Richard Nixon Hated Gays, Too

by Michael Jones · 2010-01-12 11:45:00 UTC
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Richard NixonAnd the award for the President with the meanest hate streak goes to ... Richard Nixon! Turns out that Tricky Dick (or Iron Butt or Gloomy Gus, depending on your nickname preference) had a special place in his soul for despising lots of things, among them the Washington Post, the Kennedys, modern art, and homosexuals. Perhaps not necessarily in that order.

New materials released by the National Archives show that Nixon was at war with a whole bunch of things, and that gay folks weren't spared. There's one in particular -- gay composer Leonard Bernstein -- who Nixon compared to a monstrosity.

"Those who are on the modern art and music kick are 95 percent against us anyway," Nixon said. "I refer to the recent addicts of Leonard Bernstein and the whole New York crowd. When I compare the monstrosity of Lincoln Center with the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, I realize how decadent the modern art and architecture have become."

And that's some toned down rhetoric. In previous tapes, Nixon wasn't so kind to the gay folks. He called San Francisco "the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine," and blamed the fall of the Roman Empire on homosexual emperors.

Forget military problems and monetary problems. Nah, the fall of Rome happened because some leaders liked dudes.

Poor Nixon. Seems like history shouldn't be kicking him around anymore. But then new materials get released, and you see just how devious the rhetoric flew in the early 1970s. Perhaps that's not surprising. Some of the boldest anti-gay leaders of today earned their stars with the Nixon administration -- from Chuck Colson (one of the conveners of the anti-gay marriage screed The Manhattan Declaration), to Pat Buchanan (who wrote memos for Nixon calling gay people "screaming fairies," and who once wrote that AIDS was nature's way of attacking homosexuality).

No word on what these two folks think about the fall of Rome, however.

Photo credit: Sindlinger

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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