Bob and Jack, at 83, Maintain Gay Card

Jack Reavley, Bob Claunch at Director Stu Maddux at a screening in Los Angeles, CA

A CLUE AT HOW THE GAY COUPLE STAYS IN TOUCH:

Hi Bob and Jack:

Thanks so much for the subscription to the Advocate and OUT Magazine. We are enjoying them both and I've already read through the January issues. I've always admired all the gay savvy periodicals on your coffee table. Now I feel like I will have a fighting chance to keep MY gay card in 2008 as much as you both do. I do wish that they would have made you guys one of their OUT100 this year. You would have been perfect for it.

Stu Maddux, Director
Bob and Jack's 52-Year Adventure

Bob and Jack win in Long Island

Bob and Jack's 52-Year Adventure has just won the Jury Award for Best Short Documentary at the Long Island Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

"Thanks-you" to the panel that decided on us above so many great films on the festival's program. It truly makes Jack and I feel that our lifetime together is special to more that just us.
As a movie fan, a JURY award is so wonderful to have in addition to the audience choice awards that have come our way.
The award certificate came as a message in a bottle through the mail. Very clever!
I stupidly got rid of the bottle part before taking a picture. No matter. I think this picture I've borrowed from another screening probably shows how I looked when I opened it. -Bob

A recent screening at the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center

From Bandanas To Blogs

Bob, I thought your readers would find this as fascinating as I do. It's written by our biggest supporter in the Boston area.
Best regards,
Stu Maddux, Director Bob and Jack's 52-Year Adventure

From bandanas to blogs
by Bob Linscott
EDGE Contributor
Thursday Nov 29, 2007

We have come a long way from the days when the only way to meet another gay person put us at great risk or relied upon secret codes like colored bandanas, earrings or hidden societies like Mattachine. LGBT folks coming out today are one mouse click away from meeting hundreds of other people like themselves. Now, most dating sites ask if you want to date a man or woman and you can even customize your potential date by specifying age, height, weight, hair color, or education.

To appreciate the relative ease of connecting today I would like to look back at the ways gay and bi-curious men found each other over the past three generations. In many cases we did so at great risk of bodily harm or social exclusion.

In order to explore this question, I turned to the men who attend Ethos’s weekly luncheon for LGBT seniors, and my colleagues in the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus and the JP Men’s Group (for a middle perspective). The input from LGBT youth comes from my years as an educator and GSA Advisor. A subsequent Generation Us column will explore the same issues with women.

Ralph, a man approaching his eighties and one of my regulars at the Café, had a good chuckle when I told him about my research for this story. He said "I can answer that easily. The way we met in the old days was the three B’s: Balconies, Bushes and Baths; those are all gone now." Ralph stumbled into the gay scene in the ’50s by accident; he loved watching movies, especially John Wayne westerns. He was surprised by the number of people that would congregate in the dark balconies of the theaters. Then, when someone sat right next to him in an empty row he caught on. After that, Ralph became an avid moviegoer since that was the easiest way for him to meet other men.

Camille, in his 80s, spoke about the baths in New York City. He has a fondness for that era in the mid-’60s because "it provided a sanctuary where we could truly be ourselves. It was more than a place for sex, it was our entire social outlet. We could talk openly there but we couldn’t associate with one another in the real world. It was also a pure time, before AIDS entered the gay scene and changed everything."

Some men, especially those who grew up in rural areas, also spoke about "the bushes." Tom, a colleague in the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus, described growing up queer in Ohio in the early sixties as "not fun and very lonely." He heard rumors about the city park and that became the only means he could connect with other gay men. He said it was very dangerous and he was assaulted there once.

Clearly not all men met through sexual encounters back then. Some, like Jim, 74, sought out a socio-political gathering of gay men known as the Mattachine Society. He felt that finding the courage to attend that meeting was the only way to meet other men like himself.

The next generation of men I spoke with, the men who came out in the ’70s and ’80s, had new means available: personal ads and the bars. Although gay bars have been in existence for ages, people felt safer to venture out and frequent them, given the end of police raids thanks to Stonewall and the emerging gay rights movement.

Almost all of the men I spoke with who came out in this era mentioned their first contact with the gay community was through bars like Sporters, Chaps and Buddies. Dean, another fellow chorus member, who came out in the late ’80s, said that the first people he met were through newspaper personals in the Globe and the Phoenix because there wasn’t a Worldwide Web back then. For some this seemed like a safer route than the bars, provided that you could figure out terminology like "SWJM Greek Active ISO GAM French Passive."

There is one thing that clearly defines the experience of the younger gay community, those who came out in the ’90s and present decade: the Internet. Some of the daring ones came out in high school or college but almost all of them made their first contact with another gay person online, on websites with chat rooms and personals like America Online. Later, more specialized sites catered to strictly gay and gay curious clientele such as Planet Out, Gay.com and Manhunt. Ed, a recent college graduate, says that "with the advent of Facebook (which launched in February 2004) students who are willing to self- identify their orientation on their personal profiles can easily find all the other students who are gay, bi, lesbian or transsexual."

With the increased visibility and acceptance of gay issues in mainstream culture students are coming out at younger and younger ages and technology is trying to catch up to them. Harlan, one of my former students, now a high school senior, came out when he was 13. There was absolutely nowhere for him to go in middle school so he had to wait until high school and he transferred to a school with a Gay Straight Alliance. Many of the gay websites do not cater to youth, but fortunately new websites strictly for LGBT youth started appearing on the scene. Websites such as Mogenic (claiming to be "The biggest gay and lesbian youth community on earth") and The Gay Youth Corner (GYC.com) are very popular for youth 13 to 24.

The ease of connecting with hundreds of other gay men one’s own age would have been unfathomable to some of the seniors I initially spoke with. Many of these men risked their lives and reputations to seek out the company of gay men.

So, have we lost anything with the swift and easy access to the Internet? One figure, clearly mentioned fondly by the first two groups, was the "older gay mentor." Many men who came out in the ’50s through the ’80s describe the archetype of the "wise older gay friend" who taught them about gay life. None of the young men I spoke to mentioned such a mentor or role model. Has their access to the Internet, gay newspapers and the support systems within high schools and colleges for LGBT youth taken over that role?

Because of the rapid change in the way we have met over the decades, one question looms in our future. What’s next? Will future generations have gay bars or gay choruses and other venues to meet face to face? If increased social acceptance means assimilation, how will that impact the way the next generation seeks the company of other gay men and women?

copyright 2007 Bay Windows