The Year Between Stonewall and Pride (Part III)
"Do you think homosexuals are revolting? You bet your sweet ass we are."
This is part III of a four part series. Part I and part II can be read at the links provided.
The first iteration of the Mattachine Action Committee was done. Another would soon arise, but would soon be overshadowed by the efforts of those who departed the first iteration, beginning with a consequential flier.
Its header read:
Do you think homosexuals are revolting? You bet your sweet ass we are.
It continued:
We’re going to make a place for ourselves in the revolutionary movement. We challenge the myths that we are screwing up this society.
This was the first flier for the Gay Liberation Front, the group started by the dissidents of the Mattachine Action Committee. They were advertising a meeting at the Alternate University, or Alt-U, a countercultural vagabond education center “free of grades, credit and age restrictions.” Written prominently on its wall were the words, “AND GOD SAID: E=MC²”.
The rally.
As the GLF was forming, the remaining members of the Mattachine Action Committee—with Mattachine New York and the Daughters of Bilitis—were planning a vigil for July 27 in Washington Square Park.
“We refuse to accept the straight person’s guilt about sex,” their leaflet read. “Help bring about the day when we can walk out in the open as first-class citizens.”
The rally would generate around four hundred people, with speeches from both GLFers and the Mattachine Action Committee. It was described as a “great high,” but as some attendees began calling for a march to the nearby Sixth Precinct to demonstrate in front of police, organizers abruptly told them to go home.
The formation of GLF, coupled with the newfound ostentation of Mattachine, were the first rumblings of Queer pride—the idea they no longer had to cater to straight people’s sensibilities to secure rights owed to them—on a large scale.
But GLF would soon face its own discord.
GLF fractures.
The Gay Liberation Front was ambitious. Named for the National Liberation Front of North Vietnam, they embraced a leaderless structure and called for organizing against other forms of oppression—racism, capitalism, war—as well as Queer oppression.
Some members grew frustrated with that leaderless structure, and there was even more frustration that the fledgling group was so quick to rush into what some saw as separate issues before getting its own efforts organized.
The final straw for its more moderate members came when the group passed a motion to show solidarity with the Black Panther Party (which you can read about here.) Arthur Evans, Jim Owles, and Marty Robinson left the group to form the Gay Activists Alliance, a single-issue group dedicated solely to the advancement of gay and lesbian rights.
One of GAA’s most famous members—who would also force it to confront its stance on trans liberation—was Sylvia Rivera (but that story comes next week.)
The radicals kill the Homophile Movement—and start PRIDE.
Five months after its Annual Reminder fell to pieces at the hands of newly-radical young Queers, the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) convened in Philadelphia for its annual convention, headed by its Chairman, Frank Kameny.
Surprisingly enough, Kameny had attended a Gay Liberation Front meeting every time his activism brought him to New York, according to Dr. Eric Cervini’s excellent 2020 biography on Kameny, The Deviant’s War.
Though Kameny disagreed with GLF’s embrace of non-gay initiatives, he acknowledged their radical demands represented the future of the movement.
When ERCHO convened in November, he announced his resignation as chairman.
On the first night of the convention, GLF and radicals from other militant Queer movements descended on the ERCHO conference at the gay bar, My Sister’s Place.
They had a plan to hijack the entire convention, with GLFer Jim Fouratt—who’d shouted down Dick Leitsch at the second Mattachine Action Committee meeting—saying:
We wanted to end the homophile movement. We wanted them to join us in making a gay revolution.
The next night, the radicals proposed a series of militant motions, all of which passed, despite the strong opposition of Mattachine New York.
In one of the most cinematic moments, Ellen Broidy of the NYU Student Homophile League handed a proposal to Chairman Frank Kameny, creator of the Annual Reminder.
It read:
RESOLVED: That the Annual Reminder, in order to be more relevant, reach a greater number of people and encompass the ideas and ideals of the larger struggle in which we are engaged—that of our fundamental human rights—be moved in time and location.
The final sentence would change the course of history.
We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY.
There would be no dress code or bans on PDA, like there were the Annual Reminder. Those days were done.
As Chairman, Kameny could only oversee the proceedings, he couldn’t offer a vote. He watched as the conference members voted in favor of the resolution, with Mattachine New York abstaining. The Reminder was dead.
The motion passed. The march was on. Pride was born.
NEXT WEEK: Planning for Christopher Street Liberation Day faces obstacles. Another raid mobilizes hundreds. The march takes its first steps.