Queer History With Brunch

Or, whenever you read this. There are 4 snippets, all important to maintaining visibility of people through representation in history. Language alert, in case you’re at work.

Queer History 847: Sarah Orne Jewett – The Defiant Pen That Refused to Bow by Wendy🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🌈
Read on Substack

Sarah Orne Jewett wasn’t just a writer—she was a goddamn literary revolutionary who told the world to fuck off while she lived her truth in broad daylight. Born in 1849 in South Berwick, Maine, this fierce woman carved out a life that would make modern queer folk weep with recognition and rage at how little has changed. Her “Boston marriage” with Annie Adams Fields wasn’t just a relationship; it was a middle finger raised high to a society that demanded women choose between intellectual fulfillment and emotional intimacy.

The term “Boston marriage” itself is a sanitized piece of historical bullshit that literary scholars use to avoid saying what everyone with half a brain knows: these women were lovers, partners, and soulmates who built lives together while the world pretended they were just “very close friends.” Jewett and Fields lived this reality for nearly three decades, creating a partnership that was more authentic and enduring than most heterosexual marriages of their era—or ours, for that matter.

Sarah Orne Jewett Love Letter to Annie Adams Fields

The Making of a Literary Badass

Sarah Orne Jewett emerged from a world that wanted to stuff women into corsets and drawing rooms, but she said “fuck that noise” and became one of America’s most celebrated regional writers. Her father, Theodore Herman Jewett, was a country doctor who took his daughter on his rounds through rural Maine, exposing her to the harsh realities of working-class life that would later infuse her writing with a authenticity that urban literary elites couldn’t fake if they tried.

This early exposure to real people living real lives—not the sanitized version of existence that polite society preferred—shaped Jewett’s understanding that truth was more important than propriety. She watched women struggle to survive in a world that offered them shit options: marriage to men who might abuse them, spinsterhood that meant poverty and social isolation, or the kind of life she would eventually choose—one that required courage, defiance, and the willingness to let people think whatever the hell they wanted. (snip-MORE)

Queer History 594: Alexander Hamilton – The Founding Father Who Loved Hard and Wrote Gay as Fuck Letters by Wendy🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🌈
Read on Substack

In the pantheon of American mythology, Alexander Hamilton has been sanitized, straightened, and scrubbed clean of anything that might challenge the heteronormative fairy tale we tell ourselves about our founding fathers. But here’s the thing about historical whitewashing—it can’t erase the actual fucking words these men wrote to each other. And Alexander Hamilton, that brilliant, passionate, self-destructive bastard who helped birth a nation, wrote letters to John Laurens that were so goddamn romantic, so emotionally intimate, so clearly beyond the bounds of “normal” male friendship that historians have been performing Olympic-level mental gymnastics for centuries to explain them away.

Alexander Hamilton and the National Economy

Born in 1755 on the Caribbean island of Nevis, Hamilton clawed his way from bastard orphan to the right hand of George Washington through sheer intellectual brilliance and an intensity that burned like a fucking supernova. But it was his relationship with fellow revolutionary John Laurens that revealed the depth of his capacity for love, passion, and the kind of emotional vulnerability that straight male mythology pretends doesn’t exist. Their correspondence reads like a love affair conducted through the medium of revolutionary politics, and anyone who thinks these men were just “very good friends” has clearly never read a love letter in their goddamn life.

The Making of a Revolutionary Heart

Alexander Hamilton’s early life was a masterclass in how trauma and abandonment can forge either a monster or a revolutionary—and sometimes both. His father abandoned the family when Alexander was ten. His mother died when he was thirteen, leaving him and his brother orphaned and destitute in a world that had no fucking patience for bastard children with no connections.

The psychological impact of this early abandonment cannot be overstated. Hamilton developed the kind of intense, desperate need for connection that would characterize all his relationships—romantic, political, and personal. He threw himself into every relationship with the fervor of someone who had learned early that love was scarce and could disappear without warning. (snip-MORE)

Queer History 673: Renée Vivien – The Sapphic Rebel Who Burned Bright and Fucking Died for Love by Wendy🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🌈
Read on Substack

In the suffocating, corseted world of turn-of-the-century Europe, where women were expected to be seen and not heard, to marry well and breed often, and to suppress any hint of sexual desire that didn’t serve patriarchal ends, Renée Vivien said “fuck that” with every passionate verse she penned. Born Pauline Mary Tarn in 1877, this British-American poet didn’t just write love poetry to women—she set the goddamn literary world on fire with verses so erotically charged, so unapologetically sapphic, that they made Victorian sensibilities spontaneously combust.

Renée Vivien - 96th of October

Vivien wasn’t just a poet; she was a fucking revolutionary who wielded language like a sword against the heteronormative assumptions of her time. She lived fast, loved hard, and died young at 32, leaving behind a body of work that would make contemporary lesbian poets weep with envy and recognition. Her life was a middle finger to every social convention that tried to cage women’s desires, a testament to the power of living authentically even when the world wants to crush you for it.

The Making of a Sapphic Goddess

Pauline Mary Tarn was born into privilege in London on June 11, 1877, but privilege couldn’t protect her from the psychological warfare that society wages against women who dare to love other women. Her father died when she was eleven, and her mother, perhaps recognizing something unconventional in her daughter, shipped her off to boarding school in Paris. It was there, in the City of Light, that Pauline would transform herself into Renée Vivien—a name that literally means “reborn” and “living,” because sometimes you have to kill your old self to become who you’re meant to be. (snip-MORE)

Queer History 847: Mary Glasspool – Holy Shit, She Actually Did It by Wendy🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🌈
Read on Substack

In the grand fucking theater of religious hypocrisy, where LGBTQIA+ people have been told for millennia that they’re damned, broken, and unwelcome at the altar of God’s love, Mary Glasspool stood up in 2010 and said, “Bullshit.” Not with those exact words, mind you—she’s a bishop, after all—but with something far more powerful: her entire goddamn life.

New York Assistant Bishop Mary Glasspool to retire in June – Episcopal News  Service

Born in 1954 in New York, Mary Douglas Glasspool didn’t just break the stained-glass ceiling of the Episcopal Church; she obliterated it with the force of a woman who refused to let anyone else define her relationship with the divine. When she was consecrated as the first openly lesbian bishop in the history of Christianity, she didn’t just make history—she rewrote the fucking rulebook on what it means to serve God while being authentically, unapologetically queer.

The Holy Shit Moment That Changed Everything

Picture this: It’s January 15, 2010, and the religious establishment is losing its collective mind. Conservative bishops are clutching their pearls, traditionalists are having actual conniptions, and somewhere in the background, you can practically hear the sound of centuries-old prejudices cracking like ice on a frozen pond. Mary Glasspool, a 55-year-old woman who had been serving her church and community with distinction for decades, was about to be consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal Church—and she wasn’t hiding who she was or who she loved.

The consecration ceremony at Christ Cathedral in Los Angeles was a watershed moment that sent shockwaves through the Anglican Communion worldwide. Here was a woman who had spent her life in service to others, who had demonstrated exceptional leadership, theological acumen, and pastoral care, and the fact that she happened to love women was somehow supposed to disqualify her from serving God? Fuck that noise. (snip-MORE)

Draft Lottery Riots & More, In Peace & Justice History for 7/13

July 13, 1863
Massive New York City protests decrying the first-ever wartime draft lottery led to bloody rioting over five days as a mob of 50,000 burned buildings (including looting and torching the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue, though the 200+ children were unharmed), stores and draft offices, and attacked police. Some clubbed, lynched, and shot large numbers of blacks, whom they blamed for the war.By the time troops returning from the Battle of Gettysburg finally restored order, 1200 had died over five days.
New Yorkers, spurred on by the Democratic leadership of Tammany Hall and tired of the seemingly endless war, had been angered by President Abraham Lincoln’s recent call for 300,000 more troops.

In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 by Leslie M. Harris
They especially resented the legal provision allowing a cash payment ($300 commutation fee) as a way for those with the means to avoid military service in the Union Army.
Read more about the 1863 draft riots  
July 13, 1905
A Declaration of Principles was issued by the Niagara Movement (the precursor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) following their conference in Buffalo, New York. Matters of concern included: realization of suffrage for all black men, as well as other civil liberties; economic opportunities for black Americans, especially in the South; access to education, especially high schools, trade and technical schools, and colleges; fair treatment in the courts and an end to the convict-lease system; fair treatment in employment wherein employers brought in black workers temporarily to keep down wages, and labor unions refused membership to blacks; an end to the color line, particularly in public transporation; fair treatment for black soldiers and access to military training schools; enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution passed in the wake of the Civil War.

“The Negro race in America, stolen, ravished and degraded, struggling up through difficulties and oppression, needs sympathy and receives criticism; needs help and is given hindrance, needs protection and is given mob-violence, needs justice and is given charity, needs leadership and is given cowardice and apology, needs bread and is given a stone. This nation will never stand justified before God until these things are changed.”
Additionally, they urged upon the African-American community:
The duty to vote.
The duty to respect the rights of others.
The duty to work.
The duty to obey the laws.
The duty to be clean and orderly.
The duty to send our children to school.
The duty to respect ourselves, even as we respect others.
July 13, 1985
The first Live Aid concert raised $75 million for agricultural and technical assistance to Africa, many times what was expected. Described as the Woodstock of the ‘80s, the world’s biggest rock festival (in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, Australia, simultaneously and linked by satellite) was organized by Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.


Bob Geldof
The Republic of Ireland (Éire) gave the most donations per capita, despite being in the throes of a serious economic depression at the time. The single largest donation (£1m) came from the ruling family of Dubai (Al Maktoum).
More about Live Aid ’85 
Watch a video about the concert 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july13

Well, I Think AG Bondi’s Filing Cabinet May Overtake This One As The World’s Most Famous… in Peace & Justice History for 7/12

July 12, 1974

John Ehrlichman, former top aide to President Richard Nixon, and three others were convicted of conspiring to violate a citizen’s civil rights. Ehrlichman had approved a recommendation for a covert investigation of Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 by writing on a memo: “If done under your assurance that it is not traceable.” Looking for information to discredit Ellsberg, agents of President Nixon’s re-election campaign broke into the office of his psychiatrist.

John Ehrlichman

Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst, had been responsible for public release of The Pentagon Papers, a collection of documents outlining the U.S. history and strategy in Vietnam, that had been classified as secret to avoid public scrutiny. The world’s most famous filing cabinet 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july12

A View From The Place Where It Happened

Important history in addition to what the Peace newsletter gives.

Painful Words

I was struck by the backlash to the Texan pediatrician who was ostracized and lost her job because she pointed out that decisions have consequences, and all those who voted for drumpf in Texas are experiencing those painful consequences. Painful words uttered in despair, but damn – that doesn’t make them any less true.

How many times have we heard the line that “now isn’t the time to talk about this”? We’ve seen it with the debate on gun laws, and now we see it on this horrible consequence of firing those who warn us of dangerous weather.

But once again people have died, children have died, destruction and despair are gripping our nation, and the cause of that horror is not open for discussion? It’s being political in a time of national mourning? It’s insensitive? Decisions made in comfort and greed by those untouched by the disaster have exacted the ultimate cost, and they once again seek to control the conversation by denying the ability to explore how it happened!

So, is it safe to talk about these things now? Is it ok to talk about how stripping the social safety nets have consequences? Is it ok to seek to examine what we as a country believe in now, or are we waiting for the next disaster to blow through, the NEXT time parents weep looking for lost and dead children, or will it be one of the times after that? How long must we listen to the powerful deny the impact of greed, arrogance and ignorance.

My sincere sorrow for those who have lost loved.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/greg-abbott-asked-whos-blame-190307692.html

And, to respond to this fool Abbott; Smart teams look to see if the wrong plays were called, or more likely, the wrong people were making the wrong decisions.

hugs.

The MOMocrats

There’s a podcast, as well as this written piece. The bit at the end is priceless!

Tragedy and Travesty by Donna Schwartz Mills

This week, we got to experience both. Read on Substack

We did not record a podcast last week because Donna was traveling to Austin, where her family was celebrating Fourth of July AND the arrival of a new baby (her grand-niece!).

She expected hot, humid weather. What she got was four days of torrential rain, and the specter of over one hundred deaths from flooding in the nearby hill counties – including children at a sleep away camp that was overcome by the deluge.

One week later, this tragedy is ongoing. People are wondering how much DOGE’s cuts to the National Weather Service and NOAA factored into it. Journalist Marisa Kabas has reported that as of Monday, only 86 FEMA employees were on the ground in Texas (they usually deploy hundreds of people to disaster zones like this). “We are doing a lot less than normal,” a FEMA staffer told her.

No shit.

In the meantime, $450 million from FEMA’s budget has been allocated to that concentration camp in the swamps of Florida. And Trump’s big, ugly budget bill allocates billions to expand ICE and build more “detention centers” throughout the country.

ICE continues to terrorize immigrant communities, kidnapping law-abiding parents, gardeners, day laborers, and others who just happen to have brown skin (including US citizens).Donna returned home to Los Angeles in time for a show of military cosplay in MacArthur Park. No one got hurt in that one – but it felt like a dress rehearsal for something worse.

We talked about that and more in this week’s podcast.

Screenshot from podcast
View the podcast
Audio podcast player
Listen to the podcast

We Can Be Heroes

We are living through history and it really sucks. Aliza says that the best way to deal with the continual onslaught of terrible events is to DO something. Anything. Volunteer in the community. Participate in events. Write postcards for candidates, donate to good causes.

And allow yourself the down time you need to muster up the energy to do it again.

We talked about some of the everyday heroes who are helping us all muster through this.

Like Joshua Aaron, the developer of the ICEBlock app that alerts people of ICE activity in their area. (Currently just for iPhones; we are anxiously awaiting news that this app will become available to Android users.)

The ACLU has done heroic work for over a century. After recording this week’s podcast, we were dismayed to learn that their Mobile Justice app Aliza has relied upon for years is no longer available.

To ensure compliance with a growing number of consumer privacy laws and the ACLU’s own privacy policies and to minimize risk with surveillance technologies currently used by law enforcement, the national office has made the decision not to renew our contract with Quadrant 2, the vendor behind Mobile Justice, and shut down the app on February 28, 2025.

But the ACLU is still a source of valuable information. Here are a couple of pages that you may want to bookmark:

There are things you can do as a bystander, too. This Yahoo article talks about New York City, but much of it applies anywhere in the U.S. It’s completely legal to film an ICE encounter, and the article has great suggestions for how to narrate and what details to include. There is advice on how your video can help, but it’s also important not to post your videos online without the consent of the person being detained.

The National Immigrant Justice Center is just one of many organizations with so much information on how to handle encounters with ICE or DHS, whether you are the target or a bystander.

The coalition of anti-authoritarian groups that has risen since the start of this regime continue to organize. The next big nationwide gathering is “Good Trouble Lives On,” which will be held in honor of the late John Lewis, around the July 17 anniversary of his death. Find an event near you here.

And in case you’re one of those “DO SOMETHING” people who love to bash Democrats, remember that they ARE doing something. A LOT. If you want to know what, you should follow Ariella Elm on any of the socials. She makes posts like the ones below, and daily posts like this one that list the wins for democracy and actions all over the country that are helping stem the tide of fascism, and we need to thank and elevate these soldiers for democracy.


One Last Thing

A camera decided it would rather check out than sit through another overheated tirade from Stephen Miller, as the White House deputy chief’s Wednesday night interview on Fox News faded to black midway through him extolling the virtues of a “turbocharged” ICE.

Niagara Movement, Dr. Spock, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 7/11

July 11, 1905
The Niagara Movement, precursor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was formed in Buffalo, New York. Meeting at the home of Mary Burnett Talbert were W.E.B. DuBois, John Hope and 30 others who rejected the accommodationist approach of Booker T. Washington (“The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly . . . .”)

Founders of The Niagara Movement at Niagara Falls
The Niagara Movement’s manifesto was, in the words of DuBois, “We want full manhood suffrage and we want it now . . . We are men! We want to be treated as men. And we shall win.
The Niagara Movement and its founding principles 
July 11, 1968
The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by George Mitchell, Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt and 200 others.
They gathered to organize in order to deal with widespread and persistent poverty among native Americans, and unjust treatment from all levels of government.


American Indian Movement background 
July 11, 1969

The federal appeals court in Boston reversed the convictions of Dr. Benjamin Spock and Michael Ferber who had been found guilty of conspiring to counsel evasion of the military draft in 1968. The judges considered their activities opposing the Vietnam War covered under the 1st Amendment right to free speech.

Dr. Benjamin Spock and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Read “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” co-authored by Dr. Spock (1967) 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july11

2 Pieces of News from “them” Magazine-

A Drag Queen Was Detained by ICE in San Francisco. Activists Are Fighting to Get Her Back

Hilary Rivers was arrested by ICE agents after an asylum hearing in June.

By Samantha Riedel

Community activists in San Francisco are rallying to support Hilary Rivers, an immigrant drag queen who was arrested by ICE agents after an asylum hearing nearly two weeks ago — one of the latest LGBTQ+ victims of the Trump administration’s campaign for mass deportations.

Rivers fled his home in Guatemala due to “traumatic and severe” persecution for being gay, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week. (His legal name is not being widely reported to protect his confidentiality, advocates told the nonprofit news platform 48Hills.org shortly following the drag performer’s arrest.) On June 26, Rivers attended a scheduled asylum hearing, where the government’s motion to dismiss his case was denied; Rivers was then arrested by ICE agents as he left the courtroom. That combination — in which the government attempts to dismiss an asylum case, then immediately arrests the asylum seeker for deportation — has become an increasingly common tactic for U.S. immigration police in the past several months, and one that is sometimes conducted with cooperation from courthouses themselves. (snip-MORE)

==========

Hoaxers Have Falsely Blamed Trans People for Violent “Terror Attacks” 12 Times Since 2022

A new analysis from Wired saw such cases after plane crashes, shootings, and more.

By Samantha Riedel

Transgender pilot Jo Ellis was falsely accused of killing 67 people earlier this year — and unfortunately, she isn’t alone: right-wing hoaxers have blamed trans people for at least 12 incidents of violent death in the U.S. since 2022, according to a new analysis in Wired.

Ellis, a part-time pilot in the Virginia Army National Guard, filed suit against right wing influencer Matt Wallace in April, after Wallace shared false claims that Ellis was responsible for the January helicopter crash at Ronald Reagan International Airport that killed dozens. The crash was later determined to be an accident caused by years of poor safety practices at the airport. But Ellis soon found herself on the receiving end of right-wing hatred thanks in part to people like Wallace, who posted on Elon Musk’s X platform that the crash “may have been another trans terror attack.”

Wallace has since deleted the post about Ellis, as Wired noted. But the key word in that post was “another.” In the past two years, right-wing disinformation accounts — such as Chaya Raichik’s “Libs of TikTok” — have spread similar false accusations against trans people on at least a dozen occasions, according to Wired’s analysis of news reports across that period. (snip-MORE)

But It’s Not Funny, And Causes Far-Reaching Damages

It isn’t timidity. It’s a complete reconstruction of what is acceptable rhetoric, and it makes gentler more collegial conversation and work impossible.

How does the right tear down progressive societies? It starts with a joke

George Monbiot

Whether it’s bloodshed at Glastonbury or starving people on benefits, their ‘irony poisoning’ seeps obscene ideas into the range of the possible

illustration by Nate Kitch

Illustration: Nate Kitch/The Guardian

Imagine the furore if a Guardian columnist suggested bombing, say, the Conservative party conference and the Tory stronghold of Arundel in Sussex. It would dominate public discussion for weeks. Despite protesting they were “only joking”, that person would never work in journalism again. Their editor would certainly be sacked. The police would probably come knocking. But when the Spectator columnist Rod Liddle speculates about bombing Glastonbury festival and Brighton, complaints are met with, “Calm down dear, can’t you take a joke?” The journalist keeps his job, as does his editor, the former justice secretary Michael Gove. There’s one rule for the left and another for the right.

The same applies to the recent comments on GB News by its regular guest Lewis Schaffer. He proposed that, to reduce the number of disabled people claiming benefits, he would “just starve them. I mean, that’s what people have to do, that’s what you’ve got to do to people, you just can’t give people money … What else can you do? Shoot them? I mean, I suggest that, but I think that’s maybe a bit strong.” The presenter, Patrick Christys replied, “Yeah, it’s just not allowed these days.”

You could call these jokes, if you think killing people is funny. Or you could call them thought experiments. Liddle suggested as much in his column: “I am merely hypothesising, in a slightly wistful kinda way.” This “humour” permits obscene ideas to seep into the range of the possible.

Academic researchers see the use of jokes to break taboos and reduce the thresholds of hate speech as a form of “strategic mainstreaming”. Far-right influencers use humour, irony and memes to inject ideas into public life that would otherwise be unacceptable. In doing so, they desensitise their audience and normalise extremism. A study of German Telegram channels found that far-right content presented seriously achieved limited reach, as did non-political humour. But when far-right extremism was presented humorously, it took off. (snip-MORE)

Democrats and climate groups ‘too polite’ in fight against ‘malevolent’ fossil fuel giants, says key senator

Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island gives 300th climate speech on the US Senate floor

a man in a suit speaks

Sheldon Whitehouse at a Senate confirmation hearing on 6 February 2025. Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

The Democratic party and the climate movement have been “too cautious and polite” and should instead be denouncing the fossil fuel industry’s “huge denial operation”, the US senator Sheldon Whitehouse said.

“The fossil fuel industry has run the biggest and most malevolent propaganda operation the country has ever seen,” the Rhode Island Democrat said in an interview Monday with the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “It is defending a $700-plus billion [annual] subsidy” of not being charged for the health and environmental damages caused by burning fossil fuels. “I think the more people understand that, the more they’ll be irate [that] they’ve been lied to.” But, he added, “Democrats have not done a good job of calling that out.”

Whitehouse is among the most outspoken climate champions on Capitol Hill, and on Wednesday evening, he delivered his 300th Time to Wake Up climate speech on the floor of the Senate.

He began giving these speeches in 2012, when Barack Obama was in his first term, and has consistently criticized both political parties for their lackluster response to the climate emergency. The Obama White House, he complained, for years would not even “use the word ‘climate’ and ‘change’ in the same paragraph”.

While Whitehouse slams his fellow Democrats for timidity, he blasts Republicans for being in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, an entity whose behavior “has been downright evil”, he said. “To deliberately ignore [the laws of physics] for short-term profits that set up people for huge, really bad impacts – if that’s not a good definition of evil, I don’t know what is.” (snip-MORE)

Peace & Justice History for 7/10

July 10, 1976
Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members near Georgetown, Illinois, gathered for an ill-fated cross-burning. The meeting started an hour late. When the Klansmen went to plant their cross, it was too heavy to move. Three hours later, after the cross was chopped down to a portable size, it was planted, but would not light.
Finally, the Klan members gave up and went home.


The ugly history of the KKK 
July 10, 1985

The Rainbow Warrior then
The Greenpeace flagship, Rainbow Warrior (named after a North American Indian legend), was blown up in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand, killing one and sinking the ship.
The attack had been authorized by French President François Mitterand because the environmental organization had plans to protest France’s nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific.

The Rainbow Warrior today

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july10