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.”
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
