Sagarin Situation

Making a meal out of a can of soup can be challenging. Here is a great rewarding dinner you can be proud of. It is named for a conflicted LGBT hero Edward Saragrin. Read about him after the recipe.

A can of soup, pound of ground beef and some noodles! Clean out that pantry and enjoy. 

 Ingredients:

1 lbs ground beef

1 onion chopped

2 cloves garlic chopped

10oz can vegetable beef soup

2 Tbs cornstarch

½ pkg low fat cream cheese

½ cup peas

½ pkg wide egg noodles

Directions:

Do your cutting: chop the onion and garlic.

Start the pasta.

In large skillet brown the ground beef and onions. 8-10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. 

 

Open and drain the soup liquid into a measuring cup. Fill up to the 1 cup level with water. Stir in the cornstarch making a nice slurry. Add contents of can to skillet and stir in the cornstarch slurry. 

 

Let cook until starting to thicken.

Add the cream cheese by spoonfuls and mix in the peas.

Let heat until blended.

Serve this over the cooked noodles for a full hearty meal.

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Edward Sagarin, also known by his pen name Donald Webster Cory.

His book The Homosexual in America: A Subjective Approach, published in 1951, was considered "one of the most influential works in the history of the gay rights movement," and inspired compassion in others by highlighting the difficulties faced by homosexuals.

Then he disavowed its message.

In the history of LGBT heroes, here was a Dr. Jekyll/Mr Hyde character you might never hear about.

On one hand Edward Sagarin used the royalty checks to finance his schooling to become a professor of sociology (he had been in perfume sales). He married a woman and had a child while, by all reports, carrying on a busy homosexual lifestyle. Sagarin began to insist, as a tenured sociologist at John Jay College specializing in the study of “deviance,” on pathologizing homosexuality. His belief was that homosexuality was "a disturbance" that probably arose as a result of a pathological family situation.

In 1963, he co-authored a book called The Homosexual and His Society which claimed that there was no such thing as a "well adjusted homosexual".

In the 1970s, Sagarin continued to pursue an active homosexual life, though he characterized homosexuals as disturbed, and frequently urged them to seek therapy. He rejected the idea that homosexuality was a natural sexual variant, and criticized the new psychological and sociological studies of Evelyn Hooker and John Gagnon. However, he argued that homosexuality should be decriminalized.

But who was this conflicted man? Sagarin was one of eight children born to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants in Schenectady, New York, in 1913.

He was born with scoliosis, which produced a hump on his back. He attended high school, and after graduating, spent a year in France where he met André Gide. (a personal hero whose defense of homosexuality was called: Corydon)

In the late 1940s, the federal government became deeply and officially homophobic. The Veterans Administration denied GI Bill benefits to gay veterans. The new Defense Department announced that homosexuals and lesbians must be discharged as rapidly as possible from the armed forces.

This was the environment that The Homosexual in America: A Subjective Approach was published. It's defense was landmark.

In his preface, “Donald Webster Cory” explained that it was time for someone who was homosexual to write about what it was like to be homosexual in America.

He opened the book by declaring that “minority rights” are the “challenge of this century … the corner stone upon which democracy must build and flourish, or perish in the decades to come.” Homosexuals were, he claimed, a “group without a spokesman, without a leader, without a publication, without an organization, without a philosophy of life, without an accepted justification for its own existence.”

“What does the homosexual want?” The problem, Cory says, is that the question has no answer because no freedom of political expression exists for gays. Citing a proverbial sociologist’s quip that there are no minority problems, only majority problems, Cory points more than once in his book to the all-encompassing, suffocating nature of homophobia. If gays speak out or identify themselves, they pay steep personal costs, including blacklisting in the labor market. Most straights have no interest in changing the status quo. It is all too possible for gay men to pass as straight: “The inherent tragedy—not the saving grace—of homosexuality is found in the ease of concealment. If the homosexual were as readily recognizable as are members of … other minority groups, the social condemnation could not possibly exist … our achievements in society and our contributions … would become well-known, and not merely the arsenal of argument in the knowledge of a few.”

Profound and encouraging words the country needed. Yet the still closeted Sagarin could never follow through. Was this perhaps a case of self-hatred? An internalized homophobia? For what ever reason there is just no neat package to sum up this LGBT Thinker.

Can we then focus on the powerful and necessary accomplishment of the book: The Homosexual in America: A Subjective Approach?

No one is perfect and it is important to remember that in history people were products of their time and culture.

We can celebrate the works of Donald Webster Cory and still warn of lessons learned by Dr. Edward Sagarin.