KEITH ST CLARE         

VANGUARD MAGAZINE

Keith St Clare is a man driven by a mission: help those who need it. A 1980 issue of The San Francisco Crusader called him a “nice man who cares about real problems.” 

​

When he was 17 years old, his father illegally maneuvered him into the United States Air Force, and he served as an Aerospace Ground Power Repairman stationed in Okinawa, Japan. Four years later, in 1966, he returned to the United States and moved to San Francisco. The Summer of Love expanded in his heart, and he became and edited Vanguard magazine. Vanguard was for the untouchables pushed aside by gay assimilationists and the heterosexuals they attempted to replicate. It was a forever open dialogue between the denied, forgotten, persecuted youth, drug addicts, transgenders, drag queens and all gay men and women.

Although Keith stopped publishing Vanguard in 1979, it is a living magazine. The content is controversial and remains true. It is a combination of every medium, a breath from every culture. There are pre-Gay Liberation articles titled Interview with a Transvestite, The History of Syphilis, Bisexual Interview, List of Sex Offenses and Their Punishments in All 50 states, LA Secret Police, Lavender in Uniform, Interview with a Maschosit, Black Art Adds Culture, etc. Erotic images and delicate yet in-your-face poetry unites every issue. 

The fact that Keith gave a voice to these untouched subjects in 1966 is bold, but even bolder is that he did so using his real name and real address. He admits he was scared, but the military taught him how to protect himself. He says he was not going to be a martyr. 

Keith did not stop with Vanguard. He worked commercially for community theaters and produced 186 episodes of the nationally distributed and entirely youth-run TV show Young Ideas all the while raising over 600 foster kids. 

THE FOLLOWING POETRY WAS PUBLISHED ONCE IN 1967

Man and woman may fight and kill

Or love or lie…

They have free will.

Holy God whose powers should

Be greater, aren't

Poor God can do only good.

​

Faint from assault

From the campaign still ahead

I’ve sat

And played like children

My fingers in sand

And with thoughts held by air.

THIS MAGAZINE

For me

This edition has been

The thing

Of a sense of survival,

Of faith in myself

And not love.

We’re all right.

Sometimes we pass or glance,

Embarassed

Because we are down.

​

Rather than

This summer sits still

On the clouded windows

Draperies within.

But fingers of an icy

Autumn are caught in

My hair.

The dedications

And love belong

To Will

And to our friend

Michael

In the east

​

Did you know that sex

Is a river of boats

With bowls in them?

Homosex sex in place of sex of

Striking sticks between bone boxes

Or shoulder blade cheeks to love

Song of operated, plastic

Good touchings and making dougnuts

Of dildoes curing the marriage bite

Of a good double need, consolation

And not caring about wasted seeds

On babies.