Was fdr gay

Sherry Zane illuminates a shady undercover operation that targeted homosexual Navy personnel.

On the sixteenth of March, one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, fourteen Navy recruits met in secret at the naval hospital located in Newport, Rhode Island, anxiously waiting for instructions for their fresh assignment. The senior officers stated that the volunteers had the freedom to leave if they found this special mission objectionable: a covert operation designed to ensnare homosexual men under the authority of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).

Following the sting's conclusion, investigators had detained more than twenty accused sailors and incarcerated them aboard a dilapidated ship in Newport harbor. Anxious and fearful, the suspects were kept in solitary confinement for almost four months before they were formally charged with sodomy and "scandalous conduct." The incident also foreshadowed certain laws and policies that the future President Roosevelt would put in place.

Within this episode of the MIT Press podcast, podcaster Chris Gondek converses with Sherry Zane, the associate director of the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the University of Connecticut, regarding her article, "'I did It for The Uplift of Humanity and The Navy': Same-Sex Acts and The Origins of The National Security State, 1919-1921," which was published in the June of two thousand eighteen issue of The New England Quarterly. A stream and a transcript of the podcast, initially recorded in two thousand eighteen, can be accessed below.

Chris Gondek: Greetings and welcome to the MIT Press Journals podcast. I am your host, Chris Gondek. Today, I'm speaking with Sherry Zane, the author of, 'I Did It for the Uplift of Humanity and the Navy: Same Sex Acts and the Origins of the National Security State, 1919 to 1921,' which was printed in the June two thousand eighteen issue of The New England Quarterly. Dr. Sherry Zane holds the position of Associate Director of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at the University of Connecticut. Her current work focuses on how intersectional constructs of gender, sexuality, and race shaped national security worries preceding the Cold War. Stay tuned following the interview for additional details concerning the show.

Sherry Zane, thank you for appearing on the MIT Press Journals podcast today.

Sherry Zane: I sincerely appreciate the invitation to be here.

Chris Gondek: Now, your article considers the Navy's investigations into same-sex activities following the conclusion of the First World War, and it is founded on the mysterious section that was headed by then-under-secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Could you transport us back to that era and illuminate the reasons behind the Navy's perceived necessity to investigate these actions?

Sherry Zane: Certainly. I'll start by offering some context for how this transpired, as it was initiated by a single individual. However, there were preexisting nationwide concerns regarding moral corruption within society. There was considerable anti-immigrant and anti-Bolshevik rhetoric that attributed moral corruption to immigrants, African Americans, radicals, anarchists, and women. It is within this backdrop of purging moral corruption, this anxiety over the types of individuals corrupting society, that a man, Chief Petty Officer Irvin Arnold — originally from Connecticut but stationed in San Francisco — comes to Newport in February of nineteen nineteen, and he is receiving treatment at the Naval hospital there. He begins observing patients applying lipstick, makeup, powder puffs, and wigs. He initiates inquiries regarding their gender, their sexual activities, and he maintains notes throughout his time at the hospital.

And then he forms the judgment that Newport is corrupt. Much like other people in the Navy were discussing the corruption within urban centers and port cities, there was concern about the Navy being stationed in some of these port cities because of vice, drugs, and prostitution.

Irvin Arnold truly takes it upon himself to instigate this initial inquiry. He accomplishes this by approaching the doctor at the Naval Hospital, Dr. Erastus Hudson, and stating, "I believe they ought to be investigated; allow me to conduct an informal inquiry, and subsequently, we should engage with higher-up Naval officials," which he proceeds to do. In April of nineteen seventeen, there were only eighty-six thousand Naval personnel, and President Woodrow Wilson increased this figure to nearly five hundred and thirty-two thousand personnel in November of nineteen eighteen.

Mothers, indeed, during World War One were writing to President Wilson, questioning, "How are you going to protect our sons? They're going to be exposed to all of these fights. They're going to be exposed to drugs, and what are you going to do about it?" The Navy truly aligns with other progressive era reformers, preventative societies, and anti-vice organizations to clean up these port cities where they're going to be stationed.

As they embark on this endeavor, they start to become worried about the sort of individuals that actually compose the Navy. After the war concludes, you have a number of seasoned Naval personnel departing, and they have to incorporate fresh recruits. They used this during World War One and after to think about, "How can we reshape the American sailor?"

One of the things they do is they begin questioning not just what is meant by physical fitness, but also what is meant by moral fitness, in addition to employing a Stanford-Binet IQ test, which is designed to determine whether these men possess genuine character, whether they have good morals. They also implement an Americanization of their forces, because they believe that if they make an effort to recruit white, non-immigrant sailors from the heartland, from the Middle and the Middle West, this will help bolster their reputation.

So many white Americans believe that non-white immigrants and hyphenated Americans embody these inherent elements of a criminal type and will be unable to protect the country or have an invested interest in protecting the country. Consequently, they might be readily swayed to join forces in a campaign to destroy the country from within.

The Navy truly embraces a great deal of what these preventative societies and anti-vice organizations are already striving to achieve. Those reformers consist of a white, upper-middle-class group of people who are deeply concerned about stabilizing the conventional heteronormative American family structure. That is why when Irvin Arnold arrives and declares, "This demands investigation," there are already existing systemic concerns about moral corruption within American society as a whole. The Office of Naval Intelligence then assents to move forward with the inquiry, and subsequently, around two months later, FDR becomes involved.

Chris Gondek: It seems there's practically the same sort of moral intensity that was occurring concurrently in regard to the move toward prohibition. It has the same fundamental underlying theory, but I'm hearing the same sort of progressive ideals about, here's how we can clean up America. The same energy appeared to be active there.

Sherry Zane: Yes, definitely. I concur. I think one of the things that the secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, does is he is very committed to the absence of alcohol in the officer's quarters. This causes a significant disruption in a lot of this… a multitude of the officers are really disturbed by this. There is also some continued, I suppose, contention between the civilian-led administrative offices of Daniels and FDR and the admirals who feel the civilians don't know what they're doing.

But again, you're correct, it's the same situation. It's the anti-prostitution campaigns, the temperance movement. You also have concerns over women seeking the right to vote, the suffrage movement. These all disrupt more traditional American values. And that the men who are supposed to protect the country are going to be exposed to these things. So, if we want them to protect the country, then we must protect them.

Chris Gondek: Hence, in order to perform this investigation, the Navy had to recruit individuals to investigate the same-sex sailors. Would you please discuss how they went about recruiting agents and precisely what these agents were expected to do?

Sherry Zane: Certainly. So, Irvin Arnold began the initial recruitment in March of nineteen nineteen. He States in his later testimony when he's asked that particular question, how did you recruit people? So, he states that what he was looking for was men of high moral character and good looks. He placed considerable emphasis on physical appearance. He asserted that they must be honest, reliable, trustworthy, young, and handsome. The reason he keeps emphasizing good-looking is he says that they needed to be men between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four because so-called perverts are not going to be interested in men over the age of thirty because, by the time you're thirty, you lose your good looks.

So, the age range of men that he recruits, he has fourteen men whom he recruits in March of nineteen nineteen. There are approximately… In the end, Arnold is the oldest. He's forty-one years old, yet ten of the men are between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, and the remaining men are between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-two.

He also implied that it would be most advantageous if they were untrained, as they would achieve better results without training. Initially, he asked these first fourteen individuals that he recruits to convene with him in the basement of the Naval hospital at the Newport Training Station, which is situated in the x-ray room. Everything is very secretive, and they enter the room, with Arnold initiating by stating, "You are free to depart at any given time. There will be no retaliation if you opt not to take on this special assignment." Then, he gives them a fourteen-point document. The fourteen-point document presents various details. At the beginning, it says they are expected to investigate moral corruption in the city of Newport, Rhode Island, and they're seeking drugs, they're seeking alcohol, they're seeking female sex workers, and they are also looking for men who engage in same-sex acts with other men. However, the majority of the attention is focused on the concept that these men must allow themselves to be solicited by other men. The manner in which they do this, he suggests in the document, is that they must be cheerful, they must be good-natured, they must arrange dates with them, and they must allow themselves to be solicited.

Nowhere in the document does it specify what acts, what sex acts, the men are compelled to participate in. But via the dialogues that the men have in that meeting and later with FDR, and subsequently within the testimony provided by the Senate subcommittee investigators, it surfaces that there were discussions, and the men were instructed that they should individually decide which sex acts they wanted to partake in or needed to engage in to be able to convict these men and incarcerate them. Consequently, each man was supposed to make their own decision.

And at one point, FDR contacted an attorney to ensure the men would be safeguarded if they engaged in sex, same-sex acts. The attorney suggested they would be safe because they were engaging in so-called criminal behavior to catch criminals, so it was acceptable.

Chris Gondek: That is how the men were recruited. What took place for the men who were charged with the crimes?

Sherry Zane: The men who were charged with the offenses were rounded up and incarcerated on an antiquated, deteriorating ship in Newport, the USS Boxer. They were held there for an extended period than they ought to have been, without being formally charged. So, what they did was, Arnold and his men took an ambulance, and they drove around Newport one evening and simply gathered up all these men, brought them onto the USS Boxer, and then questioned them through the employment of third-degree methods. The third-degree methods consisted of interrogating them for hours on end without food and water, at times employing physical violence. Subsequently, there were multiple complaints from people in Newport who were aware that these men were confined on this ship, and a multitude of family members of the men who were entrapped and subsequently imprisoned wrote letters to the Navy office.

What transpired is that they were brought up on general courts-martial, and each man, after about, I believe it took them more than one hundred and twenty days to finally bring them to a general court-martial hearing. One man ended up deserting, five were acquitted, and fourteen of the men were sentenced to terms ranging from twenty to thirty years for anal penetration and oral sex.

Chris Gondek: So, what became of the individuals in the Navy who were connected to this? Both Arnold and the others higher up the chain who approved this? Was this investigation, when everything was considered and completed, regarded as a positive endeavor for the Navy, or was it contentious even at the time?

Sherry Zane: It was a point of contention at the time due to the tactics and their use of volunteer sailors. In the end, what transpires is that, when the Senate subcommittee gets wind of this, because the Providence journal editor, John Rathom, is truly taking FDR and Daniels to task in the paper. He's exposing all of this. He certainly has an ax to grind with FDR. It's not necessarily that they shouldn't be investigated, but it was using what they termed innocent boys to investigate it and allow themselves to be contaminated by partaking in these acts, that if you intend to investigate so-called perversion, then you should deploy trained detectives to do so instead.

And so when the Senate subcommittee investigates, they primarily place the blame on FDR. They deem him morally liable for the investigation, and they state that he should never hold public office again. This occurred in nineteen twenty-one.

Consequently, the operatives are honorably discharged. Nothing occurs to them. The entrapped men are released from prison between nineteen twenty-one and nineteen twenty-two, yet they are dishonorably discharged. Therefore, this haunts them throughout their lives. They are unable to obtain any military benefits, they cannot have a military funeral. A multitude of them, by tracing them through their personnel files at various points in time, such as ten, twenty years later, contacted the department of veterans affairs to ascertain if someone was going to perform a background check on them for a new job, would they find out. They would not find out if the men… There were a couple of men who were acquitted, so they were fine. But if the men were dishonorably discharged, they would have received this report from the Navy.

And FDR in the end, he is morally responsible, but all know that he proceeds to become the president of the United States. Hence, he escapes any genuine repercussions ultimately.

Chris Gondek: Did he ever revisit the decision publicly years later, or was it just, this is something where he declared, 'This was a near miss. I do not need the matter brought up. Let us never discuss it again,' and simply brushed it under the rug?

Sherry Zane: He was obligated to revisit it because he had concerns in his later gubernatorial and presidential campaigns, preceding that, he was running for the vice presidency under Cox in nineteen twenty. People were questioning his manliness, founded on his moral character in the nineteen twenties, but because Rathom — John Rathom, the Providence journal editor, John Rathom — passed away in nineteen twenty-three, and the Navy wished to forget about the entire matter. Consequently, there was truly no one to challenge FDR following John's demise. However, when he contracted polio in the summer of nineteen twenty-one, directly after he was required to provide testimony to the Senate subcommittee, he contracted polio during that summer. Inquiries concerning FDR's manliness were associated with his disability. He was hence concerned about this when he was campaigning for the presidency. In nineteen thirty-one, he accepted a challenge from a Republican writer, Earl Looker, to have a committee of respected physicians selected by the New York Academy of Medicine, examine him to determine if he was competent enough to withstand these duties.

So, Looker printed in Liberty magazine, that as far as he could discern, FDR could endure more punishment than a lot of men ten years younger. As more magazines and books commenced to concentrate on him in thirty-one, Looker contributed to a biography entitled "This Man Roosevelt." Half of the pages of the biography are devoted to his tenure as assistant secretary of the Navy, with the intent to whitewash FDRs reputation in relation to Newport.

So, it is intriguing because FDR's entire history is like he is writing a biography of him, and half of it is devoted to the issue of Newport and demonstrating that FDR had no involvement in this. All he did was endorse documents.

Thus, I believe that, without a doubt, his privilege allowed him to whitewash his involvement, and the accused men cannot even get a military funeral forty years later. But, he did have to revisit it. But I do not believe that it ever came up, to the best of my understanding, during his presidency.