| Revolting homosexuals of yore |
[Nov. 19th, 2008|12:37 pm] |
Guess when this photograph was taken.
The year was 1971, just two years after Stonewall when gays and lesbians were starting to come out and fight for their dignity and rights.
Google, in its determination to corral every piece of information, image, and iota of data ever produced, just partnered with Life magazine’s archive of photographs.
The very mainstream media that was Life magazine (its circulation was 8.5 million when these photos were published) did not really cover gay news much at all1, this one in-depth article from 1971 is just about everything you currently2 get if you search “homosexuality” in the two-million-plus-photo archives of Life magazine.
1: Life ceased publishing less than a year later, although the brand was revived as a monthly in 1978
2: more photos are to be added in the coming months
The following comes from Life magazine’s special “The Year In Pictures” year-end issue of December 31, 1971, a 12-page feature that was even headlined on the cover. It’s a fascinating glimpse of who we were and what we looked like, at least reflected through the photojournalism of one of America’s largest and most influential magazines. They commissioned photojournalist Grey Villet who travelled the country (photos were taken in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Arizona, Dallas, Minnesota, and New York) photographing some of the new “gay militants” of the nascent modern gay liberation movement.
Also included is how the article was listed on the table of contents, referenced in the Editor’s Note, and the Letters to the Editor that appeared in the magazine a month later. The feature ended with a lengthy article about whether homosexuals were “normal” or not (i.e., just how sick we were). This was quite unusal for the photo-heavy Life; perhaps they felt it was necessary to “balance” or justify the preceding ten pages of photos of uppity faggots and dykes.
It’s pretty lengthy – scroll, scan, dip in, or read at your leisure:
Life Magazine, December 31, 1971
Table of contents page
Homosexuals in Revolt pp. 62-73
A major essay on America's newest militants, the activists of "gay liberation”
EDITOR'S NOTE:
We mortals sum it up
Some of the best things about 1971 were events that did not happen. Campus and street violence, familiar for some time, did not recur. Although prisons erupted tragically, students and blacks and Chicanos and feminists did not. They pressed their demands but without the violence that we have seen in recent years. A hitherto silent minority, the homosexuals, introduced the latest social revolution with adamant but largely peaceful persuasion.
Homosexuals in revolt:
The year that one liberation movement turned militant
Photographs by Grey Villet
Text by Michael Durham
When a bill guaranteeing equal job opportunities for homosexuals stalled in New York's City Council last spring, militants demonstrated at City Hall. At right, with fists raised, they shout a football-style "Gay Power" cheer at police blocking the building. The same activists took a wedding cake (left) adorned with homosexual couples to the New York City Clerk's office to protest his refusal to issue wedding licenses to homosexuals. The Greek letter lambda atop the cake, militants say, symbolizes unity in the face of oppression."
It was the most shocking and, to many Americans, the most surprising liberation movement yet. Under the slogan "Out of the closets and into the streets," thousands of homosexuals, male and female, were proudly confessing what they had long hidden. They were, moreover, moving into direct confrontation with conventional society. Their battle was far from won. But in 1971 militant homosexuals showed that they were prepared to fight it, and a report on their efforts is shown on these 11 pages.
No one knows how many homosexuals there are in the U.S. Estimates range from two million to 20 million. Nor is there any sure knowledge of why someone is sexually attracted to a person of the same sex. (see page 72)
The late Dr. Alfred Kinsey, following large-scale investigations, maintained that most people have elements of both heterosexual and homosexual in their makeup. But those who have banded together in the "gay liberation" movement argue that homosexuality is a perfectly defined way of life. They resent what they consider to be savage discrimination against them on the basis of a preference which they did not choose and which they cannot -- and do not want to -- change. And while most will admit that "straight" society's attitudes have caused them unhappiness, they respond to the charge that all homosexuals are guilt-ridden and miserable with the defiant cry "Gay is Good!"
The average man in the street may not be ready to temper his hostility toward homosexuals, but large gaps are appearing in the patterns of discrimination. Never before have homosexuals been so visible. Every large city and many college campuses have homosexual organization. Rarely mentioned in print before, today homosexuality is the subject of books, articles and films. Women homosexuals, or lesbians, have always been less discriminated against than men. Lately they have discovered an extra cachet; in the women's liberation movement, they gain special standing because of their independence from men, even for sex.
Still, what the homosexuals want most -- equality before the law -- has been slow in arriving. Homosexuals are frequently arrested for such "victimless" crimes as public solicitation and loitering. Forty-five states still have so-called "sodomy laws" on their books, which proscribe all homosexual acts. Though rarely enforced, these laws justify harassment against homosexuals in employment and housing.
The activists realize that most lawmakers are still reluctant to back repeal of the sex laws. But they are prepared for a long battle. Nothing has ever been quite the same since angry homosexuals fought New York police in the streets outside a Greenwich Village bar called the Stonewall Inn back in June 1969. "The homosexual proved then he could shove back," says veteran movement leader Franklin Kameny, "and, believe me, until we get what we want, we are going to keep on shoving."
A "zap" of the New York City Clerk's office in support of homosexual marriages included an impromptu "wedding" reception. Activists appeared with cake and coffee (right) and offered them to a flabbergasted employee. They left quietly when police arrived.
Collared by a patrolman after he deliberately crossed police barricades at New York's City Hall, Gay Activists Alliance President Jim Owles submits to arrest (above) [this photo is missing from the archive] Members of his organization were protesting City Council reluctance to debate a fair employment bill for homosexuals.
In commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village, militants this year designated the last week in June as Gay Liberation Week and celebrated it with a candlelight parade. The parade (right) involved 300 male and female homosexuals, who marched without incident two miles from Gay Activists headquarters to a park near City Hall.
A homosexual activist steps between a pair of police horses (left) to be interviewed during a New York demonstration. Militants often charge police brutality and welcome arrests for the sake of publicity. They also encourage press coverage of their protest actions.
A direct assault on laws and customs
Most of the young militants shown here are members of homosexual liberation's most effective organization, New York City's Gay Activists Alliance. Organized two years ago to promote equal rights for homosexuals, the GAA pressured Manhattan legislators to support laws guaranteeing equality in housing, employment and public accommodations. Similar laws have been introduced in a number of states. The activists were further encouraged by a recent court decision. It prevents the federal government from denying homosexuals security clearance unless it can be proved that their sexual preference affects their vulnerability to blackmail.
GAA has developed a form of protest called a "zap," which is part picket line and part sit-in. One target of the 20-odd zaps held in 1971 was the New York City Board of Examiners. The board got in GAA's bad graces when one of its members pronounced homosexuals unfit for teaching. The activists claim that demonstrations offer them the best therapy for the humiliations inflicted by an anti-homosexual society. "One good zap," they say, "is worth six months on a psychiatrist's couch."
Experiments with different life-styles
COMMUNALISTS
Some young homosexuals have joined the back-to-the-land movement and set up their own agricultural communes. Outside Phoenix, in a desert area sprinkled with straight communes, members of GLAD (Gay Liberation Arizona Desert) work in their tomato patch. (right) They have no interest in activist agitation. "We are more interested in getting our heads straight," says one member. Last year a group in Los Angeles proposed that homosexuals move in and actually take over a rural, sparsely populated county in northern California. But the suggestion was only half serious; nobody went.
PROPAGANDISTS
The three bearded, outlandishly dressed homosexuals parading through the streets of Hollywood under the gaze of a perplexed housewife are not transvestites. They are demonstrators who claim they are trying to cultivate a life-style which will free men and women from the dictates of sharply defined "sex roles." Their bizarre promenades are intended, they say, to shock onlookers into living their own fantasies by dressing according to their feelings of the "moment." They argue that the liberation of homosexuals will also free heterosexuals to adopt aspects of the less restrictive homosexual life-style. This includes the freedom to dress as one pleases, either as a man or a woman or both.
POLICE LIASON
Homosexuals and police are dedicated antagonists. If the situation in San Francisco is better than average, some credit must go to Elliot Blackstone. Possibly the only policeman in the country who deals solely with deviant. Blackstone was appointed liaison between the force and the city's large homosexual population in 1961. Above, Blackstone and homosexual leader Larry Littlejohn discuss the arrest of another homosexual. Blackstone's job requires him to attend all gay demonstrations. He has also made a study of the special problems of transsexuals and has made a point of employing as secretaries several who were then undergoing the lengthy process of changing into women.
CLUBMEN
Most homosexual organizations in large cities now rent their own headquarters to house political, cultural and hobby groups (and, usually, a chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous). Below, on a typical evening at San Francisco's seven-year-old SIR (Society for Individual Rights), an art class sketches a nude model in the background while an instructor teaches homosexuals "just enough karate to get away if attacked." The society is so politically influential that candidates compete for its endorsement by addressing the membership at special political forums before each election. Many of SIR's members are business and professional men who must pose as heterosexuals to keep their outside jobs.
A Gallery of men and women important to the movement
STUDENT LEADER
Last spring 29 year-old Jack Baker, a third-year law student and a self-professed homosexual, was elected president of the University of Minnesota Student Association. His campaign poster (right), which made light of his homosexuality by showing him in high-heel shoes, became a campus collector's item. After his election, Baker met with other student leaders (above) to explain how he hoped to improve housing for all students and to announce his intent to bar firms with anti-homosexual hiring policies from recruiting on campus. In September, Baker was married by a Methodist minister to his roommate, James McConnell. They intend to test the validity of same-sex marriage and their own right to file a joint 1971 tax return, in the Supreme Court if necessary.
LESBIAN ACTIVISTS
Talking about their own lives as a lesbian couple, Barbara Love, standing and Sidney Abbott, seated left, speak at a weekly luncheon meeting of the Yonkers, N.Y. Lions Club, "People find it very bizarre that we are happy," Miss Love says. Both women are active in the women's liberation movement and have written a book about the homosexual women's campaign called "Sappho Was a Right-on Woman." It will be published next spring. They were invited to speak in Yonkers by the Lions Club chaplain, who had heard them earlier in the year at a religious meeting. Homosexual leaders are frequently asked to address college, medical and theological groups but rarely get a chance lik this to talk before businessmen. "You are the heartland," Miss Abbott said.
HISTORIAN
Donn Teal learned at his first homosexual liberation meeting "what it felt like to be a human being." Last spring he published "The Gay Militants," the history of the movement. "My greatest pleasure since," he says, "comes from hearing homosexuals telling me they have joined the movement because they read my book."
OUTCAST MINISTER
Gene Leggett was declared "unacceptable for the ministry" by the Methodist Church after he publicly announced he was a homosexual. Here he holds a shepherd's staff in front of his Dallas home, which he has opened to youths, both homosexual and straight. "In my head," he says, "I have started my own church."
COLUMNIST
Jill Johnston publicly announced her lesbianism in the dance column she writes in the New York weekly "Village Voice." She has since become a full-time polemicist for sexual liberation. Her literary and life styles are free-wheeling. Once, at a party for women's liberation, she jumped topless into a swimming pool.
POLICE CRITIC
Rev. Ray Broshears, a homosexual activist, is a highly vocal critic of police activities in San Francisco. When a police officers' association sued him for slander, he responded by printing up bogus "wanted" posters. Broshears started a series of weekly lunches for senior citizens in conjunction with a homosexual organization.
POLITICIAN
As the first admitted homosexual candidate for Congress, Franklin Kameny polled 1,888 votes in the Washington, D.C. race last spring. A government astronomer fired because of his homosexuality, Kameny is now an ardent defender of federal employees whose jobs are threatened when their sexual deviance is discovered.
NOVELIST
When best-selling novelist Merle Miller confessed his homosexuality in a magazine article last spring, he angered militants by saying that he would prefer not being a homosexual. He was later cheered, however, by a GAA meeting when he explained that it was living in an anti-homosexual society which he objected to.
Preaching that 'God loves gays too'
The congregation at the first meeting of the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles on Oct. 16, 1968 numbered nine skeptical individuals. They had gathered to hear the Rev. Troy Perry preach the novel theme, "God loves gays too." Today, when the 31-year-old Perry exhorts his parishioners to "Love the Lord your God," 800 worshipers, most of them homosexual, roar back "Amen!" A former Pentecostal minister from Florida who was expelled for admitting his homosexuality, Perry was drifting in what he calls "my wilderness" when the despairing cry of a homosexual friend -- "Nobody loves us, not even God" -- convinced him that he should start his own church. The astounding growth of MCC -- it now includes 20 churches, scattered from Hawaii to Florida -- is partly due to the charismatic personality of its leader but also to the failure of conventional churches to minister to the needs of homosexual believers.
Perry is willing to "marry" homosexual couples, though the ceremonies are not recognized as legal by existing laws in any state.
His Sunday sermons, flavored by the Bible Belt, are laced with a wit that easily demolishes the traditional biblical view of homosexuality as evil. ("Did Jesus ever say," Perry frequently asks, "Come unto Me all ye heterosexuals . . .?'") Perry is himself considerably more militant than his largely middle-class parishioners, who represent practically every major denomination. He fasts regularly to publicize homosexual grievances, was arrested last spring at a protest march, and once led a sit-in that forced a restaurant to remove its "Faggots keep out" signs. When conservative homosexuals express their fears that those activities might damage the church, Perry replies, "Then God is going to be embarrassed. He called me to do His work."
Scouting the road ahead, Perry leads a 109-mile march on the state capitol in Sacromento to protest California's archaic sex laws. Perry kept his vow to fast during half of the grueling six-day trek.
Is homosexuality normal or not?
To keep their liberation movement going, militants must present homosexuality as a normal, healthy, even desirable form of sexual outlet. Yet there is endless dispute among doctors whether this point of view is sound. Science has long realized, of course, that whatever natural laws govern sex cannot be stated simply, as moralists would like to believe. In their book "Patterns of Sexual Behavior," Clellan S. Ford and Frank A. Beach call homosexuality "a basic capacity" of mammals and cite examples of it among primates, rodents, and even porpoises. Homosexual behavior is commonplace in primitive societies. The Keraki tribe of New Guinea, for example, makes it part of a boy's initiation into manhood. As far back as 1911, French author Andre Gide argued that "uncustomary" was a better adjective for homosexuality than "unnatural." The famous report published by Dr. Alfred Kinsey in 1948 didn't even regard it as uncustomary. Citing statistics showing that 37% of all adult males had at least one homosexual encounter leading to orgasm, Kinsey proposed dropping the "homosexual-heterosexual" labels in favor of a scale running from zero (exclusively heterosexual) to six (exclusively homosexual).
Still, Dr. Charles Socarides, a New York psychoanalyst, argues that homosexuality runs counter to "two and a half billion years of mammalian heritage." The late Dr. Edmund Bergler, who believed that homosexuality was a disease, once listed six personality traits, he said, are common to all homosexuals: "masochistic provocation," "defensive malice," "flippancy covering depression and guilt," "hypernarcissism," "refusal to acknowledge accepted standards in nonsexual matters" and "general unreliability." The activists call such labels superficial and wrong. After all, they figure, no sane society is going to liberate a minority that exhibits such neurotic characteristics. Instead society will either continue to oppress them or try to cure them. And "cure" has an ominous ring in homosexuals who insist they prefer being that way.
Many psychotherapists do not subscribe to the sickness theory. Recently, increasing numbers of them have come to consider homosexuality as what Dr. Graham Blaine, former chief of psychiatry at Harvard, calls a "normal difference," such as left-handedness. To such doctors, the homosexual can be a happy, functioning individual, capable of holding a good job, avoiding trouble with the law and maintaining a stable relationship with another man. In 1956 Dr. Evelyn Hooker, a West Coast psychologist who headed the National Institute of Mental Health's task force on homosexuality, submitted psychiatric test results on 30 "normal, overt male homosexuals" and a comparable group of heterosexuals to experts. They could find "no difference of degree of adjustment between the two." Since this is what the militants believe too, the study made her a folk hero to the liberation movement."
Speculation on what causes homosexuality lead into a scientific morass. Most scientists agree that homosexuality or heterosexuality is a learned, acquired behavior, but there agreement stops. Dr. Irving Bieber, a prestigious contributor to the "sickness theory," traces its origin directly to the family. He cites "faulty, destructive child-rearing practices," specifically "an inappropriately close relationship" between son and mother and a childhood relationship with the father marked by "fear and hostility." Other specialists believe the enormous differences among homosexuals indicate a wider range of multiple causes. Dr. Hooker, who has treated homosexuals from "happy, normal families," believes that "the emasculation of the boy by the mother and the lack of a male model with whom to identify is a contributing cause for a sizeable number of people, but not the only cause. Dr. Blaine believes that certain traditional explanations for homosexuality contradict each other. For example the "strong domineering mother" and her opposite, "the soft, seductive mother," are both considered contributing factors.
Although the layman usually equates male homosexuality with femininity, science has never been able to link the condition to an excess of female hormones. Recent studies, however, indicate that homosexuals have a lower level of the male hormone testosterone than heterosexual men. Last spring a Los Angeles endocrinologist accurately identified the sexual orientation of a mixed group of subjects by analyzing the testosterone breakdown in their urine. And last month researchers from Masters and Johnson clinic in St. Louis published the results of a study which found that young homosexual men generally have less testosterone in their blood. The researchers were unable to say whether the different hormone levels were a cause or effect of homosexuality. Homosexual militants consider the search for causes of their behavior irrelevant. They feel threatened by Dr. Bieber's contention that children who are likely to become homosexual can usually be identified between the ages of 7 and 10. Even more menacing to them is a Pavlovian technique called "aversion therapy." In it, a homosexual patient is "punished," usually by electric shock, when shown an erotic picture of a male and "rewarded" by the absence of pain when viewing a picture of an attractive woman. In gauging a homosexual's potential for change, Dr. Lawrence J. Hatterer, author of "Changing Homosexuality in the Male," takes into consideration 240 factors. These include the patient's age, religious background and personality, but the two most important are a genuine desire to change and some previous heterosexual experience.
Even these doctors who doubt it is possible to wipe out all homosexual desire concede the possibility of nudging a patient a few notches along the Kinsey scale toward heterosexuality. Dr. Hooker's task force report stated that some 40% of "predominately homosexual patients having some heterosexual orientation. . . can become predominantly heterosexual."
The homosexuals' view of their own condition bears little or no resemblance to medical and psychiatric thinking on the subject. Homosexuals believe that the "sick" characteristics associated with them -- promiscuity, guilt, self-contempt and particularly effeminacy -- are the by-products of growing up in an oppressively anti-homosexual society. Homosexuals often report passing through an outrageously effeminate stage, because, as one said, "I was always taught that's how homosexuals were supposed to behave."
Many experts believe, however, that making society the whipping boy for all problems of homosexuals is simply not justified. "Their problems exist all right," says psychotherapist Dr. Clarence Tripp, "but as much inside as outside their own heads." A whole segment of the liberation movement argues that homosexuals' main goal should be ridding themselves of guilt and self-disdain. Wary of psychiatry, they instead enter group encounter or consciousness-raising sessions that can lead to brutal confessions of self-contempt. Through such soul-searching, they seek new formulas for living where, as one of them put it, "the only important thing in our lives is being gay and proud of it."
Whether liberationists choose introspection, militancy or violence as a course of action, the basic stumbling block to acceptance remains the same: heterosexual antipathy to homosexuality. Will this ever change? Dr. Hatterer has observed that society's tolerance of homosexuality is increasing but he doubts that we will ever accept it as a desirable "alternative lifestyle." Nonetheless he and virtually all other psychiatrists advocate repealing the laws that violate this minority's civil rights.
On the question of "normality," much remains to be learned. In opposing all inquiry, the militants expose fears of what science might find out about them. Dr. Hooker's task force on homosexuality makes the sensible recommendation that the National Institute of Mental Health fund a center for the study of all sexual behavior. "It is essential," says the report, "that a study of homosexuality be placed within the context of the study of the broad range of sexuality, normal and deviant."
Life Magazine
January 28, 1972, p. 27
Letters to the Editor
Sirs: From hot pants to Persepolis to homosexuality and not one word or picture concerning our astronauts and the Lunar Rover. For shame!
Mrs. R.D. Trembly
East Wenatchee, Wash.
HOMOSEXUALS
Sirs: There are plenty to lament in your year-end issue, but the thing that struck me most sad was the fact that LIFE felt compelled to devote 11 pages to "Homosexuals in Revolt."
Bonnie Bergey
Telford, Pa.
Sirs: As one of the five elected officials of the Gay Activists Alliance during much of the time when your coverage of our participation in the Gay Liberation Movement took place, I want to compliment you on your dignified tone with which you treated our renegade minority within the behavioral minority. Frustrated activists have begun to think the heads and hearts of non-gay society are impenetrable and that the old Gay Liberation Front approach -- all-out insurrection in cooperation with other oppressed minorities -- is the only pragmatic means toward achieving equal status under the law, and law, in the foreseeable future. You just may have made the major contribution toward averting violence.
John Francis Hunter
New York, N.Y.
Sirs: Essentially, it is absurd to accept as a mere "variant life-style" a practice which, if universal, would mean the end of the human race. Homosexuals are psychic cripples who should be pitied, not persecuted. However, we should reject their claim that homosexuality is a "normal, healthy, even desirable form of sexual outlet." That rings of Aesop's fable of the fox who lost his tail in a trap: he then tried to make taillessness fashionable among foxes, so that his loss would not be conspicuous.
George W. Price
Chicago, Ill.
Sirs: As one of the oldest lesbian activists -- both in age and years of participation in the movement -- I resent being "represented" by Barbara Love, Sidney Abbott and, worst of all, Jill Johnston who is not even an activist in the movement! Not only do these three LIFE-made "leaders" not represent me and my age group, but they also do not represent many of the younger lesbians.
Also, out of the ten picture pages of this article, lesbians are mention on two -- with two pictures out of 23. If this isn't a new high in male chauvinism, I don't know what is!
The only halfway acceptable part of the entire feature is Michael Durham's essay, "Is Homosexuality Normal or Not?" While I may not agree with it in parts, it is at least informative and thought-provoking.
Julie Lee
Daughters of Bilitis
Fanwood, N.J.
Sirs: If as many psychologists and psychiatrists maintain, all human beings evolve naturally from an inactive homosexual stage to an active heterosexual stage at puberty, and homosexuality is the arrrested development of this transition, then our civilization is doomed if it admits and accepts aberration as a modus vivendi. Imagine the drastic effect on the minds of the young trying to gap these two stages if the advocates of the unnatural are put in key positions of government, religion, education, TV, theater or industry.
Joseph Vinci
North Dartmouth, Mass.
Sirs: It seems very unfair, to say the least, they (sic) every conceivable view is publicized -- except the most authoritative one, God's.
Marian B. Manwell
Mayville, Michigan
Sirs: "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22)
Nancy Svestka
Glendale, California
Many thanks to ethnographer Thomas Kraemer who transcribed the article for his blog earlier this year, where I copied the text from. His annotations and commentary are fascinating if you'd like a historical follow-up on many of the events, organizations, and people mentioned in the article:
http://thomaskraemer.blogspot.com/2008/07/life-magazine-1971-gay-liberation-story.html
And for further reading:
http://thornyc.livejournal.com/241086.html
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