MORRIS KIGHT, Humanist, Liberationist, Fantabulist: A Story of Gay rights and Gay Wrongs, important story about unjustly neglected pioneer

Book cover photo credit: Henning von Berg
MORRIS KIGHT, Humanist, Liberationist, Fantabulist: A Story of Gay rights and Gay Wrongs
MARY ANN CHERRY
Process (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$22.95 all editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Morris Kight fought for gay rights the only way he knew how—outrageously

New York and San Francisco gay liberation activists’ work is well documented but allow us to introduce Los Angeles' preeminent gay rights pioneer—say hello to Morris Kight. His activist work began in the 1930s as a teenager. As the only male living in his mother’s Texas brothel, he secretly helped women working there get vital healthcare.

During the 1950s, he was part of an underground network of gay ‘safe houses’ that provided bail, health care, and legal advice at a time when the United States had laws criminalizing same-sex relationships. He turned his unique charisma and organizing skills to the 1960s anti-war movement and then working the rest of his life in the now public fight for “Gay Liberation.” He fostered vital relationships with fellow activists, politicians, socialites, and gangsters. His style of organizing and activism showed the power of the “influencer” decades before social media brought millions together with a meme.

He founded groups that lead seminal protests that resulted in: The American Psychiatric Association removing homosexuality as a disease from its diagnostic manual, protecting civil rights for gay citizens in California, and reducing police violence against the gay community. And for every good thing Kight did, he took credit for more. He was a man who, with his many flaws, managed to alienate as many people as he brought together. His story brings to life his work as remembered by those who loved and loathed him.

Morris Kight, an exciting rebel among rebels, came to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s and immediately addressed the needs of a marginalized fraction of society: gay men. He wrote his phone number on walls in jails and bars to offer help with an underground bail fund, private counseling, and backroom treatment for STDs. This was the beginning of a community where there was none. Influential in the anti-war movement in the 60s, Kight then parlayed his energies into the post-Stonewall bi-coastal gay revolution. Through coalition building, he created a seat at the table of social reform for homosexuals.

This biography tells Kight’s personal tale entwined with a narrative of activism and the gay rights movement. Though Kight is included in many anthologies, historical narratives, and feature-length documentaries, this book is the first in-depth analysis of the man, the activist.

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My Review: Know any freshly-out babyqueers looking around for evidence of their elders? I can't think of a better character for them to learn about than abrasive, annoying, essentially contrarian and always cranky Morris Kight.

He comes across vividly in Author Cherry's personally grounded recreations of Morris' life of outsiderdom...mother ran a brothel in Bible-Belt Texas!

He came by his larger-than-life persona honestly. And Author Cherry writes it direct, pulls no punches, hides no warts. There were so many wonderful things he did, he started, he forced into being by his will alone. (Or so he'd've told you.)

All of this work, all of his contributions, and is he lauded and celebrated today? Under the current kakistocracy, of course not. But I am here to tell you, my cishet siblings, this man's life is one you should trumpet to the young, directionless, disheartened and downhearted, because there's no better cure for paralysis than action. Kight's story is a klaxon, a billboard with a searchlight on it, an unmistakable shout from the past: "Get up and do the work!"

I recommend it. I wish it'd had inline citations, but really the endnotes are very, very extensive; just not quite as useful for source checks as I would like. There are many illustrative snapshots and photo ops, but I left most of them out...much of a muchness after a while, more there to set the scene and build the mood of the times.

A quality addition to the fast-fading memory of my own elders, whose work and sacrifices have let me lead a better out-life than they could.

A FAMILY, MAYBE: Two Dads, Two Babies, and the Court Cases That Brought Us Together makes a #PrideMonth point: happiness takes work; is everywhere you plant it

A FAMILY, MAYBE: Two Dads, Two Babies, and the Court Cases That Brought Us Together
LANE IGOUDIN
Ooligan Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$8.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A gay couple's quest to adopt their foster kids in the early 2000s becomes a spiral of legal, political, and personal challenges.

In his candid and emotional memoir, Lane Igoudin shows the human side of public adoption as he and his partner Jonathan seek to adopt their foster daughters from the Los Angeles County child welfare system. Desperately wanting to be fathers, they enter into a complicated legal process that soon becomes a tangle of drama-filled birth parent visits and children's court hearings.

Lane and Jon spend years not knowing whether they will be able to officially adopt the girls, or if the county will reunite the sisters with their birth mother, Jenna, a teenager in the state's custody herself. The stress of the foster-to-adopt process, compounded with the mounting, nationwide struggle for LGBTQ+ equality, erodes the sense of peace in Lane and Jon's home.

Still, the girls attach themselves deeply to their adoptive parents, while their dads do all they can to give them the best lives possible. Heartwarming moments with the kids and relatable first-time-parent woes become bittersweet as Lane realizes how much he and Jon have built—and how much they could lose. A Family, Maybe is a moving story about dedication, heartache, and love.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Two gay dads chronicle the formation and formalization of their family. The men made a deeply responsible, generous choice to enter the foster-to-adopt system, thus ensuring they'd be in the toils of bureaucracy the rest of their lives. I expect there are many who quail before this prospect and, if a family is as much of a priority for them as it was for Lane and Jon, go the surrogacy route.

Massive kidos to you, gents, for staying the course. The bureaucracy, the sisters's biomom, the darkening clouds of great-haters' rage at gay men making strides towards having all their rights...all keep the emotional pot merrily boiling away as we read on. That was not, in any way, guaranteed. We know from the start that the family is intact. I think the ups and downs of building that family is nothing short of amazing as a survival story. These two have my mad respect for surviving their ordeal while being solid, loving, involved dads to their two daughters. I don't envy those young womens' future partners because the models for commitment they carry in their minds are going to be very hard for others to reach.

The one thing the whole family can count on is that they will be loved and supported from within, come what may.

A story of the power of commitment and caring that belongs on your shelf/Kindle. It is not some sort of revelation of beautiful writing but it is a tale not to be ignored. I feel energized by hope and happiness after this read.

#PrideMonth launches!

#PrideMonth launches! Yes, in the US Pride Month is a June celebration, but lag times must be built into all holiday seasons. I'll be reviewing mostly stuff from, by, about those people somewhere on the QUILTBAG rainbow of identities.

My intention is to get as close as my corpus callosum will support to a full-on review posted five times a week. Burgoines and Pearl-Rules aren't subject to my numerical targeting at any time...though that could happen depending on my capacities. Goodness knows I have the most amazing pile of raw review material, and a number of current-year requests for DRCs are pending. I have, as usual, a few reviews in the queue ready to go, so I like my chances of success.

Click here to see an entire blog's worth of #PrideMonth reviews.

I wish you all a wonderful June, and a grand old party of a #PrideMonth, filled with lazy days of reading in your favorite places.

BOY WITH THE BULLHORN: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York, clarion call to the quiet youth

BOY WITH THE BULLHORN: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York
RON GOLDBERG
Empire State Editions/Fordham University Press
$36.95 hardcover, available now

TRADE PAPER AVAILABLE NOW FOR $22.95

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A coming-of-age memoir of life on the front lines of the AIDS crisis with ACT UP New York.

From the moment Ron Goldberg stumbled into his first ACT UP meeting in June 1987, the AIDS activist organization became his life. For the next eight years, he chaired committees, planned protests, led teach-ins, and facilitated their Monday night meetings. He cruised and celebrated at ACT UP parties, attended far too many AIDS memorials, and participated in more than a hundred zaps and demonstrations, becoming the group’s unofficial “Chant Queen,” writing and leading chants for many of their major actions. Boy with the Bullhorn is both a memoir and an immersive history of the original New York chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, from 1987 to 1995, told with great humor, heart, and insight.

Using the author’s own story, “the activist education of a well-intentioned, if somewhat naïve nice gay Jewish theater queen,” Boy with the Bullhorn intertwines Goldberg’s experiences with the larger chronological history of ACT UP, the grassroots AIDS activist organization that confronted politicians, scientists, drug companies, religious leaders, the media, and an often uncaring public to successfully change the course of the AIDS epidemic.

Diligently sourced and researched, Boy with the Bullhorn provides both an intimate look into how activist strategies are developed and deployed and a snapshot of life in New York City during the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic. On the occasions where Goldberg writes outside his personal experience, he relies on his extensive archive of original ACT UP documents, news articles, and other published material, as well as activist videos and oral histories, to help flesh out actions, events, and the background stories of key activists. Writing with great candor, Goldberg examines the group’s triumphs and failures, as well as the pressures and bad behaviors that eventually tore ACT UP apart.

A story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, from engaging in outrageous, media-savvy demonstrations, to navigating the intricacies of drug research and the byzantine bureaucracies of the FDA, NIH, and CDC, Boy with the Bullhorn captures the passion, smarts, and evanescent spirit of ACT UP—the anger, grief, and desperation, but also the joy, camaraderie, and sexy, campy playfulness—and the exhilarating adrenaline rush of activism.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: After reading Peter Staley's memoir of the ACT UP days during the AIDS crisis, I was too emotionally fatigued to give this memoir of the same time my full attention. I still find it astounding that this book came out thirty-five years after ACT UP appeared.

Early, noisy days
I have to admit that I am still very tender on the subject of this epidemic because of my own losses during that time. There is no sense hiding away from the terrible, always-there pain of losing someone in this awful way, though. It was quite theraputic to recall that the world might not have cared much, but the world could not just ignore the issue after ACT UP got the noisemakers and angry young folk organized.

My personal favorite demonstration–combining my hatred for the catholic church and outrage at the inaction of the medical establishment
Whatever else has happened to me since AIDS took my first friend in 1984, I have carried the clear and unforgiving certainty that my life mattered less than a straight person's life on a policy level. This is brutal, evil, capitalist greed...costs too much to get those drugs, coverage denied...the Government can't afford this medication, coverage denied...and, while that is nothing new to Black or Indigenous people, or even to women, it was a wake-up call to a privileged white boy.

There is one thing that makes me recommend this as a #Booksgiving idea...your young, gay friend who is doing little, or nothing at all, to protest the inaction on climate change...that is reaching crisis stage earlier than we thought...needs a reminder that PrEP did not come about because the elites thought it was a good idea, but because there was a history of loud, angry agitation among the folk who needed it, a bunch of scientists whose careers were able to focus on AIDS because ACT UP acted, and the way to pay it forward is to start shouting along with Greta Thunberg. Or along with David Hogg abour gun control. Whatever! Read this memoir of the joys of acting up and yelling about important matters, about the crises we face. Goldberg has led a happy, fulfilling life being very disobedient. Encourage your young gay friend to do the same.

Being flamboyant in a good cause is no crime.

NEVER SILENT: ACT UP and My Life in Activism, an essential memoir about AIDS

NEVER SILENT: ACT UP and My Life in Activism
PETER STALEY (Foreword by Anderson Cooper)
Chicago Review Press
$26.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

FINALIST FOR THE 34th Lambda Literary Award--BEST GAY MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY!

The Publisher Says: The previously untold stories of the life of the leading subject in David France’s How To Survive A Plague, Peter Staley, including his continuing activism

In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. After four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, Staley was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He also knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-Related Complex.

A week after the protest, Staley found his way to a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power—ACT UP—in the West Village. It would prove to be the best decision he ever made. ACT UP would change the course of AIDS, pressuring the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and three administrations to finally respond with research that ultimately saved millions of lives.

Staley, a shrewd strategist with nerves of steel, organized some of the group’s most spectacular actions, from shutting down trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to putting a giant condom over the house of Senator Jesse Helms. Never Silent is the inside story of what brought Staley to ACT UP and the explosive and sometimes painful years to follow—years filled with triumph, humiliation, joy, loss, and persistence.

Never Silent is guaranteed to inspire the activist within all of us.

I RECEIVED MY DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There is a certain kind of person who becomes a Wall Street "Master of the Universe," in their self-perpetuated self-applied description of their glorious, oversexed, hyper-entitled selves. The Eighties were the moments of national nightmare, both the ones we saw in Wall Street embodied by poor Michael Douglas delivering the "Greed is good" speech that haunts him to this day, and the ones we ignored, eg the S&L crisis whose little brother grew up to become the GFC of the Aughties. There was the moral crisis of the horror of the Reagan Administration's heinous, vile diplomatic disasters and raid on the Social Security Trust Fund. But these are large, generation-spanning structural and systemic disasters, unfolding on time scales not really important to ordinary people.

Then there was the AIDS crisis. Or, as it was at one point called, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. This relates to the fact that the largest, most concentrated population suffering from the awful plague were urban gay men, whose "lifestyle" (how I loathe that term!) was recently, partially, and conditionally destigmatized. It burned through the New York gay-male community, it flared and killed in other gay-friendlier outposts across the country, and it was never a "gay disease" at all. Science, in its slow and ponderous way, had already established that the primary sufferers were Haitian and African heterosexuals by the end of the 1980s; this helped the disease get onto the Federal radar screens not at all.

Enter Peter Staley. Here's a Master of the Universe, a white male with all the privilege that conveyed then. And he's got AIDS-Related Complex. It was, in 1985, a kind of death sentence, a sort of scientific shrugging of the shoulders..."you ain't there yet, but it's where you're headed." And the poisonous priorities of the tax-cutting and faggot-hating "leaders" of the time meant little was being done, and that without much urgency, to discover and research the strange new disease.

This hateful cover, dated July 1985, was the moment I myownself realized why there were so many people I knew dying but not being discussed..."oh, that's them, that's something they get...not me, not my family. Sad, of course, but..." It's that poisonous little "but..." that makes the real source of the problem obvious. "As long as it stays among them, well, who really cares?"

So here's where Peter Staley was in the Eighties. He had an enviable future, one most white men regarded as dream-worthy; he had a fatal disease; and he had a country whose leadership wasn't interested in making his disease's cure or management or even treatment a priority, because by having it, he was Othered.

And he got mad.

Don't piss off the Peter Staleys of this world. They know how the world works, what value symbolism has, whose words will matter to the average person and whose story will move mountains. And, when they get mad, you will hear their voice. Loud and clear. ACT UP...AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power...was born when Staley had had enough of being told he was a dying victim, either of malevolent chance or a vengeful god or even a US government conspiracy to kill Africans. This book, in all its glorious (yet strangely not angry) insiderness, fills in a huge, huge gap in the history of a movement that forced the entire Federal medical-research machinery to create and implement more humane disease-treatment and prevention protocols. Part of that work has, no doubt, saved many many lives in the current COVID pandemic. Drug treatments and vaccine development are where they are, in part, because of a ten-year fight by the brave young men and women of that powerful coterie of angry queers.

The personal stories Staley tells, the intimate truths he reveals about the personal triumphs and sacrifices and battles that attended every step of ACT UP's early years, make the massive organization that it is today feel so much more important to me. Its continued work is very, very different from its genesis because it can be...ACT UP changed because it succeeded, and because it could start fighting for different things in this new millennium. And Staley, while no choirboy in youth or age, has never stopped fighting his demons and the dragons outside himself they light up. His life has had loss and tragedy and deep, dark passages...and he tells us about them honestly. What he doesn't do is score points off people who were once allies and friends. I admire that.

I admire Staley's work even more. ACT UP's safe-sex messages reached me, a Manhattan-resident sexually active queer in the Eighties, and very likely saved my life. The love of my life was an AIDS suffering Bajan wrestler, Bland (which he refused to answer to, "my name is B.J.!" he insisted). He was already diagnosed when we met, so all our sex was the safer sort. I lost him thirty years ago, when he was thirty-four; I miss him still.

But I am HIV-negative, and alive to do so, in no small part because of Peter Staley and the work he and his cohorts did. Thank you for my life, Peter Staley, all the awful and painful and joyous and rewarding moments of it happened because you wouldn't sit down and shut up. So now's your chance to get the story behind why he made the choices he did, what happened and to whom and when. But don't expect the unpleasant grinding noise of axes being honed to killing sharpness. A long life, longer than you ever thought it would be, teaches one the value of letting go of grudges and the futility of settling scores. Despite his own more recent challenges, Staley remains fully aware of grateful for the gift of his life. It is this that I hope our COVID-ridden youngers will absorb and embody. All who read NEVER SILENT: ACT UP and My Life in Activism have a great head start.