You've Come a Long Way, Baby

The gay rights movement, from the Mattachine Society to now.

by Jeffrey C. Billman

Evan M. Lopez

[ the movement is us ]

It's sometimes easy to forget, amid what seem the herculean battles of today waged on the chaotic clusterfuck of 24-hour cable news networks, how far, and how quickly, the gay civil rights movement has come. It was just 60 years ago, in the aftermath of World War II, that the first American gay rights organization — or rather, the first one that mattered — formed. And even then, the Mattachine Society began the slow, dogged push for equality largely in the shadows.

The era of out-and-proud queers was a ways off.

Those were turbulent days for sexual minorities: Gays were so hated that even the ACLU wouldn't rally to their cause. The Communist Party, Enemy No. 1 at the height of the Red Scare, did not want to be sullied by having homosexuals in their midst. A Truman administration document asserted that gays posed a greater risk to national security than the reds. Gays were (until 1980, in fact) denied jobs in the federal government; state licensing boards commonly held similar strictures: According to one estimate, gays and lesbians throughout the Cold War were legally barred from at least 20 percent of the nation's jobs. The news media — whose job it is to "comfort the afflicted" — piled on, glibly reporting the names of men rounded up in police raids on gay bars.

In those days, the words "gay marriage" weren't on anyone's lips. Civil unions? Unheard of. Anti-employment discrimination laws? Gay clergy? Open military service? Out gay politicians (or, perhaps, allegations that a politician faked his gayness to gain votes)? Pipe dreams, all. Members of the Mattachine Society and other such pioneers fought laws that made their very being illegal. They fought entrenched hatred and scorn at the risk of their livelihoods, and in a very real sense, their lives.

This was all before the Stonewall riots. This was before Harvey Milk. This was before the movement crystallized around the AIDS epidemic; before the American Psychiatric Association decided that homosexuality was no longer a pathological condition in 1973; before Don't Ask, Don't Tell; before Will & Grace and the mainstreaming of gay culture; before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in 2003; before Massachusetts and (briefly) San Francisco began issuing gay marriage licenses in 2004.

As gays and lesbians and their supporters descend on this city for this week's Equality Forum, we would do well to keep men like Harry Hay, Bob Hull, Rudi Gernreich, Chuck Rowland and Dale Jennings — the Mattachine founders — in mind. But obviously, their work is not done: Although gays and lesbians have undeniably made incredible strides, the fight for true equality persists. Gays have access to full marriage equality in only five states and Washington, D.C. They cannot serve openly in the military (a fact that has led Lt. Daniel Choi, a discharged gay vet, to chain himself twice to the White House fence in recent weeks in protest). In much of Pennsylvania, they can legally be denied housing and employment based solely on their sexual orientation.

For all their gains, gays and lesbians remain, by any objective measure, second-class citizens. And that's the point of this year's Equality Forum: to not only honor those, like Choi, and like Ted Olson and David Boies — the sparring attorneys in the Bush v. Gore election dispute who collaboratively challenged California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 — who have taken up the Mattachine banner (Olson and Boies will be awarded the Forum's International Role Model Award at the May 1 International Equality Dinner at the National Constitution Center, which Choi will also attend), but to remember that every cause worth fighting for needs a new generation of heroes, and the movement for gay civil rights will be no different.

(jeffrey.billman@citypaper.net)

Check out our picks for the Equality Forum's panel discussions at citypaper.net/clog.