Monday, July 2, 2007On the
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Out RanksIn 1975 US Air Force officer Leonard Matlovich, a decorated Vietnam vet, came out as a gay man to his superiors and made headlines six months later when the Air Force discharged him as being "unfit for service" and he took the unprecedented step of suing for reinstatement. He declined a proposed "compromise" that would entail his signing a pledge "never to practice homosexuality again" and in 1980 was awarded an upgraded honorable discharge and a cash settlement of $160,000."
Fourteen years later, the US Armed Forces reached another compromise - the infamous "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gay men and lesbians, a policy that Congress will be revisitng this fall. The upcoming hearings make the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society's
"Out Ranks" exhibit, the US' first historical exhibit on the experiences of gays in the military, especially relevant. The exhibition opened last month and will run until June of 2008.
Matlovich accepting the Bronze Star[/b]
Tombstone in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.[/b]
According to the GLBT Historical Society, “Out Ranks” shows the changes in military policy and emphasizes stories of GLBT veterans and peace activists from WWII to Iraq. “The GLBT Historical Society is our community’s Smithsonian,” said Paul Boneberg, Executive Director. “Our exhibits highlight the vital role of preserving and promoting GLBT history to inform meaningful public debate on pressing current events.” Items on display include Matlovich's footlocker, a photo of WWII bomber navigator and Dachau survivor Robert Ricks, and a photo of 1940s military police guarding the entrance of a San Francisco gay bar named the Black Cat, in an attempt to keep military personnel out.
The Out Ranks exhibit is open Tuesday-Saturday from 1:00-5:00 p.m. (PDT) at the , 1-5 p.m. The Society is located at 657 Mission Street in San Francisco, and can be reached at 415.777.5455. Or contact them via email at info@glbthistory.org Join the discussion about GLBT history at
Gay History - How We Got Here. BBM At the Castro[/b]
How long has it been since you saw
Brokeback in a theatre? And not just any cineplex auditorium but an old-fashioned movie palace complete with Wurlitzer organ? If it's been too long, and you're going to be in the San Francisco on the weekend of September 16th, you'll be able to join fellow Brokies for a special Screening at the Castro Theatre.
If you arrive early enough, you can also take in the San Francisco annual
Gay Rodeo and Festival, which will include a Western Warehouse Welcome Dance on Friday night and the "Buckin' Ball" celebration Saturday night.
SF Castro Theatre thread for updates, and don't miss the video of
"The Wings" being played on the Castro's Wurlitzer organ.
Manly Relationships during the American Civil Warby Janjo[/b]The American poet Walt Whitman said that “history would not record the real story of the Civil War.” Interpreting his writings from a modern perspective suggests that he may in fact be one of the reasons why this may not be so. Whitman started working in hospitals attending to, reading and writing for, and generally caring for the wounded soldiers when he went to seek out the whereabouts of his brother George.
“After finding George's unit and discovering that his brother had received only a superficial facial wound, Whitman's relief turned to horror as he encountered a sight he would never forget: outside of a mansion converted into a field hospital, he came upon "a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, &c., a full load for a one-horse cart." They were, he wrote in his journal, "human fragments, cut, bloody, black and blue, swelled and sickening." Nearby were "several dead bodies . . . each cover'd with its brown woolen blanket." The sight would continue to haunt this poet who had so confidently celebrated the physical body, who had claimed that the soul existed only in the body. . . . Now a generation of young American males, the very males on which he had staked the future of democracy, were literally being disarmed, amputated, killed. It was this amputation, this fragmenting of the Union—in both a literal and figurative sense—that Whitman would address for the next few years, as he devoted himself to becoming the arms and legs of the wounded and maimed soldiers in the Civil War hospitals. By running errands for them, writing letters for them, encircling them in his arms, Whitman tried, the best he could, to make them whole again.”Some of the images that have come to notice recently shed a new light on what was really going on in a social and emotional sense at this difficult time. Men who were fighting and going through tremendous hardships together often became emotionally very close. How close, is a subject for conjecture?
In times and cultures where the sexes were very segregated socially it was perfectly acceptable for strong same sex friendships to develop. These relationships may have been just that, close friendships, but some would have been sexual and loving relationships. An 2001 exhibition of photographs called “Dear Friends: American Images of Men Together” showed striking images of men in couples. We have a photograph of Whitman himself with his long term close friend Peter Doyle.
Like Whitman, Doyle came from a large family, and Walt got to know Doyle's widowed mother and his siblings well. He continued visiting soldiers in Washington hospitals, but he now focused his attention increasingly on this single young former artilleryman from the South. . . . For Whitman, Doyle represented America's future: healthy, witty, handsome, good-humored, hard-working, enamored of good times. They rode the streetcars together, drank at the Union Hotel bar, took long walks outside the city, and quoted poetry to each other (Whitman recited Shakespeare, Doyle limericks). As Whitman's health continued to deteriorate in the late 1860s and early 1870s, the young former soldier nursed the aging former nurse and offered comfort to the poet just as Walt had to so many sick soldiers. And just as Whitman had picked up the germs of many of his poems from the stories soldiers had told him, so now he picked up from Doyle— who had been at Ford's Theatre the night John Wilkes Booth shot the president—the narrative of the assassination of Lincoln that he would use for his Lincoln lectures that he would deliver regularly in his later years.” There are no known records of soldiers being dismissed from the army for committing homosexual acts, although Walt Whitman’s Diaries suggest that such acts occurred fairly often. During the war, on the front lines and in hospitals, all conventions about men being “merely buddies” were dropped. Commanding officers had more important things to do than to worry about physical expressions of love and tenderness amongst their troops, and such matters were viewed without the batting of an eye. But things returned to “normal” after the war, and some men returned to their families; however, for others such friendships endured, and some men even set up house together.
In the 19th century, the sexes were far more segregated than today, often educated separately; and manly and brotherly friendships were regarded as being an admirable thing. In the archival photographs shown in the
"Dear Friends" ionline museum, t is hard to know exactly what the relationships shown portray -- they probably cover the whole range, but it is left for us to decide.
Read more about Walt Whitman's life in his
biography.The Alternate Photoshop Universe[/b]
In the alternate universe of Photo-shopping, Ennis makes an appearance on Larry King, the drinks at the bar in Signal become unusually festive, and Ennis and Jack have more than one extraterrestrial visitor on Brokeback and during their "fishing trips." Join the fun at
Photo-shopped BBM images -- our talented forum members' variations on photocaps range from hilarious to slightly risque to poignant.
Post Of the DayThis week,
Janie-G shared
Beyond Brokeback, as well as the "Brokeback effect," with a friend. "Like many people here," she says, "I've come to realise that the "Brokeback effect" has set me apart from people I know. Superficially, things are the same; we see each other socially, gossip, help each other out, etc. but there's an emotional distance there. Something in me was released by Brokeback which they didn't experience.
"So, when I tentatively lent one friend
Beyond Brokeback I wasn't expecting much of a reaction. Maybe a polite 'Interesting book. Thanks.' Yesterday the phone rang and my hubby answered it and passed it over to me with a concerned expression."
Read the rest of Janie's story at
How Brokeback affected me.Brokeback In the Classroom
The annual Key Art Awards competition is the only one "in which working professionals honor their peers for designing and creating motion picture marketing materials," according to the
Hollywood Reporter. Awards are given annually in 34 categories, including posters, trailers, TV spots, print, outdoor, Internet, home entertainment and co-branded advertising.
A year and a half after its release,
Brokeback Mountain surfaced at the 2007 awards last month, in the form of an award-winning poster by a college student. The Key Art Awards has a special Student Awards category and this year, student competitors were to create posters from their choice of three films:
Brokeback, Walk The Line and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The winner, Magaly Sanchez from California State University Northridge created a
Brokeback poster that the Hollywood Reporter publisher John Kilcullin said "did an excellent job of conveying the movie's story line, and invites viewers to experience the film."
Out's Top 100
Out Magazine's
"Out 100" poll is compiling a list of the top 100 "gay (and gay-friendly) men and women who in one way or another have inspired, intrigued, entertained, or taught us or otherwise captured our collective imagination over the past year." The ballot takes only a few minutes to fill out with the nominee's name, occupation, contact information (
if available) the a paragraph or two giving the reason for the nomination. The list will be published in the December 2007/January 2008 issue.
Quote of the Day:"That men do not learn the lessons of history is the most important lesson of history."
~ Aldous HuxleyPhoto Caption of the DayFrom Photo Captioning Fun 2[/b]
Contributed by Canstandit
Jack: just a kiss..c'mon, just a little kiss....c'mon...
Ennis: I tole ya, FNIT is all yer gettin.....
Jack: (sigh) out, down and asleep...how romantic.....
Ennis: ...Ya mean there's something that happens after...?
Jack:..its called snuggling Ennis....
ennis: .....ok, I'll kiss ya....
Jack: I'd rather have the snuggle, now that I think about it..
Ennis: damn you, Jack! which is it..kiss or snuggle?
Jack: why caint we have both?
Ennis: where's the tragic love story destroyed by DRH in that??[/b]
The Daily Sheet depends on you and your ideas.Contributors to today’s edition: Janjo, Canstandit, sfericsf, Janie-G[/b]
Calendar of EventsIf you have ideas about initiating a gathering, go to
Start Your Own Threadsand get the ball rolling to plan a get-together near you.
The Daily Sheet is a production of The Ultimate Brokeback Forum at www.davecullen.com/forum
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