{"id":293,"date":"2017-03-31T00:49:20","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T06:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/wordpress\/?p=293"},"modified":"2025-08-08T04:04:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T10:04:21","slug":"paul-benard-mattachine-misfit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/31\/paul-benard-mattachine-misfit\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Benard: Mattachine Misfit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tangentgroup.org\/paul-benard-profile\/\">A profile of Paul Benard<\/a><\/em><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">.<br><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 1rem;\">In my time looking at the lives of members of the early Mattachine, perhaps the most enigmatic was Paul Benard (April 24, 1916\u2013November 7, 1954).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the eight men pictured in the famous \u201cChristmas tree\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tangentgroup.org\/paul-benard-profile\/#attachment_9972\">photograph<\/a> taken by Jim Gruber in 1951, Benard turns out to have been considered for a role in the Mattachine\u2019s leadership. He left the group and left Los Angeles but remained in contact with members, only to die in 1954.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To my surprise last year, a chance query by V\u00edctor Mac\u00edas-Gonz\u00e1lez, Professor of History and Women\u2019s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at University of Wisconsin\u2013La Crosse provided me with Benard\u2019s birth name, and I was able to construct a very detailed account of his early life. Had the existing Mattachine leadership known about his involvement in the &#8220;little&#8221; and leftist theater endeavors of New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, they\u2019d have seen him as a comrade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tangentgroup.org\/paul-benard-profile\/\">This profile of Paul Benard<\/a> is adapted from my work-in-progress with the working title&nbsp;<em>The Feeble Strength of&nbsp;<\/em><i>One: Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, Maxey, Marx and the Mattachine<\/i>. Because its length likely would prevent its eventual publication as-is, I offer it here. Lengthy as it is, more study of Paul Benard is warranted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In looking at the lives of members of the early Mattachine, perhaps\u00a0the most enigmatic was\u00a0Paul Benard, one of the eight men pictured in the famous \u201cChristmas tree\u201d photograph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[34,101,166,165],"tags":[175,170,150,389,171,174,135,169,173,172,167,168,149,164],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lgbt-history","category-publishing","category-radio","category-theater","tag-arizona","tag-bob-hull","tag-chuck-rowland","tag-dh-ms","tag-jim-kepner","tag-massachusetts","tag-mattachine","tag-mexico","tag-new-york","tag-one-magazine","tag-paul-benard","tag-paul-bernard","tag-san-francisco-bay-area","tag-tangent-group"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/IMG_1606-e1538203702150.jpg?fit=2882%2C1774&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paF2cn-4J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10482,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/10482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}