Archive of Our Own

By Eddie Brock
Feature Editor

 Much like the rest of the world, I was both surprised and extremely excited when I heard the news about Captain America being found. Frozen alive, no less. Sure, it’s the kind of event that usually is expected to come from a big-budget Hollywood movie from the likes of the Wachowskis, but sometimes life imitates art like that.
 There is something truly poetic about how the now-living legend was saved by the daughter of Howard Stark, one of many lives he’d saved back during World War II. But, dear reader, I pose two important questions: Who is Captain America? More importantly, who exactly is Steve Rogers?
 Let’s first address the elephant in the room, the thing that the entire world knows about: Captain America, practically a god among men and a super-soldier with some freaky shit in his veins. Most people grew up learning the history of that skinny guy from Brooklyn. If you didn’t, let me give you the cliff notes version.
 Steven Grant Rogers, born on the Fourth of July 1922, had suffered from physical ailments his entire life (such as asthma, color-blindness, frequent fevers, and heart arrhythmia, to name a few).
 According to many historians, the U.S. Army had denied him active duty until the prospect of Operation Rebirth came around, when General Chester Phillips introduced him to scientist Professor Joseph Reinstein.
 The rest, they say, is history. Captain America went from punching a fake Adolf Hitler across his show tours to kicking real Nazi butt with the Howling Commandos, only to be proclaimed killed in action near the end of the war (until, obviously, very recently).
 My sources from Stark Industries, who wish to remain anonymous, reveal that they had initially discovered Captain Rogers back in October 2016 and kept him under wraps with the assistance of S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel. Rogers has very scarcely been seen in public since the end of January, when he was last spotted in Brooklyn.
 Now that we have an idea of how Captain America came to be, the question remains: Who is Steve Rogers? The easy answer is he was a sickly, skinny boy from the boroughs that probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds sopping wet; a kid that had a natural heart of gold which made him the perfect candidate to one day become America’s Golden Boy.
 However, a constant talking point between conservatives and liberals alike is Rogers’ heavily debated sexual orientation. For the former, they wish to preserve the virtue of their beloved American icon, while the latter long to celebrate the significant and storied past of a queer man. Even in a time before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” historians and first-hand accounts both never agreed on the super-soldier’s orientation, having never been confirmed by the man himself.
 Many prolific gossip rags over the decades have stoked the flames that, before the Army, Rogers used to keep the lights on by hanging around the shipping docks. While most claims are unfounded, there have been internal memos dug up between military brass that implied the Captain often “stepped out” with other soldiers in his down time.
 In contrast, there are preserved letters from those same soldiers who worked near Rogers that note an apparent long-term romance with a woman within the French Resistance, a Dr. Peggy Carter. Some journals published in the early ‘60s also dove into his relationship with his best friend, Bucky Barnes, citing interviews and wartime clips that implied they shared a more intimate bond.
 Regardless of how Steve Rogers used to (or may still) identify, there is no shying away from the fact that the idea of a queer Captain America has been widely accepted and honored by the LGBTQ+ community since the first edition of D.C.’s Washington Blade in 1969.
 Every Pride parade from the Pacific to the Atlantic to this day has people wearing America’s colors in homage of Rogers, with his likeness plastered on posters and shirts and videos everywhere.
 In the end of this all, maybe we can’t actually answer the question of “Who is Steve Rogers?” Maybe we never will. We all have an idea of who we think Steve Rogers/Captain America is, and what he means to each of us, but maybe it’s an inquiry that deserves to be put to rest.
 To Mr. Rogers, if my words have the privilege of being read by you, I say—thank you. Thank you for your service, and the inadvertent gay inspiration that you became over the years. Welcome to the twenty-first century.