Posted in category "Faith"

Pat Turner and Kim Stabinski

Posted by Censor Librorum on Jun 30, 2023 | Categories: Arts & Letters, Faith, History, Lesbians & Gays

Karen Doherty, Pat Turner, Peg Cruikshank, San Francisco 1986

All the Gay Pride and social media coverage in June prompted me to reflect on my own activism and remember good friends. Back in the 1980s, when the Conference for Catholic Lesbians (CCL) was in full force growth mode, Pat Turner was the editor of our quarterly newsletter, Images. Pat stepped up to take on the role when we needed a person with experience and professionalism. Years before, Pat had served as an editor and production volunteer for the Daughters of Bilitis’ newsletter – The Ladder.

The Daughters of Bilitis

The Daughters of Bilitis, also known as “DOB” or “Daughters,” was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. According to legend, Bilitis was the lover of Sappho, a renowned Greek lyric poet. DOB was founded as a social and activist group by four women in San Francisco in 1955. Some of the founders wanted to remain a social group, but others wanted to agitate for lesbian rights, respect, and equality. The activist group prevailed. (The opposite eventually happened with CCL – the social group prevailed.) Both groups died out due to lack of volunteers, and an inability to reconcile original founding goals with evolving cultural changes. Living a lesbian lifestyle became more accepted and affirmed as the US became increasingly secular and shifted away from its larger Judeo-Christian religious participation.

Tall with curly brown hair, Pat Turner is a very attractive woman. She was a steady presence and spoke in a reasoned and calm way. Pat had a very gracious way of speaking and disagreeing; so she could bridge disagreements and manage deadlines without ruffling feathers. When she was a young woman, she had joined a religious community, but left after a year or two. When I met her in the mid-1980s, Pat was an executive in the insurance industry and living in Florida. She had previously been in a long-term relationship, but her partner had passed away.

Lesbian Roles

Pat talked to me about her DOB days and what lesbian life was like at that time. Women usually identified themselves as “butch” or “femme.” Pat was femme. I told her I couldn’t identify with either group. She told me that I would have been kiki (the “i” pronounced like “eye.”) The term “kiki” was generally in existence from the 1940s-1970s and described a lesbian who did not identify as either butch or femme and was both passive and active sexually. Butches were active and femmes were passive. I didn’t like the butch/femme vibe, gender roles, or the idea of not having a complete sex life, so being a kiki outlaw was fine with me.

An Unexpected Gift

Pat gave me an unexpected gift. It was a handwritten letter on the last piece of stationery she had from her DOB days. The name at the top of the paper was Kim Stabinski. Many DOB leaders used assumed names to protect themselves from threats and harassment. I remember that I asked her how she chose that name, but I can’t remember her answer. I treasured that letter as a piece of lesbian history from a friend who helped to make that history. I included it with my CCL papers, photos and memorabilia that are now housed in the Marquette University archives.

Pat recorded her memories as part of the Daughters of Bilitis Video Project by the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City. Pat’s interview was taped on December 31, 1987. I listened to part of her interview as I was preparing this post. It was lovely to see her and hear her voice again. Pat was mentioned in the Lesbian Herstory Archives Newsletter, #10, February 1988, as part of the East Coast DOB. Her name was noted Pat Turner (Kim Stabinski).

I looked at the August/September 1969 issue of The Ladder, and there was Kim Stabinski on the masthead. Kim Stabinski authored an article in the December/January 1970-1971 edition, “The Roman Catholic Lesbian – The Old Order Changeth.” The article is eight pages long (page 15-22) and can be read in its entirety here.

Searching for Inner Peace

There are two sections in her article that were particularly moving. One involves Catholic Lesbians and their choices about attending Mass and receiving communion; the second described an encounter with her priest and her lover. They took place in the 1960s but could easily have happened today.

“So I sat in Mass Sunday after Sunday,” she begins, “watching – often with tears – others receive the sacraments denied me. I watched my Catholic Lesbian friends: the ones who had given up completely and never attended Mass, the ones who scraped in one furtive confession a year around Easter and avoided thinking of the shut door the rest of the time, and the ones who, like me, kept going but were strangers in their own Church. Then there were the few who were apparently good practicing Catholics, attending Church regularly and receiving the sacraments while continuing to live a Lesbian life. Notable in this group were two women who were very “married” and had been for a good many years.”

“In this latter group but distinctly different were a few who attended Mass and received communion regularly without confession – a real anathema in the Church’s eyes…They had managed to rationalize in their own hearts their defiance of the legalistic Church, but acceptance of the sacraments Christ intended them to have, even though these sacraments were coming through a Church that said they had no right to them. I envied them, too – I envied their courage to trust in God’s love alone, to defy the Church that said they were “eating their condemnation” by receiving communion “unworthily.”

Longing for Communion

In November of 1969, Pat Turner said that she made one last attempt to reconcile herself and her Catholic faith. She sought out a priest at her parish and set up a schedule for counseling. “At our first session I told Father my vastly-opposed-to-Catholic views on Lesbian expression in a real love relationship. I described the emotional relationship I share with my beloved (a Catholic, by the way, of the non-confession weekly communion clan), explaining that neither of us would degrade our love via confession – but that I wanted desperately to overcome my own mental block on the legalistic Church and be able to receive communion with her. I gave Father a copy of the June/July 1969 The Ladder with my article verbalizing my religious beliefs…” The priest took the newsletter and told Pat he wanted to discuss her and her situation with some other priests just out of the seminary and more versed on the newer trends in theology. Several weeks later, “after circulating The Ladder and soliciting the counsel of other priests, Father gave me the glad tidings – from that day on, my relationship with my beloved was not a matter for confession.” However, he did caution Pat that should she “fall into temptation and be unfaithful to my ‘better half,’ then that would be a matter for confession. That night, right there in Father’s study, sitting on the couch under full lights and looking him in the eye, rather than in a dimly lighted cubbyhole confessional box, I made my first confession in seven years. I confessed those things I believed to be sinful. I did not confess my love.”

Later that evening, when her lover came to pick up her, Pat motioned her to park the car and join her in Father’s study. Pat’s lover had been very anxious about her counseling sessions, fearing that they might either affect their relationship or Pat’s relationship with God.

“It was about 9:30 on the night of November 18 when the three of us together entered the deserted sanctuary, darkened except for myriad flickering votive lights and the outside lights playing through the stained-glass windows. My love and I knelt in silent, grateful prayer as Father made the necessary preparations, then approaching the altar where we received our Lord in Holy Communion – together for the first time.”

Being Whole and Authentic

“Later we walked down the aisle hand in hand, followed by a priest smiling the smile of one who knows he has helped – really helped – drawn a soul nearer to God…My love and I talked later of how this experience was almost like being married in the Church, so rich was its depth and feeling of togetherness with God and with each other.”

The “richness” Pat described is the richness of being whole, being authentically who you are – both Catholic and Lesbian and sharing that spiritual life and identity with another. It is as much a melding together as sex.

I cannot remember if Pat discussed this experience at any of our CCL meetings or get togethers, but I felt very grateful to her reading her article in The Ladder. Thank you, Kim Stabinksi, for the example of your faith and courage.

Pat Turner 1987

Pat Turner participated in the Lesbian Herstory Archives’ Daughters of Bilitis Video Project. She was taped December 31, 1987. You can listen to her interview here.

Kim Stabinski’s article, “The Roman Catholic Lesbian…The Old Order Changeth” can be read here.

 

 

 

 

Dusty Springfield

Posted by Censor Librorum on Mar 12, 2023 | Categories: Arts & Letters, Celebrities, Faith, History, Lesbians & Gays, Scandals, Sex

I had the Sirius station tuned to the 60s channel when Dusty Springfield’s song, “I Only Want to Be With You” came on. “I don’t know what it is that makes me love you so,” she sings. “I only know I never want to let you go. ‘Cause you started something, oh, can’t you see? That ever since we met you’ve had a hold on me. It happens to be true, I only want to be with you.” I remembered during the song that Dusty Springfield was supposed to be bisexual; “Son of a Preacher Man” was another one of her big hits. When I got home I decided to google Dusty Springfield and see what became of her. Not only was Dusty Springfield not bisexual—she was a lesbian—she was in the midst of a torrid affair with a woman in Memphis when she recorded “Son of a Preacher Man.” Dusty Springfield was one of the most successful female British singers of the 1960s, with a half dozen singles in the top 20. “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” (1966) was her biggest hit in the U.S. and the U.K.

“There is a sadness there in my voice. I was born with it. Sort of melancholy. Comes with being Irish-Scottish. Melancholy and mad at the same time.” – Dusty Springfield

“My sexuality has never been a problem to me but I think it has been for other people.” – Dusty Springfield

EARLY DAYS

Dusty Springfield was born Mary Catherine Isabel Bernadette O’Brien in London, England on April 16, 1939. Her mother was Irish and her father was Scots-Irish. She was a tomboy growing up, and given the name “Dusty” playing football (soccer) with the boys. She attended an all-girls school, St. Anne’s Convent School in Enfield, London. The nuns predicted that the shy girl was going to become a librarian. As a teen, Dusty had short auburn hair and glasses. She credited the school with her first “blues” performance during a school assembly. After she left at 16, Mary O’Brien recreated herself as “Dusty Springfield,” a glamorous blond with make-up, teased hair and mod outfits.

In the early years of her career Dusty remained a practicing Catholic. The tour bus stopped so she could go to confession or attend Mass. But as the Sixties progressed, the practice of her faith diminished, and she began her long struggle with alcohol, self-harm, and violence in her relationships. She was eventually diagnosed as suffering from bipolar disorder in addition to alcoholism. 

Growing up, Dusty knew she was attracted to girls. Her first crush was on one of the nuns. She told Sue Cameron, one of her lovers, that she would watch a girl who lived across the street get undressed in front of the window. Her discovery of her lesbianism led to internal conflicts with her Irish Catholic upbringing, which she never resolved. Most Catholic lesbians and gays could not reconcile their sexuality and faith in the 1960s, and it is still a struggle today. To be one, we had to hide the other. This lack of authenticity and wholeness affected every part of Dusty’s life. Her inability to talk about that part of herself and her relationships produced terrible conflict and pain. For many years she managed it by drinking, drug use, and transient affairs and relationships, and the ever-present cloud of guilt and shame.

CAREER SUCCESS

Dusty had her first woman lover in 1963. In early 1964, her career took off with her first hit single, “I Only Want to Be With You.” Her desire for other women was forbidden in Britain at that time, so like most lesbian and gay artists, she performed for the straight majority but with emotions that were directed to her female partners and pursuits. During her peak, Dusty Springfield ranked among the most successful female performers on both sides of the Atlantic. Her blonde, bouffant hairstyle, heavy eye makeup, evening gowns, and stylized hand gestures, made her an icon of the Swinging Sixties.

She was in the limelight throughout the 1960s with such hits as “I Only Want to Be With You” (1964); “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” (1964), “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” (1965), “All I See is You” (1966), “The Look of Love” (1967), “Breakfast in Bed” (1969) and Son of a Preacher Man (1969). At the same time, Dusty was terrified that her lesbian love life would come to light and her career would be ruined. She also worried about its impact on family, friends and fans. Dusty Springfield hid her lesbianism for years, and used her Catholic upbringing as an excuse: “You have to concentrate on marriage and I’m a Catholic and can’t get divorced,” she said. Dusty was never reported to be in a relationship with a man. 

PARADE OF LOVERS

Dusty started churning through women beginning in the mid-sixties. In 1966 Springfield met American singer Norma Tanega, a Mexican-American singer, painter and activist. The couple fought just as hard as they loved. “I can’t tell you how many times I got that phone call at three in the morning,” said one of Dusty’s friends. “Get over here, Cat’s trying to kill me!” (Cat was Norma’s pet name for Dusty). Or, “John, come quick, Norma’s trying to kill me!” Dusty was prone to having flings behind Norma’s back. “I don’t mean that I leap into bed with someone special every night, but my affections are easily swayed and I can be very unfaithful. It’s fun while it’s happening, but it’s not fun afterwards because I’m filled with self-recriminations. The truth is I’m just very easily flattered by people’s attentions, and after a couple of vodkas I’m even more flattered.” She added, “I suppose to say I’m promiscuous is a bit of bravado on my part. I think it’s more thought than action. I’ve been that way ever since I discovered the meaning of the word. I used to go to confession and tell all my impure thoughts.”

Norma Tanega left Dusty in the early 70s when she found their relationship too difficult to sustain. According to Tanega, Dusty “wanted to be straight and she wanted to be a good Catholic, and she wanted to be black.” Springfield owned that while she was brought up Catholic, she no longer went to Mass. “It’s about six years since I made my Easter Duties. My mother’s going to love this. I still think that because I don’t go to Confession I’m going to go to hell but I haven’t done anything evil. I’m just lazy and self-indulgent.”

After Norma, Dusty began a string of on and off relationships, short affairs and one-night stands. From 1972-1978, she saw Faye Harris, an American photojournalist. In the 70s she was linked to the tennis pro Rosie Casals, although Casey’s said they were close friends, not lovers. There was a woman in Australia that shoved Dusty into a hotel fountain during a fight. In 1968, while recording her masterpiece album, “Dusty in Memphis,” she had a torrid affair with a woman named Sandy, drinking and partying so hard that she lost her voice. During the same trip, Dusty got into a fight with Sandy or another woman, which ended up with a TV in the hotel’s swimming pool at 4 am. One of them had picked up the TV and thrown it at the other. It went out the window and down 14 floors into the pool. One woman called the police on Dusty saying she had drugs. “As it happens I know who tipped them off,” she said. “There was a rather hysterical lady who was upset because I didn’t fancy her.”

In 1970 she gave an extremely brave interview to Ray Connolly in London’s Evening Standard, talking about her rumored attraction to women. “There’s one thing that’s always annoyed me, and I’m going to get into something nasty here. But I’ve got to say it because so many people say it to my face. A lot of people say I’m bent, and I’ve heard it so many times that I’ve almost learned to accept it. I don’t go leaping around to all the gay clubs but I can be very flattered. Girls run after me a lot and it doesn’t upset me. It upsets me when people insinuate things that aren’t true. I couldn’t stand to be thought of as a big butch lady. But I know I am perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy. More and more people feel that way and I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

THE OBSCURE YEARS

Dusty Springfield’s honesty came at a price— her popularity waned and she didn’t have a hit single for another 15 years. By the early 70s her stardom was over, and during the next decade and a half she faded into obscurity in LA as her fortune and career ebbed away. In 1972, Dusty had decided to flee the English press and move to California. The move left her short of money and without the support network she had in London. Her alcohol and drug use increased, and she found herself caught in an alcoholic haze that’s still too familiar to lesbians and gays torn between the closet and the need to live honestly. “When I knew Dusty, unfortunately, she was a mess,” said a lesbian business owner in LA who had a brief affair with her. “She was a very fragile, brilliant, special person—the sweetest, nicest person you could ever know. But she was also the most insecure person who ever lived. She was drinking, using, and slitting her wrists. She was so vulnerable.”

In the mid-seventies Dusty plucked up the courage to tell her parents that she was a lesbian—only to have it dismissed as unimportant or a joke. She was devastated by their reaction not to take her seriously. By then, her drug use was out of control, her love life reduced to a string of short-lived affairs, the sales from her recordings were low, and her royalties reduced to a trickle. She was often between stays in rehabs and hospitals. But she had yet to reach her lowest point.

Dusty and Sue Cameron

DEMONS, DRUGS AND ALCOHOLISM

In 1974, Springfield’s mother passed away. This brought her to a deep mental low. Her lover, Sue Cameron, said that Springfield would sit on the floor and hallucinate about demons. “She would scream a lot,” Cameron said. “She’s say, “Demons! Demons! They’re coming to get me! – over and over again. “She’d also threaten to harm herself. She said when she cut herself she knew she was alive, because she could feel it.” A succession of psychiatrists confirmed that Dusty was struggling not only with alcoholism but also mental illness; depression and bipolar disorder. She also attempted suicide multiple times. Cameron ended her relationship with Springfield when Dusty chased her with a knife. “I will never know whether she intended to hurt me or not,” Cameron said. “She was laughing at my terror as she came toward me, teasing me by thrusting the knife closer and closer as I backed up. In my heart I think she was playing a sick game that was almost out of her control. I ran out of there to save myself.”

In 1981, Dusty met Carole Pope of Rough Trade, a Toronto-based rock band known for their provocative lyrics. Their 1981 hit, “High School Confidential,” was one of the first explicitly lesbian-themed Top 40 hits in the world.

“She’s a cool blonde scheming bitch, She makes my body twitch. Walking down the corridor. What’s her perfume? Tigress by Faberge. She makes me cream my jeans when she comes my way.”

In 2000, Random House published Pope’s autobiography, Anti Diva. The book detailed Pope’s relationship with Springfield, how they met and first had sex. “My manager, Vicki Wickham, thought that Dusty and I should meet. I heard stories Vicki told about Dusty, and she sounded like a handful, but Vicki believed that you could have any woman you wanted if you put your mind to it. Her mantra, “Every Bird is pullable,” had become part of my philosophy. So, in the fall of 1980 I flew to New York to meet the Queen of the Mods and see her perform at a supper club called the Grand Finale. Vickie came with me. The place was packed with Dusty fanatics and celebs; the audience included Rock Hudson and Helen Reddy, the singer of “I am Woman.”

Carol Pope

“My first words were, “Vicki suggested we meet.” Dusty looked at my shyly and smiled. We started to talk and joke around, and within minutes were flirting madly with each other. In the middle of our dance of seduction, Helen Reddy came backstage with her husband. Dusty and I turned to each other and said, after they left, “Why is she married? She seems like a big dyke.”

Some months later, Dusty invited Carol to see her at the Montreal Ritz-Carlton. “I tentatively knocked on the door of Dusty’s suite. She answered, then stepped back into a rococo décor accented with heavy black and gold wallpaper. She seemed shy and unsure, and she was not alone. Her assistant—a girl draped in peals who epitomized the meaning of the word preppy—was introduced as Westchester. She discreetly left the room. Yes, the air was thick with sexual tension. She offered me a drink, and the next thing I knew we were all over each other. We tumbled into bed, half-naked. It was the first time I’d been with an older woman. Dusty had several years on me, and I found the idea very erotic. I fixated on her sensual mouth and unfathomable eyes. The most erotic thing we ever did in bed was this: I would beg Dusty to sing to me. She would put her mouth up to my ear. Then the sound of her voice, so intimate and so close, would wash over me in waves of pure pleasure.

Carol Pope asked Dusty to sing background vocals on a song, “The Sacred and the Profane,” she wrote for Rough Trade’s 1981 album, “For Those Who Think Young.” “Under the influence of Dusty—my twisted Catholic girl—my brain was inundated with images of Fellini films and Catholic morality.”

The hairdresser teaser her coif
With his tail comb
She has the tortured look of a Magnani
Constantly hounded by the paparazzi
The blood of Rome runs through her veins
She’s frightened by her overactive hormones
Mondo Italiano La Dolce Vita
Lust is written all over her face
She loves the smell of danger…
The fury of fallen angels
The aspirations of saints
The sacred and the profane

The relationship between the two started to erode the first time Carol had to take Dusty to the emergency room. “Dusty had taken some pills, coke, and God knows what else.” Carol took the knife out of Dusty’s hands when she started to cut her arms. “I tried to ignore the faded scars on her arms…What kind of self-loathing drove her to it?…Dusty was mainly silent about her past and the origin of her demons.”

“We broke up in LA. I told her I was being torn apart by her behavior. She was lost and I cared deeply about her, but she was fucking up my life. Dusty was very sweet, and resigned to the outcome. A few months before she died, Dusty called Carol to apologize. “She said, “I’m sorry for the way I behaved when we were together. You know I loved you.”

Dusty started to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to help her deal with her drinking. She met actress Teda Bracci at an AA meeting in 1982 and they moved in together in April 1983. Bracci recalled that during a trip to Rome Dusty kissed her on a balcony overlooking the Vatican in defiance of her faith. 

The two women wed at the end of 1983, exchanging vows in a backyard ceremony in LA’s San Fernando Valley. A lanky and vivacious brunette, Bracci appeared in some action films: a biker chick in CC & Company with Joe Namath and Ann Margaret; a prison inmate in a few episodes of Falcon Crest, a popular TV soap opera; a female lead in the LA premiere of Hair; and headlined in famous Sunset Strip rock clubs like The Troubadour and the Whiskey-A-Go-Go. The “best lady” at the wedding ceremony said Dusty wore a formal wedding gown, and the other bride wore a pants outfit with a vest and tie. Dusty was trying to stay sober, so anyone who wanted a drink would need to retrieve a bottle of Jack Daniels that hung from a rope outside the bathroom window. “Everyone seemed happy and peaceful that day,” the best lady said.

But like her other relationships, her marriage to Bracci quickly deteriorated into drunken violence. In one incident, Dusty menaced Bracci with a broken cup and slashed her leg. Bracci responded by hitting Dusty repeatedly in the head with a boot.

The last straw came on a day when Dusty was drinking wine and taking Valium. Teda returned to their apartment and the inevitable fight ensued. Bracci hit Springfield in the mouth with a saucepan and her teeth were knocked out. A plastic surgeon was able to patch her up, but damage to her face was permanent. The couple separated, and by 1987 Dusty headed back to Britain and a revival of her musical career.

BREAST CANCER

Dusty recorded several songs with the Pet Shop Boys, including the hits, “What Have I Done to Deserve This,” (1987) and “Nothing Has Been Proved,” (1988). In 1994, during work on her last album, “A Very Fine Love,” Dusty discovered she had breast cancer. Although her initial treatment was successful, the cancer returned and she died on March 2, 1999, in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, one month short of her 60th birthday. She had a Catholic funeral Mass in St. Mary the Virgin Church. Her casket was brought to the church by a horse-drawn carriage as she requested, and “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” was playing as her casket was carried into the church. Hundreds of fans and people from the music business attended her funeral, including ex-lover, Carol Pope.

In her last interview with the New York Times, Dusty said she would be very happy if her life took her back to Ireland. Her brother Tom, honored her wish and scattered a portion of her ashes near her favorite spot, the Cliffs of Moher. The rest of her ashes are buried under a granite marker in St. Mary the Virgin churchyard in Henley.

In the months before her death, Dusty reflected on her life with two of her friends. Lee Everett-Akin was the widow of gay DJ Kenny Everett. Like Dusty, he was raised Catholic, and that formation stayed with him throughout his life. “Being “outed” was one of her greatest fears. She just felt that she would be rejected by everyone if her secret came out. “We had a great affinity around her sexuality because Kenny felt exactly the same way. He was terrified of people finding out. They were very similar people, in that they were both brought up strict Catholics and that brought with it an awful lot of guilt.” Lee added that one of Dusty’s biggest regrets toward the end of her life was that she never settled down with someone. “She had so much love to give, even though she knew she was impossible to live with. She would say, “My life would’ve been so different if I’d had a good relationship.” Lee Everett-Akin had tried to persuade Dusty to write her life story, but Dusty told her she couldn’t remember most of it because of drugs and drinking. “The saddest thing of all,” Everett-Akin said, “was that when she was dying she told me she was embarrassed by her life, by the drinking, the failed relationships. She felt she had made so many mistakes in her life.”

Lee Everett-Akin’s comments echoed those of another close Dusty friend, Simon Bell, who moved in with her for the last 14 months of her life. “There were certain things she was addicted to, like the drink and the drugs and indeed relationships, that she eventually learned she just couldn’t have, said Bell. “She was never totally comfortable with the fact that she was a lesbian. She was very open privately with me but I think her Catholic background stayed with her right to the end and she never completely came to terms with it.”

MY LANGAN LOVE

The anger and the sadness of being a gay or lesbian Catholic always remains. Allies in local parishes, sympathetic clergy, and the large poll numbers of Catholics who believe their LGBT brethren should be treated fairly and respectfully encourage our belief that we truly belong; but the words we heard growing up and as young adults—that we were sick, our desires were twisted, that God, Jesus and the Church were against us—still resonate in our memories and emotions.

Despite all the negativity and doubt, there are times when we feel at home—with a place, in a song, with ourselves. In a YouTube video search of Dusty singing, I chanced on a clip of her performing “My Lagan Love” during a 1967 TV show. It is an old Irish ballad. “People get the idea,” she starts, “that all Irish songs are either “Paddy McGinty’s Goat” or “When Irish Eyes are Smiling,” all those lovely sorts of Hollywood Irish songs. Actually, the most beautiful ones I’ve ever heard are played by a very old gentleman somewhere in Donegal…The song that impressed me most of all was the one I’m going to attempt to sing for you now, called My Lagan Love.” A harper accompanied Dusty, who played an acoustic guitar.   

My Lagan Love

Where Lagan streams sing lullabies
There blows a lily fair.
The twilight gleam is in her eye,
The night is on her hair.
And like a lovesick Lennan-shee
She hath my heart in thrall.
No life have I, no liberty,
For Love is Lord of all.

And often when the beetles horn
Has lulled the eve to sleep
I’ll steal into her shelling lorn
And through the doorway creep.
There on the cricket’s singing stone,
She makes the boxwood fire
And sings in sweet and undertone
The song of hearts desire.

Her welcome, like her love for me,
Is from her heart within.
Her warm kiss is felicity
That knows no taint of sin.
And when I stir my foot to go,
‘It’s leaving Love and light,
To feel the wind of longing blow
From out the dark of night.

Dusty’s performance was shy and humble, which made her rendition of the song even more piercingly beautiful. The verses of anticipation, desire, love and longing were authentic; not the covert references to love in her Top 40 hits. Dusty was fully at home and in peace in the love song, and it was beautiful to hear, see and experience.

 

No Crystal Stair – Mabel Hampton’s Long Climb Home

Posted by Censor Librorum on Jul 23, 2022 | Categories: Faith, History, Lesbians & Gays

“Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” – From Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

Mabel Hampton was a dancer during the Harlem Renaissance, a domestic worker, and an early lesbian activist. In her later years, she worked with the Lesbian Herstory Archives to preserve LGBT black history. Hampton appeared in the films, “Silent Pioneers” and “Before Stonewall.” The Lesbian Herstory Archives has an extensive collection of taped reminiscences of her life, photos, personal papers, and her 1950s lesbian paperbacks.

In 1984 Hampton addressed the crowds at the New York City Pride Parade: “I, Mabel Hampton, have been a lesbian all my life, for 82 years, and I am proud of myself and my people. I would like all my people to be free in this country and all over the world, my gay people and my black people.” In 1985 she was named Grand Marshal of the Pride Parade. I marched in both of those parades. Gay Pride Parades in the 1980s had a festive spirit – marchers felt safe and empowered in the presence of thousands of other lesbians and gays. The marchers were also serious – we wanted the same civil rights as other Americans. Before the New York City Council passed the “gay civil rights” bill on March 20, 1986, we had no legal protection from discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations.

Most marchers were white, and spectators who lined the streets uptown were also white—friends and tourists. Downtown, much closer to the Village, spectators were primarily gay, and many of them were black, Hispanic with a handful of Asians. They didn’t march because to be spotted in the parade would have “outed” them, and if that happened their family would mostly likely have disowned them. They did not want to risk giving up their families.

Catholic marchers also enjoyed a special protest unit of our own co-religionists. Members of the Blue Army of Mary and other ultra conservative Catholics would throw holy water and shake rosaries as we walked by. Many of these scolds were women. I’m not sure what they intended to accomplish by throwing holy water on the marchers—an exorcism or miracle. The splash of water was refreshing on a hot, humid June day even though it was thrown in hate and disgust. But we also knew that it was their substitute for spit.

Reflecting on Mabel Hampton now, almost 40 years later and when I am much closer to her age at that time, I can only marvel, appreciate and respect what she had to endure to persevere as a proud black woman who was lesbian and a Catholic. 

A poem my father, Eugene Doherty, liked to use in his creative writing classes was “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes. It was written in 1922. The subject of the poem was a strong woman who had experienced poverty and setbacks but continued to strive and move forward. She encourages her son to do the same. I’m sure Dad had his own mother in mind; but I immediately thought of Mabel Hampton.

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin,’ honey,
I’se still climbin,’
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Mabel Hampton was born on May 2, 1902 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her mother died when she was a baby. She went to live with her grandmother, but after she died, Mabel was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in New York. She was seven. They treated her harshly and she was raped by the uncle. After that, Mabel decided to run away. “I went out with nothing but a dress, a jumper dress, and I walked and walked.” She was found at a playground by Bessie White, who took her into her home. Hampton lived in the White household until Bessie died. At 17 she was on her own. Arrested for prostitution, she served a two-year sentence at the Bedford Hills, NY reformatory. Hampton said she was falsely accused because she attended women’s parties.

After she was released from jail, she began life as a dancer and singer with an all-black women’s troupe on Coney Island in Brooklyn, NY. She met an older woman who introduced her to the word, “lesbian.” The two had one night together before the woman had to return to her husband in Philadelphia. “She taught me some things,” Hampton said. “I knew some of them, but she taught me the rest.”

From Coney Island, Mabel moved to bigger and more glamorous stages in Harlem. The 1920s were the time of the Harlem Renaissance, and Mabel met and partied with many black lesbian and gay notables, including Jackie “Moms” Mabley, Ethel Waters, Gladys Bentley, Ethel Williams and socialite A’Lelia Walker. “I had so many girlfriends it wasn’t funny,” Hampton recalled. 

While waiting for a bus, Hampton met a woman she described as “dressed like a duchess.” Her name was Lillian Foster, and the two met on September 22, 1932. Foster recalled the meeting decades later: “Forty-four years ago I met Mabel. We was a wonderful pair. I’ll never forget it…We haven’t been separated since in our whole life. Death will separate us. Other than that I don’t want it to end.” They referred to themselves as Mabel and Lillian Hampton and made their home at 639 E. 169th Street in the Morrisania neighborhood in the Bronx. Depending on the circumstance, they sometimes called themselves “sisters.”

After Hampton left dancing, she began cleaning homes for wealthy white families. It was during this time that she met Joan Nestle, the daughter of one of these families, who co-founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City in 1974. She volunteered for the organization, and her stories of the wild parties of the Harlem Renaissance were enjoyed by the other volunteers. Her memories and experiences contributed to the knowledge of the lives of black lesbians in the early 20th century.

In 1935, when she was 33 years old, Mabel Hampton was received into the Roman Catholic Church. She was baptized at St. Thomas the Apostle Church on West 118th Street in Manhattan, a church with a sizable congregation of black Catholics. The Lesbian Herstory Archives website stated, “It was a step in her ongoing quest for spiritual comfort, and included a lifelong devotion to the mysteries of the Rosicrucian, and a full collection of the writings of Marie Corelli, a Victorian novelist with a spiritual bent.”

There is no information at all on why Hampton decided to become a Catholic, what it meant to her, or how she reconciled her committed relationship with Lillian Foster with her faith. Obviously, she did, like thousands of other Catholic lesbians. A photograph of a collage of Hampton’s Catholic memorabilia includes prayer cards of friends or people she knew from the 1960s, her baptismal certificate, and membership in St. Augustine Catholic Church in the Bronx. She attended Pope Paul VI’s Mass in Yankee Stadium on October 4, 1965. Even if she was not a practicing Catholic at the end of her life, those papers were important to her as part of her life’s story.

I have thought a lot about who or what might have led Mabel Hampton to seek out baptism. Maybe she met a Catholic woman or a couple at one of the rent or dance parties she attended. Maybe she was curious and walked into a church and met a black sister who listened and answered some of her questions. Hampton’s life provides some clues. She strove for justice. She persevered. She was humble. She loved deeply. She shared. These qualities can be founded in anyone but are strengthened and reinforced in a person by faith. She also had the example of Bessie White, who rescued a child from the street and abuse and fed, clothed and cared for her.

The fact that Mabel Hampton was interested in Rosicrucian mysteries and the writings of Marie Corelli provides a few clues to her spirituality and spiritual interests.

A modern Rosicrucian group – The Ancient Mystical Order Roase Crucis (AMORC) was founded in New York City in 1915 by H. Spencer Lewis (1883–1939). Claiming that he had learned the teachings of the order from European Rosicrucians, Lewis attracted new members by distributing his teachings in mail-order lessons and pamphlets. Rosicrucians are concerned with the occult, astrology, and esoteric secrets.

Hampton’s collection of Marie Corelli’s books provides another hint of Hampton’s interest in mysticism and the supernatural. Marie Corelli, born Mary Mackay (1855-1924) was a popular novelist and Queen Victoria’s favorite author. A reoccurring theme in Corelli’s books is her attempt to reconcile Christianity with reincarnation, astral projection, spirit or time travel, and the occult. She was associated with a Rosicrucian organization. 

For over 40 years, Corelli lived with her companion, Bertha Vyver, and left everything to her when she died. She never identified herself as a lesbian, but frequent erotic depictions of female beauty appear in her novels.

Mabel Hampton died of pneumonia on October 26, 1989. She was 87 years old. She is buried in St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. Her life partner and wife, Lillian Foster, is also buried in St. Raymond’s.

I am very grateful to Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel and other volunteers from the Lesbian Herstory Archives for preserving and honoring the generous life of Mabel Hampton. She is an inspiration to the lesbians who follow in her footsteps. 

 

 

 

Saint Thecla the Evangelist

Posted by Censor Librorum on Apr 7, 2022 | Categories: Arts & Letters, Faith, History, Saints, Scandals, Sex

A healthy number of saints’ stories feature people who were “called to chastity” or to a relationship with Christ vs. marriage. All kinds of fantastic legends and tales ensued about the lengths to which these people would go to avoid marriage and connubial sex. Ultimately, they were all successful in their quest to avoid sex with members of the opposite sex. They ended up living alone (rarely) or with a same-sex companion (often) or same-sex community in a wilderness setting (usually).

Thecla at her window listening to Paul

St. Thecla the Evangelist is one of those saints. She would face anything but marriage.

Thecla’s story is preserved in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, an apocryphal story of Paul’s impact on a young virgin, Thecla, and her subsequent trials, adventures and spiritual leadership as his disciple. She infuriated many Church Fathers, including Tertullian, who griped that some Christians were using the example of Thecla to legitimize women’s roles in teaching and baptizing.

According to Acts, Thecla was a beautiful young woman of Iconium (now Konya, Turkey) whose life was transformed when she heard St. Paul preaching in the street beneath her window. She announced her intention to break off her engagement and to embrace a life of chastity. Her finance was furious. Her family was scandalized. They denounced her to the governor who had her arrested and condemned to death. Thecla was tied naked to a stake, but a miraculous thunderstorm put out the flames. She is saved. Once home, Thecla disguises herself as a youth and escapes to reunite with Paul and travel to Antioch.

While traveling, she is sexually assaulted by Alexander, a prominent man of Antioch. One account reads: “Repulsing the assault, she tears his cloak and knocks the wreath from his head. Alexander (the would-be ravisher) brings her before the magistrate who, despite the protests of the women of the city, again condemns Thecla to death, this time ad bestias. Pleading to remain a virgin until her death, she is taken in by ‘a certain rich queen, Tryphaena by name,” who lost her own daughter. (Tryphaena was the widow of Cotys, King of Thrace and a great-niece of the Emperor Claudius. In Romans 16:12, Paul sends greetings to a Tryphaena.)

Queen Tryphaina

Thecla is allowed to return to Tryshaena. She rides a lioness (who licks her feet) and is paraded through the city. The next morning, Alexander comes for her and escorts her to the arena to die. There she is stripped and thrown to wild beasts. A lioness (presumably the one who licked her feet) protects her from the attacks of lions, bulls and bears. Thecla prays, and throws herself into a trench of water (an euripus) and baptizes herself. The water is full of ferocious and hungry seals. A cloud of fire covers her nakedness and kills the vicious seals. The women in the stands of the arena cast fragrant nard and balsam into the area, which had a pacifying effect on the remaining wild animals. The awestruck governor releases Thecla and she returns to the palace of Queen Tryshaena. Refusing all entreaties to stay with the queen, Thecla dresses in male clothing and sets out to find Paul. She tells him that she baptized herself, and had been commissioned by Christ to baptize and preach in his name. According to the story, Paul recognized her as a fellow apostle and encouraged her to preach the Gospel. Wherever she went, “a bright cloud conducted her on her journey.”

Thecla encouraged women to live a life of chastity and to follow the word of God. She returned home to find her finance had died and her mother indifferent to her preaching. She left, and in one version of her story, she dwelt in a cave in Seleucia Cilicia (southern Turkey) for 72 years and formed a monastic community of women, whose members she instructed “in the oracles of God.”

In another version, Thecla passed the rest of her life in a rocky desert cave in the mountains near the town of Ma’aloula (Syria). She became a healer and performed many miracles. She remained persecuted, and men still conspired to rape and kill her. Just as she was about to be seized, Thecla cried out to God for help. A fissure opened in the stone walls of her cave and she disappeared. It is said that she went to Rome and lay down beside Paul’s tomb.

Thecla and animals

Her cave became an important pilgrimage site in early and medieval Christianity. Today visitors can still see Thecla’s cave and the spring that provided water for her. The nuns who live at the Mar Thecla monastery will tell you her story and show you the opening in the rock where the saint escaped.

There are many wonderful parts of St. Thecla’s story, beginning with her determination to live her life following her calling to evangelize, rather than accede to family or societal expectations. Her protection by animals, the public affirmation by groups of women, are also very positive. She was unashamed of her nakedness when she was led twice to the arena to die. She was proud of her body, her virginity, and her sole possession of it. The biggest surprise was her encouragement by St. Paul ( wives-be-subordinate-to-your-husbands), accepting her as a fellow apostle. The ugly, horrifying constant throughout her life is the desire by men to rape Thecla or kill her if she won’t submit to their authority. Men who are rapists do not believe that they are the problem–females (or males) who aroused them are at fault. What can Christianity do to change this perception?

 

 

 

Charlotte Mew’s Fearful Longings

Posted by Censor Librorum on Jan 16, 2022 | Categories: Arts & Letters, Faith, History, Lesbians & Gays, Sex

“Charlotte Mew: Madness and Sapphic Desire,” by Rebecca Batley introduced me to this slightly mad, brilliant, and reclusive poet. Almost immediately she reminded of some closeted Catholic lesbians that I have met. These women longed for love and sex but were fearful of acting on their desire. They were afraid of losing their respectability; and the tension between their religious faith and sexual need filled them with dread and a sense of loss. No wonder they were a little unhinged. Deeply closeted women often don’t read signs well, and can fixate on women who aren’t interested in them. This results in a predictable rejection. 

Charlotte “Lotti” Mary Mew was born on November 15, 1869, in London, England. Several of Mew’s siblings suffered from mental illness and were committed to mental institutions. This scared Charlotte and her remaining sister Anne, so much that they made a pact never to marry. In 1898, their father died without leaving any money for the family. This forced the Mews to rent out part of their home, and Charlotte took a job.

As a schoolgirl, Charlotte fell in love with her headmistress, Lucy Harrison. Harrison herself fell in love with a teacher named Amy Greener, and they moved away. Mew had two other serious crushes: the writer Ella D’Arcy in 1898 and popular novelist and suffragette May Sinclair nine years later. Her loves were unrequited. There is no information on whether Charlotte’s physical longings were ever consummated with anyone, but her poem, There Shall Be No Night There describes a tender fantasy:

“Then through my blood the coming mystery
Of night steals to my heart and turns my feet
Toward that chamber in the lamp-lit street,
Where waits the pillow of thy breast and thee.
‘There shall be no night there’—no curtained pane
To shroud love’s speechlessness and loose thy hair
For kisses swift and sweet as falling rain.

What interested me the most about Charlotte Mew was the tension between her religious belief and her lesbian desire. Tensions and strains between our physical and spiritual selves have ripped apart, wounded, or maimed many lesbians. Charlotte Mew was no exception. Does God love me for who I am and what I am? Many lesbians have concluded that the answer is “No,” and leave religion to end their isolation and painful loneliness. Mew stuck with religion but suffered. She believed, but she also carefully coded her desires and doubts in her poetry:

“I think my body was my soul,
And when we are made thus
Who shall control
Our hands, our eyes, the wandering passion of our feet,
Who shall teach us
To thrust the world out of our heart: to say, till perhaps in death,
When the race is run,
And is forced from us with our last breath
“Thy will be done”?

“Madeleine in Church” by Charlotte Mew (1916)

In 1926, her sister, Anne, was diagnosed with cancer. Charlotte took care of her until she died in 1927. After her sister’s death, she became deeply depressed and entered a nursing home. She committed suicide by drinking Lysol, a disinfectant. Charlotte Mew died on March 24, 1928, at the age of fifty-eight. 

Charlotte Mew is buried with her sister Anne in Hampstead Cemetery, West Hampstead, London. The epitaph reads, “Cast Down the Seed of Weeping and Attend.” The phrase is from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vol. II (Purgatorio), Canto XXXI (31). Dante meets his ladylove, Beatrice, and recalls his love for her. She admonishes him.

“Cast down the seed of weeping and attend;
So shalt thou hear, how in an opposite way
My buried flesh should have directed thee.”

“Never to thee presented art or nature
Pleasure so great as the fair limbs wherein
I was enclosed, which scattered are in earth.”

The dismal reproach to follow a “higher good” instead of human love followed poor Charlotte Mew to her grave.

I wish instead to provide her and her work and art a happier ending, inspired by Psalm 126:6 –

“Those who go forth weeping,
Carrying sacks of seed
Will return with cries of joy,
Carrying their bundled sheaves.”

Almost 100 years after Charlotte Mew’s death, there are lesbians of faith who are married, enjoying the physical delights of a loving relationship, and looking forward together to the promise of salvation and eternal life.

The Farmer’s Wife, a poem by Charlotte Mew read by Tom O’Bedlam

 

 

 

 

Andy Warhol’s Catholic Influences

Posted by Censor Librorum on Jan 5, 2022 | Categories: Arts & Letters, Celebrities, Faith, History, Lesbians & Gays, Scandals, Sex

Andy Warhol is an influential and celebrated 20th century artist and pop icon. He was gay and was raised Catholic. His faith and sexuality influenced his art. As an adult, he did attend church from time to time, especially after he was shot and almost killed in 1968 by Valerie Solanas, a writer and radical feminist.

Andy Warhol with Bibles

“Revelation” an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum from November 19, 2021 to June 19, 2022, features Warhol artworks that are infused with both strains, often harmoniously and deeply revealing. The show was developed by the Andy Warhol Museum’s chief curator, Jose Carlos Diaz and curated at the Brooklyn Museum by Carmen Hermo.

Some of the show’s highlights include Warhol’s two gigantic versions of “The Last Supper” in pink and yellow; and a fusion of the face of Christ, an advertising tagline, and a shirtless young man; and a shot-up, scarred Warhol reminiscent of Christ’s wounds or a martyred St. Sebastian.

Much of Catholic dogma, art and religious expression is focused on the body. The sacrament of the Eucharist—eating and drinking Christ’s body—can have sexual overtones. Human figures in Catholic art history are often beautiful men, some in sexually suggestive poses. These influences went into Warhol’s formation as an artist and as a man, and he combined them with the pop arts trends of the day. Catholicism has inspired generations of homosexual artists through its sensual and sexually charged imagery.

 

 

The First Catholic Lesbian Book: Hungerheart -The Story of a Soul

Posted by Censor Librorum on Dec 12, 2021 | Categories: Arts & Letters, Celebrities, Faith, History, Lesbians & Gays, Sex

Hungerheart is a lesbian novel written by British author Christabel Marshall under her adopted male name, Christopher St. John. The book was published in 1915 in London by Methuen & Co. The novel is a first-person account of Joanna, “John” Montolivet that follows her search for love and passion. At one point she lives with Sally, a young actress, and they are “happy as a newly married pair, perhaps happier…” Sally decides to marry a man, and Joanna/John finds solace in the arms and bodies of stormy and dramatic women. Eventually she heads for quieter shores, and coverts to Catholicism. Her “friendship” with a young nun fulfills her heart’s hunger. “There are things that can be lived, but not chronicled, and our friendship is one of them,” Joanna/John describes. “Who in the world could understand our moments of union? Who in the cloister either? But they are understood in heaven…Thy love for me is wonderful, passing the love of men.”

Hungerheart never achieved the fame of another book written a decade later by another Catholic lesbian—Radclyffe Hall’s, The Well of Loneliness. Only a few copies of Hungerheart survive in research libraries. For some odd reason, it was not tagged with a homosexual or degenerate label but cataloged as a work about “Catholic spirituality.”

Christabel Marshall

The author’s book embodied her voracious love life. Christine Gertrude Marshall a.k.a. Christopher Marie St. John (1871-1960) was an English suffragette, a playwright and writer. After college, Marshall served as secretary to Lady Randolph Churchill and actress Dame Ellen Terry. Marshall became romantically involved with Dame Ellen’s daughter, Edith (Edy) Craig (1869-1947). The two women began living together in 1899. Marshall attempted suicide when Craig accepted a marriage proposal from composer Martin Shaw in 1903. Edith Craig was an actress, director, producer and costume designer.

In 1912 Christabel Marshall converted to Catholicism and took the name, St. John out of affinity with St. John the Baptist. Her friend, Claire Atwood, converted around the same time. Atwood gave Una Troubridge and Radclyffe Hall, another Catholic couple and close friends, a relic of the true cross acquired by her ancestors from a pope. Una put it with candles and flowers in a shrine in her bedroom.

In 1916, artist Claire (Tony) Atwood (1866-1962) moved in with Craig and Marshall. Their menage a trois lasted until Craig’s death in 1947. Una Troubridge used to call them, “Edy and the boys.” They often wore men’s attire to match their male names. “Miss Craig,” wrote Virginia Woolf in her diary, “is a rosy, ruddy ‘personage’ in white waistcoat, with black bow & gold chain loosely knotted.” Marshall wrote rhat the three women “achieved independence within their intimate relationships…working respectively in theatre, art, and literature, and drew creative inspiration and support from one another.”

Edith Craig

In 1932, when she was sixty-one, Marshall fell madly in love with Vita Sackville-West, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and a successful poet and writer. Their affair continued for several years and caused huge fights between Marshall and Craig. Atwood unsuccessfully tried to serve as a peacemaker.

In 1935, under her male name, Christopher St. John, Marshall wrote a biography of a distinguished physician, Dr. Christine Murrell, the first female member of the British Medical Association’s Central Council. Titled, “Christine Murrell, M.D., Her Life and Work,” St. John/Marshall wrote the dedication to both of Murrell’s lovers: Honor Bone, M. D. and Marie Lawson, a printer, editor, and tax resister. Like St. John/Marshall, Murrell had a threesome household.

Christabel Marshall/Christopher St. John died in 1960. She is buried next to Claire Atwood at St. John the Baptist’s Church, Small Hythe, England. This is the church where Dame Ellen Terry worshipped and where her funeral Mass was held in 1928. Edith Craig’s ashes were supposed to be buried there as well, but by the time of Marshall’s and Atwood’s deaths, they had been lost. A memorial was placed in the cemetery instead.

Why did so many Anglican clerics, creatives and/or socially prominent gays and lesbians convert to Catholicism in the Victorian and Edwardian eras? The Catholic Church has always been opposed to homosexual sex; but it also has been tolerant of gay sex among its members, including priests, the hierarchy and religious, as long as they were discreet and parroted official teaching in public. At that time, being Catholic was a little naughty, not socially acceptable, and showed a streak of rebellion and independence. Creatives were drawn to the sensuousness, the pageantry, and the mysteries in Catholicism. Catholicism emphasizes the body—the body of Christ in our mouth, the bodies of saints who give themselves up to pain and ecstasy, the homoerotic images found everywhere there are Catholic artists and cathedrals. For women, Catholicism offers many role models of women who lived full and fulfilling lives—without men.

Christopher St. John’s Shrine

 

 

The Catholic, Fruit-Flavored Liberace!

Posted by Censor Librorum on Oct 7, 2021 | Categories: Arts & Letters, Celebrities, Faith, History, Lesbians & Gays, Scandals, Sex

In 1959, the flamboyant entertainer, Liberace, sued the Daily Mirror, a British paper, for insinuating that he was a homosexual. Daily Mirror columnist, William Connor, writing under the pen name, Cassandra, described Liberace as “…the summit of sex – the pinnacle of masculine, feminine and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want…a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.”  In court, Liberace denied being a homosexual (“I’m against the practice because it offends convention and it offends society”) and sued for libel.  He won and was awarded £ 8,000. Liberace skipped off and coined his famous saying, “I cried all the way to the bank.”

To the day of his death from AIDS in 1987, Liberace denied he was gay. He belonged to the generation of show business homosexuals (Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Anthony Perkins, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, Agnes Moorehead..) who believed that their personal lives were private, and certainly not political.  Liberace’s Catholic upbringing may have had a hand in shaping his attitudes, but so did social mores of post-World War II America. Actors and entertainers’ contracts included morals clauses. If they were exposed as homosexuals, their careers were over and they were economically ruined.  “I don’t think entertainers should publicly air their sexual or political tastes,” said Liberace. “What they do in the privacy of their home or bed is nobody’s business.”

He encapsulates the institutional Catholic philosophy of homosexuality for both clergy and laity:  flirt, enjoy romance, have sex with tricks and lovers, but always deny your homosexuality and condemn it in others.  Above all, say nothing political. This practice was most recently on display with the outing and resignation of Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, the general secretary of the U.S. Conference for Catholic Bishops in July 2021. Burrill was exposed through his cellphone data which indicated that he had repeatedly used his Grindr app to find men and had visited gay bars and bathhouses. 

Wladziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919-February 4, 1987) was the highest paid entertainer in the world at the height of his fame in the 1950s-1970s. Born in Wisconsin to parents of Italian and Polish origin, “Mr. Showmanship” was known for his excesses on the stage and off. After watching a movie about Frederic Chopin in 1945, Liberace made the candelabra his symbol, always on his piano during a performance. But he was best known for his elaborate, sensational costumes. There was a “King Neptune” costume; a red, white, and blue hot pants outfit; one of his favorites called the “lasagna” costume, which featured a cape that fanned out when he spun around. Two of the most “over the top” capes were designed by Liberace’s dear friend and furrier, Anna Nateece. One was white fox fur with a train 12 feet wide and 16 feet long. The second was made from 500 mink skins and weighed over 150 pounds. They were both trimmed with rhinestones.

His homes exhibited the same excess. Mirrored walls, a marble quarry’s worth of floors, colonnades and fixtures, a casino with a slot machine jackpot of three candelabras, a canopied bed with an ermine spread. On the bedroom ceiling was a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel with Liberace’s face among the cherubs. Liberace loved dogs and had about 20 of them between his Las Vegas and Palm Springs houses. They must have had a hard time skidding and slipping on the shiny marble floors.

Liberace was camp before the word came into wide-spread use. When the word first appeared in the early 20th century, it denoted “ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, effeminate or homosexual behavior.” In the 1966 Batman television series with Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward is the Boy Wonder—the campiest show ever–Liberace played a dual role as a concert pianist, Chandell, and his gangster-like twin, Harry, who was extorting Chandell into a life of crime as “Fingers” in the episodes “The Devil’s Fingers” and “The Dead Ringers.” According to Joel Eisner’s The Official Batman Batbook,” they were the highest rated of all the show’s episodes. The show had huge homosexual overtones as well. Burt Ward speculated in his book, My Life in Tights, that Batman and Robin could have been lovers. What drew fans to Liberace was not only his flamboyant and outrageous costumes and act, but his warm, gracious, polite, and down-to-earth way of speaking to fans and his audience from the stage or television. “I talked to my viewers as if they were my friends, my next-door neighbors,” he said.

Liberace gave a hint to one of his connections to Catholicism when he once remarked on religion: “There will always be the need for people to worship,” he said, “whether it’s religion, an entertainer or a movie star. I’ve always felt close to religion because it’s a form of show business.”  The late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Mother Angelica and even Bishop Robert Baron of Word on Fire could appreciate that statement. But when it comes to costumes, Liberace undoubtedly would feel closest to Cardinal Raymond Burke with his 20-foot train of watered silk, scarlet gloves, and jeweled red hats.

In November 1963, Liberace almost died from kidney failure during a performance in Monroeville, a town right outside of Pittsburgh, PA. The day before he had been cleaning his costumes in an unventilated room with a toxic cleaning solvent. The deadly fumes nearly killed him. He collapsed onstage and was rushed to St. Francis Hospital. Liberace was hooked up to a new device – a dialysis machine – and given a 20% chance of surviving. His doctors told him to get his affairs in order. “I took it very philosophically,” Liberace said. “I had led a good life, made a lot of people happy, and I had no regrets.” He described one experience during his hospital stay in his autobiography, The Wonderful Private World of Liberace that was a turning point in his recovery: “A very young and lovely nun wearing a white habit came to see me late one night, when I was very near death. She said that she was going to pray to Saint Anthony for me, and that he would make me well. The very next day, I began to get well. I described the nun to Mother Superior at the hospital and asked who she was. The Mother Superior said, ‘There are no nuns in the hospital who wear white habits.’” Dialysis took off after it saved Liberace’s life, and St. Francis Hospital gained a new, life-long patron. Liberace raised money for the hospital, financed a new intensive-care ward, and made sure that the sisters had tickets whenever he performed in Pittsburgh. 

Soon after his Monroeville hospital stay Liberace was snared by sexual blackmailers. “The Chickens and the Bulls” extortion scheme is forgotten now, but it was a scandal in the mid-1960s. In a New York Times article published on March 3, 1966 – “Nationwide Ring Preying on Prominent Deviates,” a celebrity believed to be Liberace is described. “A TV celebrity, a twinkling star who has millions of female fans all over the world, refused to take the witness stand. However, he did tell investigators that he had paid blackmailers more than $20,000. “I can afford to lose the money,” he said, adding: “I hope they die of cancer.”

That incident didn’t slow Liberace down. He had affairs, tricks, and romances, taking in live-in lovers, usually blond, blue-eyed young men with strong physiques. One of his lovers, Scott Thorson, said Liberace’s first sexual encounter was with a Green Bay Packer football player. Thorson is also the source for a story of an affair between Liberace and Rock Hudson.

4/17/79
Liberace show at the Las Vegas Hilton

Scott Thorson, 62, met Liberace in 1976 when he was 17. When he was 18, Liberace hired him to act as his personal friend and companion.  He also incorporated Thorson into his Las Vegas performances. Thorson would don a chauffeur’s uniform covered in rhinestones and drive Liberace on stage in a Rolls Royce. The five-year relationship ended in 1982, when Liberace had members of his retinue forcibly eject Thorson from his Los Angeles penthouse. Thorson admitted that at least part of the reason for the breakup was his drug addiction.

But Scott Thorson wasn’t finished with Liberace. Shortly after he was dismissed/dumped, Thorson filed a $113 million dollar lawsuit against Liberace, the first same-sex palimony suit in U.S. history. Liberace continued to deny that he was a homosexual and insisted that Thorson was never his lover. The case was settled out of court in 1986, with Thorson receiving $75,000 in cash, three cars and three pet dogs. Thorson sniped that Liberace was a “boring guy” in real life, and mostly preferred to spend his leisure time cooking, decorating, and playing with his dogs.

In August 1985, Liberace was secretly diagnosed as HIV positive. Cary James Wyman, his alleged lover of seven years, was also HIV positive and died in 1987 at the age of 33. Another alleged lover, Chris Adler, came forward after Liberace’s death and claimed that Liberace had infected him with HIV. Adler died in 1990 at age 30. Besides his long-term manager, Seymour Heller, private physician, Dr. Ronald Daniels, and a few family members and close friends, Liberace kept his HIV positive status a secret until the day he died and did not seek any medical treatment for it.  Urged by a former boyfriend to admit that he was sick, he refused, saying “I don’t want to be remembered as an old queen who died of AIDS.”

Liberace died on February 4, 1987 at The Cloisters, his home in Palm Springs, California. He was 67 years old. His death was initially attributed to anemia from a watermelon diet, and emphysema and heart disease from chain smoking. However, the Riverside County coroner performed an autopsy and while emphysema and coronary artery disease were present, the real cause was pneumonia due to complications from AIDS. Liberace received the Last Rites a few days before he died. “He had the rosary wrapped around his right hand. There was no jewelry. The rosary beads were his jewelry,” said his publicist, Jamie James.

Within hours of his death, his body was taken from his home directly to Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles. He was buried on February 7th and is entombed with his mother and brother, George. The marble façade has the very enigmatic epitaph: “Sheltered Love.”  A memorial service for Liberace had been held the day before at Our Lady of Solitude Church in Palm Springs. Two stars were present – a neighbor, actress Charlene Tilton from the television series, Dallas, and Kirk Douglas. There was a second memorial service at St. Anne’s Church in Las Vegas on February 12th, with Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor, Robert Goulet, Rip Taylor and Sonny King in attendance.  In contrast to his glittery public life, Liberace’s burial was private, and his memorial services were quiet and low key. 

I agree with Liberace that not everyone is called—or should—make their private life public. Like most gays and lesbians of his era, he lied about or denied his homosexuality.  That is an unadmirable trait, but understandable in the context of his time, his entertainment career and his faith.  Except for a despised handful, there were no gay rights supporters, no “out” showbusiness people, religious, public figures, or academics until deaths from AIDS began in the 1980s and the gay and lesbian rights movement began to pick up momentum. His longtime publicist, Jamie James, once said, “He had this image, but he was no sissy. You have to be a pretty strong, brave person to wear what he wore and act like he did during those days. You had to have guts, believe me.”

Reading:

Liberace Cooks! – A Cookbook by Liberace. 1970

Liberace: An Autobiography by Liberace. 1973

The Wonderful Private World of Liberace by Liberace. 1986

Behind the Candelabra:  My Life with Liberace by Scott Thorson. 1988.

Liberace: The True Story by Bob Thomas. 1988

Liberace: An American Boy by Darden Asbury Pyron.  2000

Rocking the Closet: How Little Richard, Johnnie Ray, Liberace and Johnny Mathis Queered Pop Music by Vincent L. Stephens.  2019

 

 

 

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Meeting Archbishop John J. O’Connor

Posted by Censor Librorum on Aug 3, 2021 | Categories: Bishops, Dissent, Faith, History, Lesbians & Gays, Politics

Archbishop O’Connor, 1984

John J. O’Connor, Bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania, arrived in New York City in January 1984.  He was named Archbishop of New York shortly before his installation and made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 1985.  O’Connor stayed in the news, and in the center of multiple controversies until he died in 2000.  He was very passionate about several issues, particularly opposition to abortion and support of organized labor. He also didn’t mince words about lesbian and gay people: no hiring, housing, or civil rights protections. From the start he was a relentless foe of Mayor Edward Koch’s Executive Order 50, a directive which prohibited “agencies that receive city funds from discriminating against homosexuals in employment.”

Although he denied it, O’Connor pressured Francis Mugavero, Bishop of Brooklyn, to shift his diocese’s stance of engagement with gay people to stiff opposition to legal protections. In February 1984 they issued a joint statement in which they claimed that the gay rights bill was “exceedingly dangerous to our society,” explaining, “We believe it is clear that what the bill primarily and ultimately seeks to achieve is the legal approval of homosexual conduct and activity, something that the Catholic Church, and indeed other religious faiths, consider to be morally wrong.  Our concern in this regard is heightened by the realization that it is a common perception of the public that whatever is declared legal, by that very fact, becomes morally right.”

Archbishop O’Connor was very clear on his position about homosexuals in the church’s employ–“We have said repeatedly that we have no problem whatsoever in employing people admitting to or not admitting to homosexual inclinations. If an individual avows engagement in homosexual activity, then we want to be able to say whether or not we will employ that person in this particular job, and we feel this is a perfectly appropriate thing for any agency. You know, we have five thousand, seven hundred youngsters in child-care agencies, and they are the ones currently at issue.” O’Connor said it would be wholly alien to Catholic teaching to employ in a child-care agency someone who openly advocated homosexuality.

In September 1984, I was a member of a delegation from the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights (CLGR) who met with Archbishop O’Connor at the New York Catholic Center to discuss Executive Order 50. Terrence Cardinal Cooke, O’Connor’s predecessor, had refused to meet with Dignity/New York to discuss it. Coalition representatives were packed with Catholics, some of whom were members of Dignity and the Conference for Catholic Lesbians (CCL).  When we arrived at the building, all in business attire, the guard at the door waved us through saying, “This way, ladies, or whatever…” As we got on the elevator, someone who knew who we were and where we were headed whispered, “Good luck.”

We were ushered into a conference room to wait for Archbishop O’Connor. I had a seat toward the end of the table facing the door.  I saw Archbishop O’Connor striding down the corridor towards the meeting room.  He was alone; no aides accompanied him. He looked grim.  I don’t know what possessed me, but I winked at him.  He winked back!  We smiled. O’Connor walked into the room and walked around the table shaking everyone’s hand. I thought, “Perhaps there’s hope.” He sat down and the meeting started.

I can’t remember what was said, but all our arguments and personal experiences of ridicule, threats, and rejections by our friends, family, co-workers and faith based on our sexual orientation didn’t affect him. He said something to the effect that the Church would never accept us in the way we wished to live.  The table went totally silent.  It was a stunning moment; I felt the pain from his statement totally wash over me.  I cried.  Several other people at the table also cried, including a man who had recently lost his children in a custody battle.  I turned to look at Archbishop O’Connor and saw that he looked surprised.  He may have thought that our firmness and anger at our Church meant that we hated it or didn’t care.  The opposite was true. There was nothing else to say and we left.

A few weeks later, I decided to write him a thank you note for the meeting.  I told him I appreciated that he met with us and listened to what we had to say.  I also said that while we strongly disagreed, I had respect for him for his straightforward expression of what he believed.

Three weeks later I received a reply to my letter.

Dear Karen:

 Your letter…was extraordinarily kind and touched me deeply. I am indeed grateful.  It is my sincere hope and prayer that through the years ahead I will be able to serve you in some way that you will consider helpful.  My convictions about Church teaching are very deep.  I do not anticipate a change in such teachings, and neither do I see it precluding our loving one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Please believe that I will give deeply sincere consideration to any recommendations that can help us in that regard in accordance with the tenets of the church which I am certain we both love.

 You and your associates are very much in my masses and my prayers, and I ask that you keep me in yours as well.

Faithfully in Christ,

 John J. O’Connor

We never spoke, or saw one another again, but the experience of meeting Archbishop O’Connor helped to guide me on how to engage with others with whom I don’t agree:

-Listen to adversaries as well as friends. One discussion may not change any minds, but it will have an impact and it shows a basic respect and courtesy.

-Look for the good in people. See a whole person, not just an opinion or point of view.

-Persevere. The Coalition members at the O’Connor meeting continued the fight for gay and lesbian civil rights.  Dignity and CCL continued to work for the respect and recognition of lesbian and gay people in the Church.

On March 20, 1986, the New York City Council passed a homosexual rights bill by an unexpectedly wide margin of 21 to 14. The bill forbade discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, employment, and public accommodations. The bill did provide an exemption for religious institutions.

The fear that the Archdiocese of New York expressed came true:  public protections guaranteed by law did change public perception of lesbian and gay people. The widening acceptance and protection encouraged people to live and love more openly. As more and more gay people came out to their friends, family and colleagues, media portrayals also changed, which encouraged even more people, and younger people, to come out.

In 2013, even the highest level of the Church changed.  In response to a question from the news media about a gay priest, Pope Francis made the statement, “Who am I to judge?”

 

 

 

Finding Our Place as Catholic Lesbians: Chapter 8 – “Ephphatha” – Be Opened

Posted by Censor Librorum on Jul 16, 2021 | Categories: Accountability, Faith, History, Lesbians & Gays, Popes

The need to speak, to be heard, to be brought out of silence and isolation into openness to God and others was one of Jesus’ miracles, perhaps one of his most important works.  In the Gospel of Mark (7:31-37) there is one small, but very important word – a word that in its deepest meaning sums up the whole ministry and message of Christ.  This word, “Ephphatha,” means “Be opened.”  The gospel reading says:

“Again Jesus left the district of Tyre
and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee,
into the district of the Decapolis.
And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment
and begged him to lay his hand on him.
He took him off by himself away from the crowd.
He put his finger into the man’s ears
and, spitting, touched his tongue;
then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,
Ephphatha!”– that is, “Be opened!” —
And immediately the man’s ears were opened,
his speech impediment was removed,
and he spoke plainly.
He ordered them not to tell anyone.
But the more he ordered them not to,
the more they proclaimed it.
They were exceedingly astonished and they said,
“He has done all things well.
He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

The historical and literal meaning of this passage is that, thanks to Jesus’ intervention, a deaf mute’s ability to hear and to speak were restored.  Before he had been closed, isolated, and limited in his ability to communicate. His recovery brought him an “openness” to others and to the world, and through his new ability to communicate, he would relate to the world in a new way.  On a spiritual level, this passage describes the closing of the deepest core of a person, what the Bible calls the “heart.” It is the heart that Jesus came to liberate— to “open” —to enable us to fully live our relationship with God and with others. It is a gesture of healing we remember and honor every time the Gospel is read: Open my mind, my mouth, my heart, to receive your holy words. 

This miracle stands in stark contrast to much of the hierarchy of the church, which does not want to hear what women, gay people and their advocates have to say, which wants to remain deaf, and which also wants these same groups to remain mute. Perhaps the openness that inspires Pope Francis to reach out to people on the margins, to hear the words of different kinds of people, to engage those of us that have been closed off is the miracle for which we have been waiting.

Read the entire article – The Importance of Being Who We Are – Finding Our Place as Catholic Lesbians.

The Importance of Being Who We Are3