4/6/97--Ed The Walt Whitman Bridge The bridge is so-named despite the vigorous protests of thousands of school children and thousands of nauseated adults. In 1955, while the bridge was under construction, the Port Authority suggested the name because Walt was a famous person from New Jersey, and so balanced Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, for whom the earlier bridge over the Delaware River was named. But the Catholic Diocese of Camden organized a campaign to prevent naming the bridge for someone whose "life and works are personally objectionable to us," for "a homo-erotic." In one of the diatribes against Whitman, the Church paper said, "Whitman's major works exhibit a revolting homosexual imagery that is not confined to a few isolated passages but permeates the fetid whole." Except for the homophile magazine One, none of Whitman's defenders thought the bridge should be named for a homo; they just thought it wasn't clear that Whitman was a homo. Some thought the Port Authority shouldn't cave into the Catholics, who, they said, had enough experience with slanderous allegations about priests not to slander Whitman. With the confidence of bureaucrats, the Port Authority did not participate in the debate and went on and named the bridge for Whitman. Bibliography Marc Stein__________________________________

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