An hour ago, the din of the dyke march could be heard roaring through the Castro. It’s a nice tradition so I braved the wilds and the crowds to check out it. Normally, I barricade myself in the house with a few select guests for an evening of our own more modest frivolity. But venture out I did, dragged down by insistent and more adventurous friends over my protestations of a roast in the oven and soufflés to start. The soufflés can wait, they said. I question whether any self-respecting gay man could ever utter such horror.
And yet glad I am that I was dragged down to see the dyke march, the official kickoff of San Francisco’s Gay Pride Celebration. I am a sentimental old fool because it did move me to tears to see many lesbian couples march under “Just Married” banners. There are no words. Human joy is immeasurable.
Now the din I hear is the crowd below on Castro and Market that is left to linger and progressively drink themselves silly. That make take some time or perhaps their definition of silly and mine are far different. I live up the hill and north of Market Street, so technically this is Corona Heights not the Castro or Eureka Valley as the neighborhood was formerly known but few know that and even less care. Being up the hill offers a measure of safety from the drunken hordes. Drunks can’t climb hills too well I have found. Still some will crawl themselves up the hill in search of their cars where they’ll sleep it off.
Pride always brings reflections on my own journey. I did not take kindly to being gay. Whose sick joke was this? And yet the idea of dating girls was an anathema. Happily, I had my books and my athletic prowess to keep my mind off sexual urges that I neither wanted nor could really control to the level that I wanted to control them. In college, I did date more for show than anything else though in truth I also did date for necessity, attending a Viennese Ball alone is not exactly much fun and a Strauss waltz and polka were things I loved that unfortunately required a female partner. So date, I did. I should send those poor women condolences cards now. What was I thinking?
In college, I also met Dr. Ned Spofford, my classics professor and my academic advisor. Ned is the guy up on the left. Ned’s tale is quite the tale. It’s a PBS documentary actually, The Great Pink Scare. I love Ned to death, through my time at Stanford, we had dinner every Thursday night. Long after he ceased to be my academic advisor, he remains my mentor, my guide to civil liberties enjoyed by Western men and a reminder that everything we see now humanity has seen before and will see again. He introduced me to the beauty of fine glass, Japanese silk prints, Herotudus and Alberta Hunter. I still go down to Palo Alto now and then to see Ned but on Pride he is much on my mind. What happened to Ned should not have happened in the Western World.
On Labor Day weekend in 1960, Massachusetts state police troopers swept through the small, idyllic town of Northampton and hauled 15 men off to jail. Three of them were professors at Northampton’s elite Smith College.
THE GREAT PINK SCARE tells the story of the devastating persecution that followed, when the three Smith professors were charged with possessing and dispersing obscene literature, tried in Northampton District Court, and eventually convicted as felons.
“Police Break Up Major Homosexual Smut Ring!” screamed newspaper headlines, first in Boston, then across the country and even internationally.
On the surface, it was the routing out of pornographers, but in reality, it was a McCarthy-like witch-hunt against homosexuals.
The alleged ringleader, Professor Newton Arvin, was considered America’s finest literary critic. The other two accused were Smith junior faculty members Joel Dorius and Ned Spofford. All three lost their jobs.
