Arthur Evans (author): Difference between revisions

Arthur Evans (12 October 1942, York, Pennsylvania - 11 September 2011, San Francisco, California was a gay rights advocate and author, most well known for Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture (1978).

In November 1970, Robinson and Evans, along with Dick Leitsch of the Mattachine Society, appeared on The Dick Cavett Show. They were among the first openly gay activists to be prominently featured as guests on a national TV program.

When Evans graduated from public high school in 1960, he received a four-year scholarship from the Glatfelter Paper Company in York County to study chemistry at Brown University. While at Brown, Evans and several friends founded the Brown Freethinkers Society, describing themselves as 'militant atheists' seeking to combat the harmful effects of organized religion.

The group picketed the weekly chapel convocation at Brown, then required of all students (even though Brown is a secular institution) and urged students to stand in silent protest during the compulsory prayer. National wire services picked up the story, which appeared in a local York newspaper.

As a result, the paper company informed Evans that his scholarship would be cancelled. Evans sought help from Joseph Lewis, the elderly millionaire who headed the national Freethinkers Society. Lewis threatened the paper company with a highly publicized lawsuit if the scholarship were revoked. The company relented, the scholarship continued, and Evans changed his major from chemistry to political science.

He promptly withdrew from Brown and moved to Greenwich Village, which he later described it as the best move he ever made in his life.

In 1963 Evans discovered gay life in Greenwich Village, and in 1964 became lovers with Arthur Bell who was later a columnist for The Village Voice. In 1966, Evans was admitted to City College of New York, which accepted all his credits from Brown University.

Evans participated in his first sit-in on 13 May 1966, when students occupied the administration building of City College in protest against the college’s involvement in Selective Service. A picture of the students, including Evans, appeared the next day on the front page of The New York Times.

In 1967, after graduating with a BA degree from City College, Evans was admitted into the doctoral program in philosophy at Columbia University, specializing in ancient Greek philosophy. His doctoral advisor was Paul Oskar Kristeller, then the world’s leading authority on Renaissance humanist philosophy. Kristeller had studied under Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger in Germany but fled to the US after his parents were killed in the Holocaust.

Evans participated in many anti-war protests during these years, including the celebrated upheaval at Columbia in the spring of 1968. In the same year he also participated in the protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. During this time, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg had a powerful influence on the formation of his values. While at Columbia, Evans joined the Student Homophile League, founded by Nino Romano, although he was still closeted.

In 1971, Evans and Bell separated. Bell died from complications of diabetes in 1984.

By the end of 1971, Evans had become alienated from urban life and the academic world. With a second lover, Jacob Schraeter, he left New York in April 1972 to seek a new, countercultural existence in the countryside.

Evans, Schraeter, and a third gay man formed a group called The Weird Sisters Partnership. They bought a 40-acre spread of land on a mountain in Washington State, which they named New Sodom. Evans and Schraeter lived there in tents during summers.

During winter months in Seattle, Evans continued research that he had begun in New York on the underlying historical origins of the counterculture, particularly in regard to sex. In 1973, he began publishing some of his findings in the gay journal Out and later in Fag Rag. He also wrote a column on the political strategy of zapping for The Advocate, the national gay newspaper.

In 1974, Evans and Schraeter moved into an apartment at the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets in San Francisco, from which Evans remained until he died. Schraeter returned to New York in 1981 and died from AIDS in 1989.

In the fall of the 1975, Evans formed a new pagan-inspired spiritual group in San Francisco, the Faery Circle. The Circle combined countercultural consciousness, gay sensibility, and ceremonial playfulness.

In early 1976, he gave a series of public lectures at 32 Page Street, an early San Francisco gay community center, entitled 'Faeries', on his research on the historical origins of the gay counterculture. In 1978 he published this material in his ground-breaking book 'Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture'. It demonstrated that many of the people accused of “witchcraft” and “heresy” in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were actually persecuted because of their sexuality and adherence to ancient pagan practices.

Evans also was active in Bay Area Gay Liberation (BAGL) and the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club, which later became the vehicle through which Harvey Milk rose to political prominence.

In the late 1970s, Evans became upset at the pattern of butch conformity that was then overtaking gay men in the Castro. Adopting the nom de plume 'The Red Queen', he distributed a series of controversial satirical leaflets on the subject. In a leaflet entitled 'Afraid You’re Not Butch Enough?' (1978) he facetiously referred to the new, butch-conforming men of the Castro as clones, initiating use of the now widely used term 'Castro clones'.

In 1984 Evans directed a production at the Valencia Rose Cabaret in San Francisco of his own new translation, from the ancient Greek, of the Euripides play 'Bakkhai'. The hero of Euripides’ play is the Greek god Dionysos, the patron of homosexuality. In 1988, this translation, together with Evans’ commentary on the historical significance of the play, was published by St. Martin’s Press in under the name of 'The God of Ecstasy'.

As AIDS began to spread in 1980s, Evans became active in several groups that later became ACT UP/SF. Evans was HIV-negative. With his close friend, the late Hank Wilson, Evans was arrested while demonstrating against the drug-makers, accusing them of price-gouging.

In 1988, Evans began work on a nine-year project on philosophy. Thanks to a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, it was published in 1997 as 'Critique of Patriarchal Reason' and included artwork by San Francisco artist Frank Pietronigro.

The book is an overview of Western philosophy from antiquity to the present. It shows how misogyny and homophobia have influenced the supposedly objective fields of formal logic, higher mathematics, and physical science. Evans’ former doctoral advisor at Columbia University, Dr. Kristeller, called the work 'a major contribution to the study of philosophy and its history'.

In recent years, Evans devoted much time to improving neighborhood safety in the Haight-Ashbury district. As part of that effort, he penned a series of scathing and funny first-hand reports entitled 'What I Saw at the Supes Today' which he distributed free on the Internet.