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This Day in Gay History
Paul Goodman
PAUL GOODMAN, American sociologist, poet, writer, and public intellectual born (d: 1972); He described his politics as anarchist, his loves as bisexual, and his profession as that of "man of letters." Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing up Absurd and for having been, during the 1960s, an activist on the pacifist Left and an inspiration to the counterculture of that era. He is less remembered as a co-founder of Gestalt Therapy in the 1940s and 50s.
The freedom with which he revealed, in print and in public, his homosexual life and loves (notably in a late essay, "The Politics of Being Queer" (1969)), proved to be one of the many important cultural springboards for the emerging Gay Liberation Movement of the early 1970s. In an interview with Studs Terkel, Goodman said "I might seem to have a number of divergent interests — community planning, psychotherapy, education, politics — but they are all one concern: how to make it possible to grow up as a human being into a culture without losing nature. I simply refuse to acknowledge that a sensible and honorable community does not exist."
Whether you agree or disagree with the late, great Paul Goodman's cheerfully, rigorously radical ideas, it's clear that very, very few public figures -- really, of any ideological stripe -- since his 1960s-1970s prominence as author/speaker/television guest have attained nearly the richness of thought or the lively way of expressing it that Goodman had.
Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love
From Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love
by Will Roscoe,
Originally in White Crane issue #63, winter 2005, Totems and Animal Wisdom:
In 1979, I attended a retreat where Hay passionately presented his idea concerning subject-Subject consciousness and called on us as Gay men to foster it. At that event I discovered I was not alone in yearning to incorporate a spiritual outlook into my life. For many of us, a spiritual inclination began in childhood with a fantasy life that included talking to trees and animals, and inventing rituals. As we shared these experiences at the 1979 retreat, we realized that Gay spirituality begins with reclaiming the child-like awareness we had before the crippling and stifling influence of homophobia penetrated our lives. Whitman had a similar intuition and frequently celebrated boyhood. In “There was a Child Went Forth,” he describes the child’s awareness in terms that resonate with Hay’s concept of subject-subject:
There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him
But in 1979 adhesive love and subject-subject consciousness were ideals not realities. In those years, it was difficult to see anything redeeming in the way that Gay men were pursuing love. The activist, experimental era of Gay liberation was over. A grassroots movement of volunteer and self-help organizations was being replaced by agencies staffed with professionals. Gay marches had become Gay parades, and Gay social life was shifting from public and community-organized events to commercial venues.
Discussions of Gay love gave way to a narrower focus on sexuality. Self-identified sex radicals claimed that simply having Gay sex challenged the social system, while moderates claimed that sex was the only thing that distinguished lesbians, Gay men, and bisexuals from heterosexuals, and, since it was a private act, it was an invisible difference. In either case, sex was the lynchpin of Gay identity. To be Gay or bisexual was to have sex. At the same time, many Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals were rejecting the idea advanced by earlier liberationists that they might be gender different. The assimilationist mantra took its place: “We’re no different from heterosexuals except for what we do in bed.”
In the 1970s, to live up to their image as sexual athletes, Gay men began using drugs and alcohol at rates far in excess of the general population. Our sexual experiences became increasingly intense, but they occurred in contexts that attributed them with no particular significance. Gay men began referring to sex as “play”—it became a form of recreation, to be consumed much as entertainment or travel or fashion. Far from posing a challenge to the social order, it turned out that a sexual minority community whose identity was derived from what it consumed was perfectly compatible with postindustrial capitalism.
All this occurred as an organized anti-Gay opposition was emerging. In 1977, Anita Bryant’s campaign in Dade County, Florida overturned legislation to protect Gays from discrimination. Soon Gay civil rights protections were being repealed throughout the country. Heterosexual Americans were not ready to see Gay lifestyles or relationships as equal to theirs in any way, nor were they willing to entertain the possibility that Gays were different in ways that might be beneficial. Indeed, Gays themselves increasingly rejected such speculations as elitist, throwbacks to a discredited model of homosexuality as inborn and essential. Lesbian and Gay intellectuals, under the influence of Michel Foucault and the theory of social constructionism, not only decried the idea of queer differences, the very desire to explore the meaning of one’s sexual identity was dismissed out of hand.
In 1982, at the same time I was reading Clement of Alexandria, I decided to write an essay expressing my dismay at the role of sexual objectification in the Gay men’s community. Instead of healing the wounds inflicted on us by a homophobic society, we were perpetuating low self-esteem. And the consequences of this, I argued, could be seen in a growing range of health problems appearing among Gay men—from alcoholism to sexually transmitted diseases to recent reports of a new and mysterious illness that was taking Gay men’s lives.
My essay, titled “Desperate Living” (after a popular John Waters’ film), was published about the same time that I put down Smith’s book. Our extended stay with Harry and his partner John in Los Angeles was over. Brad and I were still young, in our twenties, and life flowed in strong currents. We found ourselves back in San Francisco, immersed in new jobs and new projects.
Fifteen years passed before I took up Smith’s book again. It was 1997, and I had been invited to speak at Gay Spirit Visions, an annual conference held outside Atlanta, Georgia. The theme was mentoring. As I thought about this topic, it occurred to me that Gay men needed not only mentors—teachers, guides, role models—but also some form of initiatory experience to mark their passage from the closet to community and from Gay childhood to Gay adulthood.
Then I remembered the mystical rite of initiation uncovered by Morton Smith. As I began re-reading his book, I saw connections that had escaped me before. I realized how Jesus’ secret baptism drew on ideas and images with a long history, and how it was that same-sex love could be part of, indeed, give rise to, visionary experiences. I realized as well that the insights I was having now were the result of what I had experienced in the fifteen years since I last picked up Smith’s book.
Those were the years when the AIDS epidemic swept through our lives like wildfire, whisking away acquaintances, friends, and lovers—and, eventually, my own life partner.
Excerpt reprinted from Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love by Will Roscoe (Suspect Thoughts Press) courtesy of the author.
All
the qualities that the great masters found, we can attain as well. It
all depends on our own efforts, our diligence, our deeper knowing, and
our correct motivation.
—Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Calm Abiding”
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Taking
care of body, mind, soul, taking care of ourselves and each other
emotionally and physically, repairing the world, earning a living—it’s
endless. ... But to brightly begin, and then, having begun, to continue:
that’s the great thing.
—Norman Fischer, “Saved from Freezing”
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Jane Addams
JANE ADDAMS, born; American social worker, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1935) Although she would not have used the word Lesbian, she did have lasting intimate and romantic relationships with women throughout her life.
After returning from a Grand Tour of Europe, Jane resumed friendship with Ellen Gates Starr, now a teacher. A female love of Starr's had moved away and she was heartbroken. She wrote to Jane, "The first real experience I ever had in my life of any real pain in parting came with separating from her. I don't speak of it because people don't understand it. People would understand if it were a man." Soon Addams would become the object of Starr's affection. It is not clear whether Jane returned the affection. In 1889 she and Starr co-founded Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, one of the first settlement houses in the United States. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by around two thousand people. Its facilities included a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gymnasium, a girls club, a swimming pool, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, a library, and labor-related divisions. She was probably most remembered through the institution of her adult night school which set the stage for the continuing education classes offered by many community colleges today.
Hull House also served as a women's sociological institution. Addams was a friend and colleague to the early members of the Chicago School of Sociology, influencing their thought through her work in applied sociology and, in 1893, co-authoring the Hull-House Maps and Papers that came to define the interests and methodologies of the School. She worked with George H. Mead on social reform issues including promoting women’s rights, ending child-labor, and the mediating during the 1910 Garment Workers’ Strike. Although academic sociologists of the time defined her work as "social work", Addams did not consider herself a social worker.
The term Lesbian was coined in 1890, one year after Addams founded Hull House. Although she would not have used the term to define herself, by today's standards, Jane Addams would be a Lesbian. Mary Rozet Smith arrived at Hull House one day in 1890, the daughter of a wealthy paper manufacturer. Over the years she became Jane's devoted companion, virtually playing the role of a traditional wife: tending to her when she was ill, handling her social correspondence, making travel arrangements.
Unfortunately, we will never know the full extent of Jane's relationship with Mary Smith. Toward the end of her life, Jane destroyed most of Mary's letters to her. Perhaps she was trying to cover up a sexual component of their relationship. "I miss you dreadfully and am yours 'til death," Addams wrote to Smith. Smith wrote back, "You can never know what it is to me to have had you and to have you...I feel quite a rush of emotion when I think of you."
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of Addams's life and the one which won her the most notoriety was her involvement in the peace movement. Addams declared herself a pacifist and spoke out against World War I. Although she would eventually win a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts, it was an unpopular stance to take in 1914.
Addams believed women had a social responsibility to work for peace because working men would never be against war. She took on a leadership role in the Woman's Peace Party. In March 1915 Addams was invited to speak at an International Congress of Women in the Netherlands. Addams presided over the event and one participant said, "She towered above all the others and again and again when she rose to speak and when she closed the audience would stand and applaud...She led without dominating and with extraordinary parliamentary skill clarified and interpreted for the polyglot congress of women."
Jane Addams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. True to her cause, Jane gave all her prize money away.
If we live in the moment, we are not in time. If you think, "I'm a
retired person. I've retired from my role," you are looking back at your
life. It's retrospective; it's life in the rearview mirror. If you're
young, you might be thinking, "I have my whole life ahead of me. This is
what I'll do later." That kind of thinking is called time-binding. It
causes us to focus on the past or the future and to worry about what
comes next.
Getting caught up in memories of the past or worrying about the future
is a form of self-imposed suffering. Either retirement or youth can be
seen as moving on, time for something different, something new. Aging is
not a culmination. Youth isn't preparation for later. This isn't the
end of the line or the beginning.
Now isn't a time to look back or plan ahead. It's time to just be
present. The present is timeless. Being in the moment, just being here
with what is, is ageless and eternal.
- Ram Dass -
Remembering Chadwick Boseman
The TAG condom on Jesse Helms House
On this date a group of AIDS activists called "TREATMENT ACTIVIST GUERRILLAS" (TAG) accomplished one of the funniest and most outrageous bits of public activism when they literally put an enormous condom over the home of rabid homophobe and AIDS death accomplice Senator Jesse Helms in Arlington, Virginia. The activists knew they only had seven minutes before the police showed up. You can see the action in the 2012 documentary How To Survive and Plague. Here: https://youtu.be/Nrr0eA34CSM
Freddie Mercury
FREDDIE MERCURY, Zanzibar-born singer and songwriter (Queen) (d. 1991) Widely regarded as one of the great singers in popular music, Freddie Mercury possessed a distinctive voice, with a recorded range of nearly four octaves. Although his speaking voice naturally fell in the baritone range, he delivered most songs in the tenor range.
Biographer David Bret described Mercury's voice as "escalating within a few bars from a deep, throaty rock-growl to tender, vibrant tenor, then on to a high-pitched, almost perfect coloratura, pure and crystalline in the upper reaches." On the other hand, he would often lower the highest notes during live performances. Mercury also claimed never to have had any formal training.
Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé, with whom Mercury recorded an album expressed her opinion that "the difference between Freddie and almost all the other rock stars was he was selling the voice." Despite the fact that he had been criticized by Gay activists for hiding his HIV status, author Paul Russell included Mercury in his book The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present. Other entertainers on Russell's list included Liberace and Rock Hudson.
This Day in Gay History
John Cage
JOHN CAGE, American composer born (d. 1992). American composer. He was a pioneer of Chance music, non-standard use of musical instruments, and electronic music.
He is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4’33”, whose three movements are performed without a single note being played. Though he remains a controversial figure, he is generally regarded as one of the most important composers of his era. Cage was a long-term collaborator and romantic partner of choreographer Merce Cunningham. In addition to his composing, Cage was also a philosopher, writer, printmaker and avid amateur mycologist and mushroom collector.
Cage always referred to his The Perilous Night (1943) as his "autobiographical" piece, and biographer, David Revill has associated it with the traumas associated with Cage's sexual reorientation, culminating in divorce from his wife (1945) and the beginning of his monogamous partnership with Merce Cunningham, that lasted to the end of his life.
Each
time we let go of distractions to return to our focus, whatever that
is, we practice letting go. Letting go of thoughts, scenarios,
judgments, conceptual thinking—little chunks of self.
—Erik Hansen, “Bartelby the Buddhist”
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TAYATA, OM BEKADZE BEKADZE
MAHA BEKADZE BEKADZE,
RADZA SAMUNGATE
SOHA
This is pronounced:
Tie-ya-tar, om beck-and-zay beck-and-zay
ma-ha beck-and-zay beck-and-zay
run-zuh sum-oon-gut-eh
so-ha.
