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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 2002)
nnifnmhnr 1 “OfT J— t IM R T iT T new s enry “Harry” Hay, known as the founder of the modem gay move ment in the United States, has died at age 90. He had been diagnosed weeks earlier with lung cancer. Despite his ill ness, he remained lucid and died peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of Oct. 24. Hay is listed in histories of the U.S. gay movement as first in applying the term “minor ity” to homosexuals. A n uncompromising radi cal, he easily dismissed “the heteros” and never rested from challenging the status quo, includ ing within the gay community. Because of the pervasive homophobia of his times— it was illegal for more than two homo sexuals to congregate in California during the 1950s— he and his colleagues took an oath of anonymity that lasted a quarter-century until Jonathan Ned Katz interviewed him for the groundbreaking book Gay American History. Countless researchers subsequently sought him out; in recent years, Hay became the subject of a biography, an anthology of his own writings and the documentary Hope Along the Wind by Portland filmmaker Eric Slade. Previous attempts to create gay groups in the United States had fizzled— or been stamped out. Hay’s first organizational conception was Bach elors Anonymous, formed to both support and leverage the 1948 presidential candidacy of Pro gressive Party leader Henry Wallace. He wrote and discreetly circulated a prospec tus calling for “the androgynous minority” to organize as a political entity. His call for an “inter national bachelors fraternal order for peace and social dignity" did not bear results until 1950. That year, his love affair with Viennese immigrant Rudi Gernreich— whose fashion F ather F igure civil rights gains after 1969s Stonewall riots in New York City. Hay was bom in Harry Hay paved the w ay for modern gay activism England in 1912, the by Stu art Tim m ons, M artin D uberm an, Jo ey C ain and Sally H ay day the Titanic sank. His father worked as a mining engineer in South Africa and Chile, but the family settled in Southern California. After graduating from Los Angeles High School, Hay briefly attended Stanford but dropped out and returned to the City of Angels. He understood from childhood that he was a sissy— different in behavior from boys or girls— and that he was attracted to men. His same-sex affairs began Harry Hay (left) brushes the cheek of his partner of 39 years, John when he was a teen Burnside, with his hand July 19 at their home in San Francisco ager, not long after he designs eventually made him a Time cover began reading 19th century scholar Edward C ar man— brought Hay into gay circles where a crit penter, whose essays on “homogenic love” ical mass of daring souls could be found to begin strongly influenced his thinking. sustained meetings. On Nov. 11, 1950, at Hays A tall and muscular young man, Hay worked home in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles, as both an extra and ghostwriter in 1930s Hol a group of gay men founded the Mattachinc lywood. He developed a passion for theater and Society. performed on Los Angeles stages with Anthony Though some criticized the movement as Quinn in the 1930s and with Will Geer, who insular, it grew to include thousands of members became his lover. in chapters from Berkeley, Calif., to Buffalo, N.Y., Geer took Hay to the San Francisco Gener and created a lasting national framework for gay al Strike of 1935 and indoctrinated him into the organizing. Mattachine laid the ground for rapid American Communist Party. Hay became an active trade unionist. A blend of Marxist analy sis and stagecraft strongly influenced Hay’s later gay organizing. Despite a decade of gay life, in 1938 Hay married the late Anita Platky, also a Communist Party member. The couple were stalwarts of the Los Angeles left; Hay taught at the California Labor School and campaigned for Ed Roybal, the first Latino elected in Los Angeles. When he felt compelled to go public with the Mattachine Society in 1951, the Hays divorced. After a burst of activity lasting three years, the growing Mattachine rejected Hay as a liability because of his Communist beliefs. In 1955, when he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he had trouble finding a progressive attorney to represent him, he felt, because of homophobia on the left. (He ultimately was dismissed after his curt testimony.) Hay felt exiled from the left for nearly 50 years, until he received the life achievement award of a Los Angeles library pre serving progressive movements. A second wind of activism came in 1979 when Hay founded, with Don Kilhefher, the Radical Faeries, a movement affirming gayness as a form of spiritual calling. This pagan-inspired group continues internationally based on the principle that the consciousness of gays differs from that of heterosexuals. Hay’s occasional exhortations that gays should “maximize the differences" between themselves and heterosexuals remained contro versial. 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