New York City

O NEW TESTAMENT 6:9-10 is modeled on theDecalogue: those refers to the "young man having a linen who violate its precepts will find them- cloth cast about his naked body," amplify- selves excluded from the Kingdom of God. ing Mark 1451-52, with the innuendo The words malakoi, "effeminate," and that Jesus had an homoerotic relationship arsenokoitai, "abusers of themselves with with this otherwise mysterious disciple mankind," signify the passive and active as well. partners in male homosexual relations So the New Testament references respectively, rephrasing the explicit con- to homosexuality fully echo the Judaic demnation of both in Leviticus 20:13, origins of primitive Christianity, even if which Philo Judaeus and Flavius Josephus the customs of the Hellenic world occa- alike show to have been universally up- sionally emerge from the backdrop of the held in the Judaism of the first century. narrative. These passages indicate that the The reference in Timothy parallels the one primitive Church implicitly ratified Lev- in Corinthians, with the same catalogue of iticus 18 and made its strictures part of its evil-doers who are deserving of ostracism own constitution (Acts 15:20, 29). In due and punishment. For fundamentalists the time the sexual morality of Hellenistic sanctions expressed in these passages are Judaism, interpreted in a rigoristic and absolute and beyond question, while the even ascetic manner, became normative liberal Christian would seek to "reinter- for Christian civilization. pret the Bible in the light of contemporary knowledge," and the gay Christian advo- BIBLIOGRAPHY. Tom Homer, Homo- sexuality and the ludeo-Christian cate must use every exegetical strategem Txadition: An Annotated Bibliography, at his disposal to excise the offending texts Metuchen, NJ:Scarecrow Press, 1981; from the canon of authority. idem, Ionatban Loved David: Homo- Apart from this standard group of sexuality in Biblical Times, Philadel- three passages, the references to 'ldogsli in phia: Westminster, 1978; Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexual- Paul and in Revelations 21:8 and 2215 are ity: Contextual Background for Contem- probably not allusions to the kelebh, the pary Debate, Philadelphia: Fortress Canaanite and Phoenician hierodule who Press, 1983; Morton Smith, Clement of prostituted himself in honor of Astarte. Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, The story of the Centurion's servant in Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. Matthew 85-13 and Luke 7:l-10 may Tom Homer and Ward Houser suggest a pederasticrelationship, since the servant "whowas dear(entimos)untohim" may have been both orderly and bed part- NEWYORK CITY ner. But the emotional or physical over- Settled by the Dutch in 1624 and tones of the tale are less important than acquired by the English in 1667, the New Jesus' rcmark that "I have not found so York colony (unlike most other American great faith, no, not in Israel," which fore- colonies) lacked the character of a reli- shadows the conversion of the Roman gious haven; its emphasis was overtly Empire alongside the rejection of the new commercial from the start. After Ameri- faith by Jewry. The "beloved disciple" in can Independence (1783J, the city became the Gospel of John alone is sometimes, the major port of entry for millions of usually not in a pious vein, asserted to immigrants, chiefly European, someof each have been a youth for whom Jesus' love ethnic group staying behind to establish was tantamount to a Greek pederastic the city's cosmopolitan society. Given this attachment of the mentor to his prot6gC. demography, it would be expected that its An eighteenth-century manu- gay subculture would be largely European script recently discovered and published in type, as it was-though with significant by Morton Smith includes a passage that modifications for local conditions. In NEWYORKCITY 4 modem times, New York and San Fran- of such establishments as the Golden Rule cisco vied for leadership of the American Pleasure Club, Manilla Hall, Paresis Hall, gay subculture. The Palm, the Black Rabbit, Little Bucks, Colonial Times. Dutch Roman and the Artistic Club. Some of these places law punished sodomy withdeath, and cases were essentially male brothels, while are recorded from 1646, 1658, and 1660. others offered drinks and entertainment. After the English conquest a new capital In the Bowery and lower Broadway areas, statute was enacted in 1665, but it seems the streetswere cruised by aggressive male rarely to have been enforced. Lord Edward hustlers, identifiable by their painted faces Cornbury, governor of New York and New and red ties. Jersey in 1702-08, had a penchant for The Wentieth Century.The first women's clothing, but appears to have two decades of the twentieth centurywere been entirely heterosexual. the original heyday of Greenwich Village The Nineteenth Century. The as a cultural center and also as a place of newly independent American states were some toleration for lesbians and gay men. spared the recrudescence of antisodomy Others preferred to visit the nightspots in bigotry that disfigured Britain during the Harlem, which was also the scene of a Napoleonic wars, and for the first seven major black intellectual movement with decades of the nineteenth century, New several significant gay and bisexual par- York City's homosexuals seem to have ticipants: the Harlem Renaissance. Among been largely left alone. There were two the notables who enlivened New York competing and somewhat ineffectual po- during these years were Djuna Barnes, lice forces, which were not proactive, which Willa Cather, Hart Crane, Marsden Hartley, is to say they undertook no entrapment, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. At this time raids, or other activity to bring sodomites the modem gay bar and bathhouse began to justice, unless the matter was brought to take shape. For the bars, however, Pro- to their attention in an unavoidable way. hibition (1919-1 933) meant devastation, Thus in 1846 a man was prosecuted for though some gay bars continued as speak- making lewd advances to a police officer. easies. An unintended consequence of the As we know from Horatio Alger's novels, legal change was to make gay and straight the streets were full of footloose teenage bars more similar, since both were now boys, a constant temptation for some. invested with the same atmosphere of Churches, which weregenerally kept open clandestinity. Until the rise of the Ameri- and relatively dark, seem to have been a can gay liberation movement, the gay bar regular place of assignation. Walt represented the premier institution-vir- Whitman's laconic diary entries give evi- tually the only institution-for male dence of one man's pursuit of ephebic sex homosexuals. In the late 1930s, however, objects. a kind of satellite appeared in the summer After the Civil War this easy-going resorts on Fire Island, notably the all-gay atmosphere changed. The social purity village of Cherry Grove. and censorship movements put pressure As the country veered away from on public authorities to "clean up" Prohibition attitudes in the 1930s, bars America's cities. The importation of re- became legal but subject to supervision, in cent European ideas about "inverts" and New York by the State Liquor Authority. "degenerates" increased the glare of pub- This agency could revoke the licence of licity, provoking the indignation of the any tavern for permitting "degenerate respectable. At the same time, New York disorderly conduct," and campaigns of City developed a vibrant bohemian and particular virulence were waged in 1939 entertainment subculture. As a result of and in the early 1960s, in order to sanitize vice investigations of the 1890s, we know the city for the two world's fairs. With a 4 NEW YORK CITY sword of Damocles hanging over them, so commemorated each year in marches or to speak, bar owners themselves tried to parades on the last Sunday in June in New keep "obvious" types and behavior at a YorkCity and throughout theworld, ledto minimum. Dancing and kissing, though a heady but turbulent period. A New Left they sometimes occurred, were particu- organization, the Gay Liberation Front, larly liable to bring down the wrath of the elbowed the Mattachine Society out of the public guardians. In addition, many bars limelight, only to be itself replaced by the were owned or partially controlled by single-issue Gay Activists Alliance, which organized crime, while payoffs to the po- promoted the lambda symbol. Disputes lice were de rigueur. This tyrannical situ- among gay leaders and entrenched opposi- ation in the bars was finally ended by the tion by old-line politicians were to delay New York Mattachine Society and the the passage of a gay rights bill in the city election of John Lindsay as Mayor in 1965. council until 1986. In 1973 the Gay Aca- From the late 1940s to the early demicUnionwasfounded, holdingaseries 1960s an average of at least a thousand of annual conferences that promoted a men were arrested annually on solicita- comprehensive sense of gay studies. Con- tion charges, which were usually occa- tributions from the many homosexual and sioned by police entrapment. Public dis- lesbian artists resident in New York led to like and fear of homosexuals continued to its flourishing as a gay cultural center, be fanned by campaigns in the tabloid notable for a strong presence in theatre, press; the first major series occurred in film, popular music, visual arts, and litera- 1892, and such yellow journalism wasoften ture. In different ways Frank O'Hara and repeated on the eve of municipal elections. Andy Warhol had influential roles in po- The Gay Movement and New etry and painting, while gay novelists Visibility. After World War IT New York banded together to form the Violet Quill was the scene of a proto-gay rights organi- Club.

Load more