Secret Cy: behd the untold gay history of DC polics | Books | The Guardian

Contents:

• SECRET CY: BEHD THE UNTOLD GAY HISTORY OF DC POLICS
• GAY WATER, A NEW NNED CKTAIL, WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BUD LIGHT

SECRET CY: BEHD THE UNTOLD GAY HISTORY OF DC POLICS

This is te of Amerin polics, where the 20th century saw numero gay and lbian dividuals participatg at the hight levels of power, yet almost wholly effaced om the tellg of our natn’s history.

In the new book Secret Cy, historian Jam Kirchick attempts to scribe to the historil rerd the homosexual men and women who have served and ntributed to their untry Washgton DC, throughout the 20th century. “I want to tertwe the two threads – the mastream thread of history that we all read about, and this gay history that’s been siled and sequtered, ” he said.

”Kirchick first beme trigued by the ia of a gay history of Amerin power polics 2007, when he moved to DC and realized that was suffed wh a vivid gay cultural life and history. In fact, cens data shows that DC has the hight proportn of gay people anywhere the US. As he began workg on the massive project, Kirchick started to believe that, as a gay man, he was uniquely equipped to wre Secret Cy.

GAY WATER, A NEW NNED CKTAIL, WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BUD LIGHT

“It need a gay person to do this, ” he said.

My beg gay rms my abily to say that. Kirchick astutely pots out that the fear of homosexualy has been a driver of printial polics, functng siarly to other historilly regnized forms of prejudice like antisemism and purg of so-lled munists. This prejudice got kickstarted wh the revelatns of the Ksey Reports 1948 and 1953, when people sudnly realized that the gay populatn was far larger than anyone had gused.

This fear of “the gay next door” fueled stereotyp of gays beg disloyal to the Uned Stat, as well as the belief that they were herently nspiratorial – “if you have three homosexuals the room, ’s tomatilly a nspiracy, ” said Kirchick.