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
• WHAT IT MEANT TO BE GAY POLICS DURG THE LAVENR SRE
• JAGUARS ACH OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR U.S.-BASED PRO LEAGU
• A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.
• ‘THE REAL VILLA IS THE CLOSET’: A NEW HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON DEALS WH SOCIETY AS IT TLY WAS
• BEG GAY WAS DC’S MOST SHAMEFUL SECRET DURG 20TH CENTURY
• SECRET CY: BEHD THE UNTOLD GAY HISTORY OF DC POLICS
• FIRG OF GAY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER ULD TT LATT SUPREME COURT LG
• 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.

A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT

“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.

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.

“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.

WHAT IT MEANT TO BE GAY POLICS DURG THE LAVENR SRE

“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. ”There was not one person whose power uld not be danger of beg promised if there was even a whisper of possible homosexualy activy.

JAGUARS ACH OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR U.S.-BASED PRO LEAGU

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. 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.

“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. 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. 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.

A GAY UPLE RAN A RAL RTRANT PEACE. THEN NEW NEIGHBORS ARRIVED.

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.

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

” 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.

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. 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.

BEG GAY WAS DC’S MOST SHAMEFUL SECRET DURG 20TH CENTURY

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. But few (if any) have taken the time to stch the two narrativ together — to disver what really means to be gay while workg the polil mec of the untry, Washgton, D. In his new book Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton, journalist and historian Jam Kirchick explor homosexualy polics, om World War II to the Cold War, and unravels the Lavenr Sre, the panic surroundg and persecutn of gay people polics.

SECRET CY: BEHD THE UNTOLD GAY HISTORY OF DC POLICS

Secret Cy explor the prevly untold liv of queer people posns of power, and the nsequenc they faced for livg their tth — as Kirchick wr, “An timated 7, 000 to 10, 000 feral employe lost their jobs owg to homosexualy the 1950s alone, a figure that, extrapolated over time, is parable to the timated 14, 700 people who were fired or rigned due to their polil associatns durg the Red Sre. Edgar Hoover, or Jackie Kennedy — all the elements of our history had a secret gay part to them, and ’s never really been put together before to a sgle book.

A few weeks later, was revealed by an Unr Secretary of State on Capol Hill that 91 homosexuals had been fired om the State Department over the precedg three years. So, there was a nflatn between homosexualy and treason and pnage, and there was a fear that munists and homosexuals were believed to have several thgs mon. I thk gay men were greater threats for a variety of reasons: They held more senr jobs and had higher-level secury clearanc, which brought them unr greater scty.

FIRG OF GAY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER ULD TT LATT SUPREME COURT LG

For men and women, the clost analogy that I e up wh to scribe what was like to be a gay person Washgton was like beg a dissint a munist police state.

Postal service — there were some pretty important obsceny s volvg magaz that were of tert to gay and lbian rears that were banned or nfisted by the postal service. So, ironilly, durg the Cold War, when the Uned Stat was fightg the munist iology overseas, they were basilly treatg gay and lbian cizens the same way that a munist regime might. Jt a uple of weeks after the assassatn of Print Kennedy, Waldron was helpg LBJ move his thgs to the Whe Hoe when the civil service missn vtigatn disvered evince of Waldron beg gay — they terviewed a man who told them that Waldron ma a pass at him.

SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON

Two reasons: One is that Bill Clton was the first print and really the first major party nomee to openly appeal to gay people as a ndidate. But the purpose of the book was to wre about this era of the specter of homosexualy, and started wh FDR, wh the rise of the natnal secury state, and end wh the llapse of the Soviet Unn at the end of the Cold War. All Post podstsThe Post's premier daily podst, featurg unparalleled reportg, expert sight and clear analysis, every weekday Reads: A gay uple ran a rtrant peace.

Saturday, July 15, 2023In the ty town of Plas, Va., the nservative Christian neighbors of the gay-owned Front Porch Market and Grill have been workg to shut down the rtrant.