I'm Eric Marcus and you to J.J. Belanger, but before I do, I have a confession to make.

One of the things we take pride in with making gay history is bringing long lost or forgotten stories to life.

J.J. story was one that even I had forgotten.

When our executive producer, Sarah Burningham, told me that she'd been listening to

J.J's compelling interview in the Making Gay History Archive, it didn't ring a bell, not even a little bell.

But then Sarah mentioned a couple of famous black and white photo

booth pictures of two men from the early 1950s and I knew exactly who she was

talking about and you may too. In one of the photos, the handsome young men, each with his head pressed against

the other, are looking directly into the camera's lens. Both have faint mischievous smiles

on their lips. In a second photo, they're kissing passionately

and given the times defiantly.

It was 1953, and the man on the right in the photos

is 30-year-old J.J. Belanger.

1953 is also the year that J.J. joined the Early Gay Rights Group, the Madishing

Society, arriving in Los Angeles to attend the organization's heated

constitutional convention that led to the founders

being thrown out and a new regime led by Hal Call taking over. You can hear more

about the Madishing Society in two of our earlier episodes, one featuring Hal Call and the other Chuck

Roland, who was one of the five original founders.

But the focus of this episode with J.J. Belanger isn't on his involvement with Madicine. We're going further back in time to the 1930s and

40s to a wartime love story and later to J.J's work with the legendary Alfred Kinsey whose research

upended common assumptions about sex and sexuality.

...