19 Sep Introducing The Queer Lineages Project
The Queer Lineages Project is a DIY research and oral history project that seeks to trace trajectories of queer collectivity throughout time and situate Lupinewood within them. Making up the map as they go, Aurora and Hunter are teaching themselves how to research the obscure history of LGBTQ collective projects, meeting and interviewing people whenever possible. Follow along here while we share what they’re learning as it unfolds.
This first interview is with Allen Young, a gay journalist who co-founded Butterworth Farm in Royalston Massachusetts, a stone’s throw from where we live. Butterworth was started in 1973 by Allen and 4 friends, all gay men. Though it’s no longer a commune, Allen still lives on the land more than 4 decades later in The Octagon House, a remarkable octagonal home made of wood and stone that he and his friends built by hand.
Allen, Hunter and Aurora’s conversation was roving and wide. In this first excerpt they talk separatism, belonging amongst people with shared identity characteristics, and what it takes to live well from a marginalized position in a broader community, like a rural town, where people hold different value systems and don’t easily find affinity on the surface. As queer folks who’ve been building a community project in a conservative neighborhood for almost a decade, there was resonance to be found in Allen’s reflections. We think this conversation has immediate relevance in this current cultural moment, and we hope it sparks something for you.
A note: the idea behind the QLP is to share perspectives outside of our own, often across generational and cultural differences. We don’t necessarily agree with or endorse everything expressed in the interviews, but we respect people’s differing positions and their right to express their views.
Another note: in the interview, Allen Young is AY, Aurora is AR and Hunter is HS.
AR: We had a question in our list of questions about the success that you seem to have had in
embedding yourself in the local community and in the town, even back in the day when things
were much more conservative culturally. Do you have any advice about that? Like, if you were
talking to – I mean, you are – if you were talking to young people who –
HS: We’re not that young.
AR: Yeah. People younger than us.
AY: Definitely. I don’t particularly like separatism. I admire – I’m Jewish and I respect my
Jewish heritage. But I don’t only want to hang out with Jews. And especially since I’m not
religious. But I respect my heritage. I enjoy the company of other Jews. I feel a little tribal thing
sometimes when I’m with other Jews. So that’s good. But I wouldn’t want to live in a place where
it’s all Jewish. Similarly, as a gay man, I believe in gay community. I strongly believe in that. You
know, we used to talk about “my, my gay sisters and brothers” or gay and lesbian sisters and
brothers. And I like gay community. I like, you know, a certain sense of humor, a certain cultural
connection, historic connection, the process of coming out, the fact that we had to fight for our
rights and still fighting for our rights in many ways. And now you have the transgender issue
adding to it – or, I don’t know if adding is the right word, but emerging. So I think we all, our
group here, one of the reasons we came here is that we wanted to leave what was sometimes
called the gay ghetto. Wanted to leave, you know, New York and San Francisco. We wanted to be
in the country, you know, primarily attracted to nature. That was the call, was nature. Who are
the people out here? We don’t know these people, but they’re human beings and we can learn
about them and their lifestyle. It’s not a Bible belt here. There’s churches, but Christians here are
not, you know – of course, there’s exceptions – but generally speaking, Christians here are not
hatemongers. And they probably have little or no experience with openly gay people. You know,
certainly that was true in the beginning. And we didn’t announce ourselves as gay. We just
bought this land and were building houses. And I think they kind of figured it out. There were no
women living here. You know, gradually they figured it out. There was probably some
whispering. Which I don’t really know about for sure, but it’s pretty obvious that that would
happen. And, and once they saw that the house we were building, the first house, once they saw
that it was a, quote, “a nice house” with timbers – it wasn’t just a tarpaper shack. And we were
doing the work ourselves. They could see we were hard working. And then when we expressed an
interest in town affairs – joining the planning board, the board of health, the conservation
commission – when they saw that we were interested in that and treated them with respect… and
also did not get on our high horse because we’re college educated. Because the average person in this town is not college educated. More working class
AR: Right.
AY: Maybe it’s changed, you know, over time. But certainly back in the seventies, most of the
people in this town were either tradesmen or they worked in factories in Athol and Orange. It
wasn’t really agricultural. People might have, you know, a cow or a goat or some chickens and a
garden, but not like the Valley, with big farms. So I think just…I think we had a lot of self-
confidence in ourselves as people. So we didn’t have to apologize. “We hope you don’t mind that
we’re faggots, but we, but we like trees and we want to be in the…” you know what I mean? We
didn’t come across that way. I think we just said, “we’d like to be part of this town”.
AR: Yeah.
AY: And without apologizing, but also without making a fuss about it. I think it just sort of became
natural that they respected us. Royalston has very few black people, but there was a black family in
this town and I never heard anybody use the N word. You know, they were respectful of that. He – I
think Mr. Mims was his name – He drove a school bus. I didn’t get to know them very well. I did meet
them. I didn’t hear anything negative about them; of course, they were just one couple. I shouldn’t even
say they were a family because they were an older couple. But I think the answer to your question is
yes, but join community, community is important. Participate in something. You know, town
government is – certainly in our New England towns, there are all these boards that need people
to do the work. Join a board. You’re not interested in that? Do you want to be in a church or
some sort of association? There’s a women’s club; join that if you’re a woman or you identify as a
woman. I just think, you know, participate and, and if you show your willingness to participate, I
don’t think you’ll be rejected. I could be wrong. Maybe in some other place you would get rejected,
but I don’t think…I mean, in Wendell, for example, there were a lot more hippies in Wendell than here.
HS: That’s certainly true.
AY: And some of them were lesbians. There were only a couple of gay men in Wendell, but there was
definitely a bunch of lesbians that could be easily identified as lesbians. And they participated in that
town and I think one time two out of the three people on the select board were lesbians in Wendell.
HS: Sounds like you’re talking about sort of finding what the shared stakes are. Rather than, you
know-
AY: Yeah, show that there’re shared values, that you’re not littering the city; there’s a town
cleanup day to clean up the roads? Participate in that, you know, things like that.
HS&AR: Right.
AY: I think it’s sort of, I think it makes it work.
HS: Because you seem to have found a way to really walk that line of not apologizing and also not
shoving it in the town to be like, “here we are, you better accept everything about me or else.” And that
that really worked.
AY: We didn’t…I don’t know what we didn’t do. We just didn’t get too pushy. Well, we didn’t…I mean, I
think there was a vote in Northampton on equal rights for gay men and lesbians. We never promoted
that here, but we did become friends with local gay men and lesbians who were born and raised in the
area. Especially Orange and Athol. It’s funny, you know, there’s one of the roads named Butterworth?
It’s named for a family, Butterworth, and we got to meet that family.
AR: No kidding.
AY: But, you know, all the gym teachers at, in Athol, not all, but most of the gym teachers, the female
gym teachers were lesbians. It’s a stereotype, but it’s true.
HS: Did you find that the local gay and lesbian folks who had grown up here were excited that
you had this visible presence?
AY: Yeah, they heard about us because the Warwick Inn, which you drove past – it’s not
functioning as an inn anymore – The Warwick Inn used to have rock and roll bands on Friday
and Saturday night. And all the hippies would go there and dance and drink beer. And you could
actually go outside the building and smoke pot, too, because they didn’t care. But then we would
dance with each other, you know, men on men. And word got out, “oh, there’s men dancing with
men at the Warwick Inn.” So some of these people from Athol came to sort of explore and they
met us and became friends with us. And, you know, I started working for the newspaper in town.
And Arthur Platt started a real estate business, so he hired people to work in his office and he
had parties in his house and people came and there were a lot of social events here that were
mixed, gay and straight.
AR: Right. Yeah, so it sounds like you encountered people…there was a presence of openly gay
activity and people were seeing that in public and the response, it sounds like what you’re saying,
there was a lot of positive response to that. Like, people were like, “oh, there are other people out
there, you know, in this community.”
AY: I’m not sure it was a positive response or a neutral response. I think on the part of the gay
people it was positive. On the part of maybe some straight liberals it was positive. But on the part
of the average person, I think it was more neutral. It was like, “well, if they work, they’re not on
welfare and they’re not causing any problems, and they own a home and they pay their taxes and
they obey the laws…” Even though, I mean, I did get arrested for growing pot, but that wasn’t
seen as a gay thing. That was more a hippie thing. And I wasn’t the first one anyway, so I think it
just wasn’t thought out. We didn’t have a strategy session, like “how are we going to get along in
this town we’re moving into?” I think we just did what we wanted to do and I think we had the
good sense to do it in a way that was comfortable for us, but also comfortable for other people.
I mean, I don’t know if it’s a good analogy because again, I’m observing your tattoos. So you
dress the way you are now, exposing your tattoos. You go into a store in Greenfield or Northfield
and you do what you’re doing in that store and you walk in and somebody is going to see, oh,
there’s people with a lot of tattoos and they’ll notice it. You can’t not notice it.
AR: Right.
AY: They’ll notice it. Are they going to hate it? Some people might hate it. Are they going to love
it? Some people might love it. But most people are going to be indifferent and they’re going to say,
“well, that’s their business.” You know, you’re not impacting them by putting a tattoo on your
body. And I think people sense that. And I don’t think the analogy between gay or transgender
and tattoo…there’s a little bit of an analogy; they’re not exactly the same, but that’s what I think.
I think if you’re comfortable in your own skin, then other people, unless they’re really
prejudiced, are going to be okay.
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