Tangents (magazine), reborn, as good as ever

The reborn Tangents is as good under the new editor and writers as it ever was.  Don Slater and other editors would be proud of this issue (Vol V, #1, Spring 2014).

The editorial says why we need to continue the work of ONE/IGLA/HIC.  The memorial to co-founder Jim Schneider tells how we struggled to continue the work after the loss of the main one who inspired us, Don Slater.

The article on Jim Kepner and his Little Blue Books is a good explanation of how an archive works.  My review of Tracy Baim’s “history of the gay press” (Gay Press, Gay Power) explains how the history has been preserved by our community media.

There is a strange and interesting “exchange of views of our history and thinking” in the two separate yet almost conversational essays between Stephanie Donald’s memory of Jack Nichols and Craig Schoonmaker’s memory of the movement and his views on terminology—and it seems to me this discussion is as alive today as it was in the era discussed.

Listen to the views on marriage of Jack and Craig.  “Jack’s work on gay rights was hard work for full equality.  Marriage equality was never a consideration for him because he felt that getting married, at least for men (and he felt for women, too, but  thought the ‘nesting instinct’ was harder to break in the females) was taking the ‘sexual’ out of ‘homosexual’ and forcing gay rights into heterosexual assimilation, which would destroy gay and lesbian history and culture.”  While, in a sense, Don Slater would say some of this, he did NOT agree that we had a culture—and did not want us in a ghetto.  

But, here is Craig:  “I can say, however, that I am hostile to some of the notions of people who fought not for openness but for ‘privacy’ (shame) and who advocated the silly notion that homosexuality is only a point on a ‘continuum’ and related notions that we must not narrow ourselves to gay—only but must always see ourselves first and foremost as ‘human’.”  Again, Don would not agree with most of his thinking.  We never understood why people could not grasp the obvious need to protect our privacy—something now heard when discussing the government listening to our cell phone and email discussions.  Why would asking for privacy mean we are ashamed?

As to terminology, Craig says the word “queer” is bad, yet many young LGBT people say it is better than a long list of letters.  But the issue is alive and was an article in The New York Times in the last week or two—saying only the word gay is acceptable.

So reading Tangents is reading what is in the current discussion of issues of homosexuality.

So the Homosexual Information Center is continuing its work of preserving history but also speaking to today's issues.  Again, the pioneers of this movement would be eagerly reading this issue and joining the discussion.

Why many people do not watch talk TV shows...

Having watched over three hours of TV talk shows, almost all on politics, almost all with the same guests and issues, I think it is logical that more and more people no longer watch them. I include the ones I watched, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN.

There are three problems that frustrate me, not just the constant repetition/ the content but the “presentation” and one claim by a journalist today about journalists in the past that is simply not true.

First, can anyone explain to me why MSNBC especially, has incestuous  talkers?  There are three or four talkers with hour shows.  Yet I often see one talker have as “guests” other MSNBC talkers who then go to their own hour show and just repeat their views. Another frustration is the fact that most talkers ask a question and answer it before the guest can.  The host talks over the guests.  To complete the frustration, they waste time thanking the guest and repeating the identity and then wait for what seems forever for the guest to say, thank you or whatever.

And as was shown by the Rice issue: every show has the same guests. Do they think a guest will actually say something different on each show? And are the three or four usual guests the only people in the country who can speak on an issue? I could go a year without hearing again from certain “guests” such as ones from Huffington Report and The Nation.

Finally, I can tell the talkers of today and their “journalist/historian” guests that they are wrong when they say that there were better journalists/papers/shows in “the good ole days.” Ask any one who has worked in a cause, or better yet, read Gay Press, Gay Power (edited by Tracy Baim) and see proof that in those days the “journalists,” including those at major newspapers, magazines, etc., were ignorant, bigoted, and refused to allow any input on the issue of homosexuality from anyone in the movement.  Same was true of college professors, and other “professionals.”

Gay Press, Gay Power: Great History

While there have been several books and efforts to discuss the history of publications in the GLBT movement / community, at last there is one that contains the basic research and expertise needed to pull into one place the basic facts, names, and information of the magazines, newspapers, newsletters that recorded that history which they helped to make. This book, Gay Press, Gay Power, edited by Tracy Baim, covers many of our movement’s publications from the start in the early 1950s to 2012. It contains new information, corrects some misinformation, and provides us with rich biographical information on the pioneering journalists who worked on these publications.

To put the history in context, there is a discussion, with examples, of the horrible coverage the media gave homosexuality until about the late 1960s, when coverage exploded after Stonewall. The publications started with the movement to gain equal rights for homosexual Americans, and thus this civil rights movement is documented by the very people who were active in the effort. A historian or researcher trying to see how coverage changed from the 1950s on could see the evidence by looking through editions of the Readers Guide to Periodicals Index.  Baim has done this for the reader.

The first publications are discussed in full in an early chapter by C. Todd White. They started during the worst of times, the McCarthy era when homosexuals and Communists were considered to be allies and were labeled as threats to the nation’s security. The first publicly available publication (1953), ONE magazine,  suffered from the same problems all early ones did: little income, people afraid to have their names as subscribers to a homosexual publication, businesses afraid to place ads, and few authors or journalists of note willing to let their names appear in the publication. There was also a problem few other causes had: there were homosexual people in hiding who tried to keep their sexuality from being questioned or discovered by loudly protesting the existence of a publication discussing homosexuality. Many such people later were arrested for homosexual acts and still refused to support the effort to educate the public and change laws.

Issue #1, Jan. 1953

But ONE was successful, and was joined by the Mattachine Review and then The Ladder, aimed toward women. The editors of ONE, led by Don Slater and attorney Eric Julber, fought a legal battle with the Post Office to protect its right to publish and mail a magazine subtitled “The Homosexual Viewpoint” and won only at the U. S. Supreme Court level in 1958. These three magazines were slowly joined by others each few years, and together they planted the seeds that are the major media the lgbt movement/community has today. The early publications were supported by an organization. Today most are independent.

The book is loaded with pictures of most of the publications covered—a great help as it shows the progression from early publications to those of today. As White says, they are “time capsules of their era.”  One clue to how things have changed is in observing the terms used in the three eras. First they were called homophile publications, then homosexual, then gay and, now gay and lesbian or lgbt.

Gay Press / Gay Power includes short biographies of some LGBT journalists who helped make the publications successful.  The index catalogs the large number of people covered and names hundreds of current LGBT publications.

Many readers will gain a sense of pride knowing the history of the GLBT media’s growth from ONE to the hundreds of publications that exist today, currently giving the community news and views, entertainment and education, continuously revitalizing those who seek to make life better for everyone and to make this a more perfect nation, for all citizens.

No historian or journalist can write on the subject without knowing the contents of this book because the history of a movement is told through the history of its publications.

Leo Laurence

Here is a very brief mention (page 90) of Leo in Tracy Baim’s new book, Gay Press, Gay Power:

On March 28, 1969, three months before stonewall in New York, Vector’s (SIR San Francisco group’s magazine) editor, Leo Lawrence, called for the “homosexual revolution of 1969.”  He was urging gays to join with the Black Panthers and other radicals, and for this SIR expelled him. 

According to Wikipedia, Laurence then co-founded the Committee for Homosexual Freedom, with Gale Whittington, a man fired from States Steamship Company for being openly gay, after his photo appeared in the Berkeley Barb next to the headline “HOMOS, DON'T HIDE IT!” by Leo Laurence.

It also mentions a second underground paper, the San Francisco Free Press, as it carried Carl Wittman’s column “Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto.”  This also appeared later in the Chicago Seed.

Review of Stonewall Uprising in Windy City times (8-4-10)

To Tracy Baim:

I must once again register my complaint about people and publications giving false information about the history of the movement to gain equal/civil rights for homosexual Americans. Your article by Richard Knight, Jr. (Knight at the Movies does this in the reviews of Stonewall Uprising. No excuse/reason will not allow the words "The Stonewall riots, the beginning of the gayrights movement in this country..." This is not just semantics. This is faking history—sort of lie Fox News and bigots do.

It is not "similar to other singular moments in history in that many of the details of what exactly happened-when and how it happened, as well as who was involved-have become buried within the momentousness of the incident itself." Nonsense. The history of the total movement is well documented, since the start in 1950, and in Windy City Times, for instance. There have been many instances in this movement's history, and it is not a proven fact that this one incident is more important in the struggle than many other incidents. Who makes such decisions? Are court cases not important / the educatinal work much earlier, such as Frank Kameny's efforts and the picketing of historic places, suchas in phiadelphia? Is something more important because lazy media people report it more than other incidents?
What type of "overview" of the 1950s and 60s ignores all the work done by men and women since 1950? And to quote Eric Marcus again, after he has already apologized for being misquoted is lazy journalism.

It is pleasant to hear views of films/fiction, but it is not acceptible in a lgbt pulication to repeat lies and false history in a documentary that claims to be presenting the truth that others have ignored.