INDEX

1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………...Pg. 2

2. Patricia Nell Warren and her historical context .................................. Pg. 3

3. Society and History through characters ……………………………….. Pg. 5

a. Harlan Brown……………………………………………………... Pg.

5

b. Billy Sieve…………………………………………………………. Pg.

6

c. Vince Matti…………………………………………………...…… Pg. 8

d. Jacques LaFont………………………………………………….. Pg. 9

e. Straight allies: The Prescotts, Aldo Falconi, Armas Seponan and

Mike Stella……………………………………………………… Pg. 10

f. Straight opponents: Society…………………………………… Pg. 11

4. Main gay historical moments in The Front Runner ………………… Pg. 11

5. Personal Opinion and Conclusion ……………………………………. Pg. 13

6. Bibliography …………………………………………………………….. Pg. 14

1

The Front Runner and the gay society during the 70s

Pascual Rocamora Ortega

1. Introduction

The Front Runner is a sport-romantic novel written by Patricia Nell Warren,

published in 1974 and considered one of the best gay novels of our times.

Harlan Brown is a tough, conservative track coach hiding from his past at a

small college. Billy Sieve is a brilliant young runner who is homosexual and

doesn't mind who knows it. When they fall in love, they enter a race against

hate and prejudice, which takes them to the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games and

a shattering, shocking conclusion. (Synopsis taken from Goodreads)

I chose this book because, as a gay student, I’m really in touch with the

minority that gay people are, and some goals like legal rights or social

acceptation are still unachieved. This book is really moving and brings up a

subject barely rear in gay literature: gay people in sports. Besides, the period

when the novel takes place was the moment that the gay society and the gay

culture started to rise.

Patricia Nell Warren gives us a moving and wonderful love story with

characters who portray some of the gay stereotypes of the moment: the

closeted gays, the openly ones, drag queens… The gay culture plays also a

very important role as well as the sport world, with the special emphasis in

athletics, whose followers are really old-minded. This author shows a really

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deep knowledge about the way gay men think, feel and act, which is pretty

impressive for a female author.

This period is also very interesting for the awakening of the gay culture and

the awareness for the rest of the population. The gay importance of this period

began in 1969 during the Stonewall riots. Stonewall was a very famous club

among the gay hidden society. During the night of June 28 th of 1969, some

customers suffered a police raid and some of them were arrested for

depravation. The gay community all together moved for the very first time

against an abusive homophobic situation, fighting against policemen. From that

moment, June 28th became the World Gay Pride Parade. Another really

important moment of this period was the election and murdered of openly gay

politician Harvey Milk in the late 70s, who proved the equality of gay people

among straight ones.

In this thesis I’m going to develop how both gay and straight people saw the

gay society during the 70s, analyzing the characters who portray several roles

of gay and straight stereotypes of the moment, and the different episodes of the

book, where we will see some of the main characteristics of the period as it

goes on until the 1979 Olympic Games in Montreal.

2. Patricia Nell Warren and her historical context.

Patricia Nell Warren is an openly lesbian writer and journalist. She was born

in 1936 and grew up on the prestigious Grant Kohrs cattle ranch near Deer

Lodge, Montana. Her bestselling gay novels -- notably The Front Runner,

Harlan’s Race and Billy’s Boy -- started their print history in 1974 and continue

today with groundbreaking choices of themes and characters. As an activist,

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she has been involved in women’s rights and free-speech cases that went to

the U.S. Supreme Court. In recent years she turned to provocative editorials,

writing about post-9/11 issues, youth, elders, AIDS politics and other issues.

She also got active in politics, assisting with Democratic fundraising and serving

as commission of education in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In 2006

she ran for city council in West Hollywood. Many prestigious awards have come

her way, including the Barry Goldwater Award, the New York City Public

Advocate Award, and the Independent Publisher Gold Medal. (Biography taken

from The Bilerico Project).

Nell Warren has been writing gay fictional novels since 1974, when she

published The Front Runner. The 70s was the decade when the gay issue

started to show up in the United States of America, so her books became very

popular among the gay society. Nell Warren reflects gay people’s way of

thinking and feeling in a very sensitive and real way in her novels, proving

herself as a great storyteller, even when she is writing under the point of view of

a man, like Harlan Brown in The Front Runner.

Nell Warren has written around seven gay themed novels from 1974 until

2001, portraying in her stories a gay person or a gay group who have to fight

their society in order to survive. The writer always reflects a judging society who

tries to bring the gay people down.

In The Front Runner, Patricia Nell Warren shows the 70s society, who was

still adopting some of the huge transformations from the 60s, such the antiwar

movement or the human right with the black people issue in the top list.

Regarding the gay people, the 70s was really significant. According to some

experts, “the gay movement made a huge step forward in the 70s with the

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election of political figures such as Harvey Milk to public office and the

advocating of anti-gay discrimination legislation passed and not passed during

the decade. Many celebrities, including Freddie Mercury and Andy Warhol, also

"came out" during this decade, bringing gay culture further into the limelight.”

(Extracted from Wikipedia).

3. Society and History through characters

a. Harlan Brown

He is the narrator of the story, the protagonist. Harlan is a forty years old

track coach who falls in love with one of his pupils, Billy Sieve.

Harlan starts as a closeted homosexual who denies his nature because

his beliefs and education, which was very common in that period of time and

sometimes, unfortunately, does still happen nowadays. Harlan represents sort

of the mature-gay society in that time: hidden at first and opened at the end. In

the beginning of the novel, Harlan tells his background story to the reader. He

marries a woman when she gets knocked up and he works as a track coach in

Penn University. Like most of the closeted gay men of the moment, he travels

sometimes to New York City in the weekends during the early 60s to have

secret sexual relationships with other men. That’s when he learns who he really

is but still doesn’t accept it. In this period of time, the law persecuted gay

people. In fact, every state in the United States of America had a sodomy law

against gay people and it wasn’t until 1970 when these laws started to be

repealed or struck down, being the first one Illinois in 1962. Harlan lives hidden

by these oppressive rules and he is even fired from his job when a male student

accuses his of sexual arrestment. From that moment, Harlan moves to New

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York City and lives the actual changes that gay society starts to enjoy at that

moment: the Stonewall riots in 1969 and all the consequences that it brought.

All this time Harlan lives hidden from public eye and the society, fearing who he

is. It is when he gets a job in the fictional Preston University and meets Billy

Sieve when his attitudes towards the gay issues start to change. It’s relevant

the fact that their relationship becomes public when Harlan transforms himself

from a closeted old fashioned homosexual to an openly liberal gay, a transition

which was also in the gay society indeed.

Harlan stays neutral at the conflicts between the heterosexual people

and the gay people in the book, showing himself verbal violent and threatening

when the situation reaches the limits.

The author is constantly talking about the American felling towards sport,

and how proud they are about athletics and sports in general. Harlan Brown

belongs to this sector of the society.

In the end of the book, when Billy is murdered, Harlan loses almost

everything he cares in the world. This could be translated in the assassination

of Harvey Milk by Dan White, which affected the gay society on the moment by

killing his firs outspoken person in politics. As Harlan recovers and keeps on his

life, also gay society does, remembering all the effort done and all the fights

fought.

b. Billy Sieve

Billy Sieve is the co protagonist. He is Harlan Brown’s track pupil who

falls in love with his coach. Their relationship is tested by society and the sport

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world while Billy tries to achieve his goal: going to the 1976 Montreal Olympic

Games.

Billy represents the new wave of young people who embrace their sexual

identity with proud and are not afraid to show it up among the society. He is not

“public opened”, like he is telling everyone and everywhere that he is gay, but

he does not hide it either. This tendency increased at the end of the decade in

San Francisco, which has been always considered “USA’s gayest city”, when

Harvey Milk was elected for San Francisco’s Town Hall.

Billy does not go to the press and tells them about his sexual orientation,

but he does not lie either, and when he is asked, he answers with the truth. He

is proud of who he is but he does not want to be labeled only as “gay”, but more

as a “runner”, a “student” and mainly as a human being.

As being so liberal in a society which does not want him, Billy’s fate is

clear from the beginning of the story. He is the most exposed person in the

relationship because he is the one going to the Olympic Games and the one

who raises the attention. Taking in consideration these circumstances, and the

fact that he is gay, the oppression of the conservative straight people will try to

reduce Billy’s dream. At the end, when we can see that the gay pride, justice

and the evolution of the society is clear when he wins the 5.000 meters final

race, it all goes down with his assassination during the final race of the 10.000

meters. Here we can see that society has not changed and it is not ready to

have an openly gay champion among them.

Another important Billy’s characteristic is his peaceful nature: he is a

Buddhist. This comes from the hippie wave from the 60s, when new ways of

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living and thinking were introduced to the people, specially young one who

started to embrace the new and out with the old.

c. Vince Matti

Vince is Billy’s best friend, but not his lover. They have been running

together for a long time and they both go to Prescott College with Jacques

LaFont to finish their studies and to chase their dreams.

Vince also represents the new young gay society as Billy did, embracing

their sexual identity and being proud of it. Vince differs from Billy in several

terms.

First, Vince is defeated by the society when he is not allowed to go to the

Olympic games after being discovered of taking money from sponsors

(something which was forbidden). He surrenders to them. By this moment,

Vince’s attitude changes a lot when he goes from a pacifist to be part of some

gangs who use violence and extreme fight to rise up gay rights. In Christopher

Isherwood’s novel A Single Man, Professor George explains in one of his

classes: “A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the

majority to attack it. It hates the majority–not without a cause, I grant you.”

Vince Matti develops such a way of thinking: after suffering all types of

injustices for being gay, he starts a political fight pro-gay rights, which turns into

a “straightphobia” and a total reject to heterosexual people for what they did to

him. This transition in the character gets its highlight when Billy dies; after that,

Vince goes totally for the gay rights fight. After the gay movement started to

rise, so did the extreme thinking of both sides: homophobic and

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“straightphobic”. Several were the small radical and violent groups pro-gay who

did not give a good perspective for the cause.

Vince is in love with Harlan, Billy’s boyfriend. He starts flirting with his coach

at the beginning of the story but when Billy and Harlan start their relationship,

Vince also stops, but his feelings are still there. Part of his frustration is also

because of this. This love story is important for the following-up books, Harlan’s

Race and Billy’s Boy, proving, in some way, the free sexual felling of the gay

community in some terms.

d. Jacques LaFont

Jacques is a good friend of Billy and Vince. He is one of the three who go to

Prescott searching Harlan’s help. Apart of being a friend, Jacques is also

Vince’s lover and their relationship is quite disturbing because of the need but

refusal that each one has for the other.

Jacques is young, attractive but insecure. He represents the gay young

people who were too afraid to be in the public eye of the gay movement. In fact,

Jacques tend to be really stressed because of the pressure that the entire group

is constantly under.

As this segment of the gay young society, Jacques tries to hide who he is,

only being and feeling comfortable among other gay people when they are in

their privacy, but also comfortable but not happy when he pretends to be

straight among heterosexual people.

Jacques ends up leaving the team by his own decision because of the stress

he suffers and the constant pressure for being in the public eye. He ends up

marrying a woman named Eileen who knows everything about his past and

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accepts it, and having a daughter called Anna. But as we know later in the

sequel of The Front Runner, Harlan’s Race, he is still in love with Vince and

desires him, keeping his sexual instincts locked.

e. Straight allies: The Prescotts, Aldo Falconi, Armas Seponan and Mike

Stella.

Straight people reacted in three different ways regarding the uprising of this

new “gay wave”: supportive, indifferent or against. These characters are a clear

example of supportive people who were considered liberals and, in some

occasions, faced unsupportive people in some legal ways.

The Prescotts are Joe and Marian, a couple who are also the founders of

Prescott College. They hire Harland and accept Billy Sieve, Vince Matti and

Jacques LaFont in the school even knowing the scandals and their private life,

which can threaten their school. Even when everything goes public, they are still

in Harlan’s side, fighting for Billy to reach the Olympic team at the Games.

Aldo Falconi is one of Harlan’s friends who works in the Olympic Committee.

He helps Billy and Harlan form the inside, telling them all the movements that

the responsible ones for the Olympic Team are organizing to eliminate Billy’s

chances to join the team. He is not very supportive with the whole idea of the

public eye relationship, but he is a fair man and believes in justice, so he does

not hesitate to help Harlan and Billy in every way he can.

Mike Stella and Armas Seponan are two other runners that Billy meets in his

race towards the Olympic Games. Mike Stella becomes Billy’s straight-best

friend and a supportive key in the American Track Team. As a young liberal, he

is a faithful representation of the young straight society of the moment. With the

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hippie wave still in their minds, young people (most of them) were open about

the new progression of the society and the gay people were the ones who rose

at that time. While Mike is supportive and helps Billy in a personal way, Armas

does it at the professional field. Being the number one runner at the moment, he

wants to compete against Billy to prove himself. That’s why he shows up at

Billy’s meeting at the Olympic Committee when they try to stop Billy’s way to the

Olympic Games and how he won’t go if Billy does not go either.

f. Straight opponents: Society

The big antagonist of the story is society itself, when it gives its back to Billy

and Harlan when they try to enjoy and live their love.

Sport world is really criticized in the book as they see gay sportsmen and

sportswomen as natural enemies of the sports, and must be stopped in order to

perpetuate the American raze.

This mean society is represented in the people who try to stop them in their

Olympic race, like Bob Dellinger, a runner who tries to injure Billy in the

selection race for the Olympic Team; in the people who try to break their

relationship, like Billy’s biological mother who wants to kidnap him; or the

people who wants to kill them, like Richard Mech, the man who kills Billy at the

end of the story.

4. Main gay historical moments in The Front Runner

The elimination of sodomy laws all around the United States of America:

The novel talks about a “national abolition” which takes place in 1975

(the books is published in 1974) so it is a fictional historical moment. The

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sodomy laws were eliminated gradually state-by-state, starting Illinois in

1962 and finally Missouri in 2006, nearly 40 years later.

The Continental Baths Concerts: Actress and singer Bette Milder once

said “Despite the way things turned out [with the AIDS crisis], I'm still

proud of those days [when I got my start singing at the gay bathhouses].

I feel like I was at the forefront of the gay liberation movement, and I

hope I did my part to help it move forward. So, I kind of wear the label of

'Bathhouse Betty' with pride”. This bathhouse was really famous in the

beginning of the 70s when starts like Bette Milder started to perform

there, being a forefront of the gay liberation movement. The parts of the

book when the protagonists are in this place are a clear proof of

liberation and tolerance of the gay society.

LGTB or “queer” studies programs. In the book it is told that Prescott

opens the first LGTB Study Program to teach and talk about the gay

movement in 1975. This is also a fictional historical moment, as the first

program of this kind of studies was hold at the University of California,

Berkley, in the spring of 1970. These kinds of programs have become

really popular nowadays, but they started to work in the 70s. In the book,

Billy Sieve is the person in charge of this program at Prescott College.

The Stonewall riots in June 28th 1969. During these riots the gay

community became one all together to face the discrimination and

oppression that they were suffering. That’s why the Gay Pride Day is

celebrated this day. In the book, Harlan is one of the people who were

near the Stonewall and fought in the riots.

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The 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of

the XXI Olympiad. This is again a fictional historical moment. In the book,

this is where Billy is murdered, in the final race of the 10.000 meters.

There were no important accidents at the real Olympic Games.

5. Personal Opinion and Conclusion

The Front Runner is mainly a touching and wonderful love story which

proofs not only to be relevant to the gay community but also for the entire

society.

In my opinion Patricia Nell Warren success in portraying the gay culture and

society of the moment, representing in a very realistic way the oppression and

fighting against the gay community but also the way that it rises and strikes

back, become the main way of change at that moment.

The book is also relevant to understand how gay people were (and still are)

rejected at sports. It is also important the way that all the characters change

from being more close minded to have a full view of the issue and accept it. The

final part of the story, when Harlan is racing in this very last track race, is not

only fighting against the other runners, but also against that part of the society

who still does not accept it. But as Harlan says, it is not that much difficult to win

that race at the Madison Square Garden, as it is not any more to fight against

the people who does not accept him.

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6. Bibliography

- Goodreads. The Front Runner.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/343738.The_Front_Runner

- ISHERWOOD, Christopher. A Single Man. Ed. Minneapolis, 2001.

- KINSER, Jeremy. Will Bette Milder Talk About the Continental Baths? .“The

Advocate”. December 5th 2011.

http://www.advocate.com/news/daily-news/2011/12/05/will-bette-midler-talk-

about-continental-baths

- LOVETT, Joseph. Gay Sex in the 70s. Documentary. USA. 2005.

- The Bilerico Project. Patricia Nell Warren.

http://www.bilerico.com/contributors/patricia_nell_warren/

- The Huffginton Post – Patricia Nell Warren -

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patricia-nell-warren

- Wikipedia. The Front Runner - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Front_Runner

- Wikipedia. The 1970s, Social Movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s#Social_movements

- Wikipedia. 1970s in LGBT Rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_in_LGBT_rights

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