69: Gays in the Military - Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie 2

Hysteria 3, London Palladium, 30 June 1991
written by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie
Hugh Laurie: Army Officer

Ladies and gentlemen, as I'm sure you're aware, there's been over the last few weeks a great deal of nonsense spoken in the newspapers and written on the television about the issue of homosexuality in Her Majesty's Armed Forces, or HMAF, as we call them for short, or FSH as we call. . . Anyway, there are just a couple of points I'd like to make. The question, it seems to me, is does homosexuality, as a way of life, or even just as a hobby, diminish the fighting efficiency of a military organization, which is essentially what the British Army is in the business of being?
Now, I should make clear first of all that I myself have nothing against homosexuality in principle. My concern is whether or not it actually works in practice. I have always taken the view that if God had intended men to be homosexual, he would have issued them with more attractively shaped bottoms.
However, I should point out that I have known several homosexuals quite well - in fact, I used to go to bed with a young Turkish boy called Abul when I was stationed in Cyprus. Most obliging lad. . . But anyway he, it later turned out, was, in fact, homosexual. I had to stop seeing him once I'd found out, naturally. But I raise this in order to show that I have nothing personally against homosexual men. I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one, perhaps, but that is another matter.
However, I must confess to very severe misgivings when I hear the idea being mooted, and it is being mooted, possibly over-mooted, that our national defence be placed in the hands of gaysexuals of any description. The fact is that your modern homosexual is a highly trained, highly motivated individual, capable, if he or she so chooses, of resembling an ordinary person at a moment's notice. Precisely. Chilling thought. You take a handful of these dedicated chutney ferrets, place them in the midst of a modern British fighting unit and they are going to have a bloody field day.
Let us imagine, for the sake of argument, the pilot and navigator of a Tornado ground-attack aircraft flying a dangerous mission into enemy territory. Two young men, far from home, thrown into very cramped and uncomfortable surroundings. Suddenly, and without warning, they are fired upon by enemy aircraft. With only seconds in which to avoid the impact of an air-to-air missile, the pilot removes his hands from the controls, turns round in the cockpit and begins to make sexual advances towards his navigator. Strategically speaking, this would be the worst possible course of action. Instead of getting their heads down and flying the aeroplane. . . Well, instead of flying the aeroplane, they would be getting their heads down. An extremely valuable piece of military kit would be put at risk, and a thoroughly bad example shown to anyone who happened to be listening on the radio. That way, quite obviously, madness lies.
But let us imagine an even more alarming possibility, what I call the absolute nightmare scenario. A young infantryman, called Jimmy - for he may very easily be Scottish - comes face to face with his Arab foe under the fierce desert sun. But, instead of shooting his-enemy dead, Jimmy throws his rifle to one side and, in halting Arabic, suggests that the two of them repair to a nearby motel bedroom. Instead of engaging the enemy Jimmy has become engaged to the enemy. Once again, chaos. I can only say that if you study your military history closely enough, you will see that no war has ever been won by going to bed with your opponent. It simply does not make military sense.
Now, of course, there are those who say that in its attitude to homosexuality the British Army is being hidebound. Take the Foreign Office, they will say. It is well known that there are one or two heterosexuals in the Foreign Office. . . I'm sorry, one or two homo­sexuals . . . No, I'm sorry, one or two heterosexuals . . . in the Foreign Office, and that, after all, seems to function pretty well most of the time. To them I would say, when it comes to the defence of our country 'pretty well most of the time' is a long way short of being good enough. The idea that the flower of British youth, instead of getting out there and killing people in the most cost-efficient manner possible, should simply spend its time going to bed with itself just does not bear thinking about.

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Almost all of these cartoons have been from America. This may be because in the last 50 years, America has had more of its national identity invested in a sense of self-worth deriving from its military presence in the world at large. Therefore homosexuality is a direct threat to that sense of masculinity. Britain has also had its problems with gays in the miltiary over the last 15 years or so. This dates from 1991 when the issue was first seriously raised.

A frank man-to-man chat from a contemporary updating of the Colonel Blimp stereotype. Definitely not in charge of his brief, he unwittingly reveals his self-satisfaction, hypocrisy, and that peculiar right-wing quasi-sexual fetisisation of the soldiery as a point of national pride. And underlying it throughout is the fear of the pervasiveness and irresistible appeal of gay sex and men themselves, which could lead to a fighting force vulnerable to a different type of assault and whose priorities are in thrall to unspeakable pleasures.

68 - Gays in the Military: Hair

from “Hair”, 1979

Aaaaaarhhh
Oh my god

Arg


Oooooo no
No
No
Argh sweet Christ no
Oh my eyes the bleeding

ooowwwargoowaaaaahhrghh
The blood everywhere

nnooarwhoooahhh
The blood running from my ears
make it stop


The horror
the pain
the horror
the unending tortuous pain
Make it stop ohgodohgodohgodohgod
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

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Move along please. There’s nothing to see here.

67 - Gays in the Military: National Lampoon

“Guerre” by George Trow, Brian McConnachie and Henry Beard in “National Lampoon”, September 1973

With this one I may pushing the point too far. Really it’s just a parody fashion magazine about army life. However, the gossipy, precious style of a fashion mag is the clipped camp manner of a certain type of gay man. There’s not a hint of homosexuality or homoeroticism in the piece (except maybe for the cute model), but the entire tone of the parody is what we would now recognise as “Queer Eye for the Military Guy”

66 - Gays in the Military: Skip Williamson

Skip Williamson in "The Realist", May 1967

This was spot cartoon to illustrate a few letters complaining about Gerberg's "Fag Battalion" piece. As we'll see, the "Uncle Sam wants you" motif gets a full exploration come the hoo-ha over gays in the military in 1993. Although this relies the most on nelly images -pursed lip and long curling eyelashes.

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Letter from a Homosexual (May 1967)

For some time now I have been a fan of the Realist. I find it interesting, stimulating, thought-provoking and, all in all, a great publication. Your analysis of major and minor events is superb. For these reasons, I cannot help but wonder why the Realist seems to be anti-homosexual—or at the very best, not informed of the work of the Mattachine Society Inc. of New York.

For an instance, I found "The Fag Battalion" [issue #69] to be as obnoxious to me as
I do "The Committee to Fight the Exclusion of Homosexuals from the Armed Forces." We at the Mattachine are aware of the activities of this very small group of people, and we have received a great deal of undeserved criticism from their activities.

I would like to use this opportunity to point out that we are not only non-related groups, but the MSNY vigorously disapproves of their stated policy.

MSNY is a civil-rights group; nothing more, nothing less. Some of us vigorously oppose the war in Vietnam, whereas others in our group favor it. Since the goal of this Society, and the Homophile movement, is to procure the legal rights denied the homosexual by law and to educate the public in regard to homosexuality, we refuse to mix issues by engaging in foreign policy. Our main goals are difficult enough to achieve.

MSNY is not a social organization; nor is its purpose to apologize for homosexuality. We are activists who are convinced that the time for asking to be treated as human beings is past—we are demanding our right to human dignity now. We use the methods of leafleting, picketing and court-action to achieve our goals.

This is the other side of homosexuality, the side I would like to see presented in the Realist. If nothing more, we would appreciate a statement in your pages to the effect that there is no connection between MSNY and the Committee to Fight the Exclusion, etc. We would also like to make it clear to your readers that, not only did we not participate in their leafleting campaign, but we heartily disapproved of it, because it splits the homosexual community into pro-war and anti-war factions.

John L. Timmons, Secretary
Mattachine Society of N.Y.

Editor's note: Fighting the exclusion of homosexuals from the armed forces would certainly qualify as a civil-rights activity; if that form of discrimination is ever remedied, then those homosexuals who don't want to be drafted will no longer be able to exploit their deviation rather than face the consequences of conscientious objection.

65 - Gays in the Military: Mort Gerberg

Mort Gerberg in "The Realist", September 1966

from the ever-growing archive of "The Realist" at www.ep.tc/realist/

Well here, Mort Gerberg pretty much supplies every gag about swishy gays in the harsh, regimented, potentially fatal world of enlisted life one could want. Gerber had done a previous exercise for the “The Realist” society in the same vein, “The Junkie Battalion” - another set of gags about a subsection of society who would be inappropriate in the army. Although, given “The Realist”’s leftish politics, there’s probably underlying assumption that the army and its behaviour are themselves wholly inappropriate.
Of course homosexuality and the army were in definite conflict at this time. Being gay, or at least convincing the selection board, was a good way of avoiding the draft. Brian de Palma’s 1968 comedy, “Greetings” features Robert DeNiro, Gerrit Graham and Jonathan Warden as young men in New York City concocting various schemes to avoid the draft. Faking being gay is one of them – if I remember, feather boas and coming onto a sergeant make up part of this plan. It’s been a few years since I saw it.

64 - Gays in the Military: Fry and Laurie

“A Bit of Fry and Laurie”, 16 March 1990
Written by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie

Friedrich von Stoltz: Hugh Laurie
Major Donaldson: Stephen Fry

Curiously, the idea that homosexuals could constitute security risks because they might go around falling in love with their enemies doesn’t seem to have really occurred in all of the material about gay spies during the cold war. Blackmailable, certainly, but seducible, no. Although that E.M. Forster line about ”if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country” got bandied a lot by assorted poovy Cambridge-educated traitors. And for “friend” read…well we’re all adults here. Of course, the ancient Greeks had their own ideas about how to accommodate love and loyalty: starting with two men to a cot.
The overly exuberant and thunderstruck reaction on Fry’s part here would, from the account he gives in his autobiography, seem to be the way he does go around falling in love.

63 - Gays in the Military: Art Spiegelman

Art Spiegelman in “The Realist”, June 1967

Well this takes the hippy slogan as far as one might hope. Like yeah man, what if the army went around loving each other rather than fighting? And so: two soldiers kissing. A fair enough satirical point. The homosexual aspect is partly incidental. I don’t think there’s animus to discredit the army through imputations of homosexuality. No sirree. Although one can imagine purple-faced bigots fulminating about the inappropriateness of employing men to kill their fellow men whose base urges to are to love their fellow men. And indeed we’ll be seeing that point made with a certain amount of heavyhandedness when I dig up the morass of American editorial cartoons from 1993. Many years later Paul Krassner, the editor of “The Realist” would reprint this cartoon specifically to illustarate the issues of gays in the military.

62 - Gays in the Military: Mischa Richter

Mischa Richter in “New Yorker”, 16 February 1952

This is rather unexpected. I don’t really see how it can be construed as not being gay. But it appeared in “The New Yorker”, in the 50s, so it evidently flew right under somebody’s radar. What the editor thought the gag could otherwise have been, heaven only knows. It might be about hero worship, I suppose. Certainly everybody reading the “New Yorker” at this time would probably have had some military experience, so it might be a twist on some emotive aspect of army life.
Richter was a “New Yorker” stalwart producing over 1500 cartoons during hius tenure there. He also had distinctly left-wing politics, having been the art editor for the Communist “New Masses” newspaper in the 30s.

62 -Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder: Little Annie Fanny

Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder in “Playboy”, January 1976

A relatively early cartoon about the burgeoning gay scene. And in the pages of “Playboy” no less! Each instalment of “Annie Fanny” was a comic investigation of some new social scene or trend. Annie was always the unwitting stooge, largely oblivious to the effect that her pneumatic charms had on all the other characters. While she naively went about interrogating anyone and everyone about this instalment’s new fashionable milieu, others were trying to divest her of her clothes and attempt a completely different kind of social intercourse. And again in the all gay environment of the bathhouse, Annie is still the only character getting any. Other than one kissing couple tucked away in the shadows of the last horizontal panel, none of the other gays are doing anything more suggestive with each other than dancing or holding hands. There is a weird conflict in this cartoon between gays being sexless so as not to actually disturb any of the readers and yet also trying to cram the panels with as many kinky and perverse images as possible. Homosexuality being the gateway to new realms of freewheeling perversity, we get diesel dykes, transvestites and transsexuals (the penis is particularly unexpected –none of the other gays have one, so the penis in “Playboy” is actually representative of a totally abnormal sexuality that has to be removed. Hmmm.) Indeed, this carton desperately needs the lesbians if we are to get the traditional “Annie Fanny” ending. This bathhouse is not a scene for sexual expression or hot and sweaty man-on-man activity, and all the gays here are limp-wristed, skipping, mincing, coquettish, lisping and fey. At the very moment that gays are creating a new forthright sexual identity/stereotype, while Kurtzman can recognise that this new scene exists, he can only exercise the old weak, almost unsexual, gay stereotype. “National Lampoon” at least always did homosexuals the favour of recognising that at the bottom of all their weird kinks and feyness, they were also strongly sex-motivated.
Of course, this being a Kurtzman and Elder comic, it’s worth looking in all the corners to find all the “eye-pops” – hidden gags.

61 - Larry

Terrence Parkes in “Private Eye” 1 May 1964


Terrence Parkes in “Private Eye” 4 March 1966


Terrence Parkes in “Private Eye” 17 Jan 1969

“Larry” doesn’t seem to have made many cartoons about homosexuality. All of his though that I can find, are quite specifically about its illegality. No value judgements, just jokes about putting it in some context to highlight the criminality. You could argue that in these cartoons Larry makes the police efforts more ridiculous than the homosexuals, since their ferocity and intentness of purpose seems a little out of proportion to the relative innocence and casualness of the “criminals”. All of Larry’s people look much the same, so he must have gone to a little extra effort to offer us the two specimens in the second and third cartoons. In the second the mouth is more distinct than usual and the hand juts out on the hip, while in the 1969 cartoon (and homosexuality was actually legal by then) Larry’s actually gone to some effort – limp wrist, frou-frou hair, distinct lips and arms around each other.
I like to think that you can rearrange these three cartoons to make a little graphic narrative in miniature. Prisoners of Love, indeed!