Fdr gay
I recently argued that the blog, Born This Way, may give the impact that dressing or acting in ways consistent with the other sex when you are a youngster is a True Approve that you are queer . This is obviously not the case, as almost all of us can find a photo from our childhood in which we’re breaking gender norms; it also conflates gender performance and sexual orientation (leaving out “lipstick lesbians” and “butch” gay men) and it locks the GLBTQ movement into a biological argument for acceptance, an argument I accept is short-sighted.
The idea that wearing a dress or seeming girly is a sign that one is gay is also completely ahistorical. If wearing a dress as a child means boys are gay, then there should have been essentially no straight men for much of American history. Until the 1920s, infants and small children, whether male or female, were dressed and looked alike, often in prolonged hair and dresses (source: Jo Paoletti). Behold, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945):
Roosevelt may or may not have been lgbtq+ then, but this outfit and hairdo certainly cannot be read to advise that he was, at least not anymore than it can for
Ienjoyedwatching Ken Burns' The Roosevelts: An Intimate History last week, keeping in brain that these PBS documentary series are usually a heavy bit of American myth-making, sanitizing some evidence in offering a particular version of history. Still, there are a not many things just too glaring to hide or manage with discretion in 2014, though Burns arrogantly thinks he can.
How could we not hear about the scandalous anti-gay witch pursue beginning in 1919 in Newport overseen by then assistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt? As detailed in historian John Loughery's 1998 publication The Other Side of Silence, Navy sailors were recruited to entrap other men to have sex with them, with the undercover "operatives" engaging in sex to orgasmic completion -- oral, and yes, some anal -- with the men they entrapped, and logging all of this in their retain reports.
At first, the sting focused on men in the Navy, in an attempt to spotless up what was seen as "moral conditions" at the Newport base, but it soon expanded to the civilian population in Newport and resulted in the arrests and sometimes imprisonment of 17 sailors and a prominent Episcopal Navy chaplain. When the methods of
Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok
These photos come from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum. They all fall under public domain, as per the organization's website.
About the couple:
Eleanor Roosevelt's name may ring a familiar bell for history lovers. She was the First Lady of the Merged States and wife to President Franklin D. Roosevelt! Therefore, it may be surprising to learn of her long rumored romantic relationship with Lorena Hickok.
The women met when Hickok, a prominent writer, was tasked to document articles about the President and his wife. It is thought that the two soon caught feelings for each other, and Hickok left the newspaper because she feared she was compromising her journalistic integrity4. However, the women didn't separate after she left her job -- instead, she moved into the White House and started working as a staff member4.
For obvious reasons (Roosevelt's marriage and homophobia), their romantic relationship was never publically confirmed. However, the two women did distribute a strong bond, as evidenced in their many, many letters3 -- two of which are featured
“I did it for the uplift of humanity and the Navy”: FDR's Male lover Sex-Entrapment Sting
Sherry Zane sheds light on a dim covert operation that targeted homosexual Navy men.
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On March 16, 1919, 14 Navy recruits met secretly at the naval hospital in Newport, Rhode Island, anxiously awaiting instructions for their fresh assignment. The senior operatives explained that the volunteers were free to abandon if they objected to this special mission: a covert operation to entrap homosexual men under the authority of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).
By the end of the sting, investigators had apprehended more than 20 accused sailors and imprisoned them aboard a broken-down ship in Newport harbor. Anxious and afraid, the suspects remained in solitary confinement for nearly four months before they were officially charged with sodomy and “scandalous conduct.” The incident also foreshadowed laws and policies that the future President Roosevelt would put in place.
In this episode of the MIT Press podcast, podcaster Chris Gondek talks to Sher
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