Tag Archives: Plymouth Colony

PRIDE MONTH Gay History - June 9th: Cole Porter, David Hockney, and Franco Zeffirelli

PRIDE Month History – June 9: Shipwrecked Sodomite Sailors, Cole Porter, David Hockney, Franco Zeffirelli, and Christine Jorgensen.

June 9th.

1653 – The Plymouth Colony court records reported that Teague Jones and Richard Berry (both male) would be held to answer for living together in an uncivil relationship. The court was very family oriented and preferred  single men to live with families, and not together as couples. 

Berry accused Teague Jones of Yarmouth, of the crime of sodomy, and Jones was put under heavy bonds for his appearance at the March term of the Court to answer. At that Court Berry confessed that he had borne false witness against Jones, and for his perjury was whipped at the post in Plymouth.  The court caused them ‘to part their uncivil living together. Six years later Berry was charged with obscene practices and banished from the colony.

1727 – The merchant vessel Zeewijk wrecked itself on the Houtman Abrolhos islands off the coast of Western Australia.  Hitting a submerged reef, ten men drowned and two weeks passed before the crew could even launch a rescue boat. The desperate survivors used a single longboat to send 11 of their strongest men to Java for rescue – but they were never seen or heard from again. In the months that followed, the remaining crew were forced to build a new boat from scratch, using wood from the Zeewijk and material from surrounding islands.

During this time, two young sailors, Adriaen Spoor and Pieter Engels, were caught by their crewmen in “the abominable and god-forsaken deeds of Sodom and Gomorrah” and sentenced to death. They were abandoned on separate rocky islands and left to starve while the others escaped in their patchwork ship.

1892 – Cole Porter was born on this date in Peru, Indiana.  A snob and would-be aristocrat, Porter was one of America’s best songwriters. When Cary Grant played Porter in the film “Night and Day,” they ignored Porter’s glass closet.

Despite being married, (For Porter, a wife afforded a respectable heterosexual front, and for Linda Thomas who married him, Porter’s success and growing fame only enhanced her social position.)  Porter himself had significant relationships with several men, including Boston socialite Howard Sturges, architect Ed Tauch (who inspired “Easy to Love”), choreographer Nelson Barclift (who inspired “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To”), actor Robert Bray, and longtime companion Ray Kelly, to whose children Porter left half of his royalties when he died in 1964.  Porter’s life was significantly de-gayed in the 2004 biopic De-Lovely: The Cole Porter Story with Kevin Kline in the starring role. William McBrien’s 1998 biography however provides a much more complete picture of Porter’s life.

1924 – Professional wrestler and wrestling entrepreneur, Jim Barnett was born on this date. He was one of the promoters of Australia’s World Championship Wrestling and the former owner of Georgia Championship Wrestling, which later was renamed World Championship Wrestling. Barnett served as an adviser to the World Wrestling Federation (many credit him with masterminding the first three WrestleMania shows, which helped the organization establish their identity), Jim Crockett Promotions and World Championship Wrestling. Jim Barnett was one of the few known men in wrestling who was openly gay.

1936 – June Jordan, poet, teacher and community activist was born on this date in Harlem to Jamaican immigrant parents. She is widely regarded as one of the most significant and prolific Black, bisexual writers of the twentieth century.

Jordan’s first published book, “Who Look at Me”, appeared in 1969, was a collection of poems for children. Twenty-seven more books followed in her lifetime, one (“Some of Us Did Not Die, Collected and New Essays”) was in press when she died. Two more have been published posthumously: “Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan” (Copper Canyon Press, 2005) and a re-issue of the 1970 poetry collection, “SoulScript”, edited by Jordan

1937 – Birth date of English artist David Hockney. Based in Los Angeles, California, Hockney was an important contributor to the British Pop art movement of the 1960s, and considered one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.

In 1961 Hockney moved to California. in 1964. Bohemian lifestyles were the new fad, artists were welcomed with arms wide open, and the gay scene was bubbling with possibilities. In countless interviews with Hockney, he looked back at those days with impenetrable nostalgia. In an interview with The Telegraph, Hockney said: “They want to be ordinary – they want to fit in. Well I don’t care about that. I don’t care about fitting in. Everywhere is so conservative.” Hockney wanted to celebrate just how different the gay lifestyle is from the heterosexual one. It has to do with extravagance, treating the world as a playing field for daredevils, and, most of all, leading an unapologetic life.

1947 – “Newsweek” magazine reported on the US military’s intensified campaign to purge homosexuals. It described homosexuals as abnormal and neuropsychiatric cases. It also described methods used to screen out homosexuals, and said that according to Army files they had higher intelligence than the average soldier, performed admirably, and were law-abiding and hard-working.

That strange story, in retrospect, was that gay people came from all walks of life. But in 1947, neither the Army nor Newsweek in its June 9, 1947 story could wrap their heads around that fact. Newsweek was also surprised to learn that gays were, on average, intelligent, not particularly feminine, and “as a whole, these men were law-abiding and hard working. In spite of nervous, unstable and often hysterical temperaments they performed admirably as workers. Many tried to be good soldiers.” If gay soldiers were “nervous,” that undoubtedly came from the consequences of being found out. “Once this abnormality was detected, the man was usually evacuated by the unit doctors to a general hospital where he received psychiatric treatment while a military board decided whether or not he was reclaimable. A good number begged to be cured, but doctors usually doubted their sincerity, and recommended discharge.”

But being discharged was far from the end to these soldiers’ problems. During the first half of the war, they were brought up on court-martial, punished and dishonorably discharged. But by 1943, courts-martial were overwhelmed by the rising caseload, so the Army decided to let them go with an administrative “blue” discharge — neither honorable or dishonorable, and so named for the color of paper they were printed on

1983 – Italian director Franco Zeffirelli came out in an interview with “The Advocate.”  Zeffirelli considers himself “homosexual” rather than gay, he feels the term “gay” is less elegant. Zeffirelli has adopted two adult sons, men he has worked with for years and who now live with him and manage his affairs.

Zeffirelli has received criticism from religious groups for what they call the blasphemous representation of biblical figures in his films and also criticism from members of the gay community for publicly backing the Roman Catholic Church with regard to homosexual issues

1984 – A KKK march was scheduled to take place on a busy Saturday, June 9th, in the middle of the afternoon in the very gay Montrose section of Houston, TX.  Leaders from the Houston Gay Political Caucus and other organizations urged everyone to “not dignify the KKK with our attendance.” A few days before the march, local gay bars received a poster depicting a hooded Klansman saying “I want YOU, Queer — Gas Homosexuals.” A number of bars posted the poster with a suggestion that it would be better to spend Saturday voting in the city’s run-off election. “At the polls, gays win,” read a response in an LGBT magazine, “At the march, no one wins.”

Police estimated about 2,000 observers showed up for the five block march from Waugh Drive to Mason Street. Those spectators were mostly reporters, photographers, and a few curious families from the area. One father was seen telling his five-year-old son, “See those men in white robes? They’re the bad people full of hate. We’re the good people.” At Mary’s, a legendary gay bar conveniently located where the Klan’s parade began, a loudspeaker outside blared “Springtime For Hitler.” from the musical The Producers as the Klan marched bu.  Six hundred police officers lined the route to protect the crowd from the Klan — or perhaps, more accurately, the other way around — as 58 Klansmen in full regalia marched down the street. The parade itself lasted all of 16 minutes, but it cost the city about $80,000 (that’s about $185,000 in today’s dollars). Other than a few beer bottles tossed toward the marchers, there were no incidents.

1989 – Fifty people protested an appearance by comedian Sam Kinison in Seattle, Washington because of racist, sexist, and anti-gay material in his act.

1989 – The ashes of pioneer transsexual Christine Jorgensen were scattered off Dana Point by her two nieces and two of her closest friends.

1990 – Michele Barzach, former health minister of France, called for the legalization of brothels to curb the spread of AIDS.

1992 – A US District Court ruled in favor of a group of artists who challenged the constitutionality of the National Endowment for the Arts decency clause. The artist’s grants had been denied because they worked with homoerotic subject matter.

1998 – Homophobe TV preacher Pat Robertson warned the city of Orlando, Florida that God would punish the city with natural disasters for allowing the display of rainbow flags during Gay Pride Month.

2008 – Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched that nation’s first ever national convention on LGBT rights. After calling for a universal embrace of the homosexual movement, the president affirmed that “homophobia” is perhaps “the most perverse disease impregnated in the human head.”

Gay History- June 6, 1671: Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Plymouth Colony Makes Gay Sex Punishable By Death.

If we don’t start fighting back against the hate. Who knows what might happen again.

On June 6, 1667, the General Court of Plymouth, Massachusetts added several capital crimes to those listed in the previous years… one of these laws was the “sodomy” statute stating that those who commit sodomy shall be put to death but with a caveat making persons under fourteen and the party of forced sodomy not punishable by death. The further qualification, that “all other sodomitical filthiness” shall be punished according to its nature, may have meant that anal penetration was necessary for the death penalty and that other types of non-penetrative, “sodomitical” (sodomy-like) acts, such as mutual or public masturbation, were not as punished so severely.

The sixteen crimes punishable by death in the Plymouth law of 1671 were listed as (1) “Idolatry,” (2) “Blasphemy,” (3) “Treason,” (4) “Conspiring against this Jurisdiction” (attempted invasion, insurrection, or rebellion), (5) “Willful murder,” (6) “Sudden Murder in Passion,” (7) “Murder by Guile or Poisoning,” (8) “Witchcraft,” (9) “Bestiality,” (10) “Sodomy,” (11) “False-witness,” (12) “Man-stealing,” (13) “Cursing or Smiting Father or Mother,” (14) “The Rebellious Son,” (15) “Rape,” (16) “Willful burning of Houses, Ships, etc.”

The provision, whose margin referred to “sodomy” reads:  “If any Man lyeth with Mankind, as he lyeth with a Woman, both of them have committed Abomination; they both shall surely be put to Death, unless the one party were forced, or be under fourteen years of Age: And all other Sodomitical filthiness shall be surely punished according to the nature of it.:

This Plymouth law was revised when Plymouth was united with Massachusetts in 1697.

But make no mistake sodomy was still punished by death in the early 1600s.  Just not “legally”.

According to Raymond Paternoster’s Capital Punishment in America (1991), during the 1600s there were a total of five documented death sentences in the colonies for same‑sex sodomy, two each in Connecticut and New York, and one in Virginia. In addition, there was another prosecution in New York in which the records do not show the disposition of the case. There were a total of 162 known death sentences carried out in all the colonies during the century, making the five known for same-sex sodomy about 3% of the total. The number of executions does not, of course, indicate the impact and effect of such executions.

According to the online Executions in the U.S. 1608-1987: The Espy File (s) there were 10 known executions for sodomy or buggery (same-sex or different sex, human-human or human-beast, or act type unspecified) in the colonies between 1625 and 1674. One of those executions was in Virginia, two in New York, three in Massachusetts, and four in Connecticut. Between 1757 and 1801 there were five executions for sodomy or buggery. Three were in New Jersey, one in Pennsylvania, and one under Spanish law in California.

In 1642, Edward Preston was sentenced to be publicly whipped at both Plymouth and Barnstable “for his lewd practices tending to sodomy with Edward Mitchell, and pressing John Keene thereunto (if he would have yielded).” Keene, who had reported the crime, was required to watch the punishment because he was suspected of “not being without fault himself.” No death penalty here, since the actions of Preston and Mitchell only “tended toward sodomy.”

Gay History – August, 1673: Plymouth Colony Convicts Two Men Of “Spending their seed one upon another”

On August 6, 1673 Plymouth Colony convicted two men of “Lewd Behavior and Unclean Carriage”. 

While not directly labeled in the records as a case of sodomy, it is clearly an act of homosexual behavior.

From the official record:

John Allexander & Thomas Roberts were both examined and found guilty of lewd behavior and unclean carriage one with another, by often spending their seed one upon another, which was proved both by witness & their own confession; the said Allexander [was] found to have been formerly notoriously guilty that way, and seeking to allure others thereunto. The said John Allexander was therefore censured [sentenced] by the Court to be severely whipped, and burnt in the shoulder with a hot iron, and to be perpetually banished [from] the government [territory] of New Plymouth, and if he be at any time found within the same, to be whipped out again by the appointment [order] of the next justice, etc., and so as oft as he shall be found within this government. Which penalty was accordingly inflicted.

Thomas Roberts was censured to be severely whipped, and to return to his master, Mr. Atwood, and serve out his time with him, but to be disabled hereby to enjoy any lands within this government, except he manifest better desert.

Allexander and Roberts, were two men with a long history of sodomy in Plymouth and were spared capital punishment. Allexander, a property owning man, and Roberts, an indentured servant, not only violated sexual morals, but also transgressed class distinctions .

Their punishment, banishment for Allexander and the denial of future land ownership for Roberts, was approximately the same as was cast upon those who participated in illicit sexual acts between men and women.