10.
WE OWE THANKS TO CLARK POLAK
In case you don't know, Clark Polak, maligned in a hateful troll letter previously posted, ran the Philadelphia-based Janus Society, an early homophile movement, and edited its magazine, the oft-referenced Drum, which took its name from the Henry David Thoreau quote, "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears the beat of a different drummer." It also declared, unabashedly, "Drum is published by male homosexuals for the information and entertainment of other male homosexuals."
Founded in 1964, Drum was one of the few pre-Stonewall magazines to blend both sex and politics. News notices on blackmail trials or police raids were accompanied by romantic poems, pictorials lampooning "gay moments in sports" and the magazine even published the first gay comic strip, "Harry Chess: The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E"
Drum charted the changing times, chronicling activist wins and working with medical professionals to help declassify homosexuality as a mental illness.
Drum and its contemporaries "were a way of getting [movement activity] information to people who wouldn't bother to read it otherwise," said Barbara Gittings, editor of the early lesbian and then gay magazine the Ladder.
But Drum was also the first gay magazine to publish a full frontal picture of a naked man, in December of 1965, a decision that led to Polak being charged with 18 counts of distributing obscene materials. He eventually escaped imprisonment by agreeing to shutdown the magazine, which he did in 1967.
Three years later, in 1970, Polak left his hometown of Philadelphia and headed to Los Angeles, where he dabbled in real estate and art collecting and continued his activism. In addition to helping found the Stonewall Democratic Club, he created a gay chapter for the local ACLU. Unfortunately, Polak took his own life in 1980. His impact on gay culture, and American democracy, remains unparalleled and woefully under appreciated.
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