I came. I saw. I conquered. Now I am getting erased.

I have no idea what it is, but it seems to the present young generation that history only began 30 years ago, and this is a problem.

By way of illustration:

I have attended talks by people who were inside and out on the street the night of the Stonewall Inn Rebellion who, after speaking of their experience that night,  have been corrected on some details that did not match what an audience member had been sent by a peer of the same age in a text.

My own history was sanitized recently to a point to remove all possible triggers that would make certain facts uncomfortable for present day young readers who might be offended by the terms that were used and the attitudes expressed twenty years ago so that when I read my own history, I was a minor player in an event in which I was the main one. Restoration of facts and vocabulary, no matter how unpleasant to today’s sensibilities, restored me to my own story.

In my living room I have a framed t-shirt I designed for an AIDS Walk in Oklahoma City in 1994, some thirty years ago now, along with a button and key chain that were part of the fundraising, but read recently that this year will be the 25th annual AIDS Walk, according to a new committee, erasing the five walks that would make it actually the 30th and removing from the Community history the people who had faced the worst of the AIDS Pandemic’s early devastation in the 1980s, and had begun the Walks.

A simple inquiry on a visit to Long Beach California recently revealed that, although the Gay Men’s Chorus of Long Beach had existed from 1984 through around 1994 and was very well known, the young people at the reception desk at the GLBT Community Center, which should have its finger on the pulse of the Community, past, present, and future, had no idea such a chorus existed showing that the men who had given their time to the Community during the early years of the AIDS Pandemic have been erased. Making it worse was this same lack of knowledge on the part of the person in charge of the Center at the time I visited who presented a bad example to those who have taken on caring for the Community in all its aspects. They only knew about the chorus begun in Orange County in 1992. 

To guarantee to myself and anyone who might assume I have reached that age where fantasy and reality blur their boundaries, although I could find no reviews of the GMCLB’s performances, I did find notices of its upcoming concert dates in the local paper, The Press-Telegram, for those years.

Although the Center would welcome anything I might have related to the chorus, there seemed to be little interest in correcting the history.

In looking for information online since anything I had was lost in 1992 with the Rodney King Riots reaching where I had materials stored, I wrote to the local newspaper in Long Beach and was referred to a local LGBT Community newspaper that might be useful to my research and found it had recently celebrated its anniversary, claiming to be the first LGBT Community paper in Long Beach.

I know this claim to be false because, among my involvements in the Long Beach Gay Community, I was the cartoonist for the original paper from 1985 to 1992. 

That was the year I spent the summer in Greenwich Village in New York having coffee occasionally with many people who were at the Stonewall Inn that night,  holding the Ashes of Marsha Johnson at coffee in Mr. Wicker’s antique shop the day before I attended both her funeral and the party after where the Drag Queens were fierce, and got to hear the stories of the behind the scenes that may shock those whose history is all lollipops and rainbows and which they would dismiss out of hand because truth triggers the easily offended.

I have spoken with many who did the heavy lifting since Stonewall, and what they have experienced in large numbers is seeing the history of which they were a part and a shaper being modified to taste like history is a recipe and themselves being written out of their own lives and replaced with tag-alongs.

Some of the saddest words I heard came from an older activist, “No one knows who I am anymore,” when many owe her a debt.

As a teacher, whenever an unpleasant historical event came up there were always the students in the class who boasted that had they been there, things would have been different, ignoring the reality that things in the past were not like they are now and could have been better or worse than they are presently. Whereas, now you might be able to storm into someplace and make your displeasure known because times allow for that, trying that in the past might have you shot just stepping in the door depending what part of the country you lived in and what color your skin was.

When a group of us elder Gays were discussing changes over time while sitting at a bar on Pride Day, we were admonished for expressing jealousy of the young kids who have the freedom to do what we only could dream of and worked for, with the reminder that if we had only worked harder we would have had our rights sooner  when this twenty something was born Years after the state had passed its equality law and might have some difficulties now, but not those as well as what had to be experienced before.

When things like marriage equality came along it was, to this young person and his friends, just part of the natural progression that went along with what we had been given in the past because, apparently, it was not through the hard work of the activists in the Community but because of the largesse of the greater society that extended our rights to us that we now have them.

A Transgender friend is given the cold shoulder by young Trans people who ignore what her transitioning entailed as a decorated cop in a red state capitol  and do not invite her to participate in things because they have decided that all cops, regardless of anything, are bad, and she is equally guilty of any police oppression regardless of her treatment by the police force post gender alignment.

If I have seen this much erasure in these many places in just those things with which I had a close relationship, it has to be happening in a lot of places and we need to stop this erosion of our history.

I saved my history as I wrote an important part of it in a book and that, my artwork, and legal papers from OKC are archived and, regardless of any future treatment, my truth is on file.

Although it has been 30 years and only one visit in that time, I am endeavoring to restore the GMCLB and the original Gay newspaper to the historic record.

I am proposing that anyone  who was a Gay activist, who gave their lives to the fight, who experienced any part of Gay History, write your personal experience down. Do not leave it to others. They will not be looking you up especially if your history goes back more than 30 years.

Write down your personal experience, the role you played, referring only to others as they play into your story. You are the star, they the extras and supporting cast. It will happen that way with their tellings so there will, in the end, be singular and group inter-twinings.

This is your official account of your story, the one that, regardless how anyone else might twist it, will exist as your truth.

There are various places archiving Gay History.

My Oklahoma History is at a university in that state and there are Gay History sites on the internet. You can write it up on a self publishing site so it is preserved.

It used to be that we were erased by those who did not want us in the histories because we were different. Histories were rewritten to credit others with our work and pronoun genders were changed to deny our love for each other. It was bad enough when we had to protect our history from others, it is horrendous that we have to save our history from self-revision from within.

“What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. ” Thomas Paine

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Phrases like “Family Friendly” were historically used to exclude. 

Not wanting to be seen for what it was, a ban on Gay people being somewhere because that could lead to litigation, playing off of stereotypes, this phrase meant that as Gay people had no self-control while lacking any idea of social skills, we would show up and camp the event up with weird sexualized behavior. It was to everyone’s benefit that we not attend.

Anyone who has ever had to fight for their rights with which they have been endowed by their creator, rights all people had because it was just so self-evident that we are all created equal, has had to face those euphemisms that bar the door, and prosecution because a law’s wording was carefully crafted to appear broad when the intent is to artfully target.

During the book banning attempt in Oklahoma City 20 years ago, the books to be banned were those with “Homosexual Themes”  which are whatever the banner defines that as. Sometimes the publicity for the attempt to ban a book was the actual object as it opens a door to ignite any number of conservative pontifications.

The chaos this approach would create was as self-evident as the truth about equality because all books could be reassessed and evaluated with a more jaundiced eye and many acceptable books could be shown to have “Homosexual Themes” by simply assigning symbolism to names, colors, places, actions, and then re-interpreting simple scenes as the veil that blurred what was actually there.

This was useful as the majority would have little interest in what others lost or never got, so with the us/them set up, they were content to be protected from us, and the system seemed to have the expected benefits.

But those who have had to fight for their rights are very aware of slippery slopes as recognizing  our rights, the rights the creator already gave us, was constantly referred to as the slippery slope that would end up having everyone’s rights recognized, not just those of those who benefit by the division.

Back when Ron DeSantis began his anti-Gay jag and knew he needed both the ostentatious, politicaly advantageous actions and the ones more subtle because, being broad, they would appear to be universally applicable, while they would only be applied to one group of people, Bill O’reilly, assuming he was still relevant, supported Florida’s book banning law because, 

“there was abuse going on in Florida. There were far-left progressive people trying to impose an agenda on children, there’s no doubt about it.”

Now, out of fear, school districts are erring on the side of caution, afraid some overlooked book will become someone’s major issue and way to Jesus. They are obviously casting a wide net that supporters of book bans did not realize could entangle them.

Bill O’Reilly, who accused school teachers and librarians of wanting  to “impose an agenda on children” while he wrote a series of book about the “Killing of” the witches, the Legends, the killers, the Mob, Crazy Horse, the SS, England, the Rising Sun, Reagan, Patton, Jesus, Kennedy, and Lincoln, showing an odd fascination with a negative, politically explained obsession and, perhaps finding beginning each book with the words “Killing” is somehow being poetic, has found he has been removed from a school district’s libraries perhaps, because of the killing thing or as part of removing indoctrination from the schools.

Years ago, Nancy Reagan opposed stem cell research to combat Altzheimers  supporting the idea it promoted abortion because the the stem cell supply used in research had originallycome from aborted fetuses. That was until such research might help Ronnie in his waning years and mental capacity.

It became okay of a sudden.

AIDS research was purposefully slow because others were dying. When it was found that it wasn’t limited just to them, things changed. 

And, now that Bill O’reilly has been swept up in what was supposed to be a cleverly disguised law targeting a specific group of people while appearing to be applicable to everyone, he wants specifics which he will not get because that would reveal the actual intent of the law and the specific segment of the population being targeted.

“Things are getting crazy with book banning in Florida. “Killing Jesus: A History” and “Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency” both were pulled pending a review to see whether they ran afoul of a new state law passed by the state’s Republican-led Legislature and signed by DeSantis.

Depending on how any action he might take turns out, O’Reilly may be showing other authors of banned books how to get their books put back on the shelves in Florida having declared.

“We are investigating and are seeking comment from (DeSantis). This will not stand.”

What bothers him the most and what is so objectionable to him is that while he supported DeSantis’s book ban laws when applied to others, not to those like him, he has realized that “The state has an obligation to protect children. But the wording of the law was far too nebulous in Tallahassee.”

The story is that Escambia County School District removed 1,500 books from it libraries pending review, a process which, while following the law, deprives students in the district access to all those books, even the ones that will eventually be returned to the shelves either before graduation when they would be useful or after when unneeded.

Tiffany Justice, a leading voice against “inappropriate” books in school and co-founder of Mom’s for Liberty, reeling itself at present because, while they were going after controlling what other people’s children could read, they were too distracted to notice one of the founders had taken too much liberty, complained about schools doing this because 

“They’ve got bloated administrative budgets, they’ve got people doing all kinds of things. If they don’t have the time to vet the books that are in the libraries then they have no business being in their jobs.”.

The two things she ignores are that this removal of books is not what schools want to be doing but the law she supports forces them to do, and that the books were vetted by professionals but it did not go the way she would have liked because it was done out of her control.

The cooler heads at the school district explained, 

“The 1,000+ books … have not been banned or removed from the school district; rather, they have simply been pulled for further review to ensure compliance with the new legislation. Our school district, and especially our dedicated media specialists, remain committed to adhering to all statutes and regulations, while also providing valuable and varied literacy opportunities for every student.”

The only viable solution to Bill’s problem according to his own charges would be for Florida to specifically list which citizens Florida is targeting.

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The purpose of the Quigley Institute for Non-Heterosexual Archival Archaeology is to restore history as it was, correct the accepted historical record, and to be honest with any findings concerning Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression initially in regard to Whaling in the 18th through 20th Centuries, and eventually in all areas of history.

As I previously stated, inquiries about Homosexuality on whaling ships were answered not with cited instances but with assumptions implied in Moby Dick and  just accepting it had to have happened as men were on long, all-male voyages with few choices for sexual release, following the laws of the sea regarding sex as opposed those on land, and, not being out of the ordinary or worth note, just happened and nothing was said, at least not in log books.

For me, this accepted assumption became reality with the Newport Log entry I had come upon when transcribing that log in 2016. 

Until the summer of 2023, any of my inquiries to see if this was the first entry found related to Homosexuality got the same answer about assumptions and implications expressing the required interest without actually appreciating the significance, until I received a log entry from a professor of UMass Dartmouth, a friend, who while doing research on climate based on the readings of wind and weather contained in whale ship logs since they would return annually to the same areas to hunt, and their readings, compared over the years, showed changes over time that had been, had come across the log entry dealing with Mr. Smith getting lashes on the Charles Phelps among some papers someone he knew who was researching punishments and the reasons for them onboard whale ships had written down. 

The book, “Unruly Desires, American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail” by William Benemann was recommended by Silas Costello, a writer, illustrator, museum educator, and historical tour guide (https://www.sj-costello.com) who also has an interest in whaling History, deals with Homosexuality in the navy, a different culture at sea than whaling, has a chapter with other instances of Homosexuality.

I have expressed a concern that many log entries may have had references to Homosexuality that might have used terms unfamiliar to a transcriber or reader, perhaps code words, and were just glossed over, a common practice now, as so long as you get the letters of the words right so there is a transcript with no reason for a transcriber to actually understand what is transcribed. I did have to explain Onanism to quite a few well educated people, and have myself transcribed what seemed gibberish until after my transcription time at the museum I went back to figure out what I had just described. There was, also, the possibility that as a researcher might be looking for information relative to a specific topic, they might overlook something significant because it is not their topic.

“Worked the lathe” remained something transcribed at the end of quite a few entries informing the reader that an activity was taking place, but it was cross referencing with the writings of Sophie Porter that I found the captain was making replacement baseball bats. Whether I took the time to reveal the purpose of the lathe work or not, the action had been a definite one with a definite purpose that could have remained unknown if my curiosity was not peaked or if a transcriber other than myself were just dealing with producing a typed page with or without understanding what was typed. 

This might not have grabbed the curiosity of another transcriber as I am sure there are things significant to someone or even a group of people of which I am not one that I sail right by.

In one scenario we know the nature of the activity, in another, it would be mentioned but open.

In blogs and on this site I have made references to the diary of Sophie Porter, which is actually the official log book of the Jesse H Freeman, which I consulted to fill in the details about social life that were not in the other ship logs at Herschel Island the winter of 1894-1895 as they were kept by the busy captains and first mates as business documents and contained the required information on weather, location etc. while Sophie Porter, accompanying her husband on the voyage had plenty of time to spend writing about daily life. 

The only transcript I had found of “Sophie Porter’s Diary”, which I had accidentally found a link to when researching something else, was that done by Dr. Walter Vanast of McGill University who, according to his bio on www.academia.edu, is a Medical Specialist (General Adult Neurology), working at Kateri Memorial Hospital in Kahnawake, with mostly Mohawk patients. His Phd is in history of science and medicine and he writes mainly about early contact dynamics in Canada’s Western Arctic, especially the Mackenzie Delta Region, with its Inuit and Gwich’in peoples whose native community he is hoping could be reconstructed from the written record.

As a result, his transcription of what is the log of the Jesse n H Freeman concentrates on things connected to the Indigenous People while leaving out much that could have been in the original but not necessary for his purposes. As he states at the beginning of his transcription, “I have taken out sentences referring to the barometer and temperature, removing the former entirely and replacing the latter /with a numerical figure immediately after each date. I’ve also removed most wind directions which are highly repetitive and soon annoying.  I’ve kept references to wind volumes airs light fresh blow and blizzards”

He also left out minor details in Sophie’s Log, as a multi-sentence description of a celebration on board ship attended by all the captains whose names and ships are mentioned, as were the details of the gathering including descriptions of food and decorations in her writing is reduced to the single sentence,”We had a party on board….” and that is all.

He would often mention an event like this, giving the Topic sentence, but leaving out the paragraph, to get closer to a more relevant entry that he would transcribe and include in detail.

When it came to mentions of Indigenous People he was more detailed and complete as that was his interest. He made sure to include the names of individual “Natives” and any medical situations and cultural practices Mrs. Porter wrote about while leaving out much of the detail in the entry that was about the crew and officers.

As part of his ongoing study of the Indigenous People on the Western end of Canada, Dr. Vanast also transcribed the Western Arctic logs of Captain Hartford Bodfish who spent seven winters at Herschel Island, five at Baillie Island, and eleven summers in the Beaufort Sea, kept from 1893 through 1899

Bodfish had begun as a deckhand, moved up to the rank of Mate, and eventually to captain of the Newport where he included in the logbook, 

“Monday Feb 11th: A light breeze from the W.N.W. Cloudy and misty Bar. 30.10. Ther. -4 Got a load of meat put the Steward (Scott) forward for Sodomy and Onanism of Bark Wanderer one of the men deserted but was overtaken and brought back.”

Omitting the wind, weather and a reference to the meat delivery, Dr. Vanast, in accordance with his purpose, reduced the entry to

“Put the steward Scott forward for sodomy and onanism on Bark Wanderer one of the men deserted was overtaken and brought back.”

And the inclusion of this log entry, though not complete, kept the log entries sequential and complete. 

This collection of Bodfish log transcriptions, just as with Sophie Porter, had major points with few details, except when it came to the Indigenous People.

The truth of what had been an ongoing assumption should have been a known fact as the abbreviated entry, as quoted above, appeared in the collection of logs the professor had transcribed 10 years before I had come across it while doing a transcription of that very same log, not known to have been transcribed in any form, when I was doing mine in 2006, one brief sentence, nine significant words in a 135 page document.

Either because of it being of no importance to his interest in Indigenous medicine and as important to him as was the meat delivery, it went by unnoticed and had been there while people claimed there were no such known entries.

Doing my transcriptions I noticed the terms ”sodomy” and “Onanism” as I was familiar with them for a variety of reasons, and took notice where the Doctor had not.

It sat unnoticed for 10 years but was there and visible, able to answer the question about Homosexuality as a real thing on whaling ships, but no one saw it. It would have been the same if he had chosen to delete the reference to the Homosexual activity so that we might only know that, on that day, the ship got a load of meat, the omitted fact to be discovered a decade later for the first time when I was making my faithful transcription.

Which is basically what happened.

So the conundrum.

The reference to Sodomy and Onanism was typed out in 2006 by someone who saw just words and attached no meaning or significance, thus not letting the world know that Homosexuality was no longer an assumption but a fact because he did not notice what he had found.

It was as if it wasn’t there while it actually was.

This might become an annoyingly common occurrence as with a new system of crowdsourcing transcriptions with, as the head of the department in the museum that does transcriptions explained, “our final edited product is crowdsourced, worked on by multiple people”, resulting in just transcribing random pages, not necessity connected as the claim, in spite of past realities including this one, now is, this is better than if one person “owned” a page or a whole log/journal” which seems to be countered by what has been found by transcribers working on whole logs over the years and the fact that an important piece of historical information had been in plain site without notice while people sought an answer that entry could have supplied and could when found.

I came along to the same log entry, transcribed it in full and made the discovery which technically had already been made with the person discovering it just moving on with no idea of its value. If he knew its value, he certainly would have offered it as the answer to the question he would have to know was being asked, even if only from having read Moby Dick in high school, and would seem to have erred by saying nothing.

Consider this.

Because it was on my radar, I saw the significance of the two terms and saw their place in correcting the accepted historical record. The original transcriber did not, so the log entry had been there but unseen.

In the dividing up of the Newport log into two parts, by total chance I got the section with the entry which might have been glossed over as just more words whose meaning may be known or unknown as part of the document and so are deciphered and typed with no other attention given if it had gone to the other transcriber who may or may not have seen the importance, while I was skimming past something extremely important to him as his family goes back to whaling on Nantucket.

This would mean not only was the partially transcribed entry left obscure for 10 years, but it could have been transcribed in its entirety and still have remained available but unseen with the knowledge simply overlooked.

This is why the Institute is important. We need to restore our place in history, finding us with our own eyes and replacing vocabulary and removing the veil. 

So I amend my original claim when creating this site.

Dr. Walter Vanast typed the first found reference to Homosexuality on whale ships without, apparently, assigning any significance to it, and I came along and, when transcribing the same entry, saw it for what it was.

If his transcription of the Newport had been deemed sufficient enough to not call for a further transcription, in 2016 instead of being assigned the Newport log I would have been assigned the next one on the list, and this entry would have continued present but hidden until some future date beyond now. 

That is why we as a Community, whatever we call ourselves, whatever flag we prefer, whoever we like to think started Stonewall must go back into the historical record and find us.

Obviously, others have found us but told no one, not even us.

I am sure it was not a conscious thing as I know my own experiences as a transcriber, but it is a good indication that we are the ones who need to start looking.

As it is not about credit but fact, and the fact is that two people of different ages, interests, and countries, had found the same fact and assumption definitely died, and the need to find ourselves has another illustration of need that goes far beyond whaling into the very fabric of history.

I will be an adult about this, and while still loving the idea I am, now at least, the first to see the significance of what is now fact, I will keep the tiara, but let the Doctor have it on weekends and major holidays.

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