The Gay Metropolis Quotes

“So many important New York musicians were gay, one wit dubbed the American Composers League the Homintern.”
― Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America since World War II

“When you see what organized religion does to legitimize homophobia, you begin to appreciate the enormously complicated issue of attacking this fear. If the church says gay bashing is all right, then people can say, ‘Why the hell isn’t it?’ “That is to me the biggest sin of all.”
― Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America

“Truman Capote, bolder than most journalists, described Hoover as a “killer fruit,” a “certain kind of queer who has Freon refrigerating his bloodstream.”*”
― Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America

“But when the New York Post columnist Max Lerner researched an unprecedented twelve-part series on the “Washington Sex Story” he made a remarkable discovery: “At no point, whether I talked with State Department officials, Civil Service Commission officials, or Senators, was I able to track down a single case” of a homosexual being blackmailed. “Almost in every case, when I had kept pushing my questions, I was told ‘Well, Hoover says they’re more vulnerable.”
― Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America

“Ben Small’s boyfriend was hit moments after Small said good night to him in his tent. “This plane came overhead and all we heard was explosions and we fell to the ground. When I got up to see if he was all right, the thrust of the bomb had gone through his tent and he was not there. I went into a three-day period of hysterics. I was treated with such kindness by the guys that I worked with, who were all totally aware of why I had gone hysterical. It wasn’t because we were bombed. It was because my boyfriend had been killed. And one guy in the tent came up to me, and said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were gay? You could have talked to me.’ I said, ‘Well, I was afraid to.’ This big, straight, macho guy. There was a sort of compassion then.”
― Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America