Bad Gays

Born in 1876,Weimar-era gay publisher and activist Friedrich Radszuweit joined public gay life in 1923, when he founded the Bund für Menschenrecht (Federation for Human Rights, or BfM) in Berlin and began publishing dozens of gay, lesbian, and trans*-themed periodicals. The BfM grew to become the largest (indeed in some sense the only) mass-membership LGBT organization of its time. It claimed 100,000 members. Too bad its founder would end up advocating for collaboration with the Nazis.  ----more---- SOURCES: Beachy, Robert. Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity. New York: Vintage Books, 2015. Halifax, Noel. "Richard Linsert and the First Sexual Liberation Movement." http://socialistreview.org.uk/420/richard-linsert-and-first-sexual-liberation-movement Marhoeffer, Laurie. Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. Miller, Ben. "Friedrich Radszuweit and the False Security of Collaboration." http://outhistory.org/blog/i

Cambridge-educated art historian, Keeper of the Queen's Pictures, expert in French baroque art – and soviet spy? We profile Sir Antony Blunt, an art historian whose youthful political convictions reveal intriguing connections between sexuality and espionage, and whose dramatic life provided the basis for John LeCarrè's classic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  ----more---- SOURCES: Boyle, Andrew. The Climate of Treason. London: Coronet, 1982. Carter, Miranda. Antony Blunt: His Lives. London: Macmillan, 2001. Costello, John. Mask of Treachery: Spies, Lies, Buggery, and Betrayal. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1988. Lownie, Andrew. Stalin's Englishman: Guy Burgess, the Cold War, and the Cambridge Spy Ring. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2016. Simkins, John. "Antony Blunt - Spartacus Educational." https://spartacus-educational.com/SSblunt.htm Wright, Peter. Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Secret Intelligence Officer. New York: Penguin Viking, 1987. Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terr

It's Andrew Sullivan: the gay catholic conservative journalist, supporter of race science, inventor of gay marriage, and self-appointed arbiter of the morality and respectability of the gay community. ----more---- Sources: Murray, Charles N. and Richard Herrnstein. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. (New York: Free Press, 1994). Rubin, Gayle: "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." in: Carole Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger (Abingdon: Routledge, 1984). Sullivan, Andrew: published works and interviews/profiles of, including: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/06/gay-marriage-votes-and-andrew-sullivan-his-landmark-1989-essay-making-a-conservative-case-for-gay-marriage.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090425202254/http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/andrew-sullivan-thinking-out-loud https://www.thenation.com/article/andrew-sullivan-overexposed/ https://newrepublic.com/article/113639/andrew-sullivans-gay-life-gay-death-1990 Virtua

If you liked Yiorgos Lanthinos' court psychodrama The Favourite, you'll love this exploration of the complicated life of James VI and I – a king who united Scotland and England, persecuted witches, and granted his male favorites extraordinary power and privilege. Come for the court drama and stay for in-depth discussions of primitive accumulation and the question of whether using the word 'gay' to describe a 16th-century monarch makes any sense at all.  ----more---- Sources: Anderson, Perry. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso Books, 1979. Ackroyd, Peter. Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. London: Chatto and Windniss, 2017. Bergeron, David. King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999. Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia, 2002. Holstun, James. Ehud’s Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution. London: Verso Books, 2002. Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix

We take a look at the fascinating life of T. E. Lawrence: poet, archaeologist, sadomasochist, and agent of Arab self-determination and British colonial rule.  ----more---- Sources: Aldrich, Robert: Colonialism and Homosexuality (Routledge, 2002) Lawrence, T. E.: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom ed. Norton, Rictor: My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries (Leyland, 1998) http://rictornorton.co.uk/lawrence.htm Sattin, Anthony: The Young T. E. Lawrence (Norton, 2015)  

We profile Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, the beautiful and dissolute poet, publisher, and lover of Oscar Wilde–who helped bring Wilde to ruin, became an antisemite, and generally personifies the term "evil twink energy."  ----more---- Sources and further reading: Frank Harris: Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions  Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand  Douglas Murray: Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas

A discussion of the life and ideology of Ernst Röhm, the world's first openly gay politician: and a Nazi. ----more---- Sources and further reading: Eleanor Hancock: "Only the Real, the True, the Masculine Held Its Value: Ernst Röhm, Masculinity, and Male Homosexuality." Journal of the History of Sexuality Vol. 8, No. 4 (Apr., 1998), pp. 616-641. Laurie Marhoeffer: "Queer Fascism and the End of Gay History." Notches Blog, June 19, 2018. http://notchesblog.com/2018/06/19/queer-fascism-and-the-end-of-gay-history/ Laurie Marhoeffer: Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis. University of Toronto Press, 2015. Boaz Neumann: "The Phenomenology of the German People's Body (Volkskörper) and the Extermination of the Jewish Body." New German Critique No. 106 (Winter, 2009), pp. 149-181. Spartacus Educational: Ernst Röhm. https://spartacus-educational.com/GERroehm.html/