Who is to say, who was gay? In the past, back in the day, one easily could make a call as to who was handsome, debonair or elegant. But, which of these Newport residents of yesteryear seems homosexual to you? Can one ever tell, only by looking? Now as before, many insist they can always tell. Marriage and children are no reliable measure to be sure.
The “delighted”, patrician, happy warrior, what an exceptional president FDR was. But gay? No way! Of course Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his share of faults as do we all. To begin, the fortune of the Delano’s, his mother’s family, was derived from the China trade, which villainously imposed opium sales on the Chinese. Less obliquely, as chief executive, fully aware of the ghastly implications of the Nazi “Final Solution”, Roosevelt did nothing. He even failed to accept the offer of Britain’s foreign secretary to forgo England’s immigration quota in favor of German Jews following Kristallnacht. At home in America, notwithstanding all the empathetic goodwill of his wife, his record concerning oppressed, disenfranchised and lynched African Americans was scarcely better.
Yet though humanly and politically flawed, Roosevelt was still great. He boldly marshaled the Congress, courts and American people to successfully effect an economic recovery from the Great Depression. Just as adroitly, he brought all forces to bear to pursue victory in the world war between fascism and democratic values.
Moreover bucking widespread American ambivalence and even fear, he bravely envisioned an economically and politically united post-war Europe.
“With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.”
Just as Lincoln in the aftermath of the divisive American Civil War appreciated the expediency and wisdom of cooperative interdependence among these United States, so Roosevelt saw the value of forsaking retribution and extending aide toward worldwide reparation. Inspired by Roosevelt’s prudence, even our Soviet allies-turned-foes were to be offered aide in a gambit to gain peace and prosperity.
Today a similar strategy, enabling economic stability is just as imperative as it was 60 years ago. The passion to punish the vanquished, however emotionally satisfying, is hardly efficacious. Be they school teachers with favorable pensions, homeowners with submerged mortgages, profligate Spaniards or rashly gluttonous Greeks, in a world that’s grown so intimately symbiotic, instead of austerity, ‘charity for all…’, ought to be the universally beneficial watch word.
That was what Roosevelt understood all too well. It’s generally also how President Obama sees things. For both men their unpopular wisdom has meant denunciation. Some detractors still hold Roosevelt in contempt to an extent that they level the worst charge any American can. Not only is he condemned as a ‘pinko’ traitor to his class, to a few, Roosevelt is a ‘fag’!
Notoriously heterosexual enough to maintain a love affair after being stricken by polio, several websites still infer that Franklin Roosevelt was gay. A couple cite baby pictures, where he wears a dress and has long hair and a feathered hat as evidence. Unaware of the longstanding custom in the west for young boys to be kept in “coats” until-potty-training-age, they are equally ignorant of the fashion Frances Hodgson Burnett's first children's novel prompted in 1885. Little Lord Fauntleroy, the fanciful story of a poor fatherless American boy due to inherit an English earldom was immensely appealing to upper class mothers. Many took to giving their sons caviler curls and dressing them in be-plumed hats, velvet suits with lace collars and buckled shoes. Mercifully, the royal fashion for sailor suits eventually superseded this more embarrassing mania.
Some blogs offer two more compelling indications as to Roosevelt being either gay, or nearly as bad, gay friendly. The first, is Newport, Rhode Island’s Naval College Sex Scandal of 1919. The scandal involved the United States Navy's investigation of illicit sexual behavior between Navy personnel, servants, female impersonators and other civilians. "Half the world is queer!" exclaimed one member of the group, "and the other half," he concluded, "are trade!" True enough, the proceedings exposed a gay sub-culture, with its own coded language, including men from all over the east coast. They formed a secret society-like network of friends, acquaintances and friendly strangers, who hosting drag performances or impromptu parties, were ever on the lookout for sexual encounters. Indulging in alcohol and coke to fuel their tryst, their Newport hub was the Army and Navy Young Men’s Christian Association. Located on Washington Square, the five storey neo-Georgian structure with Italian Renaissance detailing was designed by Louis Jallade who later designed Harlem's YWCA. Completed in 1911 the $325,000. price tag of the well-equipped facility had been advanced by philanthropist and socialite, Mrs. Thomas Emery a widow who divided her time between houses in Chicago, Cincinnati and Newport.
The impetus of the investigation, in February 1919, occurred after Chief Machinist's Mate Ervin Arnold, homophobic but obsessively preoccupied by 'gay perversion', was a patient in the Naval Training Station Hospital. Befriending fellow patient Thomas Brunelle, a seemingly straight guy, he could hardly believe his ears! Confiding in Arnold, Brundelle boasted of how much he enjoyed sex, and lots of it, with "queers" and "cocksuckers." Arnold had scarcely found enough time to secretly scribbled notes relating these sordid conversations that he passed onto his superiors. Pruriently enthralled, documenting the seamy gay underground of Newport, identifying the Naval YMCA as a hotbed "of homos," many of whom "loved to be screwed in the rectum, pogues," Brunelle assured him that they hooked up regularly with naval personnel and, far worse still, that several of them were themselves naval officers!
Infiltrating this depraved society of "queers" Arnold's reports told how gay men, including sailors, acted effeminately, went by the names of women stars and heroines, such as Theda Barra or "Salome". They wore delicate lingerie and attended "69 Parties" with their "boys", often marines and sailor whom they plyed with liquor, cocaine, sex and cash. As most of the "girls" rented rooms there, drinks and drugs were conveniently sold by the Y's black elevator operator.
No wonder an appalled Admiral Spencer S. Wood, Commander of the Second Naval District, ordered "a thorough investigation" and created a court of inquiry which concluded that the government must devote "any expense and time necessary" to conduct a "most thorough and searching investigation . . ." Roosevelt asked Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to put his "most skilled investigators at work with a view of ultimately cleaning the whole matter up..."
Top secret, the highly sensitive operation was put into the hands of Arnold, whose "skilled investigators" were men chosen on the basis of their youth and looks: " A good looking man from the average of 19 to 24 are the best people," Arnold wrote, " in handling this class of work, with reference to perverts". He helped to select his "detectives" personally.
Thanks to Arnold's intelligence, quite high on the Navy's list of deviant suspects-of-interest was the Y's much esteemed Chaplain who had previously served with distinction as Chaplain at Lehigh University. Greatly and broadly admired as a sincere friend to young men in his care, to Arnold he was a low corrupter of men. An Episcopalian priest, the Rev. Samuel Neal Kent presided over the library. Here he frequently chatted with young sailors eager to tell him their troubles. Just as readily Father Kent would offer lads rides in his car, take them for walks, to the movies, a concert, or for a meal. Far from interpreting Kent's solicitude as untoward, it was viewed as evidence of selflessness. That his concern extended to sometimes inviting a youth to stay the night at his comfortable apartment, to share his bed, or to fellate him, this was unknown to most. In his earlier, more innocent time, ultimately, officially, Kent was judged to be blameless. But his true trial began on the day of his aquittal; never again would he serve at a church.
In the beginning the Newport scandal had attracted little public notice, but by the time the ambitious young, picture-show-handsome Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt became involved, ‘all hell broke loose’. Two aspects of the investigation caused a stink. Its methods, using attractive young enlisted personnel, presumed to be straight, as decoys to entrap their fellows, was deemed an outrage. As the probe dragged on and on, it was intensified. Indeed, it was expanded to finger more civilians, including servants, artists writers and others. Theaters, parks, the beach, the cliff walk and especially, the then wooden, 49 steps along the cliff walk were all popular 'criusing' spots. At anyone, sailors out on the prowl for some fun, were as certain of finding a mate as a stroller in New York's Riverside Park. Even now the investigator's vividly detailed reports make for interesting reading.
'Watching a squawl of brilliant stars against the inky sky, listening to the powerful rhythm of the pounding surf while getting your cock sucked, you can imagine that it was Ann Pennington or even Queen Marie of Roumania, it's wonderful...But it's best to recall it's a great brute with a large member kneeling before you. Wonderful...'
Filled with zeal, what great lengths these volunteers were willing to go to, in order to carry through their mission. Achieving an orgasm was considered the only fool-proof evidence of a culprit’s true deviance versus mere horse-play. occurred
The enthusiasm of these volunteer investigators came to raise questions, questions more unsettling than any they helped to answer. Most notably was the worry as to the veracity of poorly educated sailors who willingly, in some instances, with evident gusto, participated in vile acts of indecency. Could such men be trusted? Particularly, how reliable was the word of such a man when he was impugning the honor of well-connected gentlemen, members of the clergy or the prestigious Newport Art Association? Despite the notable antics of high society's gay blades like Harry Lehr or Ogden Codman, to whom Harper Pennington presented the luscious figure-study below, which perhaps shows a sailor at his ease, it comes as little surprise that no really prominent Newporter was implicated in the ruckus.
As the subsequent trial attracted national news coverage and provoked a Congressional investigation, Secretary of the Navy Joseph Daniels and his Assistant Secretary– the future President of the United States–chastised by a Congressional committee had each resigned.
Yet life at Newport went on as usual. Splendidly dressed with her friend Harry Lehr's help, to resemble European royalty, Newport's caustic but witty queen, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, died just in time to avoid war and the scandal. Securing at last her goal of universal suffrage, her rival and colleague, the divorced Mrs. William H. Vanderbilt-turned-Mrs. Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, soon left Marble House and lived on Long Island and in France.
At the Casino, tennis persisted and is played still, though no longer so key a social fixture. But the The US Open Championship, formally the United States Open Tennis Championships, the fast-paced hardcourt tennis tournament, first held in August 1881 at the Newport Casino, moved to the West Side Tennis Club at Forest Hills, New York, in 1915.
But Newport retains its magical lure. Presenting contrast of wealth and poverty, conventional conformity and abandonded rebellion, elaborate artifice and the most majestic kind of natural splendor, even devoid of the Naval College, the Y, or a full-time gay bar, it remains one of the most compelling places in the country.
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