"Dynamite Scrupulously Packed": A Revaluation of Henry Blake Fuller’s Bertram Cope’s Year

The essay proposes a reinterpretation and revaluation of Henry Blake Fuller’s 1919 novel Bertram Cope’s Year and argues that it deserves permanent currency within the canon of gay fiction. My reinterpretation and revaluation of it is based on the premise that readings of it over the past 50 years (since Edmund Wilson’s 1970 essay on Henry Blake Fuller’s fiction in the New Yorker) have failed to understand its representation of homo-sexuality. Criticism of the novel has been based on post-Stonewall assumptions of what a 'gay novel’ should be and what cultural work is should perform. The post-Stonewall paradigm of the gay novel is that it is a coming-of-age story, a Bildungsroman, focused on a protagonist who, through a process of self-discovery, arrives at an acceptance and affirmation of his sexual identity. The prototype is Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story, with E. M. Forster’s Maurice a precursor. To appreciate Bertram Cope’s Year, we must, I argue, abandon post-Stonewall presuppositions of what we should expect from a gay novel. Bertram Cope’s Year is not a coming-of-age novel. Rather it is a comic novel formed from Fuller’s successful fusion and subversion of the romantic comedy, the comedy of manners, and the campus novel. Bertram Cope is a comic hero who ultimately triumphs over the efforts of a college town, presided over the matchmaking socialite Medora Phillips, to marry him to one of the three young ladies in her circle. He is rescued from this unwanted marriage by his boyfriend, who arrives to save him from the unwanted marriage. Fuller successfully exploits the conventions of the comic novel to tell a story that anticipates one of the aspirations of the gay liberation movement half a century later. As such, it deserves permanent currency.

Queer Connections

This article examines the gay French author Jean Genet’s 1970 tour of the United States with the Black Panther Party, using Genet’s unusual relationship with the Panthers as a lens for analyzing the possibilities and pitfalls of radical coalition politics in the long sixties. I rely on mainstream and alternative media coverage of the tour, articles by Black Panthers and gay liberationists, and Genet’s own writings and interviews to argue that Genet’s connection with the Panthers provided a queer bridge between the Black Power and gay liberation movements. Their story challenges the neglect of such coalitions by historians of the decade and illuminates some of the reasons the Panthers decided to support gay liberation. At the same time, Genet distanced himself from the gay liberation movement, and his unusual connection with the Panthers highlights some of the difficulties activists faced in building and sustaining such alliances on a broad scale.

After the Life of LGBTQ Spaces: Learning from Atlanta and Istanbul

Many gay villages (or “gayborhoods”) arose in the wake of the gay liberation movement attracted a good deal of academic research within the last 40 years. Unfortunately, this hyper focus on certain spaces often populated by white gay men has frequently eclipsed research on other types of LGBTQ areas as well as other geographies beyond the global north. This chapter aims to address this gap, taking an ordinary cities perspective (Robinson, 2006) and asking how we can develop models that are conceptually useful for understanding the life of a more diverse array of LGBTQ spaces across the globe. To answer this question we avoid linear models of change by developing a new model based on a conceptual framework derived from physics: centripetal and centrifugal forces. The advantage of this model is its explicit recognition of the ways that social, economic, and political forces and their manifestations influence queer spaces. We use two cases from relatively under-studied regions; Atlanta and Istanbul to illustrate the utility of this framework. The “in-betweenness” of these cities, linking south and north as well as west and east, makes them a haven for queers and others fleeing the conservative surroundings in the search for more attractive and welcoming places for marginalized LGBTQ individuals. This chapter draws on the authors’ lived experiences, prior research, and additional interviews to conduct a relational reading of queer spaces with emphasis on the ways that LGBTQ people circulate and congregate in a wider range of urban areas. This comparative strategy and relational reading of queer spaces expands the narrow focus from normalized narratives of gayborhoods to a broader “analysis of the heterogeneity and multiplicity of metropolitan modernities” (Roy 2009, p. 821) of queer spaces.

The LGBTQ Press in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland

This chapter examines the development of the ‘gay’ press in Britain and Ireland from the late nineteenth century. Early periodicals that directly addressed gender fluidity and same-sex love were privately circulated; caution and secrecy lasted well into the 1960s. Yet at the same time considerable queer content appeared in some mainstream publications, such as fashion, film and physique magazines in the pre-decriminalisation period. More recognisably lesbian and gay publications from the 1960s sought to achieve political and cultural change and to foster social contacts for lesbians and gay men. The Gay Liberation Movement marked a wealth of short- and longer-lived magazines, newspapers and periodicals, while feminism invigorated lesbian activism and publications. Differentiation in content characterises the gay press in the late twentieth century, from glossy arts magazines to political campaign news to specialist pornography. From the 1980s there was a discernible shift towards lifestyle magazines. Regional gay and lesbian magazines also appear in this period, often overlapping with the local alternative press, although censorship and persecution continued alongside the success of the LGBT press. The chapter further identifies the specific development of LGBTQ publications in Scotland and Ireland.

Eugene Days

Shilts enrols at University of Oregon and quickly engages with the Eugene Gay People’s Alliance. Early attempts to start a gay liberation movement among Oregon students, including the university’s first-ever Gay Pride Week. He loses a later bid for Student Body President under a theme of “Come Out for Shilts.” Shilts embraces a “gay centric” approach to schoolwork and his life, living fully out despite some miscues, convinced heterosexuals are unaccepting of homosexuals because they lack understanding or knowledge of gays and lesbians. Oregon classmates recall Shilts’s transition from student politics to journalism. Shilts finds being “out” in conflict with his dreams of a career in mainstream journalism. Shilts writes about a summer job at a gay bathhouse.

Conclusion

Timing played a key role in all of Shilts’s success, and failures. His reporting and books on cutting-edge issues in the emerging gay liberation movement withstood strong push back on his work while establishing himself as an openly gay reporter in mainstream journalism. Shilts unapologetically approached his reporting as he had approached his earlier life – that information granted power and understanding and journalists played a key role in conveying that information. Important questions remain about whether Shilts helped or hindered the understanding of AIDS in the context of the gay community, with serious reservations raised about his use of the “Patient Zero” posit. He was praised, however, for advocacy for gay rights via Conduct Unbecoming.

Aurora Dawn

Early years of Randy Shilts’s life in Aurora, Illinois are explored, struggles with physical abuse from an alcoholic mother, and frequently absent father. Information about the Shilts family and arrival of six sons over a 25-year period. Shilts’s early engagement of Young Americans for Freedom and conservative/libertarian ideas posited by his father. Examples of Shilts’s earliest writing for a student newspaper on the draft and the Vietnam War. Shilts’s relocation to Portland, Oregon and enrollment in community college where he “came out” as part of a class presentation. Shilts’s struggle with discrimination and scorn based on his sexuality and his first forays into the gay liberation movement.

Gay Life and Liberation, a Photographic Record of 1970s Belfast

In March 2017, the first LGBTQ+ history exhibition to be displayed at a national museum in Northern Ireland debuted at the Ulster Museum. The exhibition, entitled “Gay Life and Liberation: A Photographic Exhibition of 1970s Belfast,” included private photographs captured by Doug Sobey, a founding member of gay liberation organizations in Belfast during the 1970s, and featured excerpts from oral histories with gay and lesbian activists. It portrayed the emergence of the gay liberation movement during the Troubles and how the unique social, political, and religious situation in Northern Ireland fundamentally shaped the establishment of a gay identity and community in the 1970s. By displaying private photographs and personal histories, it revealed the hidden history of the LGBTQ+ community to the museum-going public. The exhibition also enhanced and extended the histories of the Troubles, challenging traditional assumptions and perceptions of the conflict.

Anita Bryant Leads a Moral Crusade

During the 1960s and 1970s, Anita Bryant made a name for herself as a former beauty queen, a pop star, and a spokeswoman for national brands including Coca-Cola, Tupperware, and Florida Orange Juice. She was especially beloved among evangelical audiences, who also knew her for her frequent publication of small volumes of personal memoir and spiritual advice. In 1976, her public image shifted dramatically when she became the face of a backlash against the emerging gay liberation movement, first in Miami and then nationally. Her story demonstrates how some prominent evangelical women transformed their celebrity into a political platform during the rise of the New Christian Right in the 1970s. It also highlights the strategies that these women used to understand and justify their political roles in light of their sincere commitment to conservative gender and family norms.

‘In this house we believe in fairness and kindness’: Post-liberation politics in Australia's same-sex marriage postal survey

In December 2017, Australia legalized same-sex marriage (SSM), following a 13-year ban and a drawn-out postal survey on marriage equality that saw campaigners mobilize for a ‘Yes’ vote on a non-binding poll. Through a discourse analysis of the Yes and No campaigns’ television and online video advertisements, we demonstrate how the Yes campaign was symptomatic of what we call a ‘post-liberation’ approach that saw SSM as the last major hurdle for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) politics. While the No campaign linked SSM to gender fluidity, transgender identity, and sex education programmes, in contrast the Yes campaign limited itself to narratives around love and marriage. In not attending to the link between sex, gender and sexuality, the Yes campaign narrowed the possibilities of the debate, preserving existing White heteronormative expectations of gender and sexuality. We contrast the debate that unfolded during the postal survey to the Australian Gay Liberation movement of the 1970s, the latter of which was able to successfully and radically challenge similarly homophobic campaigns. Rather than relying on ‘palatable’ or mainstream ideas of equality, love and fairness, Gay Liberation in Australia embraced the radical potential of LGBTIQ activism and presented a utopian, optimistic vision of a transformed future. Here we suggest that we can learn from the history of campaigns around sexuality, to understand what was ‘won’ in the SSM debate, and to better develop strategies for change in the future.