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Silverfoxesclub-digest In this issue:
-"The Lavender Song," Berlin, 1920
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is the English translation (taken from the accompanying booklet to the Ute Lemper Decca CD "Berlin Cabaret Songs") of Germany's official gay/lesbian national anthem from 1920 - that was popular throughout that country from 1920 to 1933: "Das lila Lied," "The Lavender Song." A copy of the original sheet music is attached, including the cover page.
 "The Lavender Song":
What makes them think they have the right
P.S. Who says "gay pride" didn't exist before Stonewall?
P.P.S. Tag allerseits (Hi everyone)!
Gruß, London 1725: First Recorded Instance of Gay Resistance During a Police Raid, 244 Years Before the Stonewall Riots "Molly" is the word which gay men used to refer to one another for more than 150 years, a longer period of usage than the quasi-scientific term "homosexual." Narrowly defined, homosexuals have of course existed during all periods of history, but it was not until about 1700 that gay men began to gather together within a structured social organisation which we can properly call a subculture. What is not widely recognised is that 250 years ago there was a thriving gay subculture in England, and that there were actually more gay clubs and pubs in the heart of London in the early 1720s than there were in the 1950s when Parliament began to debate the consequences of reforming the laws against homosexuality..[1] On the simplest level the molly houses offered a relatively safe way of making sexual contacts, far safer than engaging someone in conversation at a dissenting meeting-house, or at work or in the streets. But they also offered something more. Firstly, sexual contacts or not, you were no longer alone. And this meant more than friendship, although no doubt that was important; what it gave the individual was the support of an aggressive and resilient culture. .They . swore they would massacre anybody that should betray them.[2] was the response of one molly house to the possibility that they were indeed in danger. These were not idle words. When a molly house in Covent Garden was broken up in 1725, the crowded household, many of them in drag, met the raid with determined and violent resistance.[3] .When the peace officers (the police of the day) attempted to raid a molly house near Covent Garden in December 1725, the twenty-five men within resisted, and a few of them were able to escape. Who said resistance began with the Stonewall Riot?.[4] .The theme of sodomites being woman haters ... was taken up anew after the raids upon the molly houses in 1699 and 1707; both raids occurred under distinctly similar circumstances.[5] As promised, the Societies for the Reformation of Manners entrapped individuals such as [Captain Rigby, an English sea officer] and hired informants to infiltrate the highly porous borders of the subculture and to note the times and places of meeting, thus facilitating raids by the constabulary.[6] Reaction to both raids was similar. The Societies sought to capitalize on the Rigby case by publishing .The Sodomites Shame and Doom.,. a tract telling the sinners to reform by .avoiding plays, bad books and frivolous company.. More importantly, the tract stated that it knew who many of the sodomites were and would publish their .places of abode. if they did not reform. Further, the Societies stated that they knew the location of the .scandalous haunts,. which would be visited, they hoped, by the forces of justice, who would punish them for their crimes.[7] Whether women really wanted the attention of men was beside the point in the Augustan age. Women wanted sex because men controlled society and said that women wanted it. To say that sodomites were women haters was, again, another instance of patriarchal assumptions distorting the facts. True, many did not desire women as sex objects, but then it was a question of whether a woman --- or any person --- really enjoys reification. From a sexist perspective, the real charge may have been that sodomites were unwilling to aid the forces of sexism through marriage and the impregnation of females. The Societies aided patriarchy through their antisodomitical raids and entrapments, which came to have a life of their own. As did the antisodomitical judiciary which they encouraged. In 1702, for example, Lord Chief Justice Colt, Rigby.s old nemesis, ordered the execution of four sodomites at Maidstone, Kent assizes.[8] Some of these measures were supported by the country party and landed interests to counter the seemingly sordid developments of a commercial and urban society with which the Williamite court was closely associated. The molly houses provided large numbers of reliable scapegoats; high personages an even greater challenge. Indeed, the antisodomitical sentiments may even have had an effect in driving away the principal secretary of state, and aided in the attempt upon the heads of the king.s .second self,. the earl of Portland, and that of his closest English minister (and lifelong bachelor), Lord Chancellor Somers..[9]
***** [2] Quoted in the anonymously written .Select Trials for Murders, Robberies, Rapes, Sodomy, Coining, Frauds, and Other Offences at the Sessions-House in the Old Bailey,. Vol. 2, p. 368, London, 1742. [3] Alan Bray, .Homosexuality in Renaissance England,. pp. 96-97, GMP Publishers Ltd, London, 1982. [4] William Stewart, .Cassell.s Queer Companion: A Dictionary of Lesbian and Gay Life and Culture,. p. 170, Cassell, London/New York, 1995. [5] See chapter .Anne.s Court and the Attack upon the Subculture in 1707 with Comments on the Close of the Augustan Era. in Dennis Rubini, .Sexuality and Augustan England: Sodomy, Politics, Elite Circles and Society,. pp. 370-73 in: .The Pursuit of Sodomy: Male Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe,. Kent Gerard & Gert Hekma (eds.), Harrington Park Press, London/New York, 1989. [6] .Account of the Progress of the Reformation of Manners in England, Scotland, and Ireland,. (1703). See esp. pp. 26-28. [7] .The Sodomites Shame and Doom Laid Before with Great Grief and Compassion by a Minister .. (undated). We might add a fourth purge in the lent judicial term in 1704, although that set of cases occurred in the Maidstone, Kent assizes. [8] .Account of the Progress of the Reformation of Manners in England, Scotland, and Ireland,. (1703). See esp. pp. 26-28. [9] Dennis Rubini, .Sexuality and Augustan England: Sodomy, Politics, Elite Circles and Society,. pp. 357-58, in: .The Pursuit of Sodomy: Male Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe,. Kent Gerard & Gert Hekma (eds.), Harrington Park Press, London/New York, 1989.
*****
Following the 1707 raid, a political tract appeared entitled: To the Tune of, Ye pretty Sailors all.
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XIV. End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #267
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