Category — queer history

Be it GAA or some current LGBT entity, the dirty little secret of Racism in the “gay” community still rears its ugly head. Below is a clip from the KQED documentary Outrage ‘69, where activists from the ’60’s and ’70’s talk about the issue of racism and sexism in the gay community. As the saying goes “The Names Change but the Story Stays the Same.” Be it 1969 or 2008, this clip would not be that inaccurate. The folks at QWB would encourage us in the LGBT/Queer community to engage in a serious dialogue of the “gay community’s Dirty Little Secret.” And feel free to start here on the QWB blog.

“Equality for Homosexuals”

Annual reminders at Independence Hall in Philadelphia began on July 4, 1965 and continued for 5 years until 1969 when the call went up to bring the demonstrations to New York the “Birthplace of Gay Liberation.” The Reminders were conceive by Craig Rodwell a member of the NY Mattachine Society after a series of demonstrations at the Pentagon, the Civil Services Commission, the State Department, and the White House. These small picket lines were set up to protest the exclusion of homosexuals from Federal employment and the Armed Services. A strict dress code was enforced at all picket lines at the time and men had to wear ties and jackets and women dresses or skirts and heels. Frank Kameny ever the enforcer of “taste” and a leader in the Washington D.C. Mattachine argued, “If we want to be employed by the Federal Government we have to look employable to the Federal Government.”  Dressing any other way, holding hands or any type of display that drew attention to one’s self threatened the strategy of hetero-social respectability. The activists of this period were trying to convey to the general public that they were patriotic Americans and sexual respectables as they reminded the nation that not all of its citizens had equal rights under the law.  Barbara Gittings was among a group of pioneering gay and lesbian picketers who held the first Reminder Day, which according to Gittings was meant to “remind the public that there was still a sizable segment of the American people that were not benefiting from the promises in our founding fathers’ document.” (1) Gittings later recalled “we all tried to swallow our own discomfort at not knowing what the consequences would be, whether our names would be printed in the newspaper and our jobs lost or whether we might even be arrested.” (2)

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With the recent Metroline crap still stinking I thought I would go back into my archives and tell a few of ourstories about when some of my friends and I stood up against anyone trying to revise, rewrite, ignore, omit, erase, suppress, or deny our people. Straight culture has used every trick in their book to deny our people, trying to take them from us and ignoring the fact that some of the greats of the arts and of this world were lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer persons. 

The extraordinary philosopher, movement builder, writer, folklorist, historical researcher, gay man and former communist Harry Hay in his essay, “The Hidden Ones, Christianity’s First Closet Case” seeks to reconstruct a part of our stories that have been hetrosexualized, namely the story of who were the real Adam and Eve. This important corrective reconstruction returns our people to their rightful place busts open the lies of straight societies religions and allows us to reclaim  our rightful heritage. I submit this to our readers as an essay to read and ponder to see how full of tricks the dominant culture can be. Read it and shake your heads over the oppression that has come out of that one little false story which through the political opportunism of the Christians first sculpted and then governed the guilt of Westerners for over 2,000 years. Robert Graves states in his book “Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis,” that Jehovah clearly did not figure in the original myth. As he puts it, “It is the Mother of All Living (Eve)…who casts Adam out of her fertile riverine dominion because he has usurped some prerogative of hers.” Adam the temple prostitute denying his true gay nature, betraying his scared oaths,his service to the great Mother and joining in with the invading wandering tribes. This dear friends was the original sin. Next time one of those religious ladies tells you it was Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve punch her in her nose. Lay her flat. She walks hand in hand with the oppressor. Give her a good one for all of our people who have been burned at the stake, condemned by religious authorities, marked off for extinction, eaten alive by dogs and wild beasts, castrated, electric shocked, jailed, sent to concentration camps, beaten on city streets and killed on country roads. Yes, go ahead give her a good one. If the powers that be lie to us about how human existence began on the earth what other lies have they told us?  [Read more →]

As we enter the month of June celebrating the 39th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, we should take this time to reflect on the State of our Activism. The following is a video clip from the KQED documentary Outrage ‘69 (Series: A question of equality) that discusses a brief historical perspective of the Gay Liberation Front and the transformation to the beginnings of the reformist single issue, white male dominated, Gay Activist Alliance. Also linked below (2 pages) is the letter from Huey P. Newton to his Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters about the Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements. This letter is a remarkable evolution in stance of the Black Panther Party’s recognition of the need for a united front of oppresssed groups in forming a revolutionary movement and society!

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Many thanks to Regina Dyton and the dedicated folks the City of Hartford LGBT Issues Commission for making this happen!

The LGBT Queer Pride flag will be raised tomorrow, Friday, June 13 at Hartford City Hall at noon. There will be a brief ceremony with the Mayor and a councilperson. The flag will stay up for a week. The public is invited to attend this ceremony raising the Pride Flag.

When I was at Trans Pride I had the pleasure of visiting the Sexual Minorities Archive booth hosted by archive curator Bet Power (whose speech at Trans Pride was extremely powerful and to point for the day!). I misplaced information from the booth (crazy and hot day) though have pasted a write-up of the archives from the Society of American Archivists website.

Sexual Minorities Archives
/New Alexandria Lesbian Library
Location: Private home
Address: P.O. Box 60402,
Florence, MA 01062
Phone: (413) 584-7616
Contact: Bet Power
E-mail: betpower@yahoo.com
Hours: By appointment only on week nights and weekends. Call or write a week in advance.
Wheelchair Access: yes, by request
History
Founded as New Alexandria Lesbian Library in Chicago, Ill., on July 12, 1974, as part of the lesbian Feminist Center there. In 1977 Bet Power became the curator; moved the collection to western Massachusetts in 1979. On January 1, 1992, the collection was expanded and renamed the Sexual Minorities Archives. [Read more →]

Archives are a wonderful thing. The following was published in the Village Voice as reported by Lucian Truscott IV, who described the events in a front page article headlined, “Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square.”

“Suddenly, the paddy-wagon arrived and the mood of the crowd changed. Three of the more blatant queens–in full drag–were loaded inside, along with the bartender and doorman, to a chorus of catcalls and boos from the crowd. A cry went up to push the paddy wagon over, but it drove away before anything could happen…The next person to come out was a dyke, and she put up a struggle–from car to door to car again again. It was at that moment that the scene became explosive. Limp wrists were forgotten. Beer cans and bottles were heaved at the windows, and a rain of coins descended on the cops.” [Read more →]

The following clip is excerpted from a wonderful KQED series titled The Question of Equality. This clip is from part one of this series: “Out Rage 69″ that talks about Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front, the GAA, and the movement from a multi-issue queer movement to a single issue gay movement that excludes drag queens, people of color, street people and anyone not fitting the white gay mentality of the GAA. This clip presents a view into the backlash by gays and lesbians against drag queens and street transvestites and has some excellent interviews with Sylvia Rivera as well as her storming the stage at NYC Pride 1973, following Jean O’Leary’s vicious attack on Transvestites and Drag Queens. ENJOY!

Click to view in standalone player

ALERT: First HRC attempts to marginalize the Transgender Community and now Metroline is quick on their heels of Trans Oppression! The current issue of Metroline has an Editorial by the Editor Joseph DaBrow that revises Stonewall History (4th paragraph) by stating that at Stonewall “there were no drag queens there at all. It was gay human beings simply standing up for being who they were.” Has Mr. DaBrow and the publisher of Metroline John Crowley never heard of Sylvia Rivera or Marsha P. Johnson both well know and prominent Stonewall Veterans? Perhaps if Mr. DaBrow and Crowley attended our New England Trans Pride, they would have heard Miss Majors, a Stonewall Veteran, as well as many other speakers remember the critical participation of our Transgender (i.e. Drag Queens or Transvestites in 1969 vernacular) comrades at Stonewall. Or to learn that the theme of this first ever New England Trans Pride was: “Remember Stonewall? That was us!” Or perhaps they never listened to Pacifica Radio’s excellent audio documentary: “Remembering Stonewall.” [Read more →]

On May 10th 1933 Nazis and university students in 33 towns across Germany burned books that they considered to be “un-German” In Berlin over 40,000 people gathered to hear Joseph Goebbels the German Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda as thousands of books burned in Opera Square. This event was titled, “Action Against the un-German Spirit.”

On May 6, 1933 trucks pulled up to the doors of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin . Hundreds of students and Nazis smashed open the doors of the institute and marched into the building to the strains of a brass band. They ransacked the premises and removed books from the library. Later truckloads of storm trooper arrived to finish carting away books and on May 10 these books along with a bust of Hirschfeld, books by Jewish authors and others considered degenerate were burned.

Reference: Out of the Past, Neil Miller, Vintage Books, The Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, Chapter 15.

             For other information see posting on the Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

A real interesting site is this one. Check it out.

Don’t forget to come out to the True Colors exhibition this Friday. The celebration of the founding of True Colors and a visual time-line created by Jamie Bassell and Kyle O’Toole will be a highlight of the festivities. True Colors a lgbt organization was established 15 years ago to provide support and services to sexual minority youth and families in Connecticut. Visit them on-line at: www.OurTrueColors.org.

The event is free and open to the public, the time 6:30-8:30. The location is the Elihu Burritt Library at Central Connecticut State University. Located within the Library is the Gender and Equity Collection a collection of the history of the LGBT movement in Connecticut which houses the archives of many individuals and organizations.

The Burritt Library has over the years hosted many GLBT exhibitions not only from their collections but from LGBT collectors as well.

A visual time-line celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual and queer rights and history in our state during the last 15 years, highlighting the evolution of True Colors, Inc., an  LGBTQ organization established 15 years ago to provide support and services to sexual minority youth and family in Connecticut. [Read more →]

By X357733

Introduction

The reasons for doing this event are simple enough. Having attended various fundraisers over the years, I had some idea which approaches were the best at bringing in a fairly large sum of money. A few hundred dollars from a punk rock show, for example, is always nice for non-emergency situations. But the situation with the IWW Food and Allied Workers Union 460/640 was, and continues to be, very serious. I have been watching that campaign for some time, but was not spurred into action until I became aware of the fact that the IWW grassroots had not adequately stepped up to raise the tens of thousands of dollars necessary to win perhaps our most important campaign in the latter part of our history to date.

In Connecticut, we have seen many raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which we hoped would bring more people to this event. Whether or not that was successful isn’t clear; however, the events that have followed the benefit might lead one to believe that perhaps we were on to something. The union hall that hosted us was raided two weeks later by ICE, and arrested one of their staff people. The union in question has always had a large immigrant membership, but people like Judi Bari and Martin Luther King Jr. might tell you that the forces of repression always hone in on the people who are building the connections between different movements and organizations.

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From libcom.org, libertarian communist website from the UK.

First let me make on thing very clear. I do not care for any religious leaders or organized religion and don’t give a rats pa-tooey if they are liberal or conservative. But that old thing that resides in Rome looking half crazed really gets my goat. Now I love peace as much as everyone else in fact most of my adult life has centered around working for peace. During the Vietnam days I was a conscientious objector even if the draft board tried to convince me that Lutherans were not pacifists. (Oh those outsiders telling a person who they are.) I have been arrested in many a demo and could go on and on but what the heck I don’t need to go on and on putting my credentials out there like the wash on a clothes line. I just am who I am and what I am.

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Just recently I read these words,  “all that is happening right now is a perfect example of why organizations might prefer to be single issue!” I am not going to write about the whole flap that was happening but instead I wish to write and think about single and multi-issue movements within our TBLG stories.  This essay could well be called Around and Around and Up and Down and Back and Forth we go. [Read more →]