Tag Archives: The New York Times

Gay History Month – October 24: Cole Porter, Paul Lynde and TIME Magazine’s 1969 Article “The Homosexual in America.”

Today In Gay History: October 24th.

44 B.C.:  Marcus Tullius Cicero; Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist when talking about his relationship with Mark Antony when he was younger, insinuated that he ‘established him (Mark Antony) in a fixed and stable marriage, as if he had given you a stola.’  A stola is the traditional garment of a married Roman woman. ‘Although Cicero’s sexual implications are clear, the point of the passage is to cast Anthony in the submissive role in the relationship and to impugn his manhood in various ways.  Please don’t tell Cleo. 

1926: The New York Times prints a book review of Dr. Joseph Collins’ The Doctor Looks at Love and Life.” Dr. Collins countered the claim that homosexual love is pathological and that homosexuals are psychopaths or neurotic, saying that he knew many well-balanced homosexuals of both sexes who have distinguished themselves in various fields from arms to the pulpit. He also stated that “Genuine homosexuality is not a vice, it is an endowment.”

1937: Legendary composer and songwriter Cole Porter’s legs are crushed when the horse he was riding while out in the Hamptons falls on top of him.

1966: Paul Lynde makes his first appearance on the game show Hollywood Squares and it becomes the gayest show on television without knowing it.  Or maybe they did.!

 1969 : Just a mere 4 months after the riots at the Stonewall Inn  TIME Magazine’s weekly cover story is “The Homosexual in America.”

It was not kind.

The article stated:

Homosexuals are present in every walk of life, on any social level, often anxiously camouflaged; the camouflage will sometimes even include a wife and children, and psychoanalysts are busy treating wives who have suddenly discovered a husband’s homosexuality. But increasingly, deviates are out in the open, particularly in fashion and the arts. Women and homosexual men work together designing, marketing, retailing, and wrapping it all up in the fashion magazines. The interior decorator and the stockbroker’s wife conspire over curtains. And the symbiosis is not limited to working hours. For many a woman with a busy or absent husband, the presentable homosexual is in demand as an escort –witty, pretty, catty, and no problem to keep at arm’s length. Rich dowagers often have a permanent traveling court of charming international types who exert influence over what pictures and houses their patronesses buy, what decorators they use, and where they spend which season.

The once widespread view that homosexuality is caused by heredity, or by some derangement of hormones, has been generally discarded. The consensus is that it is caused psychically, through a disabling fear of the opposite sex. The origins of this fear lie in the homosexual’s parents. The mother–either domineering and contemptuous of the father, or feeling rejected by him–makes her son a substitute for her husband, with a close-binding, overprotective relationship. Thus, she unconsciously demasculinizes him. If at the same time the father is weakly submissive to his wife or aloof and unconsciously competitive with his son, he reinforces the process. To attain normal sexual development, according to current psychoanalytic theory, a boy should be able to identify with his father’s masculine role.

Lack of procreation or of marriage vows is not the issue; even Roman Catholic authorities hold that an illicit hetero sexual affair has a degree of “authentication,” while a homosexual relationship involves only “negation.” Roman Catholic thought generally agrees that homosexuality is of and in itself wrong because, as New York’s Msgr. Thomas McGovern says, it is “inordinate, having no direction toward a proper aim.” Even in purely nonreligious terms, homosexuality represents a misuse of the sexual faculty and, in the words of one Catholic educator, of “human construction.

Even in purely nonreligious terms, homosexuality represents a misuse of the sexual faculty and, in the words of one Catholic educator, of “human construction.” It is a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life. As such it deserves fairness, compassion, understanding and, when possible, treatment. But it deserves no encouragement, no glamorization, no rationalization, no fake status as minority martyrdom, no sophistry about simple differences in taste—and, above all, no pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness.

Ten years later Time would publish another gay-themed cover story, this one titled “How Gay is Gay”, which offered a  more positive and accurate portrayal.

1978: Diana Ross stars as Dorothy in the movie version of The Wiz, which opens in theaters. It’s not nearly successful as the Broadway musical.

1981: The first National Conference on Lesbian and Gay Aging took place in California. Sponsored by the National Association For Gay and Lesbian Gerontology, it sought to “dispel myths about older lesbians and gay men, advance research, establish programs and services for lesbian and gay elders, and encourage and provide support for lesbian and gay gerontologists.”

1987: Elizabeth Kirby Lewallen was named the new president of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays at the organization’s Sixth International convention in Washington DC.

1992: Thirty-five religious leaders in northwest Vermont joined to condemn two acts of hate-motivated violence, one anti-gay and one anti-Semitic.

LGBT Activists Push Back Against Broad “Religious” Exemptions In ENDA

ENDAA strong movement is emerging by grassroots activists to narrow the current sweeping, unprecedented religious exemption in the recently introduced ENDA ( The Employment Non-Discrimination Act) legislation in both the House and the Senate.

As it stands ENDA’s religious exemptions extend far beyond churches, synagogues, and mosques and could provide a blank check to engage in employment discrimination against LGBT people. It also effectively gives a stamp of legitimacy to LGBT discrimination that our civil rights laws have never given any protections based on an individual’s race, sex, national origin, age, or disability. The religious exemptions included in the current version of ENDA would almost render the legislation useless.

Last Saturday The New York Times Editorial Board took both President Obama and Congress to task over ENDA not only urging Congress to pass the ENDA but also insisting that President Obama sign an executive order barring companies that contract with the federal government from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Amazingly President Obama has been reluctant to do so despite the fact that there is presidential precedent set by not one but two former Presidents.

President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 in 1942 which required any part of the federal government involved in defense contracts to ensure that vocational and training programs were administered without discrimination as to “race, creed, color or national origin.”   President Lyndon Johnson also singed Executive Order 11246  on September 24, 1965, which “prohibits federal contractors and federally assisted construction contractors and subcontractors, from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” 

But still President Obama refuses to sign an Executive Order to protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity by federal contractors.

The Tines editorial also touched on ENDA’s current religious exemptions:

…the exemption – extending well beyond just houses of worship to hospitals and universities, for example, and encompassing medical personnel, billing clerks and others in jobs that are not directly involved in any religious function – amounts to a license to engage in the discrimination that ENDA is meant to remedy

Exactly what good is an anti-discrimination bill that will allow those who discrimination the most to continue doing so without suffering ramifications?

This is not about religion and should never have been.  Discrimination against others is NOT acceptable in the Bible.  Quite the contrary,  and the fact that we allow the perverse twisting of scriptures by anti-gay extremist religious groups to use as protection is not only shameful to the United States but also shows our leaders as cowards who fear upsetting them.

Religious Freedom does not and will never include hate.

It’s time that the excuse for using faux “religion beliefs” as a reason to discriminate and hate is exposed and denied once and for all.

And its well past time for our so-called “fierce advocate’ and other elected leaders to step up prove that.