Walk Like a Man

Given its present mainstream, secular image, it's easy to forget that the "C" in YMCA stands for Christian, and despite (or perhaps because of) the current function of the Village People's "YMCA" as an all-purpose party song at football stadiums and hockey arenas, it's also easy to forget the organization's ties to gay male cruising. That the two--evangelical Christianity and modern homosexuality--are causally linked may come as a surprise, but this is one of the arguments of John Donald Gustav-Wrathall's fascinating new book, Take the Young Stranger by the Hand (University of Chicago Press). According to Gustav-Wrathall, the YMCA's particular brand of Christian evangelism was instrumental in shaping gay male identity in the 20th century.

The book begins by examining same-sex relations at the YMCA in the late 1800s. At the time, YMCA leaders worked under the assumption that intense male friendships between older and younger members, along with economic and educational support, would make for stronger, more Christian communities. Gustav-Wrathall argues that because public perceptions of sexuality were then less rigid, the decisions of some YMCA leaders to forsake marriage and devote their lives to other men went unquestioned.

At the turn of the century, however, new ideas about sexuality emerged, which in turn put pressure on the YMCA to change. YMCA leaders were expected to marry, homosexuality became an open concern, and the organization adopted an approach called "scientific man-making," which combined physical education, sex education, and spiritual guidance.

YMCA leaders were thus faced with the problem of how to forge close bonds with their younger members, while also cautioning them against the dangers of aberrant behavior. Further complications arose from the YMCA's physical- and sex-education programs. As pioneers in physical education, the YMCA taught young men to appreciate their bodies and the bodies of other men, and yet their sex-education classes strove to enforce heterosexuality as the only sexual option. At the same time the organization was warning against "homosexual perversion," YMCA publications like Association Men ran images that glorified (and, some would say, sexualized) the male form, and YMCA dormitories and locker rooms became havens for illicit gay liaisons.

Take the Young Stranger by the Hand has an academic slant to it--a portion of the material came from Gustav-Wrathall's dissertation--but there are great rewards for the casual reader. In a meeting at a Minneapolis coffee shop, he stressed his earnest efforts to make his book as accessible as possible. Though the author refrains from storytelling, he speaks through well-chosen primary-source documents, many from the YMCA archives in St. Paul. The early chapters on the lives of the "bachelor secretaries," for example, describe a romantic time when the object of passion was less relevant than its intensity, and where sexual identity came under far less scrutiny than it does today. Later on, the reader gets an intimate look into the hearts and minds of YMCA leaders as they struggled to maintain their very personal evangelical mission in the face of public fears that intense friendships between men, even Christian men, might lead to deviant behavior.

It's a sad tale, and in many ways it's also a tacit argument for leaving things well enough alone. One could argue that the YMCA was at its most effective when issues of sexuality were left undefined, when people were less quick to judge.

CITY PAGES: How did you tackle the problem of how sexuality and especially homosexuality are defined over the historical span of the book?

JOHN DONALD GUSTAV-WRATHALL: Prior to the turn of the century, the YMCA and most churches tended to define people in purely spiritual terms. What the YMCA did was say, in order to shape the whole man we need to look at physical development and intellectual development. The idea is embodied in the triangle, which is still the emblem of the Y, representing three aspects of humanity: physical, spiritual, and intellectual. This was the rationale for bringing in medical and psychiatric models of human development and human sexuality to apply to the moral realm.

In doing so they created a new definition of Christian manhood. Before, it would have been unthinkable to judge someone's manhood on the basis of their health or their sexual behavior. What took place in the YMCA has [since] taken place in the American churches and in American culture in general. We define people more on the basis of their sexual behavior or predilections.

CP: You refrain from claiming whether or not the early YMCA leaders were gay. Is this because of a lack of evidence or because you didn't want to sit in judgment?

GUSTAV-WRATHALL: I think if a lot of these men were living today, people would just assume they were gay. Whether or not they would be happy or comfortable with that assumption or not is a really good question [laughs].