Perry Brass, Writer for GayToday

    Jack Nichols and I had been emailing one another for years, I have no idea for how long, but due to some hard drive crashes, I don’t have access to all of them. But I wanted to reveal some of the ones I’d emailed him, and maybe I should include at some point more of his replies.

    But since this is homage to Jack, I thought he’d like it if I said, publicly, some of the things I’d said privately in the past.

7/5/04
Dear Jack,

    I am truly honored to be in your account of your NY visit. I unashamedly love you, but I guess you figured that. It is wonderful, and about time, that you, Frank Kameny, Dick Leitsch, Brabara Gittings, and others from your part of this struggle get the recognition you deserve. The GLF people will get theirs, too, at some point. A lot of people think that GAA invented "gay lib," and that nothing that came before Jim Owles and Arthur Evans mattered, not that they weren't important, also. Courage to me is the most wonderful of all human attributes, and the fact, the very real fact, that you had that never ceases to amaze me, and also to want to know what the secret of it was. My wish, on my star, is that the rest of the country will find it, and know that you've had it all along.
Perry

2/7/04
Dear jack,

    Thanks for your sweet note, and I'm glad you liked the piece. I was just in Washington DC this week, and what I could not get over was how nakedly people hate Bush. There's no hemming & hawing about it. Quite a pickle we're in, ain't it?

    I'll keep all my fingers & toes crossed about your cat scan. Listen, you've got to stay here and be there for the next generation of nitwit queers who think that their liberation came in with Queer Eyes and Will & Graceless. It's a fact.

love,
Perry

Jack Jichols wrote:
Hi Perry, Thanks for the great article--which will go onlinetomorrow night after 9 pm.I'll send your invoice to our accounting. Hope Hugh is OK. Give him my best. One of the drawbacks of growing older, as Dick Leitsch once pointed out in a 1975 barguide tribute to Lige, is that we're often subjected to a seriesof maladies. Dick was saying that at least Lige wouldn't have to deal with those.  I often think of that sentence. Anyway, I'm doing pretty well. If I pass a cat scan on Monday -- I'll be able to feel at ease about my own health for at least the next six months or more. My blood counts, said a Thursday test, are approaching normal. I'm not a worrier. I studied Zen when I was 30 and it helped me eliminate unnecessary thoughts. When I felt claustrophobic last year when getting a cat scan, I simply closed my eyesand repeated to myself what Scarlet O'Hara said: "I won't think about this now. I'll think about it tomorrow."   Hah! ooxxxxx]

12/21/03
Dear Jack,

    I'm really glad to hear from you, and I'm delighted about your book's coming out. Are you going to be doing any sort of book tour for it in June? If you are, let me know, and I'll do what I can to set things up for you. I just did two readings in NY, one for Substance and the other for DEATH COMES EASY, an anthology from Millivres-Prowler in England that I'm in. I like doing public events. It's taken me a long time to like them, but I do now. I wish you were here more: it really kills me that our little gay world thinks that all's well since we have Queer Eye, and that coming out started with Will & Graceless. I could go on and on about this. One thing that always amazed me about people like you is what gave you the courage, aggression, and will to be yourself when so many other people were so scared of themselves? I am fascinated by that. With me, it was mostly anger and the feeling that I had absolutely nothing to lose: I came from such poverty, family-lessness, such a bad childhood that being gay, in the mid-60s, was strangely easy, once I had left Savannah, GA. So I wonder what did it for you.
much love, hugs, and merry X-mass (as I say, let's put the X back in Christmas)
Perry

Jack Nichols wrote:
Dear Perry, Good to hear from you. Yes, a few of my friends have sent me the Queer Eyes on Sadaam. Even my Mom saw it on TV news! It is a hoot! I'm feeling considerably better (health-wise) now that the year is coming to a close. I guess you too must be feeling good about your new book which I will soon read -- but Jesse plans to review it for us. This has been quite a year, eh? Did I tell you that May will see publication of The Tomcat Chronicles?  I've been telling folks that its ironic that my recollections of youthful indescretions should be coming out during my first year on medicare and social security. I'm going to be in NYC in June and hope we can get together. I'll be traveling from Washington to Baltimore to Philly to NYC. If you've got any hankering to do an essay or two--you know I'd always welcome it. I saw a holiday greeting that I'll now send to you: Merry Thanksgivoween!  love,jack]


9/22/03
Dear Jack,

    I hope you are doing better. I am sorry I didn't call you back after we spoke a week or so ago. I've been concerned about your health, and I really hope that you are doing better. I've been cc'ing you some
exchanges I've had with [deleted name of GLF activist Jack and I occasionally delt with] because I thought you might find them amusing. [deleted name] is really kind of sad character to me, and there are times when I feel bad about dealing with him at all. I've known him for years and he usually comes off as an opportunist looking for an opportunity that doesn't come. He has been in the middle of every pop culture number I can think of, has known everyone, and still doesn't seem to rise to the top. He was on the original board of the Gay Community Center here in NY and ended up causing so much dissension that everyone was delighted when his time off the board came. In my 30 + years of knowing him, I learned that when the time came to use me, I was his best friend; if not, I was always in a drop-dead situation. You can only put up with that so long. Maybe I should just learn to ignore him, but you can only have your chain pulled so long, before flushing.

    Please take care of yourself. You're very important to me, and also
to our movement. You are an exceptional person, and I like exceptional people.
love,
Perry


[Jack had sent me a URL of a British website that featured him as part of gay history] 4/1/03
Dear Jack,

    This is very nice. It's nice to know that intelligence is still there in UK. My dealings with the Brits have been pretty disappointing lately. Did you get my email about LGBTQ, the "gay online encyclopedia?" They devote more time to Madonna than to all of the gay movement.
Perry

4/21/03
Dear Jack,

    I recently discovered the site GLBTQ.com, an encyclopedia of glbt
information. I did not find myself encyclopediazed, so I did a search on you. This is the only reference to you I got.

    Perhaps you might want to tell them that you've done other stuff
than this.

   Sorry I've been so out of touch. I've been working on a new book.
I'll send you a copy when it comes out.
love,
Perry

text from GLBTQ.com:

Important First Steps

In the 1960s and 1970s, the bulk of the attention paid to gay people in television news reports was in sensational documentary specials. Few openly gay individuals appeared on-camera, and when they did, it was customary for their faces to be obscured.

In a 1966 Florida television news program aired on Miami's WJTV, Richard Inman purported to represent the gay viewpoint, but said he had given up homosexuality four years earlier and giggled when asked if he thought gay couples could live happily together over a long term.

A special episode of CBS Reports, aired on March 7, 1967, almost certainly exposed the largest television audience up to that time to the existence of openly gay people. Hosted by Mike Wallace, "The Homosexuals" was the product of two years' work and debate by members of the CBS news staff.

The first version of the documentary was extensively revised for fear that it could be construed as an endorsement of homosexuality.

In the end, the CBS report mainly represented the traditional view of homosexuality as an illness, and emphasized the outsider status of gay people. However, it at least suggested that other viewpoints were possible. Still, nervous advertising sponsors would not touch it; the commercial breaks were filled by public service
announcements.

"The Homosexuals" showed footage of Washington activists Frank Kameny, Jack Nichols, Lilli Vincenz, and others picketing in front of the White House and at other strategically chosen locations. In an interview segment, Nichols appeared under an alias ("Warren Adkins") to spare his father embarrassment.

"Adkins" was one of a few positive gay role models who appeared in the documentary to declare their satisfaction with their own homosexuality. Unconsciously anticipating later arguments by gay activists that homosexuality is not a choice, "Adkins" said he couldn't conceive of renouncing his homosexuality and compared it to the color of his hair or skin.

The day after "The Homosexuals" aired on CBS, Nichols was fired from his job in a Washington hotel. Most viewers agreed with psychiatrist Charles Socarides, who opined for the camera that homosexuality precluded the possibility of living a happy, productive life. (Years later, Socarides's own son, Richard, would become an openly gay staff member in the Clinton White House.)

"The Homosexuals" remains a landmark of American television news because of its articulation, however minimal, of dissenting views. James Braxton Craven, a federal district court judge from North Carolina, appeared on the program to question the legal sanctions against those who engaged in consenting homosexual acts. "The Homosexuals" also addressed gay influence in the arts.

Noted author and political commentator Gore Vidal defended gay playwright Edward Albee's 1962 classic, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Along with his fellow dramatists Tennessee Williams
and William Inge, Albee had been criticized in The New York Times and elsewhere for writing women characters who were supposedly gay men in drag. Vidal countered this nonsense by emphasizing the popularity of Albee's play. "Obviously it's popular because what he has to say about married couples speaks to everybody," Vidal told Mike Wallace.

I wrote Jack about an award that, with any honesty, should have gone to him, rather than someone who simply panders to our celeb-driven culture, Judy Weider, the woman who brought the vapid celebrity interview to the Advocate


Subject: Judy Weider Gets Well-Deserved Ass-Kiss
9/22/02

Dear Jack,

I just came across this in PressPassQ: It gets my "We Should All Wanna Throw-Up Award!"


* JUDY WIEDER, editor in chief of the Advocate, received a National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Leadership Award on September 17. The awards honor those "who have made unparalleled contributions to advancement of freedom and equality for the nation's GLBT community."

Yeah, uh, shu-ure.
love,
Perry

9/13/02
Dear Jack,

Happy Friday 13! I thought you might like this piece. It mentions you & some of the other “Buddhas” of gay liberation. I have decided that we are now in the 6th generation of gay lib: 1st generation, Harry Hay; 2nd you and Frank Kameny; 3rd, Dick Leitch; 4th GLF-GAA; 5th, Bruce Voeller and advent of gay mainstreaming (NGLTF); 5th Urvashi Vaid et al; 6th, “queer” kids now.

Perry
 [end of email series]

Paul Barwick

I met Jack only though email a few years ago, yet his actions have been affecting my life and those of my queer brothers and sisters since before I came out back in 1971.  There are very few people who have made such a positive impact on so many people's lives as Jack.  He shall live in history as one of the heroes of our struggle towards equality. 

Paul Barwick
San Francisco

Peter Tatchell

I count myself immensely lucky to have known Jack Nichols. He was an extraordinary human being. One of the pioneers of the gay liberation movement in the 1960s, he never waivered in his commitment to sexual freedom and emancipation. While others compromised and assimilated into the heterosexual status quo, Jack remained true to the goal of a different, better, freer and more just society. Many others dumbed-down and settled for equal rights within the straight supremacist system. Not Jack. He said society had to change, not queers. He wanted more than mere equality: what is the point of equality within a repressive and unjust social system? Jack wanted to transform the world, not conform to it. He had a great and admirable vision of a more enlightened future. I miss his support and encouragement for my campaigns and those of the queer rights group OutRage!

Peter Tatchell, OutRage! London

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Dipak Ahmed