Gay Liberation (or Gay Lib) is the name used to describe the radical lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered movement of the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s in North America, Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. The phrase is somewhat synonymous with the contemporary "gay rights movement" and broader LGBT movements, but following the academic use, this article is about movements of a particular historical period in the that shared similar goals and strategies. Gay Lib is also known for its links to the counterculture of the time, and for the Gay Liberationists' intent to transform fundamental instutions of society such as gender and the family. In order to achieve such liberation, consciousness raising and direct action were employed. By the late 1970s, the radicalism of Gay Liberation was eclipsed by a return to a more formal movement that espoused gay and lesbian civil rights.

Terminology

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Specifically, the word 'gay' was preferred to previous designations such as homosexual or homophile; some saw 'gay' as a rejection of the false dichotomy heterosexual/homosexual. Lesbians and gays were urged to "come out", publicly revealing their sexuality to family, friends and colleagues as a form of activism, and to counter shame with gay pride. Coming out and Pride parades have remained an important part of modern LGBT movements, and the visibility of lesbian and gay communities has continued to grow.

Origins and history of movement

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Although the Stonewall riots in 1969 in New York are popularly remembered as the spark that produced a new movement, the origins of Gay Liberation predate this iconic event. Certainly, militant resistance to police bar-raids was nothing new — as early as 1725, customers fought off a police raid at a London homosexual/transgender molly house. Organised movements for LGBT rights, particularly in Western Europe, have been active since the 19th century, producing publications, forming social groups and campaigning for social and legal reform. The movements of the period immediately preceding Gay Lib, from the end of World War II to the late 1960s, are known collectively as the Homophile movement. The homophile movement has been described as "politically conservative", although their calls for social acceptance of same-sex love and transsexuality were seen as radical fringe views by the dominant culture of the time. By 1965, Dick Leitsch, the president of the Mattachine Society, advocated direct action, and the group staged the first public homosexual demonstrations and picket lines in the 1960s. By the late 1967, a New York group called the Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods (HYMN) was already espousing the slogans "Gay Power" and "Gay is Good" in its publication HYMNAL.

The 1960s

The 1960s was a time of social upheaval in the West, and the sexual revolution and counterculture contributed to the growing homosexual subculture, which in the U.S. included bookshops, publicly-sold magazines and a community center. These emerging social possibilities, combined with the new social movements such as Black Power, Women's Liberation, and the student insurrection of May 1968 in France, heralded a new era of radicalism. Many within Gay Liberation saw themselves as stemming from the New Left rather than the established homophile groups of the time. The words "Gay Liberation" echoed "Women's Liberation"; the Gay Liberation Front consciously took its name from the National Liberation Fronts of Vietnam and Algeria; and the slogan "Gay Power", as a defiant answer to the rights-oriented homophile movement, was inspired by Black Power, which was a response to the civil rights movement.

1969

On March 28 1969 in San Francisco, Leo Laurence (the editor of Vector, magazine of the United States' largest homophile organization, the Society for Individual Rights) called for "the Homosexual Revolution of 1969," exhorting gay men and lesbians to Join the Black Panthers and other left-wing groups and to "come out" en masse. Laurence was expelled from the organization in May for characterizing members as "timid" and "middle-class, uptight, bitchy old queens." He then co-founded a militant group, the Committee for Homosexual Freedom, with Gale Whittington--a young man who had been fired from States Steamship Company for being openly gay, after his photo appeared in the Berkely Barb, next to the headline "HOMOS, DON'T HIDE IT!", the revolutionary article by Leo Laurence. The same month Carl Wittman, a member of CHF, began writing A Gay Manifesto, which would later be described as "the bible of Gay Liberation". It was first published in the San Francisco Free Press and distributed nation-wide, all the way to New York City, as was the Berkeley Barb with Leo's stories on CHF's Gay Guerilla militant initiatives.

In June of 1969, when a group of patrons of the Stonewall Inn (led by black and hispanic transpeople) resisted a police raid, the ensuing rebellion was just the flashpoint that gay activists were looking for. Weeks after the event, on July 31, the Gay Liberation Front was formed, and the name of their magazine, "Come Out!", was an indication of their political program. By the end of the year, there were over a dozen like-minded groups around the United States. Their broad agenda included opposition to consumerism, militarism, racism, and sexism, but was primarily focused on "sexual liberation". The GLF's statement of purpose explained:

"We are a revolutionary group of men and women formed with the realization that complete sexual liberation for all people cannot come about unless existing social institutions are abolished. We reject society's attempt to impose sexual roles and definitions of our nature."

GLF activist Martha Shelley wrote, "We are women and men who, from the time of our earliest memories, have been in revolt against the sex-role structure and nuclear family structure."Shelley, Martha, 1970. Gay is Good.

1970

By the summer of 1970, groups in at least eight American cities were sufficiently organized to schedule simultaneous events commemorating the Stonewall riots for the last Sunday in June. The events varied from a highly political march of three to five thousand in New York and thousands more at parades in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. Groups with a "Gay Lib" approach began to spring up around the world, such as Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP, Inc.) in Australia and the British Gay Liberation Front. The lesbian group Lavender Menace was also formed in the U.S in response to both the male domination of other Gay Lib groups and the anti-lesbian sentiment in the Women's Movement. Lesbianism was advocated as a feminist choice for women, and the first currents of lesbian separatism began to emerge.

In August of the same year, Huey Newton, the leader of the Black Panthers, publicly expressed his support for the Gay Liberation and Women's Liberation movements.

1971

Although a short-lived group, the Comite Pederastique de la Sorbonne, had meetings during the student uprising of May 1968, the real public debut of the modern gay liberation movement in France occurred on 10 March 1971, when a group of lesbians from the Front Homosexuel d'Action Révolutionnaire (FHAR) disrupted a live radio broadcast which entitled “Homosexuality, This Painful Problem”.Sibalis, Michael. 2005. Gay Liberation Comes to France: The Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire (FHAR), Published in 'French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rudé Seminar. Volume 1.' PDF link The expert guests, including a Catholic priest, were suddenly interrupted by a group of lesbians from the audience, yelling, "It's not true, we're not suffering! Down with the heterocops!" The protestors stormed the stage, one young woman taking hold of the priest’s head and pounding it repeatedly against the table. The control room quickly cut off the microphones and switched to recorded music.

References

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LGBT history | LGBT civil rights | LGBT rights organizations