BijouBlog

I was in grade school and then high school for the last four years of the decade, pretty much insulated in the segregated Western suburbs of Chicago from the “big bad city” where undesirables (anyone not white, straight, or Catholic) preyed on young white Catholic school kids. 

Little did I know (and this is mostly anecdotal evidence) that guys in the burgeoning “gay ghettos” at that time were enjoying lots of sex, and not just inside, but outside. Now, they had been having public sex from some time, and the risks of arrest were still there, but … One person I know told me about several encounters between men that inevitably resulted in sex. A glance … a look at the crotch … constant cruising. My friend made it seem that these “quick tricks” were par for the course. I've heard stories about sex in and on trucks, sex in hardware stores, sex at the YMCA (all you needed to do was leave your door open) … was life really like a porn movie at that time? 
 

Not that sexual liberation was confined to the gay community or other countercultural movements. The Baby Boomers who were gradually settling down in the suburban subdivisions (mostly white upper middle class couples with money and leisure time) were experimenting with “swinging.” I read recently on the Huffington Post about swinging parties: 

Long before car keys were collected at parties from those who drank too much, suburban swingers in the 1970s collected them for a different reason. As they entered the party, the men would deposit their car keys in a bowl by the front door. On the way out, the women would fish a set of keys from the bowl and that's who they'd go home with. 

(Not exactly, it seems, an even power exchange; why are the women “fishing out” the men's keys, and not vice versa?) 

Everyone, it seems, was looking for Mr. Goodbar, but Mr. Goodbar wasn't necessarily someone you would marry and procreate with. 
 

And now that the gay community was evolving socially into something close to what people like me who came out later became, social structures resembling a heterosexual norm (such as marriage) were not just questioned, but even rejected. In fact, the leaders of the Gay Liberation Front in New York said in July 1969, "We expose the institution of marriage as one of the most insidious and basic sustainers of the system. The family is the microcosm of oppression.” 
 

Gay pride parades resembled militant marches. Life in the urban gay communities was focused on bathhouses, at that time veritable “sex palaces,” bars, adult movie theaters, discos, campy cabarets, and a handful of accepting churches and community organizations. Gay macho (think the Brawny paper towel guy) was in. The total look was big, in your face and in your crotch: big boots, big hair, big moustaches. Out, loud, and proud! 
 

But outside these islands of what seemed to be nonstop partying, just blocks away from the long lines to get into the Bijou Theater in Chicago, one could still be fired for being gay. Gay sex between consenting adults was still a criminal offense in many states. The American Psychiatric Association's proclamation that homosexuality was not an illness was still comparatively new and not generally accepted by large segments of the population. The holy haters like Anita Bryant and others in what would become the Religious Right Movement were slowly gaining political and social power. 
 

 

Being out, loud, and proud outside of the urban gay enclaves could mean social rejection and even death. 

And in the next decade, gay sex itself became a death sentence as the AIDS epidemic swept over these communities still fighting for survival.

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. 

If you like our blogs, please reblog or retweet or email them on to a friend.

Also, please support Bijou during this holiday season by going to our website and purchasing an item or two of vintage gay sexuality for yourself or as a unique gift for a friend. 

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! 

The world has recently lost two immensely talented figures, one so tragically by suicide, one dying at a ripe old age. 

Both were able to reach deep into the heart of the human condition, using wit and humor with compassion and grace. 

In her own words, Lauren Bacall: 
 

“Find me a man who's interesting enough to have dinner with and I'll be happy.” 

“I am not a has-been. I am a will be.” 

“Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.”  

“I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.”

“You realize yourself when you start reflecting–because I don’t live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are–that you can’t ignore it. But I don’t look at scrapbooks.” 

“You can’t always be a leading lady.” 

“I'd like to meet the man who decided that people do or don't look Jewish. What the hell does that mean anyway? Is it the American penchant for pinning things down, categorizing, for pigeonholing people? Whatever it is, it's wrong.” 

"My children give me a great sense of wonder. Just to see them develop into these extraordinary human beings. And a favorite book as a child? Growing up, it was 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe' — I would read the whole C.S. Lewis series out loud to my kids. I was once reading to Zelda, and she said 'don't do any voices. Just read it as yourself.' So I did, I just read it straight, and she said 'that's better.'" 

"You're only given one little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." 

"Do you think God gets stoned? I think so ... look at the platypus." 

"When in doubt, go for the dick joke." 

On his mentor, Jonathan Winters: "Jonathan taught me that the world is open for play, that everything and everybody is mockable, in a wonderful way." 

"I love kids, but they are a tough audience." 

“You'll always have bad times, but it'll always wake you up to the good stuff you weren't paying attention to.” – Robin Williams as Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting 

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change this world. –Dead Poets Society 
 

May they rest in peace and continue to inspire us by making us laugh. 
 

 

 

 

In 1984, the wingnuts under the auspices of the Reagan administration were consolidating their positions and essentially loaded well their guns in fighting what would become the culture wars of today. 

August seems to have been a rather active month on their part, according to The Gay Decades by Leigh W. Rutledge: 

“August 13 – Jimmy Swaggart, Phyllis Schlafly, James Robinson and Jerry Falwell all testify before the Republican Party platform committee in Dallas, pressing for (and getting) a strongly pro-family, antigay, antiabortion platform. “There were no moderate religious folks who testified,” notes one delegate. 
 

August 19 – On the eve of the Republican National Convention in Dallas, President Reagan issues a statement reaffirming his support for “traditional” family values, and adds that his administration “will resist the efforts of some to obtain government endorsement of homosexuality.” 

August 22 – Jerry Falwell delivers the benediction at the Republican National Convention."

It's obvious that LGBT Americans have made great strides since this era, but note that the leaders of what became known as the Religious Right actually began to consolidate their power base in the Republican Party in the late 1960s. That was a time of both frightening violence and exhilarating freedom, but also a time when many, on both extremes of the political spectrum, were dissatisfied with the way the country was governed.

I am wondering if we are also experiencing a similar threshold time. Can those who would scapegoat LGBT persons for not conforming to their system of social and cultural order regroup somehow? Those justices who interpret the laws of this country give hope that this dynamic will not come to pass. I'm not so hopeful about those elected officials who make the laws, or rather, in this day and age, try to prevent just laws from being passed and executed. 
 

What I am hopeful about is the changing attitude of millenials, even those who identify as Evangelical Christians, toward LGBT issues, especially marriage equality. They've got the technological means to bring about change; I hope that apathy, narcissism, and economic problems won't deter them from making a difference in a future which will belong to them.