Gay Pride month. We thought to revisit a lost-in-time pre-Stonewall Allen Ginsberg moment, from the pages of the pioneering Mattachine Review
The Mattachine Society – read this interview with the founder, Harry Hay
and this very deep-dive interview with the Review‘s editor, Hal Call
Call: “.. .Of course, Harry Hay and Chuck Rowland and those boys, in the Fifth Order of the secret Mattachine Society (Foundation) they had the idea for the Society, but they had not the slightest grasp of public relations, or how to promote something, or how to sell an idea!…They didn’t know how to do it! It was their idea, and I’m the one that developed the sales of it. What little there was done in that period. Because it was such a rough period. It was the era of Joseph McCarthy, Senator McCarthy, and all that government, State Department nonsense, and so on…”
In the June 1959 issue (Vol, 5 no. 6) – they published Allen’s poem “The Green Automobile”
Review Editor – I’ve just been looking at the June issue of the Mattachine Review, and I don’t see how it furthers your purpose of attempting to get some of us to understand homosexuality and the problems of homosexually inclined individuals for you to publish verse of the type represented by “The Green Automobile”. However artistic this may or may not be, the theme would seem to be the kind of behavior which is illegal and in the minds of many people pathological. You don’t make it any less illegal or less pathological by artistic flourishes about it, which are sharply contradictory to the thoughtful discussions represented by the articles by Professor Ayer and by Dr. Ellis. I have been disposed to commend your journal, but I cannot do so if you’re going to sandwich in tricky little glorifications of the illicit in between serious, legitimate articles. I am hoping that I have misunderstood something. Sincerely yours, Karl Menninger M.D., Topeka, Kansas
Allen was moved to respond. In the December 1959 issue of the Review:
Dr. Karl Menninger – Just what kind of analyst are you anyway? You sound like an ignorant country hick. If you think poetic beauty is just a lot of “artistic flourishes”, you don’t know the first thing about Art. “The Green Auto” is a poem, a vehicle for the Imagination to fly in, suspending the law of gravity as well as your lesser laws of opinion and pathology. I project an accurate image of my passions in this brief world, telling the truth. It demeans you to insult this sublime process as “tricky little glorifications of the illicit”. Speech unworthy of a doctor of the soul…Furthermore it is presumptuous of you to try to throw your weight around telling the Editors of the Mattachine Review more such poetry. Their magazine is pedantic and scared enough anyway. I think you have misunderstood a great deal, and I won’t stand still for it.
The next letter-writer, one “John Sheldon Ph.D”, further chimes in:
“I suspect that what Dr. Karl Menninger has misunderstood is the nature of homosexuality and the homophile movement. He does not object to the articles by Professor Ayer (advocating repeal of laws against homosexuals) and Dr. Ellis (apparently saying that anyone who is not bisexual is neurotic and that anyone who supports homosexuals must be homosexual himself) but he does object to Allen Ginsberg’s poem about a homosexual friendship. He objects because homosexual behavior is illegal and “in the minds of many people pathological…”
He goes on: “The fact that homosexual behavior is illegal is hardly relevant. If we are not free to be able to discuss and write about illegal acts from all points of view then the laws that happen to be on the books at the moment will become fossilized and sterile. Homosexual acts are not illegal in, say, Holland. Would it be alright to publish the poem there? The law is not holy writ. It should be observed except when it interferes unjustly with the individual’s private life and conscience, but it should not be sanctified.
Of course homosexual behavior is pathological in the minds of many people in our society. It is unfortunate that many of these people are psychologists and psychiatrists, that many of our students of behavior seem to suffer from cultural myopia just as much as the clergy do. Other psychologists and psychiatrists who are just as competent do not agree that homosexuality is pathological and it seems a bit presumptuous of Dr. Menninger to feel that only things that he approves of should break printed. Psychology and psychiatry are still so primitive, our understanding of human behavior so limited, that no-one can say at the present time that homosexuality is healthy or pathological, normal or abnormal. It is likely that as our understanding increases these terms will become meaningless and we will ask questions that have more validity. In the meantime, tolerance and humility seem to be called for.
An essential factor in the development of group consciousness and self-understanding is the interpretation and extension of group experience by means of the artistic imagination. High quality fiction, poetry and art can make a real contribution to the homophile movement. I hope that you will continue to publish.”
Mattachine Review did indeed:
“Publishing poetry has never been a consistent policy of the Review. However this literary art form does deserve print even in the Review occasionally. We are grateful to Mr. Ginsberg for the poem mentioned above and have received favorable comments about it. And as a bonus to readers a special supplement of 5 poems by four writers (including one Mr Ginsberg) is included in this issue.”
The poem of Allen’s was “Message“ (written, May 1958 in Paris, “originally published, in handwritten photocopy, Jargon 31, Highlands, N.C. c/o Jno Williams, 1958″, and later included in Kaddish and Other Poems (1961)
This December issue, it should be pointed out, also included Kenneth Tynan‘s article (originally published by The Observer in London), “The Bearded Beats of San Francisco”. Tynan made a point of visiting the Mattachine offices as part of his prior research /reporting for the 1961 “We Dissent” documentary).