Moving Forward

Trailblazers: The gay and lesbian protesters who took to Independence Mall in 1965 will be commemorated here next week.
: Urban Archives-Temple University Libraries, Phila

The Equality Forum will honor those who paved the way for gay rights here in 1965.

by Lewis Whittington

When the annual Equality Forum gets underway in town Monday, the focus will be the looming 40th anniversary of one of the nation's first-ever gay-and-lesbian rights protests. On July 4, 1965, outside Independence Hall, 40 people stood up for their rights at a time when it was considered taboo to do so. It's a contribution that has not been forgotten.

"These pioneers cracked the cocoon of invisibility and started a national, and international, civil rights movement," says national event co-chair Sally Susman.

At that time, gay advocacy was an unorganized, undisciplined free-for-all. What the Philadelphia protest did, however, was ease the way for a grassroots movement that ultimately brought millions of people out of the closet. Come May 1, those protesters and other heroes will be recognized for their contributions to gay rights as part of the Equality Forum festivities. Fittingly, they'll be lauded near the same spot where they launched the movement.

The forum runs at Independence National Historic Park from Sunday until May 1. About 60 events are scheduled with some 100 regional, national and international organizations participating. The Independence Hall protesters' contributions were memorialized in Gay Pioneers, a documentary that will be continuously screened near the Liberty Bell. (The film premiered at last year's forum.)

BACK FOR MORE: Frank Kameny, one of the protesters four decades ago, says there's still work to do.
Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Barbara Gittings of Wilmington, Del., however, won't need to see the film to learn what happened. She was there, toting a sign that read, "Homosexuals should be judged as individuals." Gittings is still an activist, never mind her status as a gay civil rights pioneer. She'll soon arrive in Philadelphia to reconvene with fellow demonstrators to not only look back at accomplishments but strategize about the future of gay America.

Gittings was among those who silently marched here, in Washington D.C. and in New York from 1965 to 1969 in what was quaintly termed the "annual reminders" of the sociopolitical oppression of homosexuals. Back then, the slurs were queers, faggots, bull-dykes, fairies, pansies, muff-divers, pillow-biters, limp-wrist predators and deviants. Gittings says she wanted to give an alternative image to those perceptions.

Unlike the mythologized gay bar riots at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in 1969, where a battalion of drag queens took on the NYPD, the Philly demonstrators dressed way down. The men were decked out in cheap black suits and the women in dowdy skirts and blouses. For gay America, the symbolism of being in the birthplace of liberty was potent enough for what seemed like a run-of-the-mill protest to become a watershed moment.

Their efforts helped launch a social revolution that is still evolving on the streets, in the courts and on Capitol Hill. There is no disputing the fact that those brave few, sensible shoes and all, opened the door to a hidden world. Aside from being the prelude to Stonewall, it was indeed a quiet riot that came to symbolize the turning point.

Protestors used the black civil rights movement as their model as the gay liberation movement launched. It was a time of social unrest when many gay men took to the streets to stand against the Vietnam War and many lesbians marched for women's liberation. Eventually, they took to the streets for their "homophile movement" — not that many straight people got it. Liberation for minorities can look good on paper, but the reality is always something quite different.

Morbid attitudes about homosexuality, not to mention sodomy laws, kept people in the closet for decades, but living a secret sexual life was already cultural tradition born out of Puritanism. For gays, it has been an unfolding drama since those hot days in 1965. The Liberty Bell may have been ringing, but not necessarily for sexual outlaws. Homosexuals could still get arrested if they assembled — even in a gay bar. Queer shakedowns were the order of the day.

In fact, few straights remember the impact of those steps taken in front of Independence Hall. Any reporting in the media was basically of the freak-show variety.

Forty-five years ago, Frank Kameny wrote to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover — who, along with Sen. Joseph McCarthy, persecuted homosexuals — demanding that the government recognize the Mattachine Society, a gay-rights organization founded by Harry Hay in Los Angeles in 1950, as a legitimate civil rights organization. Last month, Kameny spoke on gay civil rights at the University of Pennsylvania and made a stop in front of Independence Hall, in the spot where he silently told the world he was a gay American.

Kameny still looks dapper. And, he had a lot to say.

"Things have progressed enormously since then. There's a backlash now and that has always happened," he says. "We're going to have to ride through that the next couple of years. Keep in mind that our demonstrations amounted to 150 people demonstrating in 1969 followed by the first Stonewall commemorative marches in New York one year later. I will never forget standing in Central Park and seeing 3,000 gay people. It would have been unthinkable just a year before.

"Basically, people are following the cues they're getting from the nutty fundamentalists, unfortunately. If [only] we can achieve a few more Massachusetts-type victories. ... I had my share of death threats, of course. And ridiculous stuff, like when I ran for Congress, my house was egged. Things like that. You have to live with yourself."

To Kameny, the fight continues, but he admits that "all the issues of those days have been resolved." The road to gay civil rights has been "clearer than we might have expected. There have been that many setbacks. Of the major issues that I started to deal with back in '61 the only one left is gays in the military. Of course, now the big one is gay marriage. But sodomy laws are gone."

Today, the potential for official gay integration into the sociopolitical life of America is so formidable that it decides presidential elections and drives the dominant political right wing to the point of obsession. And that's what forum organizers hope to deepen.

Among the dozens of events, lectures and symposia on all things LGBT, the week will culminate with an Independence Hall celebration. The 16-hour event will not only honor the Independence Hall marchers but also such gay-rights visionaries as San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to a substantial public office, and GMHC and ACT UP founder Larry Kramer. Everyone on the national gay scene will be here, including Queer as Folk's Robert Gant as the event emcee, tennis great Martina Navratilova and Advocate editor Bruce Steele.

"Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell will symbolize our quest for full equality," says Malcolm Lazin, executive director of Equality Forum. "The gay pioneers chose this iconic site in 1965 to launch the movement. There is no better location [for this event] than where our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written and the home of the beacon of freedom, the Liberty Bell."