Review – Political Animal: The Life and Times of Stewart Butler
The commemorative plaque on the Faerie Playhouse, just outside the French Quarter, the headquarters for LGBT+ activist Stewart Butler and his partner Alfred Doolittle. Photo by Ellis Anderson
In this new book, New Orleans historian and author Frank Perez delves into the fascinating life of the late LGBT+ activist, a man both driven and influential.
– by Clayton Delery
Political Animal: The Life and Times of Stewart Butler
By Frank Perez
Foreword by Robert W. Fieseler
Jackson: University of Mississippi Press 2022
To read most books about LGBT+ history, one could easily get the impression that nearly all the important political advances took place in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, while the rest of the country passively rode the coattails of bicoastal activists. In writing “Political Animal: The Life and Times of Stewart Butler,” New Orleans author Frank Perez is helping correct that false impression.
Stewart Butler’s life was, in many ways, defined by being an outsider and living among them. From his youth growing up in the Carville Leprosarium, to his early adulthood campaigning for elective office in Alaska before it was a state, to his eventual relocation to New Orleans where he lived in neighborhoods like the Tremé long before they were fashionable, he seemed always to live just outside of what most people would consider acceptable boundaries.
That would have made his life an interesting one, even if he had never so much as organized a meeting or signed a petition.
Click here to order the book from your local Indie bookstore
Fortunately, though, Stewart Butler had a strong sense of social justice, and a belief that he had a duty to try and help the lives of others, a trait he no doubt inherited from his father, a career military man. And fortunately, Butler found a talented and capable biographer in Frank Perez, who shares Butler’s activist vision.
Butler was either a founder or an early member of many political organizations and movements. That he was a gay man made him a natural for Louisiana Lesbian and Gay Political Action Caucus (LAGPAC) and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (P-FLAG), as well as countless other organizations, committees, and projects.
Detail from cover of “Political Animal: The Life and Times of Stewart Butler” by Frank Perez. Cover art by J.B. Harter
Stewart Butler in his later years, photo by Vince Santiago
Butler was instrumental in getting the city of New Orleans to adopt an ordinance in 1991 banning discrimination against lesbians and gays (an ordinance that remains unique in the state). Unlike so many polarized figures in today’s political sphere, Butler knew the value of formulating alliances – however unlikely – with people on both sides of an issue, while refusing to reflexively adopt the stance of either.
Even within organizations devoted to advancing queer rights, Butler was always looking out for those who could easily be marginalized. Some gays and lesbians still resist the inclusion of trans people under the Pride umbrella, but Butler was fighting for their inclusion as early as the 1990s. He was instrumental in getting P-FLAG to adopt this position on a national scale, and was one of the signatories of a letter sent to the Human Rights Campaign, castigating the organization for its former trans-exclusion policy, and calling them out for adopting a position “inconsistent with its very name.”
That Butler was able to devote decades worth of time and energy on what often seemed quixotic causes was something that he owed to his longtime partner, Alfred Doolittle. Hailing from a wealthy family, Doolittle had a fortune that was perhaps small by the standards of one of today’s media or tech billionaires, but it was enough to allow Butler to withdraw from paid employment so that he could devote the next forty years of his life to community and political activism.
Doolittle and Butler, photo courtesy Ron Joullian
Doolittle and Butler, photo courtesy Ron Joullian
Because same-sex marriage was not yet legal, Alfred legally adopted Stewart to ensure Stewart would always be financially secure. Together, Butler and Doolittle bought and lived in a Creole cottage on Esplanade Avenue that became known as The Faerie Playhouse. Though it was on the “wrong” side of North Rampart (just outside the French Quarter), it became a community center where many plans were developed, and where the cremains of many of New Orleans’ queer activists have a resting place today.
The Faerie Playhouse, photos by Ellis Anderson
Stewart Butler was not just interested in the cause of the moment; he was also interested in preserving the records of past battles. He was – characteristically – one of the founding members of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana, and in reading “Political Animal,” one gets the sense that Butler and Doolittle never threw anything away.
This habit of theirs allowed Frank Perez access to an unusually large (and vanishingly rare) collection of documents: diaries, letters; meeting agendas; programs and handbills from performances and political functions; and even the scripts of plays Doolittle wrote and had performed at the Faerie Playhouse.
Perez, keenly aware of the value of such documents in our “read-it-then-delete-it age,” quotes liberally, and cites his sources conscientiously. He is both a detail-oriented historian, and a gifted storyteller.
In a city known for its eccentric and colorful characters, Stewart Butler still managed to stand out. In writing “Political Animal,” Frank Perez has created a vivid portrait of Butler which will serve to advance and preserve Butler’s legacy.
Stewart Butler in his later years, photo by Vince Santiago
Support our creative team –become a member of our Readers’ Circle now!
