual each princy rather than try to pile an exhstive lany (ambassador Sumner Well, for example, is a fascatg example of a high-level diplomat who prsured men to sex; I wish the chapter had prented more archival material about his life rather than try to lay out a speculative work of gay nnectns). )-history28 reviews82 followersJune 23, 2022I’m not particularly genero wh my ratgs on Goodreads, but Secret Cy serv every one of those five livg DC for a —and spendg much of that time learng about the cy’s history and gay scene—I feared this uld be a recatn of mostly faiar stori.