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Men Like That: A Southern Gay History by John Howard; University of Chicago Press; 395 pages; $27.50.
Though Men Like That touches on the lives of gay activists, entertainers and even a few politicians, it is mostly the story of people who are not famous and do not want to be famous; they just want to be left alone. Furthermore, Men Like That is about gay life in Mississippi, a state that's ignored by most gay scholars, even by the eminent James T. Sears (Lonely Hunters). Sears called 1960's Florida "the Mississippi of the homosexual"; these days Mississippi itself could very well claim the title. But this was not always so. According to author John Howard: "In the second half of the twentieth century, male-male desire in Mississippi was well enmeshed in the patterns of everyday life. Men interested in intimate and sexual relations with other men found numerous opportunities to act on their desires, and did so within the primary institutions of the local community - home, church, school, and workplace. Never inherently hostile to homosexual activity, these institutions repeatedly fostered it."
White Yankees who went south to help with the movement were branded as free-love "beatniks"; white women who had sex with black men and, even worse, white men who had sex with black men. The fact that state NAACP president Aaron Henry and attorney Bill Higgs--a native white supporter of the movement - were thought to be homosexual led many bigots to conclude that queer sex was a major threat to Mississippi's white Christian civilization. The state's sodomy law began to be vigorously enforced after 1965, as scores of men were arrested in tearooms in Jackson and Hattiesburg and gay bars were literally driven out of town. The rise of gay activist groups and the largely-gay Metropolitan Community Church only fueled straight Mississippi's rampant homophobia. In spite of all this, homosexual desire continued to be expressed in Mississippi, aided perhaps by "The heterosexual will to not-know, the pretense of ignorance [which] proved amazingly resilient." Henry remained president of the NAACP for decades after his sexuality was questioned; and Congressman Jon Hinson was reelected anyway after it was revealed that he frequented gay hot spots in Washington, D.C. (Hinson was later involved in another gay sex scandal, resigned from Congress, and subsequently died of AIDS-complications.) The recent gay-bashing death of Billy Jack Gaither in Alabama shocked many Mississippians who were convinced that all Southern faggots moved to Atlanta or New Orleans at the first opportunity. The fact that Gaither and other native boys-- including, it seems, one of his murderers--continued to enjoy male sex in spite of all external and internal opposition speaks volumes for the power of the gay sex drive.
"Jackson's Metropolitan Community Church appealed to queer Mississippians who personally felt the sting of church-sponsored oppression yet had retained the commitment to Christian spirituality," notes Howard, adding that "Gay people now seemed startlingly similar to average Mississippians in their desire for safe communities, work environments, and houses of worship - in short, in their desire for normalcy. . . . The most effective affirmation of queer life in Mississippi could no longer preclude Christian faith." This all-too brief review of Men Like That ignores the book's most interesting aspects, particularly Howard's interviews with fifty-odd "men like that" whose recollections provide the heart of the narrative. There are also some surprises in the book, most notably Howard's rediscovery of pulp novelist and artist Carl Corley, who is alive and well and living in Zachary, Mississippi. As Howard reminds us, many of Corley's novels --written during the "golden age of gay pulps" (1966-72)--were vivid re-enactments of gay life in rural Mississippi as lived by Corley and others like him. Other artistic "representations" of "men like that" discussed by Howard includes Thomas Hal Philip's 1950 novel The Bitterweed Path - now back in print in a handsome new edition edited by Howard --and Bobbie Gentry's 1967 song "Ode to Billy Joe". Howard himself is a native Mississippian who grew up in Brandon but came out in Washington, D.C. (He now teaches American history at the University of York.) Men Like That's most personal segment relates Howard's 1986 visit to Jack's Saloon - a "white queer bar" in Jackson --and Bill's Club, an African-American bar across the street. (Gay life in Mississippi, as elsewhere, is largely racially segregated.) "Expecting to find a comfortingly anonymous, homogeneous mass, like the crowds of Dupont Circle discos, I instead ran into old friends, a former next-door neighbor, a young woman I once dated. I saw Joe, who knew me by a false name and whom I knew only vaguely, through a sodden, faraway recollection: a car, a country road, a church parking lot." Writing Men Like That was for Howard a sort of home-coming, a link with his queer Mississippi roots. It was also a tribute to those GLBT people who, unlike himself, could not or would not leave Mississippi behind. "[W]hile I ran off to Washington to come out of the closet, under the protection of namelessness and economic advantage, they and others like them toughed it out in Mississippi, crafting lives of determination and grit." These people, by being who they are where they were, are the true heroes of our communities, and of Howard's history. |
Men Like That is the latest in a series of historical studies that focus
on the lives of "ordinary" lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Most queer histories published before 1990 were studies of "great gays in history":
famous figures in government, society and the arts whose fame somehow
"justified" homosexuality.
Even gay activism has established a footing in Mississippi, though here
as elsewhere it has adapted itself to local ways. Living in the most
Christian state in the most Christian region in the most Christian country in
the world, queer Mississippians share in the evangelical fervor of the vast
majority of their neighbors. They reject queer activists' attacks on
organized religion and welcomed MCCs into their state.
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