Gay History 101

California passed a law "requiring" gay history be taught in California schools. Perhaps it is time to focus on some interesting tidbits about gay men in history that you may not know about.

Two of my very favorite gay men in history are Ernst Röhm and his SA deputy Edmund Heines. Rohm was co-founder of the Sturmabteilung ("Storm Battalion"; SA), the Nazi Party militia and later was the SA commander.  In 1931, the Münchener Post, a Social Democratic newspaper, obtained and published Röhm's letters to a friend in which Röhm discussed his sexual affairs with men.

Let us look at gay men in America. Let's start with notable gay men in American politics. Michael Medved, in his column The "Gay History Law" Elevates the Irrelevant", lists:

William Rufus Devane King - "This thoroughly obscure Dixie politician left behind no major accomplishments or stirring speeches. Vice President King, who served as a Congressman from North Carolina and Senator from Alabama prior to his election to the nation's second highest office in 1852, may have qualified in two of the new protected categories: as both a "gay" and "transgendered American. The life-long bachelor shared rooms in Washington for fifteen years with a fellow bachelor Senator (and future bachelor President), James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. Political enemies of the two men whispered about their intimate friendship and Tennessee Congressman Aaron Venable Brown openly referred to the two comrades as "Buchanan and his wife." President Andrew Jackson teasingly described King as "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy," apparently alluding to the Senator's odd habit of visiting glittering Washington parties dressed as a woman.

President James Buchanan - Fellow bachelor and friend of Senator of William Rufus Devane King was the inept fifteenth President of the United States whose dithering and uncertainty helped bring on the Civil War.

Harvey Milk - The openly-gay activist. Milk served less than eleven months in his one and only public position (as a San Francisco Supervisor) before his tragic assassination by one of his colleagues.

Roy Cohn- The ruthless aid to Senator Joe McCarthy, who died of AIDS even while he berated and degraded his fellow homosexuals. Ann Coulter insists she still admires Cohn (and writes about him warmly in her defense of McCarthy, "Treason"). However, most journalistic and media accounts portray him as a corrupt bully and loathsome villain.

Gay traitors are historically important. Here is a recent example.

Private Bradley E. Manning (Wikileaks) - Ginger Thompson stated, in a New York Times article, that in Wales, OK "classmates made fun of him [Bradley Manning] for being gay". Ginger noted that former neighbors in Oklahoma described the young Manning as "opinionated beyond his years about politics, religion, and even about keeping religion out of politics.", and that in the Army, Manning's "social life was defined by the need to conceal his sexuality under 'don't ask, don't tell' ". At a young age Manning was part of the gay agenda, which includes pushing gay rights via politics as well as denouncing opposition to the gay lifestyle by churches and religious organizations. He essentially became obsessed with the repeal of DADT.

Ginger said that sometime in 2008, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (the epicenter for the gay rights movement), Manning became "part of a social circle that included politically motivated computer hackers and his boyfriend, a self-described drag queen. So when his military career seemed headed nowhere good, Private Manning, 22, turned increasingly to those friends for moral support".

Once PVT Manning embraced the gay lifestyle he became deeply disturbed. His acceptance of the gay lifestyle and the friends he made both in and outside the military led him to what he is today - a traitor to his country.

American history includes famous mass murders (from Wikipedia). Gay history has no shortage of these. For example:

William George Bonin - Bonin was a serial killer and gay sex offender also known as the "Freeway Killer". On November 17, 1968, at age 21, Bonin committed a sexual assault on a youth. In late 1968 and early 1969, he kidnapped and assaulted a further four youths between the ages of twelve and eighteen. In 1969, he was indicted on five counts of kidnapping and four counts of sexual assault on five youths. He pled guilty to molestation and forced oral copulation and was sentenced to the Atascadero State Hospital as a mentally disordered sexual offender amenable to treatment. In 1971, he was sent to prison, declared unamenable for further treatment. Bonin was released in May 1974 after doctors concluded he was 'no longer a danger to others', but was back behind bars just sixteen months later for raping a 14-year-old hitch-hiker named David McVicker at gunpoint and attempting to abduct another teenager, for which he was sentenced to between one and fifteen years in prison at Orange County Jail. In October 1978, Bonin was once again released, with eighteen months probation. He took a job as a truck driver, rented an apartment in Downey and even found a girlfriend. In 1979, he was again arrested for molesting a teenage boy. This parole violation meant that he should have been sent back to prison, but an administrative error meant he was released. A close friend who collected him from the Orange County police station later recalled that as he was driving Bonin home, Bonin told him: "No-one's going to testify again. This is never going to happen to me again."

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer - Dahmer was an American serial killer and gay sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders were particularly gruesome, involving rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. On November 28, 1994, he was beaten to death by an inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution, where he had been incarcerated. Jeffrey Dahmer committed his first murder in the summer of 1978, at the age of 18. His father was away on business and his mother had moved out, taking his brother with her; Dahmer was left behind, alone. That June, Dahmer picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks and offered to drink beer with him back at his father's house, planning to eventually have sex with him. When Hicks tried to leave, Dahmer bludgeoned Hicks to death with a 10 lb. dumbell, striking the back of his head, later saying he had committed the crime because "the guy wanted to leave and I didn't want him to." Dahmer buried the body in the backyard. By summer 1991, Dahmer was murdering approximately one person each week. He killed Matt Turner on June 30, Jeremiah Weinberger on July 5, Oliver Lacy on July 12, and finally Joseph Brandehoft on July 19. Dahmer got the idea that he could turn his victims into "zombies" — completely submissive, eternally youthful sexual partners — and attempted to do so by drilling holes into their skulls and injecting hydrochloric acid or boiling water into the frontal lobe area of their brains with a large syringe, while the victim was usually still alive. Other residents of the Oxford Apartments complex noticed terrible smells coming from Apartment 213, as well as the thumps of falling objects and the occasional buzzing of a power saw. Unlike many serial killers, Dahmer killed victims from a variety of racial backgrounds.

California teachers have their work cut out for them explaining to their students the historical truth about the gay lifestyle. This is a story worth telling.