Tinderbox

  4.Gideon Resnick and Justin Miller, “Forty-Nine Killed at Pulse Gay Club in Orlando; Deadliest Mass Shooting in U.S. History,” The Daily Beast, June 12, 2016 (www.thedailybeast.com/49-killed-at-pulse-gay-club-in-orlando-deadliest-mass-shooting-in-us-history); Liam Stack, “Before Orlando Shooting, an Anti-Gay Massacre in New Orleans Was Largely Forgotten,” The New York Times, June 14, 2016 (www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/us/upstairs-lounge-new-orleans-fire-orlando-gay-bar.html); Jim Downs, “Before Orlando, There Was New Orleans,” The New York Times, June 13, 2016 (www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/opinion/orlando-and-the-history-of-anti-gay-violence.html).

  5.Buddy Dyer, “City of Orlando Update 10:20 a.m.,” CityofOrlando.net, June 12, 2016, www.cityoforlando.net/mayor/2016/06/city-of-orlando-update-1020-a-m/; Rick Scott, “Gov. Scott: We Will Devote Every Resource Available to Assist with Orlando Shooting,” FLgov.com, June 12, 2016, www.flgov.com/2016/06/12/gov-scott-we-will-devote-every-resource-available-to-assist-with-orlando-shooting/; Daniel White, “Read President Obama’s Speech Memorializing Shooting Victims in Orlando,” Time, June 16, 2016 (http://time.com/4372521/orlando-shooting-barack-obama-speech/).

  6.Stack, “Before Orlando Shooting”; Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Orlando Attack Roils Gay Community, Painfully Accustomed to Violence,” The New York Times, June 12, 2016; Commieflirt, “[NSFW] The Body of Rev. Bill Larson Clings to a Window of the UpStairs Lounge, a New Orleans Gay Bar Set on Fire Killing Thirty-Two People on the Last Day of Pride Weekend,” Reddit, June 13, 2016, www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/4nubnk/nsfw_the_body_of_rev_bill_larson_clings_to_a/.

  7.Lauren Laborde, “Superdome Was Lit Up in Rainbow Colors Last Night,” Nola.com, June 14, 2016, https://nola.curbed.com/2016/6/14/11933194/superdome-new-orleans-rainbow-colors-orlando; New Orleans Pride, “The Superdome is Rainbow tonight in memory of the lives lost in the Upstairs Lounge Fire. Thank you to the staff at the Superdome for granting our request to change the colors for one night,” Facebook, June 24, 2016, www.facebook.com/NewOrleansPrideFestival/photos/a.377728969336.156215.331001594336/10154336318569337/?type=3&theater.

  8.George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

  9.David Webster Cory, The Homosexual in America (New York: Greenberg, 1951), 11.

  10.Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 54; Gary Teller, “I Give You My Word as a Homosexual,” Vector, January 1966, 1.

  Introduction: History Reclaimed

  1.Interview with Dexter Brecht, July 29, 2015; Mark Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed in Fire Remembered at Quarter Church,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1995 (used with permission of the Times-Picayune and NOLA.com, © 2017 NOLA Media Group, LLC, all rights reserved).

  2.Michael Riley, “The No-Win Election,” Time, November 25, 1991 (http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974345,00.html); Storer Rowley, “Edwards Accused of Cover-up Scheme,” Chicago Tribune, December 6, 1985 (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-12-06/news/8503240438_1_edwards-health-care-key-point); “Vote for the Crook,” Nola.com, December 14, 2011, http://photos.nola.com/tpphotos/2011/12/175duke.html.

  3.Dexter Brecht, email to author, December 5, 2015.

  4.“Historic Crime Data 1990–2014,” Nola.gov, www.nola.gov/getattachment/NOPD/Crime-Data/Crime-Stats/Historic-crime-data-1990-2014.pdf/; “New Orleans Murder Rate on the Rise Again,” NBCNews.com, August 18, 2005, www.nbcnews.com/id/8999837/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/new-orleans-murder-rate-rise-again/#.WZIHUXd97eQ.

  5.Brecht to author, December 5, 2015.

  6.“Convention Aspirants Announce Views,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 15, 1972, 64.

  7.Interview with Henry Kubicki, April 5, 2016; “Convention Aspirants Announce Views”; Brecht to author, December 5, 2015.

  8.Dexter Brecht, “Christophobia?,” The Advocate, March 8, 1994, 8.

  9.John Gallagher, “Is God Gay?,” The Advocate, December 13, 1994, 40.

  10.John Gallagher, “When The Advocate’s ‘God Is Gay’ Cover Infuriated the World,” The Advocate, April 3, 2015 (www.advocate.com/politics/religion/2015/04/03/when-advocates-god-gay-cover-infuriated-world).

  11.Katharine Seelye, “Gingrich’s Life: The Complications and Ideals,” The New York Times, November 24, 1994 (www.nytimes.com/1994/11/24/us/gingrich-s-life-the-complications-and-ideals.html?pagewanted=all); Paul Boyer et al., Enduring Vision: The History of the American People, vol. 2, Since 1865 (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2010), 743.

  12.Frank Newport, “Homosexuality,” Gallup, September 11, 2002 (www.gallup.com/poll/9916/homosexuality.aspx).

  13.Gallagher, “When The Advocate’s ‘God Is Gay’ Cover.”

  14.Christianne Gadd, “The Advocate and the Making of a Gay Model Minority, 1967–2007” (Ph.D. diss., Lehigh University, 2012), 16 (preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent .cgi?.article=2340&context=et2).

  15.Dale Carpenter, Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 169.

  16.Jonathan Katz, Gay American History (New York: Crowell, 1976), 24.

  17.Martha Washington to Mercy Otis Warren, March 7, 1778, http://marthawashington.us/items/show/31.

  18.“Freddy Mercury, Forty-Five, Lead Singer of the Rock Band Queen, Is Dead,” The New York Times, November 25, 1991 (www.nytimes.com/1991/11/25/arts/freddie-mercury-45-lead-singer-of-the-rock-band-queen-is-dead.html); Joseph Berger, “Rock Hudson, Screen Idol, Dies at Fifty-Nine,” The New York Times, October 3, 1985 (www.nytimes.com/1985/10/03/arts/rock-hudson-screen-idol-dies-at-59.html).

  19.Cliff Jahr, “Elton John: Lonely at the Top,” Rolling Stone, October 7, 1976 (www .rollingstone.com/music/news/elton-john-lonely-at-the-top-rolling-stones-1976 -cover-story-20110202; accessed February 2, 2011); Marjorie Garber, Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life (New York: Routledge, 2000), 145; Bill Carter, “Elton John’s Revised ‘Candle,’ for a Princess and Charity,” The New York Times, September 7, 1997 (http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/diana/090997diana-elton.html).

  20.Robert Christgau, “Turkey Shoot,” The Village Voice, September 24, 1993 (www.robertchristgau.com/xg/cg/ts93-93.php).

  21.Allan Gold, “Rep. Frank Acknowledges Hiring Male Prostitute as Personal Aide,” The New York Times, August 26, 1989 (www.nytimes.com/1989/08/26/us/rep-frank-acknowledges-hiring-male-prostitute-as-personal-aide.html?pagewanted=all).

  22.Brecht interview, July 29, 2015; Henry Kubicki, “Henry Kubicki Account” (unpublished manuscript, November 14, 2013), LGBT Religious Archives Network (http://exhibits.lgbtran.org/exhibits/show/upstairs-lounge-fire), Berkeley, Calif.

  23.Brecht interview, July 29, 2016; A. Elwood Willey, “The Upstairs Lounge Fire,” NFPA Journal 68, no. 1 (1974): 16–20; Troy Perry and Nancy Wilson, “Report to the President for the White House Conference on Hate Crimes,” November 1, 1997, LGBT Religious Archives Network (http://exhibits.lgbtran.org/exhibits/show/upstairs-lounge-fire).

  24.Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed.”

  25.Willey, “The Upstairs Lounge Fire,” 16; “General Case Report,” New Orleans Department of Police, August 30, 1973, 2–5, Upstairs Lounge Records, City Archives, New Orleans Public Library.

  26.Eric Newhouse, “French Quarter Revelers Trapped,” The [Portland] Oregonian, June 25, 1973, 1.

  27.Gay People’s Coalition to Human Relations Committee of New Orleans, July 25, 1973, National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles; Roberts Batson, “Remembering the Up Stairs Lounge,” Impact 23, no. 13 (June 19, 1998): 16–17 (read at Skylar Fein Upstairs Lounge Fire Collection, Historic New Orleans Collection).

  28.Interview with Troy Perry, December 2, 2014.

  29.Betty Friedan, “Up from the Kitchen Floor,” New York Times Magazine, March 4, 1973.

  30.Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed”; Vincent Lee, “Gay Leaders Plan Aid for Victims of Bar
Fire,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 27, 1973, 14.

  31.Buckshot, “Give … ,” The Advocate, August 1, 1973.

  32.Homophile Action League, “In the Movement,” Homophile Action League Newsletter, October 1969, 8.

  33.“Blame Shifted on All Sides for Fire Horror,” The New York Times, March 28, 1911, 1; “Door Was Locked at Factory Fire,” The New York Times, December 9, 1911, 3.

  34.Eric Newhouse, “Bar Not Inspected in Two Years,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 1, 1973, 4.

  35.“Six Dead After Church Bombing,” The Washington Post, September 16, 1963 (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/churches/archives1.htm); John Herbers, “Birmingham Klansman Guilty in Dynamite Case,” The New York Times, October 9, 1963, 28.

  36.“Bombing Is Twenty-First at Birmingham,” The New York Times, September 16, 1963, 26; “Need More Time to Study Triangle Fire,” The New York Times, March 1, 1912, 22; “Alfred E. Smith Dies Here at Seventy,” The New York Times, October 4, 1944, 1.

  37.Clayton Delery, “Thieves, Queers and Fruit Jars: The Community and Media Responses to the Fire at the Up Stairs Lounge” (paper presented at the First Annual Louisiana Studies Conference, September 26, 2009); “General Case Report,” NOPD, 58; Gareth Griffin, “Flames of Hate: The New Orleans Upstairs Lounge Fire, 24 June 1973” (M.A. thesis, University of Louisiana, 2008; courtesy of Royd Anderson).

  38.Provosty A. Dayries, Superintendent of New Orleans Police Department, to “fellow police chiefs,” July 24, 1958, Mary Meeh Morrison and Jacob H. Morrison Papers, Historic New Orleans Collection.

  39.Scott Ellis, Madame Vieux Carré: The French Quarter in the Twentieth Century (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 71.

  40.Robert Heath, “Pleasure and Brain Activity in Man,” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 154 (1972): 3–18; Charles Moan and Robert Heath, “Septal Stimulation for the Initiation of Heterosexual Behavior in a Homosexual Male,” Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 3 (1972): 23–30; Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II), 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1968); Robert Colvile, “The ‘gay cure’ experiments that were written out of scientific history,” Mosaic, July 5, 2016 (https://mosaicscience.com/story/gay-cure-experiments).

  41.Heath, “Pleasure and Brain Activity in Man,” 7.

  42.The advertisement, headlined “Christians and Jews!,” appeared on p. 51 of the April 8, 1973, issue.

  43.Griffin, “Flames of Hate.”

  44.Tom W. Smith and Jaesok Son, “Trends in Public Attitudes About Sexual Morality,” National Opinion Research Center, April 2013, 11 (www.norc.org/PDFs/sexmoralfinal_06-21_FINAL.PDF); Daniel Cappon, Toward an Understanding of Homosexuality (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), vii; Mike Wallace, “The Homosexuals,” CBS Reports, March 7, 1967, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu1r6igCODw; Tom W. Smith, Jaesok Son, and Benjamin Shapiro, “Trends in Public Attitudes About Civil Liberties 1972–2014,” National Opinion Research Center, April 2015, 16–18 (www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_CivLib15_final_formatted.pdf).

  45.Paul Atkinson, “Beer’s Dilemma on Bridge Noted,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 8, 1973, 48; Paul Breton, “United We Stand” (unpublished manuscript, August 1973), National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

  46.Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed.”

  47.Bill Rushton, “Fire Three: Who the Victims Were,” Vieux Carré Courier, July 13–19, 1973, 6.

  48.Ibid.; Perry and Wilson, “Report to the President,” 2. Batson, “Remembering the Up Stairs Lounge,” 16; Jerry McLeod, “Family Solves Mystery After Learning Uncle Died in Infamous Upstairs Lounge Fire Forty-Plus Years Ago in New Orleans,” New Orleans Advocate, June 10, 2015 (www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/entertainment_life/article_bf16d3d9-b8e7-5994-8066-6dc1fa27bca5.html).

  49.“Six of Fifteen Injured in Serious Condition,” New Orleans States-Item, June 25, 1973, A-6b; Brecht interview, July 29, 2015; Delery, “Thieves, Queers and Fruit Jars.”

  50.Robert Goss, “Silencing Queers at the Up Stairs Lounge: The Stonewall of New Orleans,” Southern Communication Journal 74 (September 2009): 269–77.

  51.Interview with Roberts Batson, May 18, 2016; interview with Johnny Townsend, March 31, 2015; David Cuthbert, “Where There Was Smoke,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 20, 1998.

  52.Floyd Getchell to Johnny Townsend, June 11, 1990, Johnny Townsend Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; Townsend interview; interview with Paul Killgore, June 14, 2016.

  53.Interview with Wayne Phillips, June 14, 2016. The exhibit, “Devouring Elements,” ran from December 1991 to December 1992.

  54.Interview with Stewart Butler, July 20, 2014; Phillips interview.

  55.Ken Weiss, “VCC Director Criticizes Disaster Area Rhetoric,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 18, 1973, 40.

  56.Cuthbert, “Where There Was Smoke.”

  57.John Pope, “Arsonist Never Found in Fire That Killed Thirty-Two,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1988, 20; Susan Finch, “Fire of ’73: Tragedy United Gays,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 24, 1993.

  58.Interview with Dexter Brecht, July 29, 2016.

  59.Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed.”

  60.Perry interview.

  61.Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed”; Bruce Nolan and Chris Segura, “Memorial for Fire Dead Has Forgiveness Theme,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1973, 3.

  62.Brecht interview, July 29, 2015; Brecht to author, December 5, 2015.

  63.Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed”; Brecht interview, July 29, 2015; Thompson interview.

  64.Brecht interview, July 29, 2015; Thompson, “Thirty-Two Killed.”

  1: Brotherhood of Men

  1.“General Case Report,” New Orleans Department of Police, August 30, 1973, 29, Upstairs Lounge Records, City Archives, New Orleans Public Library; Henry Kubicki, “Henry Kubicki Account” (unpublished manuscript, November 14, 2013), LGBT Religious Archives Network (http://exhibits.lgbtran.org/exhibits/show/upstairs-lounge-fire), Berkeley, Calif.

  2.“General Case Report,” NOPD, 29, 26; interview with Stewart Butler, July 20, 2014.

  3.Susan Fosberg, “It’s a Faggot Bar—Did I Tell You?” Vieux Carré Courier, June 29, 1973, 7; Johnny Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn: The Up Stairs Lounge Fire (self-published through BookLocker.com, 2011), 102.

  4.Interview with Richard Everett, August 25, 2015; Butler interview, July 20, 2014.

  5.“Action Set to Curb Deviates,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 23, 1958, 10.

  6.Clayton Delery, email to author, December 14, 2016; “General Case Report,” NOPD, 3.

  7.“General Case Report,” NOPD, 6; Butler interview, July 20, 2014.

  8.Interview with Henry Kubicki, September 3, 2015; “Homosexuals in Revolt: A Major Essay on America’s Newest Militants, the Activists of ‘Gay Liberation,’ ” Life, December 31, 1971; Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 103.

  9.Butler interview, July 20, 2014.

  10.“General Case Report,” NOPD, 2; interview with Henry Kubicki, September 5, 2015.

  11.Interview with Richard Everett, September 30, 2016; Kubicki interview, September 5, 2015.

  12.Interview with Ronald Rosenthal, June 14, 2016; Everett interview, September 30, 2016.

  13.Interview with Steven Duplantis, March 11, 2016; Butler interview, July 20, 2014.

  14.“General Case Report,” NOPD, 4; Troy Perry and Thomas Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 79; “Notes on Fire Victims,” Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office, 1973, Upstairs Lounge Records, City Archives, New Orleans Public Library; Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 172.

  15.“General Case Report,” NOPD, 5, 29.

  16.“The Dome Inside and Out,” New Orleans States-Item, July 30, 1973.

  17.“Up, Up and Away,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 1, 1969, 10.

  18.Vincent Lee, “Ceremony Held at New Statue,
” New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 26, 1972, 3; “Youth, Fourteen, Shoots Five-Foot Alligator,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 15, 1961, 29.

  19.“Shaw to Leave Mart October 1,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 27, 1965, 1; Scott Ellis, Madame Vieux Carré: The French Quarter in the Twentieth Century (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 71; Clarence Doucet and Donald Hughes, “JFK Death Suspect Free Under $10,000 Bond,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 2, 1967, 1.

  20.Curt Sprang, “Inside the Clay Shaw Trial,” WGNO.com, November 23, 2013, http://wgno.com/2013/11/23/the-kennedy-assassination-spawned-all-kinds-of-conspiracy-theories/; James Phelan, “A Plot to Kill Kennedy? Rush to Judgment in New Orleans,” Saturday Evening Post, May 6, 1967 (http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/phelan.htm); “Heard Shaw, Oswald, Ferrie Plot JFK Killing, Says Russo,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 15, 1967, 1, 16; “ ‘Mystery Man’ Revealed in Probe,” Ellensburg [Wash.] Daily Record, March 3, 1967, 1; Nicholas Lemann, “The Case Against Jim Garrison,” GQ, January 1992; Jack Anderson, “Jim Garrison Is Accused of Molesting Youth of Thirteen,” Gadsden [Ala.] Times, February 25, 1970, 4.

  21.David Bird, “Clay Shaw Is Dead at Sixty; Freed in Kennedy ‘Plot,’ ” The New York Times, August 16, 1974, 32; Edward Epstein, “Epitaph for Jim Garrison: Romancing the Assassination,” The New Yorker, November 30, 1992 (www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/garrison_print.htm); “Ferrie, JFK-Probe Data Linked,” Gadsden Times, February 21, 1967, 1; Nicholas Lemann, “The Rise and Fall of Big Jim G.,” Harvard Crimson, February 6, 1974.

  22.Interview with Roberts Batson, July 11, 2014; James Kirkwood, American Grotesque (New York: Simon & Schuster: 1968), 33.

  23.“Justice, at Long Last,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 2, 1969, 1; “Clay Shaw Suit Trial Date Set,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 27, 1974, 2.

  24.Clarence Doucet, “Garrison Charges Shaw with Lying During Trial,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 4, 1969, 1; Clay L. Shaw v. Jim Garrison, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, July 31, 1972 (http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/467/113/154362/).