Dr. Russ Lopez joins us this week to discuss his recent book, The Hub of the Gay Universe: An LGBTQ History of Boston, Provincetown, and Beyond. Russ called in from a vacation in California to talk about Puritan attitudes toward sin and sodomy, the late 19th century golden age for LGBTQ Boston, the tragic toll of the AIDS crisis, and the long fight for marriage equality.
The Hub of the Gay Universe
Dr. Russ Lopez has a background in urban planning, studying cities, neighborhoods, and the links between the urban environment and public health. He teaches at the Boston University School of Public Health, and he’s published three books related to that field. When he’s not busy studying, teaching, and writing about public health, he researches the history of Boston. The Hub of the Gay Universe is the third book he’s published in this area, following Boston’s South End: The Clash of Ideas in a Historic Neighborhood and Boston 1945-2015: The Decline and Rise of a Great World City. His new book traces the LGBTQ history of Boston and Provincetown from the moment the Pilgrims first encountered Provincetown in 1620 to the referendum that put trans rights on the ballot in 2018.
Keep up with Dr. Russ Lopez on his website, and follow @RussOnHarrison on twitter.
Upcoming Event
This week’s event Sarah’s Long Walk for Equality, a throwback to episode 162, where I discussed the 1849 Supreme Judicial Court case that formed the legal basis for school segregation. On February 1st, a Ranger from the National Park Service will be appearing at the Mattapan branch of the BPL to discuss that very case, Roberts v Boston. Here’s how the library website describes the event:
Since its founding, Boston has had a strong focus on public education, but not everyone had access to the same education. A young girl of color, named Sarah Roberts, forced Bostonians to acknowledge this inequality when she and her father sued the City of Boston because of the evident inequity in the Public Education System.
If you missed our show about Roberts v Boston, and you want to learn how a case meant to end segregation in Boston Public Schools backfired and created the legal framework for Jim Crow, you’ll want to check out this talk. It’s scheduled for 1pm on Saturday, February 1st, and it will be held at the Mattapan library on Blue Hill Ave.
Transcript
Music
Jake Intro:
[0:05] Welcome Toe Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the Universe.
This is Episode 1 67 Hub of the gay universe.
Hi, I’m Jake. This week I’ll be sitting down with Dr Russell Lopez to discuss his recent book, The Hub of the Gay Universe and LGBT Q History of Boston, Provincetown and Beyond.
The book was published in April 2019. I met Russ briefly in his author Table of Boston Pride in June.
I asked him to join us on the show sometime. He agreed, and then I promptly forgot to follow up.
Six months later, we’re finally correcting that, and Russ joins me to talk about Puritan attitudes towards sentence sodomy, the late 19th century Golden Age for LGBT Hugh Boston,
the tragic toll of the AIDS crisis and the long fight for marriage equality.
Because I have an author interview, I’m skipping the Boston Book Club. But before I talk to Russ Lopez, it’s time for this week’s upcoming historical event for upcoming event.
This week I’m featuring a throwback toe Episode 1 62 where I discussed the 18 49 Supreme Judicial Court case that formed the legal basis for school segregation.
On February 1st, a National Park Service ranger will be appearing at the Mattapan branch of the BPL to discuss that very case. Roberts v. Boston.
[1:33] Here’s how the library website describes the event. Since its founding, Boston has had a strong focus on public education.
But not everyone had access to the same education.
A young girl of color named Sarah Roberts forced Bostonians to acknowledge this inequality when she and her father sued the city of Boston because of the evident inequity in the public education system.
[1:57] If you missed our show about Robert, see Boston and you’d like to learn how a case that was meant to in segregation in Boston public schools backfired and created the legal framework for Jim Crow.
You’ll want to check out this talk.
It’s scheduled for 1 p.m. On Saturday, February 1st, and it will be held at the Mattapan Library on Blue Hill.
Have we’ll have a link to more information in this week’s show notes at huh?
Mystery dot com slash 167 If you enjoy this week’s interview, please consider supporting hub history for as little as $2 a month.
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Even a basic operation like this needs Web hosting security podcast feed hosting, transcription service is and Maur Toe. Learn how to support us and to see the rewards available of the $2.5 dollar and $10 monthly levels.
Check out patriot dot com slash hub history or just goto hub history dot com and click on the Support link.
And thanks again to everyone who already supports the show.
[3:05] And now it’s time for this week’s main topic. Dr. Russ Lopez has a background in urban planning, and he studies city’s neighborhoods and the links between the urban environment and public health.
He teaches at the BU School of Public Health, and he’s published three books related to that field.
When he’s not busy studying, teaching and writing about public health, he also research is the History of Boston, The hub of the Gay universe is the third book is published in this area, following Boston, South End and Boston, 1945 to 2015.
This new book traces the LGBT Q history of Boston and province, down from the moment the Pilgrim’s first encountered P town in 16 20 to the referendum that put trans rights on the ballot and 2018.
Jake:
[3:51] Dr Russ Lopez. Welcome to the show.
Russ:
[3:54] Thank you for interviewing me.
Jake:
[3:56] So the book starts out with a sort of a very brief overview survey of the earliest years of English colonization in Massachusetts. And then it dive straight into the theme of LGBT Q history.
Will you start us out by just telling us a little bit about the very complicated relationship that Puritans had with,
sexual temptation altogether just in general, and then how that led them to what seems like a particularly harsh view of homosexuality?
Russ:
[4:24] Yeah, it’s actually, um, their thoughts about homosexuality and sexuality in general.
Actually, much more nuanced then, um,
kind of normally think of Puritans and as such, First of all, they were trying to distinguish themselves from the rest of people in England and Elizabethan England or whatever.
That time Waas was.
Actually, the public was very a right.
Baldrick uses the term they use, you know, they’re very much in the pleasure of London was full of pubs and theater and all of his places where women and then mixed,
so partly to distinguish themselves, they were, say, they were this in the anti,
happy people, I guess, um,
and they very much thought that any kind of sex outside of marriage waas completely wrong And that included, of course, homosexuality.
But it was all kinds of sex. Anything that wasn’t, you know, husband and wife focused was wrong.
They in that context of a marriage there were actually Well, we’re fine with things like method.
It was the duty of him of a man and a woman in a marriage to have sex and the rapture supposed to enjoy it even.
But anything outside that line was completely prohibited.
Jake:
[5:51] From 16 at least from 16 41 in the body of liberties.
The act of sodomy was a capital crime, but it seems like they had a conception of quote unquote sodomy that was beyond just a sex act. What made up the crime of sodomy in that environment?
Russ:
[6:11] Well, I think what’s interesting from buses that they distinguished between the person and the act.
In one sense, they thought anybody was capable of the act of sodomy, and everybody was tempted by the act of sodomy,
so that a person who was found,
side of any two witnesses because it was a capital crime, ah, person who was found to be having sodomy was not Mark as a person who had that tendency them as being different.
They were just one of the regular folks who had succumbed attempt to temptation.
So they very much distinguished between the person and the act and any the act was so bad their eyes he didn’t quite really define it so often times they would be.
The laws are very nebulous. They said it was that horrible act of sodomy without a great definition.
Those fine, you know, think of who put what where didn’t really pop up until the and in the 19th century.
Because the Puritans thought it was such a bad thing that everybody, of course, to do what it waas. But no one would say attractive.
Jake:
[7:19] That not wanting to speak it out loud seems to have led to a situation where, although you have this capital crime on the book, if I read the book correctly, no one was actually executed for that capital crime. Is that what you found?
Russ:
[7:33] Yes, yes, And that, to me, is also very interesting thing because in England they were executing people left and right for some.
And in Virginia, I think the number of people who were executed was in the dozens.
But for some reason, despite this very, very strong criminal sanctions against it, they really didn’t.
They did ever executed anybody in the two colonies that made a Massachusetts bastards Bay and Plymouth Colony.
I think it’s because it was actually an element of mercy in the purity, religion and act, as importantly, was outside the range of the book.
But to be a became fascinated by how they how their religion was this mixture of tremendous condemnation of things.
And there’s also a great amount of mercy.
One of the thieves to the book is actually how the purity religion changed over the years until what we now have.
Our Unitarians and Congregationalists were the two most liberal Protestant denominations. We have.
Jake:
[8:42] I always think of that same thing that the Church of John Winthrop and Cotton Mather is now have the biggest frame hopeful hags in the Pride parade.
Russ:
[8:51] Absolutely and what wasn’t right. And I think it was that element of mercy, right? They thought that everybody have everybody’s a sinner.
Everybody was also capable of redemption, so I don’t think they wanted Thio.
Excuse me, buddy, because then they would no longer be ableto sort of redeem themselves now they thought everything was going to hell, so it didn’t really make a difference.
In one sense, I on Liam, a few people were gonna make it to heaven and everybody else with a house. So they still carry that.
That element of mercy And the only people they seem to have prosecuted anywhere in New England, um, connected, actually put something to death were people who also challenged the church.
So that was his big of the crime as sort of itself.
They didn’t really go after you wherever you were doing unspeakable ls that might have been as long as you obeyed church authority.
Then once you make that next step, then they cracked out. But they still didn’t kill you.
You know, they have these others punishments.
Jake:
[9:55] And it might have been sort of lesser charges.
Russ:
[9:58] Yeah. Yeah. Not so much again. Uh, I guess going all the way, you might say, but they were just sort of, ah, prosecute you for, you know, heavy petting. I guess you’d say, rather than doing the whole thing.
Jake:
[10:10] A side effect of this sort of sexual repression. The view of any sort of temptation is being a sin, including same sex temptations, is that there’s very little evidence to reconstruct people’s lives from for you.
For a historian in the book, a lot of what you have to reconstruct people’s lives from our records of trials.
Uh, did you have any way any evidence to build a picture of what just day to day life?
For somebody who might, we might consider LGBT Q was like, aside from a trial.
Russ:
[10:43] Yeah, that was actually a big problem relative to other places.
For example, in New York, there were they had the police do extensive sort of, you know, investigations into gay subculture at various ports of time.
And that’s today is a great trove of information for Massachusetts in Boston because they were, I guess, already more liberal since the word note.
But there was never any big police reporting investigation kind of thing.
So we really don’t have any information on folks, really until, well, it’s, you know, 18 hundreds.
When we start to get letters and kinds of things to each other, it does make it very difficult.
Well, you can tell just from the investigations and from the police reports, um are two things. One is that they’re already seems to be extensive.
I guess you have to use the word underground but extensive sort of sub society of folks who are into these kinds of things. They did sort of find each other, and they just sort of, you know, either friends or more than friends, right?
Sort of this network, I guess, you said, and also you find that there were people who were challenging gender rules from the very beginning.
[11:59] Through those prosecutions, what you find men being arrested for going outside of women’s clothes and women’s be recipe wearing men’s clothes.
So you find people already challenging sort of gender norms on the very beginning of European migration into North America.
Unfortunately, it’s all from arrest records of these arrest records or not detailed.
Jake:
[12:21] Right, You tell a story that’s sort of on the cusp between that speculative areas or the early colonial era and,
the 19th century, where we start to get a little bit more evidence, sort of in the transition between those two you talk about.
It’s kind of a tantalizing but vague story that setting a free black community and Beacon Hill, the north slope of Beacon Hill, can you introduce our listeners to George Middleton?
And I think Louis clap clap Ian.
Russ:
[12:52] Happier. Yeah, they were two men, two African American men.
One seems to have been bored in Boston together. One, We’re not quite sure where Middleton was actually a bigwig.
I guess you’d say in Boston. African American Society, Boston, Massachusetts, I should say, was the first state to actually outlaw slavery, and they did to a series of,
court cases right after the Revolution.
But you could see that they were already moving towards that, because again there there was a more liberal atmosphere.
So Boston had attracted a lot of free black people, and Middleton actually was ahead of a sort of, ah, police or.
[13:40] So have a regiment of folks of other blacks that patrol the streets have kept the order.
They weren’t forever son of a reason in the revolutionary Army itself, but they were left behind, and they were the ones who kept the peace in Boston.
And in return for that middle to got a congregation from Sam EVs and all sorts of other things, and, um was considered quite the hero.
He went on to also have a caters for education for African American folks.
Advocate for the abolition even already at that time.
He also founded a black free Mason society in Boston that is influential to stay.
Did a lot of great things, but he also lived with this other band, Clap Ian and the two of Cedar spent their lives together.
Middleton. When he died, his wife, we both got married, but that doesn’t really mean much in those days.
Built it, outlived his wife. They had no Children, and then he actually gave his fortune about fortune. But whatever resources he had, he left it to us.
A sailor to avail sailor after he died. Um, they ran a, um, hair.
[14:57] So logic you should say together on Beacon Hill was now Pinky Street.
And so they seem to have these intertwined lives that it’s It’s a little difficult to figure out who’s gay, who’s not gay, and we oftentimes hold people to a higher standard.
I often use the example of this couple was famous couple who wrote thousands of letters to each other.
We’re well known male female couple, well known as as a couple that never had Children.
We never questioned whether or not George and Martha Washington was straight or gay, or whether they were having sex, right?
But they never mentioned any kind of sex acts of their letters. Right?
But when we have two men who live similarly very close lives, you know, unless somebody left the letters saying you Wow, didn’t the birth shake last night when we got into the trap? He’s together.
[15:57] Unless we have that kind of evidence. Similar. This is what we don’t really know. What, they’re gay or not.
Well, you know, when you have two lives that are so intertwined as your regular together, your crappy and and and Middleton actually bought a house together, we put this standard on them.
You know, no one’s gonna leave a letter I get about the tramp.
He’s right. We don’t ever, ever, ever you know, maybe two or three people. The history of humanity, right? You know, as I have to tell people up with my husband out for 35 years and there’s you accept the fact that we have a marriage license.
There’s no physical evidence that we were a couple, right? We don’t We don’t write e mails to each other that we have, you know, incriminating evidence of them because we’re just not that kind of people. Right?
But you look at the totality of what the information we have on these two African American gentleman It’s really does seem what they were in a very, very supportive, emotional close relationship. Let’s put it that way.
Jake:
[16:55] It does seem like an era when it could be really hard to parse that out, because it it comes at a time when romantic friendship, this new concept is changing.
Masculinity is also changing how men can interact with each other, how men interact with with women.
I know even a decade or two before this, Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote, these really intense emotionally seem like love letters, except they were both.
Well, Abigail, at least was was happily married. Thomas Jefferson was doing his own thing recently popularized with Hamilton Musical You have that the Look Into Hamilton and John Lawrence letters.
This is it, like intense romantic friendship, so I could see where to be very hard to how to be hard to differentiate between a romantic friendship and a romance.
Russ:
[17:45] Yes. I mean, we haven’t that time. Men would write letters to other events.
And, you know, my dearest love and my heart beats when you show up and things like that, which in our mind would be like, Boy, this is really kind of you know,
you know, out there, right on the other hands, we begin tohave,
information on people Bob after the revolution so that we can look to see whether those letters are backed up by actual physical things together.
It’s one thing if you write a letter to your friend saying, you know, boy, I really would I see you. I just get excited. You know, I’m about Anna.
It’s another thing in the book where you have two men who actually seemed to whatever his friend came visited, despite the fact that the woman I was married this year, the bed together and the wife kind of felt left out.
So that seems to have a physical piece to it.
Beyond this emotional place, I mean, this goes all the way on some of the stuff about, you know, Abraham Lincoln, because he shared a bed with somebody for a couple of years and that was pretty common.
Even that, um, yeah, so you start to try to piece together things.
Jake:
[18:53] Beds were expensive. If nothing else.
Russ:
[19:00] It really is sort of a detective thing and often comes down to impressions.
That’s the totality of what we know about people. Some of some of this is a very fleeting.
Jake:
[19:10] You do get into especially a little bit later in the book, even in cases where either the people involved are their descendants have very deliberately tried to obscure the documentary evidence.
Where you do have diary entries letters, I think one of the earliest was are the earliest known names was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said he left behind documentary evidence of Ah ah, crash at least.
Russ:
[19:38] Yeah, but I wouldn’t go on whether or not he was gay or not, right? That’s not you know, but certainly it’s worth mentioning the fact that there was, ah, a man or a young man.
He was in a partner at the time who was having, you know, crushes the extent where he would describe following this object of desire around, hoping the man would turn around and look at him.
That seems to be a step beyond just this standard formula of writing, you know, dearly beloved. It’s nice to see you again.
The fact of the matter that he went on to, you know, Mary and everything. I’m almost everybody got married even into the 1950. So marriage itself is not a good piece of evidence either way, though clearly of a man didn’t a woman didn’t marry? Then it becomes a big thing.
But you do see this, these men and women in their diaries that sort of escaped.
They’re, uh, Ares Pir ji of declarations of love.
That would be out of step on the fact that their executors and heirs of what not tried to Persian things his evidence that even contemporaries of them would be used to men, right?
You know, sort of platonic love letters to each other.
Thought that these particulars items were beyond that. Why?
Jake:
[20:56] Hey.
Russ:
[20:56] So the fact that people purge their letters or burned them or whatever to me is evidence that there was no concept the word of a person being gay, But they didn’t consider these things being over the line.
Then they wouldn’t have actually destroyed.
Jake:
[21:12] So much of the focus of our conversation so far has been on on the experience of gay men in this extreme discretion that they had to use and how that can really muddy the historical record.
You give an example sort of a contrasting example of a woman who was incredibly flamboyant, had this sort of larger than life personality.
And, like you said, an era when marriage was just the absolute expected outcome for both sexes didn’t go that route.
Can you introduce the listener to Charlotte Cushman.
Russ:
[21:50] Oh, boy, she is a woman. Charlotte Cushman is a woman that I would have loved to have met.
She was just wild. He was born in Boston.
Jake:
[21:59] Huh?
Russ:
[22:00] She could bake up a back story of herself that her father had abandoned the family and therefore she had to take to the stage.
She started off as an opera, Seeger, but her voice was not good for that.
So she became an actress and she lived in the world on her own terms.
She would have passionate, passionate, passionate affairs with other women, usually one or two of the top two or three of the time I should say and,
well, we may not have all the information on some of the other folks about whether they were really doing or not with Charlotte Cushman.
Oh, she left in her letters. You know the folks, man. And we have a wild time last night, You know, I’m still catching my breath kind of thing.
And she did. He started career. United States went to London.
I lived for a time and in Rome encouraged a whole circle of women sculptors and writers.
Everything else and she would have affairs with them and she would do things with them.
She pretty much was in several long relationships, usually though, with other women on the side, sometimes with women who were 2030 years younger than her.
And she just live life to the fullest.
What a fun person she must have been.
Jake:
[23:15] Uh huh. Was there something about the arts or women in the arts that let them?
I just live more authentically from the earliest days of English settlement in Massachusetts, through at least the mid or late 19th century,
lesbians basically could fly under the radar of the dominant culture because the dominant culture just didn’t acknowledge that women had any sexuality.
Russ:
[23:43] Yeah, actually, they the one sense lesbians, We have an easier time because the general society just thought that women didn’t have sexual desire or experience sexual pleasure.
So therefore, of two women were together, that’d be no thought that they were, you know, enjoying each other right or having some sort of life together.
Jake:
[24:03] If they weren’t sexual beings, how could they be having a sex life together?
Russ:
[24:06] Exactly. Uh, on the other hand, there was tremendous economic and social discrimination against all women, and it was almost impossible for a woman toe support herself.
Economically and oftentimes, women were controlled by the male relatives, even if they inherited money.
Often times it was a male relative. We had all powers of their first Riggs and some of the women that saw the Christmas had affairs with.
That was actually a problem because the women couldn’t be free to be with Charlotte.
[24:44] There, their guardians really is. What was these adult with it? But their guard male guardians just wouldn’t let them do that.
There were very few options for women that could support themselves. One was the arts. They could show the question, take to the stage. They could write books and become authors and waiter. Wrong.
There was the growing profession of social work, and then a few also became professors very late to the 19th century.
And that was really it that you couldn’t just, you know, go work in a bank or go work.
Uh, as, ah merchant.
There were just something that women didn’t do unless there’s a very, very small scale, lower income women.
But if you were middle class or above woman, you just didn’t have any kinds of options that would allow you the freedom either to live by yourself but to do whatever you want it to. D’oh!
Jake:
[25:39] Now, speaking of some of the other career past, some of the very few career paths are open to women. You mentioned social work and in the book, I guess maybe I had heard this before but certainly hadn’t connected the dots.
It seems like quite a number of the women who were involved in the founding of Denison House, one of the early settlement houses in Boston in the South End, where, at least by today’s standards, might have been considered lesbians.
Russ:
[26:06] They were. There’s a whole group of women around. Vitus Scudder, who was a economics professor, believe I could be wrong,
at the Wellesley College, Wellston College was sort of a different example than other women’s colleges at the time, most of which were either offshoots of men’s colleges like like Radcliffe,
for Harvard or else they were still all male faculty.
Wellesley was sort of a college for women run by women with the added a restriction that these women were prohibited from married.
So they’re quickly grew to be a sort of subgroup off lesbians, and they pretty prominently with there were the other women of.
[26:54] So that, you know, they they would have, you know, houses together and travel together and do things together and again. They were protected by that.
The idea of ah ah that women weren’t having sex.
So a group of women this’d the very beginning of the settlement house movement.
The idea that you would have places that would take immigrants and help them with their issues of moving to urban areas in the United States,
summit was quite paternalistic, even though this room better that assassins were by women, and she still called paternalistic?
Uh, yeah. We had to teach those immigrants how to sweep the floors and, you know, keep their place is clean and kind of things, because these ideas that the immigrants didn’t know any better, right.
But also, they would teach them English. They would, uh, uh, do job training all sorts of social programs.
So the lift these folks out of poverty and Denison House was groups of one of a group of Selma’s founded by these Wellesley women, and it became quite the place in the South end.
Did. The time was the largest immigrant neighborhood in Boston.
Later on, a monthly Erhard work there as well. Uh.
Jake:
[28:09] Yeah. Yeah. That was her last stop before. Ah, Faymann disappearance Was Denison House a social workers?
Russ:
[28:18] And it was to me was also fascinating about this Is that it allowed these lesbians, too, be independent.
But also it was their introduction to society. So at the same time you had Vitus Cutter and him and her friends running Denison House, you had this pillar of Yankee, Protestant Boston,
Robert Archie Woods, who founded Salvan House only a few blocks away.
And he is as conservatives as can be, Um, and yet he is on a daily basis, interacting with lesbians at Denison House.
The star Rose now was really only know James Starr.
Oh, for his Storrow drive, which is horrendous because actually, his widow, right, deeply opposed with that, right? But ironic, isn’t it.
Jake:
[29:04] He was deeply opposed to building a road.
Russ:
[29:11] Anyway, he is again a pillow of the Yankee establishment. He ran General Motors for a while.
He was a banker to the wealthy. He was also famous for losing the mayor’s race to Honey Fitz, a grandfather of President Kennedy.
Again, he would open. He and his wife hallowed star, would open their house for lesbians and and interact with them. And no one seemed to care.
Jake:
[29:35] This is a period you describe as, ah, a golden age for lesbians in Boston.
Russ:
[29:39] Yeah, and and also gave it. And it was very, very contained.
You had to be Protestant.
There was one woman who was Catholic, who was shunned even though she was of the same group.
I mean, she had to be white, Protestant, sort of, you know, wealthy.
We’re not talking about Irish immigrants. We’re not talking about poor Protestant folks who moved from, let’s say, Maine and Vermont, New Hampshire in the Boston lot of doing that.
But if you were part of that elite you were you could go anywhere with your significant other and you were accepted, and it was really was a golden age.
I mean, there were there were very strict standards, right? The women had to really make sure that they were not being overtly sexual.
The men couldn’t live with their paramours. They would oftentimes build houses next door to each other rather than live with each other.
But there was those acceptance that really was probably, you know, I’m not a complete scholar of the world, right.
But you be in between ancient Greece and, uh, you know, San Francisco in the seventies, right late sixties.
That was probably the most liberal period of time in Western civilization.
Um, for LGBT people, Um.
Jake:
[30:58] A you quote a recorded Dr a German doctor had come to the U. S. To study homosexuality in America and he wrote, And how many homosexuals have come to know Boston? This good old Puritan city has them by the hundreds.
That’s, I think, 1908 He’s writing that. So that’s just before the decline in this golden age, I guess, but probably near the peak.
Russ:
[31:20] Yeah, it really went from a being late 18 seventies. Hard to say when it really started.
And then the door slammed shut extremely hard and tight, really World War One.
And it wasn’t all wonderful. Lot of really love evidence that gay men just got annoyed living in Boston and left.
There was a big access to Europe frequent, even the England.
But they were executed people there at the time that that seemed to be a more liberal place.
But in a sense, it really was this golden Asian. And I wrote it were kind of a regret.
But what would have happened in an alternate universe instead of the the terrible, terrible, the pressure that happened in World War One?
What would happen if it has endured and began to include other folks, Not so wealthy folks, people, other religions. And, you know, And then you know the other, you know, non white folks.
You really could have had this alternative world of acceptance, and it would have been, you know, thousands of people would have had a much better lives, but it didn’t happen. I mean it again. This acceptance ended very strongly and violently.
Jake:
[32:34] Of course, there would have been lgbtq you people who were in Boston at that time who weren’t white, Protestant, wealthy just that. It seems like they must have had to live less openly.
Russ:
[32:46] Yeah, but even then, you know what’s interesting is that the Bader codification of laws of polluted, lascivious conduct and sodomy was sort of enacted in the 18 seventies.
So in Boston, Massachusetts as a word. Other states. Yeah.
Jake:
[33:04] Aural sects, I think was newly criminalized in that period, too. But it sounds like the actual prosecution or the the arrest rate was pretty low even though there were these new crimes on the books.
Russ:
[33:07] Yeah, yeah. And.
[33:14] Yes. And that is interesting, because that wasn’t the case in other cities. I mean, um, bye, then New York and San Francisco, which is considered to be a very liberal city today, right?
Obviously had huge numbers of the rest.
Jake:
[33:30] Him.
Russ:
[33:30] And in Boston, though, it’s a little bit complicated because a lot of people have just arrested for disorderly conduct rather than anything definite, you know, under this ex laws.
So there’s probably more prosecution arrested. We thought that this isn’t that we could identify the record, but still, for the most part, the number of rest for tiny.
Some years, I think I think one here.
There was no more than the seven arrests for, you know, same sex crimes in all of Boston, like, you know, that’s that’s a tiny number compared to other places. So it seems like there wasa even for lower class books.
Maybe you were accepted as much better, probably less repression.
Jake:
[34:11] So before this golden age comes to an end, where where is gay life in Boston happening during this this time period?
Russ:
[34:19] It looks like we topped with the evidence that, uh, the gay life was on the back side of Beacon Hill, down into Scholar Square and it along the waterfront.
It’s hard to see things in other cities there were in Chicago.
There was a big crackdown on boys who sold newspapers, and they apparently were being used for prostitution as well.
And so we have this expensive thing of folks be arrested and where men were, where they were hanging out in Boston because there weren’t any arrests.
Really dope on as much. But it looks pretty much like the backside of Beacon Hill down its collar square and then over to the north and the waterfront with places that people who were looking for folks of the same sex to go to.
It was very hard for women. These women weren’t really allowed to go out by themselves at night.
Jake:
[35:13] And that wasn’t anything to do with being a lesbian. That was just being a woman. In little late 19th century, you couldn’t. There’s very little social freedom for anybody.
Russ:
[35:22] Right? And then for upper class folks of both sexes, women could go to the theater if they were company by other women and equal.
Siegel wouldn’t couldn’t go see math fact somebody single women did go to the fear that but they were There was a great place for prostitution.
But talking about upper class women they could meet each other as they could meet each other at the theater was the other great place to go.
Oh, and the other places became for men, became hotel bars.
So the, um Copley Plaza Hotel, the Vendome Hotel at the time and a few others who became notorious sort of, you know, basically gay bars at a time.
Jake:
[36:07] A time when that term hadn’t even been invented yet. Toward the end of your chat, your first chapter on this this golden age, you sort of it tease the end of this age with two.
Russ:
[36:09] Right? Right.
Jake:
[36:20] Parallel trends that were happening,
First, you had this,
article in ah, predecessor to the New England Journal of Medicine, the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal that starts to basically pathologize homosexuality and gender nonconformity and says that LGBT Q people should be locked up.
Either in jail are mental institutions and then at roughly the same size.
Same same time you have have look, Ellis is publishing a book that’s arguing that same sex desires are perfectly natural and can happen to anyone.
But it seems like the that sympathetic treatment it was almost as damaging as sort more medical approach. Thio get life.
Russ:
[37:06] Yeah, it was a very interesting thing out. Recall that the Puritans didn’t consider anybody to be gay.
They just considered people who fell to temptation. So everybody was right and that they just happen to be kept it that way so you could commit same sex acts.
Jake:
[37:18] Everybody was tempted, tempted in different ways.
Russ:
[37:26] But that said nothing about you was a person.
Then, starting in the end of the 19th century, his various ways, both proponents and,
other folks, they began to argue that know that people who engage in same sex activities are inherently different.
There’s something inside them, a part of them that makes them different than other folks and sometimes, like with have look callous.
They would argue that this was perfectly fine.
And why are you being mean to them? And why are you locking him up while you’re making it illegal for something that’s just inherently, ah, part of them and just natural?
Or then you would have the doctors and became quite come throughout the medical profession that whatever that is is inside them is a pathological fig, and therefore those people need to be either contained or destroyed.
So in a sense, this beginning of an idea that people who engage in same sex behaviors are different.
Ultimately helped destroy. This golden age is rather than you know, having you know, you could have Ah, you know, two women over for dinner, and it wasn’t it nice that they’re ready. And they were well read and played the piano and everything else.
You know, who’s two women are sick. And why would we have in our house similarly with the men?
Jake:
[38:47] Right, Right.
Russ:
[38:50] It wasn’t you found out your son or your love one did something.
It was suggest Oops, you know. What were they doing that with a drunk, you know that you ever did was to close with their friends, know there was something wrong with him and therefore the sole of, you know, get him out of your house.
Before you were affecting other Children. The kind of thing I was always very sad.
Jake:
[39:11] Yes.
[39:14] Yeah. There are a few points in your book. Rocket Hardly read it with a dry eye. And a lot of that comes. So a little later, parts dealing with the AIDS crisis was just really difficult to read.
Russ:
[39:28] When I do a public reading, I cannot read from the AIDS years. It’s still too. You’re I’m of that generation.
Yeah. I actually graduated from Harvard on June 5th, 1981 which was the day that the CDC and the morbidity Mortality Date.
Jake:
[39:44] Oh, wow. First acknowledge that there is Ah.
Russ:
[39:48] Person Yeah, first mentioned it. Right? So I’m really of that generation, right?
And, uh, like I was really the I’m good.
I’ll see what I was really The play The Inheritance by Matthew Lopez That’s playing in New York and Oh, God, I really did live through all this, right?
In writing the book, right of writing about the AIDS crisis. I went to the history project, and they have all these.
Ah, guy collected all these obituaries, and they’re not all just made most of clearly people from Boston who died of AIDS. I just sort of randomly took some sort of just put names on it, right.
Oh, my God. It was just horrendous. And then I Then I did news in mind My deep biological training, a doctor and epidemiology environment epidemiology.
I actually tried to put a number on you know, what percentage of gay men and those generations died and it was about 10%.
And that might seem it was only 10%. But that’s more than say, um, the number of men, the percent of men who in from France, who died a world war.
[40:59] We’re talking really of a of a societal catastrophe.
You know, it’s that big, right? And there were people see people because, like, everybody died, most people live fortunately.
But if you think about 10% of everybody you’re close with have died, right, it’s just it was And you didn’t There was no.
When you’re in the middle of it, you didn’t know who was going to die. I didn’t know if you were gonna die.
It just was justice this horror and then have to write it right. It was just very difficult.
Jake:
[41:33] Yeah, and and the complete lack of knowledge at the time on anybody’s part.
Um, not even knowing what you were what to worry about, then, seeing I was a teenager, even younger during a lot of that.
And, you know, it was a road, you know, get AIDS from a toilet seat. Don’t touch the whatever that Janie talk in complete ignorance out in the world of what HIV aids waas.
Russ:
[41:59] Yeah, we didn’t. You know, you didn’t know that was the fear.
Yeah, it’s It’s hard to write to convey to people that the fear, the panic, right.
And yet you had to get up every day and go to work, right? That is you couldn’t just give up on life, right, though some people did, and the psychological scars is still there.
But you just didn’t know what was gonna happen, right.
And there was no cure that at the beginning, you didn’t even know what caused it, right. And then when you did, you thought it was a virus is like, what? How was it spread?
It doesn’t And, you know, and who And you.
You know, I guess you’re a lot of folks panicked.
Well, let’s, you know, quarantine all homosexuals when politicians says, But, you know, that wasn’t an option. If you were day, you really crude you.
You can’t just sort of take yourself out of society of all your friends and folks, you know, and people you hang out with.
Then they all started getting says second. You know, you What? Could you do it? You don’t know what?
You didn’t know how to protect yourself. You had a government that didn’t seem to be doing anything in terms of research.
You had drug companies. That seemed to be all just well, maybe we could make some money off of this, But maybe you don’t even do it, and we’ll see how expensive we could be in.
Jake:
[43:23] Do you think Boston’s reaction to the epidemic was different than other cities? There was a pretty typical of how you just made that municipalities were reacting at the time.
Russ:
[43:34] Well, it was different, actually, in a number of ways. One is that even under Kevin White, who was the mayor up until 1983. Real?
Because he left office in January 1 1984. He okay?
Jake:
[43:48] But really a throwback to it. An earlier generation.
Russ:
[43:52] Yeah, he was his old style. Sort of.
Blackie was an old so he was He was, like, progressive, young liberal.
You know, like John Lindsay, um, of New York, combined with an old Irish machine.
Jake:
[44:04] Ah.
Russ:
[44:08] Politics kind of think who could Hey, will keep anything. Wanted to control everything in the city. He was kind of a character.
Jake:
[44:09] All right, wheeler dealer getting things done.
Russ:
[44:17] He had to be here with the first mayor of any big city that could find anywhere.
And I’ve continuous researchers. The book us out. He was the first big city mayor. Thio go into a gay bar to campaign for votes.
The book includes a picture of him looking terrified.
That is one bar like like Oh my God, is one of you has nothing doing AIDS or anything.
This is this is 1979 but he’s just like Oh my God, where have I?
Jake:
[44:43] What am I doing here, right?
Russ:
[44:45] But he did. He went into this market campaign, right?
So in the aches crisis hit, he had day support and soon,
immediately said that, um, he was also the first big city mayor to appoint a liaison to the gay and lesbian community that the seams would do everything they could to make life’s better for boats.
That’s in contrast. That’s a to New York, where you had Mayor Koch, who was women to be gay but would never do anything with that, just seemed to be reluctant to let the city get involved in the fight for AIDS.
In contrast, in Boston, you had immediately the Boston Housing Authority looking for I’m looking to do with anything for people who read a housing you had at the time. It was City hospital looking what they can do tow.
You provide care for people with AIDS.
You had the mayor’s office in general looking. The house was discrimination, so you had seen government on your side from the very beginning, and I think that made a big difference. Even it’s in Santa’s.
Jake:
[45:50] And that continues, though even a CZ. Kevin White is ushered out, and Ray Flynn, whose was a very, very different personality in different sort of political outlook, comes in.
Russ:
[46:03] And he was the same way. Actually, I should say that I was an aide in the mayor’s office for those years, so But he had folks like and McGuire ah, lesbian woman.
Very, very close ties throughout the LGBT community, coordinating, um, the city’s response.
And again after Flynn left office, Major Medina, the safety continued.
The city of Boston, um,
you want to say about its government over these years was compassionate and thought everybody waas part of the city was gay, gay people.
We could but race to be a different issue.
Whatever but that gay people were constituents in need of service is and therefore the city.
We do whatever they could for them, the others who have been lost in defense. We didn’t have the big moral issues inside the gay community that they have us save San Francisco. If you read, um, ready Schultz book and the band played on San Francisco Waas.
People move to San Francisco tohave, have sex men and then move game and moved to San Francisco. And he had a sexual people in San Francisco.
Jake:
[47:21] I was gonna say I think everybody moved to San Francisco to have sex.
Russ:
[47:22] Yeah, yeah, that In fact, in the sixties and seventies, before tech, where in the city by making a more normal um,
but s o San Francisco had bath houses and people who would just see how that you wouldn’t even take minimum wage jobs so they could have the vote for days and nights that having as many sex partners General,
Boston has never been a fun city.
It never had a big night life. It did have a bath house, but a Bauhaus that as far as I’ve never met anybody who ever went to it.
Jake:
[47:51] A bath.
Russ:
[47:56] We have at its height, maybe two dozen gay bars. But most of them were pretty small.
Also, we didn’t have back rooms where people have said it just was a very, um, tain city.
So you really knew you didn’t have this moral thing that, well,
AIDS was a disease of promiscuity and AIDS was a disease that was, you know, some sort of because by immorality of too much sex,
in New York, also, yet all sorts of stopping you have Larry Kramer’s say that gay men were just too promiscuous and that’s what they had to stop.
Well, in Boston, that was silly. No one had no was having that much sex.
That’s not what people move. The boss of people of the Boston so they could be in relationships and and live quiet lives, I guess.
So you didn’t have that moral piece. So San Francisco was split by whether we should shut the bathhouses or not about Boston.
There was one. And okay, you can shut it down. But every knew that wasn’t was going to be an issue. Everybody do that.
[49:01] All those for the Getty That AIDS was not a problem. Problem security. It was a disease.
We don’t blame people who get the flu. They got the flu because he spent too much time in public places.
You you knew just you could tell them who got sick, that it wasn’t this wild place, that this is Guy’s retribution for people having too much fun. It was just a disease.
So that also made Boston different. We didn’t have those splits.
There was a little bit some people, sort of. So this is what gave in after syrupy behaving. But everybody who that was just, you know, silly and so we didn’t have those disputes and that allowed folks to do other things.
Boston was already a center for medical research and MGH for being one of the best hospitals of the world was not providing the standard of care for AIDS people that it should have.
Jake:
[49:54] And there were other hospitals in town that did have that reputation. I think BMC sit City Hospital at the time. Sounds like built that reputation of giving quality care deaconess. Right? Right.
Russ:
[50:02] And the best and the Deaconess Hospitals. Right? And even the brigand wasn’t big on it, but they were doing the right thing.
But MGH wasn’t even providing the standard of care. So there were a lot of demonstrations against NGH to get to the change. How they were doing things.
Jake:
[50:18] Would that have been act up or that have been before acting?
Russ:
[50:19] Yes, it was actor, part of problem bosses who were who were goingto have demonstrations against right?
Even the boss was becoming a big biomedical research place. There weren’t that many targets, right?
Heart had Harvard Medical School was a target, you could protest at the federal building. Which people did people protest ID act, the cathedral, the Holy Cross for the Catholic Church’s response.
We didn’t have that many targets, right? NGS became a big target because they were provided the standard of care that they should have.
Jake:
[50:55] So just take a second. If you don’t mind, just remind our listeners what act up Waas And then locally What what their goals were.
Russ:
[51:03] So we have act up the AIDS Coalition toe At least Power found in New York City by Larry Kramer.
That inspired similar local groups across the country, and it was founded out of this rage and anger that you had institutions and government who were,
and during the days crisis, because it was a crisis of Gaby.
[51:28] Boston Chapter started fairly soon after the New York chapter, and they began to look at who they could push that rage,
to make change, to make it to begin the process of addressing the epidemic, like in New York, where you could protest places that were promoting morality.
We didn’t have that in places where you might go to the local city. Holland protests, and there were one or two protests at City Hall.
But the city was doing everything it could to make the lives off people with days sort of as good as much you could do in a situation where there was no medical cure for everything, and your decline was sort of inevitable.
So they protested at the federal building. But, you know, we’re not center of the federal government like Washington, D. C. Iwas most of the medical infrastructure. Boston is doing the right thing.
The two exceptions were Mass General Hospital, which wasn’t providing the standard of care that even in the days when you quit into a lot, that people knew what you needed to dio, they were much more conservative.
So well, you know, we’ve heard case reports on the San Francisco that this works, but we’re not gonna do that yet.
Well, that wrong And then you also had higher a medical school which was part of this whole.
Jake:
[52:44] Huh?
Russ:
[52:48] Why won’t be doing MME or two addressed these of the AIDS epidemic. And those were the two public biggest targets.
The act up group in Boston had that problem that everybody was doing the right thing. It was just his frustration and anger that it wasn’t enough.
Jake:
[53:05] Right now, you see the fatality rate rising and rising throughout the course of the eighties, and nothing is working, even if the city in the hospitals, the doctors air doing what they can.
Just that feud, I’ll rage. It seems like I have to find some outlet.
Russ:
[53:21] Yeah. I mean, we and you also I guess, had to be mentioned in this is the Fenway Health Center, which was founded by gay people, gay and lesbian people.
And though it’s served a lot of folks who are not LGBT, Q was a great provider.
Care to the community, you know, They were.
Jake:
[53:40] They really come out. It seems like they come out. It’s one of the a truly heroic organization of this this era, just in terms of everything they tried to do for Val G B T Q Community and then specifically, people with HIV AIDS.
Russ:
[53:54] Yeah, you know. And they had a very as a community based health center that was very was founded on radical principles. They had this sort of change themselves in the seventies to survive.
This is pre AIDS. They were finally getting their sort of ducks in order that they were getting certified as a clinic. They were attracting doctors.
They were figuring out howto build for treatment so that they could stay sound financially.
And then they just got slammed by this epidemic, and they really did rise to the occasion.
Thankfully, rises. It is frightening to think what would have happened in Boston that they didn’t.
And there wasn’t a lot of good before 96 with the introduction of ah, triple therapy where you could make AIDS into a control disease.
That wasn’t a lot that you could do on the other hand.
They did whatever they could, and they also participated in trials that eventually led to the introduction of these therapies that did finally control the disease.
It was there were people who did not rise to the occasion.
Even I point out that it was an institution in the community of the gay community news, which is newspaper of fabulous professional coverage when my amateurs that volunteers national.
Jake:
[55:17] If anybody’s interested, a lot of their archives are available online. You can read back issue Was gay community news pretty easily.
Russ:
[55:23] And yet when the the epidemic began in 1981 they didn’t take it seriously.
Jake:
[55:28] Huh?
Russ:
[55:29] It was like, Oh, it’s a disease of, you know well, some gay men and you know, you know, maybe it’s capitalism’s revenge or something, right?
I wanted I wouldn’t even pretend to understand what was going on there, and and the people who I know who looked back at that time our, I guess, embarrassed.
And they can’t explain what they did. Well, either.
It took him until maybe three or four years into the epidemic before they started to actually cover it. Even.
Jake:
[55:58] On the on the flip side, Do you think other than Fenway health are their organizations or people from that era that that do deserve special recognition for reacting well?
Russ:
[56:09] Yeah, very castle. Who found it? AIDS action, Um, committee.
And he’s sort of got a group of volunteers together very early epidemic in 1982. And I think there are only, like, a dozen cases at the time.
In all of Massachusetts, the invention went back and looked at records and realized that people have been died of AIDS in Massachusetts back into the seventies.
You started. You people just didn’t recognize the syndrome of diseases of symptoms that were part of this.
But anyway, so wary, uh, really rock folks together. And it wasn’t just him up, I think.
A see what had hundreds of employees and volunteers and bar owners would have, um, fundraisers.
I tried at first to quantify what percentage of folks in the in the community actually helped work on AIDS.
And it really be here. A parent. It virtually everybody did.
They either directly cared for somebody with AIDS they would donate to fund raisers.
They would donate time to either the Fenway A C couple of organizations that were working on these issues.
It was really something. We’re everybody that that time and not just gave him and also lesbians really worked hard.
[57:36] Do their best in Africa. I think the other person that deserves great,
special recognition is a woman in Alice Fully who was the town nurse in Provincetown who helped bring together folks to meet the challenges of the epidemic.
Provincetown probably had the seal highest death rate, um, of any place in the country from AIDS.
Jake:
[57:59] Yeah, we haven’t focused as much in this interview on Provincetown.
Just cause this is Ah, a Boston Focus podcast. But much much of the book is focused on Provincetown and this period and realizing how deeply cut Provincetown boys by the AIDS epidemic.
There’s another passage that was just really hard to read in the book to see It’s a town that that might have lost one in every 10 people to AIDS.
Russ:
[58:26] Yeah, it was just every person it promised out. The A support group decided that they were not gonna die alone, that they would be surrounded by folks who would provide them with compassion and love.
I think that’s the other peace in that you talk about, you know, who should we thank?
It’s but these thousands of volunteers, right?
Who would just hold hands of folks and would do things. So I’ll tell you one personal story that’s not in the book.
A friend of mine died in 94. And, um, most of his stuff, you know, is you just personal things, right?
We don’t sum. His family took Bacchus of his friends kept, But at the end of the day, there were about three or four bags of junk that needed to be thrown out.
And I was working the mayor’s office at the time. One of my friends called up to say, We can’t get rid.
We can’t get anybody to take the garbage from the house. The rubbish right?
The apartment complex owner said that it was Has it is waste.
I’m not sure. Wydell pillow cases. He has his waist, but whatever, whatever and So eventually I got some public will disguise just to come in and pick up the garbage. Right?
But that was what everybody was faced with.
[59:52] Every caretaker was faced with is just a multiple of daily things that we take for granted. You getting the garbage out, you couldn’t.
Maiga’s people wouldn’t take your garbage, you know, just and yet somehow folks got it all done.
Jake:
[1:00:07] By the I guess the late night in the middle late nineties, as some of the drug cocktails became more effective and HIV AIDS became instead of an immediate death sentence, it became a disease that you could live with.
It sounds like LGBT culture really started to change at that point, but before we before we sort of move into the 19 nineties, actually wanna back up to really an interesting era that we glossed over.
And that was sort of the the decline of that first golden age of gay Boston. So way had spent a lot of time talking about some of the personalities and the life in that golden age, but we didn’t really talk about what happens.
How did the coming of World War I change Boston’s LGBT Q life?
Russ:
[1:00:58] It had a tremendously negative, horrible impact.
Hired a willow wives. It was really kind of a wide open city. People could do whatever they want, more or less that there were there were constrains. Obviously, we were still We don’t want to scare the horses, I guess is the term people use right, But it will. War one.
The federal government decided to crack down on immorality in cities across the country with the rationale that you know they need to keep service mint ready. Tow the fight in the war.
And so not just against gay people. But there was a big crackdown nationally against prostitution.
Most cities in the United States pride will want were pretty lax in enforcing anti prostitution laws of most cities had red light districts.
I guess you’d say Chicago and Notorious. One New York, San Francisco and Boston did as well the secretary of the Navy was giving was given.
[1:01:58] Responsibility for Indy that and it came not just ah, sort of anti prostitution, anti drinking things that that was also a part of it as well.
But it quickly morphed in most cities into an anti gay movement as well.
And in Boston was it was very explicit.
Some representative from the um, the secretary of the Navy’s office came into City Hall, had a meeting with the mayor and said, If you don’t crack down on,
prostitution and morality here, City, we’re goingto nationalize your police force and do it ourselves.
It was that explicit, so.
[1:02:39] Based upon that the police in Boston first went after announced this big crackdown on prostitution that with a dare to turn into an anti gay sort of witch hunt where they would arrest any man on the street that they thought looked gay,
and closed on all the gay bars and everything else quite quickly.
They also started putting secret agents.
Did you go undercover policeman who would go into houses And if they found gay people, they’re congregating there.
They would also arrest him on it was quite remarkable what it did to the city.
[1:03:17] It shut down everything that was going on for months.
People were afraid to go outside. Even that was accompanied by a big cracked out at the Newport were iron at the the D. V based there and then continued after the war.
Morality in general had changed in the sort of I’ve AG is the pressures of the war.
So the part of the cumulative lt was a courage recently of gay people at Harvard, and they were expelled for being gay and not just expelled.
The registrar’s office was was instructed to tell anybody who would save another school wanted to find out was this person really student there and transcripts that this person was expelled for being gay?
If it employer wanted to verify that a person with school there to tell them they were expelled for being a judgment, these poor men were targeted for life.
So you had this series of things the the undercover police, the,
purges in the street, the military purge and in the Harvard purge and all that together to slam the door shut in, starting in 1918 in 1920 sous Siri’s of.
[1:04:36] Repressive things that completely changed the way people,
particularly the lesbians and gay men who had been sort of Frito, do what they want.
We’re suddenly no longer allowed. It really completely changed the whole nature of, ah, gay society in Boston for the one that was fairly open, the one that was extremely closeted.
Jake:
[1:05:01] And it seems like that closet ing that being driven underground lasted for decades through pretty much the Stonewall era.
Russ:
[1:05:09] Yeah, really. It began to relax in the sixties before stonewall, but really, you’re really talking.
Ah, 50 year period. Two generations of people, I guess, who lived in tremendously, um, homophobic times, right?
You know, it wasn’t just the government.
You had families who were just horrendous to any of their Children who were found to be sexually or gender nonconforming.
People tell of, for example, one poor guy.
His parents found out he was gay, so they called up his employer to get him fired.
That was the kind of thing that happened. And that was 50 years. Um, pretty horrendous.
Jake:
[1:05:54] It does sound like through the 19 fifties. There’s this sort of attention on, sort of like a gay panic pulling from one side and then,
a little bit of ah, loosening on the other side is as a bar scene starts to develop during and right after World War Two.
What were bars like where L G B T Q bars like in the couple decades starting during and then right after World War Two?
Russ:
[1:06:20] But Boston we get It was different than other cities that it was actually his own way more liberal, in part because alcohol licenses were done by the state, not by the city.
And they never became political issues like they did it other places.
[1:06:34] So it wasn’t like in New York or San Francisco, where you might have a mayor running for officer for re election So he doesn’t crack down on gate gay bars to show that he’s strong.
A morality mayor currently never cared a great mayor, Curly. All those years didn’t care and have it became an issue in city government.
Um, so as long as you the patient’s behavior very, very explicit the rigid ways bars were allowed to be, um, flourish, Um, so you were allowed to have same sex dancing.
[1:07:07] And you weren’t allowed to have anybody cross dressing, but as long as you did that you were pretty much could could be open.
And so, like in San Francisco again, we think it has to be a big gay mecca.
It was rare before stonewall for a bar to be open for more than a year or so because it was their legal that have gay people even congregate in a bar in Boston.
That was not a problem. And even though again we have that we have the U.
S. Military trying to get the city to crack down on gay bars,
that we have ah, woman and marry Driscoll, who was the head of the Alcohol Beverage Commission, say Noah’s longest are bars are conformity with our laws and regulations.
We’re gonna allow them to be open. There’s no law in Massachusetts, our bosses that specifically says You can’t have gay people in New York. It was illegal to serve a gate gay person, a drink.
So one of the first political actions was actually a part called Julius.
Where about a group of openly gay men with the time in the sixties, when it is before Stonewall went in and just ordered a drink.
And that was when the first political acts in New York.
[1:08:14] Boston. You couldn’t do that because you have these bars and they work at times quite wild.
There was a gentleman named Phil they own who weighed about though £350 or so very large mad and have the bar where the transportation.
That lead is now, uh, 12 Carver.
And he would Saturday night he would get to be kind of wasted, and he would get up onto this swing with this big straw hat with ribbons on it and, uh, say, uh,
it’s time for Poppet of swing.
You get into this swing suspended from the ceiling and saying in the good old summertime adds one witness.
But Margo says that that swing and collapsed, he would have killed 300 people.
Jake:
[1:09:06] Huh?
Russ:
[1:09:06] But he was a character and the bar selected and even right after World War Two, a bar open and Park square so long was picking by renewal, called the Punch Bowl that started off small.
That kept acquiring the sort of the spaces on. He decided the basement, and by the time it closed in 67 could be lines down the street people to get in.
It became quite the wild place, but again, you weren’t allowed to have dancing.
So the first bar that have safe sex dances a place called the Midtown with the Charles theaters. Now they would flash the lights and men would go.
You know, five women partners is didn’t break apart a sit down whatever. And so the police would come in and they would do.
They would check I d. S and what you would do if she would have a $5 bill with your driver’s license.
And you’d hand it to that the check already if you didn’t have an idea that would take you away.
And those oftentimes abuse beat up. The men are sometimes rape the women or rumors of that.
But if he was all you had an idea that $5 you were safer. You give it to them and they were do that.
But they worried about once a month, and the mid had only had dancing on Thursday. So it was only, you know, So one times out of four you’ll be rated.
And then similarly at the Punch Bowl was a second place that started have dancing.
And again, it was the same situation we have in the basement so you could flash the lights.
All that began in the early sixties, mid sixties, even before stone law.
Um, certainly, with that.
Jake:
[1:10:36] It’s also an era when they called home a file. Organizations started to spring up around Boston, too, and some of the early activists, I think we’re cutting their teeth at that time. Charles Show Lively Prescott Townsend.
Russ:
[1:10:48] Yeah, Boston became because of his universities and also because, well, Prescott towns. It was an old Yankee family baby.
In the 19 fifties, there was political action in Boston, people needy, to try to figure out ways of making life better for, um, gay people.
And in one sense they seem kind of timid.
Our perspective. But the bravery that represents was incredible.
Boston benefit advice. Many colleges and universities. So you have young men, women, folks, whoever coming in and being away from their families.
Do you know that began that process that they could come out publicly and to themselves.
So you Boston was taking in these young people about low over the place and woo. I’m away from home for the first time, going to the know what I’m doing.
And they benefited from that very strongly. And that provided this whole group of activists who began to do things in the fifties and sixties even before stonewall.
But what still won’t happen.
That was sort of like the match. And so they really had large numbers of people.
But at one point, when he called it the Boston Mafi, almost every national gay organization had people with Boston connections who had gone to school here are became active. So they were here. Oh.
Jake:
[1:12:04] You almost make the the period between Stone Wall and the outbreak of the AIDS crisis sound like a second Golden Age.
The social scenes starts to come back out of the underground, more able to live openly.
People are starting to develop what we probably consider trans identities today.
What do you think that decade or two? What’s the importance of that era?
Russ:
[1:12:30] So that time between 1960 died in 1981.
Between stone law on beginning the AIDS crisis was a tire wind.
Nationally, gay people be lesbian people.
And to service that trans people not that as much began to really feel they could do anything.
There was still limits. There are a lot of places that you could lose your job, et cetera.
But one hand, it was kind of this vast. Don’t ask, don’t tell world.
So, you know, maybe you went your lawyer.
[1:13:02] When you were there, you had to act very conformist. But, you know, at night, on weekends you could do anything.
[1:13:10] You want it. They called it wearing masks, right. You could wear the mask where you at work.
But then come the weekend Come five o’clock, you could take off the mask and you could pretty much do whatever you want.
And you found this used flowery social life and it was bars with really became bigger than ever. Bar’s exploded from about seven to about 20 at any given time, 60 20 any given moment.
You know, you had this big explosion of nightlife, but it was also a big explosion of organizations you had, you know, sports leagues.
You had cultural activities, virtually every kind of activity that people do. You have a club port, eh? So you have this huge infrastructure of folks.
The well, all sorts of fun things, but also big.
A beginning of acknowledging that there were parts of LGBT Q life that youth thio have action to support.
So it wasn’t just that you had more bars. You also began tohave sobriety organizations that focused on the needs of, uh, gender nonconforming or sexual nonconforming people You had.
The Fenway Health Center found it because the mainstream medical profession was so nasty.
A people you had a counselling service that was started for gay people.
Um, because yeah, for youth, right, All this support system and social system that just worst until, like everybody was doing, everything will be before my time.
Jake:
[1:14:38] Also there. Ah Bagley’s founded in that era, I think, in the first GSA’s.
Russ:
[1:14:51] It really looked like there was this tremendous social explosion.
People who have spent their generation that spent their early years, you know, just hoping no one would ever know what they were like to suddenly being able to be sort of public.
And it’s in inside the There were still strict standards and by our lives today.
But you really you kept quiet.
You know, we went toe work, but you might write. And you kept it quiet for your parents usually.
But inside the game world, you could do almost anything to be whoever you want it.
It was a second Golden Age where, where? Inside the gay world, you could pretty much do whatever you want.
I mean, there was if you wanted, you had some kind of taste or so kind of commitment to something.
There was a group for you, So yeah, there was, You know, there was a time when everything’s impossible, right?
And that would do exactly how things were gonna turn out.
But it did seem like, you know, so much could be done. And so many different organizations started and proliferated.
Jake:
[1:16:00] And then you write that everything changed on that June day in 1981 with the report first uncovering this strange new disease.
And we’ve delved into that dark era, uh, a good bit already. But Boston eventually came out the other end of the AIDS crisis in the late nineties.
Russ:
[1:16:20] And that set the stage for marriage. The AIDS crisis helps set the stage for for marriage, along with the fact that you had a lot of same sex couples that were,
starting families.
It was a little bit easier for lesbians if to have a family that for Gay Bandit gave it actually began to adopt.
Or they had kids from prior marriages and they ran into these tremendous legal difficulties.
You know, if you wanted to have your spouse pick up your child, you couldn’t do it because they weren’t if somebody got injured and it was at the hospital.
So you have these two tremendously social changing things. One was dazed because one of the invention already the obituaries, one of the saddest things that people didn’t have words to describe. The lifelong partner.
Now you would say husband or wife. Then it was like his longtime companion met by his good friend and emotional partner.
You know, whatever you had, cases of people died without the, you know, will’s stuff for without leaving there.
[1:17:33] Which is explicit, and sometimes even if they did, you had people ignoring them, and it had a couple living together on live in a house together and something one partner would find themselves evicted because they worked on the lease. So they didn’t They weren’t co owner.
You couldn’t put your second person on the mortgage kind of thing.
And so you had this horrible, horrible consequences of a CZ what it did to the survivors and what it did to the families.
And when it did, the folks try to get medical care and all these other things, plus the pressures that were coming up on families that couldn’t conform.
Thio, the social piece of ah, what we allow that was to do that that even to unmarried people could do.
[1:18:21] And then the third thing was that you had an opposition in the state Legislature to any kind of liberalization.
Took 15 years, maybe longer, to get a anti discrimination law passed.
And they were adamant after that the conservatives that nothing else was gonna pass, So you couldn’t even get domestic partner benefits for public employees in this state, you have this all this opposition.
So you had this desire for a way of legal recognition to make lives easier for couples for families along this sort of,
nasty blocking any kind of legislation by a few key legislators.
Which is interesting because the most of the rank and file were voted in favor of the CIGS, didn’t vote in favor of these things.
And then the the Senate leadership of the House leadership would squelch it and keep it from passing because of legislative maneuvering.
[1:19:17] And in that context, the idea that we should go from marriage emerged also had a tremendously well lead physician called Glad, then called gay lesbian advocates of the defenders.
It began in 1978. Also scolded Age of activism when gay men were being harassed in um, the Boston Public Library. Now swear for being gay, that would be just called offer.
I saw him do something illegal that I was almost It was really the book right here on the table.
So glad started, and by in the nineties it was very polished organization on a shoestring budget, but really great people.
A woman named Mary Bonauto who, working in concert with others, say You know, this is the time we need toe file lawsuit that will allow same sex marriage, which they filed, I believe in 2000 and two.
I believe the lawsuit was finally filed. I could be wrong. It’s in the book.
Jake:
[1:20:18] And that’s the lawsuit that becomes the Goodrich decision.
Russ:
[1:20:21] Yes, and that became the first state in the country that, um allows same sex marriage.
Jake:
[1:20:28] I moved to Boston, kind of in the middle of that airs. I moved to Boston in 97 I guess. And so I I was vaguely at least.
I was aware of the fight as it was go going on. But going back in reading about that period in the book, I very much discounted how much opposition continue to happen after the decision.
And I don’t think at the time I was aware, at least I didn’t remember the fact that there was a constitutional convention in 2004 to try to overturn Goodridge.
Russ:
[1:21:03] Yeah, it was. You know, court decision was just the beginning of the struggle in one sense.
Or maybe it was marked the half point, but that’s struggled to keep that decision alive, consumed both sides for leaving the next five years.
And the first thing was, if marriage was a constitutional right in the Massachusetts Constitution, then you could overturn it with a constitutional amendment.
They actually tried to overturn it with a simple law, and even before they could get that past which it would not have passed.
That’s a true supreme years, of course, said no.
That would not be the case. They also tried to substitute suddenly domestic partner benefits, civil unions. I guess you’d say, right, just don’t call it marriage.
Jake:
[1:21:48] Just don’t call it marriage.
Russ:
[1:21:51] That failed for two reasons. One is for same sex couples.
That wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t be accepted by the federal government would be filed in other states.
It was really not separate but equal. It was very unequal, and also the opponents of same sex marriage didn’t want any recognition of same sex couples,
so it was too liberal for them, so it failed from both sides.
So we had a constitutional convention, and I mentioned a few minutes ago that,
efforts for legalization and whatnot were stymied by this leadership that would use every kind of parliamentary maneuver toe prevent laws that would make lives of LGBT few people better,
because he didn’t have the votes, they would just started using all these maneuvers.
Well, the lobbyists for the community learn from that, and they started to use the same kinds of maneuvers to stop the constitutional convention.
Jake:
[1:22:51] I almost ended up in a sort of a filibuster that commit convention, right?
Russ:
[1:22:54] Yeah, and actually, that was one of the highlights of the high points in the whole history.
Jake:
[1:23:01] You actually, you describe going into the end of that convention there’s a moment when I think to continue the keep it going another day would have required a unanimous vote.
And you say that that evening. Waas quote perhaps the most emotional and important outburst in the history of LGBT Q. Boston. So So what was that moment?
Russ:
[1:23:24] Well, it was a parliamentary maneuver. They needed to stop the convention. It didn’t get to end it, and there was a tremendous amount of emotion and crowds filling the statehouse.
But after 12 hours of all this, the opponents went away and but there was still in need and everyone was exhausted.
So it came from the States House. But now we have yields better technology. You know, we give that text Eden phones and cellphones and everything else.
And the first calls went to Club Cafe. Just anybody who knew somebody was there said, Can we get more people to the statehouse?
Well, quickly became sort of a telephone tree, right?
Everybody was calling everybody. I think we got like Cemetery eight phone calls from various friends.
Can you get to the State House right away? We were actually out of town that, but we got seven or eight phone calls and people just forever.
They could in the Boston area, flooded to the State House, and there’s a dispute,
in the LGBT community about whether or not marriage was a real grassroots thing are just something that upper class white CIS gender, gay men wanted and.
[1:24:42] One of the reasons why I wrote it.
So in depth about that night was that it was everybody who everybody went there.
It was a grassroots thing. It was something that folks wanted and they to the fan marriage.
They did flood that state house from every home.
People just went, Oh, you know, And it succeeded in one sense, it get.
The amendment was defeated that year, but that it kind of re emerged and they had to find it again.
The other interesting thing about the fight to save same sex marriage was that,
lawsuit doesn’t have a big evangelical community, so we don’t have that kind of opposition that you have, Let’s say, in other states of the place is the other thing.
Jake:
[1:25:27] The Catholic Church.
Russ:
[1:25:27] Yeah, it was the cat and the Catholic Church was the big opponent.
But the Catholic Church had destroyed itself, almost completely destroyed itself, I should say, with the whole child abuse scandals.
[1:25:41] So it was kind of back on its heels. So the vast amount of religious activism around gay marriage was in support of same sex marriage, and that, to me, that’s became fascinating. Tire back to the Puritans, right?
Because it was led by Unitarians congregation was Reform Jewish congregations and others who came together those coolers in the fridge of the marriage, also stepping back a second in the very first gay pride parade.
There have been protests for the ST Paul’s Church up.
They’re facing the common about the church’s animosity toe religious animosity towards gay people.
On the morning of the final big debate over,
same sex marriage, this religious freedom for the marriage group met at that same place ST Paul’s, And then they marched across the Colin singing hymns.
South African him. We’re marching a lot of God to the statehouse to demonstrate religious support for same sex marriage.
So this to me it’s sort of this end of this arc of these Puritan site who then, hundreds of years later are marching this vanguard to support algae, be kicking people.
[1:27:01] History has a way of zigging and zagging in ways that can’t be predicted.
People are resilient and algae Beaky que people resilient.
So even at times when folks were under to the worst depression, they survived and they lived fulfilling lives to the best that they could that they managed to have fun.
They managed to have fulfilled lives off of times and the worst of circumstance.
And I don’t want anybody just to think all those poor folks, How did they survive? Kind of thing?
Jake:
[1:27:32] Right, which goes back to the beginning of our conversation, in that we don’t leave behind documentation of a nice, normal day. We leave behind documentation of the best and the worst, and not much in between.
Russ:
[1:27:44] Exactly.
Jake:
[1:27:45] So before I let you go, can you tell our listeners what you might be working on next? What? What’s coming up for Dr Ross Lopez?
Russ:
[1:27:52] I’m doing two things that never could do. One thing it was one is a biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner.
I found the boat, this book and other work.
She was just a fascinating person that has a personality that needs more exploring beyond the, uh, most people think of her as being this eccentric collected art.
He was actually a very interesting person who had things that you are worth knowing more about. I’m working on that.
And the other piece, don’t we get a novel, Not a historical novel, which would be a lot of sense, given the fact of history.
Now have all these books out, But actually Maur of sort of a mash up of Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath,
percent contemporary times who have a very wealthy, very hardworking folks who,
destroy everything around them, particularly folks who aren’t as wealthy as they are.
Jake:
[1:28:51] And for listeners who want to find out more about you or your work. Where should they go if they want to follow you online?
Russ:
[1:28:57] The best places, probably by Twitter handle just hashtag rests on Harrison and I do have a website called Russ Lopez dot com.
Jake:
[1:29:06] All right. Well, Dr Russ Lopez, I just want to say thank you very much for joining us.
Russ:
[1:29:10] Great. Well, thanks for writing me.
Jake Intro:
[1:29:14] Toe. Learn more about the LGBT Q history of Boston. Check out this week’s show Notes at Hub history dot com slash 167,
The book again is the hub of the Gay Universe By Russ Lopez We’ll have a link to Russell’s Twitter in the show notes, and we’ll make sure to include a link for you to purchase the book as well.
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We’ll be back next week with Nikki’s author interview about the suffrage movement in Massachusetts.
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