Gay Liberation Movement
In the 1960s, lesbian, gay man, bisexual, transgender person, or queer were struggling for their basic rights, explicitly denied them by their government and the larger society around them. A community of people, identical to other American citizens except for the objects of their affections, was united by its shared oppression and came together in the 1960s and the 1970s not to “fit in” but to build their own community for themselves within the enveloping context of American society.
As Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, often called the “father” of LGBTQ civil rights, asserted with some asperity in his 1960 petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court: "The government’s regulations, policies, practices and procedures, as applied in the instant case to petitioner specifically, and as applied to homosexuals generally, are a stench in the nostrils of decent people, an offense against morality, an abandonment of reason, an affront to human dignity, an improper restraint upon proper freedom and liberty, a disgrace to any civilized society, and a violation of all that this nation stands for. These policies, practices, procedures, and regulation have gone too long unquestioned, and too long unexamined by the courts."
In the 1950s and ‘60s, Greenwich Village was home to celebrated authors, Civil Rights activists, friends, and early Gay-Rights pioneers James Baldwin (1924-1987). Baldwin was openly gay and many of his works — notably Giovanni’s Room (1956, his second novel), Another Country (1962), and Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968) — centered on gay or bisexual characters and frankly explored issues of identity, race, and homosexuality.
Working-class butches and femme lesbians in 1950s Buffalo, New York resisted being labeled as deviant by holding hands in public and participating openly as couples in public establishments, most often bars. On the other side of the country, at Compton’s Cafeteria on an August night in 1966, drag queens and transsexuals — some of whom had working-class jobs while others worked the streets — rioted in San Francisco in reaction to police harassment and discrimination.
The Stonewall Inn is one of the most significant sites associated with LGBT history in New York City and the entire country. On Friday evening 27 June 1969, a routine police raid on this gay bar in Greenwich Village resulted in active resistance, the street erupted into violent protest as the patrons, largely working-class people of color, fought back. The backlash and the five days of rioting and demonstrations, featured unprecedented cries for “gay pride” and “gay power.”
The Stonewall Riots have been considered the event marking the beginning of gay liberation and critical in a transformation from accommodation and silence to active protest and visibility. The Stonewall uprising sparked the next phase of the Gay Liberation Movement, which involved more radical political action during the 1970s. Groups such as the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activists Alliance, Radicalesbians, and the Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries were organized within months of the uprising.
But narratives of the Stonewall Riots often celebrate the defiance of gays (and sometimes lesbians) in the face of police harassment without mentioning that many of the bar’s patrons were people of color, hustlers, transgender people, and sex workers. They were poor, gender-variant women of color, streetbased sex workers, with confrontational, revolutionary politics and, in contrast to the often abstract and traditionally political activists, focused on the immediate concerns of the most oppressed gay populations.
Portofino (c. 1959-75), 206 Thompson Street, an Italian restaurant that was a discreet Friday meeting place for lesbians, was where Edith S. Windsor met Thea Clara Spyer in 1963. Married in Canada in 2007, they were together until Thea’s death in 2009, after which Edie received a large inheritance tax bill. She sued, challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which was overturned by the Supreme Court in a path-breaking decision in 2013.
The Furies Collective House, Washington, DC was the operational center of the Furies, a lesbian feminist separatist collective from 1971 to 1973. The work done by the Furies here, including publication of their newspaper, The Furies, was instrumental in creating and shaping the ideas that continue to underpin lesbian feminism and lesbian separatism.
Bayard Rustin was a brilliant strategist, pacifist, and forward-thinking civil rights activist during the middle of the 20th century. In 1947 as a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Rustin planned the"Journey of Reconciliation", which would be used as a model for the Freedom Rides of the 1960's. He served as a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the practice of nonviolent civil resistance, and was an intellectual and organizational force behind the burgeoning civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s. He organized protests in England and studied Ghandian principles in India. His life as an openly gay man, however, put him at odds with the cultural norms of the larger society and left him either working behind the scenes or outside of the movement for stretches of time. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, his talents and tireless work were transferred to human rights and the gay rights movement. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked as a human rights and election monitor for Freedom House and also testified on behalf of New York State's Gay Rights Bill. Bayard Rustin died from a ruptured appendix on August 24, 1987 at the age of 75.
Gay rights and liberation activists, as well as lesbian feminists, would be critical players in other moments through the 1970s and 1980s. The 1970s campaign to elect Harvey Milk to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was actively supported by gay and lesbian liberation activists.
In 1974, Kathy Kozachenko was the first openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual candidate to win public office in the United States when she won a seat on the city council for Ann Arbor, Michigan. Elaine Noble, who came out as a lesbian during her campaign, was the first openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual candidate elected to a state-level office when she won the race for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1974.
During Milk’s successful 1977 campaign, he convinced the growing LGBTQ population of San Francisco that they could have a role in city leadership, and people turned out to form “human billboards” for him along major streets and highways surrounding and in the city. In doing so, they outed themselves in a way once unthinkable. His successful election to the board in 1977 was a moment of triumph, as he became the first openly gay man elected to serve in a major political office.65 For many in San Francisco it was invigorating, and the mobilization inspired people across the country.
Milk’s election, however, was followed by tragedy. On November 27, 1978, former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White assassinated Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. White quickly admitted to the murders but a jury convicted him of manslaughter—a lighter charge—and sentenced him to just five years with parole. While San Franciscans marched in silent candlelight protests after the murders, the sentencing brought two days of rioting known as the White Night Riots.
Early on in the White Night Riots, the chief of police ordered the police not to retaliate against the protesters. Despite orders, police officers entered the Elephant Walk Bar on Castro Street and began beating patrons. By the time the chief of police had ordered officers out of the Castro, sixty-one police officers and one hundred civilians had been hospitalized.
The importance of individuals like Chuck Renslow have been excluded from the dominant narrative of LGBTQ history, likely due to his identity as a leatherman. There is no question, however, that Renslow played a significant role in LGBTQ history, both in Chicago and on a national stage. He has been deeply invested in Chicago’s gay community from the middle of the twentieth century as the owner of numerous businesses including bars and publications. He was also heavily involved in politics, both in Chicago under mayors beginning with Richard J. Daley, and nationally, running as a delegate for Senator Ted Kennedy’s 1980 presidential run just three years after dancing with another man at an inaugural ball for Jimmy Carter in 1977. He was involved with Kinsey’s sex research, battled Anita Bryant, and fought censorship and entrapment.
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