Stuart Timmons - The Trouble With Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement

Stuart Timmons

White Crane Books Wisdom Series

Published by White Crane Books atSmashwords.com

Copyright 1990 by Stuart Timmons.

Copyright 2012 Stuart Timmons and WhiteCrane Institute

Cover design 2012 by White CraneInstitute.

All rights reserved.

White Crane Institute / White Crane Books

www.gaywisdom.org / editors@gaywisdom.org

First edition, first printing: November,1990

Centenary Edition, April 2012

ISBN-13 978-1-938246-00-5

ISBN-10 1-938246-00-4

Editing: Bo Young & Mark Thompson

Cover design: Dan Vera

Book design and production: Toby Johnson

Copy editing and updating: Bo Young &Mark Thompson

Library of Congress Control Number:2012933307

Urning men and women, on whose book oflife
Nature has written her new word which sounds so
strange to us, bear such storm and stress within them,
such ferment and fluctuation, so much complex
material having its outlet only in the future; their
individualities are so rich and many-sided, and
withal so little understood, that it is impossible to
characterize them adequately in a few sentences.

Otto deJeux,
Loves Disinherited, 1893

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Edited by Mark Thompson and

Richard Neely and Bo Young, AssociateEditors

For everyone who became anactivist.
And for everyone whowill.

Sasha Alyson and Richard Labonte firstproposed this biography; it would never have reached completionwithout their patience, encouragement, and support.

Many others deserve my sincere thanks. Theyinclude: William Alexander, Robert Balzer, Albert Bell, PhyllisBennis, Kate Hay Berman, Ruth Bernhard, Allan Brub, Betty Berzon,Martin Block, Joan Blood, Phillip Blood, Blue Sky Butterfly (WalterBlumoff), Joe Breyak, Peggy Hay Breyak, Peter Brocco, JamesBurford, Jean Hay Burke, John Burnside, Joey Cain, John Cage, TracyCave, John Ciddio, Kay McTernan Cole, Craig Collins, David Cohen,Josie Cottogio, Katherine Davenport, Tom Dickerson, Dimid, BenDobbs, Sandy Dwyer, Alan Eichler, Arthur Evans, Harry Frazier,Elizabeth Freeman, Fritz Frurip, Rudi Gernreich, Sandra Gladstone,Al Gordon, Eric Gordon, Helen Johnson Gorog, Lacie Gorog, JamesGruber, Pat Gutierrez, Manly P. Hall, David Hawkins, Jack Hay, JeanHay, Dorothy Healey, Tom Heskette, Bill Hill, Evelyn Hooker, LukeJohnson, Jorn Kamgren, Jonathan Ned Katz, Walter Keller, JimKepner, Morris Right, Chris Kilbourne, Ronald Kirk, ReginaldLeborg, Dorr Legg, Gene London, Alejandro Lopez, Phyllis Lyon, DelMartin, Lin Maslow, Bob McNee, John McTernan, Harnish Mearns, AlmaMeier, Joan Mocine, Mary Mocine, Jim Morrow, Hannah Hay Muldaven,Irv Niemy, Chaz Nol, Alan Page, Frank Pestana, Stanton Price, ShaneQue-Hee, Angus J. Ray, Silvia Richards, Ben Rinaldo, MarthaRinaldo, Florence Robbins, Earl Robinson, Bradley Rose, CharlesRowland, Sai (David Liner), Pete Seeger, Al Sherman, MichaelShibley, Dan Siminoski, Joel Singer, William Lonon Smith, KonradStevens, William Stewart, Mark Thompson, Dale Treleven, JacquesVandemborghe, Frans Von Rossum, Mitch Walker, Donald Wheeldin,Walter Williams, Raven Wolfdancer, and Martin Worman.

For providing information related to Haysbackground, thanks are due to Sarah Cooper and Mary Tyler of theSouthern California Library for Social Research, and to SandraArcher and the cheerful staff of the Academy of Motion Picture Artsand Sciences Library. James Kepners International Gay and LesbianArchives contain many original documents related to Hay and theMattachine Society; special thanks to Kepner for allowing me toexamine his personal correspondence with Hay and his unpublishedhistorical writing. Thanks also to James Broughton for kindlyallowing me to preview a section of his unpublished autobiographyand to Gerard Koskovich for sharing an unpublished interview withHay and for information about Stanford in the 1930s. Rudi Gernreichpreserved his notebook of early Mattachine Society meetings, andOreste Pucciani allowed me to study it. Thanks also to Dr. RobertChristianson, Dorothy Doyle, Hal Fishman, Mike Furmanovsky,Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Don Kilhefner, Dorr Legg, Freddie Paine, MiriamSherman, and Don Slater. Will Roscoe spent entire days photocopyingnotes from his personal archives; for that and many hours ofmanuscript review and suggestions, I am deeply indebted. Forsharing with me her notes and original source material on WillGeer, as well as her thesis on him, special thanks to Sally O.Norton.

This book absorbed hours of editing time.For their sound suggestions and support, thanks to Sasha Alyson,John Burnside, Craig Collins, Dorothy Doyle, AnthonyDuignan-Cabrera, Fritz Frurip, Mike Furmanovsky, Bill Hill, HenryHolmes, Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Gerard Koskovich, Richard Labonte, CraigLee, Joel Lorimer, Jim McGary, Jim Morrow, Carter Rose, Brad Rose,Peter Sigal, Faygele Singer, Bob Stacey, Mark Thompson, JoyceTimmons, Emily Timmons, Neal Twyford, Mickey Wheatley, and WalterWilliams.

For sharp wits I often feared dullingthrough overuse, Devon Clayton, Bill Fishman, Jim Kepner, and theincomparable William Moritz have my sincerest gratitude. Those fourtaught me as much about friendship as about writing.

Thanks for sustaining encouragement to thosementioned above, as well as to my friends from the Radical Faeries,A Different Light Bookstore, and to gay community writers; to mymother, Joyce Timmons, who took me to my first protest in astroller and has grown nearly as much as I have; to John Callahan,Bill Capobianco, John Fleck, Felidae Nemo, and Adrian Rodriguez,impeccable friends; and to Carter Rose, who showed me, finally, theEros of my ways.

S.T.

Acknowledgements for theCentenary Edition

This updated edition would not be possiblewithout the gracious consent and cooperation of Gay Timmons,Stuarts sister and literary executor. This volume was entirelyreviewed and reconstructed by supervising editors Bo Young and MarkThompson. Special thanks to Dan Vera for his cover design; AndrewThomas for his artful restoration of the books historicalphotographs; and to Joey Cain for his donation of the San FranciscoPublic Library image that appears on the back cover. Finally aspecial thanks to Toby Johnson for his redesign and reindexing ofthe book.

by Will Roscoe, Ph.D.

That the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexualand transgender rights (queer liberation, if you will) began in theMcCarthy era is the single most striking fact of its history. Anorganization calling for the rights of sexual minorities, formed in1950 and in three years reaching out to thousands through itsactivities and literature? How could that have happened?

Indeed, Americas pogrom against queerfolks, promoted on a national level by moral pundits andpseudo-professionals and implemented locally by policy and policepractice, was not effectively challenged until the Stonewall Riotsof 1969. And while the activism that subsequently spread across thecountry took on the trappings of the counterculture, it remainedgrounded in this reality: angry men and women fed up with policeabuse and legal persecution, with constant denigration andcondemnation, with therapies and treatments tantamount to torture,with violence and extortion and fear thereof, deciding, in the faceof all that, they had little to lose by fighting back. It hadgotten that bad.

These new activists dismissed the smallorganizations that still bore the name Mattachine. But these wereonly pale remnants of the movement Harry Hay and his cohortslaunched over six decades ago. Once the dust had settled, thetactics and aims of the new activists were precisely those pursuedor envisioned by the original Mattachine group: using the legalsystem to assert rights, circulating petitions and passing outleaflets, educating officeholders and questioning candidates,creating institutions and providing services.