BONUS NUMBER 121: SPRING BREAK
(Did You Sleep Witht the Models?)
If you’re puzzled by this Playguy layout (December, 1985), you have a right to be. The title, which should have been much larger, is “Gay Teachers in History.” Which is not the title of the book by Eric Rofes. Then, on the opposite page, see the untitled and uncredited page which is not a part of Eric’s book. That brief entry should have been called “Nine Gay Teachers From Ancient Greece to the Present.” It was written by Leigh W. Rutledge, one of whose specialties is highly readable gay history so irresistably packaged that you keep reading, on and on. How did his name get omitted? Unforgivable.
The photograph is not Leigh but Eric. As editor-in-chief, I take responsibility for this little train wreck, although the art department doesn’t make a clean getaway.
The next feature, by associate editor Bill Baumer, appeared in the November, 1985, issue of Playguy. Harvey Milk, the New York school’s namesake, was the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. On November 27, 1978, Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated in City Hall by Dan White, a disgruntled former supervisor. In a scandalous verdict, White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter rather than murder and sentenced to five years imprisonment. He was released on parole after five years and committed suicide in 1985.
Harvey Milk High School is now located in the East Village, in the vicinity of New York University.
