My Harvard, Part 2: New York - The Gay & Lbian Review

Contents:

• A GAY PURGE AT HARVARD, 1920
• THE HARVARD GAY & LBIAN REVIEW
• THE BT OF THE HARVARD GAY & LBIAN REVIEW

A GAY PURGE AT HARVARD, 1920

The ia of gay and lbian people existg was no surprise to me, but the fact that I had iated a same-genr romance a vioMore. In the early 1960s, Hansen argued that magaz like ONE and Tangents should be aimed primarily at heterosexuals, not homosexuals. The same uld be said of his novels, which are wrten as much for straight rears as for gay on.

Ramadan ftly ptur what means to be a homosexual a eply relig culture racked wh polil vlence, where nearly every aspect of life is dictated by tradn and the Koran, which turn is driven by the patriarchal and the mascule. In Memoriam ptur the atmosphere of ele public schools at the time, pecially the rampant, barely ncealed homoeroticism, often mixed wh vlence. HARDLY FIND a more diverse group of books than this: one by a pneerg Jewish lbian poet origally om Poland; one by a French surrealist; and a third by a gay man livg Dallas.

He acknowledg that ntemporary rears might fd some of the book irrelevant, but his aim is “to show what the unfoldg of gayMore. Greenough, skirtg the ual channels for vtigatg allegatns of stunt wrong-dog, nvened a secret five-member board—referred to the College’s own rerds as The Court—to gather evince ncerng homosexual activi at Harvard. It turns out that shortly before he took his own life, Wilx had told his olr brother Gee that he was havg a homosexual affair wh an olr man who lived on Bean Hill.

THE HARVARD GAY & LBIAN REVIEW

That is, they wanted nam and more nam, not jt of homosexuals at Harvard, but also of any men who knowgly associated wh homosexuals. In the end, the Court found fourteen men “guilty” eher of mtg homosexual acts or of beg, the lorful language of Greenough, “too closely associated wh those who have been guilty of the acts.

—dit that The Court saw homosexualy as a kd of moral ntagn that mt be ntaed before spread yet further. We see this worry over homosexualy’s fect power the letters Greenough wrote to parents of stunts found guilty of associatg wh homosexuals: “The acts qutn are so unspeakably gross that the timat of those who m the acts bee tated, and, though an entirely different class om the prcipals, mt for the moment be separated om the College.

The ways of thkg about homosexualy are hardly thgs of the past. Jakobsen and I argue Love the S: Sexual Regulatn and the Lims of Relig Tolerance, this worry—that homosexualy n end wtern civilizatn as we know —would be risible (Plato and Shakpeare anyone? ) if not for the ways which this accatn ntu to prop up and jtify discrimatn and even vlence agast lbians, gay men, and other sexual dissints.

THE BT OF THE HARVARD GAY & LBIAN REVIEW

So, turns out that DOMA and the policians supportg were not “agast” homosexuals; they were “for” good ol’ Amerin valu. Or, to take another example, s ongog and even accelerated practice of dischargg homosexuals om the ary, the U. When the ernment jtifi polici that actively discrimate agast lbians, gay men, and bisexuals as beg the natnal tert, we should not wonr, then, that those who m btal acts of vlence agast homosexuals, people of lor, members of relig mori, and other Others so often unrstand themselv to be actg not out of hatred, but out of fense.

For now, and the place of a ncln, I want to mark what is, to me, the most fascatg feature of the hidn homosexual history recently unvered the pag of the Harvard Crimson, how ntemporary rears have reacted to . Wilx, a sophomore at Harvard College.