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| − | On May 7, 1915 the German military torpedoed the Lusitania killing hundreds of passengers, and on the same day the California Assembly unanimously approved Assembly Bill 219 (AB 219), which would outlaw oral sex throughout the state. A few weeks later on June 2, 1915, California governor Hiriam Johnson signed AB 219 into law. This legislation stemmed from a scandal in Long Beach that had hit newspapers in November 1914 involving homosexual activities among a group of men. The scandal offers a uniquely rich source of primary materials in gay history and Californians diverse views towards gay men. Some thought homosexuality needed to be eliminated while others were more tolerant. Sacramento Bee (Bee) editor C. K. McClatchy hired southern California investigator Eugene Fisher to gather and report back details of the scandal in Long Beach. The writings of Fisher, and some of McClatchy’s correspondences back to Fisher, still remain in the Sacramento County archives.1 Comparing documents one sees how McClatchy coupled homophobia with xenophobic and contemporaneous nationalistic anxieties to push for repressive legislation.
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| − | On November 14, 1914, newspapers in Los Angeles and Sacramento published articles on a vice scandal unfolding in Long Beach, California. Editors C.K. McClatchy at the Bee and Harrison Gray Otis at the Los Angeles Times (Times) published partial lists of names of the men who had been arrested.2 John Lamb had been arrested for sexual activity with another man and the Times published his name as part of its coverage of the scandal. Lamb took cyanide and left a suicide note to his family on a southern California beach. In the note Lamb explained he “could not endure this publicity.”3 Authorities responded banning the sale of poisons in Long Beach.4 Shortly thereafter, Herbert Lowe, also named in the newspapers, went on trial and a jury acquitted him. After his acquittal prosecutors dropped charges against the other men identified in the scandal. The Times and the Bee ran nearly daily reports of the Lowe proceedings.
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| − | Examining the newspapers closely one sees editors’ different biases and goals emerge. The correspondences received from Fisher when compared to the final articles printed in the paper show how McClatchy transformed, focused and embellished his raw data to created articles for his paper and exploited anxieties about war and fears of foreign influences to push for legislative action. In Sacramento, two brothers C. K. McClatchy as editor, and V. S. McClatchy as publisher, owned and operated the Bee in 1914.5 At the time of the Long Beach scandal the Bee was by far the biggest newspaper in Sacramento and, as editor, C. K. McClatchy was responsible for content.6 The brothers used the Bee as a platform for their shared distain for the Japanese.7
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| − | In Los Angeles, the scandal turned into fodder for an old personal feud between the editors of two large dailies, the Los Angeles Times owned by Harrison Gray Otis, and Edwin T. Earl owner of the Los Angeles Evening Express (Express) and Los Angeles Tribune (Tribune.)8 The newspaper coverage also reveals a variety of opinions about homosexuality. After John Lamb took his own life, Earl’s Tribune published an editorial condemning the Times’ ethics in reporting the names of the men involved in the scandal and the subsequent publicity.9 The Times responded with an editorial entitled, “Defense of Degenerates,” and referred to Earl as “the editor of the Morning Sodomite and the Evening Degenerate.”10 The accusations continued with a series of articles, satirical cartoons and bickering back and forth, adding to a long-running feud. Quickly, the two editors were more interested in hurling accusations against each other than reporting on the Long Beach scandal and ultimately a lawsuit. Eventually, their lawsuit ended up before the California Supreme Court.11 In San Francisco the Chronicle published a single story about Lamb’s suicide on page fifty-five and San Franciscans heard no more about the Southern California scandal from their newspapers.12
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| − | The feud and a close reading of the later stories in the Times provide some insight into why the Times dropped the story. The Times depicted citizens with diverse and conflicting attitudes toward homosexuality. While there were Letters to the Editor expressing outrage at the actions of the men and advocating for more publicity, there were also indications of support for Lowe.13 The Times reported much interest in the trial of Herbert Lowe with hundreds of people trying to crowd into the courtroom. Some spectators arrived early and sold their seats to late-comers, but tellingly the reports omitted any reference to outrage from the crowds at the courthouse.14 Many in the community expressed their support financially for Lowe with a “rush of business at the Lowe flower shop since the victim achieved wide mention in the case.”15 With Earl at the Express questioning the morality of publishing details of the scandal, the community engaged in “a rushing business” to support Lowe, and the Times characterizing Lowe as a “victim,” it was apparent southern California was not unanimously appalled by the accusations. The Times managed within its own paper to convey more than the one point of view. Within McClatchy’s paper, no divergence of opinion emerged.16 The Sacramento Bee, published hundreds of miles away from Long Beach, was far more extensive than either the local coverage in southern California or the passing interest in San Francisco and, largely alone, continued the publicity and the call for legislation.
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| − | C. K. McClatchy's fascination has intrigued historians looking at the scandal. The first author to write about the Long Beach scandal and McClatchy was Sharon Ullman who first published her findings in, “Female Impersonation and Sexual Practice in Turn-of-the Century America.”17 She concluded visual clues indicating a change in traditional gender roles was largely permitted for female impersonators at the turn of the century providing the audience was reassured the person did not engage in deviate homosexual conduct, and homosexual conduct was permitted within strict boundaries. Focusing on evolving rules regulating gender, Ullman did not enter into an in-depth look at what motivated McClatchy's intense interest in the scandal.18 While not well received by reviewers, Sharon Ullman’s following book Sex Seen is the most frequently referred to account of the Long Beach scandal.19
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| − | Following Ullman, historian Daniel Hurewitz took another look at the Long Beach scandal in Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics.20 Hurewitz focused on the leftist artistic and political community in the neighborhoods of Silver Lake and Echo Park in early twentieth-century Los Angeles. Challenging Ullman’s source material, Hurewitz dismissed her assertion of a community. Hurewitz treated the Long Beach scandal briefly and moves onto his thesis that the 1950 gay community developed from the leftist artistic and political community in Los Angeles.21 Ullman and Hurewitz both used the scandal to develop a tangential thesis, neither author looked into the politics of McClatchy in order to understand his motives and how he successfully pushed for legislation.
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| − | With the other major papers around the state not interested in covering the scandal, McClatchy singularly understood the gravity of the situation. He strengthened his call for legislation by repeatedly linking the scandal to non-native influences and in particular to a threatening Berlin. The men in Southern California had attended parties wearing kimonos and similar parties had occurred in Berlin. For McClatchy, the scandal revealed a shortcoming of the legal system, and legislation would remedy this spreading foreign scourge.
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| − | For information McClatchy turned to Eugene Fisher, who after gaining the confidence of a man involved in the scandal, wrote McClatchy and recounted details of parties held in nearby Venice, California a year earlier. Fisher wrote, “each guest, when welcomed at the door was given a silk kimona, [sic] wig and pair of slippers, and directed to a room where he exchanged his street clothes for these garments.”22 The fact that men had dawned Japanese kimonos must have been particularly appalling to a xenophobic man devoted to excluding the Japanese from California. Fisher only used the word “kimona [sic]” once but the Bee repeated the word “kimono” in headlines, captions and within the body of stories again and again. McClatchy seemed to be tapping into fears of Japanese influence and associating homosexuality with foreign influences. In the early twentieth century Americans often understood different sexuality as a symptom of racial degeneracy and many Californians believed Asian sexuality evidenced racial degeneracy.23 Authors familiar with McClatchy cannot avoid his vitriolic xenophobia towards the Japanese.24
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| − | When the Bee published Fisher’s narrative, editor McClatchy embellished Fisher’s text in ways to emphasize the foreignness. For example, “Slippers” in Fisher’s text became “French slippers” when published in the Bee.25 With Europe at war and Germany invading France, embellishing “slippers” with “French” as an adjective McClatchy was referencing a weakened, violated culture. Cultural imperialist often pointed to France as an example of a country gone awry and homosexuality being a contributing factor. After the war one speaker at the American Academy of Medicine warned, “teaching of American boys to be kind, gentle and loving to cripples will ultimately develop traits of homosexuality,” and cited France as an example.26
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| − | Shirking logic and continuity, the editor went on to associate homosexuality with the aggressors in the war and warned of the homosexual situation in Berlin. According to his source, Berlin had over 50,000 homosexuals and “[t]hat is the reason The Bee has published enough of the facts to let the people know something of the damnable thing that is spreading – a curse to which medical men, sociologist, and reformers must turn their attention here, as in Germany.”27 Citing a letter written to him, McClatchy demonstrated he was not alone in wanting to see something done, quoting: “glad one newspaper man in the United States stands ready to throw the light of publicity on these cases.”28 Here, he is not only lauding himself but also trying to differentiate his response from the German response. Feelings toward Germany were increasingly negative as the war dragged on.29 The Germans torpedoed the Lusitania after months of increasing tensions with the United States. Drawing parallels between the Long Beach scandal and Berlin, McClatchy was tapping into the anxiety about the war and presenting homosexuality as a threatening foreign influence.
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| − | Within the homosexual file maintained by McClatchy is a letter from Newton D. Baker, the homophobic Mayor of Cleveland, and soon to be Secretary of War. He shared McClatchy’s concern that homosexuality was not indigenous to the United States and “more common in the larger cities in Europe than it is anywhere else in the world.” Thanking McClatchy for his recent letters, he told McClatchy about reading “in Berlin he [an author named Flexner] saw a ball attended by 300 couples, all men, and all of them addicted to vice of this variety.”30 Unlike McClatchy, Mayor Baker doubted the efficacy of legislation and concluded, “its victims [homosexuals] are midway in the process of biological elimination which is automatic and irresistible.”31 On January 30, 1915 McClatchy took the information he received from Mayor Baker and equated the men in Long Beach with the men in Berlin, “the vilest sexual degenerates – those in Berlin and Long Beach.”32
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| − | Taking sides in the Los Angeles feud, the Bee dismissed charges of questionable ethics leveled by the Express and called for more publicity. The Bee editorialized, “Is Not News Suppression Of This Monstrous Evil In Itself An Evil?” and laid out its goal to wage “warfare to exterminate a thing that is infinitely worse than all the prostitution that ever cursed the earth.”33 It was his belief publicity could lead to legislation, which would ultimately control this problem. With Los Angeles distracted by personal vendettas and San Francisco indifferent to this moral crusade, the Bee, largely alone, continued to rail against the men.34 Outraged by the acquittal of Lowe on December 11th, 1914 McClatchy began a series of articles bewailing the miscarriage of justice and calling for new legislation.35 The days before Christmas 1914 McClatchy ran a series of front page stories calling for new legislation.36 The Christmas Eve edition of the Bee included a letter advocating public whippings as a fitting punishment.37
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| − | While the Bee’s Christmas editorials were timely, juxtaposed to the holy holiday and just prior to the opening of the 41st session of the California legislature, it would be tempting to suggest the legislators read the editorials and the editorials influenced the legislation. This may have happened, but, during this period in California’s history the legislature usually met only for a few weeks during odd numbered years.38 At Christmas, in 1914, it was more likely legislators were in their own districts and more attentive to local requests, and paid little attention to the Bee. Legislation, though, was the paper’s goal. Not only had he called for legislation in the paper, discussed legislation with Mayor Baker, but within the file maintained by McClatchy is a handwritten note, “Get proofs of articles and send to legislators.”39 Clearly, McClatchy used his paper to rally public opinion but he also lobbied the legislature.
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| − | Sacramento Assemblyman Lee Gebhart took up the Bee's request, and in January 1915, he introduced Assembly Bill 219, which called for the following addition to the Penal Code, “Any male person who shall wilfully [sic] commit the act known technically as fellatio, or any female person who shall wilfully [sic] commit the act known technically as cumulingus [sic] shall be guilty of a felony and shall be imprisoned in the state prison for a period not less than twenty years.”40 The assembly immediately referred AB 219, summarized as “relating to sex perversions and defining the same,” to the Committee on Judiciary.41 On April 28, 1915, the Committee broadened the original language and voted to change AB 219 to read, “The acts technically known as fellatio and cunnilingus are hereby declared to be felonies and any person convicted of the commission of either thereof shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than fifteen years.”42 AB 219 returned to the full assembly. On May 7, 1915, (ironically, the same day the German military torpedoed the Lusitania) the full assembly unanimously approved the later language. Then on May 9, the California Senate voted unanimously in favor of AB 219, Governor Johnson signed the bill on June 2, 1915 and McClatchy took credit for the legislation.43
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| − | McClatchy believed homosexuality was a foreign influence that was spreading and threatening to undermine the American way of life. With America anxious about war and kimono-wearing men engaged in unsavory behavior, editor C. K. McClatchy felt compelled to draw upon all the resources available to suppress and hopefully eliminate homosexuality. Unable to maintain the interest of other influential newspaper editors around the state, McClatchy exploited the anxiety of war and xenophobic fears to draw attention to this problem, and to call for repressive legislation. The originally proposed legislation was not only borne from homophobia, but McClatchy also hyped the fear that homosexuality was a foreign influence spreading during wartime to gain support to have outlawed what he saw as a “monsterous evil.”44 <comments />
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