THE FILE ON STORMY FOSTER
A Cartoon Movie Serial in Twelve Chapters
CHAPTER FIVE:
“THE GREAT DEFENDER”
TIME AND PLACE:
HAWAII, 1990 (and in flashback, 1942)
CAST OF CHARACTERS:
FREDDY BANG, the STUDIO OWNER
IRENE BANG, the CLUB OWNER
DIAMOND FAWS, the DEMAGOGUE
STORMY FOSTER, the GREAT DEFENDER
SNOOKS, the PARROT
Hello again, it’s Irene. This is the fifth installment of a multi-volume audio tape my husband and I are making. It details our firsthand knowledge of a forgotten hero from World War II. He came to Honolulu from an uncharted island and displayed incredible powers. He looked as though he’d leapt from the comic book pages, but he was no four-color fantasy: If Superman had been a real person, his super-strength would’ve paled in comparison to this hero’s abilities! The natural elements of air, earth, fire and water were like playthings for him.
He was not only real, he was also a man of color, and even more amazing: He was specifically sworn to protect Lesbian and Gay people from the Nazi threat! Nobody else was doing that during the War; for us, he was what Oskar Schindler was to European Jews. There was never anyone like him before, and there's been nobody like him since. Gay Hawaiians called him The Great Defender, and my husband called him "Absalom", but I knew him by another name: Stormy.
The previously untold story of Stormy Foster is utterly fantastic, so much so that you probably won’t believe most of it. You may doubt and dismiss the contemporary accounts of his exploits that we’re providing to the Hawaiian Gay Archive. The facts as presented in Stormy’s declassified FBI file may not convince you, either; but that isn’t our concern. It’s not for us to make you believe anything! All we want to do is put an undeservedly obscure piece of Gay history on the record as we witnessed it.
STORMY FOSTER IS THE
GREAT DEFENDER!
I need to shift gears for a bit and tell you about the man who became Stormy’s arch-enemy. History has largely forgotten Diamond Faws, even though his activities were covered regularly in Hawaii’s wartime newspapers. He called himself "Deacon Diamond".
Arriving on the island of Oahu in the summer of 1941, he was like that notorious Catholic clergyman Father Coughlin, who stirred up anti-Jewish sentiment during the 1930s. However, the Deacon’s influence was far more incendiary. His target was Gay men and Lesbians, who Native Hawaiians called aikane. The translation to English isn’t exact, but I’ll use it here for convenience of reference.
For centuries, there was no stigma attached to being aikane; but then outsiders came, among them Christian missionaries who converted the islanders to their faith. Over many years, same-sex-loving people were vilified. Persecution of their gender expression and sexuality drove them into hiding; the secret Gay refuge called Pajaro Island was an example of that. So we LesBiGay people were shunned in Hawaii long before the Deacon's arrival, but his hate-filled sermons made our situation far worse. I mean to tell you: That man was like Anita Bryant on steroids!
He and his acolytes pulled out all the stops spreading homophobia. They claimed that we were pedophiles and began spreading horrendous false stories about child rape. They warned that we carried venereal diseases that were hard to cure. They said we were hell-bent on “recruiting” normal men and women into homosexuality: We’d make them abandon their husbands, wives and children! We’d get them all addicted to Gay sex, infect them with VD, and then Hawaiian society would crumble. Deacon Diamond claimed that Sodom and Gomorrah was being “reincarnated” in Hawaii.
Typical of his sermons was "Queer Means Predator", a guest op-ed that he wrote for The Honolulu Observer in 1942. Just listen to this quote: Homosexuality is a reproductive dead end! Queers cannot have children, and that is part of their tragic pathology; but in their sick minds, the normal man or woman's desire to raise a family gets twisted into something hideous and vile: The desire for children as lovers! Oh, the horror of it: Grown men forcing themselves on little boys, just like they did in ancient Greece and Rome. Fiendish man-hating women, bearing down on sweet little girls like loathsome tarantulas stalking their prey. These monsters will stop at nothing to recruit tender babies into their perverse, sordid and disgusting lifestyle! Believe me, my friends: Child rape is happening even as I write these words.
So, you see how forcefully the Deacon bore down on those pedophile accusations! He founded an organization called the Children’s Protection Committee to stop a burgeoning “child molestation menace.” There was no such menace, but he frightened the islander population into believing that there was. Everyone was scared: Either you feared victimization by “queers” or you feared being exposed as Gay and incarcerated. But that wasn’t all you could suffer.
BASHERS HAD BETTER
WATCH THEIR BACK!
Eventually, we Gay Hawaiians started fearing for our very lives! The inflammatory rhetoric coming out of the Children’s Protection Committee sent Bible-toting vigilantes into the streets, hunting down “sex perverts”. The Deacon recommended taking those they found to the nearest police station, but more often than not suspected “queers” got beaten to a pulp! By early 1942 several people had been brutalized and sent to the hospital. There was one woman who got gang-raped; she nearly died! So much for “Christian” values! It was a throwback to the years of the Thalia Massie rape scandal. Her accusation was later revealed to be a hoax, but not before Native Hawaiian men were labeled predators of White women and targeted. As a result of racist demonizing, an innocent man was murdered!
Being a member of Honolulu’s clandestine Gay community, I knew about more victims than the newspapers reported. I had friends and acquaintances who’d been assaulted by these “Gospel-guided” thugs, but they never reported the attacks or had their injuries treated by doctors. They were too afraid of being “outed”!
You must understand something: Life was very different for us back then. We did not enjoy the freedoms that are taken for granted today. The notion of a Gay Pride parade was unimaginable! You'd have been called insane if you even suggested such a thing. Exposure as a Lesbian or a Gay man meant you became an instant pariah: You could kiss your job, your home, your friends and your family goodbye. Criminal prosecution was frequent, forced commitment to mental hospitals was possible, and blackmail was commonplace, sometimes driving people to suicide. The closet was our only means of survival, and the Children’s Protection Committee drove us deeper into it.
Even before confiding in me and my brother Freddy, Stormy Foster had started earning his reputation as a champion of Gay Hawaiians. At certain times, his parrot Snooks would alight on his shoulder and perform that amazing color transformation I told you about. That’s how Stormy would know that a Lesbian or Gay islander was in danger. Snooks would lead him to whomever was in distress and, from a hidden location, he’d use his amazing powers to repel their attackers.
However, the attacks were increasing and he wanted to stem them! He didn’t know how.
The three of us discussed the problem together. I suggested that he adopt a secret identity that would eliminate his need to hide. My brother thought it was a great idea. “A mask, a costume, and a memorable name,” Freddy told him, “would put the bashers on notice that from now on, they’ve got a defender to deal with!”
Stormy liked the name “Defender”. I did, too, but I amended it to “Great Defender”. So, it was Freddy and I who gave him the name that became so notorious!
Since the costume was my suggestion, I went to work designing one. You’ll laugh at me, but I’ve got to confess: I consulted the comic books for ideas! The costume I designed was a composite of uniforms worn by such fictional 1940s heroes as The Hawkman, The Flash, The Spider, The Atom, Captain America and Wonder Woman. As for the gloves he wore, those were inspired by Mickey Mouse! I'm not shitting you!
Freddy, who inherited our mother’s seamstress skill, made the pattern and sewed it. Together we decided on the blue, red, silver and yellow color scheme. It complemented the silver harness Stormy used to help him fly, but that's not why we chose such bright, eye-popping colors. We wanted that outfit to leave a lasting impression on everyone who saw The Great Defender.
I’ll never forget when Stormy came to my house for the costume fitting. Freddy took his measurements but insisted that he strip naked first! “These clothes should be skintight, like the ones comic book superheroes wear,” he said. “Underwear will skew my measurements, so take it off. Take it all off!”
My brother was a typical Gay man with a prurient mind; I knew what he was up to but I didn’t interfere.
Frankly, I thought it was hilarious! Especially when Stormy was standing there in his birthday suit, looking so uncomfortable. He glanced over at me during his humiliating ordeal and immediately sprouted an erection; of course, he felt embarrassed and quickly averted his eyes. That should have told me something, but I was clueless. I didn’t realize how Stormy felt about me until much later.
STORMY AND SNOOKS:
THE DOUBLE TRANSITION
It took about a month for Freddy to finish sewing the costume. He did it all himself! When it was ready, Stormy came back to my house with his parrot in tow; she’d flown after him, he said, and he couldn’t stop her. So Snooks perched on the back of a chair as, with much difficulty, we pushed and pulled Stormy into those form-fitting togs.
There was no spandex back then so Freddy had used rationed nylon.
The costume looked very striking on Stormy; not only was it colorful, it flattered his boxer’s physique in all the right places! But he complained that it was too tight. He scolded Freddy: “Are you fucking trying to cut off my circulation?” It was a snug fit, no doubt about that; I remember worrying about whether the fabric would rip. Alterations were going to be necessary, or so we thought.
Stormy took the costume off (with Freddy ogling him, of course) and began putting his street clothes back on. That’s when Snooks squawked loudly, flew to a perch on his shoulder and changed her plumage color. Simultaneously, Stormy’s street clothes disappeared and somehow he was wearing the costume again! Only this time his hair was glowing, which was the signal that his powers were manifest.
Freddy and I gasped in disbelief! Up until then, we thought we’d seen everything Stormy could do; but all of a sudden there he was, looking like he’d been born in that uniform, and this time he said the fit was perfect.
From that day forward, Stormy would “change into” his costume this way. The man-and-bird double transition was instantaneous; he never had to put on or take off that outfit as long as Snooks was there. Freddy almost drove himself crazy, trying to figure out how the thing was done. “There are scientific explanations," he insisted. You didn’t dare suggest that it was magic! The elemental powers, the glowing hair and the changeovers . . . there was a rational explanation behind it all and dammit, he was going to find one! And he tried, oh, how he tried, but he never could.
Freddy never admitted he was wrong about the supernatural things we saw, but he wasn’t wrong about the effect that costume would have on vigilantes. It absolutely scared the shit out of them! Once they saw The Great Defender on their trail, they forgot about everything else and their bashing victims would get a chance to run away. Stormy liked that, because then there’d be no innocent people in the danger zone when he cut loose with his powers!
Those thugs would go flying through the air and crash into trees, or their clothes would be set on fire, or they’d get tangled up in roots that miraculously shot up out of the ground! Stormy would leave them battered, bruised and humiliated. He wouldn’t hesitate to inflict injury! “It isn’t enough to just scare them,” he told me. “Those sons-of-bitches need to be punished.”
He wanted to teach them a painful lesson so they’d never gang up on anybody again!
Soon, word began to spread about this mysterious costumed avenger, but for a long time people thought he was some kind of urban legend. Nobody believed someone like him could exist, and could you blame them? But some of The Great Defender’s exploits are documented in Stormy’s FBI file, so you don’t have to take my word that they happened.
Marauding bashers weren’t the only menace Honolulu’s closeted Gay community faced. There was also the constant threat of blackmailers, and it was really bad in the early ‘40s. These crooks would see or photograph someone in a compromising position, or they’d entrap Gay men in bars or cruising areas, or they’d get hold of same-sex love letters. A lot of Lesbians were blackmailed that way.
Threatened exposure to employers, family members or the police – and remember, the law criminalized Gay relationships back then - quickly brought victims to heel. Those who could afford to pay would be milked dry, and those who couldn’t would either flee the island, never to return, or they’d die by their own hand. It was just a horrendous situation!
THE DOUBLE SUICIDE
OF RUTH AND MAYME
The worst I can remember was the sad case of Ruth Dawn and Mayme Genovese. I knew them both. Ruthie was a pillar of the local Jewish community and her family was well-off. Mayme was a popular half-Italian, half-Native girl, descended from Hawaiian royalty. I was one of just a handful of people who knew they were Lesbians; nobody suspected because neither one was the least bit stereotypical.
Mayme worked for a charity that Ruthie’s family administered, and that’s how they met. They fell deeply in love and became inseparable; but they were foolish enough to exchange explicit letters, and one of them fell into the wrong hands.
When the blackmail threats came, everything spiraled out of control! Ruthie resisted paying, and the blackmailer showed the letter to her father. Of course, Mayme was named as her lover. I heard that he accused her of being "a goddamn dyke" and slapped her face, reducing her to tears. Mayme's father gave his daughter an ultimatum, insisting that she marry a man of his choice. He also demanded that she never see Ruthie again, but Mayme refused. Neither of them could bear being separated, and they ended up confessing the relationship. Both women were promptly disowned by their families. Ruthie’s parents actually sat shiva for her!
It was a bad omen. Ostracized, publicly denounced and faced with certain ruin, they co-wrote a suicide note. One morning in early December of 1942, they took a ferry to Molokai Beach and scaled the high cliffs. Removing their clothes, they made love one last time; then they wrapped their arms tightly around each other and leapt to their doom on the rocks below.
It was a horrible shock, but the subsequent news coverage shocked us more. The dead women were absolutely and completely vilified. The newspapers called them degenerates and child predators who had endangered Oahu residents while they were alive. Where was the evidence? They had none. It was slanderous and despicable: Those death notices couldn’t have been more hateful if Deacon Diamond himself had dictated them!
And would you believe no funeral home would take Mayme’s body? Her family wouldn’t even claim her remains; it was appalling! Gay people were the only ones who mourned the tragic loss, and we did so in secret. I and a few other women quietly raised funds to give Mayme Genovese a proper burial on the mainland. If only we’d been able to bury Ruthie alongside her, but that wasn’t possible. She was cremated, even though the Jewish faith forbad cremation at that time. In death, they were both abandoned by their communities.
Those suicides and their aftermath devastated and demoralized Gay Hawaiians. That’s when Stormy realized: Just confronting bashers wasn’t enough! He had to appear in costume before the Gay community itself, declare himself their champion and say something to raise their spirits. People were beaten down by years of shame and fear, and he quite correctly saw that as an obstacle to his mission.
So, proceeding carefully, we arranged his first secret meeting with a small group of Hawaiian Lesbians and Gay men. I recall that Freddy printed up a handful of flyers, but we mostly publicized the gathering by word-of-mouth. That’s how people learned where it would be held. It was packaged as a memorial service for Ruth and Mayme, and it was, but Stormy had more than mourning in mind.
There really weren’t Gay bars to speak of back then; just ordinary bars, clubs, hotels and leisure spots that would draw Gay crowds on a certain day or at a certain time of day. People would meet at one of these locations for a while, then move on to another one; shifting around like that was the only way to be safe! Anyway, the memorial took place at a heterosexual singles bar near the John Rogers Navy Airfield. Under an assumed name, I booked it for the evening.
I remember that meeting like it was yesterday: There were no more than ten or fifteen people in that small room. When Stormy appeared in costume and climbed up on the bar with Snooks on his shoulder, they were frightened and confused; but Snooks began to coo loudly, and that sound had a strange calming effect on the crowd.
HOW CAN STORMY FOSTER TRIUMPH?
Stormy didn’t spend much time talking about himself, other than to say that he hoped they'd come to consider him their Defender. You can imagine what skepticism greeted a statement like that, but he pressed on. He immediately began commemorating Ruth Dawn and Mayme Genovese. He praised them as “good women” who represented the best of Hawaii. He denounced those who had accused them of wrongdoing and declared their love “divine”. Even I was shocked to hear him say such things; nobody, but nobody made those kinds of statements in 1942.
He eulogized Ruthie and Mayme in a way that was both heartfelt and dignified. He gave them the respect the press had denied them, and vowed to avenge what he pointedly called “their secondhand murders”. (Good to his promise, he later tracked down their blackmailer and forced him to confess! That bastard was wanted for a bunch of other crimes and went straight to prison.)
Then Stormy launched into the first of what would be dozens of motivational speeches. He assured the small assembly that, contrary to what they’d been told, they weren’t sick, immoral or criminal. They were not predisposed to molest children. You can’t imagine how therapeutic it was to finally hear somebody say that! And Stormy said it with conviction.
He explained how Gay people were either misidentified in or missing from modern religious texts; he said that we were a special race (his word). He spoke of an ancient Hawaiian culture where opposite and same-sex relationships co-existed in harmony. He insisted that homosexual orientation was part of the balance of nature, and he bore down on one point repeatedly: We are not predators. We are not perverts! We are not queers or any such thing! Don’t be ashamed of yourself! And don’t let anybody make you feel ashamed. As he spoke, you could have heard a pin drop; Everyone was totally dumbfounded.
Stormy wrote every word of that speech and all the speeches to come; but they were drawn from Pajaro Island religious doctrine, and certain unfamiliar concepts needed translating. Freddy and I helped with that. We came up with empowering terms like “Lesbian”, “Gay man” and “same-sex love”. I’m not saying we invented them, but they certainly weren’t in general use at that time. I maintain that Stormy’s speeches helped popularize them.
If I ever lacked faith in The Great Defender's ability to carry out his mission, it’s because there was so much open hostility toward Gay people back then. Using super powers to dispatch gang-bangers was all well and good, but it wasn’t going to change anybody’s attitude; and our attitudes needed changing as much as anybody else’s!
We had internalized so much hatred, our self-esteem was at a very low ebb. When Stormy began spreading his Gay Pride message, I became more optimistic. For the first time I believed we had a fighting chance against the hatemongers. Just from that first speech, it was clear that Deacon Diamond had met his match!
You've just read Chapter Five! Click below to read
Fourth chapter in the Stormy Foster saga
Then be sure to read
Sixth chapter in the Stormy Foster saga
Concept by HAMPTON JACOBS and PATTY BALL
Art by STUFFED ANIMAL
Costumes by HENRIETTA la del BARRIO
Project Assistance by RODERICK MACK and DAVE PEARSON
Text by HAMPTON JACOBS