Podcasts about secret city the hidden history

James Kirchick joins Ron Steslow to discuss his book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington (01:55) Why he wrote the book (06:43) The interwoven political history and gay history in Washington (14:33) The melting pot of the gay community and why it was seen as a  threat (19:55) The trope that whatever is bad must be gay (31:51) The Lavender Scare  (35:53) The tension between the gay  loyal foot soldiers of Ronald Reagan and courting the religious right  (49:00) What was challenging about writing the book  You should read Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington: http://bit.ly/3wgiORk Follow James Kirchick and Ron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jkirchick https://twitter.com/RonSteslow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Noam Dworman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by James Kirchick, journalist for the New York Times and bestselling author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. 

Noam Dworman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by James Kirchick, journalist for the New York Times and bestselling author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. 

In this special Pride Month episode of Know Your Enemy, Matt and Sam talk to historian Neil J. Young about his new book, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right. His absorbing account picks up in after World War II, when neither party made for a good political home for gay people, which helped make a libertarian approach to sexual politics—getting the government out of their private lives—compelling, a feature that would mark the gay right for years to come. The conversation then turns to some of the gay, often closeted architects of the postwar conservative movement, the hopeful years between Stonewall and AIDS, Ronald Reagan's embrace of the religious right and the growing partisan divide on LGBTQ rights, and goes on through the very campy Trump years—and more!Sources:Neil J. Young, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (2024)Neil J. Young, We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics (2015)Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, (1996)James Kirchick, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, (2022)Marvin Leibman, Coming Out Conservative: An Autobiography, (1992)...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our extensive catalogue of bonus episodes!

James Kirchick's New York Times op-ed, “A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing”, has elicited much controversy. I have to admit that I'm not entirely convinced by Kirchick's thesis, particularly on his position that a Jew these days has no choice but to be a Zionist, but it's a provocative argument. While meritocracy has “been good for the Jews”, he explains, our new “woke” politics, especially surrounding Israel, has transformed Jews into “the new whites”. So Jewish writers are now being silenced by a censorious publishing industry if they express even the slightest ambivalence about Gaza. Is this the new McCarthyism or just another storm in the literati teacup?James Kirchick is a journalist and the New York Times-bestselling author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington and The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. A writer at large for Air Mail and a contributing writer for Tablet, he has reported from over 40 countries and his writing has appeared in many publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

For the protesters and their supporters, the pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations across the globe are part of a proud tradition of student activism that includes the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s, and the calls to end South African Apartheid in the 1980s. And just as those past protests are now widely accepted to have been on the right side of history, today's campus protesters are confident that history will prove their cause was just.  Critics disagree. They say the protesters have often downplayed or made excuses for Hamas' murderous attack on Oct. 7; that the demonstrators fail to consider the complexity of a conflict that cannot be simplified into simple binary terms; and that some of the protesters have indulged in violent and hateful rhetoric towards Israelis and Jews.    Arguing in favour of the resolution is Ben Burgis. He's a columnist with Jacobin and an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University. Arguing against the resolution is James Kirchick. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. He's also a columnist for Tablet magazine, and a writer at large for Air Mail. SOURCES: Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students, WPA Film Library, Getty Images, ABC 7 New York, The Hill.    The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths. Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to podcast@munkdebates.com.   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 50+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/   Executive Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Senior Producer: Daniel Kitts Editor: Kieran Lynch

Today's episode of The Remnant features James Kirchick, the prolific pundit and author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Recently, James published an essay in Liberties that examined how gay culture has changed in American life since the 1980s. But despite the success of the gay rights movement, LGBTQ issues remain prominent in the culture war. Why is this the case? Where do we go from here? And how would Jonah's grandpa feel about this episode? Show Notes: —Watch this episode on YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Kirchick is a columnist for Tablet magazine, a writer at large for Air Mail, and author of the instant New York Times bestseller, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.  Jamie( as he is known,) sits down with Adam and details why he wrote “Secret City,” discusses his longtime interest in Cold War history and assesses the intersection of anti-Communist and anti-gay hysteria and the toll it took on so many gay people in government during the immediate years following World War II and beyond. Jamie also is a widely published journalist and historian, and he has reported from over 40 countries, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Atlantic. In their wide-ranging conversation, Adam and Jamie also analyze the current state of American politics , the dangers of Trumpism and the menacing illiberalism which has metastasized on the left. Thanks for helping us save democracy one episode at a time! Join the Dirty Moderate Nation on Substack! Tell us what you think on Twitter! Are you registered to VOTE?

James Kirchick is a journalist and author of the NY Times bestseller "Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington". You may know him from his work in  Air Mail, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and others. Follow Jamie on Twitter, read his excellent latest piece in the Atlantic about the importance of protecting free speech, and of course his exclusive interview with Armie Hammer.Don't forget to join us on Substack for a discussion, plus next week will post some photos from Yael's recent visit to Kibbutz Kfar Aza that was attacked on Oct 7. You can comment there, it's a nice place to vent and connect with other likeminded people (Substack, not the Kibbutz).You can also support us by giving us a 5 star review and comment on Apple Podcasts, it helps us grow and reach more people! And send your questions to askajewpod@gmail.com In this episode we discuss:Jamie's back storyHow bad is it? Not too bad. But social media is.The definition of ChutzpaDC vs. NYCYoung people are still stupidDefund OaklandThe mood in Israel + Bibi talkOn BerlinOn writingThe scary gaysRichie Torres for presidentTree B'ShvatWhere do you get your news  Joing the AAJ conversation on Susbtack! askajew.substack.comEmail us your questions askajewpod@gmail.com And please rate and review us 5 stars on your favorite podcast platform - it helps us grow!

James Kirchick is a journalist, historian, columnist for Tablet magazine, writer at large for Air Mail, and the author of the NYT bestseller, SECRET CITY: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, New York and Rolling Stone among others. He's a frequent speaker at colleges and universities across America and at venues including the National Security Agency, the U.S. Department of State, the Oslo Freedom Forum and the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. He's also appeared on Good Morning America, Real Time with Bill Maher, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the BBC and NPR. Jamie shares his childhood, the evolution of his political thinking and early career, and discusses Israel, antisemitism, campus free speech, homophobia, transphobia, his book about gay DC, and what it's like being a gay conservative in America today. Got somethin' to say?! Email us at BackroomAndy@gmail.com Leave us a message: 845-307-7446 Twitter: @AndyOstroy Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud @ Radio Free Rhiniecliff Design by Cricket Lengyel

On this episode of The AUXORO Podcast, James Kirchick and Zach record a thrilling two-parter. The first half of the episode focuses on James Kirchick's interview with Armie Hammer titled 'Armie Hammer Breaks His Silence' (published by Air Mail Feb 2023), the first and only interview given by Armie Hammer since he was accused of sexual abuse and cannibalism and blacklisted from Hollywood. We get into evidence that shows how Elizabeth Chambers, Hammer's now ex-wife, colluded with the main accuser Effie, why the "cannibal" accusations are unfounded and ridiculous, the shortcomings and negligence of the 'House Of Hammer' documentary, texts from Hammer's accusers that paint a completely different story than the one portrayed by the mainstream media, a #MeToo NFT minted and sold by one of Hammer's accusers, the origins of Hammer's interest in BDSM, and more.  The second half of the episode covers James Kirchick's book Secret City: The Hidden History Of Gay Washington. We discuss how homosexuality became intertwined with the heightened threat of communism, the purge of gay employees from the federal government, The Lavender Scare, the courageous story of Frank Cameny, the plot to out Reagan as part of a clandestine homosexual cabal, and the throughlines between the cancellation of Armie Hammer and the gay men in Washington who had their lives destroyed. Guest Bio: James Kirchick is a columnist for Tablet magazine, a writer at large for Air Mail, and author of the instant New York Times bestseller, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. A widely published journalist and historian, he has reported from over 40 countries, and his reportage, essays, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times,  the Atlantic, and Rolling Stone, among many other publications in the United States and around the world.  JAMES KIRCHICK LINKS:'Armie Hammer Breaks His Silence': https://bit.ly/3YczrKxSecret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington: https://jameskirchick.com/book/secret-city/James Kirchick Website: https://jameskirchick.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/jkirchickInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jkirchick/ THE AUXORO PODCAST LINKS:Apple: https://apple.co/3B4fYju Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zaS6sPOvercast: https://bit.ly/3rgw70DYoutube: https://bit.ly/3lTpJdjWebsite: https://www.auxoro.com/ AUXORO SOCIAL LINKS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auxoroYouTube: https://bit.ly/3CLjEqFFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/auxoromagNewsletter: https://www.auxoro.com/thesourceYouTube: https://bit.ly/3CLjEqF If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds, helps us appear higher in searches so more people discover the show, and it boosts my ego;) Past Guests On The Auxoro Podcast Include: Aubrey de Grey, Andy Weir, Eben Britton, Eric Jorgenson, Isabelle Boemeke, Houston Arriaga, Jerzy Gregorek, Chris Cooper, Gryffin, Elsa Diaz, Dave Robinson, Meghan Daum, FINNEAS, Chloé Valdary, Coleman Hughes, Maziar Ghaderi, YONAS, Ryan Michler, Ryan Meyer, Gavin Chops, Bren Orton, Zuby, Jason Khalipa, Ed Latimore, Jess Glynne, Noah Kahan, Kid Super, Deryck Whibley, and many more.  

EPISODE 1553: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to James Kirchick, the author of the Liberties journal essay "From Queer to Gay to Queer", on why he believes the theory of "queerness" is a "parasite" on the gay rights movement James Kirchick is the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode Reading List:* From Queer to Gay to Queer, James Kirchick* How Hannah Arendt's Zionism Helped Create American Gay Identity, Blake Smith* When the Pope Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie, That's Ahmari, James Kirchick* Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Big Fat Nonbinary Mistake, Blake Smith* Are Conservatives the New Queers?, Blake Smith* Wesley Yang, The Souls of Yellow Folk, John PistelliI have a working hypothesis that no one has suffered a more dramatic decline in a certain kind of social status, as a result of changes in left-liberal elite culture and politics, than white gay men. Less than a decade ago they were at the vanguard of social progress, having led a gay rights movement that achieved an extraordinary series of legal, political, and cultural victories. Now they're perceived as basically indistinguishable, within certain left-liberal spaces, from straight white men. In some activist circles they may be even more suspect, since they're competing for leadership roles and narrative centrality where straight men wouldn't presume (or particularly desire) to tread. My hypothesis, if it's accurate, is interesting on its own terms, as part of a much longer history in America of ethnic and other minority groups rising and falling in relative cultural, intellectual, and literary status. It's also interesting, however, for what it tells us about the recent evolution of left and liberal politics, as they've shifted and reshaped themselves in reaction to both great victories, like the legalization of gay marriage, and to depressingly intractable problems like the persistent racial gaps in wealth, health, incarceration, and crime.I'm less interested in the justice or injustice of this shift in standing (though I'm somewhat interested) than I am in the facts of it and its implications. Why has it happened? What does it feel like for the people who have experienced it? What are its implications? Will there be a backlash? To assist me in thinking through what it all means, I invited to the podcast Blake Smith and Jamie Kirchick. Jamie is a columnist for Tablet magazine, a writer at large for Air Mail, and the author of last year's New York Times bestseller, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. He has long been an outspoken critic of some sectors of the gay left and what he perceives of as their desire to subordinate the project of achieving full civic and political equality for gay people to a more radical, revolutionary project to tear down conventional bourgeois ideas of gender, sexuality, marriage, family, monogamy, and identity. In a recent essay in Liberties, “From Queer to Gay to Queer,” Jamie compares the liberal tenets of the gay rights movement to the radical aspirations of what he calls “political queerness”: With its insistence that gay people adhere to a very narrow set of political and identitarian commitments, to a particular definition that delegitimates everything outside of itself, political queerness is deeply illiberal. This is in stark opposition to the spirit of the mainstream gay rights movement, which was liberal in every sense — philosophically, temperamentally, and procedurally. It achieved its liberal aspirations (securing equality) by striving for liberal aims (access to marriage and the military) via liberal means (at the ballot box, through the courts, and in the public square). Appealing to liberal values, it accomplished an incredible revolution in human consciousness, radically transforming how Americans viewed a once despised minority. And it did so animated by the liberal belief that inclusion does not require the erasure of one's own particular identity, or even the tempering of it. By design, the gay movement was capacious, and made room for queers in its vision of an America where sexual orientation was no longer a barrier to equal citizenship. Queerness, alas, has no room for gays. The victory of the gay movement and its usurpation by the queer one represents an ominous succession. The gay movement sought to reform laws and attitudes so that they would align with America's founding liberal principles; the queer movement posits that such principles are intrinsically oppressive and therefore deserving of denigration. The gay movement was grounded in objective fact; the queer movement is rooted in Gnostic postmodernism. For the gay movement, homosexuality was something to be treated as any other benign human trait, whereas the queer movement imbues same-sex desire and gender nonconformity with a revolutionary socio-political valence. (Not for the first time, revolution is deemed more important than rights.) And whereas the gay movement strived for mainstream acceptance of gay people, the queer movement finds the very concept of a mainstream malevolent, a form of “structural violence.” Illiberal in its tactics, antinomian in its ideology, scornful of ordinary people and how they choose to live, and glorifying marginalization, queerness is a betrayal of the gay movement, and of gay people themselves. In the podcast I refer to Jamie as “a man alone.” This isn't quite true. He has comrades out there, in particular older gay writers like Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch, who share many of his commitments and critiques. Generationally, however, Jamie seems more alone than they do, without a cohort of gay intellectuals of roughly his age who share his intellectual reference points, his liberalism, and his very specific experience of coming of age as a gay man and journalist in America when he did, at his specific point of entry to AIDS, the decline of print and rise of online journalism, and the political advance of gay (and more recently trans) rights. He's a man alone but also, if the premise of this podcast is accurate, a man alone who has been publicly articulating a set of feelings and arguments that is shared by many of his gay male peers, of various generations, but hasn't yet taken shape in the form of a political or intellectual reaction.Blake Smith is my first return guest to the podcast, having recently joined me to discuss Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist and critic Andrea Long Chu (the “it girl of the trans world,” as I called her). He is a recent refugee from academia, now living and working as a freelance writer in Chicago, writing for Tablet magazine, American Affairs, and elsewhere. At 35 he is only a few years younger than Jamie, but is the product of a very different set of formative biographical and intellectual influences. Raised in a conservative Southern Baptist family in a suburb of Memphis, Blake's big coming out, as he tells the story, was less as a gay man than as the kind of academically credentialed, world-traveling, city-based sophisticate he has become. If Jamie's sense of loss is maybe something in the vicinity of what I proposed at the top of this post–that he went from being in the ultimately victorious mainstream of the gay rights struggle to being seen as a member of the privileged oppressor class, at best a second-class “ally” and at worst an apostate to the cause –than Blake's experience is less about any personal or political loss of status or standing than it is a variant of the venerable intellectual and literary tradition of pining for a scene or scenes from eras prior to your own. Think Owen Wilson's character in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, who was magically transported back to Paris in the 1920s, the scene he'd always romanticized, only to fall in love with a woman from that era who herself romanticizes and eventually chooses to abandon him for another, earlier cultural moment, the Belle Époque scene of the 1890s. For Blake, the key era, maybe, was the brief post-Stonewall period before AIDS superseded all other concerns––so the 1970s, more or less– when gay male life was sufficiently out of the closet for a gay male public to come into existence and begin to define itself and understand how it related, or didn't relate, not just to the straight world but also to feminism, women, Marxism, black civil rights, and other left-wing and liberal movements. In a recent piece in Tablet, Blake writes about the magazine Christopher Street, founded in 1976, and its project of helping to bring into existence a coherent intellectual and cultural community of gay men:In its cultural politics of building a gay male world, Christopher Street featured poetry and short stories, helping launch the careers of the major gay writers of the late 20th century, such as Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, and Larry Kramer. It also ran many essays that contributed to an emerging awareness that there was a gay male canon in American letters, running from Walt Whitman and Hart Crane to John Ashbery and James Merrill.Christopher Street was by no means the only venue for the construction of a gay world, but [editor Michael] Denneny and his colleagues were perhaps the sharpest-minded defenders of its specificity—their demand that it be a world for gay men. In a debate that has now been largely forgotten, but which dominated gay intellectual life in the 1970s, Denneny's Arendtian perspective, with its debts to Zionism, was ranged against a vision of politics in which gay men were to be a kind of shock force for a broader sexual-cum-socialist revolution.For Blake, what's been lost or trumped is less the liberal politics that Jamie champions and that Christopher Street more or less advocated than the existence of a gay male world of letters that had fairly distinct boundaries, a relatively private space in which gay men–who may always remain in some way politically suspect, even reviled, by the mainstream–can recognize and talk to each other.  As he writes in another recent essay in Tablet, maybe half-seriously, “One should, …know one's own type (Jew, homosexual, philosopher, etc.) and remain at a ‘playful distance' from those outside it, with ‘no expectation of essential progress' toward a world in which the sort of people we are can be publicly recognized and respected. No messiahs, and no end to paranoias and persecutions—but, in the shade of deft silences, the possibility of cleareyed fellowship with one's own kind.”Jamie, Blake, and I had what I found to be a really exciting conversation about all these issues and more. Give it a listen.Eminent Americans is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Eminent Americans at danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

James Kirchick joins Ron Steslow to discuss his book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington (01:55) Why he wrote the book (06:43) The interwoven political history and gay history in Washington (14:33) The melting pot of the gay community and why it was seen as a threat (19:55) The trope that whatever is bad must be gay (31:51) The Lavender Scare  (35:53) The tension between the gay loyal foot soldiers of Ronald Reagan and courting the religious right  (49:00) What was challenging about writing the book  You should read Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington: http://bit.ly/3wgiORk Follow James Kirchick and Ron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jkirchick https://twitter.com/RonSteslow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Kirchick is a writer and a columnist at Tablet. His most recent book is Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and James Kirchick discuss how the Cold War shaped attitudes toward homosexuality; the (dis)similarities between homophobia and anti-Semitism; and what we can learn from the hard-won progress on gay rights about how to make progress in other areas. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Wedenesday, October 26th, we will be launching a new podcast called Not Even Mad, featuring Gist host Mike Pesca (heard of him?), Wired contributor and self-proclaimed liberal Virginia Heffernan, and author of the bestselling Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, Jamie Kirchick, who holds many conservative positions on the issues. So, as a preview of the new podcast, we've invited Virginia and Jamie on The Gist to discuss the brokenness of our current political discourse, and also to debate how the Democrats lost the post-Dobbs polling momentum. Is it really just about gas prices? Also, an analysis of “talking your book,” or as Mike describes it “a prediction based on predilection.” Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com To advertise on the show, visit: https://advertisecast.com/TheGist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The D.C. History Center just unveiled a new exhibit to celebrate LGBT History Month. But D.C's queer community hasn't always felt welcome here. Gay federal employees were forced to stay in the closet as recently as the 1990s. Author Jamie Kirchick is here to share history he uncovered for his book —Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.  Also, find your closest ballot drop box here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Washington is known to be a city of secrets. And, for many decades, one of the most dangerous secrets was that of homosexuality. Its spectre haunted the halls of power, and the true stories are only now coming to light.Tara's guest on today's podcast has written a sweeping history of gay involvement in government. And he has much to say about the past's lessons for the present moment — for free speech, for open debate, and for a free press.James Kirchick is an American journalist and a columnist at Tablet magazine. He's also the author of the New York Times bestseller, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

On this episode, we talk with veteran journalist James Kirchick about his new book, "Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington." He explains how government officials who were gay became the focus of investigations, campaigns to out them, and even lost everything. He shows how Washington attracted gay men and women who hoped to serve their country, but who found that it was both the most dangerous place for them to be, but in some ways, the most liberating. He organizes his book chronologically by president, so we also get a real sense of how different administrations reacted to the prospect that gay public servants were among them. Kirchick explains how that reveals their broader character. From FDR to JFK to Nixon to Reagan, this is a discussion that will pull the veil off an aspect of life in Washington that has seldom been reported. Sadly, we will never know how many patriots never shied away from serving their country over the fear that their deepest secret could be exposed.James Kirchick has a website at https://jameskirchick.comHe is on social media at https://twitter.com/jkirchickMore information on his book from Henry Holt and Co. can be found at https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627792332/secretcitySupport our show at https://patreon.com/axelbankhistory**A portion of every contribution is given to a charity for children's literacy** "Axelbank Reports History and Today" can be found on social media at https://twitter.com/axelbankhistory https://instagram.com/axelbankhistoryhttps://facebook.com/axelbankhistory

Gays and lesbians have been part of America and its politics since the country's foundation. Still, historically the stigma attached to homosexuality meant that any person whose alternative desires became publicly known was immediately banished from politics as well as mainstream society. James Kirchick has written an epic narrative history, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, which examines American politics alongside and through the experiences of gays and lesbians in Washington, from the New Deal through the end of the 1990s. In this podcast episode, Kirchick discusses the multiple dimensions in which homosexuals and homophobia impacted American politics, particularly in the mid-20th-century “Lavender Scare,” the purge of gay employees from federal service which took place alongside (and outlasted) the Red Scare. “Even at the height of the Cold War, it was safer to be a Communist than a homosexual,” Kirchick writes. “A Communist could break with the party. A homosexual was forever tainted.” The podcast also focuses on Frank Kameny, a Harvard-trained astronomer who was fired from the Army Map Service for his sexuality in 1957 and became the first person to challenge his termination on those grounds in court. Kameny formed the Mattachine Society in 1961 to agitate for full civil rights for gays and lesbians. He organized the first picket outside the White House for gay rights in 1965, and was instrumental in getting homosexuality removed from the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental disorders in the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1973. Kameny, in Kirchick's telling, comes across as a radical moderate: radical in the sense that the full participation of gays and lesbians in American society was beyond the conception of even political progressives for most of the 20th century, but moderate in that his crusade sought the fulfillment of rights guaranteed by the Constitution, to be achieved through a politics of respectability rather than liberation. Kirchick discusses how the politics around homosexuality played a key role during the presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. He also considers whether the tremendous gains in both legal equality for and public acceptance of homosexuality in recent years are likely to be reversed by Supreme Court decisions or populist agitation by Republican politicians like Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

James Kirchick stops in to talk about his new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. He and Bridget discuss his fascinating deep dive into the history of homosexuality in Washington D.C., his process for writing the book, how he researched it, what he uncovered, and which US President he considers the most homophobic. They also cover the Lavender Scare, writing a narrative history in an engaging way, the important role World War II played on gay consciousness in America, the dramatic transformation in public attitudes on homosexuality in the last few decades and what James attributes that to, and how he developed a real sense of gratitude as a gay man living today during the course of writing the book.

“Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington” details the brave and sometimes salacious characters of Washington D.C.'s gay culture during the 20th century. President Biden on Monday night announced the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri, who became al-Qaeda's leader after Osama bin Laden died in 2011. What happens to the extremist group now? Nearly a year after U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan, some 19 million Afghans face life-threatening hunger, and women's rights have deteriorated. SoLa Impact says it costs them $250,000 to build one unit of affordable housing in LA. How are they doing it, while others take $600,000, on average, to build such a unit?

We are joined this week by Jamie Kirchick to talk about his latest book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. We also reflect on his first book, The End of Europe, which he wrote in 2017, and much of which he predicted in it, unfortunately, has come to pass in the past five years. We also talk about the state of the media today compared to the past and how media affects a democracy. 

Author James Kirchick joins Margaret Hoover to talk about his new bestseller, “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington,” and the facts and fiction about gay men and women in politics and government from the FDR administration to the end of the 20th century. Gays within the federal government persistently faced suspicion, harassment, and ostracization, even as they filled vital jobs in the State Department, the intelligence services, and the White House. Kirchick recounts the moral panic of the Lavender Scare, responds to long-standing rumors about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Eleanor Roosevelt, and reveals new details about fears on the right that Ronald Reagan was being manipulated by a “homosexual network.” He also talks about the state of LGBTQ rights in America in the 21st century, the signs of a brewing backlash against inclusivity, and why some homosexual politicians in Washington today might still feel compelled to remain in the closet. Support for “Firing Line for Margaret Hoover” is provided by Stephens Inc., Robert Granieri, Charles R. Schwab, The Fairweather Foundation, Asness Family Foundation, The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Damon Button, and The Marc Haas Foundation.

National security, secrecy, paranoia, suicide, and the rise of modern civil rights—James Kirchick joins host Richard Aldous to talk about the untold story of the nation's capital, and his new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.

Join Gregg as he welcomes James Kirchick, an American reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist. James has a fascinating new book: “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington” and discusses it among other topics...

June is Pride Month. The first Pride March took place in June 1970, to commemorate the Stonewall Uprising the year prior. Today on We the People, we look back on LGBTQ rights and advocacy throughout American history—from key stories and figures to key court cases interpreting the scope of LGBTQ rights under the Constitution. James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, and Dale Carpenter, Judge William Hawley Atwell Chair of Constitutional Law at SMU and author of Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v Texas, join Jeffrey Rosen for the conversation. Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org. Continue today's conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.

June is Pride Month. The first Pride March took place in June 1970, to commemorate the Stonewall Uprising the year prior. Today on We the People, we look back on LGBTQ rights and advocacy throughout American history—from key stories and figures to key court cases interpreting the scope of LGBTQ rights under the Constitution. James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, and Dale Carpenter, Judge William Hawley Atwell Chair of Constitutional Law at SMU and author of Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v Texas, join Jeffrey Rosen for the conversation. Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org. Continue today's conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.

“Every advance gay people have made in this country has been the result of the exercise of free expression,” argues writer James Kirchick, author of the New York Times bestseller, “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.” www.sotospeakpodcast.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SotoSpeakTheFreeSpeechPodcast Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/freespeechtalk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sotospeakpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freespeechtalk/ Email us: sotospeak@thefire.org

Today's guests: Bret Baier, host, Fox News “Special Report”. Former Missouri Senator Jim Talent, senior fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center. Jamie Kirchick, author of “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington”. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, joins the podcast today to discuss his book as well as the January 6 Committee's ongoing hearings and the revolt of the “woke” in the workplace.

James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, joins the podcast today to discuss his book as well as the January 6 Committee's ongoing hearings and the revolt of the “woke” in the workplace.

We took the podcast on the road this week — to Provincetown for a live chat with Jamie Kirchick, whose new book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, I reviewed last week. We were able to discuss much more than could be covered in pixels — with questions from the audience as well.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). For two clips of my convo with Jamie — on the similarities between anti-Semitism and homophobia, and on whether J. Edgar Hoover was gay — head over to our YouTube page. Also: new week, new transcript — this time with Charles Murray. It was one of the most popular episodes last year, and if you never listened to it, now’s your chance to read it as well.Looking back to our episode with Kathleen Stock (who has since moved to Substack!), we still have many unaired emails from listeners. The first writes:I just wanted to email to say thank you for the work you’re doing on the (potential) threat of trans ideology to cis gays. I’m a 33-year-old cis gay in Australia, and I was a bit confused by trans stuff at first, because I felt I was supposed to implicitly understand trans issues, existing in that “LGBT” bloc. Back around 2013, any trans-related conversation amounted to laughing about the silliness of the “xe/xir” stuff, while still acknowledging that it’s simple human decency to use whatever pronouns someone asks me to use.As Kathleen Stock said on your podcast, respecting trans people through their struggle always seemed “costless.” Clearly, that is no longer true. Something has changed for the worse; the most visible, loud and most obnoxious segment of the LGBT community are the “queer fascists.” I’m called a bigot for simply acknowledging that there exist people who detransition (without even mentioning whether transgenderism might be a form of gay conversion therapy, in some cases). I could go on and on, obviously, but again: thank you.P.S. I adored your point on Brendan O’Neill’s show about how the queer community used to be the resistance, but has transitioned into being the censorious puritans.Here’s a clip from the Stock pod:From another listener who “LOVED the conversation with Kathleen Stock”:I’m an intersex person and can say with authority that human bodies are weird. Mine doesn’t produce enough sex hormone. I tried testosterone and developed anxiety, depression, and depersonalization, so I’m now going in the other direction and I’m much happier. My pronouns are “whatever you want,” and I’m fully aware that I’m atypical. I don’t care for the “trans” label because of how ridiculous it has become. That makes my heart hurt for those who have battled very hard to be recognized only to watch their identity subverted into something meaningless by a vicious and thoughtless mob. I hate what was done to Kathleen or anyone else who says, “Hey, wait a minute, we should talk about this.” I don’t know when talking about our differences became so damn dangerous. It’s intellectually dishonest. Weren’t universities supposed to be the places to halt this kind of thing, where ideas could be debated and reasoned through? But if the universities are all businesses now, and their incentives are about how to get more paying students, then where else can the debate be had? Where are the incentives more closely aligned with the public good rather than the almighty dollar? I don’t know. I worry that place doesn’t exist here in the US.One thing that was truly horrifying was when you mentioned that gay kids are being told they’re trans because they’re gay. That’s evil. I don’t know what else to call it. Human brains aren’t done forming until what, our 20s? There’s a reason peer pressure is so pernicious for teenagers, and it seems strange that many adults seem to have forgotten it and blithely go along with kids (rare exceptions aside) who want to block their own puberty or have a double mastectomy before they can legally vote.Anyways, I enjoyed every minute of your conversation with Kathleen, even the part where you went on about how “I don’t even know what non-binary IS,” because that’s how I feel as a non-binary person! I’m not comfortable with either of given options, nor am I comfortable in any same-sex space (but I manage in airports). Again, I’m atypical on the chromosomal level, so while I can’t speak to everyone’s experience, I can say mine is a bit more existential than the random 16 year old who’s decided, along with their entire social circle, that they’re suddenly non-binary and have all dyed their hair blue. Sometimes it feels like I’m riding around in a clown car, to be honest.From another fan of the episode, a medical doctor:I admire both you and Kathleen Stock. The more I learn about what is being done to children who don’t conform to stereotypes, the more horrified I’ve become.  During my lifetime, much has been done to accept people, including children as they are. We’ve come to recognize that there’s a great deal of variance of normal around the mean. But when it comes to subjecting children to dangerous medical interventions, we no longer need to worry about causing real harm? To me it appears that some physicians have no qualms about experimenting on healthy children. Malicious intent is all that’s missing for this to be criminal misuse of medical science.I have no platform to use to try to stop this. I appreciate that you and Dr. Stock are making an effort to put the brakes on this madness. Another medical doctor who sounded off on the trans debate was the great Dana Beyer:Listen to the whole episode here. Another listener reflects on the trans debate more broadly:Though I find the entire trans/gender battle beyond exhausting, the recent events surrounding the swimmer at Penn brought it front and center for me. Partly because I was a competitive swimmer in HS, but mostly because my girlfriend’s daughter is a championship-level swimmer with a scholarship to a top-tier program after HS. (By the way, the daughter is not okay with the Penn swimmer.)I have a degree in English, and I’m fortunate to have a lifelong best friend whose father is a linguist. And there were two linguistic tools recently designed to serve one group’s agenda while doing a terrible disservice to the one that should matter. The first was to change the term transsexual to “transgender,” shifting from a term defining the biology of gender dysphoria to one that is intentionally far more vague. The second was to create the shorthand term “trans,” which acts a vehicle for the first by turning something that affects .03% of the population into something broader and far more inclusive.It’s these subtle yet effective shifts in language that facilitate the gender vs biological sex movements, and accepting that someone who still has a penis can be defined as a woman. Now, “trans” is a definition designed to cover any permutation of gender non-conformity instead of actual gender dysphoria, as defined in the DSM-5. And it has opened the door to well-meaning (I assume) adults making terrible decisions regarding child development.Growing up as a boy, all my closest relatives — sister, cousins, an aunt three years older than me — were girls. I ended up playing with them often, regardless of the game or what items were involved (dolls, etc). I followed their lead and even thought I was supposed to pee sitting down. None of this was driven by a desire to be a girl, but rather just to be included. And like many boys, my first forays into my own genitalia involved other boys, as we learned about our bodies. But by the time I neared puberty, it was clear that I was both male and heterosexual. Yet, I fear that children growing up today in similar circumstances will find themselves in a world of confusion, brought on by adults, not their playmates.Speaking of confused kids, another listener:I’ve heard you express frustration and/or disbelief at the rate of depression among gay youth today, despite how much easier things are for them compared to the ‘70s and ‘80s. I just wanted to point out that many young people seem to believe that gay means same-gender attraction, not same-sex. This seems to be part of the Queer umbrella where heterosexual people can identify as another gender and so claim a gay identity. This makes no sense to me (I also find it homophobic), and I wonder if the whole mess contributes to the rates of depression among Millennials and Gen Z.One of those confused kids was Helena Kerschner, a young woman who transitioned and then detransitioned:Listen to her whole story, along with the inimitable Buck Angel’s, here. Another good point comes from this listener:I see the current kerfuffle about trans identities as reflecting the inability to experience complexity without anxiety and a desire to simplify things. That a person can have what are seen as conflicting senses of themselves — as a man, as a man/woman, woman/man, or somewhere in-between — is too complex for some people. Some I expect do find the idea anxiety-provoking — leading to questions about themselves, in a Freudian way — and they are trying to solve their problems by forcing others into boxes.Circling back to the Stock episode, another listener:I do want to push back on, and encourage you to revisit in depth, your point of disagreement with Kathleen over the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments in transgender youth. While the issues are surely different in the case of adults who have reached the age of consent (though even here there is a strong reason for limiting what can be done in the name of medicine in the strict sense, with consequences for what insurance policies should have to cover), the idea that a child could be given permanently life-altering treatments on the basis of a diagnosis for which, as Kathleen observed, there are simply no rigorous criteria, and to treat a psychological condition that could very well turn out not to be lasting, seems utterly abhorrent. What serious arguments are there in defense of this? What are the responses to the obvious objections? Finally, what should liberal people, who are opposed to these treatments but nevertheless prize individual autonomy and fear governmental overreach, think about the various legislative strategies that are on offer to forbid or restrict access to them? I hope that this is a conversation you’ll be able to keep on having.For more debate on this ongoing issue, check out the Dishcast episode with Mara Keisling, the founding executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. A clip of our constructive disagreement:Lastly, a listener looks ahead:I’m writing to suggest a guest (though I am not sure she accepts podcast invitations). There’s a point of view on trans issues I haven’t really heard adequately represented on your podcasts or in your blog posts. I think the person who best articulates it is Natalie Wynn, aka Contrapoints. I recently watched her YouTube episode on J.K. Rowling (and TERFs in general). It was brilliant, and opened my mind to many of the tropes and biases we hear all the time that I wasn’t fully hearing. Natalie is extremely smart, articulate, funny, and not afraid to say things that piss off her tribe. Thanks so much for the suggestion. Keep them coming — along with your dissents, assents and personal stories: dish@andrewsullivan.com. And you can browse the entire Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Get full access to The Weekly Dish at andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

This week on Unorthodox, three of our favorite guests return to the show to tell us about their latest projects.  First we visit Philadelphia restaurateurs Mike Solomonov and Steve Cook at their new Brooklyn restaurant Laser Wolf, a shipudiya, or Israeli skewer house, named for the butcher in Fiddler on the Roof. You can listen to our 2019 road trip to Philadelphia, where we spoke to Solomonov and Cook at their restaurant Zahav, on Episode 204.  Tablet columnist James Kirchick also returns to the show to talk about his new book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.  Unorthodox joins The WNET Group's Exploring Hate and All Arts on June 16 at 5 p.m to present “Can I Laugh At That?” a virtual panel discussion about comedy during trying times, hosted by Judy Gold and featuring Alex Edelman, Negin Farsad, and Mike Yard. Learn more and register at tabletm.ag/canilaugh.   We are hiring a community manager! Help us connect with the audiences of all our shows, run our social media, and generally be our cheerleader. It's a paid six-month, part-time position, and a chance to work with your favorite Jewish podcasters. Learn more at tabletm.ag/community. We love to hear from you! Send us your emails and voice memos at unorthodox@tabletmag.com, or leave a voicemail at our listener line: (914) 570-4869. Remember to tell us who you are and where you're calling from.  Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Join our Facebook group, and follow Unorthodox on Twitter and Instagram. Get a behind-the-scenes look at our recording sessions on our YouTube channel. Find out about our upcoming events at tabletmag.com/unorthodoxlive. Want to book us for a live show or event in your area, or partner with us in some other way? Email tabletstudios@tabletmag.com. Unorthodox is produced by Tablet Studios. Check out all of our podcasts at tabletmag.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Award-winning journalist and author James Kirchick joins Zerlina on the show to discuss his new book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, out now! ABOUT THE BOOKWashington, D.C., has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick's Secret City.For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of international communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government. In the fevered atmosphere of political Washington, the secret “too loathsome to mention” paradoxically held enormous, terrifying power.Utilizing thousands of pages of declassified documents, interviews with over one hundred people, and material unearthed from presidential libraries and archives around the country, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington is a chronicle of American politics like no other. Beginning with the tragic story of Sumner Welles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's brilliant diplomatic advisor and the man at the center of “the greatest national scandal since the existence of the United States,” award-winning journalist and author James Kirchick illuminates how the idea of homosexuality shaped each successive presidential administration, impacting everything from the creation of America's earliest civilian intelligence agency to the rise and fall of McCarthyism, the struggle for African American civil rights, and the conservative movement.Celebrating the men and women who courageously decided that the source of their private shame could instead be galvanized for public pride, Kirchick offers a reinterpretation of American history told from the perspective of the citizens who lived in its shadows.Sweeping in scope and intimate in detail, Secret City will forever transform our understanding of American history. ABOUT THE AUTHORJames Kirchick is an award-winning journalist and author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age. A visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, he has reported from over 40 countries and is a columnist for Tablet magazine. Kirchick has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung among many other publications, and lives in Washington, D.C. 

This week on Chatter, Shane Harris talks with journalist Jamie Kirchick about his new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Kirchick's story unfolds over several decades and reveals the secret history of gays and lesbians in the capital, as well as the history of secrecy in which they played pivotal roles. The book is a set of personal stories as well as an exploration of the national security bureaucracy at the heart of power and influence in Washington. And Kirchick explores a provocative idea: Were gays and lesbians, already accustomed to living secret lives, well-suited to work as intelligence officers? Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. Learn more and subscribe to Chatter.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week, Shane Harris talks with journalist Jamie Kirchick about his new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Kirchick's story unfolds over several decades and reveals the secret history of gays and lesbians in the capital, as well as the history of secrecy in which they played pivotal roles. The book is a set of personal stories as well as an exploration of the national security bureaucracy at the heart of power and influence in Washington. And Kirchick explores a provocative idea: Were gays and lesbians, already accustomed to living secret lives, well-suited to work as intelligence officers? Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Works discussed in this episode:Jamie's book: Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington https://www.amazon.com/dp/1627792325/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_YF2CX5FTCSS1BTCXSATMHis website: https://jameskirchick.com/Follow Jamie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jkirchick?s=21&t=E5hDivNZ2g89sHSeSB6DCA Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dear readers,Due to the holiday weekend, this week’s schedule for Very Serious is out of order. The podcast is out today, there will be a regular issue tomorrow, and a special Fire Island edition of the Mayonnaise Clinic will be coming on Friday.One striking fact about three-term New York mayor Ed Koch’s life in the closet — the subject of a recent New York Times feature — is that he stayed in the closet long after he could plausibly claim that he needed to.An openly gay man would not have been elected mayor of New York City in 1977; once in office, he would have had good reason to fear he would not have been re-elected had he come out. Politicians simply didn't do that at the time. But in retirement, Koch had no reputation to protect from the knowledge that he was gay. In fact, coming out probably would have earned him sympathetic news coverage and softened his image at a time when his record as mayor was often criticized for reasons related to race relations and the AIDS crisis — including the specific allegation that he shied away from leadership on AIDS for fear that association with a “gay issue” would fan the (true) rumors that he was gay.One theory the Times piece considers is that, after denying his sexuality for so many years in the face of detractors like Larry Kramer who wanted him outed, Koch felt coming out would be tantamount to letting them win. But if you lie about your sexuality long enough, it can simply become hard to tell the truth. A lot of people stay in the closet for expediency, but a lot of people stay there because of their own shame, and it’s sad.And it’s sad how common the need to hide was until not very long ago.This week’s episode of the Very Serious podcast is an interview with James Kirchick, author of the new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, which chronicles the powerful roles that gays (mostly gay men) played in our federal government from World War II through the Reagan administration. Just because gays couldn’t announce themselves didn't mean they weren't around — in fact, some of them arguably sublimated their sexual desires into drive that propelled them to the heights they achieved in American government.Jamie’s book describes the creation of the modern closet as an artifact of World War II, the Cold War, and the security state. Gays had long been considered disgusting, but with world war they came to be considered security threats, at risk of blackmail over their appalling secrets. As a concept, that this would be a risk makes intuitive sense, though Jamie notes the surprising difficulty American officials had when asked to identify any specific cases where gays in government were blackmailed over their sexual orientation. And besides, whatever security risk homosexuals posed was not really a product of their sexual orientation itself, but of the government’s and society’s reaction to their sexual orientation — if you let people freely admit they are gay, then there’s no shameful secret to threaten anyone over. Nonetheless, gays were vilified, investigated, and until 1995, prohibited from holding security clearances.Through the decades covered in Jamie’s book, allegations of homosexuality were wielded as political weapons — true allegations and also false ones. Jack Kemp, for example, was not gay, and he was definitely not part of a right-wing gay cabal that controlled Ronald Reagan. But that didn’t stop a cadre of Republican officials — many of them moderates — from pushing that fantastical narrative to reporters in an effort to block Reagan's nomination in 1980. That madcap story is the subject of an excerpt from Jamie’s book that you can read in Politico Magazine.The 1980s would bring in the AIDS crisis, and an aloof response to it from the Reagans, despite Nancy Reagan’s coterie of gays, ranging from her hairdresser to Merv Griffin. The AIDS crisis would also lead to the waning of the political closet as it had been established in the 1940s, with gay political figures forced out of it, often in death. The era also brought the first two openly gay congressmen who sought and attained re-election: Gerry Studds and Barney Frank, both from Massachusetts, and both far from the idealized image of a gay politician you might mold on the basis of a focus group.I encourage you to listen to the podcast and, if it intrigues you, read the book. It's dishy and full of odd stories like the one about Reagan and the alleged secret right-wing gay cabal; and of correctives to wrong things you’ve likely heard about figures such as J. Edgar Hoover, who probably was not actually a cross-dresser. The story as a whole is sad and maddening — Jamie has, for example, handwritten edits to Ronald Reagan’s draft statement about Rock Hudson’s death, removing all reference to the closeness of Hudson’s relationship to Ronald and Nancy — but also very interesting, and well worth your time.Very seriously,JoshP.S. As we’ve mentioned, the Very Serious podcast is now hosted directly on Substack, coming to you through the same series of tubes as the newsletter. We think the migration has been pretty seamless — if you already subscribed to the podcast, it should still be coming into your player of choice just like before; and if you want to sign up now, we have a button here for you to press.We are now offering episode transcripts. You can see this episode’s transcript here.Questions about the process? Technical issues with your feed? Email podcasting@substackinc.com for support. For any other inquiries, please email mayo@joshbarro.com. Get full access to Very Serious at www.joshbarro.com/subscribe

Uniquely Nasty, a Yahoo News documentary from 2015, explored the little known story of the US Government's relentless persecution of gays in the Cold War era, focusing in part on how the FBI under Hoover's direction, tracked the names of tens of thousands of suspected gays and lesbians working for the Federal Government. And then took steps to have them fired. It was just one piece of a so-called lavender scare that left in its wake a trail of fear, paranoia, and destroyed lives. The full story of the US Government's jihad against gay America is now being told in a landmark book, The Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, by journalist James Kirchick. Kirchick's book brings to life the largely invisible stories of senior government officials at the State Department, the White House, and in Congress, who lived in fear that their secret lives would become publicly known. And how their careers were shattered when their homosexuality was exposed, often for political or bureaucratic advantage. It's a shocking story that is a reminder of how much about America's dark past of persecution has been obscured yet remains highly relevant to themes in our current politics. Kirchick joins to discuss the excruciating agony that denizens of the secret city experienced. And why it is a crucial chapter in American history. GUESTS:James Kirchick, (@jkirchick), Author of the book Gunfight.HOSTS:Michael Isikoff (@Isikoff), Chief Investigative Correspondent, Yahoo NewsDaniel Klaidman (@dklaidman), Editor in Chief, Yahoo NewsVictoria Bassetti (@VBass), fellow, Brennan Center for Justice (contributing co-host)RESOURCES:Pick up James Kirchick's book The Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington - Here.Watch the groundbreaking Yahoo News documentary "Uniquely Nasty: The U.S. Government's War on Gays - Here.Follow us on Twitter: @SkullduggeryPodListen and subscribe to "Skullduggery" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.Email us with feedback, questions or tips: SkullduggeryPod@yahoo.com. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

James Kirchick talks about his new book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.

With current-day labor movements at Amazon, Starbucks and other big employers in the news, Nell McShane Wulfhart is on the podcast this week to discuss her new book about a vivid moment in labor history, “The Great Stewardess Rebellion: How Women Launched a Workplace Revolution at 30,000 Feet.” That revolution was launched in the face of working conditions that included contracts with onerous demands about every corner of a woman's life.“The age restrictions and the marriage restrictions and the pregnancy restrictions — obviously that was a big no-no — they had been part of the contracts for many years, I think for as long as stewardesses had been working,” Wulfhart says. “These restrictions were obviously designed to keep the work force as young as possible, as svelte as possible and as pliable as possible, because when you're only working for a few years, you're not that invested in getting better benefits or establishing a pension plan or fighting for your rights.”James Kirchick visits the podcast to discuss his new book, “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.” The sweeping story, from the days of the New Deal up through Bill Clinton's presidency, considers the toll of homophobia in the nation's capital.“It's incalculable,” Kirchick says. “The governmental resources that were expended in this, the hundreds of thousands of man hours that went into rooting out, discovering and firing patriotic civil servants. The deep wells of knowledge that were denied this country based upon fear of gay people. We don't know those numbers. And then there's of course the impact that it had on individual gay people.”Also on this week's episode, Lauren Christensen and Gregory Cowles talk about what they've been reading. John Williams is the host.Here are the books discussed in this week's “What We're Reading”:“Truth and Beauty” by Ann Patchett“Fierce Attachments” by Vivian Gornick“Role Models” by John WatersWe would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

The Atlantic's Jonathan Rauch joins the group (including Cathy Young) to consider whether a federal judge saying Trump is a likely criminal should spur DOJ? Also, the “Don't Say Gay” law, Ginni Thomas, Biden's popularity, and more. Highlights & Lowlights: Mona's highlight: DCist: Maryland Will No Longer Require Four-Year Degrees For Thousands Of State Jobs (https://dcist.com/story/22/03/15/maryland-college-degree-requirement/) Damon's highlight: NY Times: Yes, There Is a Clash of Civilizations (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/opinion/ukraine-clash-of-civilizations.html) Damon's other highlight: Slow Boring: Ukraine and the end of history (https://www.slowboring.com/p/ukraine-and-the-end-of-history?s=r) Bill Galston and Jonathan Rauch's highlight: Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington by James Kirchick (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627792325/secretcity) Bulwark+ members get access to an exclusive ad-free version of Beg to Differ. Learn more here: https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/how-do-i-add-a-bulwark-member-only?s=w Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Atlantic's Jonathan Rauch joins the group (including Cathy Young) to consider whether a federal judge saying Trump is a likely criminal should spur DOJ? Also, the “Don't Say Gay” law, Ginni Thomas, Biden's popularity, and more. Highlights & Lowlights: Mona's highlight: DCist: Maryland Will No Longer Require Four-Year Degrees For Thousands Of State Jobs (https://dcist.com/story/22/03/15/maryland-college-degree-requirement/) Damon's highlight: NY Times: Yes, There Is a Clash of Civilizations (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/opinion/ukraine-clash-of-civilizations.html) Damon's other highlight: Slow Boring: Ukraine and the end of history (https://www.slowboring.com/p/ukraine-and-the-end-of-history?s=r) Bill Galston and Jonathan Rauch's highlight: Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington by James Kirchick (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627792325/secretcity) Bulwark+ members get access to an exclusive ad-free version of Beg to Differ. Learn more here: https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/how-do-i-add-a-bulwark-member-only?s=w

With Kmele waiting for his son to arrive and moving into his new East Coast digs (or something), Welch and Moynihan again find a temporary replacement. This time the honor is bestowed upon Jamie Kirchick, senior fellow for the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council and author of the forthcoming book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. Bullet point topics for this episode seem unnecessary because....lotta Ukraine. With a bonus digression into Jamie's recent piece on Sohrab Ahmari and the right's lurch towards "national conservatism." Enjoy.Also: another Patreon coming at the end of the week. So go sign up. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Katie Herzog, one of the last remaining lesbians in America, is the co-host of Blocked and Reported alongside her battered pod-wife, Jesse Singal. Gay neocon Jamie Kirchick is a Brookings fellow and the author of the forthcoming book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. If you’d like to hear a politically incorrect gay and lesbian conversation that would never be aired in the MSM, check it out. Get full access to The Weekly Dish at andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

Jamie Kirchick is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for Tablet magazine. His first book, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age, was published in 2017, and his next book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington is forthcoming from Henry Holt.  Erin Jackson has appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers and CONAN and just made her Netflix debut as part of Season 2 of Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready. 

Jamie Kirchick is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for Tablet magazine. His first book, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age, was published in 2017, and his next book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington is forthcoming from Henry Holt.  Erin Jackson has appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers and CONAN and just made her Netflix debut as part of Season 2 of Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready.