Gay Liberation

GAY LIBERATION

Stonewall

Gay liberation was an important social-justice movement precipitated by the spirit of the 1960s. In June 1970 more than five thousand gay men and women marched in Greenwich Village to celebrate the first anniversary of the Stonewall riot, a violent clash between New York City police and gay people at the Stonewall bar on Christopher Street. Each year in a growing number of cities, the Stonewall marchers called for "Gay Power" and "Gay Liberation," and their politics and consciousness transformed a small reform movement into a grassroots gay liberation crusade. Hundreds of gay rights organizations in American cities demanded legal reform, access to public services, and an end to discrimination. By 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in response to lobbying by gay liberation groups who charged that psychiatry provided the underpinnings for many antihomosexual practices. The National Association of Social Workers, the American Sociological Association, other academic organizations, and several states took similar action by 1975.

Politics

The success of the gay liberation and gay rights movement prompted gay candidates to run for public office. In Massachusetts Gerry Studds, a gay Democrat from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was elected to Congress in 1973. Elaine Noble was the first openly homosexual woman to be elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1974. Barney Frank, a gay man who served effectively in the administration of Boston mayor Kevin White and in the Massachusetts legislature, would be elected as a Democrat to Congress in 1980. Other gay candidates campaigned or were elected to office in California, Missouri, Minnesota, and Florida. The election of openly or covertly homosexual candidates marked a new mood of tolerance and acceptance in the United States.

Harvey Milk

In San Francisco Harvey Milk, a prominent gay activist, was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1977 and served ably until November 1978, when Milk and Mayor George Moscone were shot and killed in city hall by Dan White, a former policeman who also served on the Board of Supervisors. When White received a lenient prison sentence based on the so-called "Twinkie defense" (eating junk food had impaired his mental capacity), San Francisco City Hall was rocked by demonstrations and violence. In 1984 The Times of Harvey Milk won an Oscar for best documentary film.

Anita Bryant

Energized by these political changes, the gay and lesbian movement in the late 1970s emphasized two major issues—the repeal of sodomy laws and passage of antidiscrimination legislation. It proved very difficult to organize factionalized homosexual communities around legislative issues, though. Gay activism was only slowly emerging outside of a few large cities. How-ever, gay liberation advocates did rally in response to an anti-gay rights crusade. Begun in 1978 in Dade County, Florida, and led by the evangelist singer Anita Bryant, the antigay crusade persuaded Dade County voters to repeal a civil rights law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Within a year Bryant's Save Our Children organization and evangelical groups, including the Reverend Jerry Falwell, repealed similar laws in Minnesota, Kansas, and Oklahoma and attempted to do so in Oregon and California. Perhaps in reaction to the economic recession of the late 1970s, these conservative critics of homosexuality, dubbed the New Right or neoconservatives, made a concerted effort to assert their moral and religious views in legislative bodies on all levels. Nevertheless, gay rights advocates won the support of liberal and moderate voters.

Results

Increased personal tolerance for sexual experimentation during the 1960s and 1970s is referred to as the sexual revolution. Although some sexual inhibitions loosened, homosexuals and lesbians did not find wide-spread public acceptance. Colleges, for example, relaxed in loco parentis rules for heterosexuals long before they tolerated gay men and women. Gay pride marches and legal protection from discrimination were to come slowly in the mid 1970s. The problems gay high-school students faced were only slowly addressed, although New York City soon opened the Harvey Milk School for gay and lesbian high-school students.