In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 Daughters and Sons for the Rest of Their Lives I n the fall of 1945, after finishing his tour of duty in Hawaii, a twentyone -year-old William Billings wrote a long and momentous letter to his parents, in Arkansas City, Kansas, where he had grown up. Billings was contemplating coming home and going to college with funds from the G.I. Bill of Rights. But he needed to tell his parents something first. He began by saying that since he had been away from Kansas’s ‘‘provinciality and small town-ness,’’ he felt he now understood, whether his family ‘‘recognized it or not, [that] the world is emerging from the Victorian Era and beliefs.’’1 Though he pointed out that his enlightenment about ‘‘the facts of life’’ did not come from his parents, he reassured them that ‘‘no, darlings, I don’t blame you.’’ Nonetheless, he asked them, ‘‘Didn’t it ever occur to you that certain tendencies I possess pointed in only one direction long, long before I was aware of it?’’ If they had seen ‘‘what I was heading for, you didn’t face it. You were afraid to face the truth! . . .Well, dearest ones, think again. The inevitable is there. If you haven’t faced the truth, please do it now. Let’s quit playing ‘Blind Man’s Bluff.’’’2 Billings trusted that his parents knew to equate his ‘‘certain tendencies’’ with being gay. On the surface, this revelation was more practical than it was emotional. His central purpose was neither to invite his parents to know him better nor to share an intimate aspect of his life, but to discuss the matter-of-fact consequences. ‘‘[I]n facing facts, truths as they are, it has of course been necessary to arrive at certain decisions,’’ he announced.3 These words of finality—‘‘facts’’ or ‘‘truths’’—conveyed what he considered the fixed and 2 Chapter 1 unchangeable character of his tendencies. In his view, it would be pointless to try to ‘‘erase inborn (maybe hereditary) traits’’ or to ‘‘blot out environment (and mine was feminine from beginning to end).’’4 He assured his parents that he did not ‘‘intend to let it wreck my life nor warp the pleasing attributes of my personality’’ and reminded them that ‘‘the ancient Greek civilization’’ was ‘‘practically based on it and its civilization flourished.’’5 Still, he told his parents that they should feel ‘‘perfectly free and at ease with this opportunity to change [my homecoming plans] for me. I mean that. No person loves his home and family more than I, but I am cognizant —too—that it is your home to say who shall enter. After all, you are much older and your opinions on life are set in concrete. You may not feel it within the realm of your principles, ethics, and standards to accept this that I have declared.’’6 Though he did not call himself a gay man per se, by page 10 of his thirteen-page letter, he left no doubt: ‘‘To state it inviolably so there can be no question in your mind, the sum and substance of the whole thing is briefly this: I am strongly attracted to members of my own sex!’’7 Billings seemed prepared to forfeit his family relationships and assume an utterly independent adulthood. He clearly would have preferred to have his family in his life, but he did not harbor specific ideas about what this ‘‘much older’’ generation owed the younger one, particularly when their children were gay. He equated his parents with the ‘‘principles, ethics and standards’’ of their generation that presumably could not countenance the possibility of a gay child. A sample of gay writers who, like Billings, would become teachers, or figures in the arts or literary world, suggests that for these individuals the immediate postwar period was a time of self-awareness about same-sex attractions, including what those attractions revealed about the nature of their true selves. In turn, these gays had to negotiate how, or even whether, they would give expression to this often hidden self in the family context. This dilemma was complicated by a sense of ambivalence and uncertainty that surrounded the family not just as a place of self-disclosure but as a place of mutual intimacy and affection between parents and children, where one central commonality between them was a presumed heterosexuality. In a society attuned so readily to rumor and false appearances, one that suggested a...

Share