‘Let’s follow in their footsteps and keep fighting’
◆ As Pride Month begins, Lewis Laney’s new book 365 Gays of the Year celebrates the lives of activists who have battled for equality and played a role in advancing and celebrating the LGBTQ+ movement
As we celebrate Pride Month across the UK this June, taking to the streets for marches and parades, and heading into parks, bars and community spaces for parties, music festivals and rallies, let’s remember how far we’ve come, but also that the fight continues. Right now, across America, laws are being passed that once again criminalise the LGBTQ+ community and are designed to silence us and falsely mark us out as villains in society.
Back home, the UK’S score in the Ilga-europe’s Rainbow Map and Index continues to fall year after year, as we now sit in 17th place, down from the number one spot in 2015. The fall is attributed to the delay in banning conversion therapy and a rise in “antitrans rhetoric” in the media and from the government. Let’s look to the bravery and resilience of these activists of yesteryear and follow in their footsteps and keep fighting. And if you catch yourself on the side-lines, not doing your bit, think what Stormé Delarverie would say: ‘WHY DON’T YOU DO SOMETHING!?’.
Many accounts of LGBTQ+ history will say that it is a truth universally acknowledged that ‘drag queen’ Marsha P Johnson threw the first brick during the Stonewall riots, on the 28th June, 1969 in New York City. However – as confirmed by Johnson herself – this isn’t the case. When police raided the Stonewall Inn, an illegal gay club run by the mafia and located in Greenwich Village in New York City, Johnson was uptown at a party and only arrived at the Inn when the revolt against the police was well underway.
What happened over the next few nights was instrumental in the LGBTQ+ rights movement, as the New York queer community fought back against authorities, and ultimately won. So if it wasn’t Marsha P Johnson (the ‘P’ stood for ‘Pay it no mind’), who did ignite the riots?
When police arrived at the Stonewall Inn, they intended to shut it down and beat and arrest its patrons, as they had often done before. However, this time – as the community mourned the loss of one of its most-loved icons, Judy Garland – whose funeral took place hours earlier – they decided they’d had enough. Many attribute the turning point in the uprising to Stormé Delarverie, a butch lesbian, singer and drag king of colour who turned to the crowd after being beaten by the police and shouted, ‘WHY DON’T YOU DO SOMETHING?!’. And
do something they did… They retaliated, throwing coins and bottles, setting fires and eventually forcing the police to barricade themselves into the bar until back-up came to help.
Of course, the Stonewall riots are acknowledged as a revolution and the turning point in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement in America, but they were by no means the first acts of activism in the 20th century. Harry Hay, sometimes referred to as the original radical fairy, on account of him being a gay activist as well as a hippy communist, co-founded one of the US’S earliest gay rights organisations, the Mattachine Society (originally called Society of Fools) in 1950 – 19 years before Stonewall.
While united in progress, Mattachine members disagreed on whether their cause should go down the route of assimilation into heterosexual society or whether gay people should acknowledge their differences and present themselves as an oppressed cultural minority, as Hay proposed. Internal squabbles aside, when fellow founding member Dale Jennings was arrested for cruising in Los Angeles, Hay saw an opportunity to fight back and expose police entrapment. After collecting funds from gay people to pay for an attorney, Hay encouraged Jennings to admit to being a homosexual in court but deny making advances to the cop. Jennings was one of the first gay men to contest charges like this, as many often pleaded guilty to avoid public scrutiny. On 2nd July 1952 the jury’s verdict was for acquittal, citing police intimidation, harassment, and entrapment of homosexuals. This was a resounding win for the Mattachine Society, as well as a key moment for the Gay Rights Movement.
In 1955, lesbian couple, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, along with several other women, bravely set up the political and social lesbian organisation, the Daughters of Bilitis, from their home. The name was inspired by a collection of lesbian poetry by Pierre Louys entitled ‘Songs of Bilitis’ and the group allowed women to safely connect with other lesbians. Members received a newsletter, The Ladder, which was the first printed lesbian magazine in the US. During the early part of the 1960s Barbara Gittings, an early and significant member of the Daughters of Bilitis was the editor of The Ladder, and her partner, Kay Lahusen was the art director. As a photographer, Lahusen captured many of the movement’s earliest demonstrations, providing important historical documentation of LGBTQ+ activism in the USA. The pair campaigned tirelessly to have the American Psychiatric Association (APA) remove its definition of homosexuality as a ‘mental disorder’, initially storming meetings of the APA, but eventually working with them to organise a panel discussion on the subject. They even convinced a psychiatrist to take part (in disguise), to support their argument, and thanks to their efforts the APA removed the harmful definition on 15th December 1973.
Across the pond in the UK, progress seemingly came about (very slowly) via more official routes, starting around the mid-fifties when a case involving three high-profile men (the third Baron of Beaulieu Edward Montagu, landowner Michael Pitt-rivers, and Anglocanadian journalist Peter Wildeblood), brought widespread attention to the laws on homosexuality.
Heterosexual journalist and army major, Goronwy Rees, joined the government’s committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution in 1954 and became an early notable ally for the LGBTQ+ community.
He argued that the Committee should hear testimonies directly from homosexual men, as well as so-called experts, which in turn played an important part in the resulting Wolfenden Report. At the time, gay people were viewed as perverts and criminals, so Rees’s stance on including them was revolutionary.
The report, which was highly controversial, laid the foundations for the later 1967 Sexual Offences Act, that partially decriminalised male homosexuality for the first time in England and Wales. Rees was described as ‘by far the most lateral thinking and perceptive member of the committee’ for his ideas. The act received royal assent and became law on the 27th July 1967 in England and Wales, while it took until 1981 for male same-sex sexual acts to be legalised in Scotland, as part of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980.
Sir Ian Mckellen recalls the first gay kiss on British TV that was aired in this transitional period, on 6th August 1970, just three years after the Sexual Offences Act legalised homosexual acts in England and Wales, but not Scotland. The show was a Bbc/prospect production of the play Edward II, and the kiss was between Ian Mckellen and James Laurenson. Recalling the kiss, Mckellen said, ‘I’ve met many Americans who said [our] performance was crucial in their lives when it aired on PBS. But the situation we were placed in was obscene! I mean we were breaking the law in Scotland at this point.’
This is an edited extract from 365 Gays of the Year, by Lewis Laney (White Lion, £16.99) – out now. Illustrations from the book by Charlotte Macmillan-scott
The UK’S score in the Ilgaeurope’s Rainbow Map and Index continues to fall