01-06-2025
Gay history was made in D.C. At times, it was dispiriting — but also uplifting.
1.
Lafayette
Square
At night during the Roaring Twenties, men strolled the 'old square' and sat in the benches under the grand magnolias and blossoming crabapples of Lafayette Square, across from the White House.
Their felt hats slightly lowered, they locked eyes with others looking for something that couldn't be sought in the light of day 100 years ago.
'It happened like this: I went to Lafayette Square and found a seat in the deep shade of the big beech. It was the best bench in the park,' an author with the pen name Jeb Alexander wrote on Aug. 23, 1920, in a diary chronicling gay life in D.C. A man sat down beside him, 'in a green suit with a blue dotted tie. He has beautiful eyes and sensuous lips. He wants to become a diplomat …'
The nation's capital was quietly a gay mecca in the early part of the 20th century, when LGBTQ people closeted in their small towns escaped to work for the government. The New Deal expanded the federal workforce, and the nation's capital became a city for fresh starts.
That changed when Lt. Roy Blick was promoted to head of the vice squad in the D.C. Police Department. On June 19, 1947, the Evening Star reported Blick's arrest of 41 men after a 'routine cleanup' of Lafayette Square. Lt. Roy E. Blick was head of the D.C. police's vice squad. He oversaw the arrests of hundreds of gay men and lesbians. (Anthony Camerano/AP)
That year, the U.S. Park Police began a 'Sex Perversion Elimination Program' and regularly updated President Harry S. Truman on the arrests. In 1948, Congress passed D.C. Public Law 615, 'for the treatment of sexual psychopaths,' which cleared a path for the arrest and punishment of LGBTQ people in Washington.
The growing arrest list became fodder for blackmail and purges known as the Lavender Scare, which was named for Sen. Everett Dirksen's (R-Illinois) label for gay men in 1952 — 'lavender lads.' The Lavender Scare mirrored McCarthyism's Red Scare targeting suspected communists, but its impact was larger.
'While more widely remembered by history, the Red Scare produced few results,' the National Park Service wrote. '... Conversely, the oft-forgotten Lavender Scare victimized Americans in their workplace and beyond for the latter part of the 20th century.'
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In 1953, a 25-year-old University of Chicago student was arrested after allegedly soliciting an undercover detective. It was Lester C. Hunt, Jr., the son of Sen. Lester Hunt (D-Wyoming).
Hunt had been publicly feuding with Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin). Senate historians said Hunt called the Red Scare architect a 'liar' and 'opportunist.' The charges against Hunt's son were dropped. But two Republican senators agitated to have them restored and Hunt Jr. was tried and fined, according to a letter the son wrote to the U.S. attorney general in 2015 asking for a formal review of his father's case.
The senators told Hunt that his son's conviction 'would become a major campaign issue' unless he dropped his reelection campaign, according to the Senate's official history. Hunt abruptly withdrew from the race, citing health reasons. Sen. Lester Hunt (D-Wyoming) killed himself in 1954 after his son was arrested and outed in the Lavender Scare. (William J. Smith/AP)
But Hunt believed the torment of his son and the election wouldn't end because he dropped out of the race, according to Senate historians.
On June 19, 1954, he hid a .22 Winchester rifle under his coat and headed to his Senate office. Minutes after he got there, he sat at his desk and shot himself in the right temple.
McCarthy was censured by Congress later that year. The Hunt family didn't speak about the affair until 2013, when Wyoming historian Rodger McDaniel interviewed Lester Hunt Jr. for a biography of his father, 'Dying for Joe McCarthy's Sins —The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt.'
2.
The
Mattachine
Society Gay rights activists Jack Nichols, Frank Kameny and Lilli Vincenz protest with others outside the White House in 1965. (Bettmann Archive)
It was Frank E. Kameny, a suit-wearing scientist in D.C., who led the first public protest of discrimination against LGBTQ people in the United States.
A Harvard University graduate, World War II veteran, astronomer with the Army Map Service and professor at Georgetown University, Kameny was quiet and studious.
Then, the federal government fired him for being gay. And a radical was born.
On April 17, 1965, Kameny gathered 10 people to take a public stand. The men had crewcuts and suits, the women wore dresses and stockings, and they picketed outside the White House at 4:30 p.m. — quitting time at federal offices.
They were fighting President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Executive Order 10450, which made ruining the lives of queer people a government policy in 1953. The order said 'sexual perversion' was grounds for outing and firing federal employees.
Thousands were targeted — including Kameny, who was fired in 1957. His appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court. He wrote dozens of letters to lawmakers and presidents. A 1950 report concluded that gay people were "unsuitable for employment in the Federal Government." (Records of the U.S. Senate)
In 1961, Kameny founded the D.C. branch of the Mattachine Society, an organization with several chapters across the United States that was named for the French society of masked dancers who criticized social norms with pointed satire.
Although other chapters were primarily support groups, Kameny turned his into a vehicle for radical activism. His brick Colonial house in Northwest Washington became the national headquarters for a growing civil rights movement.
At first, it was mostly White and male. Then women like Eva Freund joined the group and bucked the sexism within it. Eva Freund is one of the last surviving original members of the D.C. Mattachine Society. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
'The men in Mattachine thought the women were just there to take care of them,' Freund said in a 2019 interview with The Washington Post. She became fluent in Robert's Rules of Order, ensuring that lesbians were heard and acknowledged.
They printed newsletters and pamphlets and continued their protests outside the State Department and Pentagon. They joined marches in Philadelphia and New York.
In 1971, Kameny became the first openly gay American to run for a seat in Congress. He didn't win, but in 1973 he advocated for the passage of Title 34, the nation's first citywide human rights ordinance making it illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ people in the areas of employment, education and housing.
3.
Gay Corner In
Congressional
Cemetery The grave of Leonard P. Matlovich, the first gay service member to fight the military's ban on homosexuality. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
A cluster of tiny rocks always sits atop Leonard Matlovich's headstone in Washington's Congressional Cemetery, placed as prayers and gratitude by visitors. It's a pilgrimage made by thousands.
The engraving in black granite reads: 'WHEN I WAS IN THE MILITARY THEY GAVE ME A MEDAL FOR KILLING TWO MEN AND A DISCHARGE FOR LOVING ONE.'
Matlovich was a closeted airman who had earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart until March 6, 1975 — the day he handed his Air Force commander a letter.
'After some years of uncertainty, I have arrived at the conclusion that my sexual preferences are homosexual,' it began. Matlovich had been inspired by Frank Kameny and offered to be the test case to challenge bigotry in the military. (Doug Chevalier)
That fall, Matlovich's face was on the cover of Time magazine. 'I Am a Homosexual,' the headline stated.
Matlovich had been inspired by Frank Kameny's activism and offered himself as the test case to challenge bigotry in the military. They carefully crafted Matlovich's coming-out letter.
Despite his combat medals and continued exemplary service, Matlovich was ruled unfit for the military and discharged. (The Air Force was forced by court order to reinstate him and offer back pay, but he didn't return to the military.) Instead, became a vocal advocate for gay rights over the next decade.
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In his final act, Matlovich created what may be the only LGBTQ section of a cemetery in the world. And it started as a wry joke.
A stone's throw from what is now known as Gay Corner is the grave of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who died in 1972.
Hoover led a program compiling thousands of pages of information on the sex lives of Washington's powerful. Near his plot is that of his close adviser, Clyde Tolson. There has been speculation that the two were more than co-workers, but historians have never found evidence to confirm the rumors. Matlovich was buried at Congressional Cemetery in 1988 after his death from AIDS-related complications. (Ira Schwartz/AP)
Matlovich bought two plots near Hoover and Tolson. He died in 1988 at 44 after being diagnosed with AIDS.
'It was his way of having the last laugh,' said A.J. Orlikoff, Interim Executive Director of the cemetery, "forcing FBI Agents visiting Hoover's grave to walk past the grave of someone so openly gay.'
The corner has since expanded to be the final resting place of dozens more LGBTQ Washingtonians. It's a popular stop on gay history tours and the occasional setting for same-sex weddings.
4.
The
Furies
Collective The June-July 1972 edition of The Furies, a radical magazine that was published by a lesbian collective. (The Furies Collection, courtesy Rainbow History Project Archives)
'We call our paper The FURIES because we are also angry,' Ginny Z. Berson wrote in 1972, in the inaugural edition of a radical, feminist newspaper run out of the basement of a brick rowhouse on Capitol Hill.
'We are angry because we are oppressed by male supremacy,' Berson wrote. 'We are working to change the system which has kept us separate and powerless for so long.'
The Furies Collective was a group of 12 lesbians who said it all out loud. Their newspaper, in an age of mimeographs and hand delivery, reached 5,000 readers across the nation.
They organized meetings and ran workshops on car repair and self defense. They had film festivals and softball games. They wanted nothing to do with men and little to do with straight women.
'We considered ourselves a revolutionary cadre, and our intention was to overthrow the patriarchy and capitalism,' Berson, a member of the collective, said in a recent interview.
D.C. was 'a hotbed of political activism' in the early 1970s, and the lesbian feminists Berson met led to an epiphany. 'You mean, I don't have to live my life in order to please men?' Berson said. 'It was astonishing. It was a liberation.'
The rowhouse in Southeast D.C. was perfect, with room for wide layout tables for publishing and space for meetings.
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'Women have been kept down in many ways,' Lee Schwing wrote in one of the pieces about her new karate habit and how her strong, thickening torso and sculpted arms challenged the beauty standards of the day.
'Women are rarely encouraged to be strong, because it is undesirable to men,' she wrote.
The collective adopted an ethos that 'any woman who's sleeping with a man is basically sleeping with the enemy.'
Berson recently laughed a little at that radical thought: 'We were a little extreme.'
5.
Gay
Clubs Revelers dance at the ClubHouse, a gathering space for Black gay men in D.C. that attracted gay and straight celebrities. (Courtesy of John Eddy)
Washington was a buttoned-up, bureaucrat's world during the day. But at night, the scene was vibrant.
At least 200 LGBTQ clubs have operated over the past 100 years in D.C. The Rainbow History Project, an organization that has amassed a thorough history of LGBTQ D.C. history, plotted the often-segregated clubs on its mapping archive.
The Chicken Hut was the hot spot for gay White Washington in the 1950s. A block away from the White House, it operated from 1948 until the 1970s, hosting drag shows and piano tunes.
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For queer Black Washington, discrimination was twofold: The government was actively hunting homosexual men and women in workplaces, bars and parks at a time when racial discrimination was still codified by federal law.
In 1953, a rowhouse on Kenyon Street NW in Columbia Heights became a word-of-mouth house party and sanctuary for gay Black men.
It opened its doors wide to the public in 1957 as a club called Nob Hill. When it closed in 2004, it was acknowledged as one of the longest-operating LGBTQ bars in the nation.
But nothing bumped like the The ClubHouse in the 1970s. Inspired by New York City's Loft and Studio 54, it was the epicenter of Chocolate City's gay nightlife, tucked in a residential neighborhood near a high school.
At the time, Black people 'got hassled getting into the white clubs. You needed two or three IDs and all of this stuff,' said Kwabena Rainey Cheeks, who was working construction when John Eddy and other friends recruited him to turn a gutted commercial garage into one of the hottest scenes on the East Coast.
In the 1970s, the scene flourished in the D.C. warehouse district surrounding South Capitol Street. Cinema Follies was where largely closeted, queer men came for adult films. It was equally popular with police for raids and arrests, becoming a rallying point for activists who fought police profiling.
In 1977, a fire engulfed the theater and killed nine people. A former Marine and Republican congressman outed themselves as survivors.
It took days to identify the victims. Many of them were married with children. There was a pastor, a congressional aide, an Army major, a hairdresser and an economist with the World Bank.
6.
The
National
Mall The entire AIDS quilt was on display from Oct. 11 to 13, 1996, on the National Mall. It contained more than 48,000 panels. (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post)
The AIDS epidemic hit the United States in 1981, the year President Ronald Reagan took office. Washington was frigid to the gay community.
'If we take a look at the Federal Government's response to the AIDS crisis it leads unavoidably to the conclusion that within this administration, there is a sharp contrast between the rhetoric of concern and the reality of response,' Virginia Apuzzo, executive director of the National Gay Task Force, said during a congressional hearing in 1983.
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A year later, a gaunt Rock Hudson came to the White House for a party. Nancy Reagan was alarmed by his appearance and wrote him a letter urging him to get a mole she spotted on his neck checked out. He was diagnosed with AIDS, and the Reagans distanced themselves from him until his death in 1985, according to Kate Andersen Brower's biography, 'Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon.'
In Washington, the Gay Men's VD Clinic — later rebranded the Whitman-Walker Clinic — opened a full-time AIDS clinic by 1986, following similar facilities in San Francisco and New York. The Whitman-Walker Clinic — first known as the Gay Men's VD Clinic — opened its doors to Washingtonians in 1986. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
The federal government finally began to step up in the wake of a 1986 report issued by the National Academy of Sciences titled 'Confronting AIDS.'
Public health campaigns reached out to the gay community with condom-promoting posters featuring scantily clad men. That riled some on Capitol Hill.
The AIDS quilt, shown above in 1996, was officially unveiled on the Mall in October 1987 with panels honoring 1,920 victims. (Larry Morris/The Washington Post)
Then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) said the disease was a result of 'unnatural' and 'disgusting' behavior.
But Helms's 1987 purity campaign was eclipsed when a memorial the length of two football fields was unfurled on the nation's front lawn on an October morning. The AIDS quilt, with panels honoring 1,920 victims of the disease, showed the nation the tangible scope, size and humanity of the crisis. The massive, growing quilt was unfolded on the National Mall several more times.
'I can't do anything for the patients but watch them die,' Suzanne Phillips, a medical student from Brooklyn, told The Washington Post in 1987 as she watched the quilt being unfurled. 'I can't stand it anymore.'
