EARLY HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVISM IN THE UNITED STATES

The first effort to organize homosexuals in the United States was an attempt in 1950 to resist police harassment, led by Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles. This marked the birth of the homophile movement. As historian David Carter (2004) explains, “The founders of the Mattachine Society used the word homophile because they believed that this new term, with its incorporation of the Greek word for love, could help counter the stereotype of homosexuals obsessed with sex”

By the 1960s, the Mattachine Society, with chapters in cities around the United States, was not the only predecessor to the contemporary gay liberation movement. In San Francisco, the League for Civil Education (LCE) was formed by the openly gay drag queen Jose Sarria, the first person to run for elected office as an openly gay person in the country. In 1962, San Francisco bar owners and employees formed the Tavern Guild, which retained an attorney and bail bondsman for any person arrested in or near a gay bar. Soon afterwards, also in San Francisco, the Society for Individual Rights was founded “with a more open and democratic approach than that used by LCE or California’s Mattachine organization ‘to create a community feeling that will bring a Homophile Movement into being’”

These organizations provided the foundations upon which gay men began to actively become more open and public about their homosexuality. It was also in the late 1960s that increasing numbers of gay men began to rebel against the limited view of masculinity and against heterosexism in general and began to venture out of their private clubs and private lives and go public. The climate, at least in major urban areas like San Francisco and New York, made them feel a degree of safety, largely because there was a critical mass of gay men congregated in one area, and there is some strength in numbers. Following the 1969 riots that occurred after what the police expected to be just another routine raid on a Manhattan gay bar — the Stonewall — the Gay Liberation Front was born (Carter, 2004). Soon afterward, the movement for increased visibility of and acceptance for gay people who refused to act like second-class citizens took off. It happened in conjunction with a decade of social upheaval including the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War protests, women’s liberation, and the sexual revolution. By 1979, gay men had established a visible, distinct culture in urban areas. Gay consciousness continued to evolve as more men proudly began to live their lives openly, out of the suffocating constraints of the closet. They created gay-friendly spaces and communities in certain neighborhoods, which propelled momentous political gains for gay civil rights. As gay people started to come out of the shadows and defy social expectations of heterosexuality by holding hands and kissing in public, gay people began to feel a sense of solidarity. Gay-friendly cities such as San Francisco and New York became Meccas for gay men in pursuit of open and liberated lives.

Central to the new, open gay culture was a celebration of sex. Although they might still struggle inside themselves with feelings of shame or torment about their same-sex desires, more and more gay men were eager to explore their sexuality. They began to celebrate and flaunt those desires and sought creative ways to fulfill them. Bathhouses, bars, and discos for gay men, as well as other venues for men to meet and have sexual encounters, flourished. In the 1970s, in America’s largest cities, gay men no longer had to be furtive about their same-sex desires. Whether or not they identified as homosexual or bisexual, men who had sex with other men could find willing and abundant sexual partners, and plenty of establishments catered to helping them hook up with one another. There appeared to be no limit to the erotic possibilities. Men had sexual adventures with other men with reckless abandon. Beyond worries about not contracting the usual STDs, getting gay bashed, or finding that a partner was closeted, the majority of gay men did not worry about permanent, negative consequences of their sexual partying. Gay bathhouses, sex clubs, backrooms, and orgies were plentiful and popular. An entire generation of gay men came out in a gay subculture that encouraged men to have sex with strangers as casually as they might shake hands with a new acquaintance.