In the pre-Stonewall era, suicide was often the expected course for gay people, to avoid suffering the humiliation of being publicly identified as a degenerate. This was particularly true for prominent figures like Clay Shaw.

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Months passed, however, and Shaw had not obliged Garrison by killing himself. Garrison then was forced to bring Shaw to trial.

The trial finally began in early 1969. Garrison produced witnesses who swore that they saw Shaw plotting to kill the President. As the trial progressed, however, it became clear these witnesses were nothing more than an odd assortment of crackpots and toadies whose stories were incompatible with each other.

The jury took less than an hour of deliberation to return with a verdict of not guilty. The date was March 1, 1969, exactly two years after Shaw's arrest.

Two days later Garrison re-arrested Shaw, this time charging him with perjury. It took another two years, and the last of Shaw's retirement savings, finally to get the United States Supreme Court to order Garrison to stop persecuting Clay Shaw. By this time Shaw's resources were depleted, and he had to return to work.

The strain of the five-year ordeal took its toll on Shaw's health. He died of lung cancer on August 14, 1974. He was 61 years old.

To honor him, friends erected a plaque on one of the French Quarter buildings he had restored. They hoped that with time the public would come to know what they knew, that Shaw was a fine and decent man.

They did not anticipate that Oliver Stone would make a film called JFK, which made the unscrupulous Garrison into a hero and portrayed Shaw as a slimy underworld figure. Millions of people around the world who have seen the film presume it tells the truth.

Instead, however, the truth is on the plaque: "Clay Shaw was a patron of the humanities and lived his life with the utmost grace; an invaluable citizen, he was respected, admired, and loved by many."

The experience of Shaw is a telling reminder of the vulnerability of closeted gay men and lesbians in the pre-Stonewall era. Precisely because of his homosexuality, Shaw made an inviting target for the machinations of a ruthless politician.

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