Sexual Mafia

By Dominic Schuler '11

The Mafia (Cosa Nostra) is as an institution one of the top subscribers to ideals of 'machismo'. In a nutshell- organized crime is a go, but gay is a deal breaker. I found this interesting because of Robert Mormando, a Gambino family gunman, who broke the mafia code of silence-- omertà and confessed to acting as a government informer in his court hearing this week (regarding a shooting in 2003), but that isn't all he confessed to. He also outed himself in court, in an attempt to stress to the judge the higher-than-usual degree of danger he was putting himself in acting as a government informer.

I didn't find this case interesting because of a slightly self-interested court-mediated outing, nor because I was surprised to hear about a 'gay' in the Mafia (I'm sure there are more), but because of the Mafia's history in interacting with the queer world.

Before queer communities 'came out' from underground, laws prevented queer people from living easily in the mainstream world. For instance, throughout the 1950's and 60's, the FBI kept a list of known homosexuals (due to the 'Lavender Scare'- we all know those gays are right up there at the top of the list of risks to national security) so that bartenders could avoid breaking the law by having more than three homosexuals in their building at the same time- and this law seems almost sane and non-arbitrary in comparison with others!

During that time period, the Mafia ran a host of gay bars and night clubs, including the Stonewall Inn, interacting profitably with what at the time, was another underground, highly controversial community. Although queer culture has run more into the mainstream these days (I'm glad that law is off the books, because I've probably broken it more times than I can count!), the Mafia still interacts with many openly gay lawyers and businessmen.

I think that these seemingly opposed ideals stem from the divide between what is 'business' and what is 'personal'. In any event, the Mafia (and the military, for that matter) would probably do well to leave sexual preference out of their membership criteria.