Michael Waters reviews Jam Kirchick’s book “Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton,” which chronicl the panic over queer polil fluence Washgton, D.C., om the Princy of Frankl D. Roosevelt to that of Bill Clton.
Contents:
- A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT
- WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'
- ‘THE REAL VILLA IS THE CLOSET’: A NEW HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON DEALS WH SOCIETY AS IT TLY WAS
- SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON
- ON THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON
- WHAT MA WASHGTON, D.C., THE “GAYT AND MOST ANTIGAY CY AMERI”
A HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON THAT LETS HOMOPHOBIA STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT
"Secret Cy," isn’t so much a gay history of D.C. as is a history of Washgton as experienced by s gay power players. * hidden history of gay washington *
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. 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.
WASHGTON, D.C.'S HIDN GAY HISTORY IS UNVERED 'SECRET CY'
* hidden history of gay washington *
” 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.
” 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.
‘THE REAL VILLA IS THE CLOSET’: A NEW HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON DEALS WH SOCIETY AS IT TLY WAS
The New York Tim BtsellerA New York Tim Notable Book of 2022Named one of Vany Fair's “Bt Books of 2022”“Not sce Robert Caro’s Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret Cy is not gay history. It is Amerin history.”—Gee StephanopoulosWashgton, D.C., has always been a cy of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the on revealed Jam Kirchick’s Secret Cy. For s, the specter of homosexualy hnted Washgton. The mere suggtn that a person might be gay stroyed reputatns, end reers, and ed liv. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexualy beme tertwed wh the growg threat of ternatnal munism, leadg to a purge of gay men and lbians om the feral ernment. In the fevered atmosphere of polil Washgton, the secret “too loathsome to mentn” held enormo, terrifyg power. Utilizg thoands of pag of classified documents, terviews wh over one hundred people, and material unearthed om printial librari and archiv around the untry, Secret Cy is a chronicle of Amerin polics like no other. Begng wh the tragic story of Sumner Well, Frankl Delano Roosevelt’s brilliant diplomatic advisor and the man at the center of “the greatt natnal sndal sce the existence of the Uned Stat,” Jam Kirchick illumat how homosexualy shaped each succsive printial admistratn through the end of the twentieth century. Cultural and polil anxiety over gay people sparked a s-long wch hunt, impactg everythg om the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI to the ascent of Joseph McCarthy, the stggle for Black civil rights, and the rise of the nservative movement. Among other revelatns, Kirchick tells of the World War II–era gay spymaster who pneered sctn as a tool of Amerin pnage, the voted ai whom Lyndon Johnson treated as a son yet abandoned once his homosexualy was disvered, and how allegatns of a “homosexual rg” ntrollg Ronald Reagan nearly railed his 1980 electn victory. Magisterial spe and timate tail, Secret Cy will forever transform our unrstandg of Amerin history. * hidden history of gay washington *
” This, of urse, is not how homosexualy works.
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.
SECRET CY: THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON
For s, the specter of homosexualy hnted Washgton. The mere suggtn that a person might be gay stroyed reputatns, end reers and ed liv. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexualy beme tertwed wh the growg threat of ternatnal munism, leadg to a purge of gay men and lbians om the feral ernment. In the fevered atmosphere of polil Washgton, the secret “too loathsome to mentn” held enormo, terrifyg power. * hidden history of gay washington *
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. 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. "Secret Cy: The Hidn History of Gay Washgton" by Jam, Henry & Company, Inc.
“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.
ON THE HIDN HISTORY OF GAY WASHGTON
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.
WHAT MA WASHGTON, D.C., THE “GAYT AND MOST ANTIGAY CY AMERI”
“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.