In doing so, I came across a great read, Leigh Ann Wheeler's How Sex Became a Civil Liberty. From it, one may glean two interesting points about Baldwin's sentiments on sexuality:
Further, Wheeler goes on to describe women's rights activist Harriet Pilpel and her proposal at a 1964 ACLU conference to "protect all private sexual behavior between consenting adults" [page Ixvi]. Baldwin argued that this definition was too narrow and failed to "recognize the unique problems faced by 'bi-sexuals,' especially married fathers charged with committing a homosexual act" [page Ixvi]. Indeed, privacy itself was a contested topic within the sphere of sexual civil liberties. According to Robert Cottrell, in his book Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union, Baldwin contended that "Private sexual life should be private, not in public places. You don't have public fornication or public homosexuality. Some things you don't do in public view. The Puritan ethic had something to be said for it" (166). So, my questions are: How might a man like Roger Nash Baldwin have reconciled his views on civil liberties, civil disobedience, and sexual nonconformity – heterosexual free love versus homosexuality? Was he aware that a number of people in his own movement (like HWLD) were homosexual? How would he feel about the tool of civil disobedience used in movements for sexual liberation and modern LGBT rights in parallel to its use in pacifist protest? Box 1 [Reel 71.1] Folder 1, Page 147: Correspondence from Roger Baldwin,
in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana Papers (DG 011), Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
2 Comments
Hilary Lowe
4/9/2016 05:53:30 am
I'm very interested in how Dana's connection to Baldwin (they are at Harvard at the same time) relates to his relationship to Bartolome Vanzetti and his family (see the link to this collection at Harvard...) Very nice questions and analysis here...
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GVGK Tang
4/9/2016 09:23:24 am
That is very interesting; I'd love to hear more. Thanks for the link!
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