Lessons in being gay: Queer encounters in gay and lesbian prison activism

Radical History Review

Volumn , Issue 100, 2008, Pages 11-37

  Kunzel, Regina ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA DULUTH   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 38749149974     PISSN: 01636545     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/01636545-2007-020     Document Type: Article

References (160)

1. The Counter Intelligence Program was an FBI program aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. See David Cunningham, There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004);
2. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBIs Secret War against Dissent in the U.S., 2nd ed. (Boston: South End, 2002).
3. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner (New York: International Publishers, 1963), 15.
4. Joan Nestle, "Stone Butch, Drag Butch, Baby Butch," in A Restricted Country (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand, 1987), 77.
5. Donn Teal, The Gay Militants: How Gay Liberation Began in America, 1969-1971 (New York: Stein and Day, 1971), 328. The Women's House of Detention was also a site of protest for activists in the early women's liberation movement.
6. See Karla Jay, Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 103-5.
7. Howard Blum, "Gays Take on the Cops: From Rage to Madness," Village Voice, September 3, 1970, 42, 44.
8. For an account of this march, see Daniel Hurewitz, Stepping Out: Nine Walks through New York City's Gay and Lesbian Past (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 23-24.
9. Blum, "Gays Take on the Cops," 44.
10. See also Frank J. Prial, "Protest March by Homosexuals Sparks Disturbance in 'Village,'" New York Times, August 30, 1970;
11. C. Gerald Fraser, "'Gay Ghettos' Seen as Police Targets," New York Times, August 31, 1970;
12. Hurewitz, Stepping Out, 23-24.
13. In February of 1971, representatives from several New York gay liberation groups picketed outside the Men's House of Detention in lower Manhattan to protest allegations of the "routine brutality" faced by gay prisoners there ("Gays Protest Brutality in N.Y.C. Prisons," Advocate, April 14, 1971, 20).
14. During Boston's Gay Pride Week in 1972, activists led a candlelight march to the Charles Street Jail, where they "chanted and sang to let the prisoners know they were there" (John C. Mitzel, "Boston's Week Includes March to Jail, Capital," Advocate, July 10, 1972, 14).
15. And in 1973, gay activists in Chicago sponsored a demonstration in support of gay prisoners at the Cook County jail (Deanna I. Sava to Jeannie, Advocate, June 6, 1973, 32).
16. On the relationship of the radical left and the prisoners' rights movement, see Eric Cummins, The Rise and Fall of California's Radical Prison Movement (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1994);
17. John Irwin, Prisons in Turmoil (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980).
18. Allen Young, "Out of the Closets, into the Streets," in Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation, ed. Karla Jay and Young (1972; New York: New York University Press, 1992), 16.
19. See John D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 70, 157;
20. Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 172-73;
21. Molly McGarry and Fred Wasserman, Becoming Visible: An Illustrated History of Lesbian and Gay Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Viking, 1998).
22. "Behind Bars," RFD, no. 10 (1976): 26.
23. Ibid.
24. Mike Riegle, "Sexual Politics of 'Crime': Inside and Out," GCN, December 10, 1983,4.
25. Ibid.
26. Mike Riegle, "A Brief History of GCN's 'Prison Project,'" GCN, October 3, 1981, 8.
27. League for Lesbian and Gay Prisoners, pamphlet, n.d., Bromfield Street Educational Foundation Records, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts (hereafter BSEF), Box 12, Fol. 37.
28. Ron Rose to Robert G. DeSantis, May 19, 1974, Robert G. DeSantis Papers, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society of Northern California, San Francisco (hereafter GLBT Historical Society), Box 1, Fol. 16.
29. Don Jackson, "The Daddy Tank," Gay Sunshine, no. 1 (1972): 3.
30. "Women Hit Jail Treatment," Advocate, July 10, 1972, 14.
31. "We Mean Business," Lesbian Tide 1 (1972): 1.
32. Ibid.
33. Jeanne Cordova, "Prison Reform - New Freedoms for Daddy-Tanked Lesbians," Lesbian Tide 7 (1977): 6.
34. Join Hands Testimony at California State Senate Committee on Penal Institutions Hearings, December 5, 1974, ms., GLBT Historical Society, "Prisoners" file, 1.
35. Jack Hoffman to editor, RFD, no. 10(1976): 29.
36. Join Hands subscription form, GLBT Historical Society, "Prisoners" file.
37. Riegle, "Brief History," 8.
38. Prison projects like the one initiated by Boston's Gay Community News were initiated to forge connections between gay prisoners with gay men and lesbians on the outside. The journal RFD included a section titled "Brothers behind Bars" devoted to letters and pen-pal requests from prisoners. In 1972, a group of gay men in San Francisco formed the Join Hands collective and published a newsletter "to bring together members of the 'free' community with gay prisoners through correspondence and visiting" (Join Hands subscription form, GLBT Historical Society, "Prisoners" File). The Gaycon Press Newsletter, also published in San Francisco, printed articles, short stories, poetry, and graphics by gay prisoners, provided information on prison life for gay men and lesbians, and listed gay publications available free to prisoners. The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), a nondenominational Christian church with largely gay congregations founded in 1968, began conducting services in prisons in 1972 and published the Cellmate newsletter.
39. "Still More on P.C.," Join Hands, clipping, n.d., BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 2.
40. Alan Greene to Mike Riegle, April 16, 1984, BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 42.
41. Wilbert Leonard Thomas, letter to the editor, Advocate, August 18, 1972, 28.
42. Calvin L. Keach, "Gay Demo against Prison Censors," Join Hands 5 (1976): 2.
43. Louis to Mike Riegle, March 22, 1983, BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 42.
44. Danny Owen to Mike Riegle, January 27, 1984, BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 42.
45. Buddy L. to editor, RFD, no. 10 (1976): 29.
46. David Rothenberg, "Gay Prisoners: Fighting Back behind the Walls," Advocate, June 16, 1976, 11.
47. Frank O'Rourke, "Prisons: The Nature of the Beast," Honcho, August 1983, 61.
48. Mike Hippler, "Where the Boys Are: Gay Inmates at San Bruno Jail," Bay Area Reporter, December 29, 1983.
49. Jack Childers, letter to editor, Join Hands 1 (1976): 2.
50. Chuck Hill to editor, RFD, no. 13 (1977): 38.
51. Ibid.
52. Quoted in Mark Fleisher, Warehousing Violence (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989), 164.
53. Charles McLaughlin, "Homosexual Living behind the Walls," unpublished ms., n.d., BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 44.
54. Letter to editor, Join Hands 1 (1976): 2.
55. William Kissinger, "View from Within," in New York Gay Activists Alliance newsletter, n.d., International Gay Information Center Archives, New York Public Library (hereafter IGIC), Ephemera, "Prison File."
56. Jon Wildes, "To Be Young, Gay, and Behind Bars," Village Voice, January 9, 1978, 21.
57. Jeanne Cordova, "Inside Terminal Island," Lesbian Tide 2 (1973): 18.
58. Ibid., 18-19.
59. "The Unpleasantries of Pleasanton," Through the Looking Glass 4 (1979): 13.
60. "Sissy in Prison: An Interview with Ron Vernon," in Jay and Young, Out of the Closets, 107.
61. Bobbie Lee White, "Learning to Understand:' GCN, January 23, 1982, 9.
62. "Sissy in Prison," 104.
63. Billy LaToya Lewis to GCN, n.d., BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 44.
64. Tyrone Gadson, "New American Cult Gay World Behavior Notice," flyer, April 20, 1983, BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 42.
65. "Self-Help Alliance Group," n.d. [1984?], BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 42.
66. Ibid.
67. Quoted in Wayne S. Wooden and Jay Parker, Men behind Bars: Sexual Exploitation in Prison (New York: Plenum, 1982), 220.
68. On Men against Sexism, see "Men against Sexism," Through the Looking Glass 2 (1977): 18;
69. Daniel Burton-Rose, "The Anti-exploits of Men against Sexism, 1977-78," in Prison Masculinities, eds. Don Sabo, Terry A. Kupers, and Willie London (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001);
70. Rick English, "Men against Sexism," RFD 14 (1977): 49;
71. John McCoy, Concrete Mama: Prison Profiles from Walla Walla (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981), 92; 136-37;
72. "Men against Sexism: Past, Present, and Future," Join Hands 13 (1978): 6.
73. Rick English, "Walla Men against Sexism," Join Hands 12 (1977): 5.
74. Martha Shelley, "Gay Is Good," in Jay and Young, Out of the Closets, 32.
75. On the importance of an analysis and critique of sexism to gay liberation ideology, see John D'Emilio, "Still Radical After All These Years: Remembering Out of the Closets," in The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 45-63;
76. John D'Emilio, "After Stonewall," in Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University (New York: Routledge, 1992);
77. Terence Kissack, "'Freaking Fag Revolutionaries': New York's Gay Liberation Front, 1969-1971," Radical History Review, no. 62 (1995): 104-34;
78. Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Love: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 322-23;
79. John Loughery, The Other Side of Silence: Men's Lives and Gay Identities; A Twentieth-Century History (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), 327.
80. Young, "Out of the Closets," 7.
81. Billy LaToya Lewis to GCN, n.d., BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 44.
82. Henry Lucas, "We Must Unify," BSEF, Box 12, Fol. 37.
83. Johnny Crawford to BWMT Quarterly 11 (1981): 34.
84. Mike Riegle and prisoner friends, "Why Does GCN Have a Prisoner Project?" BSEF, Box 12, Fol. 37.
85. Curly to Mike Riegle, January 29, 1986, BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 42;
86. Denver V. Sassoon to GCN, n.d., BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 44;
87. William D. Concannon to editor, GCN, July 12, 1980, 4.
88. "Jail Guard Trainees Hear from Gays," Advocate, November 22, 1972, 14.
89. Ibid.
90. See Aaron H. Devor and Nicholas Matte, "One Inc. and Reed Erickson: The Uneasy Collaboration of Gay and Trans Activism, 1964-2003," GLQ 10 (2004): 179-209;
91. Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 235, 237-38;
92. Dallas Denny, "You're Strange and We're Wonderful: The Relationship between the Gay/Lesbian and Transgendered Communities," TransSisters 2 (1994): 21-23;
93. Kissack, "Freaking Fag Revolutionaries," 123. Kissack underlines the importance of masculinist affirmations in new left politics and "the extent to which sexualized codes of masculinity were a highly charged component of sixties' discourse," in which gay liberationists partook (111-12).
94. See also Richard Meyer, "Gay Power Circa 1970: Visual Strategies for Sexual Revolution," GLQ 12 (2006): 454-55.
95. Tracy, letter to editor, Join Hands 1 (1976): 1.
96. "Hard Times for Queens," Join Hands 5 (1976): 3.
97. M. Darrell Hay, letter to editor, Join Hands 2 (1976): 1.
98. "Mr. Cuddles Talks about Letter Writing," Join Hands 2 (1976): 7.
99. Wooden and Parker, Men behind Bars, 144.
100. Postcolonial theorists, anthropologists, and historians have exposed the ethnocentrism in the developmental narrative that positions a primitive other against a modern us. David Halperin, for instance, notes the "noxious political effects" of pronouncing some forms of sexual organization "modern" and others "primitive" or "backward" by comparison. Such a progress narrative, he writes, "not only promotes a highly invidious opposition between sexually advanced and sexually retrograde cultures but also fails to take account of the complexity of contemporary transnational. formations of sexuality." David Halperin, "Introduction: In Defense of Historicism," in How to Do the History of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 18; 14.
101. On anthropologists' use of temporal terms to communicate cultural difference and cultural hierarchy, see Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
102. For discussions of the intersection of white identity and homonormativity, see Roderick A. Ferguson, "Race-ing Homonormativity: Citizenship, Sociology, and Gay Identity," in Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, ed. E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 52-67;
103. Martin F. Manalansan IV, "In the Shadows of Stonewall: Examining Gay Transnational Politics and the Diasporic Dilemma," GLQ 2 (1995): 425-38.
104. Randy Shilts, "Locked Up with the Jailhouse Queens," San Francisco Chronicle, April 7, 1978.
105. Marlon Ross characterizes the narrative of development and underdevelopment as "intrinsic to the project of queer history and theory," in "Beyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm," in Johnson and Henderson, Black Queer Studies, 163.
106. Tom Reeves, "The Hidden Oppression: Gay Men in Prison for Having Sex with Minors," GCN, December 13, 1980, 8.
107. Ibid., 9.
108. Ibid., 11.
109. On the transition from a gay liberation movement to gay rights, see D'Emilio, "After Stonewall."
110. Michael Serber, "Shame Aversion Therapy," Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 1 (1970): 213.
111. Ibid., 213.
112. Michael Serber and Joseph Wolpe, "Behavior Therapy Techniques," in Sexual Behavior: Social, Clinical, and Legal Aspects, ed. H. L. P. Resnick and Marvin E. Wolfgang (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 247.
113. See Henry L. Minton, Departing from Deviance: A History of Homosexual Rights and Emancipatory Science in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 256-64.
114. Don Altimus to Mike Riegle, October 7, 1982, BSEF, Box 12, Fol. 52.
115. Join Hands Testimony.
116. Rob Cole, "Behind Bars, Lessons on Being Gay," Advocate, June 20, 1973, 1.
117. Join Hands Testimony, 9.
118. Michael Serber and Claudia G. Keith, "The Atascadero Project: Model of a Sexual Retraining Program for Incarcerated Homosexual Pedophiles," Journal of Homosexuality 1 (1974): 95.
119. Tom Close, "A Patient's View: A Strange New World," Advocate, June 20, 1973, 2.
120. Ibid.
121. Close explained that AGE "is administratively a facet of the Sexual Reorientation Program but is open to all homosexual and bisexual patients in the hospital who are 18 or over. The club is designed for specific therapeutic purposes and is an integral part of many patients' formal program. AGE will become the voice of the gay patient as well as his conscience. As acting president, I am striving to achieve our four purposes: • Becoming more aware and accepting of our sexual identity. • Informing members and others in the hospital about gay culture. • Providing opportunities to meet other Gays in social settings. • Providing useful information to members about where to go and whom to go to after release from the hospital" (ibid., 35).
122. Serber and Keith, "Ataseadero Project," 93.
123. Ibid., 87.
124. Ibid., 90.
125. "Needless to say," Serber wrote, "the patients are more than grateful to receive a service that does not include stripping them of their homosexuality and personal dignity" (ibid., 94).
126. Cole, "Behind Bars," 1.
127. A class-action suit was brought by California inmates in 1973 to allow the MCC into prisons. In a decision handed down on May 20, 1975, in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, the court ruled that the MCC was a bona fide church and that the denial of MCC religious services to prisoners who requested them was an infringement of their constitutional rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. See "Court Allows MCC in Prisons," GCN, June 14, 1975, 1;
128. "Gay Church Allowed in Prisons," Lesbian Tide 4 (1975): 19.
129. On the MCC, see Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker, The Gay Crusaders (New York: Paperback Library, 1972), 19-22;
130. Troy D. Perry with Charles L. Lucas, The Lord Is My Shepherd and He Knows I'm Gay (Los Angeles: Nash, 1972);
131. Troy D. Perry with Thomas L. P. Swicegood, Don't Be Afraid Anymore: The Story of Reverend Troy Perry and the Metropolitan Community Churches (New York: St. Martin's, 1990).
132. Richard R. Mickley, Prison Ministry Handbook, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Universal Fellowship Press, 1976), 7.
133. Tom Purcell, "The Homosexual's Prayer," DeSantis Papers, Box 1, Fol. 16.
134. Mickley, Prison Ministry Handbook, 33.
135. Ibid., 33, 7.
136. Purcell, "Homosexual's Prayer."
137. See Gresham M. Sykes, The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958), 96;
138. George Lester Kirkham, "Homosexuality in Prison," in Studies in the Sociology of Sex, ed. James M. Henslin (New York: Appleton Century-Crofts, 1971), 334.
139. Mickley, Prison Ministry Handbook, 8.
140. Ibid., 31.
141. "MCC Launching 'Prison Lifeline' Letters Program," Advocate, January 31, 1973, 14.
142. "Open Forum," Bay Area Reporter, June 30, 1983.
143. Lary Holvey, "Pen Pal Caution," Bay Area Reporter, August 11, 1983.
144. Teddy to Jeannie, Advocate, July 4, 1973, 38.
145. Some prisoners acknowledged that some among them used pen-pal relationships to scam gay men. Exploiting the generosity of gay pen pals, one prisoner acknowledged, like that of "lonely women," was "one of the oldest games in the joint" (Jim Hogshire, You Are Going to Prison [Port Townsend, WA: Breakout, 1999], 90).
146. One Michigan prisoner wrote to GCN offering to help gay men "sort the fakes from the real thing" (David Sidener to GCN, n.d., BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 42).
147. Troy Lewis to Mike Riegle, October in, 1986, BSEF, Box 13, Fol. 42.
148. "Open Forum," Bay Area Reporter, June 30, 1983.
149. "Prison Pen Pals on the March," Bay Area Reporter, June 30, 1983.
150. M. B. to Jeannie, Advocate, October 10, 1974, 31.
151. Letter to editor, GCN, January 10-16, 1988, 4.
152. "A Concerned Lesbian Subscriber," letter to the editor, GCN, December 13-19, 1987, 4.
153. "Joint Venture," RFD 13 (1987): 65.
154. David Frey, "You Are a Criminal Too," RFD 27 (1980): 8.
155. The organization ACT-UP San Francisco had a small but thriving Prison Issues Group in the early 199os that "was able to galvanize activists across the state to come together and fight for the rights of prisoners" (Rosenblatt, Criminal Justice, 89). See also Dawn Schmitz, "Activists Demand PWA Rights on the Inside," GCN, April 19- May 8, 1992, 1, 3.
156. Rebecca Lavine, "A Great Need," GCN, December 1-17, 1991, 7.
157. Riegle's work as the GCN office manager and his struggle with HIV/ AIDS was memorably chronicled by his friend and GCN colleague Amy Hoffman in Hospital Time (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).
158. Riegle, "The March: A Focus on 'Justice' (as 'Political' Finally!) - and Still Gay/Lesbian Prisoners Are Invisible," GCN, October 11, 1987, 4.
159. Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon, 2003), 50.
160. See also Lisa Duggan, "The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism," in Materializing Democracy, ed. Russ Castronovo and Dana D. Nelson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 173-94.