This is the perverse set of skills that the closet could breed.” “In the period documented in this book,” Kirchick said, “closets were good at producing gay people with skills that made them preternaturally equipped to function in Washington – they were good at keeping secrets, had no family life to distract them, and they were more loyal to people in power. It is an irony common to stories of LGBTQ+ resilience that the very things that oppressed gay and lesbian individuals – such as the need to lead a double-life, or the isolation that came from not being permitted to marry – were made advantageous both to the pursuit of their liberation and their political careers. Regardless of all the intrigue, Kirchick also reports that Reagan’s administration proved to be “the gayest of any presidential administration yet”, demonstrating two points central to Secret City: the growing acceptance of gays throughout the 20th century and their great value in government, even a macho, hard-right one like Reagan’s. Although these allegations are absurd excess based on little more than rumor, Kirchick argues that they had the potential to have turned Jimmy Carter’s landslide loss in the 1980 election to a win. Kirchick entwines this lurid tale, which fueled an effort to scuttle Reagan’s 1980 presidential nomination, with a number of gay conspiracy theories attached to the Reagan administration (including one that Reagan himself had sex with another man). Best-known for being forced to resign amid a sex scandal while on the brink of succeeding Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, Livingston in 1980 became convinced that the gay men legitimately working for Ronald Reagan were in fact a sinister cabal secretly controlling him. This fear of “the gay next door” fueled stereotypes of gays being disloyal to the United States, as well as the belief that they were inherently conspiratorial – “if you have three homosexuals in the room, it’s automatically a conspiracy,” said Kirchick.Ī good example of this point is the bizarre story of Bob Livingston. Even more frightening, they could be anyone. This prejudice got kickstarted with the revelations of the Kinsey Reports in 19, when people suddenly realized that the gay population was far larger than anyone had guessed.
Gay men gay sex porn driver#
Kirchick astutely points out that the fear of homosexuality has been a driver of presidential politics, functioning similarly to other historically recognized forms of prejudice like antisemitism and purges of so-called communists. For the people who went through this suffering so I wouldn’t have to.”Ĭongressman Bob Livingston (right) & John Rhodes discuss legislation Photograph: Capital City Press/Georges Media Group, and Baton Rouge, LA. “I feel enormous gratitude for the people who came before. Although Kirchick found that writing the book could be overwhelming as he worked to piece together all of the information he discovered, and while at times he became angry at the historical wrongs he found, his dominant emotion while working on the project was gratitude. At 800 pages, including well over 100 just for notes and sources, the scope of Secret City feels momentous. Starting with the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and continuing up through Bill Clinton’s presidency, Kirchick has spent a decade uncovering long-hidden stories that have been lost from history. My being gay informs my ability to say that.”
It’s important that we have these stories. “Even liberal straight historians would feel uncomfortable about writing this kind of a book. “It needed a gay person to do this,” he said. As he began working on the massive project, Kirchick started to believe that, as a gay man, he was uniquely equipped to write Secret City.
In fact, census data shows that DC has the highest proportion of gay people anywhere in the US. Kirchick first became intrigued by the idea of a gay history of American power politics in 2007, when he moved to DC and realized that it was suffused with a vivid gay cultural life and history. It’s not overturning this established narrative, it’s adding to it and complicating it.” “I wanted to bring them together to show they’re connected stories, that they interact and complement each other. “I want to intertwine these two threads – the mainstream thread of history that we all read about, and this gay history that’s been sidelined and sequestered,” he said.