Honcho (March 1993), Part Two

In the spring of 1916, Sir Roger Casement, a beloved philanthropist who had worked to protect African natives from colonial exploitation, was tried and charged for treason due to his involvement with the campaign for Irish independence. Although the original verdict did not involve death, Ernley Blackwell, a legal advisor to the British Home Office, used Casement’s Black Diaries, a personal memoir he had written which graphically detailed his sexual encounters with African men during his humanitarian efforts, as a means to tarnish the individual’s reputation and sway King George V into overruling the verdict and demanding a death sentence. Despite pleas for a stay of execution from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the United States’ Senate, and writers George Bernard Shaw and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the King, repulsed by the accounts presented in the dairies, had Casement executed. In this March 1993 issue of Honcho (which has been broken into two parts), Roger Edmonson’s article explores the life and legacy of Casement, including his poetic defense of same-sex love. Included in this second half (see the first half here) is a reader’s praise for the magazine’s willingness to feature hairy, mature men, the short story “Tuck-Point” (where the narrator tries to find relief during finals week), and photspreads titled “Big Things Come in Leather Packages,” “Daddy Leatherbear and His Favorite Gloves,” “The Next Best Thing to Strange Underwear Is Taking It Off,” and “On-the-Job Training.”