Loneliness

"Finally, if the literature regarding homosexuality is to be believed, the inevitable mark of the homosexual is loneliness. It is not without significance that the first great novel on lesbianism was called The Well of Loneliness and it would seem that much of the frantic seeking of companionship in which the homosexual indulges (including the frequent changing of partners) is a recognition of this state... this loneliness seems to be a part of the cross of the homosexual who must, by nature of his inversion, bear. One hopes that the homosexual "societies" help, to some degree, to meet this problem, one tends to doubt it."

Richard Byfiels, "A Pastoral View of Homosexuality," Pacific Coast Theological Group, November 1965, p. 5-6, [courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society Archive, Don Lucas Papers; Diocesan Committee Documents, 1965 folder 19/22].

While this comment is found in the midst of a long essay about how pastors should work with gay people in 1965, it is admittedly a product of the media's portrayal of gay people at the time. The image above is from the article "The Sad 'Gay' Life: The Homosexual Man" [Star, Jack, Look, January 10, 1967 (courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society Archive, Don Lucas Papers; Mattachine Document Clippings folder 19/16)]

While it is surely true that some of the rhetoric about sad lonely gay men was designed to make homosexuality a less desirable lifestyle for youth, it is not completely missing the mark. The nature of the closet and the loss of social and familial support that many gay individuals experienced, would naturally lead to loneliness. It should also be said that the dynamics of urban life also create a sense of loneliness for many (regardless of their sexuality or gender identities).

It is particularly this loneliness that the pastors working with the Vanguard youth sought to address. This article, published in the original Vanguard , written by the Rev. Ray Broshears (picture courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society Archive, Ray Broshears Papers; News Clippings; 96-3 Carton 2) seeks to address the loneliness he witnessed in the Tenderloin.

Volume 1, Number 4, February 1967, p. 7 [courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society Archive, Don Lucas Papers; Vanguard]

The next issue of Vanguard featured comments about loneliness from youth member, Keith St. Clare:

"The more chronically one is lonely, the more selfish he becomes... Read More. ‘I just want someone to love me!’ you cry. Do you? Usually not. Are you waiting for Prince Charming or Snow White to carry on with? Give up, Mary. The secret, the power to overthrow your loneliness, is within. Put self aside and learn to love others! Paradoxically, concern will breed concern and (Sorry ‘bout that) you’ll lose your loneliness. One way to learn concern is through uninhibited enthusiasm. Don’t hide your feelings too well...Applaud and praise at the least honest provocation. True appreciation never alienates anyone. Affectionate companions and amiable friends are rare, but if you become one you will have more than your share.”

Volume 1, Number 5, 1967, p. 7 [courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society Archive, Don Lucas Papers; Vanguard]

Working with many of the individuals in the Tenderloin who are a part of the Vanguard generation and/or who are addicted, homeless, queer, transgender, mentally ill, addicted, etc, I know that loneliness is still one of the biggest issues those living in poverty or on the margins in San Francisco. In fact, I think it is such a pervasive problem in our city that it should be considered emotional poverty.

The more I research the history of the pastors that worked with and around the Vanguard youth, the more I see how my current ministry is a direct result of the advocacy, theology and law breaking of the Urban Specialist Pastors. My work along with that of the Night Ministry, the Faithful Fools and the many programs created by Glide Memorial Church and Foundation continue to work with the lonely souls of the Tenderloin.

Vanguard Revisited will create the opportunity for contemporary individuals to use their own words, art and writings to express how they experience loneliness.

Illustrations

One of the most interesting parts of Vanguard are the illustrations. The youth who created Vanguard not only used art as a major part of their work, by screen printing the entire periodical even the typed print looks like art. Here are some sample pages that were a part of the Night Songs poetry feature:


[Images courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society Archive]

Local clergy learned they were needed to stand up for homosexuals

Here is a story about the pastors that helped the Vanguard youth. This San Francisco Chronicle article from Jan. 3, 1965 records the political event that helped the clergy understand their power to help call for justice on behalf of homosexuals. Check out the GLBT Historical Societies Online Exhibit about this group of pastors.

Market Street and Union Square Sex Work Economies

Reposted from OutHistory

Text by Joey Plaster. Copyright (©) by C. Joey Plaster, 2009. All rights reserved.

Union Square, 1955. Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library.

Redevelopment in the central city would dramatically impact the Polk Street in the 1970s. The Polk Gulch district sat on the western fringe of the Tenderloin. The area housed the city’s bustling entertainment industry, until the 1920s, when city officials shut down the Barbary Coast “vice” district at the behest of the city’s business elite before the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and much of the trade went underground and relocated to the Tenderloin district.^[1]

San Francisco’s modern gay subculture began to come together in the Tenderloin’s speakeasies and gin joints during the era of Prohibition. When Prohibition was lifted in 1933, a number of gay bars quickly opened in the area. By the 1960s, the low-income area was a haven and a residential ghetto for low-income elderly, runaway youth, and an emerging transgender community, who found space in its residential hotels, 24-hour cafeterias, bars, and liberal religious institutions.

Patrons of the Gilded Cage, a Tenderloin club and afterhours youth hangout. 1968. Courtesy of the Peter Fiske collection at the GLBT Historical Society.

Ed Hansen, a liberal minister with close ties to anti-poverty campaigns and youth organizing, called the Tenderloin “the human dump heap of San Francisco. It is the place where the social outcasts – the aged, the poor, the infirm, the youth with sexual problems – persons of all races and religions – go and are out of sight. Here they are forgotten, ignored, and ultimately die, emotionally and then physically.”^[2]

Several discreet sex work economies were also based in the neighborhood, each built around a specific “type” of sex worker and customer. While youth may have carried themselves differently in other aspects of their lives, while working they conformed to each location’s style of dress and sexual identity.

Patrons of the Gilded Cage, a Tenderloin club and afterhours youth hangout. 1968. Courtesy of the Peter Fiske collection at the GLBT Historical Society.

The “Meat Rack,” located along Market Street at Mason, was known for “trade,” a term referring to heterosexual-identified, traditionally masculine or “rough” young men, as well as individuals we would now refer to as transgendered. In 1962, a letter to the editor in LCE News complained about the “Walking Eyesores of Market Street” made up with “Lipstick, Rouge, Pancake, Eyeshadow, Spraynet and Bobby Pins,” and “the Hustler,” “lounging in the doorways of Market and Mission looking for the married man from down the Peninsula or over in East Bay.”^[3]

“A few are quite honestly married with children,” a 1968 article noted of the “Meat Rack” hustlers, “and proud to wheel the carriage down past the meat rack on Sunday afternoon, introducing the wife to the johns and other hustlers.”^[4] These youth were also thought be less educated and more likely to be involved in drug use and crime. “This is the male who is more likely to claim that he is straight …who is temporarily out of work and is transient to the city,” criminologist Martin Stow wrote in the early 1970s. He is “not likely to have completed high-school and comes from a family of conflicts.”^[5]

Gay-identified prostitutes, many of them thought to be in college or with higher education levels, worked outside Union Square’s St. Francis Hotel, where the upscale “men-only” Oak Room was a well known cruising spot among gay men in the 1950s and early 1960s. “His goal,” according to a 1968 article, “will be to meet a truly generous sugar daddy, not too hard to take and too demanding of time, that will set him up as a keptie, put him through college, buy him a car, or place him in a life-time business career.”^[6]

In this economically depressed area, aboveground businesses depended on the money generated by the sex trade. “The Plush Doggie…has suffered mightily from the gay trade,” Guy Strait wrote sarcastically in 1964 of a 24-hour diner. “They have suffered so badly they are still in business, otherwise they would have had to close their doors many months ago.”^[7]

Vanguard Magazine, 1966. Courtesy of the GLBTHS.

Vanguard, a short-lived queer youth organization that arose out of liberal ministers’ anti-poverty work in the central city, characterized the economy as exploitative in the mid-1960s: “We Protest the endless profit adults are making off youth in the central city,” one mid-1960s flier read. “We demand justice and immediate corrections of the fact that most of the money made in the area is made by the exploitation of youth by so called normal adults who make a fast buck off situations everyone calls degenerate, perverted, and sick.”^[8]

Vanguard "Street Sweep" Protest. Courtesy of the GLBTHS.

1. ↑ “Excavating the Postwar Sex District in San Francisco,” Josh Sides, California State University, Northridge, 359.
2. ↑ Vector Magazine, Jan 1966.
3. ↑ LCE News, March 4 1962.
4. ↑ Orpheus…in-bound, Vector Magazine, May 1968.
5. ↑ No title, c. early 1970s, by Martin F. Stow, Toby Marotta Collection, GLBTHS.
6. ↑ “Orpheus…in-bound,” Vector Magazine, May 1968.
7. ↑ LCE News, May 1964.
8. ↑ Vanguard “We Protest” in Don Lucas papers, GLBTHS.

Vanguard Covers

[Images courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society Archive]