John Looney, the Gay Ganster of Rock Island's Past

Growing up in Rock Island, we had our share of local celebrities, but not only heroes -- anybody who we could use to fight our image as a "hick town" surrounded by cornfields.  So not only writers (Carl Sandburg), artists (Grant Wood), actors (Ken Berry), and musicians (Bix Beiderbecke), but gangsters.

Our resident ganster was John Patrick Looney (1865-1947), a lawyer and politician, who began his life of crime with extortion and embezzlement, then moved on to gambling, prostitution, protection, and violence. In 1912 he started his own newspaper, The Rock Island, to print pro-Looney articles and blackmail prominent residents by threatening to reveal their secrets in print.  After a shootout with rival editor W. W. Wilmington in 1915, he left town, and lay low for awhile in Texas.   

Prohibition brought him back to Rock Island, where he ran the town like Capone in Chicago, managing 150 prostitution, gambling, and bootleg liquor establishments, paying off the police and the mayor, having his hit men rub out anyone who got in his way (including his former associate William Gambel).

He lived in this 5,000 square foot 5-bedroom, 5-bathroom mansion adjacent to Longview Park in Rock Island (now a private home).

On October 6, 1922, Looney's adult son Connor was killed in a shootout, and his empire quickly crumbled.  Looney was arrested, tried for smuggling, bootlegging, and murder, and sentenced to 14 years in prison.  He served 7 1/2 years.

What's the gay connection? Teachers at Denkmann Elementary School and Washington Junior High  who told us the story, and writers who wrote it up in "Rock Island History" retrospectives, never mentioned a wife for either John or Connor Looney, but several very close male associates.  It was an all-male crime family, with Connor almost a boyfriend rather than a son, and the grief over his death causing John to loose control of his mind and his empire.

By the way, I thought that Connor Looney was a pretty unique name, but it turns out that there are several in the U.S., including a medical intern on Staten Island and a freshman basketball star at Hawaii Pacific University (left).

The 2002 movie Road to Perdition features Paul Newman as Looney (renamed Rooney) and  Daniel Craig as Connor.  But the main characters are Tom Hanks as hitman Mike Sullivan, and Tyler Hoechlin (left, later photo) as Sullivan's son.

Besides, it takes place in the 1930s, when Looney was already in prison, and Rock Island isn't even mentioned.

Timothy Leary, the Homophobic Guru of the 1960s Counterculture

The Youth Counterculture of the 1960s turned on to psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, as a means of achieving higher consciousness and recognizing your connection with all beings.

LSD trips were like sexual connections, the participants -- boys and girls both -- expressing love, friendship, and desire on a transcendent level.  As a result, when they came down, they weren't as homophobic as those who abstained from acid.  If it's not hurting anyone else, than whatever turns you on is cool.  Even if it's like, going with someone of another race (then illegal in 23 states), or two dudes going together.

The guy who almost single-handedly turned the Counterculture on to LSD was a Harvard psychologist named Timothy Leary, who started out studying the effects of psychedelics on consciousness in the late 1950s, then became an outspoken evangelist for the drug movement.  He believed that LSD could cure insanity, reduce recidivism in criminals, and eventually result in a society free from war, crime, injustice...and gay people.

Wait -- wasn't the guru of "Do your own thing" in favor of turning on with whatever turned you on?

No, not at all.

According to The Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin, Richard Alpert (later the guru Ram Dass) lived and worked with Leary for several years in the 1960s, even helping take care of Leary's children.

Most of their friends knew that Alpert was bisexual with a distinct preference for men.  He was constantly falling in love with cute guys, after all, and he and his wife had an open relationship.  But Leary didn't.  When he found out, he started screaming that Alpert was evil, and kicked him out of the commune.

Later, in an interview for Playboy magazine, Leary responded to allegations that sometimes otherwise heterosexual men engage in same-sex activity during the free-fall orgies of an LSD trip.  No, not at all, he said firmly.  In fact, using LSD is a proven "cure for homosexuality."  Hundreds of gay men have used the drug to overcome the hangups that made them think they were women, and went on to a "normal" heterosexual life.

Of course, nothing of the kind ever happened.  Leary was making the whole thing up.  But he had to have some way to reconcile his homophobia with the increasingly open sexuality of the generation he helped create.

He was also friends with gay poet Allen Ginsberg, his lover Peter Orlovsky, and many other gays of the Counterculture (pictured: Neal Cassidy).  Maybe he didn't realize it.

The Inbetweeners: Classic Britcom About Homophobic Teens

The U.S. usually wins the prize for homophobic comedy.  On tv, we have Family Guy, American Dad, Working, Two Broke Girls, The Game, and everything on Comedy Central. In movies, everything with Seth Green.

Britcoms are usually kinder & gentler.  But The Inbetweeners (2008-2010), which was nominated for Best Sitcom at the British Comedy Awards three times, and actually won "Outstanding Contribution to British Comedy," takes hatred of gay people to an all-time high.

It was about four high school friends:
1. Focus character Will McKenzie (Simon Bird).
2. Foul-mouthed Jay Cartwright (James Buckley)
3. Neurotic Simon Cooper (Joe Thomas)
4. Dim-witted Neil Sutherland (Blake Harrison)

Like the cliched teenage boys of Archie Comics, they are interested in only two things: 1. having sex with girls who have big breasts; 2. proving that they are not gay.  They pursue these twin quests with lots of profanity, misogyny, and homophobia, from the mild ("Homework is gay!") to the severe ("you touched my leg!" gay panic).

If the series wasn't bad enough, it spawned books, "Best of" DVDs, and 2 movies.

The Inbetweeners (2011) has the boys going to Crete to meet women with big breasts and prove they're not gay.  In one particularly offensive scene, Jay and Neil sneak into a nightclub to meet women with big breasts, but it's a gay club!  You know what happens next.

The Inbetweeners 2 (2014) is currently filming in Australia.

And an American remake on MTV (2012) with Jay Pollari, Bubba Lewis, Zack Pearlman, and Mark L. Young. It only lasted 12 episodes.  I never saw it, so I don't know if they toned down the homophobia.