Gay Boy Scouts in the 1970s - Video

Last week, for the first time in its century-long history, the Boy Scouts of America officially admitted openly gay boys into its membership rolls.

As of January 1, 2014, gay teenagers can now participate in BSA activities until they are 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours, and 59 minutes old.  One minute later, they become ineligible in a bifurcated policy that permits gay Scouts but not gay Scouters (the term of art the international Scouting movement uses to refer to adult leaders).

When the policy's implementation made headlines on the cusp of the new year, I reached back into my own archives, discovering some home movies from a Boy Scout summer camp in 1971.

I was a member of Troop 72 of the Potawatomi Area Council at the time. Troop 72 was sponsored by St. Agnes Parish in Butler, Wisconsin, where I attended elementary school. I joined the troop in the fall of 1970 and went on probably a dozen camping trips over the following two years, including two week-long sojourns during the summer at Camp Long Lake in the Kettle Moraine State Forest in Sheboygan County.

That first summer, my father brought along a Super-8mm movie camera to record some of the frolicking Scouts as they assembled for a flag-raising, took their swimming tests, participated in fire-building, gathered at the mess hall for dinner, and worked toward getting merit badges in archery, canoeing, and other activities.

This silent film -- characterized by overcast skies in what was apparently a chilly summer of 1971 -- lasts for just over seven and a half minutes.

(Before clicking on this video, let this be fair warning to anyone offended by images of shirtless teenage boys romping around in skimpy swimwear, or by classic gas-guzzling American automobiles of late 1960s and early 1970s vintage. You'll see all those things and more. By the way, if you recognize yourself in this home movie from 1971, or if you have ever been a member of Troop 72 at St. Agnes School, please note it in the comments section, below. It will be fun to reconnect with old friends.)

It's possible, but not likely, that I was the only gay Scout featured in this video. Of course, at 12 years of age, I wasn't openly gay like Maryland's Pascal Tessier, who hopes to become the first Scout to earn his Eagle rank while being openly gay. (There are many other gay Eagle Scouts who came out subsequent to their achievement.)

The Boy Scouts' new policy was approved last year and there was some trepidation that the transition might be bumpy.

According to news reports, however, whatever fears there might have been dissipated quickly once the policy was implemented.

For instance, according to a story in the Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune, local Scout council leader Doug Callahan said he had not observed much of an effect since the policy change.

Overall, he said, the feedback he has received about the change has been "mostly positive."

"Some folks didn't think it went far enough, and some folks didn't like any change, but the vast majority of our supporters and members are OK with the change because they realize our focus is on serving youth and delivering a quality scouting program," he said. "This issue isn't really an important part of our core mission."

Callahan said the Great Rivers Council, which oversees about 8,000 Scouts in northern and Central Missouri, has gotten a few letters from parents that said they will pull their sons out of the Scouts and some letters from people ending financial support. But others have increased their donations because of the change, Callahan said.

"Financially, it's pretty much a break even," he said.

Elsewhere, Alex J. Davidson and Trudy Ring reported in The Advocate,

... so far there has been little blowback as a result of the new policy.

Although about 70 percent of scout troops are affiliated with churches, not all of them LGBT-friendly, very few churches have ended their sponsorship over the gay-inclusive stance, NBC News reports. BSA spokesman Deron Smith told NBC that fewer than 2 percent of the nation’s 116,000 scouting units were dropped by their sponsors between May 23, when the new policy was approved, and Wednesday, when it went into effect.

In an additional statement to The Advocate, he said BSA volunteers and staff were "prepared to implement the new policy with no major changes to the delivery of the scouting program."

The Advocate further reported that BSA spokesman Deron Smith had said in a written statement:

"While people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in scouting. We're pleased that the overwhelming majority of our members, families, and chartered organizations remain committed to the Boy Scouts of America. America's youth need scouting, and by focusing on the goals that unite us, we can continue to accomplish incredible things for young people and the communities we serve."

Years after my own, brief Scouting experience, I mentioned my participation in Troop 72 in the first commentary piece I wrote for The Wall Street Journal, in which I argued that, although the Boy Scouts' policy at the time -- to exclude completely any openly-gay boys or leaders -- was wrongheaded and cruel, it was the BSA's right as an organization to maintain that policy.

Later, Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL) made a similar but expanded argument in an amicus curiae brief presented to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of BSA v. Dale. The court alluded to our brief in its decision favoring the Scouts' right to freedom of association.

GLIL had argued that public pressure, rather than government coercion, was a better way to get the Boy Scouts to change theiranti-gay policies.  As I noted in my WSJ article in August 1999:

a self-contradictory and wrong-headed policy does not require (nor deserve) the action of the state to correct it. Many commentators have noted that the Girl Scouts have chosen to practice non-discrimination in regard to sexual orientation. Lesbians are free to participate in Girl Scout programs. Yet no government action compelled this change in policy. The Girl Scouts' leadership acted on its own.

That is why we should encourage the efforts of those individuals and groups, such as gay former Scouts, who are trying to persuade the BSA to change its membership requirements voluntarily. Their attempts at moral suasion deserve commendation and support.

Moral suasion is indeed what turned out to be successful. Eagle Scout Zach Wahls, a co-founder of Scouts for Equality described that process in an article in The Miami Herald on January 3:

“We began an 18-month campaign that less than a year later culminated in the Boy Scouts voting this past May to end their ban on gay youth,” said Wahls, 22, who is spending his New Year’s holiday in Miami Beach. “While in some sense this is a big step forward and we need to recognize that, on the other hand you’re still going to be kicked out of the program the day you turn 18.”

The transition is not complete, as noted by Eagle Scout Eston "Dusty" Melton (also the father and son of Eagle Scouts) in the same article, written by Steve Rothaus. Changing the policy on gay youth members, Melton said, "was the correct first step for the Boy Scouts as an organization, but the effort will not be completed successfully until every aspect of discrimination is eliminated from the BSA’s official policies.”

More public pressure is undoubtedly needed to prod the BSA toward more thorough reforms of its policies.  As we have seen from what has happened so far, however, patience pays off and persuasion is better than coercion.

My Op-Ed About GOP Lt. Gov. Candidate E.W. Jackson

Google Alerts failed me.

For readers unfamiliar with Google Alerts, Wikipedia provides a succinct definition:

Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service, offered by the search engine company Google, that automatically notifies users when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches a set of search terms selected by the user and stored by the Google Alerts service. The results are delivered as an email digest to a gmail account. The service is available to the general public as an open beta release.

I use Google Alerts to track a couple of dozen topics, including iterations on my name and an organization to which I belong, Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty (GLIL).

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article that included a reference to GLIL and, of course, included my name in the byline. I submitted it to the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star but never received a reply from the editor.

It came as a surprise to me when, on Sunday, I discovered by chance that the Free Lance-Star had published the piece on Sunday, July 21. In the intervening three weeks, Google Alerts never let me know about it. (Neither, for that matter, did the Free Lance-Star itself.)

E.W. Jackson and Rick Sincere

The article was about the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia, E.W. Jackson. Two days before the GOP state convention on May 18, I predicted on Coy Barefoot's radio show in Charlottesville that, of the seven candidates for lieutenant governor, two would lose on the first ballot and be dropped out of the competition: state Senator Steve Martin and E.W. Jackson.

I was half-right.

Jackson took the convention by storm and eventually got the nomination on the fourth ballot, after a good portion of delegates had left the Richmond Coliseum to go home. Nobody I know -- outside of Jackson's own group of supporters -- predicted, or could have predicted, his victory. Not even his opponents took him seriously as a rival.

That may be why some of the more eccentric statements by Jackson made prior to the convention never made it into general circulation until after he secured the nomination.

One of these instances was an interview with Peter LaBarbera on AmericansforTruth.com. Immediately after the nominating convention, people -- primarily liberal Democrats, but not exclusively so -- glommed onto his statements about gay people, such as:

Their minds are perverted, they’re frankly very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally and they see everything through the lens of homosexuality. When they talk about love they’re not talking about love, they’re talking about homosexual sex.

That's social-conservative boilerplate, and therefore not very interesting.

What did interest me, as a non-liberal, non-progressive gay activist, were his remarks that gay men and lesbians are universally and uniformly "authoritarian" and "totalitarian":

Chesapeake clergyman E.W. Jackson said that gay men and lesbians have "an authoritarian, totalitarian spirit that has decided they know what's best for everyone."

Jackson repeated the characterization when he said: "I used two words to describe what they're trying to do: 'authoritarian' and 'totalitarian,' and I believe that. I believe that they are of a mindset that says we want to destroy, in any way we need to, anyone who dares oppose this agenda. That's a very, very dangerous approach."

Had Jackson said that "some" or even "most" gay people have these characteristics, I might have cut him some slack. I, myself, have been assailed by leftists because I'm not a liberal Democrat. One radio host even accused me, on the air, of not being gay because I didn't adhere to a liberal agenda (in that particular case, with regard to the Boy Scouts of America's pending freedom-of-association case before the U.S. Supreme Court). I retorted that both of his listeners would have reason to disagree -- but that was a long time ago.

My purpose in writing the article that appeared in the Free Lance-Star was to point out that gay men and lesbians are not monolithic in their political views and that many of us even share the basic values that Jackson claims to hold. I noted:

While there are radicals within any political movement, whether right or left, the totalitarian impulse is rare and exists only on the fringes.

Indeed, Jackson's words are at odds with the attitudes and activities of a large number of gay and lesbian Americans whose core beliefs are keenly attuned to the values of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that Jackson claims animate his own political agenda.

In the article, I mentioned three organizations that mitigate against Jackson's blinkered view: Log Cabin Republicans, Pink Pistols, and Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty. Were it not for space considerations, I could also have pointed out the existence of GOProud and Outright Libertarians, or even the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians (PLAGAL, an anti-abortion group).

It irritates me when politicians -- or anyone, for that matter -- make blanket statements about groups of individuals without having the evidence to back them up. To assert that all gay men and all lesbians are "authoritarian" or "totalitarian" is not only baseless, it's slanderous.

I concluded my Free Lance-Star article:

Whether E.W. Jackson was the right choice for the Republican Party's lieutenant governor nominee is a broader topic best left to other days and other commentators.

One thing is clear, however: His blanket condemnation of gay citizens as wanting to oppress other Americans through "authoritarian" and "totalitarian" methods lacks factual foundation. He should withdraw that accusation and acknowledge that there are many gay men and lesbians who share his fundamental desire for strong families, free markets, and smaller, less intrusive government.

The Republican party and the conservative movement are "big tents" that are, essentially, part of a broader "leave us alone" coalition. People with different backgrounds and different personal characteristics come together to elect public officials who share basic goals but who might disagree about certain issues. That's what coalition politics is all about. To exclude anyone from potential membership in that coalition is bad politics. As former Virginia Congressman Tom Davis likes to say, "politics is a game of addition, not subtraction."

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Put on a Happy Face ... or Two

Under the circumstances, it seems both odd and wrong to chide Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell for being two-faced, especially given that I like the result.

Today Governor McDonnell reversed his long-held position that only the General Assembly possesses the authority to add "sexual orientation" to the list of categories protected against discrimination in state government employment.  After having, as Virginia's Attorney General, advised his predecessor that an executive order extending employment protections to gay and lesbian Virginians with state jobs was not permitted under the law, McDonnell today issued a similar -- if not stronger -- executive order doing precisely that.

McDonnell's order comes on the heels of a widely-criticized letter sent by the new attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, which told state colleges and universities that they could not include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies -- neither formal nor informal policies.

I'm divided on this issue because, as far as Virginia statutes go, Attorney General McDonnell was right on the law and wrong on policy.  Now Governor McDonnell is wrong on the law and right on policy.  I believe, as Attorney General McDonnell did, that the General Assembly had to act in order to expand Virginia's employment non-discrimination protections.

It's a mixed bag, to say the least.

A few weeks ago, I testified before the state Senate's Committee on General Laws and Technology in favor of SB66, a bill introduced by Senator Donald McEachin that would have added sexual orientation to the protected categories.  I noted then that "there is no rational justification" for excluding sexual orientation from a broad anti-discrimination policy.  Indeed, the committee members who voted "nay" offered no argument to explain their votes.

That bill later passed the state Senate -- a historic first for this type of legislation -- but it was killed in a House subcommittee, again with no Delegates offering an argument against it.

Just before that House vote, I spoke at a news conference at the State Capitol, along with Senator McEachin, Delegate Adam Ebbin (D-49), and other supporters of the bill.  You can see the complete event below.  (My remarks come in the second segment.)

In Part I, Jon Blair of Equality Virginia introduces the first speaker, former Secretary of Administration Viola Baskerville and offers some remarks of his own. This segment also includes remarks by Glen Pond of the Virginia Governmental Employees Association and Patricia W. Cummins of the American Association of University Professors.

My remarks (representing the Republican Liberty Caucus of Virginia) open the second segment (Part II), which also includes comments by Andres Tobar of the Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations; Irving Taylor of AARP Virginia; Ben Greenberg of the Virginia Organizing Project; Falls Church city council member Lawrence Webb; and Delegate Adam Ebbin.  Note that I make clear that, if SB66 applied to the private sector as well as the public sector, I would oppose it -- as would the RLC-Virginia.

In Part III, State Senator Donald McEachin (D-9), chief patron of Senate Bill 66, speaks to a gathering of journalists and activists to explain why the bill is needed. McEachin answers questions from the Associated Press, Virginian-Pilot, and other news organizations. The news conference ends with a few announcements by Jon Blair of Equality Virginia.

In his answer to a question, McEachin took a cheap shot at Governor McDonnell, suggesting that he had created an atmosphere conducive to protests by the virulently anti-gay (and clearly insane) members of the Westboro Baptist Church (the people behind godhatesfags.com). This was uncalled for, since the Phelps clan also held protests in Virginia during the administrations of Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, often demonstrating at the funerals of soldiers who lost their lives in service to our country.

Getting back to today's announcement by Governor McDonnell, it's noteworthy that he asserts in his executive directive that the rights of lesbian and gay people are protected by the U.S. Constitution.  He says:

The Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution prohibits discrimination without a rational basis against any class of persons.

(Andrew Sullivan may have been the first to point this out, but others may have mentioned it, as well.)

Bearing Drift -- which first reported the story about the new McDonnell administration policy -- has posted excerpts of a news release from Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, who as Virginia's new "job creation czar" has a particular concern for issues like this. Bolling said:

“While various federal and state statutes set forth certain classifications in which employment related discrimination is prohibited as a matter of law, our policy and practice will be much broader than this. All state employees should take comfort in knowing that we will not tolerate employment related discrimination in any form or for any reason, including sexual orientation.”

What is troubling is the terse response by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who -- if you read between the lines -- seems to have no intention of enforcing the governor's executive directive. Here is the complete comment by Cuccinelli:

I applaud Governor McDonnell for the tone he is setting for the Commonwealth of Virginia. I will remain in contact with the Governor and continue to work with him on issues important to Virginians. I expect Virginia’s state employees to follow all state and federal anti-discrimination laws and will enforce Virginia’s laws to the fullest extent.

Since neither state nor federal law recognizes "sexual orientation" as a category subject to employment non-discrimination protection, then Cuccinelli can "enforce Virginia's laws to the fullest extent" without including gay and lesbian employees in that protective umbrella. His words sound expansive but, in fact, they offer nothing more than his -- and the previous Bob McDonnell's -- insistence that only the General Assembly can add sexual orientation as an anti-discrimination category.

As I noted before his election as governor, Bob McDonnell has matured on issues regarding gay and lesbian Virginians since his notorious reply to a reporter that he could "not recall" whether he had ever engaged in oral sex (or any violation of Section 18.2-361 of the Code of Virginia -- still on the books despite Lawrence v. Texas).

Although I agree that Virginia statutes do not currently allow an expansive sort of non-discrimination policy for Virginia state employees, I believe this is a quirk in the law that should be scrutinized and reversed.  For me, the legal standard should not be "unless it is permitted, it is prohibited."  Notwithstanding the General Assembly's pride of place in the making of policy, the standard should be:  "Anything not prohibited is permitted."

In his new executive order, Governor McDonnell acknowledges that latter, and better, standard.  Let's hope his legal judgment -- as Governor, not as Attorney General -- holds up in both the court of public opinion and the courts of law.

Update:  There is a distinction between an "executive directive," which is what Governor McDonnell issued with regard to sexual-orientation non-discrimination policy, and an "executive order."  An "executive directive," first used by Governor (now Senator) Mark Warner is a statement of policy without the force of law.  An "executive order" has the force of law.  The difference between the two provides McDonnell with the wiggle-room he needs to deny that he has reversed the position he held as Attorney General.  Reporter Rosalind Helderman has a more complete explanation in Friday's Washington Post.

Also, it is noteworthy that McDonnell's decision is coming under attack from the religious right, including the Virginia Family Foundation, Delegate Bob Marshall, and one-time lieutenant governor candidate Michael Farris.  This suggests that McDonnell issued his directive cognizant of the political risk of alienating part of his base, something for which he deserves credit.

Side note:  Victoria Cobb of the Family Foundation coins a new word in her news release:  "unimmutable."  Kind of like non-unchanging, I suppose.  Here's the quotation, which was distributed by email in a FF "Information Alert" yesterday but does not appear to have been posted on the Family Foundation's web site:

We absolutely agree with one statement in Governor McDonnell’s directive – that state employment should be based on “qualifications, merit and performance,” regardless of one’s immutable or unimmutable characteristics.

(Just to clarify, the opposite of "immutable" is "mutable.")

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Four Decades After Stonewall

This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, considered a critical moment in the gay rights movement.

The riots did not, contrary to popular mythology, start the gay rights movement. They did not even mark the first time that gay bar patrons had fought back against a raid by corrupt police in a major city. (There was a similar event at the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles two years earlier.)

Moreover, groups of gay men and lesbians had been organizing around the country for some forty years. The Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis each had active chapters in various cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. (This history has been chronicled in many places, notably in the documentary film, Before Stonewall.) As Dale Carpenter put it in a post on the Independent Gay Forum this week,

The liberationists who gave us Stonewall hastened us down a path (already begun long before them) that has brought us to the edge of unprecedented respect and acceptance.

To demonstrate the differences between today and 1969, one need only take a look at how the mainstream media covered the incidents at the Stonewall Inn and compare it to how they might do it today.

As an example of how far mainstream acceptance has come, Conan O'Brien made an inoffensive joke in his monologue on The Tonight Show on Friday about a news item he had seen about a gay senior citizens group. Their slogan, he said, was "We're here; we're queer; we can't hear you." Well, maybe elderly people might take offense at that -- but not gay people.

In 1996, Edward Alwood wrote a comprehensive history of how the news media has covered gay issues and events in a fascinating book published by the Columbia University Press (with copious illustrations and photographs and accessibly readable despite its academic origin), Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media. Here is some of what he wrote about the coverage in June and July 1969 of the Stonewall Riots (excerpted from pages 84-88 of Straight News, footnotes omitted). He begins with coverage after the first night of the riots:

The six-paragraph, single-column story ran on page thirty-three of the [New York] Times on Sunday, June 29. It carried no byline, indicating that the author was a junior writer. The small article was classic New York Times. In sterile language it described the clash in terms of the problems faced by the police. It mentioned nothing about the recent rash of arrests at gay bars or the history of police harassment. Readers were left to figure out for themselves the reasons for the uprising. The story began,

4 POLICEMEN HURT IN ‘VILLAGE’ RAID
MELEE NEAR SHERIDAN SQUARE FOLLOWS ACTION AT BAR

Hundreds of young men went on a rampage in Greenwich Village shortly after 3 A.M. yesterday after a force of plainclothes men raided a bar that police said was well known for its homosexual clientele.Thirteen persons were arrested and four policemen were injured. The young men threw bricks, bottles, garbage, pennies and a parking meter at the policemen, who had a search warrant authorizing them to investigate reports that liquor was sold illegally at the bar, the Stonewall Inn, 53 Christopher Street, just off Sheridan Square.

The tone of the article and its placement deep inside the newspaper came as no surprise to homosexuals. “I didn’t expect it to be on the front page because the Times didn’t cover gay stuff,” recalled Martha Shelley, then president of the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis. “I knew that if there had been that many black people rioting in Manhattan, the story would have been front page news.”

Reporter Dennis Eskow took a similar approach in his story in the New York Daily News, 3 COPS HURT AS BAR RAID RILES CROWD. It was accompanied by a three-column photograph showing police talking to a group of smiling young men outside the bar, hike the Times story, Eskow’s was buried on page thirty. It began, “A predawn police raid on a reputed Greenwich Village homosexual hangout, the second raid within a week, touched off a two-hour melee yesterday as customers and villagers swarmed over the plainclothes cops. Before order was restored, the cops were the targets of thrown coins, cobblestones and uprooted parking meters, windows were smashed, a police van was nearly overturned and the front of the raided bar, the Stonewall Inn, was fire-bombed.”

The spontaneous demonstrations did not end immediately. They were renewed the next day, after the Stonewall Inn reopened. The newspapers again reported on the events. Their placement and tone suggest (in retrospect) an utter lack of understanding of what was happening and what would follow (including the first gay pride parade in New York exactly one year later, on June 28, 1970). Some of the reports displayed outright bigotry with regard to the gay men who had reacted to decades of police oppression, blackmail, and extortion. Alwood continues:

The Times reported the Saturday night outbreak in a second article. Again, the single column, ten-paragraph article was buried on page twenty-two. It began,

POLICE AGAIN ROUT “VILLAGE” YOUTHS

Heavy police reinforcements cleared the Sheridan Square area of Greenwich Village again yesterday morning when large crowds of young men, angered by a police raid on an inn frequented by homosexuals, swept through the area. . . . A number of people who did not retreat fast enough were pushed and shoved along, and at least two men were clubbed to the ground.

Only reporter Jay Levin of the New York Post was able to put the uprising in a context that would enable the average reader to understand the events, despite the condescending tone of the article. His story ran on July 8, more than a week after the riots erupted. Headlined THE GAY ANGER BEHIND THE RIOTS, the story began,

“People are beginning to realize,” said the doorman at the Stonewall Inn, “that no matter how ‘Nelly’ or how ‘fem’ a homosexual is, you can only push them so far.” With a battle cry of “gay power,” the Nellies, fems, gay boys, queens—all those who flaunt their homosexuality -- have been demonstrating that they have indeed been pushed too far."

Although most of the city’s newspapers underplayed the riots, two others sensationalized them beyond extremes. The worst offender was the Daily News, the irreverent paper of the city’s working class. Headlined HOMO NEST RAIDED, QUEEN BEES ARE STINGING MAD, the article by Jerry Lisker appeared on July 6, nearly a week after the riots, on the first page of the local news section:

She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a humming bird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn’t bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street. Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra_strap to-bra-strap against an invasion of the helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of their private gay clubs, the Stonewall Inn at 17 Christopher St., in the heart of a three-block homosexual community in Greenwich Village.

In mocking, denigrating descriptions that ran throughout the article, Lisker described gays as “Queen Bees,” “princesses and ladies-in-waiting,” “Florence Nightingales,” and “honeys turned Madwomen of Chaillot.” “Queen power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt ,“ the article said. He referred to the Stonewall Inn as “a gay mecca” and a “homosexual beachhead .“ In one section he wrote,

The whole proceedings took on the aura of a homosexual Academy Awards Night. The Queens pranced out to the street blowing kisses and waving to the crowd. A beauty of a specimen named Stella wailed uncontrollably while being led to the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall by a cop. She later confessed that she didn’t protest the manhandling by the officer, it was just that her hair was in curlers and she was afraid her new beau might be in the crowd and spot her. She didn’t want him to see her this way, she wept.

Written in an entertaining and dramatic fashion, the story evoked the days of yellow journalism, when newspapers put a premium on telling a story rather than finding the facts or providing the truth.

The July 3 edition of the Village Voice struck a similar tone in two front page articles that provided the most extensive coverage of all. By coincidence the Voice’s editorial offices were located on Christopher Street, only a few doors from the Stonewall Inn. When the riot began on the first night, reporter Lucian Truscott IV was in the Lion’s Head, a favorite drinking spot for journalists, and darted outside to see what had happened. As a result he wrote GAY POWER COMES TO SHERIDAN SQUARE, the lead article on the front page of the next edition:

Sheridan Square this weekend looked like something from a William Burroughs novel as the sudden specter of “gay power” erected its brazen head and spat out a fairy tale the likes of which the area has never seen. The forces of faggotry, spurred by a Friday night raid on one of the city’s largest, most popular, and longest lived gay bars, the Stonewall Inn, rallied Saturday night in an unprecedented protest against the raid and continued Sunday night to assert presence, possibility, and pride until the early hours of Monday morning.

Like the article in the Daily News, Truscott’s contained a liberal dose of prejudiced characterizations ranging from “fags” to “blatant queens.” “The stars were in their element,” he wrote, capturing the drama of the moment but ignoring and trivializing legitimate complaints about oppressive police tactics. He referred to the “limp wrists and primed hair” of the gays but described the police as “the city’s finest.”

Fast-forward forty years. So much has happened in that time it boggles the mind. (Who, in 1969, would have imagined that gay and lesbian citizens would be lobbying for equal marriage rights and that they would have achieved them in several foreign countries and six states? That an openly gay man would be heading the U.S. civil service, which once excluded homosexuals from government employment? Or that a majority of Americans approve the idea of gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military?) Gays are no longer disdained: they are courted by politicians (President Barack Obama panders to gay voters almost weekly) and targeted by merchants.

As an example of the latter, consider this article in the June 2009 issue of O'Dwyer's PR Report, a (subscription-only) newsletter for public relations professionals, by Matt Tumminello, president of Target 10 in New York.

Tumminello notes:

In 1969, gay visibility was practically non-existent and only a handful of individuals were willing to stand up and he counted. Today, gay visibility has exploded and the community has become a thriving market segment that holds a wealth of opportunity for major companies and consumer brands.

Gently chiding his PR colleagues and competitors for underserving the gay market, Tumminello lists a few salient facts:

About six to seven percent of the population is gay or lesbian. In urban areas, that percentage can exceed 10 or 12 percent.

The per capita buying power of gay consumers is estimated at $45,300, with a total market estimated at $712 billion.

Gay consumers are concentrated and easy to reach through targeted media, resulting in an efficient use of marketing dollars.

In research we’ve conducted. 73% of gay men and lesbians strongly agree that gay-targeted marketing positively impacts purchasing decisions. This market is extremely brand loyal.

Gay consumers influence trends, styles and tastes beyond their own community. Call it “The Queer Eye effect.”

Gay consumers are early adopters and there are many categories where gays over-index, such as travel, grooming, personal care products, technology and entertainment.

Gay research capabilities have become first-rate in the last five years. The results of a marketing program can be tracked and measured with great precision.

Tumminello concludes by reminding his readers that the gay market is not just a 21st century phenomenon, but it started slowly and is now maturing:

The gay market is not something new or just starting to emerge. It’s been growing up and all around us. A look at the last ten years of pop culture shows how far we’ve come. It’s been more than a decade since we first met Will & Grace. The Queer Eye guys finished giving America a makeover in 2007 after a successful four-year run. And last year, Ellen DeGeneres married her wife the same month she signed on to be the face of Cover Girl cosmetics. Today we even have LOGO, the gay TV network owned by MTV that reaches into more than 30 million homes.

Most recently, marriage equality has found a groundswell of support. Gay couples are now marrying in five states - probably six, by the time this magazine hits your desk. It may have seemed impossible a generation ago, but many of us now believe we won’t have to wait a lifetime to see it happen in all 50 states.

Ten years from now, as historians and activists mark half a century since the Stonewall Riots brought the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights to public attention, what will they be marveling about? For my money, the most remarkable thing about this progress is the short span it took to get from there to here. While the boys and men who fought back at Stonewall might have stimulated, initially, a left-wing movement, the surprise is that it is the free market, encompassing both commerce and popular culture -- something valued more by the right than the left -- has been the strongest motivator, protector, and stimulant for gay liberation.

This Just In: Water Is Wet

People magazine will reveal on its web site tomorrow that American Idol's most famous runner-up, Clay Aiken, is gay.

The shock and surprise with which this news is being met is... well, it isn't.

Reuters reports:

After years of dodging questions, former "American Idol" singer Clay Aiken will acknowledge he is a gay man in an interview with People magazine set to run on its Web site Wednesday, according to media reports.

Celebrity site Perezhilton.com on Tuesday published a photo of the cover of People magazine's upcoming issue on which Aiken cradles his new son, Parker Foster Aiken, in his arms.

The caption reads "Yes, I'm Gay," and underneath is a quote from Aiken on his decision to come out of the closet that says: "I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things."

An unscientific poll on Popeater.com (which seems to be affiliated with AOL) finds that 96 percent of nearly 186,000 people surveyed are not surprised by the news Clay Aiken is gay; 4 percent (probably people who live in an abandoned coal mine in Alberta) expressed surprise.

A parallel poll indicates that 91 percent of over 151,000 persons surveyed are more surprised that Lindsay Lohan has admitted to being a lesbian, with 9 percent being more surprised about Aiken. (Most of those 9 percent have been searching the web for salacious home video of Lohan and her girlfriend, Samantha Ronson.)

Isn't news supposed to be, well, new?

Politics and Entrepreneurship

Congressman Ron Paul's quest for the Republican presidential nomination has generated far more grassroots entrepreneurial activity than the average presidential campaign. Individuals have set up web sites that sell bumper stickers, lapel badges, hats, yard signs, gold coins, and endless forms of kitsch and memorabilia. For the most part, these budding enterprises are created by Americans otherwise unaffiliated with Ron Paul or his campaign staff.

The most notable grassroots effort, so far -- though not entrepreneurial per se -- was the November 5th "moneybomb" that raised more than $4 million for the Ron Paul campaign, setting a one-day on-line fundraising record.

Whatever success Ron Paul has in the upcoming caucuses and primaries will be due, in no small measure, to his eschewing of top-down control of the campaign in favor of a grassroots, "let a thousand flowers bloom," bottom-to-top motivation of voters, donors, and volunteers.

I just learned about the latest pro-Ron Paul effort that may also have the ancillary effect of bringing profits to its creator: A web site selling "Gays and Lesbians for Ron Paul" apparel.

Who knows? Tomorrow at your favorite gay gym, you may see someone on the treadmill next to you wearing a Ron Paul for President t-shirt -- in rainbow colors.

Marcia, Marcia , Marcia!

Half a century ago, ad-man Stan Freberg caught heat from the censors for his send-up of radio and TV soap operas, with a novelty record called "John and Marsha." The dialogue in "John and Marsha" consisted of only two words ("John" and "Marsha"). But that genius Freberg directed his actors -- he might have been one of them -- to say those words of dialogue with such torrid inflection that he angered the bluenoses of the 1950s, who actually got the record banned from several radio stations around the country.

That, of course, led to increased sales of the single and subsequent album, but that's a story for another day.

What would Freberg make of this tasty tidbit from ABC News? Would he redo his recording with new actors and new dialogue, calling it "Jan and Marcia"? Read on:

The book publisher for Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia Brady on the 1970s sitcom "The Brady Bunch," is shooting down rumors that she had a lesbian on-set affair with co-star Eve Plumb, who played her younger sister Jan.

The story of the alleged lesbian affair started circulating the Internet Friday, and was picked up by at least one newspaper on Saturday.

The reported source of the story was McCormick herself in her new tell-all book, "Here's the Story," slated to come out next year.

But the book's publisher said, though there are plenty of other revelations in the book, a lesbian affair is not one of them.

Once again, the headline ("Lesbian Bradys? Publisher Denies Report") sets us up for a sensational story about torrid lesbianism in Hollywood, only to be shot down with truthiness.

To much of Middle America, the idea of the Brady sisters coupled in lesbian incest would be akin to finding out that Lawrence Welk and Myron Floren had a Hoover/Tolson-style relationship.

Yet the tabloids press on.

If only Stan Freberg were still as active as he was in the '50s and '60s. I can hear it now:

"Jan!"
"Marcia!"
"Jan…"
"Marcia…"
"Jan?"
"Um… Marcia…"
(-Snif-) "Jan!"
"Marcia?"
"John…."
"Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!"

So that's the way they all became the ... oh, you know the rest.

Too Funny to Pass Up

When I was much younger, I used to stay up late at night, bouncing from page to page in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary or a young people's encyclopedia. (There were neither hyperlinks nor remote controls in those days, so I had to hold a book in my hand, sometimes with a flashlight in the other while under the sheets, and turn the pages with my fingers.)

Nowadays, my late-night wandering eye is serviced by YouTube. If I don't pay attention, hours can go by before I realize I have been watching video after video after video, sometimes linked together most tenuously. That's how I found this video from Showtime (below) after looking at a number of bootleg videos of Broadway shows, which -- out of respect for copyright -- I will not post here no matter how good they are. How I got from point A to point L is a mystery.

This send-up of public access TV programs is so funny that I simply could not pass it up. Having spent my share of hours in public access studios, I have a special appreciation for the technical jokes. But the conversation -- apparently improvised -- is what really makes this clip hilarious.

Please enjoy "Good Morning Agrestic: Too Soon to Be Gay?"

eDisharmony?

News from (where else?) California notes that a lesbian, fresh from the break up of her long-standing relationship, has sued the matchmaking company eHarmony.com because it did not allow her to seek another woman as a partner through its services.

The AP reports:

Linda Carlson said she tried to use the Internet site in February to meet a woman but could not based on her sexual orientation. When Carlson wrote to eHarmony to complain, the company refused to change its policy, according to the lawsuit filed on her behalf in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The lawsuit claims that by only offering to find a compatible match for men seeking women or women seeking men, the company was violating state law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

"Such outright discrimination is hurtful and disappointing for a business open to the public in this day and age," Carlson said in a statement.

For its part, eHarmony gives a perfectly reasonable explanation for why it is unable to serve gay or lesbian clientele: It is simply not set up for it:

"The research that eHarmony has developed, through years of research, to match couples has been based on traits and personality patterns of successful heterosexual marriages," a company statement said. "Nothing precludes us from providing same-sex matching in the future, it's just not a service we offer now based upon the research we have conducted."

In a way, Carlson's suit is parallel to a vegetarian suing a butcher shop for not selling tofu. Or an airline for not offering ocean cruises.

More than that, though, Carlson is excruciatingly shortsighted. If she prevails in her suit -- and, given that she filed the suit within the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals geographic reach, she may well do so -- then gay-oriented dating and matchmaking services (like gay.com or myPartnerPerfect.com) will have to accept straight clients on an equal basis with gay clients. That will dilute their purpose and make them less safe and inviting for the very people they are intended to serve.

As legal analyst Walter Olson (who presides at Overlawyered.com) told San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders:

Olson noted that Carlson has "a much better chance with existing dating services." But she is suing, Olson noted, because diversity and tolerance have come to mean, "It's not just that you get the choices you want, but also choices you don't approve of have to be taken away."

And: "Diversity in theory is the enemy of diversity in practice."

This case also has parallels to the Supreme Court's 2000 decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. In the arguments leading up to that ruling, Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty contributed an amicus curiae brief that said, in part:

Gay organizations often seek exclusively gay environments. There are exclusively gay social and activity clubs, web sites, retreats, vacations, and alumni and professional organizations. Lesbian organizations and institutions, in particular, often seek to limit membership and participation. Many lesbian bars and clubs bar all men, straight men, or unaccompanied men, and many women's music festivals exclude men. Sometimes organizations have no explicit policy excluding straight people, but their names indicate that they are meant to be gay organizations, e.g. Federal Gay Lesbian or Bisexual Employees. Finally, while many organizations do not insist on an exclusively gay membership, there would be resistance to leadership by heterosexuals. For instance, gay people certainly would not wish to force a group like Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays to accept as a leader someone who was also active in Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, a group that counsels that gay people should try to become heterosexual.

Such threats are far from theoretical; at least one anti-gay group has already sued a gay parade for the right to participate and protest... For gay organizations that wish to keep consistent the ideological perspective of their leaders, and for lesbians and gay men who want to preserve spaces that are exclusively lesbian or gay, a decision in favor of the Boy Scouts will protect their ability to maintain and control their expressive associations. (pages 24-25; numerous footnotes omitted)

At bottom, one has to wonder why Linda Carlson would seek to find a partner through an organization that admittedly was ill-prepared to provide the best service for her. Wouldn't it make more sense for her to take advantage of one of the numerous web sites or social clubs that cater specifically to lesbians?

Twenty or thirty years ago, when there were limited possibilities for gay men and lesbians seeking social or romantic connections -- that is, before there was an Internet -- Carlson's disappointment at being turned down by eHarmony, and her subsequent reaction, might have made some sense. In today's world of virtually limitless possibilities, her litigiousness raises genuine questions of motive. One doesn't have to be a cynic to see that.

Update: Thanks to GayPatriot and Overlawyered.com for linking to this post!