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Douglas Park Boys

“Squalid gratification” at the expense of gays

Illinois Times

August 26, 1982

The disapproval, indeed disgust with which the general public regarded homosexuality among men in the 1980s demanded that they seek gratification in sordid settings, which justifies the disgust. The incident here described involved a man I knew and liked and worked with, a man who was better in every way than the men—whom I also knew—who were sneering at his disgrace.

 

This piece, like several among my older work, raises the now-controversial issue of repeating in print racial and sexual perjoratives in common use. As I have done elsewhere on this site, I have acquiesced in censorship to the extent of placing a fig leave atop the offending letters. I also censored the same term used here in an entirely disapproving way by Garry Wills—I feel obliged to apologize to Wills.

 

I was in a locker room at the Y when, above the slap and chatter, I heard a sneering voice say something about "those Douglas Park boys." Its owner's buddies reacted with knowing laughter that made me bristle with anger. A few weeks previous, three fairly well-known Springfield men had been arrested in a local park in a men's john frequented by homosexuals. The news had struck me at the time as sordid and a little sad—sad because I know that the decent people of Springfield, which is about as small as a town of 100,000 people can get, are utterly unforgiving of those whose vices stray from the conventional. More than reputations were lost; one of those involved quietly "resigned" his post with a socially-connected community group which had knowingly enriched itself for decades on donations from half the tax cheats, shoddy peddlers, and con artists in town. We can assume that his step quickened when he heard the gurgle of tar being heated up in the parking lot by his board of directors.

 

I am not gay myself, and thus usually worry no more about the problems of being gay than I do about getting into heaven or making par. But this little incident made me think, as they say. My irritation at these men being made the butt of easy jokes had partly to do with human sympathy, I suppose. Partly it had to do with what 1 knew of their mockers, most of whom are heterosexual only from lack of imagination and whose notion of a mature sexual relationship is one in which the man pays by check instead of cash. Partly, though, I was irritated at myself, for having momentarily forgotten that enduring animus toward gays persists with a virulence scarcely diminished by time.

 

It's not like it's hard to see or anything. For example, a few months earlier J., speaking at a public forum about the ways issues pertaining to human sexuality are portrayed in the local press, observed that homosexuality tends to be written about only in terms of deviate behavior. (Gay bars, men's rooms, and bus stations are no more typical of gays than swingers' clubs, singles bars, and wife beating are of heteros, except in newspapers). Privately, J. occasionally complains that people who would never dream of using words like "kike" or even "girl" in its more demeaning sense make homophobic jests comfortably.

 

It seems ironic that in an era of sexual liberation, when alternative varieties of sexual preference are talked about in public more openly than ever before, there should be this lingering contempt for gays. Of course, that very liberation may fertilize bad feelings. We tend to hate the things we fear the most, after all, and as accustomed sex roles have been redefined many men have become certain about what manhood is, and means. Inevitably a certain amount of this discomfiture shows itself as a nervous and self-defensive homophobia.

 

Mostly, though, I think it's just that the liberation hasn't happened yet. There is a stratum of sophisticated straight opinion which assumes that the grosser forms of anti-gay sentiment are relics of the past, like segregated lunch counters. Because of the papers they read and the people they know, they tend to know more about New York and San Francisco than they do about central Illinois, and more importantly, mistake the more tolerant atmosphere of those cultural islands for that of the country as a whole.

 

Yet even in Washington, D.C., (as the retiring gay head of the U.S. Legal Services Corp. told the New York Times in March) government officials still feel compelled to keep their sexual preferences a secret to avoid official reprisals. One wonders how many gays working for the state in Springfield still lead such closeted lives. True, a few Illinois cities such as Evanston and Champaign-Urbana have enacted ordinances to protect the rights of gays in housing and employment. But state gay activists regarded it as a triumph that five gay rights bills (which eventually were roundly defeated) were even voted out of a General Assembly committee onto the House floor.

 

Apparently big-city newspaper editors hang around in locker rooms too. The Chicago Tribune, a paper ordinarily so heedless of propriety that it publishes Ronald Reagan's speeches on economic affairs, still regards homosexuality as the love that dare not speak its name; last week it ran an editorial about the recent rumors of homosexual conduct between members of Congress and pages without once using the word "homosexual" or "gay." Instead, it referred to it as "a squalid kind of sex gratification."

 

(Interesting, too, that the Trib that day ran a "Form letter for college students" which said in part, "Dear Mom. You were wrong about my roommate. He's (a) not a pothead (b) not stealing stuff out of my desk (c) not gay." This from a woman whose husband probably collects underwear catalogs.

 

One is accustomed to associating retrograde social attitudes with Chicago, of course, but this sort of opinion survives even in places like New Jersey, where a jury not long ago showed that it is still permissible for a wife (in this case Mrs. Nancy Kissinger) to throttle a person who accuses her husband (the former Secretary of State) of being gay. Had someone called hubby a war criminal—a more heinous charge, and one which more closely approaches the truth—the jury probably would have found the allegation insufficient provocation. A man can order other men killed in the U.S. of the '80s without disapproval, in other words, but he can't sleep with them.

 

Homosexuality remains a dirty enough word in the minds of enough people that one can smear other people with it. Take for example the rumor that Gov. Jim Thompson is gay. This story (made plausible by his forty years of bachelorhood) surfaced in the dying days of the 1976 campaign. In his 1979 book, Big Jim Thompson of Illinois, Robert Hartley recounts how aides to Thompson's opponent—an oafish fellow from Chicago whose name I've forgotten—"began calling in person on newspaper editors to plant rumors of Thompson's homosexuality." It had no effect on the election, perhaps because it got no wide circulation. The story first made the rounds in Chicago when Thompson was U.S. Attorney, and Thompson has always denied it. In the absence of any proof one must assumed is not true, but there are those of us who would think better of Thompson if it were; he would have shown a willingness to depart from the conventional in at least one major policy area.

 

Yet another sign of our accelerating retreat from tolerance is the resurgence—or what I perceive to be a resurgence—of the term "faggot" as a general purpose pejorative among teenage boys. It is seldom used literally, to accuse its target of homosexual behavior. Rather it is applied, like nukes, because it is the most damaging weapon at hand; because it is the worst thing kids think they can say about another boy, it is the best insult to use.

 

What is wrong with this use of "faggot" is what is wrong about epithets. I have been the target of name-callers from time to time. I objected to it mainly because the names usually offend my sense of accuracy. I associated with no n----rs when I was called "n----r-lover" as a boy, although I enjoyed the company of several African-American friends. And only people as resolutely ignorant of politics as a schoolteacher would have denounced me as a communist, as at least one did a few years later.

 

As Garry Wills (writing in, of all places, Illinois Issues magazine) noted in a recent essay, "We all learn, indecently early, the words that can break friendships, wound hearts, end worlds—words like kike and spick and n----r and whore and fag. We can reach with words through another person's shield of privacy and dignity." (Including, I feel compelled to note, shields of undeserved dignity.)

 

I am not so silly as to propose that we quit calling each other names. Names are often the only weapons the powerless have against the powerful. But like any weapon they should be wielded circumspectly and in a good cause. Let us resolve to put no more blood of innocent bystanders on our hands. ●

SITES

OF

INTEREST

John Hallwas

Essential for anyone interested in Illinois history and literature. Hallwas deservedly won the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society.

Lee Sandlin Author

One of Illinois’s best, and least-known, writers of his generation. Take note in particular of The Distancers and Road to Nowhere.

Chicago Architecture Center

See Home Page/Learn/

Resources for a marvelous building database, architecture dictionary, even a city planning graphic novel. Handsome, useful—every Illinois culture website should be so good.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago

 

The online version of The Encyclopedia of Chicago. Crammed with thousands of topic entries, biographical sketches, maps and images, it is a reference work unmatched in Illinois.

Illinois Great Places

The Illinois chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2018 selected 200 Great Places in Illinois that illustrate our  shared architectural culture across the entire period of human settlement in Illinois.

McLean County Museum

of History

A nationally accredited, award-winning project of the McLean County Historical Society whose holdings include more than 20,000 objects, more than 15,000 books on local history and genealogy, and boxes and boxes of historical papers and images.

Mr. Lincoln, Route 66, and Other Highlights of Lincoln, Illinois

 

Every Illinois town ought to have a chronicler like D. Leigh Henson, Ph.D. Not only Lincoln and the Mother road—the author’s curiosity ranges from cattle baron John Dean Gillett to novelist William Maxwell. An Illinois State Historical Society "Best Web Site of the Year."

Illinois Digital Archives

 

Created in 2000, the IDA is a repository for the digital collections of the Illinois State Library and other Illinois libraries and cultural institutions. The holdings include photographs, slides, and glass negatives, oral histories, newspapers, maps, and documents from manuscripts and letters to postcards,  posters, and videos.

The Illinois State Museum

 

The people's museum is a treasure house of science and the arts. A research institution of national reputation, the museum maintains four facilities across the state. Their collections in anthropology, fine and decorative arts, botany, zoology, geology, and  history are described here. A few museum publications can be obtained here.

Chronicling Illinois

“Chronicling Illinois” showcases some of the collections—mostly some 6,000 photographs—from the Illinois history holdings of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

Chicagology

I will leave it to the authors of this interesting site to describe it. "Chicagology is a study of Chicago history with a focus on the period prior to the Second World War. The purpose of the site is to document common and not so common stories about the City of Chicago as they are discovered." 

Illinois Labor History Society

The Illinois Labor History Society seeks to encourage the preservation and study of labor history materials of the Illinois region, and to arouse public interest in the profound significance of the past to the present. Offers books reviews, podcasts, research guides, and the like. 

Illinois Migration History 1850-2017

The University of Washington’s America’s Great Migrations Project has compiled migration histories  (mostly from the published and unpublished work by UW Professor of History James Gregory) for several states, including Illinois. The site also includes maps and charts and essays about the Great Migration of African Americans to the north, in which Illinois figured importantly. 

History on the Fox

An interesting resource about the history of one of Illinois’s more interesting places, the Fox Valley of Kendall County. History on the Fox is the work of Roger Matile, an amateur historian of the best sort. Matile’s site is a couple of cuts above the typical buff’s blog. (An entry on the French attempt to cash in on the trade in bison pelts runs more than

2,000 words.)

BOOKS

 OF INTEREST

SIUPromoCoverPic.jpg

Southern Illinois University Press 2017

A work of solid history, entertainingly told.

Michael Burlingame,

author of Abraham 

Lincoln: A Life 

One of the ten best books on Illinois history I have read in a decade.

Superior Achievement Award citation, ISHS Awards, 2018

A lively and engaging study . . .  an enthralling narrative.

James Edstrom

The Annals of Iowa

A book that merits the attention of all Illinois historians

as well as local historians generally.

John Hoffman

Journal of Illinois HIstory

A model for the kind of detailed and honest history other states and regions could use.

Harold Henderson 

Midwestern Microhistory

A fine example of a resurgence of Midwest historical scholarship.

Greg Hall

Journal of the Illinois

State Historical Society

Click  here 

to read about

the book 

Click  here 

to buy the book 

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Southern Illinois University Press

SIU Press is one of the four major university publishing houses in Illinois. Its catalog offers much of local interest, including biographies of Illinois political figures, the history (human and natural) and folklore of southern Illinois, the Civil War and Lincoln, and quality reprints in the Shawnee Classics series.

University of

Illinois Press

The U of I Press was founded in 1918. A search of the online catalog  (Books/Browse by subject/Illinois) will reveal more than 150 Illinois titles, books on history mostly but also butteflies, nature , painting, poetry and fiction, and more.  Of particular note are its Prairie State Books,  quality new paperback editions of worthy titles about all parts of Illinois, augmented with scholarly introductions.

University of

Chicago Press

The U of C publishing operation is the oldest (1891) and largest university press in Illinois. Its reach is international, but it has not neglected its own neighborhood. Any good Illinois library will include dozens of titles about Chicago and Illinois from Fort Dearborn to

Vivian Maier.

Northern Illinois University Press

The newest (1965) and the smallest of the university presses with an interest in Illinois, Northern Illinois University Press gave us important titles such as the standard one-volume history of the state (Biles' Illinois:
A History of the Land and Its People) and contributions to the history of Chicago, Illinois transportation, and the Civil War. Now an imprint of Cornell University Press.

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Reviews and significant mentions by James Krohe Jr. of more than 50 Illinois books, arranged in alphabetical order

by book title. 

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Illinois Center for the Book

Run by the Illinois State Library, The Center promotes reading, writing and author programs meant to honor the state's rich literary heritage. An affiliate of the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book, the site offers award competitions, a directory of Illinois authors, literary landmarks, and reading programs.

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