Hay, Harry

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Harry Hay

BORN: April 7, 1912 • Worthing, England

DIED: October 24, 2002 • San Francisco, California

American gay rights activist

Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society in California in 1950, at a time when gay men and women were all but invisible in American culture. It was still technically illegal in the state for more than two gay men to meet, and Mattachine members had to swear an oath of secrecy. Hay spent the next fifty years working to win recognition for gay men and women as a distinct cultural minority. Although his Mattachine Society went through many changes, it is still considered the first gay rights organization in the history of American social reform movements.

"Assimilation is the way you excuse yourself. It absolutely never worked at all. You may not think you are noticeable. But they know who you are."

Realizes sexual identity

Harry Hay was born on April 7, 1912, in Worthing, England, near the resort area of Brighton Beach. His father was a mine manager, and the family lived near the Atacama Desert Copper Mine in Chile during Hay's early childhood. After his father was permanently injured on the job, the family settled in California. Hay's mother, American by birth, passed along her passion for music to her son. His father, however, made certain that his son was trained in various outdoor survival skills. He camped and learned horsemanship as part of a scouting group, and he worked in western Nevada's hayfields during the summers of his teen years. But Hay realized he was different from other boys at a young age. In the early 1930s, he enrolled at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and began a period of sexual experimentation.

Although Hay did not seem to have trouble finding others who wished to explore their sexual identities, homosexuality—the sexual attraction between individuals of the same gender—was a deeply forbidden subject at the time. It was classified by the medical profession as a form of mental illness, and even the word "homosexuality" was not included regularly in dictionaries until the 1940s. Furthermore, in most states, the sexual acts that gays performed were technically illegal.

In 1924 Henry Gerber, a German immigrant, founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago, Illinois. He described it in its official charter as an advocacy group for people with "mental abnormalities." This was technically the first gay rights organization in the United States, but it quickly attracted the attention of law-enforcement authorities. They banned the publication of Gerber's magazine, and he lost his post office job because of the scandal.

Secret life

When Hay was a young man, gay Americans stayed "in the closet." This phrase came into use a generation later to describe gay men and women who kept their sexual preferences hidden from friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, and society at large. Their private lives remained secret for practical reasons because they could easily lose their jobs if their sexual orientation was discovered. As Hay explained in an interview with Anne-Marie Cusac for Progressive magazine, attitudes about sexual orientation were very different in the early to mid-twentieth century. "In that time, you aren't a gay person, you aren't a homosexual person, you're a degenerate [an immoral person]," he recalled. "And what you were suffering from was what was known as ostracism [exclusion]. Ostracism means you don't exist at all. And that's a very difficult situation to live with."

After leaving college because of poor health, Hay moved to the Los Angeles, California, area and became a union organizer for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), one of the most prominent labor union groups in the United States at the time. He was also a minor actor in films and appeared in area stage productions, too. In his personal life, he began dating a man who had been a member of the Chicago human rights group a decade earlier, which led Hay to consider organizing a similar organization. He later became romantically involved with Will Geer (1902–1978), a moderately well-known actor in Western films who would later be remembered as the kindly grandfather on the 1970s television series The Waltons. But Geer and others, who were politically active but not on gay issues, warned Hay that any group of "temperamental" men, as they called themselves, would never be able to attract many members.

For a time, Hay stayed in the closet himself. He was even married for thirteen years to a fellow liberal activist and stage actor, and they adopted two children. Both he and his wife, Anita, were active in various leftist causes during the 1940s, and Hay joined the American Communist Party. Communism is a political system in which most aspects of social and economic life are dictated by the government. Under communism, all property is owned by the government and, theoretically, wealth is distributed evenly throughout society. Many leading progressives, intellectuals, artists, and even Hollywood actors and screenwriters were Communist Party members during this period. Hay later adopted some of the group's organizing tactics when he founded the Mattachine Society.

In 1948 Hay and some of his friends lent their political support to the presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965), a third-party candidate who was running on the Progressive Party ticket. They jokingly called their group "Bachelors for Wallace," and considered pushing for the addition of anti-entrapment legislation in the list of issues for which the party stood. Entrapment was a very real threat at the time, especially in the Los Angeles area. The police knew there was an active gay community in and around Hollywood, and often used decoys—men posing as homosexuals—to trap men into situations where they could be arrested. An offer would then be made to let the suspect go if money changed hands. Most men, fearful of losing their jobs, simply paid off the cops.

Impact of Alfred Kinsey

The turning point for Hay came with the publication of a book by Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956), a respected professor at Indiana University who had conducted extensive surveys of American sexual practices over the course of a few years. The findings presented in Kinsey's 1948 book, Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, caused a sensation for several reasons. One of the most significant was Kinsey's estimate that about ten percent of the male population had either experienced or would engage in a homosexual act at some point in their lives. Until then, Hay and his gay friends thought they merely made up a tiny fraction of the entire male population.

Hay began holding discussion groups for the Kinsey book, which were open to the public. When the discussion monitors would lead the audience into a question-and-answer session on homosexuality, Hay and his friends would be able to detect the fellow closeted gay men by their statements. After the meeting concluded, Hay and the others would quietly approach such men to inquire if they were interested in meeting elsewhere for further discussion. At the time, it was illegal in the state of California for more than two gay men to meet in one place at the same time.

During this period of his life, Hay was conducting his own independent research efforts. He was still devoted to music and the arts, and he was convinced that gay men and women had played some part in the cultural history of Western civilization. Their contributions, however, were unknown, so Hay spent years studying scholarly books looking for clues. He became fascinated by the Mattachines, a performing group in the Middle Ages (476 to the late fifteenth century) who wore colorful costumes and poked fun at the power of the Catholic Church. They took their name from a Spanish North African term with roots in the Arabic word mutawajjihin, which means "mask-wearer." By hiding their faces, the Mattachines could pass on secret information, which may have been ancient fertility songs and dances dating back to Europe's pre-Christian past, or word of underground, or secret, political movements elsewhere. Hay thought that a group of gay men in America might serve the same political purpose, to work toward ending the social isolation and segregation many closeted gay people feared.

Mattachine Society is formed

On November 11, 1950, at Hay's home in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles, the Mattachine Society was officially founded. Its first members included Rudi Gernreich, Hay's lover at the time. Gernreich was an Austrian-born fashion designer later known for his most famous creation,

Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk is a highly regarded and respected figure in the history of gay rights in America. A member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Milk was the first openly gay man elected to political office in the United States. He was murdered, along with the city's mayor, by a fellow politician in 1978.

Born in 1930, Milk grew up in Long Island, New York. After earning a math degree from Albany State College, he served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War (1950–53). When he returned to civilian life, he settled in New York City and worked for an investment banking house on Wall Street. Milk had become aware of his sexual orientation as a teenager. In 1972 he moved to San Francisco, a California city that was becoming a place of refuge for a younger generation of gay men and women from across America. San Francisco was known as a tolerant community for those whose lifestyles differed from mainstream Americans.

Milk owned a camera shop in the Castro district, the center of the gay community in San Francisco. In 1973 he ran for a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors, San Francisco's version of a city council. He ran as a candidate from the gay community, but lost the election as well as two others. The campaigns brought a great deal of negative publicity from the more conservative media and political elements in the city. Milk even received death threats. He finally won his Board of Supervisors seat in 1977 and was sworn into office along with Dan White, a former police officer. White, who represented the more conservative, working-class community, was outspoken in his opposition to the city's gay culture. In contrast, Milk was one of the liberals on the board who backed Mayor George Moscone, a Democrat and early gay rights supporter.

After several political battles with Moscone and Milk, White resigned citing a salary dispute. His supporters begged him to return, but only the mayor could reinstate him. Moscone refused. On November 27, 1978, White entered San Francisco City Hall through an open window in order to bypass the lobby's metal detectors. He then shot Moscone after a heated argument. He found Milk and shot him as well. Both Moscone and Milk died. White's attorneys claimed he suffered from depression that was intensified by his addiction to junk food. However, White was found guilty on two counts of voluntary manslaughter—killing without cruel or vicious intent—on May 21, 1979. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. The light sentence outraged the gay community, and the city erupted in violence. The evening unrest would be remembered as the White Night Riots, a turning point in the political awareness of San Francisco's gay community. White committed suicide in 1985 after he was paroled.

Milk was a famous figure in San Francisco during his brief political career and became an icon in the gay rights movement after his death. His belief that gay men and women should actively work to win full civil rights set a standard that many activists followed in the 1980s. Realizing that he was a target for hate crime, Milk dictated a will which contains his most lasting political statement. "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door," he stated, according to Time magazine. "Closet" refers to being "in the closet," when gays hide their sexual identities from others. Milk was named one of the magazine's 100 heroes and icons of the twentieth century.

the topless swimsuit. The other founding members were Dale Jennings, a film and stage writer, and Bob Hull and Chuck Rowland, two men Hay had met through the classes he taught at the California Labor School. They all swore an oath of secrecy about the group.

Hay taught courses in music theory and in Marxism, the political philosophy that was the foundation of Communist parties. He knew that well-known composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) had belonged to the Freemasons, an organization possibly dating from the Middle Ages and open only to men. The Freemasons were part of the greater Masonic order, which was sometimes banned for political reasons in places like imperial Austria of the 1700s. Because of this, the group operated in secret. The American Communist Party had also been the target of harassment in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the U.S. government and national law enforcement agencies began to suspect Communists as being agents of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a collection of nations dominated by Russia and considered America's greatest enemy from the late 1940s to the late 1980s. It was dissolved in 1991 and replaced by fifteen independent states. As a result of this surveillance by federal agencies, the American Communist Party was being more careful about its activities. Both organizations served as models for Hay when he started the Mattachine Society.

Although members of the Mattachine Society had sworn an oath of secrecy, they communicated with sympathetic friends elsewhere. Soon, several dozen chapters had been formed in major American cities. They remained underground, but still attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the federal law-enforcement agency that monitors groups considered to pose a threat to the security of the United States. Hay later learned that a person working for the FBI had gained access in every Mattachine chapter. The FBI also actively pursued Communist organizations for the same reason: The two were seen as part of the same threat. When the Mattachine members learned there were spies inside their group, it was a terrible setback for the movement. Many felt isolated and discouraged.

First court victory

The Mattachine Society did have one notable triumph in its early years, however. One of the founding members, Dale Jennings, was arrested in February 1952 by the Los Angeles police. Jennings, Hay, and the others decided to organize a legal challenge to the entrapment and the resulting criminal charge of offensive and immoral behavior. None of the previous entrapment cases had ever made it to trial because the suspects had paid the police bribe money in order to erase any record of the arrest. Hay and the other Mattachine members formed a defense committee and found a tough-minded labor lawyer who agreed to take the case. Few attorneys would become involved in such legal issues at the time, fearing damage to their reputation and loss of income. Jennings's lawyer convinced all but one member of the jury to side with the defense. The jury became deadlocked in an eleven-to-one vote in favor of a not guilty verdict. The judge dismissed the case, and it became the first court victory for gay rights in U.S. legal history.

The case caused a division within the Mattachine Society, however. Some wanted the group to stay away from outright activism, instead focusing on acceptance of gay men in society. Hay firmly believed there was such a thing as a distinct gay culture and a distinct gay identity. But others disagreed and he was expelled from the organization. "The assimilationist group you have now is exactly the same crowd that threw me out, only forty years later," he told Cusac in 1998. Assimilation means becoming like others in society or being absorbed into society, not being distinct. "Assimilation is the way you excuse yourself. It absolutely never worked at all. You may not think you are noticeable. But they know who you are."

Later in 1952 Hay founded a new organization, which he called ONE, Inc. Unlike the male-only Mattachines, it was open to gay women as well. He began publishing a magazine under the ONE name, but this was banned by the U.S. Postal Service as obscene, or sexually offensive. Hay began a four-year legal battle with the government and won his case in 1958. That same year, the journal reappeared as the ONE Institute Quarterly of Homophile Studies. This was the first scholarly publication for gay and lesbian studies in the United States. In 1974 the publication became the Journal of Homosexuality.

The Radical Faeries

In the early 1960s Hay became the life partner of John Burnside, an inventor and fellow free-thinker. He was still active in a few gay rights groups and helped set up draft-resistance networks for gay men in California during the Vietnam War (1954–75). The draft consisted of a lottery that determined which eligible young men would be called to serve in the military. The draft officially ended in 1973, although men are still required to register for the draft by age eighteen. In 1966 Hay and Burnside founded the North American Committee of Homophile Organizations (NACHO), an umbrella group for gay rights organizations. It worked to repeal laws pertaining to gay sexual practices in various states. The group also challenged the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This book was the standard handbook that psychiatrists used when determining what disease or illness afflicted a patient. The medical book classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. After three years of protests, the APA membership finally voted to change the classification in 1973, which was viewed as a major turning point in the gay rights movement.

Hay and Burnside, who lived in New Mexico for a number of years, became involved in Native American political issues while there. Hay publicly revealed his role in the Mattachine Society only in the mid-1970s, to author Jonathan Ned Katz (1938–) for the book Gay American History. In 1978 Hay organized "A Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries," and a year later hosted the first annual gathering of the counterculture group the Radical Faeries. Its members supported his idea that gay men shared a distinct cultural identity and were able to make positive contributions to the rest of society because of it. Gay men were particularly skilled as teachers, healers, and negotiators, Hay believed, and he hoped that someday their role would be more fully recognized and appreciated.

Hay died of lung cancer on October 24, 2002, at his home in San Francisco, at the age of ninety. He remained active in various gay rights causes well into the 1990s, although he disagreed with some members of the younger generation of activists who followed in his footsteps. He did not like the idea of "gay pride" as he told Cusac in the interview for the Progressive. "The moment you say, 'We are proud. I'm proud to be this, and I'm proud to be that,' what you're saying is we're almost as good as the others. 'Almost' always means not quite."

Shortly before Hay's death, his biographer Stuart Timmons went to visit him. Timmons had written The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement in 1990. In The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide magazine, Timmons described the conclusion of the visit with Hay: "At parting, clutching a pen and yellow pad by habit, [Hay] gestured for me to write. 'Tell my people I want them to be happy and strong. And free.' He stopped for breath. 'And contributive,' he added. 'And to fly.'"