The History of Queers and Cinema

This classic, "Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema," by Steven Paul Davies covers the basic ground, focusing on, but not limited to films made in the United States. From the closet days of the fifties: (The Wizard of Oz) through the ominous classics of the sixties: (The Killing of Sister George, Midnight Cowboy, The Children's Hour) up through the early 21st century: (Angels in America, Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica), he chronicles a progression of the best-known films, actors and directors who brought LGBT life to light on the big screen.

"Queer Screen: A Screen Reader," edited by Jackie Stacey and Sarah Street is an anthology, a collection of different writers presenting a compilation of articles about specific queer films and the issues surrounding them. Most of the contributors to this anthology are women and so it provides a distinctly lesbian perspective to the world of queer cinema.

"Queer Cinema in Europe," edited by Robin Griffiths takes us across the pond with another anthology examining queer identity in film. This book contains fourteen scholarly essays. Identities, aesthetics, queer bars and queer spaces and coming out stories in the cinema of Europe are some of the topics broached in this collection of predominantly male writers.

Archives January 2011

California Hall, San Francisco. January 1, 1965.

46 years ago an event occurred which served to coalesce the emerging LGBT community in San Francisco. Police harrassment of homosexual men and women was witnessed first-hand by straight men and women. They were appalled and were very public about their outrage.

In the mid-1960s members of the gay community and the religious community sought to find common ground. The Council on Religion and the Homosexual sponsored a fundraiser, a Mardi Gras Ball. Attendees included homosexual men and women along with local clergy and their wives.

Evander Smith was a San Francisco lawyer who along with Herbert Donaldson was retained by the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. Anticipating police harassment at the ball, Smith and Donaldson were asked to attend the event in case legal advice was necessary.

In fact the police did take photographs of attendees arriving and requested admission to the event on two occasions. The first was to examine whether the event was in accord with rules regarding liquor; this was standard practice and the police were admitted to ascertain that the event was in compliance. At a later time, the police asked for admittance again and were denied because they did not have tickets for the private event and could provide no reason to enter. As a result, four people were arrested: Evander Smith, Herbert Donaldson, Elliott Leighton and Nancy May.

The Hormel Center contains the Evander Smith -California Hall Papers. The collection includes case files on the legal defense of Smith, Donaldson, Leighton and May. The files contain a chronology of the events that took place, legal research on the laws pertaining to those events, notes on jury selection, materials concerning homosexuals and their treatment by authorities, clippings of newspaper coverage and cartoons, a few photographs of attendees and police, and some homosexual publications of the time. There are also copies of sermons or papers enclosed in Methodist Church service programs of January 1965.

Nan Alamilla Boyd's book Wide Open Town:a history of queer San Francisco to 1965 is an excellent history of the events leading up to and through this moment in San Francisco LGBT history. The Evander Smith/California Hall Papers are available through the San Francisco History Center, 6th Floor, Main Library.

Sexual Intimacy in US Prisons

The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the world. According to the United States Deparment of Justice statistics, in 2009 there were 748 inmates for every 100,000 residents. Although in rare instances sexual contact occurs between males and females, the overwhelming majority of sexual contact in prison is between people of the same gender.

In Regina Kunzel's book, "Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality," she rejects the often asked question, "do prisons simply collect "perverts" or help produce them?" by substituting the theory that sexual expression behind bars is not an issue of identity. Kunzel stresses the difficulties for those prisoners exhibiting "gender non-conformity" and points out that power, pleasure and random circumstance are more responsible for the normative shift of behavior in a single-sex environment than any theories regarding whether or not an inmate identifies as gay.

Silja J.A. Talvi presents a less academic take on prisons in her book, Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System. Talvi's background as an investigative journalist, editor and activist is evident in this work. By referencing the actual experiences of women inmates she presents examples of sex between women that runs the gamut between furtive encounters to stable partnerships. In addition she deals with other inmate issues such as medical care, mental health, abuse and the specific situations of women who kill. This book encompasses both defeat and resistance, it reads as a compilation of survival strategies utilized by women who feel themselves to be "a nearly invisible group that has been dehumanized, forgotten."

Click here for more information about the Women Behind Bars Prison Project that Silja Talvi founded.

Archives December 2010

“Make the Yuletide Gay”

To celebrate the season, we thought it would be fun to highlight a few of the Christmas items in the Hormel Center’s archives.

The first is a photograph of the Mattachine Society Christmas social from about 1953. This image is from a scrapbook in the J. Gruber Papers. He was a member of the Society.

William Dickey wrote and printed many poems. The library's collection of his Poems contains several of his annual Christmas poems which were sent to family and friends. "Ornament" is a lovely example of his poetry and printing.

The last item is a photograph of Harvey Milk, Galen McKinley, and their dog Trick in the early 1960s. The photo is from the Harvey Milk Archives/Scott Smith Collection.

We wish you all a happy new year!

Looking Beyond Marriage

The Ninth Circuit Court has now heard the arguments from attorneys on both sides of the proposition 8, same-sex marriage debate and we await their decision as to legal standing and constitutional scruting as to how broad the scope of those rights should be. Click here for a legal analysis of the current deliberations. While we are in legal limbo, these book choices look past the tired old system of monogamyand the nuclear family to the possibility of other options.

The first book, "Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law," by Nancy D. Polikoff, a law professor is a brief history of the legal transformations and paramutations marriage and family law has undergone. It also is an analysis of how far it still needs to go when it comes to broadening and expanding the definitions of marriage and family. She deals with the changes radical feminism has wrought from caring fatherhood to the death of the concept of the "illegitimacy" of children. Hospital visitation and lawsuits for wrongful death by queer partners are also explored. Click here for an interview with Nancy Polikoff and here for some of her more recent articles on LGBT community issues.

Once the legal issues are squared away, we can move on to "The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures," by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy. This, more social perspective is by a marriage and family therapist and a creative writer. In this updated reissue of an old classic, the authors embrace and expand on the term "slut," a derogatory, sexist term for a woman. They posit the male equivalent as "stud."

Anyone can be an ethical slut in thier view; the key to non-monogamy and polyamory in their view is honesty. Their chapters deal with flirting and cruising, overcoming jealousy, healty sex, childrearing, making an agreement and dealing with conflict. This book is not gay or straight but rather more fluid and permeable in its definitions of sexual identity. Click here for an interview with Dossie Easton about this book.

Archives November 2010: GLBT Veterans

On Veterans Day we celebrate and remember the military men and women who have served our country. The Hormel Center houses a few archival collections of GLBT servicemen and women: the Cliff Anchor Papers, the Leonard Matlovich Papers, and the Pat Bond Papers. The Matlovich and Bond papers are on deposit from the GLBT Historical Society of California.

Cliff Anchor was a gay rights activist, military man and radio broadcaster. He was romantically involved with Dr. Tom Dooley and, later, with Leonard Matlovich. Matlovich was a United States Air Force Sergeant who was expelled from the service with a general discharge after he disclosed his homosexuality. Pat Bond was an actress and comedienne; she served in the Women's Army Corps from 1945 to 1947.

In addition, the center has the Randy Shilts Papers. Shilts was a gay San Francisco journalist and author. His book Conduct Unbecoming is about gays in the military. The Shilts collection contains the drafts of the book as well as his collected research notes and interviews with these brave men and women.

In addition to the archival collections, there are books and videos on GLBT servicemen and women and on the issues surrounding gays in the military. You might choose to explore the library's holdings starting with these: Conduct Unbecoming by Randy Shilts, Coming Out Under Fire (also on video) by Allan Berube, and Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story (also on video).

Archives October 2010: New Leaf

After 35 years of providing support services to the LGBT community, the doors to New Leaf closed on October 15, 2010. New Leaf was a nonprofit multi-purpose counseling center for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area.

Services included comprehensive mental health, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and social support and were available to all income levels especially to middle and low-income individuals and families who could not afford private therapy or support services.
Staff members at New Leaf saved flyers, photographs, memoranda, promotional literature, and handbooks in order to document their work with the community. This material forms the New Leaf collection.

Of particular interest are some older materials from Operation Concern (which merged with 18th Street Services to form New Leaf), GLOE (Gay and Lesbian Outreach to Elders), and a draft of Peg Cruikshank's Fierce with Reality, an anthology of literature on aging. It is worth noting that the collection does not include any patient files.

Because the New Leaf collection is a very recent acquisition and not yet organized, it is not currently available for research. All Hormel Center archives are handled through the San Francisco History Center, 6th floor, Main Library. For questions, please contact the San Francisco History Center reference desk at 415-557-4567.

Queer Politics and the Rise of the Religious Right

At election time informed decision making becomes a top priority. Library materials can provide a research resource for a myriad of issues. These two books both deal with the rise of the religious right and the role that homophobia, quite literally fear of homosexuals, has played in shaping shaping right-wing talking points and LGBT activism.

The first book,"How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism," by Tina Fetner takes a historical approach. From the Evangelicals of the fifties, through Anita Bryant and the rising of the "moral majority" to the AIDS crisis of the eighties and culminating in the "culture wars" that persist today, Fetner takes us on a chronological journey through the right-wing battle strategies of times gone by as well as how the Gay Movement moblilized around them.

In many ways the second book,"Kingdom Coming: the Rise of Christian Nationalism" by Michelle Goldberg takes up where Fetner leaves off. She chronicles the ascendancy of evangelical fundamentalism which she renames "Christian Nationalism" because of their emphasis on the construction of a theocratic state. Goldberg details how, under the George Bush administration they congealed as a movement. Now, a thriving minority, they comprise the right wing of the Republican Party and, in many races, are taking center stage in this mid-term election.