Stand by Me by Jim Downs

Stand by Me by Jim Downs

Author:Jim Downs
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465098552
Publisher: Basic Books


The police raid on The Body Politic’s headquarters and the paper’s impending trial for “use of the mails to distribute immoral, indecent or scurrilous material” made news across the gay world. The January–February issue of Join Hands, a gay periodical based out of San Francisco, led with the headline “Gay Press Attacked” and stamped “Final Issue?” on a reproduction of The Body Politic’s masthead. Join Hands reported that the police raid resulted from the fact that the “Ontario Human Rights Code is presently under consideration” and “a number of government ministers are known to oppose protection for gay people in the Code.” Join Hands quoted Edward Jackson, The Body Politic spokesperson, who explained, “This is only one article in a paper that has been in publication for six years, and it is about the lives of only four gay men. That the government sees it as an excuse to refuse recognition of the rights of hundreds of thousands of gay people is simply further evidence of how much we need legal protection. . . . The real intent of the police raid,” Jackson suggested, “was to shut this newspaper down.”59

In Texas, Gay Austin reported that “the warrant used to seize material from the newspaper’s office” permitted the police to take “almost anything.” The Texas paper quoted Jackson’s claim that the police filled twelve large crates with “subscription lists dating into the past, distribution and advertising records, corporate and financial records—even our chequebook.” Jackson further stated, in the Gay Austin account, “It was an obvious attempt to terrorize the readers of a newspaper by seizing its subscription list. It has the effect of intimidating subscribers of a publication of which the government does not approve.”60

Gay Austin placed the police raid on The Body Politic’s office within a broader global context of attacks against gay newspapers. In Britain, the Gay News had been sued for “blasphemous libel.” As The Body Politic itself commented on the case: “In England, gays have also been sensitive to the parallels between the Gay News case and that of The Body Politic. Both papers are fighting charges which appear to have been trumped up in an attempt to intimidate or silence the gay press.”61 Gay Austin also reported that Diana Press, a feminist publishing house in California, was “viciously vandalized” and that two Toronto men were being criminally charged “for hanging gay posters.” For readers of gay periodicals, the raid on The Body Politic’s headquarters meant censorship, surveillance, and, for some, a concerted effort to shut down newspapers and free speech altogether.62

As the trial approached, activists across the world publicly protested the raid of The Body Politic, and some Americans issued statements defending the paper to the US attorney general. The list of supporters ranged from activist groups in France and Australia to prominent leaders in the gay community, including Jonathan Ned Katz and Harvey Milk. Craig Rodwell spread word of a fund-raising event hosted by historian Martin Duberman in his West Village home in New York City to support The Body Politic.



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