Warren Johansson (February 21, 1934 – June 10, 1994) was a

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

, author and a leading American

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

scholar during his lifetime. He was founding member of the Scholarship Committee of the

Gay Academic Union The Gay Academic Union (GAU) was a group of LGBT academics who aimed at making the academia more amenable to the LGBT community in the United States. It was formed in April 1973, just four years after the Stonewall riots, held 4 yearly conferences ...

Biography

Warren Johansson was born in 1934, in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, with the name Philip Joseph Wallfield. His father was Jewish (and is said to have been killed with a shotgun by robbers in his pharmacy). At some point in his later career, Philip changed his name to the Nordic-sounding Warren Johansson, to express his disapproval of Jewish homophobia. His first venture into gay scholarship was to co-author ''Greek Love'' with the numismatist and later convicted child sex offender

Walter H. Breen Walter Henry Breen Jr. (September 5, 1928 – April 27, 1993) was an American numismatist, writer, and convicted child sex offender; as well as the husband of author Marion Zimmer Bradley. He was known among coin collectors for writing ''Wal ...

, who wrote under the name J. Z. Eglinton. He abandoned formal academic studies (at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

) but did not obtain a Ph.D. Johansson made himself a master of all the modern European languages (excepting only Basque, Hungarian, and Finnish) as well as of Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic. He used his linguistic abilities to read deeply and spent much of his life in research libraries, particularly at Columbia, where his extensive knowledge of obscure Slavonic dialects made him a valuable informal resource to scholars in the Russian department. William Armstrong Percy cites just one example of Johansson's surprising discoveries: while the British

Wolfenden Committee The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (better known as the Wolfenden report, after Sir John Wolfenden, the chairman of the committee) was published in the United Kingdom on 4 September 1957 after a suc ...

was sitting, Johannson unearthed the by-now-famous citation from Sigmund Freud, to the effect that homosexuals were not sick, and sent it off. Later, he provided expert testimony to legislative bodies in several countries including Luxembourg, Moldova and Argentina. Johansson apparently ran through a couple of bequests in record time: at one point he was driving a Mercedes in California, but most of the time he was penniless, and slept in public places such as libraries while keeping his few possessions in storage lockers. As Percy points out, Johansson came to see himself as a model of the Talmudic scholar, and thought it only fair that he should receive room and board in exchange for providing what amounted to an advanced post-graduate education in gay studies, gratis. Author and historian William Armstrong Percy has called Johansson "simply the most extraordinary person I have ever known."

References

Works

Wayne Dynes Wayne R. Dynes (August 23, 1934 – late July 2021) was an American art historian, encyclopedist, and bibliographer. He was professor emeritus in the Art Department at Hunter College, where he taught from 1972 to 2005. Dynes spent his early ye ...

and Warren Johansson (editors),
Encyclopedia of Homosexuality
', Taylor & Francis 1990. * Warren Johansson and William Percy, ''Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence'', Haworth Gay and Lesbian Studies, Routledge 1994. * Warren Johansson,
Ex parte Themis: The Historical Guilt of the Christian Church
', Gay Academic Union, New York 1981. Also in: Warren Johansson, Wayne Dynes,

John Lauritsen ''The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein'' is a 2007 book written and published by John Lauritsen, which defends the unorthodox hypothesis that the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, not his wife Mary Shelley, is the real author of '' Frankenstein; or, The Mode ...

,
Homosexuality, Intolerance, and Christianity: A Critical Examination of John Boswell's Work
', Pink Triangle Trust Library, 1985 & 2003. * Warren Johansson
"London's Medieval Sodomites."
''The Cabirion and Gay Books Bulletin'', no. 10 (Winter-Spring 1984), pp. 6–9 and 34. * Warren Johansson, "Whosoever shall say to his brother, ‘Racha’", ''The Cabirion and Gay Books Bulletin'', no. 10 (Winter-Spring 1984), pp. 2–4. Also in: Wayne Dynes & Stephen Donaldson (editors), ''Studies in Homosexuality'', vol. XII: ''Homosexuality and Religion and Philosophy'', Garland, New York & London 1992, pp. 212–214. * Warren Johansson and William Percy
Homosexuality in the Middle Ages
' (online pdf).

Literature

* William A. Percy, "Warren Johansson," in Vern Bullough, ''Before Stonewall'' (Harrington Park Press, 2002).

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johansson, Warren 1934 births 1994 deaths American philologists Jewish American writers Writers from Philadelphia American LGBT writers American LGBT rights activists LGBT studies academics LGBT people from Pennsylvania 20th-century philologists 20th-century American Jews 20th-century American LGBT people