Hay, Harry. As a young man, he worked in Hollywood as a ghostwriter and an extra on movie sets, where he met the actor Will Geer (best known for his later role as Grandpa on The Waltons). So this was in ’34, you fell… and he fell in love with you. SHR was founded by Bavarian-born Henry Gerber (, ), who drew his inspiration from Magnus Hirschfeld’s work with the, The author whose work had such a profound effect on young Harry Hay (and who introduced him to the word “homosexual”) was Edward Carpenter (, ), known as the “sexy sage of Sheffield.”  Carpenter was a gay socialist philosopher and pioneering advocate of sexual freedoms. stated, “Hay’s contribution was to do what no one else had done before: plant the idea among American homosexuals that they formed an oppressed cultural minority of their own, like blacks, and to create a lasting organization in which homosexuals could come together to socialize and to pursue what was, at the beginning, the very radical concept of homosexual rights.”, In 1953, Hay—and the other leaders of the Mattachine Society, including, Chuck Rowland (featured in a Season One MGH episode), —was ousted in part because his Communist affiliation, which was deemed a liability by an insurgent group of more conservative members of the organization, including, Hal Call (featured in a Season Two MGH episode), Hay’s gay rights activism didn’t end with his Mattachine ouster, however: in 1966 he co-founded the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations, a “mixture of a political alternative, a counter-culture, and a spirituality movement,” in the. Harry was the gay rights pioneer who paved the way for everything that came after. And the Emperor Domitian who had you burned at the stake for it. documentary short about the movement titled, tribute page to founders Harry Hay and John Burnside, In the episode, Hay touches on a short-lived gay “social group” begun in 1924 Chicago. Inspired by an incendiary manifesto Hay had drafted, most historians mark the founding of Mattachine as the beginning of an organized gay movement in the U.S. Which is, uh, that you are a hetero performing nasty acts. Because after all, honey, I was, I really. But these are the people who are, who are acting, going to be there for the foundation, who will be therefore present, presenting us to the society at large, and this is what it really amounts to. That you are a hetero, and you’re a deviant, perverted hetero, but hetero you are. And I would come in with a whole list of a prefixes and a whole list of suffixes and we’d try putting the two together and see how it sounded. This is why I say there was no identity. EM: So you asked your mother to become involved because you needed a presentable front. And, ironically, it was his self-made, autocratic father who helped Harry find his way to other gay men. Others had you, uh, obliterated by stones, but the point was that you were wiped out, so there’s nothing left for the, when the body is called for to go into resurrection in the last day. Michael J. Tyrkus, ed. HH: We had a call to come together to begin to develop a gay organization. As Harry Hay’s 2002 obituary in the New York Times stated, “Hay’s contribution was to do what no one else had done before: plant the idea among American homosexuals that they formed an oppressed cultural minority of their own, like blacks, and to create a lasting organization in which homosexuals could come together to socialize and to pursue what was, at the beginning, the very radical concept of homosexual rights.”. EM: That’s right. As he says in the episode, Hay had a fondness for the word “fairy,” and in 1979 he would go on to co-found the Radical Faeries. The film had its broadcast premiere on PBS in June of 2002. In 1950, Hay was a founder of the Mattachine Society. From 1936 to 1938 he worked on the End Poverty in California campaign, the Hollywood Writers’ Mobilization, the American League Against War and Fascism, the Mobilization for Democracy, the Workers’ Alliance of America and Labor’s Non-Partisan League.[4]. And you can listen to an episode from Devlyn Camp’s Mattachine Podcast about “The Call” here. Tape one, side one. So if this fourth season of Making Gay History is an exploration of beginnings, Harry Hay was there at the inception of the movement in the U.S. It was a five-page thing, as a matter of fact, the original call. And that’s a nice word, until you look at the word, because what it really means: the sin for which there is no forgiveness. We would get, after, after we got our discussion group started and there were people who came to them, and then, or who were Europeans who were here and would write back to us, we would get little billets-doux from the post office saying, “We just received this package in your name. He rose up against huge odds in his struggle to give American gays a voice by constantly pushing the margins of acceptability, asking questions, and taking a stand at enormous personal risk. I mean, you know, I threw a ball like a girl. This first gathering launched a movement of Radical Faeries that is now active across the US and around the world. And so in 1934, when I was, uh, working in the theater, I fell madly in love with the leading man whose name was Will Geer. Interviewer is Eric Marcus. Thank you to executive producer Sara Burningham and the rest of the Making Gay History crew: producer Josh Gwynn, production coordinator Inge De Taeye, social media producer Denio Lourenco, photo editor Michael Green, and our guardian angel, Jenna Weiss-Berman. And in Chicago, he in turn had been the friend, the young friend of an older man, who at one time had started a group of homosexuals in Chicago in 1924. We can’t afford to have you exist. Hope along the Wind debuted to a sold out Castro Theater in 2001. Now why? Now, everybody said, “Well, they were using it in Holland, how come you didn’t copy it from them?” Well, fine, except we didn’t know that, because literature like that was not permitted through the mails, and the only way that you could have known that is if we had people of the upper middle class who were traveling in 1948 and ’49, and we didn’t know too many people who did, who would have gone to Europe and found this out and come back and told you. When he was ten years old, he and his family moved to Los Angeles. Nor is it because of his tut-tutting, which drove me nuts. As the Mattachine Society grew with chapters around the country, the organization saw the Communist ties of its founders, including Hay, as a threat during the McCarthyite witch-hunt era, and expelled them from leadership. So I was warned. The post office is the law! In 1950 he co-founded “The Mattachine Society” with his then-lover, Rudi Gernreich, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, and Dale Jennings. Tape one, side one. In 1983 Hay addressed a NAMBLA conference in New York. Making Gay History is a team effort. One of the important things that the Mattachine does, which it has never been given credit for, and I think it should be, one of the first series of discussion groups we had was that we were very dissatisfied with the name “homosexual,” because it didn’t describe how we felt and what we were doing. HH: We were totally illegal because, um, perverted acts are… Homosexuality in itself is totally illegal. Information Age (1970-present) And so I, asking my mother, um, I knew that she was, let’s say, the most respectable person that I could possibly think of who had a certain, she had a certain standing here in the community, and this was what she was doing in 1952. We did not vote. Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder. EM: So even if you knew the word “homosexual,” you couldn’t go to the dictionary and look it up. He was also involved in flings with other homosexuals over time before entering into an affair with fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, which lasted from 1950 to 1952. This is the, the oldest documented gay rights organization in the United States. Thirty years ago, sitting with Harry Hay, I started to understand what he was up against, what. Now we’re using that, I’m using the chapters and the various points that are in that, to have people to openly discuss this. Since the Communist Party disapproved of homosexuals, Hay married Anita Platky in 1938 and they adopted two daughters. San Francisco Chronicle (June 25, 1999): A17. EM: Do you remember some of the alternatives? Don’t be silly! Don’t kid yourself. law would you take into your own hands? Think black velvet jacket and matching knee pants worn with a fancy blouse with a large ruffled collar and a floppy bow. Interview with Henry Hay, Friday, August 24, 1989. And you can listen to an episode from Devlyn Camp’s, ) interviewed Hay and Barbara Gittings (who was featured, along with her partner Kay Lahusen, in two MGH episodes, which you can listen to, , which also includes interviews with MGH luminaries. We knew at this time that we had to set up a facade. All rights reserved. The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University offers extensive information and research on human sexuality and gender. She is currently working on Free for All, a feature length documentary that will chronicle a year inside a busy urban public library, San Francisco Public Library. That’s right. At this time, nineteen years before the Stonewall riots, virtually no gays or lesbians were publicly out, it was illegal for homosexuals to gather in public, and the American Psychiatric Association defined homosexuality as a mental illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. And, um, it turned out that he had been the, um, protege of a doctor in Kansas City, where he had recently come from, who had been interned at one time in St. Louis and before that in Chicago. Nor is it because of his tut-tutting, which drove me nuts. That’s great because… Oh, we got the points out. Location is Los Angeles, California. They immediately assume that you are making an assignation, and this therefore leads to licentious conduct and that is illegal. And who are watching to see whose eyes get inordinately bright and have a gleam going, which is more than ordinarily interested. Abuse Survivor Activist Author California Civil Rights England Gay Gay Pioneer LGBT Activist Los Angeles. I mean deviant sounds pleasant, but you’re a criminal. And this doctor in turn had another protege, who was the guy who picked, told me how dangerous it was, how I must never have anything to do with anything like that at all because it was so dangerous…, was the other message that was coming through to young Harry Hay, but this message was far louder and more clear…. In this case, the message was to bring people together to fight for our rights—and through a series of filament-thin connections across time, and between friends and lovers, that message was whispered in young Harry’s ear. During the 1950s he worked fearlessly with the Citizen’s Committee to Outlaw Entrapment. He put forth the radical idea that gays could give votes in exchange for ideological support. Angie Craig . Despite all these rejections, Hay continued pressing for gay rights and was one of the first to link gay support with voting when he publicly suggested to vice-presidential candidate Henry Wallace that the Progressive Party would get the homosexual vote if they backed the sexual privacy law. EM: I know exactly who he is. He also helped shape who we are as a people. Beaded necklace, ample sideburns, long gray hair, a single dangling earring. I just know it’s me. Harry Hay. You’re a hetero performing nasty acts, so, therefore, therefore you’re a criminal. As he says in the episode, Hay had a fondness for the word “fairy,” and in 1979 he would go on to co-found the Radical Faeries. So anyway, I can’t find out what it means, but I know. Here are part one and part two. He knew from an early age that he was attracted to men, had his first gay sexual experience when he was nine, and developed an interest in union organizing in his early teens while working on an uncle’s farm in Nevada. So if an image of Harry Hay’s mother sipping tea while listening to a group of gay people discuss the Kinsey Report sounds meek, it wasn’t. Homophile Movement (1945-1969) EM: You might just have heard something click for me. Thompson, Mark. Did she have any idea what she was president of? EM: You say, “show him the call.” Was it printed? In 1963, at age 51, he met an inventor named John Burnside, who became his life partner.

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