“ ‘Cause love don’t need a reason
Love don’t always rhyme
And love is all we have for now
What we don’t have is time.” – Love Don’t Need A Reason
In memory of Michael Callen
(11 April 1955 – 27 December 1993)
They Are Falling All Around Me
Michael Callen was a US singer and gay man who became an important AIDS activist during the terrible pandemic that swept the world in the 1980s and 1990s – and which continues to this day in many parts of the world. One of his legacy songs, Love Don’t Need A Reason, was co-written by Australian-born singer Peter Allen (who also died of AIDS) and singer Marsha Malamet.
My personal introduction to Michael Callen took place at the US National March on Washington on 25 April 1993, not because I attended the event, but because I watched film clips from the March on the ABC News in Australia. I was visiting a lesbian friend who has since passed away, and we were captivated by Michael’s song – a moment of beauty and peace during a stormy era when our civil rights were under attack and many of our friends were suffering and dying from a dreadful epidemic.
Do Not Turn Away
Michael Callen was a musician in The Flirtations, but his long list of activist achievements forms an impressive resume in itself. He rallied People With AIDS, formed support networks, led activist protests, wrote and edited activist books and literature, and appeared in a number of HIV/AIDS-related films during an era of terrible stigma.
Although he came from a background where he had enjoyed a lifestyle of sexual freedom and ‘promiscuity’ within gay male communities, he later spoke against this behaviour in the era of AIDS, and expanded his activist work to support all who were affected by HIV/AIDS – women, children, minorities, haemophiliacs, and others.
He ‘coined the term “people with AIDS” (PWAs) to replace the early characterizations of PWAs as AIDS victims’ and spoke of empowering them:
“Michael Callen used to say there was ‘a special magic in the room’ whenever a group of people with AIDS got together. Because our lives were at stake, we generally did our best to share what we were learning without judgment, without personalizing our arguments, without any agenda except to learn.”(Strub, 2014, 296)
Michael Callen worked passionately to agitate for those with AIDS. He even helped to invent the then-revolutionary concept of safe sex. Impressive work for one individual – a musician by trade, an activist by calling.
Living in Wartime
I do not know if he considered himself a Humanist, but he was an atheist and he certainly undertook activist work that upheld Humanist principles, by working for the dignity of others and empowering the dispossessed. Although he testified to members of New York Congress in 1983 that, ‘At age 28, I wake up every morning to face the very real possibility of my own death’, the most recent book on his life and works notes that his atheism contained elements of ‘hope and optimism’ (Jones, 2020, 349), which I see as another Humanist trait.
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
In 1988, he noted the insidious nature of living with AIDS:
“Two weeks ago… I looked down and noticed my first KS lesion on my leg. A biopsy has confirmed my suspicion. I thought I’d made a separate peace with AIDS, but it’s continually negotiating in bad faith. AIDS is a wily adversary. One cannot turn one’s back for an instant.” (Callen, 1988, xix)
Two years later, he displays a more positive attitude during the era when HIV remained a virtual death sentence:
“While I would never have wished for AIDS, the plain truth is that I’m happier now than I’ve ever been. Having AIDS has been like going through ten years of therapy – every week.
“AIDS has taught me the preciousness of life and the healing power of love. I’ve been more productive than at any time prior. I’ve travelled the world and met hundreds of wonderful people that I’m sure I would not have met any other way. I’ve tried to see AIDS as a challenge to begin living, instead of a sign to begin dying.
“AIDS forced me to take responsibility for my own life – for the choices I had made and the choices I could still make. For better or worse, AIDS has made me the man I am today.” (Callen, 1990, 10)
We could surely all learn from his uplifting attitude.
The Healing Power of Love
Perhaps one of Michael’s greatest gifts to the world was his strong hope. Author Sean Strub reports of Michael’s 1990 book, Surviving AIDS, written at a time when HIV was largely seen as a death sentence:
“In Surviving AIDS, Callen interviewed people with AIDS about why they thought they were alive. He found that those who had survived the longest shared three important traits: They believed survival was possible; they could identify a reason to get up in the morning; and when asked how they treated their illness, they could rattle off a list of different strategies. What was on the list wasn’t important. Survivors sought survival; seeking and experimenting with various treatments and strategies was the key.
“Callen told me he was accused of offering people with AIDS ‘cruel hope’ by suggesting that survival was possible. “I tell them there’s no such thing as cruel hope,” he said, “Hope is hope – either you have it or you don’t.” ” (Strub, 2014, 236).
Such a concept as ‘hope’ might be open to accusations of demonstrating a religious mindset. Lawrence Rifkin suggests an alternative view of hope, divorced from the populist vision of a utopian, dreamy-eyed fantasy that denies the ugly face of reality:
So let’s admit straight out: humanism is not about hope. It’s about facing the world as it actually exists and making the best of it. It’s about looking this real world in the eye and, using imagination and initiative, building castles in the sand, not castles in the sky. It’s about finding goodness within the spectrum of what’s real and what’s possible. And in facing such truths, humanists don’t look outside nature for salvation; they don’t seek change through wish fulfillment. This perspective is not a limitation. It’s a motivator. It’s the ground for positive action and results.
It seems to me that this is actually the form of hope that Michael Callen grasped and shared widely. A gay cliché of dark humour during that same era was that if life offers you lemons, make lemonaids. This is what Callen did, not denying the world’s problems but defying them; offering enlightenment to those facing darkness; offering a tomorrow for those whose today offers little. We can learn a lesson from him a generation later, whether facing cancer or COVID, poverty or prosperity, pride or prejudice.
On The Other Side
Australian AIDS historian Nick Cook recalls Michael Callen’s ‘show-stopping speech’ at Australia’s Third National Conference on AIDS in Hobart in August 1988, where he ‘gave a rousing address about refusing to be ashamed of his infection’ (Cook, 2020, 143). This encouraged, ‘the first major coming out of people with HIV’ in Australia, led by activists Chris Carter and Terry Giblett (Menadue, 2014, 20) – a virtual takeover of the conference by HIV-positive Australian activists gatecrashing the stage, coming out to the world – and to each other – for the first time; amidst applause, cheers, tears, hugs and a standing ovation from the audience – in defiance of widespread stigma and discrimination across the nation (Cook, 2020, 144 – 150). In that event, Michael Callen changed Australia.
I am fortunate to own a copy of Michael’s books, in one of which he has inscribed to its previous owner: “Celebrate diversity and heal AIDS with love!” Such words are surely worth remembering during this current pandemic and beyond.
“Together we have come this far
Don’t wonder where the heroes are
You are one!” – The Healing Power of Love,
(c) 1986 by Michael Callen & Marsha Malamet
(Callen, 1987, 94)
Michael Callen died of AIDS at age 38 on 27 December 1993. Had he been spared that fate, he would have celebrated his 66th birthday just this month. We can only wonder what music, what activism, and what hope he might have offered the world during those fruitful years of life that he was denied. Maybe that is his last lesson to us: to grasp every day and every opportunity while we can. Because love is all we have for now, what we don’t have is time.
Thank you, Michael.
This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
References include:
Berkowitz, Richard & Callen, Michael, with editorial assistance by Dworkin, Richard (1983). How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach, New York: News From the Front Publications, May.
Callen, Michael, ed. (1987). Surviving and Thriving with AIDS, New York: People With AIDS Coalition Inc.
Callen, Michael, ed. (1988). Surviving and Thriving with AIDS Volume Two: Collected Wisdom, New York: People With AIDS Coalition Inc., August.
Callen, Michael (1990). Surviving AIDS, New York: HarperCollins.
Cook, Nick (2020). Fighting For Our Lives: The history of a community response to AIDS, Sydney: NewSouth Publishing/University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
Jones, Matthew T (2020). Love Don’t Need a Reason: The Life & Music of Michael Callen, punctum books, 11 May.
Menadue, David (2014). ‘Stigmatised but largely invisible’, in John Rule, ed., Through our eyes: Thirty Years of people living with HIV responding to the HIV and AIDS epidemics in Australia, Newtown: NAPWHA, July, 18 – 21.
Strub, Sean (2014). Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival, New York: Scribner.
In 1993, Minerva Books published a memoir written by Melbourne academic, John Foster, which immortalised the life and death of his partner. A generation later, we are experiencing another pandemic, and this book – subsequently reissued by Black Inc. in 2003 and most recently in 2016 by the Text Publishing Company – is something of an overlooked classic. Given its literary merit – Peter Craven (1994) praises this writing as “unparalleled in Australian letters” – it is surprising that John Foster’s book has not received wider acclamation.
The answer, it seems, might be found in the historical context of the times. A generation has now passed since the arrival of AIDS, and much of our societal ignorance, fear and hysteria have dissolved into the calm of complacency. AIDS, which was once loudly denounced everywhere from pulpit to Parliament, has instead succumbed to the ultimate stigma: that of being generally forgotten and invisible. Foster’s novel is both a victim of, and a challenge against, such invisibility. It reminds us that HIV/AIDS is still here – and that we are greatly diminished when we overlook the courage of its heroes.
Take Me To Paris, Johnny is the real-life story of Juan Céspedes, the Cuban refugee and US emigre who arrives in Melbourne in 1986 to begin a new life filled with love, cautious hope and limited possibilities – only to be struck down with AIDS. Foster’s affectionate testimony to Juan’s resilience transforms the young man into the human personification of John Donne’s call for compassion: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind…” Juan’s Cuban mother and grandmother – whose distant lives interweave a mixture of both compassion and heartbreaking tragedy – are also transformed by Foster into figures who, through their suffering and loss, are evocative of the mother of Jesus. Such religious allusion subtly enriches Foster’s writing at different times throughout the novel.
Foster’s devout religious convictions might puzzle anyone who believes the term “gay Christian” to be potentially oxymoronic – even more so in the 1980s, when religious-based vilification was aimed at many people with AIDS. Such contradictions, however, are apparently not unusual for John Foster: an administrator who hates bureaucracy (Robertson, 1994) and an academic who falls in love with a self-educated dancer. Most paradoxically, Foster is an historian who teaches his students about the horrors of the Holocaust whilst conceding in his book that history holds a callous disregard for mere mortals: “Mostly it neither absolves nor condemns; it simply forgets”. Like his teaching, Foster’s personal memoir is a protest against such oblivion – this latter being a tribute to his partner, Juan, whose deathbed exclamation of heartbreaking despair, “I have accomplished nothing”, sparks Foster’s determination to document his life and death (Rickard, 2003).
The story is large and literate in scope, evocative even of a Shakespearean epic. Foster’s star-crossed lovers battle both society’s disapproval of their relationship and a deadlier ‘plague on both their houses’. Whereas Shakespeare’s fictional characters die in suicidal despair, Foster’s real-life lovers find consolation within their relationship: “We made it, Johnny. Didn’t we?”
John and Juan’s relationship can also be seen as an Australian story because it is the embodiment of multiculturalism and diversity. Their potentially intergenerational partnership – common enough in the gay community (Wilde, 2008) – is complicated by differences of race, education, class, culture and language. Foster nevertheless demonstrates unconditional love and acceptance, for example by accepting Juan’s infidelities either by choosing wilful ignorance or through a dismissive attitude akin to “boys will be boys”. Such is the nature of their unconventional partnership; one which some religions might propound as being symptomatic of the ‘sinful’ nature of homosexuality, but which Foster, as a Christian, presents without apology or reservation – his is neither a tale of political activism nor moral turpitude (Dessaix 1994), but simply a narration exposing a facet of what he considers to be real life.
Despite this implicit documentation of ‘ordinariness’, Foster’s writing also resonates with his personal sense of ‘otherness’ as revealed in his earlier book about WW2 German Jewish refugees when he summarises the effects of war, flight as refugees and subsequent cultural assimilation: “In Melbourne, German Jews have ceased to be a community…It is the memory of a past which is proud, terrible and still problematic” (Foster, 1986). Such mixed feelings and fears are reflected in Take Me To Paris, Johnny when Juan’s difficulties as a refugee and a gay man with AIDS allude to the plight of “pariahs” within Australian society (Baker 1994); they imply a concern by Foster that AIDS might decimate his own gay family just as life’s harsh realities ravaged members of the German Jewish community. There may even be a further parallel concerning the struggle within Foster’s own faith as a gay Christian, a minority within a minority which was under attack from both disease and discrimination. It may indeed be John Foster’s very underlying assumption – that gay men can find acceptance and love within the religious community – which has contributed to the avoidance of this text by some Australian readers.
Artwork used with artist’s permission.
Juan’s more obvious ‘otherness’ exposes different possible interpretations of his life and motivations. Readers might criticise Juan for relying on the financial support of older men in order to compensate for his own lifelong failure to forge a successful career for himself (Dessaix, 1994). A more benign interpretation might see Juan as someone who strives to improve his lot (Hanrahan, 2003) but upon whom fate inflicts many cruelties – until he is blessed through the friendship of John Foster. Williams (1994) evokes this latter alternative in his character description of Juan: “attractively elegant, talented, flawed, and unlucky in just about everything, except his choice of lovers.” As an example of the fickle finger of fate, Juan lies dying just as the “Grim Reaper” campaign is terrorising Australian television in 1987, and this fills Foster with impotent rage. After all, the faceless ‘other’ who is being publicly vilified as someone to fear is none other than gentle Juan. In the end, it matters not whatever might form the course or cause of Juan’s life journey; readers are uplifted by the end of his vigil when he discovers the redemptive power of love.
“Who, in their right mind, would actually want to read a book … about AIDS?” – apparently wrote one reviewer of an early New Zealand AIDS anthology, and was soundly criticised for this comment by Tom McLean, a Scottish journalist who was living and dying in New Zealand at around the same time as the characters in Foster’s book. McLean wrote his own AIDS autobiography, If I Should Die: Living With AIDS, dying three days after its publication (Young, 2002?a) – departing this mortal coil, like Juan Céspedes, on a Good Friday (Young, 2002?b).
The vexed question remains: “Who would want to read a book about AIDS?” – particularly in this decade when AIDS is seen as being barely newsworthy. Perhaps the answer is obvious: Everyone, because in learning about John and Juan, we are learning about ourselves. Why?
Indeed, why did the world find Anne Frank’s diary about the Holocaust to be so compelling and personal? It is an endearing coincidence that Anne Frank and Juan Céspedes share a childlike optimism despite imminent disaster; moreover, both their testimonies resonate with a mix of inner personal voices and external human truths which echo poet Walt Whitman’s decree: “I am large, I contain multitudes”.
Robin Grove (1994/1995) summarises another parallel in Foster’s book: “JUAN is JOHN, John Juan, each in the language of the other…” and this is the first of many parallels which are replete within and without the memoir. Juan receives almost identical care at the start and end of his life; his compassion for the friend who probably gave him HIV is shown through his caring support as the other man lies dying of AIDS – and mirrors the care he receives in due course from Foster, to whom he probably transmitted the same virus; the lovers both have funerals at Easter (Brady, 2004) and are buried together in Kew Cemetery. Such is the level of connection which unites John and Juan in both life and death; such is Foster’s skill that he can weave together such disparate threads of memory into a colourful tapestry of love and loss.
The book’s original subtitle, A Life Accomplished in the Era of AIDS, was a refutation of Juan’s deathbed exclamation of despair and defeat. This subtitle was deleted for the subsequent reissues, and may reflect the changing face of AIDS in Australia since Foster’s book was first published. The genre of Australian novel-length AIDS life narrative was a transitory and largely overlooked phenomenon; commencing with an autobiography by Eric Michaels (Unbecoming: An AIDS Diary, 1990) and ending with another by Robert Newey (Lessons Learnt, 2005); the arrival of new drug regimes then ended the conspicuity of suffering and death. AIDS now inspires little interest for most Australians; they see it as affecting marginalised peoples who are geographically or emotionally distant from their own lives. This is another tragedy of the pandemic: we fail to recognise noble heroes and role models. As one character comments in Foster’s book: “I sense from your account… that many people are increased in their humanity because of Juan’s presence among them.” A common truism is equally fitting: those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.
Most significantly, John Foster’s text is a story of humans and families: individuals, lovers, friends, biological versus adoptive families, religious and gay communities – and indeed the whole human family. In this mix, Juan is presented as both child and adult seeking his way in the world, while John Foster becomes both lover and mentor. The heartbreak of Juan’s biological family as they lose him to refugee flight is counterbalanced with the pain faced by Juan’s adopted Melbourne family as he is fades away with AIDS.
Take Me To Paris, Johnny has acquired extra layers of meaning since its initial publication. Juan originally escaped from Guantánamo in Cuba – a place which has taken on a new resonance around the world in more recent times as the location for other forms of cruelty – and his identity as a refugee also places his story within a more contemporary Australian context of discrimination and alienation. Most pointedly in recent times, the whole world has learn what it means to endure under the spectre of pandemic. Foster could not have envisaged that his book would remain as relevant as tomorrow’s headlines in the decades following his death.
John Foster shows his consummate skill as an author through his realism and compassion: love may not conquer all, but it makes everything bearable. His legacy is a work which echoes with the voice and essence of his departed friend, Juan Céspedes. In turn, readers can only wonder how many other Juans have been forgotten, with their stories left untold. Perhaps Juan’s greatest accomplishment is that, in the pages of this memoir, he speaks on behalf of them all.
This is based upon an unpublished book review written in 2010, related to my PhD Studies on, “A Social History of HIV/AIDS in Melbourne during the ‘Crisis Years’ 1981 to 1997”. This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
References:
Mark Baker, 1994. ‘Gentle Critic of the Hills Hoist Culture’, in Michael Visontay (editor), ‘Time and Tide’ (obituaries), The Australian, 18 May 1994, p. 16.
Jim Brady, 1994. ‘Eulogy’, in Baker, Mark, editor (1997), History on the Edge: Essays in Memory of John Foster 1944-1994, University of Melbourne History Department.
Peter Craven, 1994. ‘A Rare Thing’, in Voices, Vol. IV Number 2, Winter, pp. 118 – 122; an excerpted version of this essay was reprinted as the Foreword to the 2003 reissue of John Foster’s book.
Robert Dessaix, 1994. ‘The Dark Rose’, in Meanjin #1.
Stephen Dow, 2003. ‘AIDS, Fragile Love and Dying’, in The Age, 28 September, Agenda section, p. 10.
John Foster (editor), 1986.Community of Fate: Memoirs of German Jews in Melbourne, Allen & Unwin.
John Foster, 1993. Take Me To Paris, Johnny, Minerva.
John Foster (reissue), 2003. Take Me To Paris, Johnny, Black Inc. (includes Foreword by Peter Craven and Afterword by John Rickard).
John Foster (reissue), 2016. Take Me To Paris, Johnny, Text Publishing Company. (includes Foreword by Peter Craven and Afterword by John Rickard).
Robin Grove, 1994/1995. ‘A Memory’s Shape’, in Island No 60/61, Spring/Summer, pp. 68-71. (Note: this article contains a beautiful photograph of Juan which is not available in any of the other literature).
John Hanrahan, 2003. ‘Loving and Dying’, in Australian Book Review, November.
Tom Mclean, 1989. If I Should Die: Living With AIDS, Benton Ross Publishers, p. 56.
John Rickard, 2003. ‘Afterword’, in John Foster, 2003, as above.
Ian Robertson, 1994. ‘Obituary: John Foster’, in The Age, 14 May, ‘Extra’ p. 8.
Winston Wilde, 2008. Legacies of Love: A Heritage of Queer Bonding, Haworth Press.
Stephen J Williams, 1994. ‘The Personal Will Be History, One Day’, in Overland No. 136, Spring, pp. 84 & 85.
Hugh Young, 2002?a. ‘HIV/AIDS in New Zealand‘, in Queer History New Zealand: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender New Zealand History, Queer History New Zealand.
– – – – – – – 2002?b. ‘A Chronology of Homosexuality in New Zealand: Part 5 – From Law Reform to the Present’, in Queer History New Zealand: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender New Zealand History: Part 5, Queer History New Zealand.
In 2019, I attended a public event where speakers criticised the Australian government’s proposed ‘Religious Freedoms’ Bills as a license to permit homophobic and transphobic discrimination. There, one prominent LGBTQIA+ community leader thanked ‘queers of faith’ for their ongoing work to defend LGBT rights—as well she should. And yet she failed to also thank queer non-believers, many of whom have also worked for queer rights. Perhaps she should have contemplated the words of heterosexual atheist Phillip Adams:
There are some parallels here between atheism and homosexuality, ‘the Love that dared not speak its name’ as Oscar Wilde pronounced it, leading to millions living their life in the closet. Atheism was, and to a large extent still remains, the philosophy that dared not speak its name. And it’s only recently that I’ve observed atheists coming out, finally confident enough—to borrow a gay slogan—to be loud and proud. Incidentally, spare a thought for gay atheists. (Adams, 2010, 2:37)
The concept of gay atheism is hardly a new idea: I have been living this reality for decades. Queer communities comprise individuals who have undertaken their own personal journey to arrive at a place of autonomy and empowerment, difference and diversity. Atheist communities are the same.
Losing my religion
I recall the exact moment when I realised that I had finally lost the last shreds of my religious world-view in the early 1990s. I was surrounded by my new, queer friends, at workshops for the AIDS Memorial Quilt, where people came in to make panels for those who had been lost to the epidemic. Together, we all shared cups of tea, shoulders to cry on, and lots of hugs. As a former Christian, I was momentarily dumbstruck to realise that there was more genuinely unconditional love in that room than in any church I had ever attended. This shell-shocked group of social outcasts, volunteer activists, and carers, taught me that treating others with basic love and respect was not the self-proclaimed monopoly of any one religion or philosophy, but was actually a pragmatic expression of our shared, common humanity.
And yet history tells a different story. It speaks of marginalisation and exclusion. Particularly under the historic influences of the Abrahamic religions, queers and atheists have been largely proscribed and persecuted: from the burning of witches, faggots and heretics, to family disinheritance and conversion therapy; from the execution of sodomites and apostates, to the ongoing cultural genocide of queer youth, and more.
I have previously noted Camille Beredjick’s observation that religious homophobia can cause a queer person to become atheist (Allshorn, 2018, 116), and this is no more apparent than in the case of gay activist Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated Vietnam War veteran in the US Air Force. Coming out on the front cover of Time magazine in 1975, he was subsequently court-martialled and discharged by a panel of military personnel who were all religious (Duberman, 1991, 315). His Mormon church then excommunicated him, effectively not once but twice. Ultimately, ‘his faith and spirituality were crushed and he considered himself somewhere ‘between an agnostic and an atheist’.’ (O’Donovan, 2004) His personal resilience and courage enabled his survival until his 1988 death from AIDS, but his loss of faith is rarely mentioned by biographers.
A similar case involves Henry Gerber, who founded the Society for Human Rights, which historian Jonathan Katz records as being the earliest documented gay rights organisation in the USA. Established in 1924, the Society was quickly targeted by police, who arrested its members and confiscated its documentation. This meant that both Henry Gerber and his Society—along with their altruistic ambitions—were largely erased from queer civil rights history. Gerber later attributed this fate, at least in part, to a mixture of ‘religion and politics’, self-identifying as ‘now an avowed atheist’ and openly espousing atheist views, such as: ‘In America, where the Christian religion is losing ground, the horizon is growing brighter for homosexuals’ (Katz, 1994, 419 & 554-557).
Such stories reflect an ongoing experience within our communities. When Israel Folau recently declared that gays and atheists (and other ‘sinners’) are going to hell, his was a familiar historical and cultural narrative regarding a purported hellish afterlife for people who are different—and a hell which many theists throughout history have seemed willing to create for us in this life as well.
‘Smash the Church!’
The Stonewall riots and gay liberation are often proclaimed as being definitive moments in our fight for collective civil rights. But these were not explicitly the start of our collective queer journey out of oppression and towards liberation. Ultimately, this journey began whenever the first individual human being began to think independently and fight against his/her/their oppression. Thus we see the most basic parallel between queers and atheists.
Nor was this journey an easy one. Gay liberation was a war, a declaration of independence, and a call for social revolution. In the UK, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) disrupted the 1971 launch of the Festival of Light (mudlark121, 2019). In the USA, one early GLF street slogan was: ‘2, 4, 6, 8, Smash the Church, Smash the State!’ (Avicolli Mecca, 2009, back cover). Daughters of Bilitis co-founders Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin noted: ‘Everything that’s happened to oppress homosexuals today stems from organised religion. If it hadn’t been for all that shit, we wouldn’t have our problems today.’ (Tobin & Wicker, 1972, 53-4) The 1971 Manifesto of the ‘Third World Gay Revolution’ stated: ‘We want an end to all institutional religions because they aid in genocide by teaching superstition and hatred of Third World people, homosexuals and women…’ (Jay and Young, 1992). One meme expressing such sentiment can be found on a Melbourne badge from that same era: SODOM TODAY, GOMORRAH THE WORLD.
In seeking to be all-encompassing, gay liberation created its own downfall. One GLF activist recalls: ‘GLF didn’t last. We got involved in these endless theoretical debates about what we should do and what our relationship was to other organisations… GLF disintegrated into so many splinter groups that it just disappeared’ (Marcus, 1992, 185-6). In its wake, gay liberation seeded many other activist groups that shared its socially revolutionary aims, including some that subverted religious traditions. These included the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the Radical Faeries.
This culture war continues today in other forms. Since losing the Marriage Equality postal survey, Australian religious right-wing conservatives have extended their attacks on the Safe Schools program and trans rights. They continue to advocate gay conversion therapy. They demand new ‘religious rights’ to discriminate against queer people. In our increasingly secular twenty-first century world, such religious bigotry provides a strong argument for atheism. It also demonstrates how inadequate are outdated dogmas to provide guidance in a future that may contain new understandings of life, habitat, self-identity, human rights, gender and sexuality. Humanity will surely find fresh perspective in the quote from JBS Haldane that the Universe is queerer than we can suppose.
The history of queer atheism is the story of striving to build such a future.
The rise and fall of militant gay atheism
A formal LGBT atheist movement was born during the ascendancy of gay liberation idealism in the 1970s. This was an era when ‘Kill A Queer For Christ’ bumper stickers adorned some US motor vehicles (Perry & Swicegood, 1991, 13) while anti-gay campaigns were led by US conservatives such as Anita Bryant and John Briggs. The anti-gay Briggs Initiative of 1978 was soundly defeated after US President Jimmy Carter publicly spoke against it, following a rally by gay atheist protesters at a public meeting (Rolfson, 1978a, 7). In his last column in the Bay Area Reporter before his assassination, gay atheist Harvey Milk credited gay atheist Tom Rolfsen with being instrumental in ensuring President Carter’s public support: ‘And Tom Rolfsen pulled it all together in Sacramento last week. Tom’s idea, Tom’s work, Tom’s money, and a group went up there to confront the President of the United States. The rest is history. Congratulations Tom …’ (cited in Rolfsen, 1978b, 5).
Rolfsen and his lifelong partner, Chal Cochran, became founding members of GALA (the Gay Atheist League of America, later renamed Gay And Lesbian Atheists), in 1976. Their San Francisco chapter ran social events and meetings, and published a monthly newsletter and various magazines. The GALA Review began publication in 1978 and continued until 1989, at which point it boasted over a thousand readers; however, the workload upon then-76 year-old Rolfsen forced a scaling-back of their activities (GALA Board, 1989, 1).
It is Texas where perhaps the most controversial gay atheist activities were led by gay couple Don Sanders and Mark Franceschini. The ‘Houston LGBT History’ web page is a good source of material regarding the social, activist, and outreach activities of this Houston group, and of the openly hostile reception it frequently received from religious members of their local community. Operating since 1981, the group began its decline in September 1992 following the death of 38 year-old Franceschini, whose obituary testified: ‘From gay pride parades to ACT UP demonstrations, Mark Franceschini could be counted on to yell the loudest and walk the proudest’ (Sanders, 1993, 4). His partner, Don Sanders, died three years later (Texas Obituary Project, 1995).
These atheist groups—once fueled by gay liberation anger and outrage—are now largely forgotten by queer historians and social commentators. A new generation appears to prefer a less confrontational form of atheist activism.
Humanism and human rights
Australian-born UK activist Peter Tatchell is one example of a gay atheist for modern times. He has been a prominent humanist and human rights activist for many years, and is director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation. He observes, ‘A decent, better world is possible—and we don’t need religion to make it happen. All we need is love and people willing to turn that love into political action for human freedom’ (Tatchell, 2009, 309).
Another prominent example is someone who dates from the earliest days of queer rights. Gay activist pioneer, Magnus Hirschfeld, was a secular Jew, a humanist, and a socialist (Tielman, 1997). He co-founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, which advocated for homosexual rights. He even joined the feminist movement because, as a gay man, he saw a link between the need for queer rights and women’s rights (Finamore 2018).
Other overseas queer humanists have also been prominent activists. Antony Grey has been called ‘Britain’s first gay rights activist’ after helping to secure law reform via the passage of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act (Geen 2010). Rob Tielman is credited with having played a ‘prominent, pioneer role in the Dutch gay movement’ (Gasenbeek and Gogineni 2002, 64), a movement which he documents as having existed continuously since 1911 (Tielman 1997, 21). Dan Savage is known for his writings and podcasts, and perhaps mostly for his 2010 founding of It Gets Better, an Internet website offering bullied GLBTIQ teenagers hope and positivity. Groups like the LGBT Humanists UK, the Pink Triangle Trust (UK), and the LGBTQ Humanist Alliance (USA), also enjoy a long history of activism.
Australia has its own proud history of humanist LGBT activism. In December 1966, the first issue of the Australian Humanist (AH) featured an article in which heterosexual women’s rights activist Beatrice Faust supported gay rights (Faust, 1966, 2). Public meetings, networking, and other activism ensued. Subsequent discourse included gay activist Lex Watson writing subversively in the December 1971isue of AH that: ‘Homosexuality is an alternative sex role, an alternative life style, as inconsequential in one sense as a preference for red hair to black.’ (Watson, 1971, 38).
In 1970, the Humanist Society of Victoria produced a pamphlet entitled, The Homosexual and the Law — A Humanist View, and sent a copy to every member of State Parliament. Further copies sold out in bookshops, necessitating at least one reprint run (Reinganum, 1971, 6). The 5-page booklet criticised the law for its foundation in Biblical scripture, reinforced by its prohibition of what was legally termed ‘the abominable crime of buggery’—an emotive word that prevented Australian society from adopting a more ‘reasoned approach’ to the issue (HSV, 1970, 1 & 2). The booklet was later reprinted by Society Five, an early Melbourne gay rights group (Society Five, 1974).
Humanism offers more than simply an atheist version of liberation theology. It provides ethical cogency for atheists, agnostics, secularists and the non-religious. Humanism proposes more than a negative attitude (‘atheist’ = ‘non-theist’) and provides opportunities to contribute positively to society.
Love thy neighbour
Lesbian atheist comedian Sue-Ann Post quips: ‘I once auditioned for the part of Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar. I gave what I thought was a very realistic rendition of, I Don’t Know How To Love Him.’ (Post, 2010, 6:02) Levity aside, the problem of ‘feeling the love’ is very real in Australia, where I see religious privilege in our queer communities. I observe queer theists dominating public discourse and setting queer agendas, while openly atheist speakers are largely excluded from queer conferences, rallies, newspapers, publications, coalitions and networks. Only in independent social media discussions (and in Bent Street!) am I most likely to see any public acknowledgment that queer non-believers even exist.
Queer atheist blogger and author Greta Christina writes of similar experiences within US queer communities: ‘I’ve heard LGBT leaders talk about how important it is to reach out to people of different religious faiths… with no mention whatsoever made of reaching out to people with no religious faith. Not even in lip service’ (Christina, 2008). It must be questioned why queers cling so strongly to dying religious philosophies that have traditionally oppressed them.
Atheist liberation
While many religions claim a monopoly upon good works or virtue, the reality is that good people proliferate across space and time because of common humanity. Atheists are a part of this ubiquity. We can revisit the old GLF ideal of social transformation instead of assimilation, and use our difference to make a difference. This would surely marry the human existential desire for significance with a pragmatic, humanist response to the world’s injustices.
In seeking to change the world, we should start with ourselves. Transphobic ideologies appear to have been adopted in some atheist circles (Sorrell, 2018; EssenceOfThought, 2019), demonstrating a need for queer atheists to participate in greater community discourse and thereby contribute to what gay atheist and HIV/AIDS activist Michael Callen advocated: ‘The Healing Power of Love’.
Gay liberation may yet make way for atheist liberation—as exemplified in the life of US magician and atheist James Randi, who came out as gay in 2010 at the age of 81, stating on his website: ‘Here is where I have chosen to stand and fight. And I think that I have already won this battle by simply publishing this statement’ (Randi, 2010).
Bert Gasenbeek and Babu Gogineni (eds.), 2002. International Humanist and Ethical Union 1952-2002: Past, present and future, Utrecht: De Tijdstroom uitgeverij,(IHEU ebook).
Humanist Society of Victoria, 1970. The Homosexual and the Law — A Humanist View.
Karla Jay and Allen Young (Eds.), 1992. Reprint of ‘What We Want, What We Believe’ from Gay Flames No.11, in Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation, twentieth anniversary edition, London: GMP Publishers, 363-367.
Jonathan Ned Katz, 1994. Gay/Lesbian Almanac, New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers.
Eric Marcus, 1992. ‘The Radical Activist—Martha Shelley’, in Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Rights, New York: HarperCollins, 175-186.
mudlark121, 2019. ‘Today in London religious history, 1971: the Gay Liberation Front mash up reactionary Christian Festival of Light’, Past Tense, 9 September; at
Connell O’Donovan, 2004. ‘Leonard Matlovich Makes Time’, on Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons website, September. Retrieved from Wayback Machine Internet Archive.
Troy D Perry & Thomas LP Swicegood, 1991. Profiles in Gay & Lesbian Courage, New York: St Martin’s Press.
Peter Tatchell, 2009. ‘My Nonreligious Life: A Journey from Superstition to Rationalism’, in Russell Blackford & Udo Schüklenk (eds.), 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing, 300-309.
While the world largely regards COVID-19 as an unusual and singular event in living memory, the reality is that many epidemics and pandemics have swept the world. We can learn from another pandemic in our recent past that has killed millions and changed our cultural and human landscape – or have we already forgotten its many, many lessons?
While flags, uniforms and banners might arguably be seen as aligning with nationalism, elitism, or other forms of division, fabrics can also be used to bring people together in widespread community bonding – none more self evident than with the AIDS Quilt, which formed a strong public testimonial between the late 1980s and the early years of the 21st century. Fighting stigma and prejudice, the Quilt served a public function during a public health emergency.
Today, a COVID-impacted world could learn from the achievements of the activists, mothers, families and volunteers who formed a virtual underground army. Their activism during the catastrophe of AIDS led to reforms in social attitudes, religious homophobia, decriminalisation, anti-discrimination protections, sex education and sexual autonomy, family and inheritance rights, health care, and marriage equality. Will long-term positive benefits somehow also arise from the modern-day catastrophe of COVID-19? Such social and societal reforms could help to improve lives across the developing world in particular, especially in places such as Africa, where LGBTQIA+ people today suffer from the same abominable treatment that they endured in western society during the era of AIDS some two or three decades ago.
As a committee member/supporter of the AIDS Memorial Quilt Project Melbourne for over twenty years, I recall its many educational and support roles for those who were grieving, memorialising, or trying to overcome ignorance, prejudice and stigma. This essay comprises a talk I gave to an LGBT History Conference in Sydney on 24 September 2010.
Australian AIDS Memorial Quilt Project on Display in the Exhibition Building, Melbourne. Photo (c) 1999 Geoff Allshorn.
The Australian AIDS Quilt is our nation’s most evocative public response to AIDS and it remains our largest ever example of activist and community art. Following the 1987 founding of the American AIDS Quilt, called the NAMES Project, the Australian AIDS Quilt was launched on the first annual World AIDS Day, 1 December 1988. Panels were made by families, partners, friends, colleagues, workmates, nurses, carers or others in memory of people who had been lost to AIDS. Panels were sewn into blocks of eight, and these quilt blocks were then displayed individually or collectively. Each quilt panel was a unique testimony to an individual, a group or to a slogan such as “See It and Understand”. Names, dates, photos, personal messages, badges, clothing, teddy bears or more exotic personal items were often included on a panel. It is estimated that approximately 900 panels were eventually produced across Australia.*
Although the AIDS Quilt might be seen as an example of gay activism and a radical appropriation of a traditionally conservative crafting form, it is simply one manifestation of quilts being used for activist purposes. Despite its being an offshoot of the NAMES Project, the Australian AIDS Quilt also has historical and cultural precedents from elsewhere and elsewhen.
Quilts enjoy a long tradition around the world. It has been suggested that quilting may have travelled from Asia, where early surviving examples include grave goods; to Europe, where it became popular as clothing for knights during the Crusades (von Gwinner, 1988, 12 & 13). These early symbolic links between quilting and death or warfare would prove to be a recurring motif.
The 11th century Bayeux Tapestry is a famous example of medieval embroidery. Its pictorial form resembles surviving medieval quilts which suggest that such textiles were commonly used during those times to present information to largely illiterate populations – and once again, we see themes relating to warfare and death.
US medieval historian Norman Cantor reports that tapestries were hung across doorways and windows of medieval churches to alleviate common fears of airborne plague contagion (Cantor, 2002, 22) and German art historian Schnuppe von Gwinner reports that African burial cloths, resembling AIDS Quilt panels, were used in colonial Dahomey and Nigeria (op cit, 29 – 32). Thus we can see that such crafting has been a popular tool in response to plague and in memorialising past lives.
In 17th century France, bed quilts were hung from windows to commemorate religious processions (ibid, 16). This connection between quilts and street marches resembles the AIDS Quilt being displayed in conjunction with AIDS Candlelight Vigils during the 1980s and 1990s.
Socially isolated groups in the USA, such as pioneer and Amish women, included this quilting within their traditions. During the US Civil War, women sewed quilts in order to raise money and awareness for the abolitionist cause (Brackman, 1997, 12). It is also claimed – probably incorrectly – that quilts may have been used as markers for the “underground railway” to guide escaping slaves to freedom (Dobard & Tobin, 1999; Brackman, 1997, 14 & 15; Wikipedia, 2020). Clearly, there is a long association – both real and reputed – between quilting and providing a voice for disempowered peoples.
Australian quilting historians Annette Gero and Margaret Rolfe report that quilting has enjoyed a long history in Australia, where quilts have been used not simply for comfort but also to convey messages. Some quilting traditions have also provided clear parallels between war, mortality, crisis and AIDS, and have supported disempowered peoples.
Aboriginal women made decorative patchwork cloaks and sleeping covers from possum skins (Gero, 2008, 9; Rolfe, 1987, 14). One surviving cloak includes what may be representations of clan patterns (Beasley & Conte, 1995, 33).
Quilting also offered some degree of self-sufficiency for female convicts and an opportunity for colonial women to provide both bedding and social narrative within their families. Subsequent immigrant women have also made quilts to acknowledge significant life transitions. One recent group of Australian Iraqi women has used quilts to promote compassion for asylum seekers – a marginalised group in our modern society (Gero, 2008, 13 & 14; Marshall, 2004, ii).
The National Quilt Register lists over 1000 quilts from Australia’s history, many of which represent life transitions such as birth, war, marriage, illness, hard times and death (National Quilt Register, 2020) and some include recycled materials due to a scarcity of cloth among pioneer women. Such recycling was revisited and reinterpreted on the AIDS Quilt, through the occasional inclusion of a deceased person’s clothing on their panel.
In the Australian AIDS Quilt, a sampling of 190 panels (an estimated 20% of the entire Quilt) reveals that men comprised approximately 40% of identifiable quilt makers in the sample. Their contribution within a traditional “female” activity gives us another reason why the AIDS Quilt was a significant community project. But it must be stressed that, within this sample, women comprised approximately 60% of identifiable Quilt makers and they extended the traditional “female” roles of nurturing and quilting into activism on behalf of their gay sons, brothers, friends and patients – yet their contribution is largely overlooked by the gay male community’s social appropriation of the AIDS Quilt.
Australian quilts made during times of war provide the greatest parallel to the AIDS Quilt. Both forms of quilting were created at times when many young men were dying, and were a personal response to battles that involved love, loss, community, death and grief. In a break from the traditional female stereotype, war quilts were made by men (Gero, op cit, 129) as were many AIDS Quilt panels. Australia’s first war quilt was made in 1806 by a Prussian soldier who had been imprisoned during the Napoleonic wars (ibid). Later war quilts encompass a range of conflicts including the Boer War, both World Wars and Korea.
During the World Wars, women reclaimed their role in quilting by creating “Red Cross Quilts”, which were fundraisers for the Red Cross (ibid, 161). One example is a World War One “signature quilt” created by women in Williamstown, Victoria, who were inspired by one of their sons who sent home patches of cloth containing signatures from the battlefield. Some of those who were featured, including the young man at the centre of the quilt, did not survive the war (Author unknown, 2010). Further “Red Cross” quilts continue to be made. Although they are intended primarily as fundraisers, they enable local communities to publicly show their support for a humanitarian cause and have parallels with signature panels connected to the AIDS Quilt, which also enabled visitors to leave messages of support.
The Australian War Memorial reports that women imprisoned in Changi Prison during World War Two also compiled signature quilts which included personal messages, the meaning of which has now been lost (Australian War Memorial, 2017). Some AIDS Quilt panels also contain cryptic personal messages.
Australian scholars such as Robert Ariss and Jennifer Power have written of the role of the AIDS Quilt in providing both ritual and structure for shared grieving among the gay community during the 1990s. Ariss drew upon a parallel from the 1980s, when an AIDS diagnosis was often seen as a public and unintended double “coming out”. He suggested that “The Quilt is death coming out” (Ariss, 2004, 282), thereby breaking another social taboo. Perhaps this explains why the Quilt has almost disappeared from public view now that AIDS has largely faded from our collective awareness.
The AIDS Quilt began its decline during the mid to late 1990s. Death rates, activist burnout and the arrival of new medical treatments for AIDS may all have contributed to this decline. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some Australian gay men grew tired of visiting what had been nicknamed, “the doonah of death”. As the era of AIDS gave way to the era of living with HIV, the AIDS Quilt quietly disappeared from public view. It might therefore be seen as a product of its historical context rather than as a major contributor to ongoing discourse. The other Australian quilts discussed in this study also appear to follow this pattern of transitory fame.
Even though much of the AIDS Quilt has disappeared, some of it is still available for public viewing via live displays or on the Internet. Meanwhile, quilting has become a popular method for presenting memorial tributes. Recent examples include memorial quilts for those lost to other diseases, violence or armed conflict. The Australian Salvation Army has launched a “Life Keeper Memory Quilt”, a memorial to people lost to suicide (Benson, 2009). Thus quilting continues its perennial connections with conflict and death.
The Australian gay community founded and operated the AIDS Quilt as an assertive activist entity for over a decade, and the high participation rate of other groups of people provides a testimony to the creation of a memorial which promoted respect and diversity. A study of its place in both history and society enables us to fully appreciate how gay people operated in neither a cultural vacuum nor social isolation, and it also enriches our appreciation of the AIDS Quilt within a wider historical and cultural context. With its disappearance from public prominence, we are challenged to consider how best to ensure that its people do not fade from the rich tapestry of our lives, cultural memory or folklore.
*Estimate provided during conversation by the Secretary, Quilt Project Melbourne on 6 September 2010.
The above talk was preparation for my PhD Studies on, “A Social History of HIV/AIDS in Melbourne During the ‘Crisis Years’ 1981 to 1997”. This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
References:
Robert Ariss, 2004. ‘Re-Inventing Death: Gay Community Memorial Rites in Sydney, Australia’, in Robert Aldrich (editor), Gay Perspectives II: More Essays in Australian Gay Culture, University of Sydney.
Jennifer Power, 2011. Movement, Knowledge, Emotion: Gay activism and HIV/AIDS in Australia, Canberra: ANU E-Press.
Margaret Rolfe, 1987. Patchwork Quilts in Australia, Greenhouse Publications.
Schnuppe von Gwinner, 1988. The History of the Patchwork Quilt: Origins, Traditions and Symbols of a Textile Art (English edition, translated by Dr. Edwards Force), Schiffer Publishing.
