Claiming Gay History

All of the wingnut bullshit about Brokeback Mountain reminds me how so many of the right-wing, straight community deny the existence of gay history and when confronted with examples of it deny its legitimacy. Thank God for the many excellent gay and straight historians who have written or edited some really good histories of the gay community.

All gay men and women should support these great authors and in doing so increase their own understanding of our collective history. Fight bigotry and ignorance with facts.

Some histories I recommend:

Allan Berube - Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two

Cathy Crimmins - How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization: The True and Heroic Story of How Gay Men Shaped the Modern World

Hans-Georg Stuemke - Rosa Winkel, rosa Listen: Homosexuelle und "Gesundes Volksempfinden" von Auschwitz bis heute

John Boswell - Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century

Jonathan Katz - Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.: A Documentary

Magnus Hirschfeld - Von einst bis jetzt: Geschichte einer homosexuellen Bewegung, 1897-1922

Martin Duberman - About Time: Exploring the Gay Past

Mary Ann Humphrey - My Country, My Right to Serve: Experiences of Gay Men and Women in the Military, World War II to the Present

Randy Shilts - Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History of the Gay and Lesbian Movement

In Jonathan Katz's groundbreaking anthology Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.: A Documentary, he publishes a Badger Clark poem "The Lost Pardner":

I ride alone and hate the boys I meet.
Today, some way, their laughin' hurts me so.
. . . . . . . . . .
I hate the steady sun that glares and glares!
The bird songs make me sore.
I seem the only thing on earth that cares
'Cause Al ain't here no more!

And him so strong, and yet so quick he died,
And after year on year
When we had always trailed it side by side,
He went -- and left me here!

We loved each other in the way men do
And never spoke about it, Al and me,
But we both knowed, and knowin' it so true
Was more than any woman's kiss could be.
. . . . . . . . .

What is there out beyond the last divide?
Seems like that country must be cold and dim.
He'd miss this sunny range he used to ride,
And he'd miss me, the same as I do him.

It's no use thinkin' -- all I'd think or say
Could never make it clear.
Out that dim trail that only leads one way
He's gone -- and left me here!

The range is empty and the trails are blind,
And I don't seem but half myself today.
I wait to hear him ridin' up behind
And feel his knee rub mine the good old way.
(From Badger Clark, Sun and Saddle Leather, 3rd ed. (Boston: Richard G. Badger, Gorham Press, 1919), pp 67-69.

So for all those homophobes in the West and Mid West who feel insulted because, God forbid, someone believes that cowboys could love one another "in that way", it's been going on since the earliest settlers started homesteading the red states.