The Stonewall Reader
A study guide of the New York Public Library’s 2019 book ‘The Stonewall Reader.’
Summary, part 6
After Stonewall
“Gay is Good” by Martha Shelley
Shelley led the New York City Chapter of Daughters of Bilitis. She recounts the activity of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). They marched on Washington, protesting against the sex-role structure and the nuclear family structure.
Shelley explores the counterproductive presence of liberalism in the gay liberation movement. She said, “I am personally sick of liberals who say they don’t care who sleeps with whom, it’s what you do outside of bed that counts. This is what homosexuals have been trying to get straights to understand for years. Well, it’s too late for liberalism” (p. 330). Liberalism portrays acceptance but maintains a sense of entitlement because of heteronormativity.
There is this idea that unconscious guilt exists among straight society. Internalized self-contempt and hatred have led to a suppression of people's identities. Shelley addresses the “inner homosexual” and how it is being suppressed (p. 334). This suggests that most people's sexuality is more fluid than they or society want to accept.
“You have managed to drive your own homosexuality down under the skin of your mind—and to drive us down and out into the gutter of self-contempt. We, ever since we became aware of being gay, have each day been forced to internalize the labels: ‘I am a pervert, a dyke, a fag, etc.’” (p. 335)
From Tales of the Lavender Menace By Karla Jay
Jay was a former member of the GLF and Radicalesbians. In this chapter, they talk about the Lavender Menace action, a protest organized by an informal group of radical feminists to protest the exclusion of lesbians and lesbian issues from the feminist movement. At the Second Congress to Unite Women conference in Manhattan, the Lavender Menace staged a demonstration. It was a response to the fact that lesbian women were being excluded from this conference in the planning and content. This also meant their issues were not heard in congress (p. 205). The group lined up in the auditorium holding signs and wearing t-shirts. It resulted in an immediate dialogue. Audience members of the conference engaged with the members of Lavendar Menace to discuss the “lesbian issue” (p. 342). Other groups joined, too, including Black women to voice concerns over the conference's reflection of racism and classism (p. 342). Jay stated that “For lesbians, the best thing that emerged from the Lavender Menace action was the group of protesters itself—the first post-Stonewall group to focus on lesbian issues” (p. 343).
In post-Stonewall, there were more demands that movements like gay liberation and women’s rights also include all who experience the oppression they are protesting. If these movements were not going to be inclusive organizations, the Lavender Menace would create its own movement.
“We would be equal partners, or we would leave the straight women and gay men behind” (343).
“Hey man” By Steven F. Dansky
“All men are male supremacists. Gay men are no exception to the maxim” (346).
Dansky is a member of the GLF and founder of Effeminism, a movement of profeminist men. In this essay, he addresses the presence of male supremacy within the gay community. As he states, men are raised in a culture that programs them to systematically oppress, dehumanize, and sexually assault women. This is a male-dominated heterosexual society.
Homosexuality threatens the heterosexual society we live in. Gay liberation involves the rejection of the internalization of the male heterosexual identity. Self-expression of sexuality is molded by male supremacy. Dansky introduces the “non-man,” a non-assertion of cultural manhood that includes the process of “de-manning” (p. 348). Instead of pushing forth the idea of de-manning, the GLF has instead “consistently asserted their manhood… stifl[ing] the struggle of women to free themselves from the shackles of male domination” (ibid).
GLF has been complicit in the stifling of the women's movement. Many of the issues were because the influence of heterosexual society has dictated people’s lives within the gay community. There were also specific incidents of straight men being able to enter spaces created by the GLF without consequence. Straight men’s presence at GLF dances resulted in them harassing lesbian women which was tolerated by the organization.
“Our homosexuality can be a revolutionary tool only if we abandon our self-destructive attempts to fit the warped roles given us by the male heterosexual system.” (p. 349)
The goal for Dansky was “stopping the propagation of the male heterosexual ethos by any means necessary” (p. 349). This starts with the recognition that GLF has ignored and avoided the women's movement. Many lesbians did not feel welcome or included in GLF due to the immense male presence and disregard. The solution Dansky proposes is that the GLF should have women in leadership. There was also an entity Dansky talks about, the Revolutionary Male Homosexual (RMH) collective, that worked to combat the romantic notions of heteronormativity. The collective reject heterosexual societies pairing off and wanted to change how young boys are socialized into the male supremacists’ ideation of manhood.
The overall points Danksy makes are: (a) male supremacy must be dismantled for liberation, as it is an obstacle; (b) women must be included in the gay liberation movement, and (c) we live in a heterosexual society that defines sexuality and manhood.
“Radically Gay” by Harry Hay
Harry Hay co-founded the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles, 1950 and was the leader of the GLF Los Angeles chapter.
Gay Liberation Front Statment of Purpose
History
In 1969, new groups of activists surfaced with militant and determined viewpoints. Some of these groups were the Committee for Homosexual Freedom, San Francisco, Gay Liberation Front, New York, and Gay Liberation Front, Berkeley.
Community interests
The GLF is in opposition to America’s racism, poverty, hunger, and “systematic destruction of our patrimony” (p. 357). They are anti-war and against economic inequality. In support of other movements for human rights by Black, Asian, Latino/Latina, women, elderly, and young people.
General Methodology
GLF will be a non-exclusionary and welcoming organization. The decision-making process is by consensus, and there is no formal membership in the GLF.
Philosophy
GLF refuses the idea that homosexuality is a sickness. GLF promotes acceptance of self and others as they are. Hay states that “homosexuality is a perfectly natural state, a fact, a way of life, and that we enjoy our sexuality, without feelings of inferiority or guilt” (p. 358).
Self-liberation
The goal is to have all sexual beings accept their sexuality. People should express their sexuality to family, friends, and others they know to liberate themselves from gossip, guilty feelings, and self-destruction (358).
Education
To learn from each other and educate the community, especially those in opposition to this movement (359).
Action
To defend one another and those in this society will deprive of their liberation and freedom to sexuality. Street action will be used to demonstrate. Hay explains, “Our goal is—total liberation—life is for the living! We are alive! We want all to be alive! Sex is a sure cure of boredom and an antidote to the violence that is so American” (p. 359).
“The Lord Is My Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay” By Rev. Troy D. Perry
Perry founded the Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC) in 1968, the first Christian denomination to affirm LGBTQ+ people. He also helped plan the 1970 parade in Los Angeles, which coincided with the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march in New York commemorating the first anniversary of Stonewall. The parade was a conglomeration of gay groups in California: Society of Anubis, a social group that was militant conservatives; Focus, another conservative gay group who supported Ronald Regan during that time; Gay Liberation Front; Gay Lib Guerrilla Theatre; Heterosexuals for Homosexual Freedom, a straight solidarity group; SPREE (Society of Pat Rocco Enlightened Enthusiasts), Pat Rocco was a filmmaker in the gay community.
Civil Disobedience
Perry participated in civil disobedience, holding a prayer vigil and fasting to protest the discrimination of gay people in California. Police continued to inform Perry he was breaking the law as more supporters arrived. Two women joined Perry, one from Daughters of Bilitis, a nonviolent militant organization fighting for lesbians’ equal rights, and the other from HELP (Homophile Effort for Legal Protection). All three were arrested and taken to the Hollywood police station. They were going to be released O.R. (own recognizance), but Perry refused and decided to spend the night in jail rather than being arrested a second time for protesting again:
“Well, if they don’t let me out, I’ll just stay in jail, then, because I will not put up bail. And I’ll just go on with my prayer-vigil and fast, while I’m in prison” (p. 375).
Perry was then moved to another prison to await a bail hearing.
“I saw that the new one (arm band) had the name of an individual I had never heard of. They also gave me a new booking number. That really scared me. I was sure that some strange game had started, and that I would be lost somewhere in the jail system of Los Angeles County or Los Angeles City, or traded back and forth” (p. 373).
Perry was given a trial date and was released for the time being. At that point Perry was in the news and had garnered public attention:
“Originally I had been told that I was to be charged with inciting to riot, but the charge had been reduced to simply obstructing a public sidewalk. The proceedings were short, sweet, cut, and dried” (p. 376).
“We did it!” By Perry Brass
“Sing it loud, sing it clear! We’re not in the dark, crowded gay bars now; we’re out in the open. Sing it loud. Sing it clear. Gay is proud. Gay is here!” (p. 379)
Brass is a former member of GLF, coeditor of Come Out! Magazine, and co-founder of the Gay Men’s Health Project. Brass describes the feelings around the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march in New York commemorating the first anniversary of Stonewall. To Brass, the march was a liberation itself in giving space for people to express themselves.
“The courage that it took for some people to make those first steps from Sheridan Square into Sixth Avenue and out of the Village was the summoning up of a whole lifetime’s desire to finally come clear, to say the truth as it is, to expose themselves nakeder than any pinup boy in any flesh book, to show their heads as well as their bodies and to put their heads and souls where their bodies have been for so many years.” (p. 379)
It was a time of gay pride. This march would come to be known as the pride march and Gay Pride week.
“It was Gay Pride Week, just like the coming of a holiday you’ve never heard about and suddenly discovered and the holiday became a time and feeling, a mass feeling, like Mardi Gras” (p. 381).
“When We Were Outlaws” By Jeanne Córdova
Córdova was an activist, writer, and editor of The Lesbian Tide news magazine in 1971. She talked about the position of lesbians in the gay pride parade:
“To many of these women Stonewall and the Christopher Street West annual march was a gay male birthday.” (p. 383).
The Los Angeles 1971 commemoration of Stonewall was the first of many grassroots events she would organize with Morris Kight, an American gay rights pioneer and peace activist who is considered one of the founders of the gay and lesbian movement in the U.S. Over the next decades, they would fight for the rights of gay men and lesbians, struggling not just with the politicians but also with other gay and lesbian leaders to keep the burgeoning movement from straying from its grassroots (p. 386).
Córdova and Kight protested the California Penal codes against sodomy and oral copulation by having a straight, lesbian, and gay couple all “confess” to the crime of sodomy. When the plan did not work out as intended, and all eyes were on Córdova, she made a statement:
I am here in the name of thousands of lesbian mothers who have stood before California Judges and heard, ‘This woman is unfit, and she has no right to her child because she is homosexual.’ I am here in the name of hundreds of lesbians who have been dishonorably discharged from the services, thrown out of their jobs, their homes, their churches. In the name of those whose lives have been ruined in the name of this Penal Code law, I demand to be arrested! (p. 388)
Kight then made a citizen's arrest of Córdova and her partner to make a point about the discrimination inherent to the law. When the police wouldn't arrest them because they hadn't witnessed the attack, they headed to the district attorney. They were continually denied an acknowledgment of the discrimination the law caused. In the end, all the commotion around Córdova and the pushing from Knight led Governor Jerry Brown to overturn the law.
“From an interview with Allen Young: Rapping with a Street Transvestite Revolutionary” By Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson was the vice president of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). STAR was also started by president Sylvia Lee Riveria and member Bubbles Rose Marie. The purpose of STAR was, “We want to see all gay people have a chance, equal rights, as straight people have in America.” (p. 394). The main goal of STAR was to liberate gay people and reform the justice system.
Police would arrest trans women for loitering or prostitution and let them go to build a police record. After some time, once the record was long, they would have higher bails and were more likely to be sent to jail. Often those arrested could not afford lawyers. STAR planned a dance to fundraise money for lawyers to represent trans women.
Oppression towards trans women comes from within and outside of the LGBTQ+ community. Gay men have perpetuated oppression towards transgender women: “Once in a while, I get an invitation to Daughters of Bilitis, and when I go there, they’re always warm. All the gay sisters come over and say, ‘Hello, we’re glad to see you,’ and they start long conversations. But not the gay brothers. They’re not too friendly at all toward transvestites” (p. 397).
There was a STAR home for those who needed shelter. Many transgender people were working various jobs, presenting as women. There was a danger for trans women, especially as sex workers. Much of the danger came down to how the world perceived them based on their gender presentation: “You can lose your life. I’ve almost lost my life five times; I think I’m like a cat. A lot of times I pick up men, and they think I’m a woman and then they try to rob me” (p. 402)
“It’s very dangerous being a transvestite going out on dates because it’s so easy to get killed. ” (p. 402)
The long-term goals for STAR were to work with the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) and get more transgender people to come to STAR meetings. For people not in NYC or an urban city with STAR, chapters can be opened. Johnson also talked about the plans STAR had at the time to grow the organization. They planned to have dances, residential space for those who need it, telephone services, bail and lawyer funds, and a recreation center.
Terms of the time:
Drag queen: usually go to balls and get dressed up
Drag queen was in comparison to others who “live in drag” or “ spend most of her life in drag” (pg. 407).