Die Geschichte des 'Spartacus Gay Guide' wurde bisher nicht geschrieben. Das hat Gründe, die hier beschrieben und dokumentiert werden. Dabei ist sie (sogar nur von 1970-1987) spannend, turbulent und so umfangreich, dass sie einen einzelnen Blog-Eintrag sprengen würde. Deshalb veröffentlicht brunoleaks die Geschichte und die Hintergründe in mehreren hintereinander folgenden Teilen.
Da schon während der Recherchen immer wieder neue und sogar gegenteilige Fakten auftauchten, aber auch nachträglich ergänzende Kenntnisse und Erkenntnisse von Insidern eingingen und sicherlich noch eingehen werden (z.B. von Lesern), sei an dieser Stelle daran erinnert, dass Einträge in diesem Blog grundsätzlich auch ergänzt, selbstverständlich richtig gestellt, korrigiert oder gekürzt werden können.
Das hier auftauchende Dauer-Thema ‘Pädophilie’ dient nur einem Zweck, nämlich zur Erläuterung der ‘Spartacus’-Fakten und -Hintergründe. Im übrigen erhebt auch dieser Blog-Beitrag weder Anspruch auf Allwissenheit, noch auf Vollständigkeit. Interessenten stellen wir gerne Artikel-Kopien in hoher Auflösung zur Verfügung, z.B. wenn Textabbildungen hier nur ungenügend lesbar sind.
In der ersten Ausgabe gab Stamford an, an der Gesetzesreform der 60er Jahre in Grossbritannien beteiligt gewesen zu sein ... Jedenfalls schien er aus Kreisen zu kommen, die sich aus Gerechtigkeitsstreben für die eigenen homosexuellen Interessen und die der anderen eingesetzt haben. (Peter Thommen/ARCADOS, 11/2006)
1972 übersiedelte Stamford nach Amsterdam, angeblich weil er in Grossbritannien mit seinen Publi-kationen Schwierigkeiten bekam ... wird in 'Wikipedia' behauptet:: "... die britischen Gesetze [standen] einer offenen Diskussion über Homosexualität entgegen...".
The Sunday Times erzählte Stamford, er sei aus England geflohen, weil die Briten „zu stur sind und nicht die Qualität sexueller Partnerschaft zwischen Männern und Jungen verstehen können“.
Tatsächlich dürfte der Umsied-lungsgrund ein weit schwerwie-genderer gewesen zu sein, wie in schwulen Publikationen nachzulesen ist. U.a. im ‘Gay Journal’, 1986, Seite: "...der 1972 in die Niederlande geflohen war, nachdem er in London des Kinder-Porno-Handels überführt worden war..." Stamford rühmte sich bekanntlich, die ersten schwulen Pornohefte in Grossbritannien produziert zu haben.
1973 im Dezember erschien der ‘Spartacus’, 3. Ausgabe, erstmals in Amsterdam; „im liberalen Klima der Niederlande“. Während der seinerzeit viel in schwulen Publikationen gedruckte DORUS die Titelseite illustriert hatte, fallen im Innenteil die zahllosen Buben-Illustrationen auf.
Bis zu dieser Ausgabe erscheint der Name Stamford nicht im Guide, sondern Euro Spartacus, Post Office Box 3496, NL 1001 AG Amsterdam
1977 schon beklagte sich Stamford über Raubdrucke. Ausserdem darüber, dass es Diskriminierungen gibt, der Art, dass entweder ältere Homosexuelle (er war "schon" 38), Lesben, oder überhaupt Homosexuelle irgendwo plötzlich nicht mehr eingelassen wurden.
1980 Die 10. Ausgabe des Reiseführers hatte bereits einen Umfang von 608 Seiten, mit Informationen aus über 250 Ländern. Das Cover wurde vom berühmten Pornoproduzenten Jean Daniel Cadinot gestaltet. Die Redaktion erhielt jährlich 12.000 Briefe mit Informationen. (nach ‘Wikipedia’)
1981 bereits kam der ‘Spartacus’ in heftige Turbulenzen. Im ‘Gay Journal’ 8/1986, S. 20, heisst es: "Er sei für die Ausbeutung von Kindern in Thailand, Sri Lanka und auf den Philippinen verantwortlich ..."
(Der ganze Artikel kommt später noch zur Sprache)
1982 erscheint am 29. April im Londoner nicht-schwulen EVENT Magazine (Stadtmagazin London) folgende Guide-Besprechung, hier vollständig wiedergegeben, da sie ein interessantes und umfassendes Bild von John D. Stamford und seinen Geschäften zeichnet:
Good Man Guide. David Roper on the ‘Spartacus Gay Guide’.
He started his adult life as a Catholic priest in Brighton. Now he’s head of what must be the largest gay business empire in the world. He is the only man who knows the exact circulation figures for the world’s most comprehensive homosexual information guide, which this year alone may sell as many a quarter of a million copies at £ 7.50 (das entsprach damals 32,- DM) for 750 densely printed pages. Such is its reputation that it is now sold by ‘Foyles and Collets’, though thousands more copies are consulted and furtively memorised in bars and clubs from Bangor to Bankok.
What began as a gay listing guide in Brighton is now in position whose power enables the owner to offer advertising space by invitation only to those establishments of ‘quality’ that have been awarded at least two stars in the guide. And there are enough advertisers who are willing to pay £ 600 (das entsprach damals 2550,- DM) for a full page without knowing the print run - safe with the assurance that each year’s guide sells out entirely by September.
There can’t be many people who can afford to replace their ‘Spartacus’ annually, though the listings do change constantly thanks to reports sent in by readers and constant Egon Ronaystyle updatings by their own assessors. And with a seven workstation computer digesting those facts and well-established international contacts, it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to suspersede their information easily. And in any case, John D. Stamford is not a man who would tolerate any meddling with the heavily protected set-up he runs from a box number in Amsterdam (in the early, less permissive days they anticipated police problems if they remained in Britain).
Since the first ‘Spartacus’ appeared in 1970, the company has diversivied and grown to include a holiday club offering discount at various establishments, specific reports on areas such as the Far East or California, and a contact service of around 200 couriers to help members find their way round foreign parts. Every two month they publish a rather tawdry travel guide that consits of John Stamford’s diaries and visits about the globe: happier doing field research than supervising his empire, Stamford spends most of the year on the road in an impressive mobile home (number plate BOY1) - well in keeping his flamboyant life-style of meeting with government officials and club owners.
In his editorial in the latest ‘Spartacus’ guide, Stamford hits out at those governments that try to be ‘virtue-vendors’ - preferring local exploitation to cash-flush tourists from the West - and begins to refer to them as Nazi repressives. What he objects to is the practice of those third world countries that have chosen to discourage the gay (and often pederast) tourist lavishes boys with money in exchange for sexual favours: is this any more reprehensible than making the boys work in shops and small factories for little or no wages ... and then screwing them away?
‘Spartacus’ appears to be in two minds over this one, and Peter Glencross, the company’s business manager is ready to admit that their promotion of parts of the third world was mistake which is now being rectified. Stamford himself is against loud, flashy faggots, and Sri Lanka has been dropped from the listings at the demand of the country’s government; any places that the guide might have included would have suffered local police trouble. Until two or three yaers ago, Sri Lanka was being offered as the paedophile’s paradise - an honour that has now developed on the Philippines.
A number of countries that have previously been omitted due to a lack of accurate information are included this year. Burma has come in (‘the Burmese is a true friend’) and Swaziland (no laws, no one in prison) is on the way. China and Russia are always a problem since so few people of ‘that persuasion’ bother to holiday there, but even more surprising are the listings for Albania, Rwanda, St Barthelemy and Micronsia (eight out of ten guys available in exchange for a case of beer!).
Unanimously voted Europe’s gay Mekka once again, West Berlin is awarded plenty of four star entries, though it’s only London that gets a of five star accolades (Heaven, Subway, Napoleon, Bolts, the Tent); John D. Stamford, sole proprietor, has final word on all these tributes, but for UK listings, at least, the guide depends on report and recommandations offered by Gay Switchboard.
Perhaps the most unusual entries in each section are headed ‘Facilities’, which may be dropped for the next issue. The reason? ‘Spartacus’ thinks most correspondents find these details unimportant, though, for all they know, there could be a silent ‘majority’ which finds them indispensable; needless to say, inspectors do not check the local shithouses, and apart from the legal complications of inciting lawlessness, it is the one area of the information spectrum that threatens to lower the whole tone of Stamford’s Good Man Guide.
He comes across as strangely moral for someone who can claim to have produced male porn mags before anyone else, and the former guest-house owner’s most recent targets are the users of poppers (amyl nitrate), anyone who smokes in bars, un-airconditioned clubs and uncircumcised men (they should wash several times a day).
If any premises fall below his standards ‘Spartacus’ takes up the complaint with the owner, whose unwillingness to make improvements leads to a quick snip in the next edition. At the same time as he offers grants for research into VD and other health hazards, Stamford now publishes and distributes the ‘Pan’ magazine which ‘deals honestly with boy-love’ by printing interviews with international youth an ‘recent research by psychologists on the realities of untraumatised man/boy relations’. For the first time, they have just launched ‘Panthology I’, a collection of rather tame stories about nephews visiting during their public-school hols or willing slaves in ancient Rome.
What we do not know is just how much money this 43 year old Geminian from Lancashire has made from his enterprises, none of which have that cleanly acceptable air of self-help that characterises the ‘San Francisco Pink Pages’ (a Yellow Pages for anyone looking for gay plumbers, poodle-trimmers or typists), which may be soon to be seen in England.
Those who have met John Stamford do not find him easy to get on with, and his liability to bear a grudge for decades has led some unkind foes to spread rumour that his next project is likely to be a walk on water. The belief that his arrival in a foreign country amounts to: ‘I am John Stamford, send me up a guy in exchange for a T-shirt and an English cigarette’ does not prevent anyone from recognising that this year’s guide is far more accurate than any previously published. The rest of his literary output has a distastefully pornographic flavour, typically disguised as ‘scientific’ or serious articles. Mr. Super Morality has this to say in his defence: ‘One is justified in suspecting some sort of international conspiracy against us by many of those grey men who execute the laws of the world. And in this dark crusade a new breed of virtue-vendors are appearing in the press with more regularity - men and women who are making themselves nicely rich and powerful out of ‘cleaning up’ (that is, desexualising) the world. It is not difficult to draw a parallel between the Britain of 1981, for example, and Germany on the eve of the Nazi take-over. What can we do about it? First, we should not let the Nazi types and virtue-vendors hang a guilt trip on us. We must confront them and expose their distortions and reveal their real purposes in mounting these attacks: to wipe out homosexuals and homosexuality and to grab publicity and all the power and the money that goes with it.’ Now, really, what does he mean?
1983 informierte SPARTACUS erstmals über AIDS. Davor gab es immer nur ein kleines Kapitel über Geschlechtskrankheiten.
1983 Einstweilige Verfügung gegen Spartacus-Ausgabe 1983:
"Ohne 'Nachbehandlung' darf kein Exemplar ... verkauft werden ... besteht im Unkenntlichmachen einer Kritik, welche Stamford unter 'München' gegen zwei dortige Diskotheken schrieb. Diese Unternehmen, so wetterte Stamford, würden Homosexuelle geringschätzig betrachten, dennoch so viel geld wie möglich von ihnen nehmen, davon aber nichts in die Homosexuellen-Szene investieren - keiner der beiden betriebe hatte in Stamfords 'Spartacus' inseriert ... Beobachter betrachten diesen 'gerichtlichen Warnschuss' John Stamford gegenüber als 'längst überfällig': Der Spartacus-Herausgeber verteile je nach eigenem Geschmack und Erleben selbstherrliche Plus- ujnd Minuspunkte über die Gay-Etablissements 'around the world'. Zumindest an jenen Orten, an denen er persönlich erscheint (und er reist viel), soll er, heisst es, seine Bewertung stark von den Umständen abhängig machen, wie er empfangen und bei den Anzeigenaufträgen bedacht wird."
Da schon während der Recherchen immer wieder neue und sogar gegenteilige Fakten auftauchten, aber auch nachträglich ergänzende Kenntnisse und Erkenntnisse von Insidern eingingen und sicherlich noch eingehen werden (z.B. von Lesern), sei an dieser Stelle daran erinnert, dass Einträge in diesem Blog grundsätzlich auch ergänzt, selbstverständlich richtig gestellt, korrigiert oder gekürzt werden können.
Das hier auftauchende Dauer-Thema ‘Pädophilie’ dient nur einem Zweck, nämlich zur Erläuterung der ‘Spartacus’-Fakten und -Hintergründe. Im übrigen erhebt auch dieser Blog-Beitrag weder Anspruch auf Allwissenheit, noch auf Vollständigkeit. Interessenten stellen wir gerne Artikel-Kopien in hoher Auflösung zur Verfügung, z.B. wenn Textabbildungen hier nur ungenügend lesbar sind.
Fortsetzung vom (anklicken) 1. Teil, Vorgeschichte und 1967
Die Geschichte des SPARTACUS Reiseführer beginnt
1970 im März brachte Stamford in Sussex [nahe dem ziemlich schwulen Brighton] den ersten ‘Spartacus’ heraus. Auf 109 Seiten waren insgesamt 3.000 schwule Treffpunkte (Homophile meeting places) verzeichnet. Davon waren 60 in London und mehr als 200 Orte aus dem Vereinigten Königreich. Stamford hatte es sich zum Ziel gesetzt, eine „bessere Welt für Schwule“ mitzugestalten, gegen die versteckte Einsamkeit (der Homosexuellen) anzukämpfen, Kontakte zu ermöglichen und mitzuhelfen ein internationales Netzwerk kooperierender Organisationen aufzubauen. (bis hier nach ‘Wikipedia’)In der ersten Ausgabe gab Stamford an, an der Gesetzesreform der 60er Jahre in Grossbritannien beteiligt gewesen zu sein ... Jedenfalls schien er aus Kreisen zu kommen, die sich aus Gerechtigkeitsstreben für die eigenen homosexuellen Interessen und die der anderen eingesetzt haben. (Peter Thommen/ARCADOS, 11/2006)
The Sunday Times erzählte Stamford, er sei aus England geflohen, weil die Briten „zu stur sind und nicht die Qualität sexueller Partnerschaft zwischen Männern und Jungen verstehen können“.
Tatsächlich dürfte der Umsied-lungsgrund ein weit schwerwie-genderer gewesen zu sein, wie in schwulen Publikationen nachzulesen ist. U.a. im ‘Gay Journal’, 1986, Seite: "...der 1972 in die Niederlande geflohen war, nachdem er in London des Kinder-Porno-Handels überführt worden war..." Stamford rühmte sich bekanntlich, die ersten schwulen Pornohefte in Grossbritannien produziert zu haben.
1973 im Dezember erschien der ‘Spartacus’, 3. Ausgabe, erstmals in Amsterdam; „im liberalen Klima der Niederlande“. Während der seinerzeit viel in schwulen Publikationen gedruckte DORUS die Titelseite illustriert hatte, fallen im Innenteil die zahllosen Buben-Illustrationen auf.
Bis zu dieser Ausgabe erscheint der Name Stamford nicht im Guide, sondern Euro Spartacus, Post Office Box 3496, NL 1001 AG Amsterdam
1977 schon beklagte sich Stamford über Raubdrucke. Ausserdem darüber, dass es Diskriminierungen gibt, der Art, dass entweder ältere Homosexuelle (er war "schon" 38), Lesben, oder überhaupt Homosexuelle irgendwo plötzlich nicht mehr eingelassen wurden.
1980 Die 10. Ausgabe des Reiseführers hatte bereits einen Umfang von 608 Seiten, mit Informationen aus über 250 Ländern. Das Cover wurde vom berühmten Pornoproduzenten Jean Daniel Cadinot gestaltet. Die Redaktion erhielt jährlich 12.000 Briefe mit Informationen. (nach ‘Wikipedia’)
(Der ganze Artikel kommt später noch zur Sprache)
1982 erscheint am 29. April im Londoner nicht-schwulen EVENT Magazine (Stadtmagazin London) folgende Guide-Besprechung, hier vollständig wiedergegeben, da sie ein interessantes und umfassendes Bild von John D. Stamford und seinen Geschäften zeichnet:
Good Man Guide. David Roper on the ‘Spartacus Gay Guide’.
He started his adult life as a Catholic priest in Brighton. Now he’s head of what must be the largest gay business empire in the world. He is the only man who knows the exact circulation figures for the world’s most comprehensive homosexual information guide, which this year alone may sell as many a quarter of a million copies at £ 7.50 (das entsprach damals 32,- DM) for 750 densely printed pages. Such is its reputation that it is now sold by ‘Foyles and Collets’, though thousands more copies are consulted and furtively memorised in bars and clubs from Bangor to Bankok.
What began as a gay listing guide in Brighton is now in position whose power enables the owner to offer advertising space by invitation only to those establishments of ‘quality’ that have been awarded at least two stars in the guide. And there are enough advertisers who are willing to pay £ 600 (das entsprach damals 2550,- DM) for a full page without knowing the print run - safe with the assurance that each year’s guide sells out entirely by September.
There can’t be many people who can afford to replace their ‘Spartacus’ annually, though the listings do change constantly thanks to reports sent in by readers and constant Egon Ronaystyle updatings by their own assessors. And with a seven workstation computer digesting those facts and well-established international contacts, it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to suspersede their information easily. And in any case, John D. Stamford is not a man who would tolerate any meddling with the heavily protected set-up he runs from a box number in Amsterdam (in the early, less permissive days they anticipated police problems if they remained in Britain).
Since the first ‘Spartacus’ appeared in 1970, the company has diversivied and grown to include a holiday club offering discount at various establishments, specific reports on areas such as the Far East or California, and a contact service of around 200 couriers to help members find their way round foreign parts. Every two month they publish a rather tawdry travel guide that consits of John Stamford’s diaries and visits about the globe: happier doing field research than supervising his empire, Stamford spends most of the year on the road in an impressive mobile home (number plate BOY1) - well in keeping his flamboyant life-style of meeting with government officials and club owners.
Vorsatz der 1982er Ausgabe mit Stamfords Freund (zu dieser Zeit, offensichtlich Holländer), der auch auf der 1983er Ausgabe abgebildet ist
In his editorial in the latest ‘Spartacus’ guide, Stamford hits out at those governments that try to be ‘virtue-vendors’ - preferring local exploitation to cash-flush tourists from the West - and begins to refer to them as Nazi repressives. What he objects to is the practice of those third world countries that have chosen to discourage the gay (and often pederast) tourist lavishes boys with money in exchange for sexual favours: is this any more reprehensible than making the boys work in shops and small factories for little or no wages ... and then screwing them away?
‘Spartacus’ appears to be in two minds over this one, and Peter Glencross, the company’s business manager is ready to admit that their promotion of parts of the third world was mistake which is now being rectified. Stamford himself is against loud, flashy faggots, and Sri Lanka has been dropped from the listings at the demand of the country’s government; any places that the guide might have included would have suffered local police trouble. Until two or three yaers ago, Sri Lanka was being offered as the paedophile’s paradise - an honour that has now developed on the Philippines.
A number of countries that have previously been omitted due to a lack of accurate information are included this year. Burma has come in (‘the Burmese is a true friend’) and Swaziland (no laws, no one in prison) is on the way. China and Russia are always a problem since so few people of ‘that persuasion’ bother to holiday there, but even more surprising are the listings for Albania, Rwanda, St Barthelemy and Micronsia (eight out of ten guys available in exchange for a case of beer!).
Unanimously voted Europe’s gay Mekka once again, West Berlin is awarded plenty of four star entries, though it’s only London that gets a of five star accolades (Heaven, Subway, Napoleon, Bolts, the Tent); John D. Stamford, sole proprietor, has final word on all these tributes, but for UK listings, at least, the guide depends on report and recommandations offered by Gay Switchboard.
Perhaps the most unusual entries in each section are headed ‘Facilities’, which may be dropped for the next issue. The reason? ‘Spartacus’ thinks most correspondents find these details unimportant, though, for all they know, there could be a silent ‘majority’ which finds them indispensable; needless to say, inspectors do not check the local shithouses, and apart from the legal complications of inciting lawlessness, it is the one area of the information spectrum that threatens to lower the whole tone of Stamford’s Good Man Guide.
He comes across as strangely moral for someone who can claim to have produced male porn mags before anyone else, and the former guest-house owner’s most recent targets are the users of poppers (amyl nitrate), anyone who smokes in bars, un-airconditioned clubs and uncircumcised men (they should wash several times a day).
If any premises fall below his standards ‘Spartacus’ takes up the complaint with the owner, whose unwillingness to make improvements leads to a quick snip in the next edition. At the same time as he offers grants for research into VD and other health hazards, Stamford now publishes and distributes the ‘Pan’ magazine which ‘deals honestly with boy-love’ by printing interviews with international youth an ‘recent research by psychologists on the realities of untraumatised man/boy relations’. For the first time, they have just launched ‘Panthology I’, a collection of rather tame stories about nephews visiting during their public-school hols or willing slaves in ancient Rome.
What we do not know is just how much money this 43 year old Geminian from Lancashire has made from his enterprises, none of which have that cleanly acceptable air of self-help that characterises the ‘San Francisco Pink Pages’ (a Yellow Pages for anyone looking for gay plumbers, poodle-trimmers or typists), which may be soon to be seen in England.
Those who have met John Stamford do not find him easy to get on with, and his liability to bear a grudge for decades has led some unkind foes to spread rumour that his next project is likely to be a walk on water. The belief that his arrival in a foreign country amounts to: ‘I am John Stamford, send me up a guy in exchange for a T-shirt and an English cigarette’ does not prevent anyone from recognising that this year’s guide is far more accurate than any previously published. The rest of his literary output has a distastefully pornographic flavour, typically disguised as ‘scientific’ or serious articles. Mr. Super Morality has this to say in his defence: ‘One is justified in suspecting some sort of international conspiracy against us by many of those grey men who execute the laws of the world. And in this dark crusade a new breed of virtue-vendors are appearing in the press with more regularity - men and women who are making themselves nicely rich and powerful out of ‘cleaning up’ (that is, desexualising) the world. It is not difficult to draw a parallel between the Britain of 1981, for example, and Germany on the eve of the Nazi take-over. What can we do about it? First, we should not let the Nazi types and virtue-vendors hang a guilt trip on us. We must confront them and expose their distortions and reveal their real purposes in mounting these attacks: to wipe out homosexuals and homosexuality and to grab publicity and all the power and the money that goes with it.’ Now, really, what does he mean?
1983 informierte SPARTACUS erstmals über AIDS. Davor gab es immer nur ein kleines Kapitel über Geschlechtskrankheiten.
"Ohne 'Nachbehandlung' darf kein Exemplar ... verkauft werden ... besteht im Unkenntlichmachen einer Kritik, welche Stamford unter 'München' gegen zwei dortige Diskotheken schrieb. Diese Unternehmen, so wetterte Stamford, würden Homosexuelle geringschätzig betrachten, dennoch so viel geld wie möglich von ihnen nehmen, davon aber nichts in die Homosexuellen-Szene investieren - keiner der beiden betriebe hatte in Stamfords 'Spartacus' inseriert ... Beobachter betrachten diesen 'gerichtlichen Warnschuss' John Stamford gegenüber als 'längst überfällig': Der Spartacus-Herausgeber verteile je nach eigenem Geschmack und Erleben selbstherrliche Plus- ujnd Minuspunkte über die Gay-Etablissements 'around the world'. Zumindest an jenen Orten, an denen er persönlich erscheint (und er reist viel), soll er, heisst es, seine Bewertung stark von den Umständen abhängig machen, wie er empfangen und bei den Anzeigenaufträgen bedacht wird."
aus dem Schwulenmagazin DON Juni 1983
Fortsetzung (anklicken) 3. Teil 1984 und 85
