R. Richard Wagner - Coming Out, Moving Forward: Wisconsins Recent Gay History

Coming Out, Moving Forward

Coming Out, Moving Forward

Wisconsins Recent Gay History

R. Richard Wagner

WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESS

Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Publishers since 1855

The Wisconsin Historical Society helps people connect to the past by collecting, preserving, and sharing stories. Founded in 1846, the Society is one of the nations finest historical institutions.
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2020 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin

E-book edition 2020

For permission to reuse material from Coming Out, Moving Forward: Wisconsins Recent Gay History (ISBN 978-0-87020-927-7; e-book ISBN 978-0-87020-928-4), please access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users.

Photographs identified with WHi or WHS are from the Societys collections; address requests to reproduce these photos to the Visual Materials Archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State Street, Madison, WI 53706.

Cover designed by Percolator Graphic Design
Typesetting by Wendy Holdman Design
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wagner, R. Richard (Sociologist), author.

Title: Coming out, moving forward : Wisconsins recent gay history / R. Richard Wagner.

Description: Madison : Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: Coming Out, Moving Forward, the second volume in R. Richard Wagners groundbreaking work on gay history in Wisconsin, outlines the challenges that LGBT Wisconsinites faced in their efforts to right past oppressions and secure equality in the post-Stonewall period between 1969 and 2000Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019049807 (print) | LCCN 2019049808 (ebook) | ISBN 9780870209277 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780870209284 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: GaysWisconsinHistory.

Classification: LCC HQ76.3.U58 W335 2020 (print) | LCC HQ76.3.U58 (ebook) | DDC 306.76/609775dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049807

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019049808

For Hank, Will, Paula, and Mark

This 1989 cover of In Step magazine from Milwaukee highlights the twentieth anniversary of Stonewall as an enduring marker. in step, june 821, 1989

Publication of this book was made possible in part through generous gifts from:

Mr. Charles Bauer and Mr. Charles Beckwith

David Bedri and Jon Sorenson

Sue Riseling and Joanne Berg

Paula Bonner and Ann Schaffer

Frances Breit and Julie Acci

Gary Brown and Paul Hayes

Barbara Constans and Deb Rohde

Paul Gibler and Thomas DeChant

Bob Dowd and Marge Schmidt

Julie Eckenwalder and Constance Anderson

William and Lynne Eich

Renee Herber and Tamara Packard

Joanne Holland and Margie Rosenberg

Kim Karcher

Scott and Mary Kolar

Donald Lamb

Phil Levy

Hank Lufler and Mike Gerdes

Katharine Lyall

Scott and Megin McDonell

Eileen Mershart and Sarah Hole

Mike and Sally Miley

Anne Monks

Richard Petran

Purple Moon Foundation, Inc. Dale Leibowitz

Timothy Radelet

Mary Lou Roberts

Susan Schaffer and Joan Hinckley

Robert Stipicevich and Scott Short

Mary Strickland and Marie Barroquillo

Howard Sweet

Mike Verveer

William Wartmann

Mark Webster and Ryan Brown

Susan Zaeske

Jaime Zimmerman

Contents

Tammy Baldwin
US Senate, 2012present

I first met Dick Wagner in 1984, after returning to my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, following my graduation from college. Eager to become involved in the local political scene and searching for mentors, I had been cold calling local officials in my new neighborhood and seeking opportunities to work on campaigns and learn the ropes. I was invited to a gathering of local progressive elected officials, labor union leaders, and civil rights and environmental activists to strategize about candidate recruitment for city council and school board seats to be contested in the spring 1985 elections. We met on the second floor of a popular local establishment, Mothers Pub, which had long been a gathering spot for local progressives. I observed how much respect Dick had earned from his fellow progressive leaders. Following a discussion about the issues the group hoped to advance, we broke into small groups. Dick Wagner and Kathleen Nichols, both out LGBT members of the Dane County Board of Super visors, led a discussion on opportunities to advance policies, initiatives, and ordinances to counter discrimination against our community. I nervously approached their working group, having come out in college about a year earlier. That day, Dick became my role model and mentor, and a lifelong friendship ensued.

Dick Wagner, who obtained his doctorate in history from UWMadison, was then working in state government and serving as an elected supervisor for his near east side Madison district on the Dane County Board. I took delight when he shared stories of his graduate training. In that pre-Internet era, the research for his dissertation on prostitution permitted, in fact necessitated, that Dick work in the library stacks near books on non-normative sexual behavior and orientation, which, at the time, usually presented the subject of homosexuality as a disorder. No doubt, this experience played a pivotal role in Dicks search for an alternative narrative more reflective of his own experience. At social gatherings in the 1980s and 1990s, usually hosted at his historic Madison home, Dick would share tidbits from his extensive collection of news clippings, correspondence, and other archival materials depicting gay life and culture in Madison and the surrounding region. He knew he had a book waiting to be written of heretofore untold stories. Little did he know then that it would require two volumes.

Of my own coming out story, I wrote the following for a speech delivered at a Madison Gay Pride Rally in 1989:

During the year after I came out, I grabbed anything I could find to read which gave what I was going through some social and historical context. I needed to ground myself, to discover I was not alone. And I was amazed and so proud of what I learned when I read. The dignity and courage of people in our movement. And I was so angry that no one had ever let me know about these things before. No one in my educational background told me about Stonewall, when years ago, gays in New York City united to resist nightly acts of police oppression and that this event signaled the beginning of the contemporary gay liberation movement. And no one told me about Elaine Noble, the first openly lesbian member of a state assembly, or of Harvey Milk who became the first openly gay person elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and was later assassinated. No, the Stonewall rioters, Elaine Noble, and Harvey Milk were people who I found out about from other Gay and Lesbian people who took the time to make films, write books, and tell others about our history.