YMCA: Homosexual Haven

The YMCA was a religious grouping of men, an uplifting assembly based on shared spiritual values between members, in search, often in bible classes, of Christ-like purity. With the genesis of the concept that a man's body was the shrine in which he sheltered his immortal soul, came the desire to preserve, even embellish, each man's physical cathedral. Y publications, like the cover of this book, showed photographs of men, at times seminude and nude, as proof of what could be achieved thanks to regular gymnastics and healthy food, photos that escaped censorship because they were published by a Christian organization while, at the exact same time, in 1907, the magazine Physical Culture faced obscenity trials for publishing the same identical material.The combination of pictures of the ideal man in the Y's religiously-oriented magazines, the encouragement of fellowship between men and incentives to make men beautiful in body, as well as the benefits of camping, sharing a tent with a