
The gay liberation movement was a social and political movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s in the Western world, that urged
lesbian
A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...
s and
gay men
Gay men are male homosexuals. Some bisexual men, bisexual and homoromantic men may dually identify as ''gay'' and a number of gay men also identify as ''queer''. Historic terminology for gay men has included ''Sexual inversion (sexology), in ...
to engage in radical
direct action
Direct action is a term for economic and political behavior in which participants use agency—for example economic or physical power—to achieve their goals. The aim of direct action is to either obstruct a certain practice (such as a governm ...
, and to counter societal shame with
gay pride
In the context of LGBTQ culture, pride (also known as LGBTQ pride, LGBTQIA pride, LGBT pride, queer pride, gay pride, or gay and lesbian pride) is the promotion of the rights, self-affirmation, dignity, Social equality, equality, and increas ...
.
[Hoffman, 2007, pp.xi-xiii.] In the
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
spirit of the
personal being political, the most basic form of activism was an emphasis on
coming out
Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBTQ people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity.
This is often framed and debated as a privacy issue, ...
to family, friends, and colleagues, and living life as an openly lesbian or gay person.
[
The ]Stonewall Inn
The Stonewall Inn (also known as Stonewall) is a gay bar and recreational tavern at 53 Christopher Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It was the site of the 1969 Stonewall riots, which led to th ...
in the gay village
A gay village, also known as a gayborhood or gaybourhood, is a geographical area with generally recognized boundaries that is inhabited or frequented by many lesbian, gay, bisexuality, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. Gay vil ...
of Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...
, Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
, New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, was the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, Stonewall revolution, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous riots and demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of ...
, and became the cradle of the modern LGBT rights movement, and the subsequent gay liberation movement. Early in the seventies, annual political marches through major cities, (usually held in June, originally to commemorate the yearly anniversary of the events at Stonewall) were still known as "Gay Liberation" marches. Not until later in the seventies (in urban gay centers) and well into the eighties (in smaller communities) did the marches begin to be called " gay pride parades".[ The movement involved the lesbian and gay communities in North America, South America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Gay liberation is also known for its links to the ]counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...
of the time (e.g. groups like the Radical Faeries
Radical Faeries are a loosely affiliated worldwide network and Counterculture, countercultural movement blending queer consciousness and secular spirituality. Sharing various aspects with neopaganism, the movement also adopts elements from anarchi ...
) and for some gay liberationists' intent to transform or abolish fundamental institutions of society such as gender
Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
and the nuclear family
A nuclear family (also known as an elementary family, atomic family, or conjugal family) is a term for a family group consisting of parents and their children (one or more), typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single ...
,[ regardless of whether they had anything to do with the actual principles of gay rights. For some offsets of movement, the politics were radical, ]anti-racist
Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and delibera ...
, and anti-capitalist
Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and Political movement, movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists seek to combat the worst effects of capitalism and to eventually replace capitalism ...
. In order to achieve such goals, consciousness raising
Consciousness raising (also called awareness raising) is a form of activism popularized by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group on some cause or ...
and direct action
Direct action is a term for economic and political behavior in which participants use agency—for example economic or physical power—to achieve their goals. The aim of direct action is to either obstruct a certain practice (such as a governm ...
were employed. While HIV/AIDS
The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...
activism and awareness (in groups such as ACT UP
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy, ...
) radicalized a new wave of lesbians and gay men in the 1980s, and radical groups have continued to exist ever since, by the early 1990s the radicalism of gay liberation was eclipsed in the mainstream by newly-out, pro- assimilationist gay men and women who stressed civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' political freedom, freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and ...
and mainstream politics.[
The term ''gay liberation'' sometimes refers to the broader movement to end social and legal ]oppression
Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment of, or exercise of power over, a group of individuals, often in the form of governmental authority. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced.
No universally accepted model ...
against LGBT people. Sometimes the term ''gay liberation movement'' is even used synonymously or interchangeably with the ''gay rights movement
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) movements are social movements that advocate for LGBTQ people in society.
Although there is not a primary or an overarching central organization that represents all LGBTQ people and their i ...
''. The Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee was formed in New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
to commemorate the first anniversary of the June 1969 Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, Stonewall revolution, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous riots and demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of ...
, the beginning of the international tradition of a late-June event to celebrate gay pride. The annual gay pride festivals in Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, Cologne
Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
, and other German cities are known as Christopher Street Days or "CSD"s.
Origins and history of movement
Although the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York City are popularly remembered as the spark that produced a new movement, the origins predate these iconic events. Resistance to police bar-raids was nothing new: as early as 1725, customers fought off a police raid at a London homosexual molly house
Molly house or molly-house was a term used in 18th- and 19th-century Britain for a meeting place for homosexual men and gender-nonconforming people. The meeting places were generally taverns, public houses, coffeehouses or even private rooms ...
.
Organized movements, particularly in Western Europe, have been active since the 19th century, producing publications, forming social groups and campaigning for social and legal reform. In the early 1890s, the trial of Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
was widely reported in Germany and spurred discussion of homosexuality, leading to the homosexual emancipation movement in Germany, the first modern gay rights movement
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) movements are social movements that advocate for LGBTQ people in society.
Although there is not a primary or an overarching central organization that represents all LGBTQ people and their i ...
.
The movements of the period immediately preceding gay liberation, from the end of World War II to the late 1960s, are known collectively as the homophile movement. The homophile movement has been described as "politically conservative", although its calls for social acceptance of same-sex love were seen as radical fringe views by the dominant culture of the time.
Name
While the movement always included all LGBT people, in those days the unifying term was "gay", and later, "lesbian and gay", much as in the late eighties and early nineties, "queer
''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...
" was reclaimed as a one-word alternative to the ever-lengthening string of initials, especially when used by radical political groups.[Hoffman, 2007, pp. 79–81.] Specifically, the word 'gay' was preferred to previous designations, such as homosexual or homophile
Terms used to describe homosexuality have gone through many changes since the emergence of the first terms in the mid-19th century. In English, some terms in widespread use have been '' sodomite'', '' Sapphic'', '' Uranian or Urning'', '' homop ...
, that were still in use by mainstream news outlets, when they would carry news about gay people at all. ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' refused to use the word 'gay' until 1987, up to that time insisting on 'homosexual'.[Hoffman, 2007, p. 78.]
1960s
Early 1960s New York City, under the Wagner mayoral administration, was beset with harassment against the gay community, particularly by the New York City Police Department
The City of New York Police Department, also referred to as New York City Police Department (NYPD), is the primary law enforcement agency within New York City. Established on May 23, 1845, the NYPD is the largest, and one of the oldest, munic ...
. Homosexuals were among the targets of a drive to rid the city of undesirables. Consequently, only the Mafia
"Mafia", as an informal or general term, is often used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the Sicilian Mafia, original Mafia in Sicily, to the Italian-American Mafia, or to other Organized crime in Italy, organiz ...
had the power and financial resources to run gay bar
A gay bar is a Bar (establishment), drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ+) clientele; the term ''gay'' is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBTQ+ communi ...
s and clubs. By 1965, influenced by Frank Kameny's addresses in the early 1960s, Dick Leitsch
Richard Joseph Leitsch (May 11, 1935 – June 22, 2018), also known as Richard Valentine Leitsch and more commonly Dick Leitsch, was an American LGBT rights activist. He was president of gay rights group the Mattachine Society in the 1960s. He c ...
, the president of the New York Mattachine Society
The Mattachine Society (), founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, preceded by several covert and open organizations, such as Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Ha ...
, advocated direct action, and the group staged the first public homosexual demonstrations and picket lines in the 1960s.[Thomas Mallon](_blank)
"They Were Always in My Attic," ''American Heritage'', February/March 2007. Kameny, founder of Mattachine Washington in 1961, had advocated militant action reminiscent of the black civil rights campaign, while also arguing for the morality of homosexuality.
The New York State Liquor Authority (SLA) did not allow homosexuals to be served in licensed bars in the state under penalty of revocation of the bar's license to operate. This denial of public accommodation had been confirmed by a court decision in the early 1940s. A legal study on the city's alcoholic beverage law commissioned by Mattachine New York concluded there was no law ''per se'' prohibiting homosexuals gathering in bars; however, laws did prohibit disorderly conduct — which the SLA had been interpreting as homosexual behavior — in bars. Leitsch informed the press that three members of Mattachine New York would turn up at a restaurant on the Lower East Side, announce their homosexuality and, upon the refusal of service, make a complaint to the SLA. This came to be known as the "Sip-In" and only succeeded at the third attempt at Julius in Greenwich Village. The "Sip-In", though, did gain extensive media attention and the resultant legal action against the SLA eventually prevented the agency from revoking licenses on the basis of homosexual solicitation in 1967.
At the beginning of gay rights protest, news on Cuban prison work camps for homosexuals inspired the Mattachine Society to organize protests at the United Nations and the White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...
, in 1965.
In the years before 1969, the organization also was effective in getting New York City to change its policy of police entrapment of gay men, and to rescind its hiring practices designed to screen out gay people.[Carter, David, 2004. ''Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution''.] However, the significance of the new John Lindsay
John Vliet Lindsay (; November 24, 1921 – December 19, 2000) was an American politician and lawyer. During his political career, Lindsay was a U.S. congressman, the mayor of New York City, and a candidate for U.S. president. He was also a regu ...
administration and the use of the media by Mattachine New York should not be underestimated in ending police entrapment. Lindsay would later gain a reputation for placing much focus on quelling social troubles in the city and his mayorship coinciding with the end of entrapment should be seen as significant. By late 1967, a New York group called the Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods (HYMN), essentially a one-man operation on the part of Craig Rodwell
Craig L. Rodwell (October 31, 1940 – June 18, 1993) was an American gay rights activist known for founding the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on November 24, 1967 - the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors - and as the prime mo ...
, was already espousing the slogans "Gay Power" and "Gay is Good" in its publication ''HYMNAL''.
The 1960s was a time of social upheaval in the West, and the sexual revolution
The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the late 1950s to the early 1 ...
and counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...
influenced changes in the homosexual subculture
A subculture is a group of people within a culture, cultural society that differentiates itself from the values of the conservative, standard or dominant culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures ...
, which in the U.S. included bookshops, publicly sold newspapers and magazines, and a community center. It was during this time that Los Angeles saw its first big gay movement. In 1967, the night of New Years, several plainclothes police officers infiltrated the Black Cat Tavern. After arresting several patrons for kissing to celebrate the occasion, the officers began beating several patrons and ultimately arrested 16 more bar attendees including three bartenders. This created a riot in the immediate area, ultimately bringing about a more civil demonstration of over 200 attendees several days later protesting the raids. The protest was met by squadrons of armed policemen. It was from this event that the publication ''The Advocate
An advocate is a professional in the field of law.
The Advocate, The Advocates or Advocate may also refer to:
Magazines
* The Advocate (magazine), ''The Advocate'' (magazine), an LGBT magazine based in the United States
* ''The Harvard Advocate' ...
'' and organization Metropolitan Community Church
The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), also known as the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC), is an international LGBT-affirming Christian denominations, LGBT-affirming mainline Protestant Christian denomination. The ...
(led by Pastor Troy Perry) were born.
Few areas in the U.S. saw a more diverse mix of subcultures than Greenwich Village, which was host to the gay street youth. A group of young, effeminate runaways, shunned by their families, society, and the gay community, they reflected the countercultural movement more than any other homosexual group. Refusing to hide their homosexuality, they were brutalized, rebellious tearaways who took drugs, fought, shoplifted and hustled older gay men in order to survive. Their age, behavior, feminine attire and conduct left them isolated from the rest of the gay scene, but living close to the streets, they made the perfect warriors for the imminent Stonewall Riots. These emerging social possibilities, combined with the new social movements
The term new social movements (NSMs) is a theory of social movements that attempts to explain the plethora of new movements that have come up in various Western world, western societies roughly since the mid-1960s (i.e. in a post-industrial economy ...
such as Black Power
Black power is a list of political slogans, political slogan and a name which is given to various associated ideologies which aim to achieve self-determination for black people. It is primarily, but not exclusively, used in the United States b ...
, women's liberation
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminism, feminist intellectualism. It emerged in the late 1960s and continued till the 1980s, primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which resu ...
, and the student insurrection of May 1968 in France, heralded a new era of radicalism. After the Stonewall riots in New York City in late June 1969, many within the emerging gay liberation movement in the U.S. saw themselves as connected with the New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer ...
rather than the established homophile groups of the time. The words "gay liberation" echoed "women's liberation"; the Gay Liberation Front consciously took its name from the National Liberation Fronts of Vietnam
Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...
and Algeria
Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...
; and the slogan "Gay Power", as a defiant answer to the rights-oriented homophile movement, was inspired by Black Power, which was a response to the civil rights movement.
Vanguard 1965–1967
Vanguard was a gay rights youth organization active from 1965 into 1967 in San Francisco. It was founded by Adrian Ravarour and Billy Garrison, and ''Vanguard'' magazine was founded by Jean-Paul Marat and Keith St.Clare. Ravarour had been asked by Joel Williams to help the Tenderloin LGBT youth who suffered discrimination. Seeing their conditions, Ravarour, a priest, led Vanguard for ten months and taught gay rights, then led Vanguard members in early demonstrations for equal rights. After he resigned in May 1966, J. P. Marat joined Vanguard and led it in six months of protests. Glide Church began to sponsor it in June 1966 assisting Vanguard to apply to become a non-profit and apply for the EOC grant. The organization dissolved due to internal clashes in late 1966 and early 1967. Former members reorganized as The Gay and Lesbian Center and Glide re-directed the EOC funds intended for Vanguard to form a service agency and new non-profit The Hospitality House.
1969
On March 28, 1969, in San Francisco, Leo Laurence (the editor of ''Vector'', magazine of the United States' largest homophile
Terms used to describe homosexuality have gone through many changes since the emergence of the first terms in the mid-19th century. In English, some terms in widespread use have been '' sodomite'', '' Sapphic'', '' Uranian or Urning'', '' homop ...
organization, the Society for Individual Rights) called for "the Homosexual Revolution of 1969", exhorting gay men and lesbians to join the Black Panthers and other left-wing groups and to "come out" ''en masse''. Laurence was expelled from the organization in May for characterizing members as "timid" and "middle-class, uptight, bitchy old queens".
Laurence then co-founded a militant group the Committee for Homosexual Freedom with Gale Whittington, Mother Boats, Morris Kight and others. Whittington had been fired from States Steamship Company for being openly gay, after a photo of him by Mother Boats appeared in the ''Berkley Barb'', next to the headline "HOMOS, DON'T HIDE IT!", the revolutionary article by Leo Laurence. The same month Carl Wittman, a member of CHF began writing ''Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto'', which would later be described as "the bible of Gay Liberation". It was first published in the ''San Francisco Free Press'' and distributed nationwide, all the way to New York City, as was the ''Berkeley Barb'' with Laurence's stories on CHF's gay guerrilla militant initiatives and Mother Boats' photographs.
CHF was soon renamed the Gay Liberation Front (GLF); the Gay Liberation Front was a loose network of organizations throughout the US and abroad that determined their own political goals and modes of organization. One GLF statement of purpose explained their revolutionary ambitions:
We are a revolutionary group of men and women formed with the realization that complete sexual liberation for all people cannot come about unless existing social institutions are abolished. We reject society's attempt to impose sexual roles and definitions of our nature.
Gay Liberation Front activist Martha Shelley wrote, "We are women and men who, from the time of our earliest memories, have been in revolt against the sex-role structure and nuclear family structure."
In December 1969 the Gay Liberation Front made a cash donation to the Black Panthers, some of whose leaders had expressed homophobic
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who identify or are perceived as being lesbian, Gay men, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred, or ant ...
sentiments. Prominent GLF members were also strong supporters of Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and President of Cuba, president ...
's regime. These actions cost GLF, a numerically small group, popular support in New York City, and some of its members left to form the Gay Activists' Alliance. The GLF virtually disappeared from the New York City political scene after the first Stonewall commemoration parade in 1970.
Mark Segal, a member of GLF from 1969 to 1971, continued to push gay rights in various venues. As a pioneer of the local gay press movement, he was one of the founders and former president of both the National Gay Press Association and the National Gay Newspaper Guild. He also is the founder and publisher of the award-winning ''Philadelphia Gay News'' which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. In 1973 Segal disrupted the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the ''CBS Evening News'' from 1962 to 1981. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trust ...
, an event covered in newspapers across the country and viewed by 60% of American households, many seeing or hearing about homosexuality for the first time. Before the networks agreed to put a stop to censorship and bias in the news division, Segal went on to disrupt ''The Tonight Show
''The Tonight Show'' is an American late-night talk show that has been broadcast on NBC since 1954. The program has been hosted by six comedians: Steve Allen (1954–1957), Jack Paar (1957–1962), Johnny Carson (1962–1992), Jay Leno (1992–2 ...
'' starring Johnny Carson, and Barbara Walters on the '' Today'' show. The trade newspaper Variety claimed that Segal had cost the industry $750,000 in production, tape delays, and lost advertising revenue. Aside from publishing, Segal has also reported on gay life from far reaching places as Lebanon, Cuba, and East Berlin during the fall of the Berlin Wall. He and Bob Ross, former publisher of San Francisco's Bay Area Reporter
The ''Bay Area Reporter'' is a free weekly LGBT newspaper serving the LGBT communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is one of the largest-circulation LGBT newspapers in the United States, and the country's oldest continuously published ne ...
represented the gay press and lectured in Moscow and St. Petersburg at Russia's first openly gay conference, referred to as Russia's Stonewall. He recently coordinated a network of local gay publications nationally to celebrate October as gay history month, with a combined print run reaching over a half million people. His determination to gain acceptance and respect for the gay press can be summed up by his 15-year battle to gain membership in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association one of the nation's oldest and most respected organizations for daily and weekly newspapers. The battle ended after ''The Philadelphia Inquirer
''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', often referred to simply as ''The Inquirer'', is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded on June 1, 1829, ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is the third-longest continuously operating da ...
'', ''Philadelphia Daily News
''Philadelphia Daily News'' is a tabloid newspaper that serves Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper is owned by The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC, which also owns ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', a daily newspaper in Philadelphia.
The ''Dail ...
'' and the ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', also known simply as the PG, is the largest newspaper serving Greater Pittsburgh, metropolitan Pittsburgh in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Descended from the ''Pittsburgh Gazette'', established in 1786 as the fi ...
'' joined forces and called for PGN's membership. In 2005, he produced Philadelphia's official July 4 concert for a crowd estimated at 500,000 people. The show featured Sir Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, songwriter and pianist. His music and showmanship have had a significant, lasting impact on the music industry, and his songwriting partnership with l ...
, Patti LaBelle
Patricia Louise Holte (born May 24, 1944), known professionally as Patti LaBelle, is an American Rhythm and blues, R&B singer and actress. She has been referred to as the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Godmother of Soul". LaBelle began ...
, Bryan Adams
Bryan Guy Adams (born November 5, 1959) is a British and Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and photographer. He is estimated to have sold between 75 million and more than 100 million album, records and Single (music), si ...
, and Rufus Wainwright. On a recent anniversary of PGN, an editorial in ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' stated: "Segal and PGN continue to step up admirably to the challenge set for newspapers by H.L. Mencken: to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted."
1970s
By the summer of 1970, groups in at least eight American cities were sufficiently organized to schedule simultaneous events commemorating the Stonewall riots for the last Sunday in June. The events varied from a highly political march of three to five thousand in New York and thousands more at parades in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. While groups using the Gay Liberation Front name appeared around the U.S., in New York that organization was replaced totally by the Gay Activist Alliance. Groups with a "Gay Lib" approach began to spring up around the world, such as Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP, Inc.), and Gay Liberation Front groups in Australia, Canada, the US and the UK. The lesbian group Lavender Menace
Lavender Menace was an informal group of lesbian radical feminists formed to protest the exclusion of lesbians and their issues from the feminist movement at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City on May 1, 1970.
Members included ...
was also formed in the U.S. in response to both the male domination of other Gay Liberation groups and the anti-lesbian sentiment in the Women's Movement. Lesbianism was advocated as a feminist choice for women, and the first currents of lesbian separatism
Feminist separatism or separatist feminism is the theory that feminist opposition to patriarchy can be achieved through women's sex segregation from men.Christine Skelton, Becky Francis, ''Feminism and the Schooling Scandal'', Taylor & Francis, ...
began to emerge.
In August of the same year, Huey Newton, the leader of the Black Panthers, publicly expressed his support for gay liberation in his letter titled "A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters About the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements" stating that:
Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion.
...
Some people say that omosexualityis the decadence of capitalism. I don't know if that is the case; I rather doubt it. But whatever the case is, we know that homosexuality is a fact that exists, and we must understand it in its purest form: that is, a person should have the freedom to use his body in whatever way he wants.
This statement by Newton was revolutionary. There has been another black civil rights organization that saw gay and lesbians as another oppressed group in the United States during this decade. Newton recognized the same challenges that both oppressed groups face. He writes in his letter:
We haven't said much about the homo-
sexual at all but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it's a real thing. I know through reading, and through my life experience, my observations, that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. Maybe they might be the most oppressed people in the society.
Furthermore, Newton called for the removal of derogatory terms in the Black Panther's vocabulary. This helped advance the Gay Liberation Movement and legitimized it even further.
Although a short-lived group, the ''Comite Pederastique de la Sorbonne'', had meetings during the student uprising of May 1968, the real public debut of the modern gay liberation movement in France occurred on 10 March 1971, when a group of lesbians from the Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire (FHAR) disrupted a live radio broadcast entitled: "Homosexuality, This Painful Problem".[Sibalis, Michael. 2005. ''Gay Liberation Comes to France: The Front Homosexuel d'Action Révolutionnaire (FHAR)'', Published in 'French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar. Volume 1.]
PDF link
/ref> The expert guests, including Ira C. Kleinberg, Herman Kleinstein, a Catholic priest, and a dwarf, were suddenly interrupted by a group of lesbians from the audience, yelling, "It's not true, we're not suffering! Down with the heterocops!" The protesters stormed the stage, one young woman taking hold of the priest's head and pounding it repeatedly against the table. The control room quickly cut off the microphones and switched to recorded music. Later on the 15th of May the first specifically Gay Power march takes place in Europe in Örebro
Örebro ( ; ) is the seventh-largest city in Sweden, the seat of Örebro Municipality, and capital of Örebro County. It is situated by the Närke Plain, near the lake Hjälmaren, a few kilometers inland along the small river Svartån, and ...
, Sweden, led by a group known as .
In 1971, Dennis Altman published '' Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation'', considered an important intellectual contribution to the ideas that shaped gay liberation movements in the English-speaking world. Among his ideas were "the polymorphous whole" and his posing of the notion of "the end of the homosexual", in which the potential for both heterosexual and homosexual behaviour becomes a widespread cultural and psychological phenomenon. Similarly, Allen Young's 1972 manifesto "Out of the Closet, into the Streets" envisions gay liberation as the recognition of humanity's innate bisexuality
Bisexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or Human sexual activity, sexual behavior toward both males and females. It may also be defined as the attraction to more than one gender, to people of both the same and different gender, ...
and androgyny
Androgyny is the possession of both masculine and feminine characteristics. Androgyny may be expressed with regard to Sex, biological sex or gender expression.
When ''androgyny'' refers to mixed biological sex characteristics in humans, it oft ...
within relationships that are free, expressive, and equal. Young portrays lesbians and gay men as the vanguard
The vanguard (sometimes abbreviated to van and also called the advance guard) is the leading part of an advancing military formation. It has a number of functions, including seeking out the enemy and securing ground in advance of the main force.
...
of sexual and human liberation. Sociologist Steven Seidman interprets these intellectual productions as precursors to queer theory
Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of queer studies (formerly often known as gay and lesbian studies) and women's studies. The term "queer theory" is broadly associated with the study a ...
.
See also
* Decriminalization of homosexuality
* '' Gay Lib v. University of Missouri''
* Gay Community News (Boston)
* List of fictional gay characters
* Radical Faeries
Radical Faeries are a loosely affiliated worldwide network and Counterculture, countercultural movement blending queer consciousness and secular spirituality. Sharing various aspects with neopaganism, the movement also adopts elements from anarchi ...
Explanatory notes
Citations
General and cited sources
* Hoffman, Amy (2007). ''An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News''. University of Massachusetts Press. .
External links
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Emory University
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer collection, 1969–2019
{{Authority control
1960s in LGBTQ history
1970s in LGBTQ history
Underground culture
Sexual revolution
LGBTQ rights movement