Queer, There, and Everywhere

by Sarah Prager

  Transitions

  * * *

  This perfect-on-the-outside life couldn’t last. Unable to live as Renée, Dick was on the verge of killing himself. He divorced Barbara, quit his job, and finally went through with the reassignment surgery in 1975—thirty-two years after he’d first donned women’s clothing. Lying on the table about to go under, he reflected on the name he had chosen at a young age. Back then, he didn’t know that Renée translated to “reborn” in French. The name—and the surgery—seemed like fate.

  When Renée finally began to live as herself, she was already in her forties. Barbara was “disgusted.” Renée’s sister thought it was a huge mistake. Her friends had urged her not to do something “so drastic”—though it was a little late to turn back. Without support in New York, Renée headed west, where no one would know her past, to start over with a blank slate.

  Renée bought a Shelby Cobra, a small but powerful race car, and headed to California. She identified with the car, which was built to go fast but had a very fragile exterior. Once she arrived on the new coast, Renée led a very similar life to Dick’s in New York: practicing medicine and playing amateur tennis. She “wanted nothing more than to melt into American society and live happily ever after.” That’s not exactly how things went down.

  Renée played in tennis tournaments that were high profile enough to get press coverage, and one reporter went digging about this mysterious newcomer’s past. He found the New York medical license for Richard Raskind that had been converted to a California one . . . in Renée’s name. When the story broke in 1977, Renée was headline news. Female players dropped out of the tournaments Renée was in, refusing to play against a transsexual woman in a women’s competition.

  To add insult to injury, the US Tennis Association declared that Renée was not allowed to play women’s tennis in professional matches until she passed a “sex test” first. If the test determined she had XX chromosomes instead of XY, she could play. Renée refused, arguing: “I’ll take a sex test but I’ll take a reasonable sex test like a gynecological examination.” She was angry that they wouldn’t let her play even though she had a document from the New York City Health Department stating that she was female. The next step Renée took changed the landscape for trans rights: she sued the USTA for her right to play as a woman without taking their chromosome test—and won.

  Game, Set, Match

  * * *

  Two months after winning the court case that guaranteed her the legal right to play as a woman, Renée was the first out trans person to play in the US Open. She was forty-three years old, and her pro tennis career was just beginning. She toured the world for four years, having fun with the other female tennis players on the circuit. She says it was like the adolescence Renée never got to have.

  After she retired, Renée coached the newly out-as-bisexual Martina Navratilova (who later came out as a lesbian) for a while and then eventually moved back to New York. She began working as a doctor again at the very same place that had employed Richard Raskind years earlier. She had come full circle.

  Today Renée makes her home in a cottage in upstate New York, commuting in for her ophthalmologist job. She finally lives the quiet, mostly anonymous life she always wanted. Renée attends the US Open every year as just another fan of the game.

  HARVEY MILK

  1930–1978

  tl;dr The beloved leader of a gay political revolution

  “You get the first bullet the minute you stand at the microphone” was the message on the postcard that had come in the mail last week. Harvey regularly received death threats like this one, and he always laughed them off outwardly no matter how he felt inside. But would today be the day Harvey’s enemies finally made good on their promises to kill him? Would the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco mark the end of his crusade for gay rights—and his life?

  When Harvey stepped up to the microphone at the Freedom Day celebration, he spoke to the assembled crowd about the battle against Proposition Six, the proposed law that would ban homosexuals from teaching in California schools. Freedom. Equality. These were the pursuits that made jeopardizing his life worthwhile.

  Let me remind you what America is.

  Listen carefully:

  On the statue of Liberty, it says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be [sic] free. . . .”

  In the Declaration of Independence, it is written: “All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights. . . .”

  And in our national anthem, it says: “Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free.”

  For . . . all the bigots out there: That’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words.

  Hundreds of thousands of queer people and their allies erupted into applause. Harvey stepped down from the podium, glowing from the crowd’s energy and relieved to have survived another public appearance. Let the haters mail all the death threats they wanted; California’s first openly gay elected official wasn’t going anywhere.

  The Mayor of Castro Street

  * * *

  Harvey started off just a big-eared Jewish kid from Long Island who grew up and decided to go work for corporate America. But when the liberal hippie wave of the sixties and seventies hit, Harvey got swept up in it. He grew his hair long and moved from New York City to San Francisco to start a completely new life with his lover of three years, Scott Smith. Though twenty years younger than Harvey, Scott had been living the life of a free spirit for much longer. After bumming around his Mississippi hometown and taking too much LSD, long-blond-haired Scott got bored and moved to Greenwich Village at twenty-two years old and met Harvey.

  With New York behind them, Harvey and Scott drove around California in Harvey’s Dodge Charger, passing the days lazily, living off savings, and spending most nights in sleeping bags under the redwoods with their adopted dog, the Kid. They spent their last $1,000 (equivalent to more than $5,000 today) to settle down and start a camera shop on Castro Street in San Francisco—soon to become the queer capital of the United States—even though neither of them was trained in anything related to photography. It didn’t really matter what the store sold; Harvey just loved the idea of having their own business underneath the apartment they rented. He even put a sign in the storefront window: “Yes, We Are Very Open.”

  The Castro district of San Francisco was changing fast. Every week dozens of gay people from around the country were making the pilgrimage to the Promised Land and staying. Traditional shops owned by conservative folks went under as new gay establishments sprang up in their place. But not everybody was happy about the shift, and violence against homosexuals became as common in 1970s California as faded bell-bottoms and tie-dyed shirts. The police weren’t much help, either. The very people who should have been protecting innocent victims of hate crimes instead patrolled the Castro to raid gay bars. (The motto to “protect and serve” apparently excluded queer people.) Unwilling to be victimized, gay men got organized to protect themselves and started carrying whistles so they could call out for help if they got in trouble. One night, Harvey and a friend were in the Castro when they heard a whistle blowing. They both ran to the victim of the latest beating and then Harvey chased down the attacker. When he caught the bigot, Harvey didn’t respond with violence; instead, he let him go with a warning: “Tell all your friends we’re down here waiting for them.”

  After years of being closeted on the East Coast, Harvey became more and more active within the gay community. He believed the way to make change was from the inside, so in 1973 he decided to run for one of the spots on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which did the lawmaking for the city. He lost. But two years later, with his hair cut short and his jeans traded in for a suit, he ran again . . . and lost, again. Still! All that campaigning had lit a fire inside Harvey. People were responding to his platform of equality for all (not just gays but all the marginalized groups of
San Francisco). He was already making a difference just with his candidacy, and he didn’t want to stop.

  The same couldn’t be said for Scott, who was tired from three solid years of crusading. For both men, life had become about squeezing any small profit they could out of the camera store to put toward the next campaign’s signs. The carefree hippie Scott had met in Greenwich Village was gone, and a political machine now lay next to him in bed. Scott had already started sleeping in a separate bedroom, and when the 1975 election was over, he moved out. Harvey had lost a partner—and his campaign manager.

  The following year, California voting districts were rezoned and the Castro would be electing its own supervisor to the board. Harvey knew he’d finally win, but it was still a hard fight. Somehow, Harvey found time amid all the campaigning to pick up a cute boyfriend, Jack Lira. Jack moved in with Harvey soon after they met; they exchanged hundreds of love notes over the course of their relationship. Scott was jealous, but Harvey was smitten. When people asked Harvey what he was doing with Jack (who they considered a hot mess), he’d just wink and say the sex was great.

  Elected

  * * *

  When Harvey won the election by a good margin, the celebration in San Francisco was epic: Harvey rode down Castro Street on the back of a motorcycle, waving to his fans. He became one of the first openly gay people elected to public office in the country. On day one at City Hall, Harvey walked up the steps with Jack on his arm and said: “You can stand around and throw bricks at Silly Hall or you can take it over. Well, here we are.”

  And take over he did. Harvey accomplished a ton in his first months in office. As he had promised, he was a supervisor fighting for all communities, not just gays. He especially championed senior citizens, even though he said he would never get to be one himself (see: death threats). He brought up bills that everyone could support, like enacting fines for leaving your dog’s poop on the sidewalk. And in the queer community, he was an inspirational figure at a local and national level. He encouraged all queer people to come out even though it was hard, and to have hope above all else. He secured the passage of San Francisco’s gay rights ordinance, which would protect gay people from being fired from their jobs or kicked out of their homes just for being gay. Of the whole board, only one supervisor voted against it.

  And that supervisor was Dan White. Dan was part of a conservative group of San Franciscans being crowded out of the area by the wave of gay transplants taking over the city. As he put it: “Change is counterproductive when you force it on people. I fear that’s where the problem is going to start.” Dan knew something about that fear; it had taken root right in his own mind.

  November 27, 1978

  * * *

  Eight months after the ordinance was passed, Dan entered San Francisco City Hall through a window, carrying a loaded .38–caliber revolver and extra bullets in his pocket. He walked straight into the mayor’s office; Mayor George Moscone was Harvey’s political friend who had happily supported the gay rights ordinance. Dan shot the mayor four times, killing him, then left the room as George’s still-lit cigarette burned his silk tie.

  Dan made his way through the building to the supervisors’ offices and stopped at Harvey’s door.

  “Harvey, can I see you for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  Inside Harvey’s office, Dan again took out the gun. He shot. Again. And again. The fourth bullet entered the base of Harvey’s skull. Then, to be sure his mission was complete, Dan moved closer and fired a final shot into Harvey’s brain. Harvey was just forty-eight years old.

  Dan walked out of the office, nodding a casual hello to another city worker, who had no idea what had just happened, and left.

  That night, Scott joined the tens of thousands of San Franciscans who marched silently, each with a lit candle, from the Castro to City Hall. For the San Francisco queer crowd, which often responded to infuriating events by rioting, it was a beautiful, peaceful response to violence.

  Legacy

  * * *

  Dan White would serve only five years in prison for the double murder after his defense team successfully argued that depression caused in part by eating junk food had left him mentally incompetent and incapable of premeditation (the infamous “Twinkie defense”). The night after the verdict was announced, the city rioted, shattering the glass doors of City Hall and burning more than a dozen police cars.

  The assassination only increased Harvey’s impact on the world. He had lived in San Francisco for just eight years and had been a city supervisor for less than one, but his legacy endures decades later. Harvey did everything in San Francisco with an eye on the national gay rights movement and he knew his role as a highly public, very out politician would carry risks. But even with the sure knowledge that he lived with a target on his back, Harvey kept his focus on the movement. “If a bullet should enter my brain,” he said in a recording he made just days before his murder, “let that bullet destroy every closet door.”

  GLENN BURKE

  1952–1995

  tl;dr Decades before Michael Sam and Jason Collins, Glenn Burke scores points for queer men in sports

  It was spring training in 1980, and Glenn was excited for Billy Martin to start as the new manager of his team, the Oakland A’s. The feeling wasn’t remotely mutual—in Billy’s eyes, Glenn was batting for the wrong team.

  Spring training brought with it all the usual growing pains as players batted, pitched, and fielded away the relative laziness of the off-season. But while the A’s were getting back on their game, Glenn was thrown off his. One day in the locker room he overheard Billy say:

  “No faggot’s going to ever play in my ball club.”

  A Love of the Game

  * * *

  Raised in Oakland, Glenn was a devout Christian who couldn’t get enough of sports. He could have easily gone for a career in basketball instead of baseball (and he later said his only regret was that he should have done just that). Sex wasn’t at all a part of Glenn’s early life, and he got all his energy out through athletics.

  Three years before joining the A’s, when Glenn was twenty-three, he had a revelation. He realized there must be a reason why he didn’t feel about girls the way other guys seemed to. The only similar feeling he could think of was the crush he’d had on Mr. Mendler, his middle school’s glee-club and drama teacher. When the reality of his sexual orientation hit home, Glenn drove to his old school, found Mr. Mendler, and confessed his feelings. That led to Glenn’s first sexual experience; he cried for hours afterward, consumed by the relief of finally understanding himself for the first time. Over the years, Glenn and Mr. Mendler ended up becoming casual friends with benefits.

  Glenn was already in the minor leagues when he had his encounter with Mr. Mendler and immediately knew he would have to stay closeted or risk committing “baseball suicide.” He moved out of his apartment and into the YMCA so his roommates wouldn’t discover his secret if he brought home a guy. Despite all the precautions he took, Glenn knew he would have to be an above-and-beyond ball player as a kind of insurance. If he was the best player on the roster, maybe he’d still have a career even should his secret be discovered.

  The Big Leagues

  * * *

  Glenn was called up to the Major Leagues a year later, in 1976. His first team was the Dodgers, famous for racially integrating the team with the first black pro baseball player, Jackie Robinson, twenty-nine years earlier. Glenn, also a black man, couldn’t know he was about to test the team’s tolerance for diversity once again.

  Glenn’s future was bright and several baseball insiders commented on his limitless potential. He performed well for the Dodgers and got along with his teammates, but there was a problem. Tommy Lasorda, one of the team’s managers, didn’t like the relationship between his son and Glenn. Spunky Lasorda was openly gay, though his father denied it. Glenn and Spunky were superclose despite appearing to be opposites: Glenn was a six-foot macho muscleman nicknamed King Kon
g, and Spunky was a rail-thin bleached blond obsessed with his tan. They spent their time going out in the Castro in San Francisco and commiserating about Tommy’s homophobia. Both men had a great sense of humor; one time, they planned to show up at Tommy’s for dinner wearing pigtails. They canceled their prank at the last minute because Glenn was sure “Tommy first would have shot us both in the head. Then he would have had a heart attack and died.”

  Whether Glenn and Spunky were ever more than bar-hopping buddies, Glenn never revealed. But their relationship ended abruptly when the Dodgers paid Spunky to never see Glenn again. Glenn was pissed off that Spunky accepted the buyout, and the two never reconciled.

  Despite the drama off the field, Glenn was a solid player for the team, with average batting and fielding stats. So when he was called into a meeting with Al Campanis, the team’s general manager, Glenn assumed it was to discuss his contract for 1978 and beyond. He was excited to be offered a great deal, but his enthusiasm couldn’t have been more misplaced.

  Al laid it out plain and simple: marry a woman, or your career with the Dodgers will be in danger. He even offered Glenn $75,000 to get hitched, and told him: “Everybody on this team is married but you, Glenn. When players get married on the Dodgers, we help them out financially.” *cough not true cough*

  Glenn declined the bribe. The next season he was traded to the lower-ranked A’s in exchange for an aging player.

  A Secret Revealed

  * * *

  Glenn had lasted four seasons total in Major League Baseball before being blackballed and forced into early retirement at age twenty-seven. Soon after being unceremoniously outed to the A’s courtesy of manager Billy Martin, Glenn was released from his contract early.