From the Executive Director | Lee W. Formwalt | History of Sexuality | Vol 20 No 2 | March 2006

From the Executive Director

Lee W. Formwalt

The origins of this issue on the History of Sexuality can be traced to a National History Day summer institute I directed four years ago in Atlanta. Thirty teachers from around the country attended this weeklong institute focused on the history of the civil rights movement. The first four days dealt with the African American Freedom Struggle from 1865 to 1965. On the last day we looked at all those other movements that sprang from the civil rights movement and those turbulent years of the Sixties—the antiwar movement and the movements for equal rights for women, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, gays and lesbians, and people with disabilities. We decided to focus our discussion on two groups: women and homosexuals.

When Rose Gladney from the University of Alabama spoke about the history of gays and lesbians, I noticed a different reaction from our largely white middle-class middle-aged participants than I had seen in earlier sessions. For starters, you could hear a pin drop in the conference room at the Carter Center. This was clearly new material for these teachers. One of them appeared to have more difficulty with it than the rest. She got up, walked to the back wall of windows and stared outside for the rest of the presentation. I wasn't sure what the participants were thinking until the Q & A period following Rose's talk. The questions that emerged centered less around the history of homosexuality and more around practical issues that teachers faced in the classroom concerning the issue today. Straight teachers who had never encountered gay and lesbian friends or acquaintances now had to deal with students struggling with their sexuality. It was clear that these teachers were unprepared for dealing with students who were coming out and with the homophobic reactions of other students and of their own colleagues on the faculty.

That day I saw dedicated, experienced teachers admit that they were unsure how to handle gay and lesbian related issues as they emerged in their classrooms. I also saw that learning the history of sexuality was one way to begin to address these problems. From that session emerged plans for a state of the field session on the history of sexuality at the OAH Southern Regional Conference in Atlanta two summers later and for this issue of the OAH Magazine of History.

Although many teachers may have difficulty broaching the topic of sexuality in the classroom, the fact is that no matter where you turn in our culture and society today you encounter it. Whether it is sports, religion, politics, art, cinema--you name it and you will find some aspect of sexuality in the news concerning it. Should a male-to-female transsexual athlete be allowed to compete in women's sports? Should the Vatican ban gay priests and seminarians? Should states outlaw same-sex marriage through constitutional amendments? Queer sexuality in particular can be viewed in our living rooms on such TV programs as Will and Grace, Queer as Folk, The L Word, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Some of the leading contenders for the Oscars this spring are films with queer themes: Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica, and Capote.

Sexuality has also been the subject of much research and discussion in the field of American history. The last two decades have seen some pioneering work, especially in queer sexuality. Academic publishers produce scholarly works with titles that might have made our grandparents blush. Historical conferences include panels on the subject and scholarly journals have published excellent work in the field. Eventually, new scholarship makes its way into the textbooks in college and high school classrooms. Considering the role of textbook selection committees, especially in more conservative communities and states, it may be some time before we see the history of sexuality work its way into high school textbooks. American history teachers at all levels should be aware of this history even if it is not easily accessible. Whether a teacher incorporates into his or her presentation material on the lesbian and gay civil rights movement such as the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village in 1969 or the landmark 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Lawrence v. Texas decriminalizing sodomy, s/he should be aware of these important events.

As the international professional organization and learned society for American history, the Organization of American Historians has a responsibility to make sure that new developments in the field, even if considered controversial by some, should be available and accessible to all practitioners of the craft. In this issue the reader will find important and fascinating articles on the gay ex-communist Bayard Rustin, who was Martin Luther King’s chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington; Christine Jorgensen, the first transsexual who secured worldwide recognition during the heyday of the Cold War; the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national lesbian organization; and a new perspective on the so-called liberalizing of laws relating to sex by the Warren Court.

For those teachers, like the ones I encountered in Atlanta, who want more information on dealing with issues of sexuality that arise in the classroom, I recommend the Web site of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) <http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/home.html>. GLSEN’s mission is "to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression." GLSEN "support[s] students as they form and lead Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs), helping them to change their own school environments from the inside out." One of the best ways historians and teachers of history can help students deal with the topic of sexuality is to historicize it--put it in its historical context. Sexuality--straight and queer--is not a new phenomenon of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It’s up to historians and all who teach history to tell its story and how it has changed over time. --Lee W. Formwalt