Frank Muzzy's Gay and Lesbian Washington D.C.

New York City and San Francisco may be the most famous gay meccas in the United States, but author Frank Muzzy makes a persuasive case for Washington D.C. as the granddaddy of them all. Part of Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series of photo essays, Gay and Lesbian Washington D.C. introduces the poets and politicians, the soldiers and activists, all queer, who have shaped life in the nation’s capital from its very founding.

The city’s namesake, George Washington, couldn’t win a battle with his Continental Army until he imported a gay man, Prussia’s Baron von Steuben, who drilled them into an effective fighting force. Another, Pierre L’Enfant, designed the layout of the new capital city in 1784. Starting with these inspiring stories, Muzzy’s well-chosen photographs and informative captions illustrate a whirlwind tour through 200 years of queer history.

That history has included at least one gay president and first lady, the country’s unofficial national poet, a male Native American princess, numerous lesbian suffragettes, and countless closeted politicians and open activists. From drag kings and queens to bears, AIDS rides to Dykes on Bikes, Muzzy covers the vast scope of Washington’s gay scene over more than 200 years. All of these are illustrated with uncommon pictures from archives and private collections. It is a powerful experience to glance across time into the eyes of fellow gay men and lesbians.

Muzzy’s eye for the amusing or fascinating anecdote adds to the pictures’ effectiveness. A photograph that Muzzy includes of Walt Whitman with his lover, Peter Doyle, is well-known. But how many know that Doyle was in Ford’s Theatre the night that Lincoln was shot? Who knew that Congressional Medal of Honor winner Mary Walker regularly strode the capital’s streets at the turn of the century dressed in men’s clothes? Or that there exists a large-scale painting of J. Edgar Hoover in French-king drag? A giddy, “can you believe this?” quality pervades both the happier and sadder stories. Even readers without much interest in history will get caught up in their drama.

For such a short book, Gay and Lesbian Washington D.C. is almost endlessly fascinating. Muzzy has captured much of the diversity of urban GLBT life, so that his photo essay has something of interest for any reader. With any luck, more authors will pick up the challenge and add gay and lesbian volumes to the Images of America collection.

This review was originally written in 2005 upon the book's release, then never published. I'm pleased to say that there are now 4 gay and lesbian titles in Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series, with a fifth, about lesbian and gay Richmond, to be published next month. Gay and Lesbian Washington D.C. is still in print and available in bookstores around town or from Arcadia Publishing.