Arthur Scott Evans was an early
gay rights advocate and author, most well known for his
1978 book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture died he was 68..
(October 12, 1942– September 11, 2011)
Early life
When Evans graduated from public high school in 1960, he received a four-year scholarship from the
Glatfelter Paper Company in York 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 society picketed the weekly chapel services at Brown, then
required of all students, and urged students to stand in silent protest
against compulsory prayer. National news services picked up the story,
which appeared in a local York newspaper.
As a result, the paper company informed Evans that his scholarship was cancelled. Evans contacted
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.
Move to New York City
Evans 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 later became 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 May 13, 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, one of 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. He
also participated in the protests at the
1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. While at Columbia, Evans joined the
Student Homophile League, founded by Nino Romano and
Stephen Donaldson,
although Evans himself was still closeted. On December 21, 1969, Evans,
Marty Robinson, and several others met to found the early gay rights
group
Gay Activists Alliance.
[3]
In November 1970, Robinson and Evans, along with Dick Leitsch of the
Mattachine Society, appeared on
The Dick Cavett Show,
making them among the first openly gay activists to be prominently
featured on a national TV program. In 1971, Evans and Bell separated.
Bell died from complications of
diabetes in 1984.
Move to Washington
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 gay newspaper.
Move to San Francisco
In 1974, Evans and Schraeter moved into an apartment at the corner of
Haight and Ashbury Streets in San Francisco, in 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 based on his
research on the historical origins of the gay counterculture; these
"Faeries" lectures took place at 32 Page Street, an early San Francisco
gay community center. In 1978 he published this material in his
groundbreaking book
Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. The book offered evidence that many of the people accused of "witchcraft" and "heresy" in the
Middle Ages and the
Renaissance were actually persecuted because of their sexuality and 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 neighborhood. Adopting the
nom de plume "The Red Queen", he distributed a series of controversial satirical leaflets on the subject. In a leaflet titled
Afraid You’re Not Butch Enough? (1978) he skewered those who pursued
hypermasculine bodies and wardrobes as "zombies" and "clones", presaging the "
Castro clone" moniker.
Later writings and activism
In 1984 Evans directed a production at the Valencia Rose Cabaret in San Francisco of his own new translation, from
ancient Greek, of the
Euripides play
The Bacchae.
The hero of Euripides' play is the Greek god Dionysos, the patron of
homosexuality. In 1988, this translation, with Evans' commentary on the
historical significance of the play, was published by
St. Martin’s Press as
The God of Ecstasy: Sex-Roles and the Madness of Dionysos.
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 pharmaceutical companies
making AIDS drugs, accusing the companies 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 ancient times to the present, showing how
misogyny and
homophobia have influenced the supposedly objective fields of
formal logic,
higher mathematics, and
physical science.
Evans' former advisor at Columbia University, Dr. Kristeller, called
the work "a major contribution to the study of philosophy and its
history."
In his later years, Evans devoted much time to improving neighborhood safety in the
Haight-Ashbury district. As part of that effort he wrote a series of scathing reports, "What I Saw at
the Supes Today", which he distributed free on the Internet.
Death
Diagnosed in October 2010 with an
aortic aneurysm, Evans died in his Haight-Ashbury apartment of a massive heart attack on September 11, 2011.
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