On This Day in History: March 19

Gay Nay Sex Club

Subscribers can listen to the audio of today’s post here.

The first rule of Gay Navy Sex Club is: Don’t talk about Gay Navy Sex Club. Sailor Thomas Brunelle talked about it, and the guy he told narked, and then there was an investigation that turned into a national scandal that would sully the reputation of a future president.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: March 19, 1919--

In early 1919, Brunelle was a patient in a navy hospital in Newport, Rhode Island. While there his gaydar failed, I guess. He told fellow patient Ervin Arnold, a machinist’s mate, that the local Army and Navy YMCA as well as the Newport Art Club were great places to hook up for some hot gay action. Arnold checked these places out to see for himself and oh my Christian stars men dressed as women and having sex with each other and drinking booze and also doing cocaine. Arnold was a good little stooge and wrote up a report and it found its way to Admiral Wood, who got some serious wood for exposing the heinous crime of consensual coupling between people of the same sex.

The report went before a court of inquiry and on March 19, 1919, a thorough investigation was ordered. And that’s when shit got weird. Arnold, the guy who narked, was a state police detective in a former life. So the Navy said fuck it, he’s already got an in, so let’s put him in charge of the investigation. Arnold’s approach was, shall we say, unorthodox. Continues below …

Some consider my approach to writing history unorthodox, and others just really fucking like it. Want more? Click the green button to become a paying subscriber.

He chose 13 men to help him in the investigation. The men were chosen based on two things: being young, and hot. He sent them on infiltration missions, and they infiltrated all right. They submitted daily reports about all the gay sex they participated in in these clubs. There was little in the way of “I didn’t want to but I had to in order to further the investigation” in these reports.

Two weeks later the arrests began. Seventeen sailors were charged, and during their trials the investigators who took the infiltration way too seriously testified in graphic detail that oh yeah that was the guy who stuck his dick in my bum in the course of my totally legit investigation. Most of the accused were sent to prison for sodomy and “scandalous conduct.”

It became a media shitnado and the religious community was all what the fuck how could the Navy condone these kinds of investigative methods? At the time, future president Franklin Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he caught heat. But then he quit in 1920 to run as veep candidate for James Cox’s run for president. They got obliterated by Warren Harding.

But the scandal wasn’t over for Roosevelt. The following year a Senate Committee on Naval Affairs denounced both him and his former boss Josephus Daniels who was Secretary of the Navy. The New York Times said that most of the details were “unprintable” and accused Roosevelt and Daniels of knowing full well how the investigation had been conducted.

Thanks, Lucy, for the suggestion of today’s topic. And thanks to all the gay guys who provided feedback on this piece prior to publication.

Support keeping this daily column free and get access to subscriber only content:

Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.