This anthology pays tribute to Allan Berube (1946-2007), a self-taught historian and MacArthur Fellow who was a pioneer in the study of lesbian and gay history in the United States. Best known for ...his Lambda Literary Award-winning bookComing Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II(1990), Berube also wrote extensively on the history of sexual politics in San Francisco and on the relationship between sexuality, class, and race. John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, who were close colleagues and friends of Berube, have selected sixteen of his most important essays, including hard-to-access articles and unpublished writing. The book provides a retrospective on Berube's life and work while it documents the emergence of a grassroots lesbian and gay community history movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Taken together, the essays attest to the power of history to mobilize individuals and communities to create social change.
During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding ...antihomosexual policies and procedures of the military. InComing Out Under Fire, Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontation--not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed between gay citizens and their government, transforming them both. Drawing on GIs' wartime letters, extensive interviews with gay veterans, and declassified military documents, Berube thoughtfully constructs a startling history of the two wars gay military men and women fough--one for America and another as homosexuals within the military.Berube's book, the inspiration for the 1995 Peabody Award-winning documentary film of the same name, has become a classic since it was published in 1990, just three years prior to the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which has continued to serve as an uneasy compromise between gays and the military. With a new foreword by historians John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, this book remains a valuable contribution to the history of World War II, as well as to the ongoing debate regarding the role of gays in the U.S. military.
The History of Gay Bathhouses Berube, Allan
Journal of homosexuality,
01/2003, Volume:
44, Issue:
3-4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Public policy regarding bathhouses has been criticized as being based on political expediency rather than on medical or social science. To affect that shortcoming, we include here a brief history of ...gay bathhouses. The history of the baths is rarely told, but whenever it is told it necessarily reflects the times in which it was written. For that reason, we include a history written in 1984, at the time that much of what was known about AIDS, routes of transmission and the role of the bathhouses was very much in flux. This history not only gives a context for the current discussion, but also allows the reader to see the history from that distant point in time. This paper was first published in December 1984 as an article in Coming Up!, a lesbian and gay community newspaper published monthly in San Francisco (California). It was later edited and reprinted in a book titled Policing Public Sex(1996). The version of the paper presented here is from the original 1984 article (pp. 15-19); several images appeared with the article that are not reproduced here. As with all the reprinted papers in this volume, no editorial changes were made to the paper and only minor typographical errors were corrected.
Intellectual Desire ALLAN BÉRUBÉ
My Desire for History,
06/2011
Book Chapter
In 1992 I was invited to present one of two keynote addresses at La Ville en Rose: Le premier colloque Québécois d’études lesbiennes et gaies—the First Quebec Lesbian and Gay Studies Conference—held ...in Montreal that November. Nicole Brossard, the lesbian-feministquébécoisepoet, novelist, and essayist, presented the other address. We were paired up as speakers for a reason. The conference organizers as a group included both anglophones and francophones, and their goal was to create an event that brought together lesbian and gay studies in Canada’s two official languages. The conference was held at two locations: Concordia University
The U.S. military has a long tradition of purging homosexuals from its ranks. In January 1982, the Pentagon released a directive that may be its strongest antigay policy to date. “Homosexuality is ...incompatible with military service,” the directive explained, because it undermines military discipline, creates security risks, and gives the military a bad reputation. Even a member of the armed forces who “has stated that he or she is a homosexual” or “desires” to “engage in homosexual conduct” is considered a threat to the military under these rules.¹
The massive mobilization of all Americans for World War II allowed the
For centuries, society has stigmatized homosexual men and women as sinners, criminals, and diseased because of their sexuality. Baths and bars were the first institutions in the United States that ...contradicted these stigmas and gave gay Americans a sense of pride in themselves and their sexuality. As such, gay bars and baths are an integral part of gay political history.
Before there were any openly gay or lesbian leaders, political clubs, books, films, newspapers, businesses, neighborhoods, churches, or legally recognized gay rights, several generations of pioneers spontaneously created gay bathhouses and lesbian and gay bars. These men and women risked
Trying to Remember ALLAN BÉRUBÉ
My Desire for History,
06/2011
Book Chapter
I first met Stephen “Mickey” Blair, who called himself a working-class queen, in 1983 at his home in Seattle. A former boyfriend of mine, Chip Parker, and his lover, Gregg Kasner, introduced us. My ...friends knew I wanted to talk to older gay men, as I called them, who sailed as merchant seamen. I’d heard fantastic stories about how, from the 1920s into the 1950s—the golden age of luxury liners—hundreds of “queens,” as they called each other, sailed in the stewards departments of the big passenger ships, put on drag shows for their shipmates, became active in their
When I teach college courses on queer history or queer working-class studies, I encourage students to explore the many ways that homosexuality is shaped by race, class, and gender. I know that ...racialized phantom figures hover over our classroom and inhabit our consciousness. I try to name these figures out loud to bring them down to earth so we can begin to resist their stranglehold on our intelligence. One by one, I recite the social categories that students have already used in our discussions—immigrant, worker, corporate executive, welfare recipient, student on financial aid, lesbian mother—and ask students first
Pioneer Experts Allan Bérubé
Coming Out Under Fire,
09/2010
Book Chapter
In the Washington offices of the War and Navy Departments, psychiatric reformers had the luxury of discussing and formulating homosexual policies in the abstract. But in the field and aboard ship, ...psychiatrists assigned to duty in military hospitals had to put these policies into practice. As psychotherapists they were inclined to understand their patients—nearly all of whom were men—as people who needed help. But as military officers having to obey orders, they were called upon to identify homosexuals and report them for discharge. The conflicting roles of therapist and informer presented psychiatrists with difficult ethical dilemmas and frustrating
Comrades in Arms Allan Bérubé
Coming Out Under Fire,
09/2010
Book Chapter
On February 28, 1945, Pfc. Robert Fleischer, who had just turned twenty, found himself crossing the English Channel into France. He was to become a replacement in an antitank company in the 42nd ...(Rainbow) Infantry Division, which was making its way across France toward Germany. Wading through the icy waters from their landing craft onto the bombed-out beach at Le Havre, Fleischer and his terrified buddies were greeted by French children lined up on the beach offering them bouquets of flowers. From Le Havre the Army transported Fleischer by boxcar and truck to the Harz Mountains, where he joined his
