When Batman was gay

Batman vs. the Nuclear Family
At a time when social norms dictated that men and women should form nuclear families and settle into comfortable domesticity, Batman’s homosocial world presented no small challenge to the “normal” family.

Of course, only a decade before the publication of “The Seduction of the Innocents” the idea of men living only with other men for the purposes of fighting other men was not just uncontroversial, but, in the midst of World War II, it was the norm. Under war conditions, soldiers lived and slept together. They depended upon one another for comfort and support, emotional and physical.

As John Ibson argues in “Picturing Men,” male-male physical affection in the wartime context was normal and captured frequently in photography of the era. As Allan Berube has documented, soldiers frequently also found sexual companionship with other soldiers, often with the knowledge of — and without causing much consternation among — their peers and superiors.

The military actually did little to aggressively police male-male sexuality until the end of the war, when the branches dishonorably discharged tens of thousands of service people on “morals” charges.
Indeed, the sort of intimacy between men enjoyed by millions of men in the early ’40s was increasingly suspect by the end of the decade. Society moved quickly to restabilize heterosexuality and stigmatize many of the types of same-sex intimacy — sexual and nonsexual alike — that had been common during the war.

Margot Canaday notes in “Building a Straight State” that the architects of the 1944 GI Bill designed it intentionally to make ineligible for benefits those service members who had been discharged on morals charges.

The Lavender Scare
As tensions with the Soviet Union increased, psychologists, politicians and demagogues linked communism to homosexuality, arguing that communists and homosexuals were secretive and opposed to the “democratic” heterosexual family unit.

Even if homosexuals were not communist themselves, they could be blackmailed and strong-armed into complicity with communist schemes. Thus, the “lavender scare” — as historian Robert Johnson has called it — preceded the “red scare.”

In 1950, a subcommittee chaired by Maryland Sen. Millard Tydings convened to investigate Joseph McCarthy’s notorious list of “205 known communists.” Tydings worked to discredit McCarthy’s claim, but in the process the subcommittee at least partially validated concerns that the State Department was overrun with “sexual perverts.”

During the hearings, Nebraska Sen. Kenneth Wherry memorably claimed that as many as 3,000 homosexuals were employed by the Department. By the end of 1950, 600 people had been dismissed from positions at the State Department on morals charges.

Butching up Batman
How deeply the cultural climate influenced the creative forces at DC Comics is difficult to tell. Regardless, the charges levied by Wertham against Batman were bad for sales — parents might steer their children away from the title toward more “wholesome” comics and some communities might attempt to censor the comic book altogether. In an effort to combat the perception that their product was morally suspect, DC made a number of changes.

To address the general concern that Batman comics were too violent and encouraged socially reckless behavior, writers for Batman increasingly penned stories with surreal, fantastical, or absurd story lines. Plots portrayed Batman traveling through time to ancient Babylon, venturing to alien planets, and being the victim of magic spells.

Rather than depicting Gotham as a den of vice and crime, the writers portrayed the city as relatively safe and prosperous. Batman’s foes became less violent, plotting capers that often centered exclusively on symbolic crimes or “unmasking” Batman. Batman himself became less anti-social — frequently cooperating with Gotham police and public safety committees — and DC began including public service advertisements in the comic.

Other changes were designed to specifically undercut the accusation that Batman and Robin were gay. Alfred’s role in the comic was diminished. (He was even killed off for a while in the early 1960s, only to be literally resurrected for a while as a villain.) Aunts Agatha and Harriet were introduced to provide care, nurturing and a woman’s touch in Wayne Manor.

At the same time, DC began to introduce a series of other female characters to provide romances for Batman and Robin — Bat-girl in 1956 and Batwoman in 1961. As Best notes, Bat-girl and Batwoman’s complementary crimefighting acted as a replacement for regular heterosexual courtship: rather than dinner and a movie, a romantic Batman took his girl out on rooftops.

In this way, Batman’s crimefighting became a time when he could WOO! and COURT! And the cast of female characters provided him with something of a full family, or at least the groundwork for one. Even if this existence never achieved true “normalcy,” the changes at least blunted the edges of a lifestyle that was at odds with the expectations of the decade.

It’s something of a cliché today to point out that the rigid expectations of domesticity in the ’50s were, to say the least, unrealistic and stifling for many people, straight and gay. Whether Batman experienced something of a Bat-Mystique is tough to discern, though he seems at times to have chaffed under the care of Aunts Harriet and Agatha.

In any case, Batman’s hypothetical feelings on the matter were irrelevant to the suits at DC. The world had changed and a Batman who continued to live in 1945 was an economic liability in 1955. He was a threat to the family and to the bottom-line.

Batman’s “gayness,” then, was a flash point for a larger set of social anxieties. Just as elites worked aggressively to purge society and government of homosexuality, so too did DC purge Batman of any social deficiency which could be interpreted or construed as “gay.”

Was it enough? To satisfy the most vocal critics, yes. But, ironically, the move to surrealism and fantasy also pushed Batman into the territory of high camp, in which Batman’s ostensibly heterosexual romances were suspiciously unbelievable.

Indeed, in the camp world of the Batman television series, Batman’s exaggerated and largely asexual romances seemed almost like a parody of actual heterosexual romances — a tension best explored by Robert Smigel’s “Ace and Gary” cartoon shorts.

In this sense, Silver Age Batman’s partisans miss the central reason why he is a compelling and fascinating figure in the first place. His most important relationships have always been with criminals. What drives him to pursue them? How does he distinguish himself from his foes? How is vigilantism anything but criminal? His most provocative implications have always centered around the distinction between law and justice — his dedication to the latter, often at the expense of the former.

Attempts to contrive a heterosexual “history” for Batman have always rung false, precisely because what rang true about him had nothing to do with “normal” heterosexual romance. This, however, hardly necessitates that he occupy an all-male world, and the next Nolan film would benefit from a compelling female villain.

In the end, this much is certain: a character locked in any banal romance, either with Dick Grayson or Gotham City prosecutor Rachel Dawes, hardly seems believable as someone willing to endure the deprivations and burdens required of The Batman.

— Tyrion Lannister is a contributor at Bilerico-Indiana (indiana.bilerico.com), where this feature first appeared. It is reprinted with permission.