our friends the anarchist part one

From the last few post it sounds like LGBT's had no political expression at all except for the negative speeches of some doctors and articles in medical journals. The ''energy'' of the movement may have been ''watching, waiting and learning,'' as I said in yesterday's post, but the presents of LGBT's was known and spoken for by a group I have not mentioned yet, the anarchist!
    The anarchist was another movement, like the social purist, labor, women's suffrage, people of color and free-love, who were trying to get a piece of the political pie at the turn of the century. They were the clearest and most open advocate of LGBT's at the time. They felt, and openly declared, that the state had no business in the bedrooms of consenting adults, period! This included heterosexual bedrooms, because many state sodomy laws applied to any anal and/or oral sex, and interracial bedrooms as well as LGBT bedrooms. They also openly declared that sex was not just for reproduction but for pleasure, too. They felt that any man or women could be with any other man or women for as long or short a period of time as they liked and that legal marriage was intrusive and unnecessary.
    The anarchist had a huge following at the turn of the century and, because of they're stance on Homosexuals, many in that movement were probably Gay. Today the vast majority of LGBT's support same-sex marriage but there is a silent minority within them/us that sees marriage of any kind the way that turn of the century anarchist did. More on our friends the anarchist tomorrow.

watching, waiting and learning

... A Queer History of the United States continued. So, if the medical community was analyzing LGBT's, the social purist were demonizing LGBT's and LGBT"s themselves were in the closet, understandably I might add, can we still say there was an LGBT movement going on in the late 19th century? Well, yes we can! The use of that phrase was not stolen from Obama's 2008 campaign, it just fit my point.
    Anyhow, even though most LGBT's were in the closet the groundwork for today's movement was still being laid. Other groups like labor with the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Square riots in which police killed eight protesters, the 1896 supreme court Plessy vs. Ferguson case that legalized segregation, and Women's suffrage were all showing LGBT's how it's done and that it can be done! Although Plessy... was a losing case for African-Americans it did reveal the shortcomings of using ''legal'' channels alone to fight injustice. Although lives were lost, Haymarket Square showed how violent state repression can move public opinion. And Women suffrage showed how grassroots organizing can create a groundswell of mass support.
    Today's LGBT movement is most definitely modeled after previous movements. The courts, the ''kitchen table'' and the streets have all been used, and are being used, to gain LGBT rights. So, it is fair to say that the LGBT movement existed in a dormant state in the late 19th century. If a movement can be considered a living thing, then it was standing on the sidelines watching, waiting and learning.

the gay voice in the ''gay 90's''

Okay, back to my study of A Queer History of the United States. Now, where was I? Oh yes! In the mist of all this fighting and bickering amongst the labor, Women suffrage, free-love, African-American and social purity movements where were the LGBT's? Of course, it's true that LGBT's are represented amongst all of those groups, but where was they're specific voice since most of them were not out? Well, it appears that they/we did not have one, at least not one of our own. The people that were specifically and openly talking about LGBT's or homosexuals, in the United States, were medical professionals.  The first time the fledgling word ''Homosexual'' was used in print in the United States was in a 1892 article by Dr. James G. Kiernan. Kiernan was a well known Chicago based Neurologist. He said that Homosexuals were persons whose ''general mental state is that of the opposite sex.'' I'm not exactly sure what he meant by that but he became a kind of respected ''authority'' on Homosexuality and wrote many more articles on the subject. They often had mixed messages like ''Homosexuality is linked to crime but may not be the cause of the crime.''
    In 1893 a famous speech, or then famous speech, called Should Insane Criminals or Sex Perverts be Permitted to Procreate? was given by The Texas Medical Journal's editor Dr. E. F. Daniel and widely reprinted. In it he argued that it would be more humane to castrate sex criminals, which would have included Homosexuals since Homosexuality was a crime, than to execute them or spend tax dollars on incarcerating them. He advocated for a ''sanitary utopia'' which took social purity to another level with applied eugenics. This was the extent of the Gay voice in the ''Gay 90's.''
    The labor, free-love and African-American movements must have really found this wing of the social purity movement particularly frightening. I'm certain that they knew the vast majority, if not all, of these insane criminals and ''sex perverts'' would be conveniently found amongst them!
   

so, here I go!!

I finally had my meeting with my friend who's going to do IT work for me Sunday. The meeting went very well. We were there for three hours. One thing we did was try to get me on Goggle books, but I found out I'm already on Goggle books. It just makes your book[s] show up in Goggle's search engine. From trying to get myself on they're search engine, that I'm already on, I found out that my book is only available in the U.S.
    We also looked at something called LGBT bookshop, which is a web site for LGBT books and authors to sell their books. I'm not sure how it works but we're going to check it out and see if it's something I should do. We looked at BookDaily and Goodreads, too. But what we decided we're going to focus on, for now, is creating an Amazon author central account and my Facebook fan page. Amazon author central is a ''space'' on Amazon.com for authors to post videos, link they're blog[s], announce events, post photos and a bio, link they're facebook and twitter accounts, etc. So, we have to take new pics of me and I have to write a bio.
    We decided we're going to meet once a week and we decided on the fee I'm going to pay her. It was a productive meeting and I'm excited about my new promotional adventures. I'm looking to do things I didn't do back in 2008/09. I want to experiment with new ideas. So, here i go!

women, people of color and LGBT's vs. social purity

I've already pointed out how the the social purity stance on non-reproductive sex shut out LGBT's but how did they shut out women and people of color, many of whom were also LGBT? Well, let's think about it. The labor movement, which wanted fair wages and safe working conditions, etc., was in high gear. But so was the bitter South's crusade to institutionalize segregation. The labor movement wanted to empower Women. They were concerned with fairness and equality. But the social purist wanted to ''protect'' women. They were concerned with domesticity and ''womenhood.'' Most in the social purity movement saw women's  suffrage as the way to empowerment, while many  in the labor movement saw suffrage as an upper class issue. See how this gets complicated? But it does not stop there! Regarding race, the social purist were abolitionist, for the most part, but they also thought people of color, especially African-Americans, were amoral and hypersexual. Amorality and hypersexuality imply a disposition toward homosexuality, rape, etc. ''Social purity'' also meant ''racial purity'' because amalgamation, or race mixing, is a social construct.
    So, the social purist were making enemies all over the place! They're newspaper columns, letters to the editor and editorials were constantly rebutted and challenged, and often by well known activists' and thinkers like Mother Jones, Ida B.Wells and W. E. B. Du Bois.
    As an aside, I want to point out that some African-Americans, Caribbeans and Africans today see homosexuality as a product of slavery and colonization, which has an element of social purist/purity thinking.
    I personally think that the way to change society and the world is from the inside out and not the outside in. One has to change his/her self first and let his/her ''vibration'' affect others. Trying to control others will always backfire because people are motivated by whats in they're heart not by what somebody else says or a government dictates. The social purity movement, although they're intentions were good and had foundation, had it backwards.

elders, comstock and the movies

So, picking up where I left off yesterday, the social purity/pure food movement[s] may seem completely off track today but they had a lasting effect on society. Long after these movements were over stigmas about sex, sexuality and masturbation lingered on well into the 20th century. Remember Bill Clinton's Firing of Surgeon general Joycelyn Elders for merely suggesting that masturbation was perfectly normal and natural in 1994? But social purity philosophy went back to the puritans. The turn of the century social purist, like the puritans, believed that sex was for reproduction only and that any non-reproductive sex, even heterosexual oral and anal sex was sinful.
    As more of these groups formed, like The Union for Concerted Moral Effort[founded in 1891] and The American Purity Alliance[founded in 1895], they're influence in government grew. In 1874 Anthony Comstock, who founded The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice in in 1873, successfully lobbied congress to illegalize the sending of obscene, lewd or lascivious materials through the mail. This was the infamous ''Comstock Act'' that would collide with the fledgling American LGBT rights movement some eighty-eight years later. Not only did this mean pornography but also birth control, sex education materials and even books on human anatomy! The social purity movement also moved to censor the arts, especially the burgeoning motion picture industry.
   

social purity and corn flakes

Now it's time for me to get back to my study of A Queer History of the United States. So, I left off talking about the social purity movement.
    By the late nineteenth century society was out of control, not that it's in control today but you get my drift. With the industrial revolution people were moving into the cities, in droves, in search of work. The immigrant population swelled too, and along with all this prostitution, alcoholism, domestic violets, gambling and family abandonment increased tenfold.
    Hundreds of ''social purity'' groups sprang up to try and combat this chaos and mayhem. Groups like the Women's Christian Temperance Union formed in 1874 and the Anti Saloon League formed in 1893. They are two of the most famous of these groups. They felt that widespread male sexual desire was the basis of the countries social problems and that legislating morality was the answer. Victoria Woodhull's ''free-love'' movement and Germany's advancing Gay rights movement, influenced by Whitman and British thinkers and essayist like Oscar Wilde did not stand a chance in turn of the century America. The memberships and supporters of these social purity groups grew year after year until, by the passage of the eighteenth amendment in 1919 which illegalized alcohol, they had millions of members.
    One interesting, and little known, outgrowth of the social purity movement was the pure food movement. Some people thought that sexual desire and alcoholism stemmed from unhealthy food. So, whole lines of breads and crackers were created to control sexual desire and masturbation. The invention of the corn flake was a result of the ''pure food'' movement.