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Thus, in 1955, Mattachine Review, published by The Mattachine Society, was the only gay rights, or “homophile,” magazine in the country. In those days there existed physique magazines like Bob Mizer's Physique Pictorial, but these homoerotic publications had to “cover” as bodybuilding manuals to avoid censorship by the United States Post Office. 
 

The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950 by Harry Hay and a group of friends in Los Angeles, was one of the earliest gay rights groups in the United States. 

The primary goals of the society were, according to the group's mission statement found in many of the group's publications: 

“1. Unify homosexuals isolated from their own kind; 

2. Educate homosexuals and heterosexuals toward an ethical homosexual culture paralleling the cultures of the Negro, Mexican and Jewish peoples; 

3. Lead the more socially conscious homosexual to provide leadership to the whole mass of social variants; and 

4. Assist gays who are victimized daily as a result of oppression.” 

This was the era of McCarthyism and, as it turned out, most of the founders of Mattachine were affiliated with Communism. As the McCarthy persecution of Communists progressed, the association of Mattachine founders with Communism concerned some of its members as well as supporters. Hay, a member of the Communist Party for 15 years, stepped down as the society's leader. The new leadership structure became influenced less by Communism and more by a liberal ideology similar to that espoused that by the African-American civil rights organizations. 
 

What does the word Mattachine mean? According to Jonathan Katz in his book Gay American History, Harry Hay claimed: 

“One masque group was known as the 'Société Mattachine.' These societies, lifelong secret fraternities of unmarried townsmen who never performed in public unmasked, were dedicated to going out into the countryside and conducting dances and rituals during the Feast of Fools, at the Vernal Equinox. Sometimes these dance rituals, or masques, were peasant protests against oppression—with the maskers, in the people’s name, receiving the brunt of a given lord’s vicious retaliation. So we took the name Mattachine because we felt that we 1950s Gays were also a masked people, unknown and anonymous, who might become engaged in morale building and helping ourselves and others, through struggle, to move toward total redress and change.” 

A brief perusal of some of the articles in the September/October 1955 issue shows not only how attitudes about homosexuality have changed drastically today, but also how some of the issues are still relevant today as the “culture wars” continue to erupt over the legalization of same-sex marriage. 

The newsletter features articles entitled “The Liberal Mind,” “Culture and Sexuality,” and “The Importance of Being Honest.” The last article emphasizes the importance of historic research on homosexuality and claims, though somewhat gently, that one should not make the assumption that homosexuality has always been a dangerous perversion and threat to society. Gays are still fighting this assumption, much more overtly of course today than in 1955. 
 

There is also a short article on Havelock Ellis and his views on homosexuality. Havelock Ellis, a British doctor and psychologist, coauthored the first medical textbook on homosexuality in 1897. He also studied what today are called transgender phenomena. Together with Magnus Hirschfeld, Ellis is considered a major figure in the history of sexology to establish a new category that was separate and distinct from homosexuality. 

Albert Ellis contributes a piece entitled “The Influence of Heterosexual Culture on Homosexual Attitudes,” significantly, romance and marriage. Yet nowadays, one could make a case for the opposite in a culture which produced Queer Eye for the Straight Guy! 

James Phelan contributes an article on the treatment of sex offenders: gays are lumped together with child molesters and rapists as “sexual psychopaths,” all of whom need rehabilitation through an experimental group that uses the Alcoholics Anonymous model, called ESP, Sex Psychopaths Anonymous. Today, many right wing extremists, such as the husband of Michelle Bachman, would still concur with this notion, but incorporate it into the therapeutic model “praying away the gay.” 

What is also interesting is a response to someone asking to be taken off the magazine's mailing list. The response from the editors is that The Mattachine Society is “NOT an organization of homosexuals, but of people interested in human sex problems, especially those of the homosexual and sex variant.” Such was the danger of being raided and arrested and censored and thrown in prison as a “sexual psychopath” that the editors felt it necessary to hammer home this point (and others points about the Society not being secret) in what was a real climate of fear in the 1950s. 

Yet a selection from a book entitled Sex and the Law by a Judge Ploscowe printed in this issue does indicate the seeds of a shift in attitudes, calling for a repeal of heterosexual anti-sodomy statutes, which would also hinge on decriminalizing private homosexual conduct. Stay in the closet, ye homosexuals, the author seems to be saying, for what you are doing sexually is fine privately, not publicly, because it accords with your essential nature. One can't totally repress “unconventional” sexual behavior, either homosexual or heterosexual. The law (arrests, imprisonment) cannot change “scandalous,” that is publicly deviant, homosexual behavior but psychiatry and science can change behavior. Still, there seems to be the assumption that homosexuals can and should change for the good of society. But the author also decries heterosexual sexual crimes (again, lumping together homosexuality with criminal acts as noted in the Albert Ellis article described above), including child molestation and male prostitution. Thus, perhaps, the homosexuals shouldn't take all the blame for deviances from the heterosexual norm. 

Now, as the United States nears the end of 2014, some LGBT people are fearful, not because of who they are and certainly not because of the enormous strides in the legalization of same-sex marriage, but because many politicians and religious leaders on the far right seek to return to the fearful isolationism and xenophobia of the 1950s. Harry Hay and the members of the Mattachine Society showed remarkable courage in beginning the fight against gay invisibility; now that gays are so powerful and visible, we are perhaps even more vulnerable. Since those days in the 1950s, LBGT people have dropped their masks; now their only protection is the truth of their stature as loving, just persons. 

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But gays serving in the military isn't exactly a newfangled development. In ancient Greece and Rome, soldiers who were also sexual partners served together, died together in battle, and in this case, were martyred for being Christian, not because they were gay. Shocking, and, as you will see, rather hypocritical, isn't it, given the polarization on the gay marriage issue still prevalent in some areas of the the United States, with the Catholic Church vowing never to change its position against any form of gay/lesbian union. 

The saints' story is told in the text known as The Passion of Sergius and Bacchus. The story is ostensibly set during the reign of the emperor Galerius (305-311 A.C.E.), though the work itself may date to the mid-5th century. According to the text, Sergius and Bacchus were Roman citizens and high-ranking officers of the Roman Army, but their conversion to Christianity was discovered when they attempted to avoid accompanying a Roman official into a pagan temple.

After they refused to offer sacrifice to the god Jupiter in front of the emperor, they were publicly humiliated by being dressed in female clothing and paraded around town. Galerius then sent them to another province in the East, Mesopotomia, to be tried by Antiochus, the military commander there and an old friend of Sergius. Antiochus could not convince them to give up their faith, however Bacchus was beaten to death with whips. The next day Bacchus' spirit appeared to Sergius, encouraging him to remain strong so they could be together forever in heaven. With Jesus, definitely, but together!   

Over the next few days, Sergius was also brutally tortured. Sergius refused another opportunity to offer sacrifice to the gods, and Antiochus punished him by having nails driven upright through the soles of his boots. He then forced him to run before his carriage for the nine-mile journey to the fort of Tetrapyrgium. That night, an angel healed Sergius' feet. The next morning, Antiochus was astounded at Sergius' rapid recovery and accused him of sorcery. He forced him to endure the same punishment once more, this time during the nine-mile journey to the town of Resapha. He then gave him a final chance to change his mind. But Sergius refused to do so, and Antiochus ordered him to be led away and executed. 

The close friendship between the two is strongly emphasized in the stories told about them and in their cult, making them one of the most famous examples of paired or “twin” saints, like Christian versions of the famous twins Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology. The late gay historian John Boswell argues that Sergius and Bacchus's relationship contained a romantic element; he claims the oldest text of their martyrology describes them as erastai, which can be translated as "lovers". He also suggested that the two were united in a rite known as “brother-making,” oradelphopoiesis, which he argued was a type of early Christian blessing or ceremony for same-sex unions. 
 

Now, even though Boswell's claim is still open to dispute, I would think, given that the two lived together and shared property together, were not married to women (as far as we know), and, in the course of their martyrdom, were made to dress as women in a unique way to humiliate them, these two men's true orientation is indicated. But, most significantly, they weren't being punished for being gay. If that were the case, their genitals would have been mutilated, according to one source by David Woods, “The Origin of the Cult of SS. Sergius and Bacchus.” They were being punished in that manner for being Christians! 

The picture to the right is a 1994 icon of Sergius and Bacchus by the gay iconographer Robert Lentz, a member of the Catholic Franciscan order, first displayed at Chicago's Gay Pride Parade. 

To read John Boswell's views on this subject, see his book, Same-Sex Unions in Pre Modern Europe. 

(And unlike Jewish baby boys, I wasn't the focus of a big bris party with tons of deli. Not that I would have remembered anyway. Oh well...) 
 

Why even circumcise? There's a clear directive in Genesis 17; all male descendants of Abraham on the eight day after birth, require foreskin removal. Thus both Jews and Muslims follow the practice, Muslims because they regard themselves as descendants of Abraham through his first son, Ishmael. 

But though this text, from a source in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) called the “P” or “Priestly” source that concerns itself primarily with rituals and explanations for their origins and practices, seems to imply that the practice began with the ancient Israelites, it actually did not. 

Many of the nations who bordered on Israel practiced it, including the Egyptians, the Moabites, and the Ammonites. The Philistines did not practice it (Judges 14:3 and I Samuel 17:26). Thus, one of the most famous Philistines, the nine-foot tall Goliath, most probably sported a huge uncut cock. 

The Egyptians waited until puberty to perform the ritual; in that culture and in many other cultures, it was a rite of passage for young men. In Genesis 34, after the rape of their sister Dinah by a Canaanite prince, Jacob's sons insist he be circumcised before he can marry her. (Yes, this story is in the Bible. It's quite shocking on many levels. Check it out.) 

Based on the Bible, it's not clear if the Israelites originally performed the ritual at puberty; the “P” sources that claim it should be done on infants are rather late. 
 

Some Jewish athletes around the time of the Maccabees (2nd century B.C.E.), actually underwent an incredibly painful procedure to surgically create a foreskin in order to participate in Greek competitions, which meant they would no longer be Jewish. 

St. Paul in Romans 4:1-12, writing a few decades after the life and death of Jesus (a Jew, and thus he was circumcised; see Luke 2:21), claims that Christians don't need to be circumcised like Jews, as their salvation is not contingent on being physically born of a certain people. 

By the way, someone supposedly saved Jesus' foreskin. It is called the Holy Prepuce. (Ew … ) 
 

Since the 1970s, doctors in the United States have come to realize that removing the foreskin on baby boys is unnecessary, potentially harmful, and possibly unethical, unless some medical emergency or specific condition requires it. 

Check out our titles that feature famous cut and uncut cocks. Cut or uncut, the cock is still a cock. 
 

 

More gay bars are closing. So we've heard. But then I heard Touché Chicago is undergoing a major renovation. 
 

Who goes to gay porn theaters to watch movies (ostensibly), other than at the legendary Bijou Theater? It's still hopping late weekend nights/early mornings. 

And based on a random sampling of craiglist ads (not exactly a scholarly statistical source), plenty of man-on-man sex is still happening outdoors in forest preserves and indoors in adult “bookstores.” There's one in the Chicago suburb of Roselle that gets mentioned at least once a week as the site of some tryst. 
 

Oh, I forget about the activities in the bathrooms at Macy's and some of the train stations. Ogilvie (what used to called Northwestern Station in Chicago) seems to be quite popular these days. 

So, what's different about man-on-man sex these days (not just the public sex I've noted is still going on) these days, say, compared to not just the pre-AIDS 1970s (sad that one needs to divide LGBT history that way) but the ensuing decades when AIDS drastically changed sexual interaction between gay men and also much of gay social culture? 

The obvious answer is the technology. One could argue that gay men pretty much energized online interaction as early as the 1990s (anyone remember those America Online chat rooms)? Then the Internet became mobile with the advent of laptops and wireless technology. And of course the cellphone which became the multifaceted smartphone/i-phone changed the medium of the sex hunt, but not the goal itself. 

But I really wonder if all those wondrous social media apps have really “killed” physical sex. What was cruising in the docks and parks and bar backrooms in the 1970s and in the 1980s via 1-888 numbers and personal ads has become today's hook-ups via apps. 

Of course, it's so easy to substitute jack off sessions via the phone for actual physical sex, but don't forget, before instagrams and youtube videos, magazines and books served much the same purpose. 

So, what is really going on in this scenario? I think you have to got to start by exploring the type of man-on-man sex that was going on the 1970s, which you can see in several of our Bijou titles. 

More, much more to follow on this subject in a later blog. 

Rest assured, sex is not dead. The madwoman Arachne in Drive has not won and will never win! 

If you ever took Psychology 101, you may have learned about the“bystander effect,” a psychosocial dynamic that often occurs when multiple witnesses view a traumatic (but not always) event happening to an individual. 

Essentially, because of social inhibitions, The more witnesses to an event, the less people are willing to become involved. 
 

Why the inhibition? There's many factors that feed into it, but think if it this way as a diffusion of responsibility: how many times you were in situations where you assume others are either more able or just automatically will take care of a problem? Oh, I thought so and so should do it, because it is his job. Or, I just assumed someone else called the police. 

Now, much of the effect does depend on the context, especially if the environment is different or the the group isn't cohesive, but it's not just apathy, as many still believe, based on the supposed reaction of supposed to witnesses to the now infamous Kitty Genovese murder. 
 

The usual story, based on the New York Times story we have heard is that 37 or 38 people saw Kitty Genovese's brutal stabbing outside her apartment building on March 13, 1964, and did nothing, that is, no one called the police. The apathy of the world. The urban jungle. Being lonely in a crowd. People don't know their neighbors anymore in the big city. It all fits, all those social changes are destroying our sense of community. 
 

But I found out that what's really going on here is akin, but not completely, because something happened and there were witnesses, to those urban legends. In fact, my current “brain candy” television viewing (which, it turns out, in this case, ended up far from being that sweet), Investigation Discovery, basing their show on more recent research, pretty much establishes that the usual narrative we have grown up with is not an accurate depiction of what actually happened. 

Here's the rub: no one witnesses the actual stabbing. People heard screams but saw nothing. They saw nothing. Does hearing a scream make you a witness? 

One neighbor saw something and shouted out the window for Kitty's murderer, Winston Moseley, to leave her alone. He could not tell she was stabbed in the darkness. Moseley fled. The neighbor did see her stagger to the door of her apartment building across the street, but he assumed she was probably drunk and/or the victim of a domestic spat. 

It turns out another woman picked up the phone to call the police. She panicked and put the phone down. In those days, there was no 911 emergency service. You dialed the precinct directly. And in some cases, the person answering the phone might tell you to, basing his judgment (based on extensive experience) solely on your speech, to not get involved. Or, perhaps, the person at the precinct might even be led to believe that you were directly involved in the incident. Thus, calling the police during that period actually could be a risky venture. And also, because police departments had not developed the technologies of surveillance and tracking we now take for granted, you could expect to be questioned extensively and even be deemed a suspect just because you made a call. 

Someone else called the police: a female friend of Kitty's neighbor, Karl Ross. Kitty collapsed in the hallway of her apartment building and screamed Karl's name, crying out she had been stabbed. At first Karl did nothing. Winston by then had caught up with her in the hallway and finished killing his prey, inside. (There was no third attack, as the newspaper article claims). Karl by that point had opened the door and saw the attack, but shut the door in horror and fear. Moseley ran off, but soon after, Kitty's neighbor, and, it turns out, good friend, Sophie, had heard the commotion and ran toward the scene, yes, toward a murder (not exactly apathy). Sophie screamed for Karl to call the police. Karl was not there. He had fled the building via a window to his friend's house. 

But why did Karl do nothing, even after he saw the horror? 

Here's the rub, and it could show that the real issue is not apathy, but fear, and not a fear of “getting involved.” Karl Ross was gay. That night, he had also been drinking, alone. In 1964, gays were routinely harassed by the police, even in their own social spaces, which at that point were limited pretty much to gay bars. His fear about calling the police lost precious minutes. 

And Kitty Genovese was a closeted lesbian (well, pretty much anyone gay or lesbian during that period has to be closeted). Her roommate, Mary Ann, was questioned for six hours by the police after the murder, at one point focusing on why there was only one bed in the apartment for two women. Again, anyone considered to be sexually deviant was a target for police harassment. A grief-stricken Mary Ann moved out of the neighborhood soon after, understandably so. 
 

Kitty herself, as far as we know at this point, was not persecuted for being a lesbian. In fact, she was popular with everyone. Her best friend, Sophie, a straight married woman, apparently knew Kitty was a lesbian, but respected Kitty's privacy in that matter. (Kitty also had dated men, not just because it was the norm, but because she worked as a bar manager, and dating men would be pretty much a required “social” dynamic of the job.) 

There's another issue going on here, and I think it could tie into sexism. One of the neighbors assumed the screams were the result of a domestic dispute, and they thus thought it best to not get involved. According to psychologist Frances Cherry, people during that time period were unlikely to intervene if they assumed a man was attacking his wife and girlfriend. 

And there's something else going on here. The values (or lack thereof) that the article was trying to read into the incident, that is, we live an urban jungle where neighbors don't know each other and everyone is a potential enemy, and this distrust and isolation results in apathy, don't really seem to apply on a literal level in this situation. Kitty knew many of her neighbors. She knew Karl, at least enough to call him by name while she was being murdered. And she died in the arms of her best friend, also a neighbor. In this day and age, how many people can even claim they know even the name of a neighbor? 

What's really a shame is that she had to keep the most basic part of her identity a secret. But that didn't prevent her from loving and being loved by her neighbors. And this loving person was brutally murdered by a psychopathic killer who to this day shows no remorse for his action. 
 

 

Kitty should be remembered for her love, not as a victim of apathy. You could say, though, if she's a victim of anything, it's of the sexism and homophobia of the culture at that time. But I don't think Kitty ever saw herself as a victim of anything while she lived, because she loved her neighbor as herself.