Bad Gays

A podcast about evil and complicated queers in history. Why do we remember our heroes better than our villains? Hosted by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. Learn more: www.badgayspod.com

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Episodes

Lord Castlereagh

Tuesday Apr 07, 2020

Tuesday Apr 07, 2020

The Anglo-Irish aristocrat, politician and statesman Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry: better known, like Bjork or Madonna, by his mononym - Castlereagh. A Whig politician, he was hated by the populations of both England and Ireland for his support of vicious repression against liberal, reformist, and radical politics and activism. Lord Byron put it best: "Posterity will ne'er survey / A nobler grave than this: / Here lie the bones of Castlereagh: / Stop, traveller, and piss."
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James Buchanan

Tuesday Mar 31, 2020

Tuesday Mar 31, 2020

The United States of America's first gay – and worst – President. This bumbling slaveholder collaborated with the Confederacy, promoted the racist Dred Scott decision at the Supreme Court, and cohabited in Washington with a dashing Alabama Senator who, in the words of President Andrew Jackson was the "Aunt Nancy" to his "Aunt Fancy." 

Nikolai Yezhov

Tuesday Mar 24, 2020

Tuesday Mar 24, 2020


A man variously known as the “Iron Hedgehog” and a “malignant Dwarf”, but also as charming, courteous, and, most importantly “a good party man,” a man who held the position of the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs - the head of the NKVD during Stalin’s Great Purge - Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov.

Wednesday Jan 29, 2020

With special guests Mac Folkes and Edna Bonhomme (@jacobinoire), Ben explores the life story, politics, and cultural phenomenon of Pete Buttigieg. From his resume-polishing early life to his racist record as Mayor to his recycling of stale right-wing attacks on progressive policy, we look at how longer-term trends in gay life and culture, including the split of the "mainstream" wealthy and white gay rights movement from multiracial struggle, have influenced both his politics and the broad audience they have found. 
== Update, 8 March, 2020 ==
We are devastated by the recent death of Mac Folkes, one of our two guests on this episode. A legend of the scene, a devoted friend, and a fierce fighter for justice. Rest in power.

Wednesday Dec 25, 2019

For a special episode, Huw is joined the writer and filmmaker Juliet Jacques to discuss Colonel Victor Barker. 
 
As a military nurse, ambulance driver, kennelman, horse trainer, fascist, car salesman, thief, and actor, Colonel Victor Barker was the embodiment of early 20th century upper-class British masculinity. But he became famous after his trial and imprisonment for committing perjury on his marriage certificate to his wife —because Victor Barker was assigned female at birth. Juliet and Huw explore his life, and the questions it raises around gender identity a century ago.
 
SOURCES:
 
Collis, Rose. Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment: A Tale of Female Husbandry, Boston: Little, Brown Book Group, 2001 
 
Zagria. A Gender Variance Who's Who https://zagria.blogspot.com/
 
Oram, Alison: Her Husband was a Woman! Women's Gender-Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture, London: Routledge, 2008
 
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
 

J. Edgar Hoover

Wednesday Nov 27, 2019

Wednesday Nov 27, 2019

The other polestar of human evil. "Justice is incidental to law and order." Johnny and Clyde. 

Piers Gaveston

Tuesday Nov 19, 2019

Tuesday Nov 19, 2019

The namesake of the secret dining society at Oxford where David Cameron may or may not have committed unspeakable acts with a pig. Perhaps you’ll have a clue to the themes of today’s episode when we tell you that the motto of the Piers Gaveston Society is "(Sane) non memini ne audisse unum alterum ita dilixisse" or, for those of us without a private school Latin education, "Truly, none remember hearing of a man enjoying another so much".

The Stonewall Colony

Tuesday Nov 12, 2019

Tuesday Nov 12, 2019

What happens when a political analysis that comes out of the politics of alliance ends up departing from alliance: in other words, when people think that making something “gay” is enough. The kinds of people that get forgotten and spoken over when a certain kind of essentialist gay politics are deployed. And even though this crackpot plan never came to pass, today's show, about the failed attempt to establish a gay nation in rural California, reveals some of the flaws at the heart of ‘70s radical gay politics. 

Nicky Crane

Tuesday Nov 05, 2019

Tuesday Nov 05, 2019

A young white London lad driven by a passion for extreme violence and racial hatred, who climbed pretty easily through the ranks of a small fascist party, and went on to become something of a big fish in the far-right's murky, polluted, poisonous pond. But in 1992, the Sun ran the following story, under a photo of Nicky Crane in his White Power vest: "Nazi Nick is a Pansy." 

Pim Fortuyn

Tuesday Oct 29, 2019

Tuesday Oct 29, 2019

The fairy godmother of the new European far-right. A vile racist named "The Greatest Dutchman of All Time" in a 2004 TV poll. A lens into how a particular version of homosexuality is compatibile with a particular kind of far-right politics – how a certain kind of “live and let live” attitude at the heart of white liberal gay politics can immediately turn into a wave of immigrant-bashing hatred that turns, inevitably, on queer people themselves. “I don’t hate Arab men," he said. "I even sleep with them.” 

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