80 Gays Around the World: Part 8) Persona Non Grata

Last time: 23) Harmodius and 24) Aristogeiton were killed rebelling against 25) Hipparchus (whose father-in-law, 26 Charmus of Kollyton had been sexual partner, at different times, to his brother 27 Hippias and father 28 Peisistratus) during the ritual torch relay to the Parthenon, whose main architect also created the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, which was particularly admired by 29) Caligula (12-41 AD).

29) Caligula (12-41 AD) has become one of the most notorious and eccentric of all the Roman Emperors. Among his sexual eccentricities were dating a Senator and a male actor at the same time, and allegedly committing incest with his sisters. The Senator even complained often about being exhausted by Caligula’s bedtime activities.

A lot of Caligula’s eccentricities can be misinterpreted. For example, the famous story of him making his favourite horse a senator could easily be thought of as a sign of madness. But it could also be interpreted as a jibe against what he thought was the standard of the debate and actions of the then Senate. He thought his horse would do a better job. I’m sure you’ve even made comments yourself that a horse or something could do a better job than your local politician.

Like many Roman Emperors (and a couple of Presidents in 2026), Caligula had an over-inflated opinion of themselves. One of his egomaniac projects was to have all the statues of Greek gods and heroes transported from Greece to Rome. There they would have their heads removed and replaced with carved portraits of his own head. One of these statues was that of Zeus at Olympia.

However, the statue of Zeus, or maybe Zeus himself, who knows, made it known that it thought of Caligula’s plan. The Greek writer Suetonius writes that scaffolding was erected around the statue and workmen were preparing to disassemble it for transportation to Rome. It was at this point that the workmen heard the sound of laughter coming from the statue. The laughter was so loud and hard that the scaffolding collapsed. The workmen ran off in terror and swore never to return to finish their task. This is probably one of those apocryphal stories that were popular at the time.

After Caligula’s assassination his successor and the Roman Senate wanted to make sure that he was erased from history. In Rome there was a process called “damnatio memoriae”, which means “damnation of memory”, a kind of ancient “cancel culture”.

Modern cancel culture has led to many statues and memorials have been defaced of removed from public sight because of that person’s supposed link to an issue that goes against the personal beliefs of an activist. In the instance of Caligula’s “damnatio memoriae”, all his statues, portraits and inscriptions were to be defaced and his properties seized by the state. The Senate wanted to ensure that that no-one ever heard about him again. Luckily, there are many surviving records, like the writings of Suetonius mentioned above, and things like coins across the Roman Empire and beyond that testified to his existence.

A lot of the statues and busts of Caligula were simply thrown in to rivers. Many of them were re-cut in order to change the resemblance from Caligula to another emperor. Above is one of many examples of Caligula’s face being re-sculpted into that of his successor, Claudius (currently in the archaeological museum at the site of Carsulae, Umbrio, Italy; photos by Eric R. Varner, “The Digital Sculpture Project”, 2013). The front view is obviously more successful than the side view.

How ironic. The emperor who wanted to removed the heads of gods from statues and replace them with sculptures of his own head, ended up having his face removed from his own statues and replaced.

Other regimes throughout history have tried to erase the evidence of a person’s existence or presence purely because of a difference of opinion or politics. Not all of them went as far as complete obliteration from the records as attempted by Rome. You’ve probably seen footage of statues to dictators being knocked down following a coup.

The USSR, of the Soviet Union (1922-1991), was one of the most notorious regimes for removing people from their records. One of the most famous cases was that of 30) Nikolai Yetzov (1895-1940).

Nikolai Yezhov was the People’s Commisar (Chairman) of the Party Control Commission of the Central Committee, or NKVD (what preceded the dreaded KGB). In effect he was head of the Soviet secret police.

In 1937 he became responsible for what is known as the Great Purge, or Yezhovshchina (the Age of Yezhov). He became one of those gay men who should never become a role model.

The Great Purge was called by Soviet leader Josef Stalin to deal with any opposition or criticism of his leadership. Any member of the Communist Party could be arrested and executed at Yezhov’s command, including their wives and children. Ethnic groups and the Russian Intelligentsia were also targeted. Most of the non-political prisoners were sent to the Gulag labour camps. During the first year of the Purge over half a million people were sent to the Gulags. When the Gulags became too overcrowded Yezhov ordered prisoners to be executed.

Eventually, but only after about 1.2 million people were killed, did Stalin think that Yezhov had over-stepped his authority and was doing more harm than good for the Communist Party. Yezhov’s undoing was his attempt to arrest the leader of the Georgian branch of the NKVD. The suspect convinced Stalin to help him overthrow Yezhov. Yezhov knew that his days were numbered and he resigned in November 1938. He was arrested five months later.

Yezhov confessed (probably by force) to incompetence and that the Great Purge had led to crimes against the state. He even confessed to being gay and having a string of homosexual partners, despite being married. He was found guilty and executed on 4th February 1940.

What connects Nikolai Yezhov to Caligula is what happened after his death. Because Yezhov has no statues erected to him, the only method available at the time to remove his image was to remove him from all official photographs, particularly ones which showed him with Stalin and other senior Soviet politicians, like the “before and after” example below.

During his arrest and confession to homosexual activity he admitted to having an affair with another leading Soviet figure, 31) Filipp Goloshchyokin (1876-1941).

Like Yezhov, Goloshchyokin has been named as the man responsible for the deaths of over a million of his own countrymen. He was from Kazakhstan, at the time a constituent “republic” of the Soviet Union. By 1925 he had become the virtual dictator of Kazakhstan. Stalin introduced his policy of collectivisation of agriculture, effectively forcing all peasant families to stop producing food for themselves and making them work for state-run farms with dozens of other families. The theory behind this was that it produced more food for equal distribution around the Soviet Union, in particular for the growing industrial urban centres. The actual effect was that it deprive rural peasants of their livestock and not producing enough food for them to live on. The result was widespread famine.

Under Golshchyokin’s zealous implementation of this policy an estimated 2 million Kazakhs died of starvation, 40% of the population, because most of the food they produced went to the cities.

It was at the beginning of this policy that Goloshchyokin met and had an affair with Nikolai Yezhov. During the Great Purge Goloshchyokin was sure he was safe as long a Yezhov was running the NKVD. Not long after Yezhov was arrested and admitted to their affair Goloshchyokin was also arrested. He, too, was executed.

Yet, the general public are unaware of the Kazakh Famine, or of Goloshchyokin’s role in it. What they might know more about is a previous massacre that he was personally responsible for – the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and the imperial Romanov family. Goloshchuokin’s role in the massacre was as the principal captor of the Tsar and his immediate family in Tsarskoye Selo. In fact, he was the man in charge of arranging the killings and disposal of the bodies.

This event is well-known, but what people often forget is that some Romanovs survived, and some were murdered even before the 1917 Russian Revolution by previous revolutionary assassins. One of the victims was 32) Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov (1857-1905).

Next time: Pride and prejudice in Moscow.

Extraordinary Life: Robert Culliford, Pirate Captain - Part 2

Yo, ho, ho my hearties! It’s back to the high seas for a bit more piracy with Robert Culliford, pirate captain extraordinary.

Last September, in the first half of my look at Robert Culliford, we ended with him leaving his life in the Americas and heading into the Indian Ocean in the 1690s.

The Indian Ocean trade routes were heavily policed by the European powers. The Dutch East India Company and the East India Company of Great Britain were in control of virtually the whole of the Asian continental coastline from the Philippines and down the east coast of Africa. These companies had their own militia and fleet and were treated as semi-independent nations in their own right. Together they provided a more diligent defence against piracy than any power controlling the Caribbean or American trade routes, where there was no unified anti-piracy strategy.

Things didn’t start well for Robert Culliford. The ship on which he was serving headed to Gujarat on the north western coast of the India. Anchoring the ship at the port of Mangrol, the crew began what can best be described as a wild rampage by drunken yobs. No doubt they were desperate to get off the ship after the long voyage from the Americas around the bottom of Africa (there was no Suez Canal until nearly 200 years later) and wanted to enjoy themselves as much as possible with lots of alcohol. The crew abused local women, attacked local men, and stole whatever they wanted.

Understandably, the locals were angry. So, one day a local boy swam out and cut the anchor free. The ship drifted ashore where the local Indians boarded easily and seized the crew. Culliford and eighteen others were on board and they were all put in shackles and taken before the local Indian authorities, who promptly locked them all up in jail.

They remained there for four years.

It was in jail that Robert Culliford met John Swann, another prisoner. Whether Swann was already a crewmember of Culliford’s, or a separate captive, I’m not sure, but the special relationship between them probably began in that Gujurati jail.

The behaviour of the prisoners must have instilled a degree of trust in the captives, because after a couple of years some of them, including Culliford, were allowed to do menial work on ships of the Indian Mughal Empire.

You don’t need to be a fortune teller to know what came next!

In 1696 Culliford and his fellow prisoners overpowered their too-trusting guards and made their escape. Rather than hijack a ship and sail off into the distance, the escapees made their way to Bombay (modern Mumbai), a distance of 600 miles (966 km). There, most of them signed on as crewmembers on board the ship “Josiah” belonging to the British East India Company.

After being cooped up in an Indian jail for four years, Robert Culliford decided it was time to get back to what he had sailed half way round the world for. So, as soon as the “Josiah” had got far enough away from Bombay and out to sea, Culliford, John Swann and their fellow ex-jailbirds hijacked the ship.

But Culliford should have thought this through. The majority of the “Joshua”s crew were the original East India Company crew. They had spent their careers fighting off pirates. They waited until the crew had put ashore on one of the Nicobar Islands just north of Sumatra to gather (or pillage for) provisions. Only two pirate crewmembers were left on board. It didn’t take long for the East India men to take ship and sail off, leaving Culliford and everyone else stranded.

A month later the marooned crew were picked up another pirate ship called the “Defence” (formerly an East India Company ship called the “Mocha”) and joined them. A few months after that, in May 1697, the “Defence” stopped off at Sumatra and a shore party went to collect fresh water. Here we encounter differing versions about the fate of the “Defence”s captain. Some documents say that he and the shore party were killed by local tribes, while others say that his own shipmates rebelled and killed him. Either way, the captain was gone and the crew elected Robert Culliford to take his place. Culliford renamed the ship “Resolution” and spent the next year sailing from one end of the Indian Ocean to the other plundering any ship that took his fancy.

In the summer of 1697 the “Resolution” encountered the East India Company ship “Dorrill” in the Straits of Malacca. This led to what was probably the biggest sea battle Culliford had ever fought. A cautious stand-off between the vessels on the first day of their encounter only built up tension and eagerness to fight among the pirates, despite Culliford’s order to wait, and it allowed the “Dorrill” to prepare to defend itself.

On day two, cannons started firing from both sides. Masts, sails and bulk heads were smashed, smoke and shouts filled the air, and there were many casualties. These included several teenage cabin boys on the “Dorrill”. One of the Master Gunner’s boys had his leg blown off and he died several days later in agony. Extensive damage to the “Resolution” forced Culliford to pull back and retreat, without capturing any prize.

By May 1698 the “Resolution” docked at the island of Sainte-Marie (now called Nosy Baraha) a couple of miles off the east coast of Madagascar. Sainte-Marie had recently become a haven for pirates and Culliford probably wanted to take stock of his vast wealth obtained from piracy. He and John Swann lived together, and this is where records of them being referred to as consorts is mentioned by contemporaries. This could mean that they were regarded as a same-sex couple, of course. But “consort” had another meaning at sea.

In sea-faring terms, a “consort” was a ship that sailed with or accompanied another. Culliford himself had used his ships as consort several times. So, you could say that John Swann was merely Culliford’s travelling companion, in naval terms. We’ll never know for sure what their relationship was, but it is generally believed that they were in some form of romantic same-sex relationship. Anyway, the couple had only just got settled on the island when a familiar face arrived – Captain Kidd.

As related in part one, there was an unpleasant rivalry between these two captains. This was heightened by the fact that that Captain Kidd was no longer a pirate. The king of England had recruited Kidd as a pirate-hunter, and Culliford knew this. Cautious courtesies were exchanged between Culliford and Kidd, but Kidd was not ready to capture Culliford, because he thought Culliford had a full crew and not just 20 men under his command. Kidd, however, had 150, but he waited until more ships had arrived from England, but this was a mistake.

The wait was to contribute to Kidd’s eventual downfall. On Sainte-Marie he set about sharing out the loot he captured from an Arabian vessel as few weeks earlier. Kidd’s crew looked at Culliford’s wealth and thought piracy was a better option, and for a second time most of Kidd’s crew, 97 men in all, abandoned him to join Culliford.

By September, “Resolution” sailed towards the Arabian Peninsula. It encountered an Arabian merchant ship heading for China called “Great Mahomet”. There was another great sea battle. Some reports say that 300 crew and passengers on “Great Mahomet” lost their lives, and Culliford’s crew was down to just 20 men. The reward for the pirates, however, was £800-worth from the defeated ship’s cargo – that’s around £150,000 in today’s money! Each!

In the meantime, Captain Kidd was having difficulty recruiting crewmembers on Sainte-Marie, and most of the remaining 40 crewmembers and some other pirates wanted to go back to the Americas. So Kidd limped off in a leaky ship and headed for New York. On arrival he was arrested – his attack on the Arabian ship was not authorised and he was declared a pirate once more.

In 1699 more visitors arrived at Sainte-Marie, four British man-of-war ships. The pirates expected the worst, but were surprised when they were offered a Royal Pardon to all British-born pirates if they returned home with them. They were probably offered death if they refused. Two dozen pirates accepted the offer, including Robert Culliford. It is unclear if John Swann was still on the island. He may have been one of the men who went with Captain Kidd to America. There’s no record of him after the references to him being Culliford’s consort.

Culliford’s return to England turned into a nightmare. There was indeed an Act of Parliament offering Royal Pardons to pirates, but there was a time limit. By the time Culliford and his comrades arrived back in England the time limit had expired, so as soon as they set foot on British soil they were all arrested for piracy and put on trial. All of them were hanged, as was Captain Kidd – except one. Culliford agreed to turn King’s Evidence against another pirate who had carried out a particularly nasty attack on a friendly ship, and in return Culliford’s Royal Pardon was reinstated. He was one of the few lucky ones, one of the traitors against the pirate community, depending on whose side you were on.

Like his partner Swann, Robert Culliford disappears from the records. Whether he settled down in England or went back to sea is unknown. It is unlikely that he was allowed to keep the massive fortune he made from piracy. We don’t even know if he was reunited with John Swann, or decided to settle down and get married and have children.

Believe it or not, all this is just the edited highlights. It amazes me that no-one has turned the life of Robert Culliford into an action film, or even a factual documentary. It would make “Pirates of the Caribbean” look as action-packed as the Teletubbies. There’s even very little on YouTube, except for the one video above (others are not particularly well made or detailed). So, until someone decides to make a full-length film or documentary, I hope you enjoyed my little look at the Extraordinary Life of Pirate Captain Robert Culliford.

City Pride - Sydney

Following on from the Venice carnival we arrive at the actual day of Mardi Gras. For those who are unfamiliar with the origin of Mardi Gras, perhaps a little information may help. In medieval times Christians put aside several weeks of fasting and abstinence before important Christian festivals like Easter and Christmas. The most common terms for these periods are Lent and Advent respectively. Lent begins tomorrow, the day after Mardi Gras. In preparation, Christians would eat up all the food that they were going to deprive themselves of all the way up to Easter, especially meat. They would also celebrate with carnivals. Actually, “carnival” comes from a 15th century Italian term meaning “remove meat”, which implies the word was created specifically for Christian Mardi Gras celebrations. Today people have generally dropped the fasting element.

Perhaps the most famous Mardi Gras carnivals take place in Brazil and New Orleans, but undoubtedly the most famous lgbt+ Mardi Gras is that held in Sydney, Australia. This year’s Sydney Mardi Gras finished this past weekend. So, as a belated celebration, here is the latest entry in my “City Pride” series about Sydney.

The area I’ve concentrated on is just south of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Because Sydney has so much lgbt+ history it has been difficult to narrow it down to just 12 locations. Most of them may be known to a lot of Sydney citizens, but I have, as always, tried to find some lesser known locations, people or events that show the diversity of the lgbt+ culture in Sydney.

First of all, the area covered is in the Sydney Electoral District (except for a tiny bit of the bottom left hand corner of the map). The current MP for the Sydney electoral district in the New South Wales parliament is Alex Greenwich (b. 1980, into a princely dynasty from Georgia – the country, not the US state), who has been the representative since 2012. He was the first openly gay elected member.

The locations are listed from north to south.

1) Speaker’s Corner, The Domain

John Webster (1913-2008) was a regular speaker at Speaker’s Corner for over 30 years. His distinctive voice is remembered by many older Sydney citizens of all political ideologies, genders and faiths. His opinion on all these issues evolved over the years. Briefly married twice, he is also known to have had gay relationships. His ashes were scattered around the Speaker’s podium.

2) St. James’s Church

In the summer of 1836 Rev. William Yate (1802-1877), a British missionary fresh from New Zealand, was appointed chaplain to this church. It was while he was here that reports were made to the authorities of his homosexual activity with sailors and Maori youths. Yate protested his innocence, and no evidence of actual sodomy was proven. Nevertheless, he was dismissed and was sent back to the UK by December. He took with him Edwin Denison, the Third Mate he “befriended” on the ship that brought him to Sydney. He died as chaplain of the Mariners Church in Dover.

3) Sydney Town Hall

One of the locations that were part of the demonstrations that took place in Gay Pride Week 1973. On 15 September activists marched to the hall. Among the banners they carried was what I consider to be the world’s first lgbt+ community flag – a black flag with a pink triangle in the centre. Previous flags had belonged to specific organisations, but in Sydney this flag was adopted by all sections of the community. I write in more detail about the use of this flag here.

Currently, there are a record four lgbt+ elected members on the city council, Zann Maxwell, Matthew Thompson, Mitch Wilson and Adam Worling, all elected last October. Zann Maxwell was appointed the city’s Deputy Mayor.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the Sydney Olympics. At the end of each day of the torch relay there was a ceremony involving the lighting of a “community cauldron”. On the night before the opening ceremony the final leg of the relay went from Sydney Harbour Bridge and down George Street to the Town Hall. The last torch bearer was the world’s top female golfer at the time, Australia’s Karrie Webb, who lit the community cauldron.

4) St. Andrew’s Cathedral

One of the few non-political Australian state funerals took place here in 1986. It was to honour the Australian ballet dancer and choreographer Sir Robert Helpmann (1909-1986). He is most famous for his role as the Child Catcher in the film “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (a character invented for the film). Helpmann was the first in a long line of openly lgbt+ performers to play this character in its many theatre productions. These include Stephen Gately, Wayne Sleep, Paul O’Grady, Richard O’Brien, and The Vivienne.

5) Junction of William Street and College Street, Australia Museum

During WorldPride 2023, hosted by Sydney, many artistic expressions of lgbt+ culture were on display. One of the most unusual, located outside the museum entrance, was the Progress Shark, a huge life-size model of a great white shark dressed in a Progress Flag-inspired lycra swimsuit. Created by Sydney-based artist George Buchanan, the shark quickly became a tourist attraction and icon of WorldPride. Like many artworks created for the occasion it was taken down afterwards.

6) 110 Bathurst Street

This is currently a modern multi-storey building home to various businesses, but back in the 1920s it was a residential area. This address was, for a couple of years, the art studio and salon of Australian sculptor and artist Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge (1869-1948) and her partner Baroness Helene von Kügelgen (d.1948). Although they lived in Rome most of the time, Dora revisited Sydney and produced many works for Australian clients. These included designing the ANZAC medal, and many sculptures that are now lost or destroyed.

7) 29 Pelican Street

In 1948 this address became the home of Iris Webber (1906-1953), described by local newspapers as “the most violent woman in Sydney”. She is a perfect subject for one of my “Extraordinary Lives” series. Condensing her life down to a few sentences has been difficult, but here goes. Iris was married twice and had at least two female partners. She shot three men (including her first husband, and killing another) but was acquitted each time. She was either arrested or convicted of assault at least 4 times (twice with a tomahawk). She was arrested many times for busking and begging, illegally selling alcohol, and robbery (with her then partner Vera). Iris’s last court appearance was for contempt of court in 1952.

8) National Art School, formerly Darlinghurst Gaol.

This old jail once housed several notable lgbt+ prisoners, the most well-known being the bushranger known as Captain Moonlite (Andrew Scott, 1842-1880). Born in Ireland, Scott can be said to have been a bit of an adventurer, travelling the world fighting as something of a mercenary before arriving in Australia in 1867. While living as a lay reader in a church in the gold fields, he was masquerading as Captain Moonlite, robbing a local bank agent. Caught and convicted, Scott met James Nesbit in jail and the two formed a relationship. After release he struggled to find work, and attacked a cattle station with his gang. Nesbit was killed, but Scott was captured and later hanged in the jail.

The current art school opened in 1921 has had many lgbt+ alumni and has hosted many exhibition by lgbt+ artists.

9) Green Park – LGBT Holocaust Memorial

This monument, designed by Jennifer Gamble and Russell Rodrigo, commemorates the many lgbt+ victims of the Nazis during the Holocaust. The pink triangle that gay prisoners were forced to wear has become an iconic symbol of gay rights in the 1970s. The Jewish Museum is located across the road to the north on Burton Street. In this year when we remember the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II it is essential we recognise diversity of opinion by people on all sides, without anger, hatred, or violence.

10) 301 Forbes Street – Qtopia

Sydney’s first permanent lgbt+ museum, said to be the world’s biggest, opened here in February 2024 in buildings that were originally Darlinghurst’s police station. As the police station it was where people arrested on homosexual charges were held in custody. This included a large number of participants in Sydney’s first Mardi Gras in 1978, people who proudly sport the name of The 78ers. Sadly, a sign of the times included police brutality against those in custody. The museum also has sections on AIDS, and a reconstructed AIDS ward from the neighbouring St. Vincent’s Hospital where many AIDS patients were treated.

11) Junction of Campbell Street and Little Bourke Street

On the night of 31 March 1962, the body of Frank McLean was discovered several metres south of this junction. He was one of several gay victims of William MacDonald, whom the media labelled as “The Mutilator”. MacDonald picked his victims up in gay venues, took them to a private location and murdered them, slashing their bodies and severing their genitals. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in 2015.

12) Taylor Square – The Rainbow Crossing

Sydney’s famous crossing was first established in 2013 for that year’s Mardi Gras. However, due to concerns that people standing on it to take selfies put them in danger of being run over, the city removed it. This sparked as spate of graffiti chalk rainbow crossing popping up across the city in protest. Thankfully, the city council realised the importance of such a statement of identity and repainted crossing in 2019.

A Queer Bogeyman

Hallowe’en is with us again, with its US-inspired misappropriation and distortion of traditional European customs and neo-pagan fakery.

The world is full of monsters and evil spirits who “live” all year round in every culture. There are no supernatural spirits that are specifically associated with Hallowe’en (unlike Christmas). Some of these spirits lurk in the shadows, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting. They are a wide range of bogeymen, a general name given to the many different types of spirits and monsters in all sizes and physical forms often used by parents to keep their children in order.

In South Africa there’s a bogeyman that has some gender-bending characteristics called Antjie Somers.

While most bogeymen originate in centuries-old folk belief, Antjie Somers can be traced back to more recent times. The first printed reference appears in a South African magazine called “The Friend of the Free State”, published in Bloemfontein on 10th August 1866. I haven’t been able to track down a copy of this edition but I have found snippets and references to it from other sources. From these it seems that Antjie Somers was a devilish character who stalked the streets at night, preying on lone travellers or looking for naughty children to carry away in his sack.

Several different urban legends and folk motifs merge in this Afrikaan bogeyman. First there is the Sackman, common throughout the world in many forms, including the original 19th century American Santa Claus who has a sack from which he distributes presents to good children and kidnaps naughty children (later downgraded to a “naughty list”).

Another common folk motif in Antjie Somers is the urban myth of a highwayman or robber disguising himself as a vulnerable character in need of protection or rescue. The urban myth of a hitch-hiker who appears innocent and turns into a bogeyman is still quite common. Although hitch-hiking bogeymen are scary they are also not very intelligent. Victims who see through the disguise can easily make an excuse to stop the car or horse and carriage by saying they accidentally dropped something onto the road, or there’s an obstruction ahead and ask the hitch-hiker to get out and pick up or remove the object. The potential victim can then just to drive off at speed, leaving the bogeyman behind.

A third common folk motif is one which concerns us today, that Antjie Somers is a male bogeyman disguised as a woman. This is a variation on the preceding hitch-hiker motif (commonly referred to as “the hairy-armed hitch-hiker”). There’s several indexes of world folk motifs. In the Thompson Folk Motif Index, for example, tales of a man disguising himself as a woman is category K.1836.

The 1866 “The Field” article states that there were two bogeymen called Antjie Somers and Antjie Winter, one operating in summer and the other in winter, hence their names. The article indicates that the characters were known from the time of Lord Charles Somerset who was the Governor of Cape Colony 1815-26.

Over the decades, these urban myths merged to produce the Antjie Somers known today. Such additional myths include his ability to become invisible and to fly around in the sky, other common motifs applied to evil spirits in European folk tales. The Dutch, the ancestors of the Afrikaans, certainly had legends about female-disguised robbers, as did other European colonists.

By the mid-20th century the stories of Antjie Somers had been reduced to those told to scare children. This was part of a general global turn from traditional folk stories and customs as humanity began to turn away from old days of superstition and into the modern scientific and technological world.

When Pieter W. Grobbelaar, a South African author and folk tale collector, published his 1968 book “The Most Beautiful Afrikaans Fairy Tales”, he wrote the “full story” of Antjie Somers. Briefly, it went like this: Andries Somers was a brave and strong Afrikaans fishermen. No-one could haul in the full nets as fast as he could. One day, the other fishermen became jealous and attacked him. Andries knocked them all to the ground, but one fisherman didn’t get up. He was dead. Andries, hoping to avoid being accused on murder, stole some women’s clothes to disguise himself and ran away. He managed to find work in another part of South Africa. His new work colleagues found the stolen clothes in his hut and began taunting him, calling him by the female name Antjie Somers. Andries could bear it no longer and fled once more and was never seen again. However, children began talking about an old woman in the mountains who was always angry and kept threatening them. People believed this was Antjie Somers and that children should keep away or he would carry them away in a sack. From this Antjie developed into a bogeyman. This was Grobbelaar’s version.

By the end of the century the origin myths of Antjie Somers had been further elaborated. Rather fancifully, modern social rights were applied to the bogeyman’s origin, including sexism and racism.

The first modern interpretation came from feminist activists who claimed Antjie Somers is proof of the patriarchal misogyny of the 19th century. As mentioned above, Antjie Somers is just one of many variations of combined folk motifs. The Thompson Folk Motif Index lists other disguises used my male bogeymen in folk tales, including animals, old men, and other people. There are also folk motifs of female bogeymen disguising themselves as men, even among the Afrikaans. Even today, most female fiction writers feature men as the main villain. Very few write about evil women.

Next we come to the most obvious fake addition to Antjie Somers, the idea that he was a slave and his myths are racist. I haven’t found any reference to Antjie Somers being either a slave or black before 2000. The version by given by Grobbelaar in 1968 clearly identifies him as Afrikaans, i.e. white, and every other reference I’ve found from that period implies the same.

The black slave link seems to originate in a musical called “Antjie Somers” which premiered in South Africa in 2000. The musical sets the origin of the Antjie Somers legend in 1834 which contradicts the 1866 “The Friend” article which dates if before 1826.

The character of Antjie Somers is portrayed as a black ex-slave. The musical’s creators haven’t said why they changed his race, or why the musical is set in the wrong period. The disturbing aspect, however, is that people who saw it probably went away thinking it was historical fact, like people have who have seen the musical “Hamilton” or the film “Braveheart”.

This is probably why a South African student wrote an MA thesis in 2011 about Antjie Somers which was solely based on the “fact” that the bogeyman was based on a real slave. The student even retold Grobbelaar’s 1968 version of the legend and wrote quite specifically that she changed Antjie’s race to a black purely to suit the purpose of her thesis, not because she had any new proof. Why her university didn’t throw out this student’s pathetic attempt at academic research is puzzling.

Be that as it may, the idea that Antjie was a black slave soon spread across the internet, and every time it appears it is usually repeated word-for-word as if it was fact, so that now it is virtually impossible to find any reference that restores the original version.

One earlier attempt to discover the origin of this bogeyman to find any basis in historical fact was made in the mid-20th century. One South African historian was told a story by a respected poet and folklorist C. Louis Liepoldt (1880-1947) who, in turn, heard the story from an elderly couple in around 1900. In their youth they were told of a real un-named robber who stalked Tuin Street, Cape Town, dressed as a woman. It was a rough area and most people avoided going there at night. When his activities became too well known he feared capture and ran away into the mountains.

This may just have been a story about a different robber, and there are other origins that have been suggested, including being the ghost of someone who committed suicide. Whatever Antjie Somers’ origin story actually is, he’ll be scaring children and travellers for generation to come.

I hope I haven’t put you off going out tonight, so why not stay indoors with a nice bottle of wine. A few years ago you could have enjoyed a nice sauvignon blanc from Folklore Wines in South Africa called Antjie Somers (pictured below). I don’t think it is available now, but you’re free to search around for a bottle.

For me, I’m celebrating Hallowe’en as it was intended, by remembering our ancestors, like the ancient Roman festival in late October which inspired the Roman Catholic Church to create Hallowe’en in the first place. The neo-pagan cultural appropriation of an alleged British Celtic festival unknown to the distant Italian Catholics, is not for me.

Whodunnit? Millionaire Murder

In 1997 Gardner Young decided to give his partner, Greg Siner, what he had always dreamed of. Greg was a dog groomer and ran a dog boutique in New Jersey and had often dreamt of owning his own kennels and breeding championship dogs.

Gardner and Greg found the ideal place in Hopkinton, Rhode Island. It had been abandoned since 1988 and had become something of a local legend. The estate had been the home of a renowned yet eccentric millionaire spaniel breeder called Cam Lyman. Cam disappeared in 1988.

Greg had met Cam briefly a few times at various dog shows across the US, and he revelled in telling stories of Cam’s disappearance to his old friends from the New Jersey gay scene when they visited him. He had even more stories to tell after July 1998.

Greg and Gardner began the long task of renovating the estate and setting up their kennels. One of the problems that needed urgent attention was the drains in one of the kennel buildings. It had become blocked. Greg reasoned that the drain leading to the septic tank needed a good clean out after nearly a decade of non-use.

I’ve watched too many true crime programmes to be not surprised at what happened next.

After prizing off the lid of the underground septic tank Greg could see a human skull staring up at him from the bottom. He knew exactly who it belonged to. Cam Lyman had been found. Examination of the remains showed that Cam had been shot in the head.

Cam Lyman was born a biological female in 1932 and was raised as a girl. Her parents were millionaires from old colonial families and baptised their daughter Camilla Lowell Lyman. Before we go further, a brief word on pronouns. In accordance with accepted convention for people who are no longer alive I will use female pronouns for when Cam identified as female. Some YouTubers assign a non-binary identification on Cam Lyman. There is absolutely no evidence or justification for this, as there is no record that Cam identified as such, and claiming so shows disrespect.

Cammilla’s parents were like chalk and cheese. Mrs. Margaret Rice Lyman showed no interest in any of her four children. She never displayed any love towards them. Arthur Theodor Lyman, on the other hand, was the most loving and supporting father they could have. Camilla was particularly attached to him.

Growing up, Camilla became distinguishable by her large frame and awkward mannerisms. At school she was nicknamed “Butch” by her classmates. Camilla’s closeness to her father began to show in her wearing the type of jacket that he also wore. What brought them closer was their shared interest in dogs and dog-breeding which other members of the family didn’t have.

After her father’s death in 1968 Camilla seemed to withdraw from her family. Her contact with the outside world came primarily in the dog shows where she became a familiar sight and a success as a breeder. She wore her fathers’ jackets, long skirts, and cut her hair short. People were beginning to say that she was turning into her father. One month after her mother died in 1973 the transformation became complete. Camilla had become Cam.

One unsettling aspect of Cam’s new identification as a man came in his taking of steroids developed for dogs made from bull’s semen. With his aversion to established health services he would never have considered reassignment surgery, according to those who new her best. He never went to a doctor or dentist. Cam’s family and contacts in the dog world put his behaviour down to natural eccentricity and accepted it.

However successful Cam was as a dog-breeder the same cannot be said about his handling of money. To help run his estate and finances he employed a “handler” called George O’Neill.

With hindsight, the most charitable thing I can say about O’Neill is that he was a crook, and it showed from the very beginning. But Cam, for some reason, trusted him. More significantly, Cam trusted O’Neill to handle all his money and ensure all bills and official documents were delivered on time. It was O’Neill to whom Cam entrusted the preparation and delivery of the documents stating his intention to legally adopted the name Cam instead of Camilla. To the outside world O’Neill seemed to be having a controlling influence on Cam, even at dog shows, and Cam seemed to be totally dependent on him. O’Neill was even given power of attorney over everything.

Yet, despite all this, and their successful partnership as dog breeders, Cam was prone to sudden rages and the two had a tempestuous working relationship. Their last known disagreement concerned O’Neill not submitting entry details for Cam’s prize-winning spaniel in a show in Canada on time. To be honest, it wasn’t entirely O’Neill’s fault. There was a postal strike, but Cam blamed O’Neill completely. The heated argument over the phone ended when Cam’s line was cut off.

The next day, 20 July 1987, O’Neill went to Cam’s estate to explain. He found the phone ripped off the wall and could not find Cam anywhere. Nothing else seemed out of order, and the dogs were okay but they needed feeding. For the rest of his life O’Neill claimed that he had assumed Cam had left the business and gone to have gender re-assignment surgery in Europe. Knowing Cam’s aversion to health care this was never believed by anyone.

By Christmas 1987 Cam’s family had got very concerned and began an investigation. At the same time Cam’s lawyers and bank did as well. It was discovered that O’Neill had been embezzling money from Cam’s estate for several years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars had gone missing. Cam probably never knew it was happening. Although O’Neill was eventually convicted of embezzlement, he refused to admit he knew anything about Cam’s disappearance, or even showed any real concern. All he said was “she’s dead”, but that’s what Cam’s family was thinking as well.

Apart from O’Neill the police and private investigators could never identify a reason for Cam’s disappearance, nor any suspects in his murder after his body was discovered by Greg Siner. O’Neill acted very suspiciously throughout the whole investigation, but that’s not proof of any involvement.

To this day the case is unsolved. The mystery behind it only enhances its appeal, like Jack the Ripper. It still features in the media from time to time.

Cam’s remains were buried with his parents. There’s no-one still living who had any close connection to the 1987 case. The last of Cam’s siblings died in 2018 and his many nephews and nieces were too distantly connected to have any useful information. Only Greg Siner and Gardner Young (now separated) remain to give first-hand accounts.

So, whodunit?

Homohoax: Politics, Pizza and Ping-Pong

(Homohoax: A hoax, prank, scam, confidence trick, deception or fraud committed by, targeted at, attributed to or significantly involving members of the lgbt community.)

If you were in the US during the 20216 Presidential Election campaigns you’ll probably remember Pizzagate. What you may have forgotten, or were not made aware of, is that a gay-owned business was caught up in its epicentre. You might have thought that it was all over with, but you’d be wrong. Like the anchovies on a pizza Pizzagate keeps returning.

Let’s start at the beginning. The 2016 Presidential Election was between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

In October 2016 Wikileaks began publishing the hacked emails of John Podesta, Chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and former White House Chief of Staff. Some people, mainly far-right activists, read them and claimed they contained code words for paedophilia and child abuse. Their claims were later posted on fake new websites and spread by Trump supporters and this created the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory.

But what has it got to do with pizzas? Someone on the social media forum 4chan spotted references in the emails to going out for a pizza, and for some unexplained reason claimed the word “cheese pizza” was code for “child pornography” (c.p.). Several Wikileaks emails mentioned a gay man called James Alefantis, the owner of a Washington DC pizza restaurant and bar called Comet Ping Pong (hence “Pizzagate”). James knew John Podesta’s brother Tony, who had eaten at the restaurant.

From this the 4chan user claimed that the restaurant was the location of a child pornography ring that included senior figures in the Democratic Party associated with Clinton’s presidential campaign. James Alefantis was also the ex-boyfriend of David Brock, a journalist and social commentator and a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter in the media, dragging Clinton even further into the alleged child trafficking ring.

A Reddit user posted a document alleging proof of child sex abuse, inferring that everyone associated with Comet Ping Pong - staff, customers and guest performers - were involved in sex with minors and that performers generated “cultish imagery of disembodiment, blood, beheadings, sex”. It’s no surprise that any mention of sex is guaranteed to get people’s attention and the story was soon picked up by the mainstream media and alt-right activists.

As Pizzagate got bigger so did the lies. It even got to a stage where people pointed to a t-shirt James Alefantis was seen wearing that read “I (heart) l’Enfant”. Twisting James’s name to Jim Alefantis, then to the similar sounding phrase “Je t’aime l’enfants” (“I like children” in French) and finally to “I (heart) l’Enfant” the Pizzagate theorists claimed it was Alefantis’s coded admission to his paedophile activities. In fact, “I (heart) l’Enfant” referred to a bar in Washington named after the city’s 18th century planner, Pierre l’Enfant.

Some of those who fell for the fake news posted photographs from James Alefantis’s social media accounts as further proof of his involvement. In some cases, images were taken from unrelated sources. Alefantis and his staff were harassed and threatened on social media, and Alefantis received death threats. Several bands who had performed at the pizzeria also faced harassment. Other businesses close to Comet Ping Pong received death threats and harassment.

Pizzagate began to get out of control when in December 2016 Edgar Welch from North Carolina went to Comet Ping Pong and fired a rifle three times at the building. He had read about a secret bunker under the restaurant that was used to imprison children and subject them to sexual abuse. Welch wanted to be seen as a national hero - a rescuer of children. He surrendered without further incident after police surrounded the restaurant and he was arrested. It was soon proven that there was no bunker and that photos of it that appeared on the internet were of another unrelated property. Welch pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison. He was released on 28th May 2010.

The conspiracy theory was soon debunked by fact-checking websites and news organizations. Much of the evidence cited by the conspiracy theorists were taken from entirely different sources and manipulated to fit their theory. On 8th December 2016, Hillary Clinton herself responded to the Pizzagate theory, and about the dangers of fake news.

Despite being debunked, Pizzagate continued to spread on social media. On 25th January 2019, more than two years after Pizzagate began, Comet Ping Pong suffered an arson attack. Employees quickly extinguished the blaze and nobody was injured.

In 2020 Pizzagate was used by the far-right QAnon group who widened the conspiracy to include international figures and an international sex-trafficking ring involving celebrities like Ellen Degeneres, Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates. Weirdly, this revival of the theory became popular on the youth-orientated social media TikTok.

Pizzagate theorists then dragged singer Justin Beiber into the conspiracy. At one point in a live Instagram video he adjusted the black beanie hat he was wearing, apparently unaware that someone had earlier posted a comment asking Justin to do just that if he was a child victim of Pizzagate. There’s no indication that Bieber even read this comment among the thousands of others being posted every minute. Eventually, Justin had to make an announcement that he had no connection to the Pizzagate theory or child trafficking.

Will Pizzagate ever leave us? Perhaps not. As long as there are manipulative people with sad little lives based only with delusions of their own self-importance in the world, and as long as there are people gullible enough to believe them, there’ll always be fake news and conspiracy theories. Creating a conspiracy theory is easy. I could start a few myself involving Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion’s choice of neo-Nazi symbolism, or the Black Lives Matter leaders appropriating donations to pay for their own luxury millionaire lifestyles. Hang on, those are actually true…. aren’t they?

80 More Gays Around the World: Part 14) Colonial Roots

Last time on “80 More Gays”: 36) Frederik Gotthold Enslin (c.1740-after 1778) , a Dutch colonist, escaped the death penalty for being gay, unlike an earlier Dutch colonial, 37) Joost Schouten (c.1600-1644), a merchant and envoy to the court of the Japanese shogun 38) Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604-1651), father of the “Dog Shogun” 39) Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646-1709), who introduced a festival based on an ancient harvest celebration, another version of which was Thanksgiving, created by the colonial Americans during the lifetime of 40) William Plaine (c.1595?-1646).

40) William Plaine was neither the first to be convicted or executed for what they called sodomy in the American colonies. Richard Cornish was the first to executed, but he was an English merchant and not a settler. William Plaine was the first settler to be executed for sodomy.

New Haven colony was founded in 1637. The township of Guilford, which was originally called Menunkatuck after the native tribe from whom the land was bought, was founded in 1639. Several ships from England carried Puritan colonists, farmers and their families. One ship, the “St. John”, carried three colonists who are worth mentioning – William Plaine, Francis Chatfield and John Parmalee (also referred to as Parmalin or Permewly). Francis Chatfield will become a significant figure in a future article on the coat of arms of his 9-times great-nephew, the gay Olympic swimmer Mark Chatfield.

Guilford township experienced a difficult first few decades, at least spiritually. The original Puritan pastor moved away and the settlers were left with no spiritual leader, vital for the Puritans, for a number of years. Several settler families moved away, including that of Francis Chatfield’s brother George, the Olympian’s direct ancestor, to avoid living in what they regarded as an increasingly godless township. During the events that transpired in 1646 it appears that William was probably one of these “godless” people that settlers wanted to get away from. William made it clear that he doubted the existence of God. At first, however, William Plaine seemed to be a trusted member of the town.

Unlike some of the other colonists we know nothing of William Plaine’s origins. We assume he was born in England and can definitely assume that he was an adult when he embarked on the “St. John” in 1639 because he was one of the signatories, with Francis Chatfield and John Parmalee, of the Covenant made on the voyage which founded Guilford. On arriving in Guilford William was allotted two acres of land to settle and build a home. You can actually visit the site today. The buildings have gone but the site is now occupied by Page Hardware store and the old Guilford Trust bank building to the south of Guilford green. William’s house was situated in the car park behind the old bank.

The Guildford Covenant stone placed outside Henry Whitfield House Museum in 2018 to commemorate the 375th anniversary of the signing of the covenant in 1639. William Plaine’s name is included.

William Plaine may have been married before he arrived in Guilford. His wife was called Anne (surname unknown). They had only one known child, a daughter and heir called Hannah. William was appointed inspector of chimneys to check they were constructed properly and not able to set fire to property or spread. He was well known to the people of Guilford. Just what they knew about his private life is unknown but everyone soon got to know very quickly when he was accused and tried by the town council of sodomy and sexual abuse of boys.

Court records are missing so most of what we know of William’s trial or examination comes from the journal of John Winthrop, the governor of the neighbouring Massachusetts Bay colony. He writes how the governor of New Haven colony, Theophilus Eaton, had written to seek advice on what action to take with William Plaine, who had been accused and found guilty of having sex with two men in England, and abusing boys in Guilford more than a hundred times. Governor Winthrop agreed with the law, that Plaine should hang and this is exactly what happened in or around 6th June 1646.

But that’s not the end to his story because he left a widow and daughter, and it’s what happened to them that takes us to the next of our “80 Gays”.

It was common in early colonial times for a widow like Anne Plaine to remarry in order to ensure she could keep possession of her late husband’s property. Her new husband couldn’t even sell it without her permission. In a small community like Guilford there was a relatively small number of “available” husbands, and in about 1650 Anne married the recently widowed John Parmalee, the son of the John Parmalee who had travelled with William Plaine on the “St. John”. The Parmalees were a prominent family and the marriage indicates that there was no stigma attached to Anne for her executed husband crimes. The marriage lasted until Anne’s death in 1658, leaving Hannah as her sole heir.

Again, marriage would ensure Hannah’s continued occupation of the property, and who stepped up to marry her? It was another recently widowed man, her own stepfather, John Parmalee. They married in 1659. Historians assume this was the case because John had to ask his wife’s permission to sell some of the land that she inherited, some of the Plaine property. He wouldn’t do that if Hannah wasn’t the heir to William Plaine.

People may cringe at the thought of a man marrying his stepdaughter but there were no objections and it seems not to be regarded as incest under the Puritan colonists’ laws. There was no blood link and the marriage was more of a property alliance. However, John Parmalee and Hannah Plaine had nine children. The first, John Parmalee III, was born in 1659, and the youngest in 1678.

Today there are several thousand people who are descended from John and Hannah, and thus from William Plaine. There are several famous descendants - First Lady Barbara Bush and her son President George W. Bush, and actors Ben Affleck, Christopher Reeve, Humphrey Bogart and Jodie Foster.

Descended from the eldest son, John Parmalee III, is 41) Vincent Price (1911-1993).

Next time on “80 More Gays”: Hollywood horror, a daughters’ revelation, Latina art, homophobic Baptist, and a reporter on the Daily Planet.

JFK : The Queer Conspiracies

History is full of events which become surrounded in myth and controversy and become centres of conspiracy theories. One event which has produced more than any other in the 20th century (apart, perhaps, from Roswell and the aliens) is remembered today – the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Even though a survey carried out in 2017 found that two thirds of the American population believe that the credited assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was not acting alone, many also believe he was set up and didn’t even fire the bullets that killed the president. Several people have been accused of being Oswald’s co-conspirator or alternative assassin. Only one of them was ever put on trial, and that was a gay man from New Orleans called Clay Shaw (1913-1974).

Clay Shaw has been wronged twice. First was his arrest and trial at the instigation of the homophobic District Attorney Jim Garrison. Garrison was one of the many people who considered the official investigation into the assassination that was published by the Warren Commission in September 1964 was a whitewash and that there was a conspiracy to hide the truth.

Highly ambitious and ruthless Garrison seized on the possibility of a conspiracy to frame someone for Kennedy’s death – someone he could put on trial, thereby claiming himself to be a hero for uncovering the “truth”. To justify his own version of events he invented a “homosexual thrill-kill” at the reason behind the assassination.

Cobbling together a theory based on little or no evidence Garrison claimed Lee Harvey Oswald was a bisexual acquaintance of a New Orleans pilot called David Ferrie. During his investigations Garrison also came across the name Clay Bertrand, whom he believed was a gay man in New Orleans. This led him to assume Clay Bertrand was an alias used by Clay Shaw, a well-known businessman in New Orleans. This was all Garrison needed to fabricate his gay thrill-kill theory and prosecute Clay for Kennedy’s assassination.

Clay’s trial began in 1969. Garrison paraded a series of witnesses whose evidence contradicted each other and it took less than an hour for the jury to acquit Clay Shaw of all charges. However, the damage was already done.

Clay Shaw came from a highly respected family and had received high honours for his war service, including the French Croix de Guerre, the US Legion of Merit, and knighthoods from both France and Belgium. He became an influential businessman in New Orleans.

Another two-year trial for perjury he was alleged to have committed at his first trial, again fabricated by Garrison, was eventually thrown out, though by now Clay had used his wealth to pay for his defence. He died in 1974 of cancer. A plaque to his memory was placed on one of the buildings in the French quarter of New Orleans that he had helped to restore with his own money.

Just as his reputation seemed to be restored Oliver Stone (an egotistical homophobe I’ve never l had a high opinion of, I don’t care what anyone else thinks) produced the equally homophobic film “JFK”. Clay Shaw was portrayed as a camp, effeminate gay man who held regular sex slave parties. The truth is the opposite, except that he was a gay man, but he was discreet and anything but camp. The devious legacy Jim Garrison is alive and well in the person of Oliver Stone.

A year ago the “National Enquirer” (the spiritual home of fake news) ran a front page headline declaring “Proof! J. Edgar Hoover Ordered JFK Murder!” J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), another discreet gay man, was the head of the FBI at the time of the assassination. The “National Enquirer” weren’t the first to think the FBI and Hoover had some part in it, and nothing new was actually presented. It just presented a conspiracy theory to attract attention on the 54th anniversary.

In the 1960s being gay, or even being accused of it, was often used to justify a witch-hunt in many political scandals. The Kennedy assassination was no different. At various stages in its history several suspects have been labelled as being gay, lesbian or bisexual in order to create justification for them to be included in a conspiracy. Even Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife were called bisexual perverts purely on the fabricated links to the New Orleans gay subculture and Oswald’s wife leaving him to live with a female friend.

There will be no end to the publication of new and old conspiracies. One book published back in 1975 was called “Presumed Guilty: Lee Harvey Oswald in the Assassination of President Kennedy”. It was written by a young gay man who had become fascinated by the assassination since he was 14.

Howard Roffman, the teenager in question, bought all 26 volumes of the Warren Commission report and immersed himself in the vast amount of official documents. “Presumed Guilty” was the result of years of his research. It, too, questioned the findings of the Warren Commission.

Howard’s significance to the canon of literature concerning the Kennedy assassination is that he was the first gay man to publish a book on the subject. What he has done since is so different that you’d never guess it was the same man.

At the time “Presumed Guilty” was published Howard was a recently graduated law student. He went on to work in the US Court of Appeals as a law clerk. From there he moved into the world of media and film. And here’s where we make a spectacular leap from President Kennedy that is worthy of inclusion in my “Around the World in 80 Gays” series. In 1980 Howard Roffman became the legal adviser to Lucasfilms. In 1986 he was appointed its Vice President of Licensing and later President of Lucas Licensing. If you have bought any “Star Wars” merchandise since the 1990s thank Howard Roffman. He relaunched the Star Wars merchandising franchise in 1991, effectively creating the modern mass merchandising techniques used by every blockbuster film franchise ever since. Since the Kennedy assassination Howard’s publishing efforts have gone into photographic books – predominantly featuring naked men!

However much of Howard’s “Presumed Guilty” book will be used to further develop the truth, myths and conspiracies into what happened 55 years ago today one thing is certain. There will always be someone who will write a new book, come up with a new conspiracy theory, or finally debunk an old one. We may never know the truth, but let’s hope that any new material, including any new motion picture, will avoid the unjustifiable homophobia that surrounded so much of the original investigations.