Partner Paul Hardman
Queer Places:
1782 Pacific Ave, San Francisco, CA 94109
A. Warren Kopp (born June 1, 1929) and his partner Paul Hardman have been featured in ''Family: a portrait of gay and lesbian America'', by Nancy Andrews (1994).
World War II Navy veteran Paul Hardman was a founding member of the American Legion Post 448, the nation's only predominantly gay post. Paul and his partner of forty years, Warren Kopp live in the Pacific Heights section of San Francisco. Paul was a retired banker. They lived in a Victorian home. Hardman said: Ten years ago it became apparent to me that the cutting edge for gay rights in the military had to be from the outside by those of us who had served honorably and successfully in the military—people who knew what it was like to be in the military but who were be¬ yond their reach. We were now civilians, and I don't care how big a general you are, you are second-rate to a civilian. So I founded American Legion Post 448. An American Legion post is a minimum of fifteen people who are honorably discharged war veterans who are interested in working with war veterans. It took a year and a half to get them to accept our application. Because we were gay, because we were making an outreach to gay and lesbian veterans, they didn't want our kind. Several times they lost our application. They threw up every roadblock, creating things that were not really required. All of our members had to show formal discharge papers to at least two other members of the Amer¬ ican Legion to make sure that we were truly veterans. We had to pick the name of an American war hero, which is also not required. So I picked Alexander Hamilton, because he was gay. Many American Legion posts sit around and drink beer. They tell limited-intelligence jokes, talk dirty about girls, and make snide remarks about gay people and pretend to per¬ form a lot of functions which are in their handbooks but don't actually occur. They have all kinds of subcommittees on youth, radio communication, and espionage. It's like a Boy Scout handbook that has very little relevance in actual practice. The intentions of those who put it together were good—but the phenomenon that's observable in actual conduct is not. Before they really knew or had any experience with gay veterans, they were suspicious and antagonistic. People would ask, "Will your members dress funny and speak funny?" We march in parades and we win their prizes—which is not really any comment on how good we are, but, frankly, how poor they are. When the veterans are all out marching, like on Memorial Day, we're there.
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