Horny History: Happy Pride 🏳️🌈
It’s real history, as told by some horny dudes in my inbox and me.
This post contains sensitive content on homophobia. Reader discretion is advised.
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Happy Pride Month, everyone. I’ve written a lot about queerness in history, these are three of my favorite old pieces. As usual with my work, these aren’t favorites in the sense that I love the history. They are stories that ache. That burn. That speak. I’m sharing them again for Pride because remembering is a part of resistance.
These are in honor of all the gay people who were threatened, imprisoned and had their lives destroyed for their love. We refuse to forget.
(As a reminder I do not know these men. My Horny History contestants are usually right-wing men who message a satirical conservative Facebook profile. Although, since a few of these messages are from before I started using that profile, some of these men don’t fit that mold. Find out more about me here.)
1. The Lavender Scare
The Lavender Scare overlaps with the Red Scare, a period of intense fear of communism. In fact, thanks to some very intentional wording from McCarthy and his fellow Republicans, many people began to associate communism with homosexuality. They believed communists were converting American youth to homosexuality.
To set the stage: it’s the late 1940s, just after World War II. Women and men had been pulled away from traditional family roles to join the war effort, and not everyone wanted to return to the old “normal.” There was a growing fear that American morals were slipping. That people were changing. And in the middle of all that panic, homosexuals dared to exist as they always have.
They feared what they didn’t understand. They punished what they couldn’t control.
There are more stories to be told. It’s not good-bye yet.
2. Ervin Arnold and the Newport Sex Scandal
It’s 1919 and gay sex is illegal in Rhode Island. It turns out illegality didn’t stop people from doing it. The man of dishonor for this story, Ervin Arnold, just had to know what those secret gay men were up to. This is the story of how he, and many other government men, including Franklin Roosevelt, decided the best way to catch gay men was to hire other men to have sex with them. Their plan was to assign presumably straight navy sailors to go undercover, and under covers, to flirt with, entice and sleep with suspected gay men.
Candidate A
This guy Ben had to live out the rest of his life wondering what happened to Arnold. 😔
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Candidate B
The next man is a gem. If Carl weren’t a stranger likely copy-pasting the same romantic line to multiple women on Reddit, he’d actually be kind of charming.
Carl never found the time to hear more history. Usually I’m glad when they block me, but Carl was admittedly very funny, and I will miss him.
Candidate C
Some of the Navy sailors recruited for this sting operation later said they felt forced to participate. They didn’t want to, but they were told it was for the good of the country, so they complied.
Meanwhile, the men who created and approved the plan escaped untouched. The ones in power always are. If they had been regular citizens, they would have been imprisoned like the men they entrapped. Instead, they walked away to continue the lives they took away from others.
The man who preserved the story of Ervin Arnold was Lawrence R. Murphy. He poured over Arnold’s notes and left behind research that would’ve been lost without him. But Murphy’s book was rejected in this lifetime for being “too scandalous.” He died without ever seeing it published.
3. Henry Gerber
“Henry Gerber” was born Josef Henrik Dittmar, and he was a gay man. Being homosexual caused him to be expelled from school and to lose several jobs.
He moved to Belgium and changed his name to Romaine Neubauer. He stayed publicly gay though, and as his problems with the police escalated, he decided to leave Europe and move to America.
Broke and hoping for citizenship, he joined the army. After being discharged for falling ill, he had a myriad of all-American experiences, including getting arrested and sent to an asylum.
After his release, he changed his name one last time, hoping to escape the constant persecution of gay men. This time, he became Henry Gerber.
Then he messaged me.
Alas, this guy wasn’t Henry Gerber after all. Or, perhaps he was, but I draw the line at being forced to see a penis.
The Society of Human Rights, which Gerber started, really was the first gay rights organization in America. His goal was to educate both gay and straight people on what it meant to be homosexual. It was a place for reflection on how to survive persecution and a place to support one another.
But in July of 1925, the group was raided. Gerber and several members were arrested. The wife of one of the men from the group had exposed them as homosexual. The homophobia was coming from inside the house.
History doesn’t move in straight lines, especially not queer history.
It twists, it doubles back, it hides in court documents and police reports. We change and push for acceptance, only to be pushed the other way. Queer history lives in a man changing his name three times just to survive. In sailors used as bait. In jobs lost. In lives erased.
Queerness has never been safe in America.
We remember the people who were hunted, and hope no one will have to remember us the same way.
This is Pride.
Sources:
The Lavender Scare by David K. Johnson
Queer America's interview with David K. Johnson
Perverts by Official Order: The Campaign Against Homosexuals by the United States Navy Lawrence R. Murphy
I Did It For The Uplift Of Humanity And The Navy Sherry Zane
MIT interview with Sherry Zane
An Angel in Sodom: Henry Gerber and the Gay Rights Movement by Jim Elledge
You can find the superb shirt I’m wearing in the thumbnail for this post here. It’s by Art by Veya.
I’ll be creating a pride themed post for my other Substack Let’s Not Date so be sure to subscribe here too: https://open.substack.com/pub/letsnotdate
Happy and safe Pride - and I'm commenting, hearting and restocking (what a truly bad term they chose for that) to do my part for engagement.