Studer Community Institute

Author Joe Openshaw shares the journey

June 22, 2015
/ Louis Cooper
/ community-dashboard

History records the heroic and sometimes bloody events that led to greater civil rights for African Americans in the 1960’s, but there was also an awakening of another minority group: the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. In his book, “Those Others: Navigating The Riddle of Homosexuality in 1965,” Alabama author Joe Openshaw tells the fictionalized story of young white man from Tennessee who travels to Washington and discovers his own identity as a gay man as the Voting Rights Act is being debated. Openshaw will present a reading and a lecture at 7 p.m. Monday at Open Books, located at 1040 N. Guillemard St., as part of the week-long PensacolaPRIDE, Pensacola’s annual gay pride celebration. The event is free. [sidebar] Want to go?

What: Book Signing, Reading and Lecture by Joe Openshaw, author of “Those Others: Navigating the Riddle of Homosexuality in 1964.” Wine and cheese reception to follow.
When: 7 p.m., Monday, June 22
Where: Open Books, 1040 N. Guillemard.
Admission: Free.
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“Knowing we can never chart the best course forward without knowing where we have come from, this year we are offering this literary event,” said Doug Landreth, president of Gay Grassroots of Northwest Florida, which sponsors PensacolaPRIDE. PensacolaPRIDE started last Saturday with the Festival in the Park at Seville Square and wraps up this Saturday with a showcase at First City Arts Center, with different events each night in between. Openshaw’s book uses a real life series of newspaper articles published by the Washington Post in early 1965 as a starting point for his fictionalized story. The five-part series was called, “Those Others: A Report on Homosexuality.” “Society-at-large faces a practical problem. It must decide how it is going to deal with the homosexual in its midst. And this question, in turn, raises a troubling complexity of legal, medical, moral and religious questions,” the first article posed. “Now, for the first time, some of these questions are being asked in public: Are homosexuals born or made by environment? Is homosexuality a crime, disease, choice or natural way of life for a minority?” In Openshaw’s book, the main character is Michael, an 18-year-old who comes from a small town in Tennessee to Washington to work in a senator’s office. While in Washington, he discovers his homosexuality and another gay man gives him the Washington Post articles to read. In the process of accepting himself – sometimes aided by the articles and sometimes not – Michael becomes convinced that the ongoing civil rights movement for African Americans is not only morally right, but also parallels the need to fight anti-gay measures like laws that criminalized sex between two people of the same sex, police stings in parks and men’s rooms and government policies against employing gays. “Michael thought about his Negro friends and how they were fighting to overturn laws that treated them as second-class citizens, and here were laws that made him a criminal. All these laws, he thought, are so archaic. People are people, whether Negro or white, and whether heterosexual or homosexual,” a passage in the book reads. Openshaw, a 60-year-old retired veterinarian, received the articles from an uncle who lived in Washington during the ‘60s. The resulting book – in which the articles are reprinted – is his only work of fiction to date. He lives in Bessemer, Ala., outside of Birmingham, with his husband, Bobby Prince. When he speaks in Pensacola, he will bring the original newspaper clippings from the Washington Post with him. He will also be signing copies of his book. Q: How do you think being an 18-year-old gay man in 1965 is different from being an 18 year-old gay man today? Openshaw: In 1965, I was 9 years old. I was aware of my own feelings, but I didn’t have words to describe it. I didn’t have role models. An 18-year-old in that time probably didn’t either, just like Michael didn’t. He had no idea that being a homosexual could be a normal way some people are. In today’s world, obviously with the Internet and cultural things – Michael Sam coming out as a gay football player and things like that – young people are so much more aware of the reality of being gay. On the other hand, there is so much more pressure and negativity – bullying – for those young people … You would think it would be much easier nowadays. Maybe in urban areas, but in rural area, in small towns, I’m sure there’s a lot of difficulty. Q: Why did you choose to connect racial civil rights and gay rights in this story? Openshaw: I was born in Montgomery, and I was about 5 or 6 years old when we moved to Birmingham. … Civil rights and the sort of tension that goes along with that is part of my history. Also, during the time I was writing the book, I was involved in LGBT organizations here, like Equality Alabama. We were trying to tie our quest for equality and rights to the Civil Rights Movements. Some people would say, “No, you can’t make a comparison.” Others say, “Yes, you can.” My view has always been inequality is inequality and civil rights belong to everybody. Now, the struggles have been different, and the routs that the two groups have taken – I don’t think either one has achieved equality – may have been different, but civil rights belong to everyone. For me, it’s an easy link between the two. Q: You use a real person, Bayard Rustin, in the book as a character. He’s the African-American gay man who organized Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. What did you do to research him? Openshaw: I read a couple books about his life, but they hardly touched on that issue because, until later in his life, he wasn’t really that open about it. He never tried to hide it, I don’t think. Some of the things he says in my book are basically either direct quotes or paraphrases of things he actually said. I tried to catch as much of his true spirit and personality as I could. There are a couple other real characters. Both the senators from Tennessee were real senators at the time (Sens. Al Gore Sr. and Ross Bass). Frank Kameny … arranged the first gay protest in D.C. I spoke to him by phone to get some idea about D.C. in the ‘60s. That was real interesting. Q: Do you know if there really were white gay people at the Selma marches? Openshaw: I did some research, and there is documented evidence that groups of gay people were supporting the march. Q: What did you think about what the Washington Post articles had to say? Openshaw: I thought they were well-balanced for back then. They’re not what we would think of as well-balanced now. I tried to reflect that some in the way Michael responded to them – the way they didn’t really help him to develop. They kind of showed him things he didn’t want to become or didn’t want to see. I think the articles themselves may have become more of a stepping stone for more media. Q: There wasn’t a lot of talk about religious objections to homosexuality, either in the articles or in your book. Why do you think the religious aspect of the anti-gay argument wasn’t as prominent in the 1960’s as it is now? Openshaw: I think it was taken for granted just because homosexuals were thought of as perverts and the dregs of society. Religious people or organizations didn’t feel the need to demonize us or talk about it. And there was the idea that it was an illness, so they couldn’t really attack gay people like they do now. I don’t think it was until the rise of the Moral Majority and those groups, that right-wing religious people started talking about gays the way they do... .Those who had to hate had their punching bag in the ‘60s. They didn’t need the gays. Q: What will you be talking about in Pensacola? Openshaw: One of the things I want to talk a little bit about while I am there is the importance of knowing our history. That’s one of the things about the book, even though it’s several years old (published in 2009) and it’s about something that happened 50 years ago, you can read it now. It’s about our history. It’s timeless. It has those articles in it, and I think those articles are an important part of our history.

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Author Joe Openshaw shares the journey

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