Rediscovered manuscript: Man with ties to NH defends homosexuality long before there was a gay rights movement
Allen Bernstein's manuscript was rediscovered in the National Library of Medicine two years after he died.
Allen Bernstein's manuscript was rediscovered in the National Library of Medicine two years after he died.
Allen Bernstein's manuscript was rediscovered in the National Library of Medicine two years after he died.
Long before there was a real gay rights movement, a man with ties to New Hampshire went on a mission to bring injustices against homosexuals to light.
Allen Irvin Bernstein was born in Nashua in 1913. He spent his childhood in Salem, Massachusetts, and later lived in Maine for many years. In 1940, Bernstein finished writing a 149-page manuscript titled "Millions of Queers." He tried to get his manuscript published to no avail.
For decades, the manuscript went unnoticed until Drexel University professor Randall Sell came across it while doing some research at the National Library of Medicine in 2010.
"It was just this shocking defense of homosexuality that this person was writing in the 1930s, and that really was unheard of," Sell said.
Sell believes Bernstein's manuscript is one of the earliest defenses of homosexuality to be written in English in the United States.
"At least for me, one of the most perplexing things about him is how did he feel so confident that he was right?" Sell said.
Bernstein himself was gay. In his manuscript, he wrote, "There has always been homosexuality between adults as long as there has been mankind, the same as there have always been tall men and short, fat and thin..."
Bernstein joined the army in 1940 during World War II. He ended up getting a blue discharge when army officials discovered he was a homosexual. Those less-than-honorable discharges were given to soldiers who had "undesirable habits." Bernstein talked about that during an interview he did as part of the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress in 2003.
"Sitting in the psych ward for three weeks while the paperwork unfolded," Bernstein said. "I could never find out what the other people were in for, but nobody else seemed to be in because of being gay."
In 1981, the army finally awarded Bernstein an honorable discharge, which he fought hard for. After his service, he went on to Harvard University, where he was pursuing his PhD, but after the school learned about the blue discharge, Bernstein was kicked out.
"There was a period in there where he was out and I think what that did is it put him underground. I mean, where did it get him? Got him tossed out of the military, got him tossed out of Harvard," Bernstein's son Gerald Bernstein said.
According to Gerald Bernstein, his father returned to New Hampshire for a short time to work as a professor at New England College in Henniker. He also taught in the Boston area and in Maine. Gerald said his father was not only an activist for gay people but for anyone who was different. He even joined a chapter of the NAACP and volunteered with the Red Cross for years, even though he was barred from donating blood.
Bernstein said he was upfront with his wife about his homosexuality before they got married. They were married for 45 years until her death in 1991. It was not until after she died that Bernstein finally came out to his two sons and the rest of the world.
Author Alix Kates Shulman said she remembers when Bernstein came out. She and Bernstein became friends after he sold his house in Maine to her.
Shulman told News 9 in an email, "He was in his 80s. Allen came out as gay, moving into a house with other gay men, as he described to me excitedly on one of our visits in Portland. He was philosophical in conversation, a gentleman in manner, and sweet and gentle in personality, with a wry humor."
When Gerald Bernstein was asked how he reacted to learning his father was gay, he said he gave him a hug.
"What do you do? What do you say? I suppose you could get angry or something like that, Gerald said. "It's still OK. I'm glad you can be you."
It was two years after Allen died in 2008 when Sell found "Millions of Queers" and tracked down Bernstein's sons. They did not previously know about their father's manuscript.
Gerald Bernstein said if there is one thing he'd like people to take away from his father's writings, it's this: "Life is short. We don't need to do this to one another. Let people flourish."
>Read Allen Bernstein's manuscript
>Listen to Allen Bernstein's interview for the Veterans History Project