Reflections of a Gay Activist at the Start of the LGBTQ+ Movement in Chicago in the Months after Stonewall

Left: Author taken by Larry Sapadin in September , 2017 at Three Arrows Story Telling, , ; Right: Author taken by Margart Olin in April, 1970 at domonstration in Downton Chicago

This month we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the modern LGBTQ+ movement. As a gay activist who helped start the movement in Chicago 50 years ago, I am overjoyed to be alive and see the visibility that this event has in the media. As we get ready to celebrate this watershed moment in LGBTQ+ history, I want to share some reflections to put a human face on the beginning years, to show the true place of Stonewall and to suggest ways that this movement can inspire all of us during these rather dark political times.

It was in the summer of 1969 when Henry Wiemhoff showed me the Village Voice article about the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar where the patrons fought back at a police raid. The article also mentioned that a group of gays and lesbians was forming in New York. Henry had reached out to me because he knew that I had tried to form an informal gay group at the University of Chicago-quite a revolutionary thing for that time. The resistance against the police at the Stonewall Inn had a special resonance for me. When I was starting to come out into my sexuality in 1965, I was arrested at a gay party and marched passively into a paddy wagon, filled with the fears of losing by first real job and exposure to friends and family.

As a graduate student at the University of Chicago in Human Development, I witnessed the anti-war movement, the movement for Civil Rights and Black Power, and a lengthy sit-in at my own school. But while I was becoming supportive of these struggles, I wasn’t motivated to do anything; I didn’t connect enough with them. I had even studied Karl Marx the previous year in a class. I thought of writing a paper applying Marx’s concepts to being gay, but I was afraid of even that level of exposure.

Henry introduced me to the literature on Women’s Liberation. This was all new to me. I grew up in a culture of fixed roles. I assumed everyone was happy that way and that my sexuality was just deviant. I was struck by the personal stories and the arguments in Red Stockings and other publications for transforming gender roles. I thought I had worked through the self-hate that many gay men carried, but I still felt a sense of failure for not going to have a wife and my 2.2 kids. Feminist theory put my sexuality in a new perspective; we were part of potential social upheaval, a process of social transformation. That along with knowing about Stonewall, made it clear to me. I was in.

First Chicago Gay Liberation Demo in Grant Park, April 1970 taken by Margaret Olin. Note the context of gay liberation : “Power to All Oppressed People”

We decided to form a group to talk about Stonewall and our evolving analysis of sex roles. We talked to our friends and put an ad in the school paper with Henry’s phone number. At our first meeting in December, eight people showed up: a mix of women and men, current students, dropouts and people in the area. Most of them talked about walking around the block a few times before going in from fear of the Chicago Police. Recently the police had raided a gay bathhouse: everyone was arrested and the full names and addresses of the patrons were published in the Chicago Tribune. And the previous year, the national media had been full of images of the police bashing the heads of anti-war demonstrators outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Bystanders at first Chicago Gay Liberation Demo in Grant Park, April 1970 taken by Margaret Olin

First Meetings: Facing the dragons in our heads

In the first meetings we talked about the difficulty of having a double life. I volunteered that the closet was the cause of so much anonymous sex between men. In our sharing it became clear how our culturally induced closet was keeping us from having any power- personally by automatically censoring so much and politically, as seen by ineffectiveness of previous homophile groups. If we were to reach for any power like the social movements around us, we had to come out not just sexually, but publicly. One of the lesbians summarized the discussion with phrase:“the dragons are in our head.” I agreed: we were the ones keeping ourselves back, as long as we stayed in the closet.

Our first action was to be interviewed as a group by the student run radio station. My lover of four years threatened to leave me if I participated. I told him I didn’t have to give my name; he said that someone could recognize my voice. I didn’t hesitate; I did the interview and our relationship ended soon after. This was the first sign of the fears that our actions stirred up in the larger community as we moved farther out on the limb.

At 26, I was the oldest in the group and the most established in the sense that I was a fourth year graduate student. Some in the group were starting to tell straight friends and were surviving fine. But in my mind, I had more to lose. My friends would be my future colleagues. Word would spread within my field. I wouldn’t be hired. What department would want trouble? Even if they never told me that my sexuality was the reason, it would always be there.

Looking back now at almost seventy-six, it is hard to believe what I did. I would have told my younger self, “go slower, let others take the risk. If the movement is good idea, it will keep growing until it is safer for you.”

Yet at that time, I had more clarity than ever in my life. For many years I lived with the fear of not fitting it, not trusting my feelings or inner voice (it is still really hard to write), or believing strongly in anything. But Coming Out made sense in my mind. I was at the beginning of something much bigger, and it could improve my life as a gay man (and maybe even attract a new partner). And it just felt right in my body to take such personal power over my life. I just saw something that was right and needed to be If it were to bring harm, I would know what it was like for once in my life to believe passionately into something and to feel the support of others. You may sense some of that passion in the first picture. This was the first rally of Chicago Gay Liberation in downtown Chicago, April 15,1970. (Thank you Magaret Olin for the pictures of the demonstration.) This was the first time in my entire life that I spoke to a group larger than a meeting in someone’s apartment.

First Chicago Gay Liberation Button taken by Kevin Burke

Coming Out: facing the dragons

And so I/we came out. We ordered buttons that said “OUT OF THE CLOSETS INTO THE STREETS.” We agreed to all wear them that week and announce through the buttons who we were. It turned out not to be that easy. No one understood the button. Was it “make marijuana legal” or “let’s be free and have a good time?” The responses showed us that our closets were even deeper than we thought.

So I had to tell people individually. There was responses like the one I got from my dissertation advisor who said “ I was wondering why you weren’t even looking at that beautiful women sitting next to you at a concert,” but hardest was “I’m so sorry for you.” I would have to explain that being gay was a good thing. This was not something I was that sure of then, nor was it something they were ready to hear. But I survived. Overall, telling people brought a great feeling of relief and personal power to my life.

I have since learned that every “Coming Out” story has a variation on these themes of internal fears, external fears, risks taking steps, and the belief that “my situation is different.” What made our experiences unique is that we didn’t have role models, and we had no clue what could happen. Would we be out on a limb without a movement behind us?

There was magic through this period, though. I could see my effect on people drawn to our group. They were seeing someone sure of himself and creating his own life. We talked about my experience; they shared feelings by saying things like: “but my situation is different. ” I could certainly relate to that. Often it was only a week later when they told me they started to come out to others. After four meetings we started to attract others form the city. Soon there was a group at Northwestern, then other schools, then on the north side of Chicago and then throughout the Midwest.

Bystanders (possibly undercover police, at the first Chicago Gay Liberation Demonstration in April, 1970 taken by Margaret Olin

But the dragons weren’t all in our heads

During the first year, we had a confrontation with the police through an intermediary. A group of us were told that the police were going to raid our dance that night at the Chicago Coliseum. We went ahead with the dance anyway and the police backed off. An ongoing fear from the first meeting was that the police had a spy in our meetings. I learned recently that this was true and that they had a full file on me.

The fear of arrest was always in the back of our minds, and a year later it actually happened to me. Plainclothesmen captured me, pushed me through closed doors, beat me up, and threw me into a paddy wagon just for chanting “gay power” at a campaign rally. They didn’t identify themselves before attacking, but they still booked me for “resisting arrest.” But, heck, it was only physical harm; it just made me stronger. It was a far cry from the psychological harm I endured during my arrest at a party in 1964 when we walked passively like sheep into the paddy wagon.

The fear of being out on a limb was always there as well. I think that contributed to my intense involvement with gay liberation in the first couple of years. I was really committed; my future depended on our success. That fear dissipated in at the gay pride march in 1971. We started off with a few hundred marchers, about double what we had the year before in the first march. When we reached the end of the march, I looked back and could see what must have been a couple thousand people behind us. I still a feel a tear when I think of it. We weren’t the only ones; there really was a movement behind us.

I see our early work as incubating “LGBTQ+ pride.” Because we were leftists and identified with the progressive movements of that time, we could reject the beliefs of the dominant culture and feel that our sexuality was good and not something to hide. We came out publicly and started to act more like our true selves. And by meeting and then demonstrating with others who shared that perspective we could reinforce those feelings in ourselves. We made space for ourselves by coming out and by acting more natural in public.

There are many levels to this coming out. Consider a simple act like affectionately touching someone of the same sex in public. At first the desire could be repressed. I once felt that public displays of affection by anyone were wrong. The next step might be to feel the desire, but give into the fear and hold back. Another step might be to tentatively touch, with eyes looking all around for a sign of danger. Another step might be touch at a public demonstration with a sense of defiance that over time could lead to actually feeling the depth of the affection. Eventually this can lead to the freedom of acting spontaneously when the feeling arises.

All of these internal changes take time and they can be felt and seen by others. As we acted and became more visible, we drew in others that weren’t as far “left,” but could sense the integrity in our being and were willing to question their own assumptions about the culture and society. Over the years, this same process of the ways we influence and liberate each other has moved across the political and religious spectrum. Each group finds ways to modify their beliefs to allow their own full expression of sexuality and then to tries to integrate it with their own belief system.

Stonewall was a catalyst

So, yes Stonewall was a catalyst. But in many ways the yearly celebration of the event was at least as important because it was a laboratory for others to experiment with the possibilities of this new identity and experience of the world But the celebration has become a great marketing opportunity and a big party. It is overrun by commercialism. The spirit of Stonewall, fighting back, got lost a long time ago.

So I’ve been torn about attending this Sunday, the 50th anniversary. I love the focus on Stonewall. If I were still living in New York now, I would be joining with my fellow activists to the much smaller march, Reclaim Pride, that will leave earlier in the morning take the route of the original march in 1970.

But I’m living in Portland now and rather than a long trip, huge crowds and all that commercialism, I’ve chosen to put that energy into writing this piece and hopefully getting through my writer’s block to write more of my history. Besides, on Sunday I can just go outside into a crowd and visibly celebrate by kissing and loving my husband.

Author and Husband

Thoughts about the present

The times are dark now and it can be hard to appreciate the many gardens of creativity –people incubating new (and old) ways of being with the earth and with each other. When we commit to a vision, take risks, work with others, and follow our passions we don’t know the outcome, but it sure can be satisfying. And with enough water, some of these gardens will blossom in way that LGBTQ+ pride has.

Earlier I mentioned that my older self might have counseled my younger self to be more cautious and to let others take the big risks. However, I would also tell him how very proud I am of him of the courage and passion he displayed as he helped us find our way out of the cultural induced closet at that early moment of history. And this older gay man is so grateful for the joys I’ve experienced watching the ripple effect of those early actions over the years, and for the freedoms that I have now as a result of all of our work.

Originally Posted to Medium.com Reflections of a Gay Activist…. Jun 28th, 2019