Tuesday, February 14, 2023
Via White Crane Institute // TODAY'S GAY WISDOM Harry Hay…The Mattachine Society
Today's Gay Wisdom
2018 -
TODAY'S GAY WISDOM
Harry Hay…The Mattachine Society
In 1948, as Senator Joseph McCarthy railed against homosexuals in the State Department, Harry Hay, working on the Henry Wallace presidential campaign, wrote a startling document, declaring homosexuals an oppressed minority. While the idea is widely accepted today, at the time the notion of homosexuals as a minority was considered absurd. But it was this key concept that would eventually bring the Gay and Lesbian rights movement together.
Harry's platform for the Wallace campaign was never voted on, but he remained determined to organize homosexuals to fight for their equal rights. Two years later, he met Rudi Gernreich (who would later go on to become a noted fashion designer, most famously of the “topless” bathing suit for women) and together they canvassed beaches in the Los Angeles area known as homosexual gathering places, inviting people to a discussion group about the just released Kinsey Report. In November 1950, Harry showed the plank written for the Wallace campaign to Bob Hull, a student in his Southern California Labor School class. Bob shared the document with two of his friends, Chuck Rowland and Dale Jennings, and on November 11, 1950, the five met for the first time to discuss forming a political group that would later become the Mattachine Society. All of the founding members identified themselves as leftist.
Given the fearful political climate, Mattachine Society meetings often took place in secret with members using aliases. Like the Communist Party, the organization was organized in a cell structure that was non-centralized so that should a confiscation of records occur only limited information would be available to the authorities. In 1951 the group of five was joined by two other members, Konrad Stevens and James Gruber, and together they created the Mattachine Society Missions and Purposes statement and held their first conference. Given the risk that homosexuals presented to the Communist Party, Hay resigned from the Party in that same year.
Over the course of the next two years, the Mattachine Society worked to organize and increase regional chapters throughout most of Southern California, but it was not until the arrest of member Dale Jennings on police entrapment charges that the Mattachine Society took on its first political battle. Police entrapment was a common form of harassment against homosexuals during that period. Suspects' names were printed in the newspapers, which caused many to lose their jobs and become estranged from their families. By standing up to defend Jennings, the Mattachine Society not only rose to the defense of one of their members, but also took on the notorious Los Angeles Police Department for its pattern and practice of homosexual harassment.
Jennings charges were dismissed due to the judge catching the arresting officers in a lie. This victory was not reported in the papers, but the Mattachine Society took it upon themselves to publicize the event through flyers distributed throughout Los Angeles to areas where homosexuals met.
The result was a swelling of attendance at Mattachine Society meetings. But the newcomers, nervous about the founders ties to leftist political causes, called for a statewide convention. On the last day of the conference the original Mattachine founders (Hay, Rowland, Hull, Jennings, Stevens, Gruber) resigned due to political differences with the new membership.
The Mattachine Society grew into a national movement, and in conjunction with a Lesbian organization, the Daughters of Bilitis, became the above ground civil rights organizations for Gays and Lesbians until the Stonewall riot in 1969. The final Mattachine Society office closed in the 1980s.
White Crane gratefully acknowledges the assistance of historian and Hay biographer, Stuart Timmons.
|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8
Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8
Via White Crane Institute // JONATHAN DAVID KATZ
1958 -
JONATHAN DAVID KATZ is an American activist, art historian, educator and writer. I only know the year of his birth so I'm choosing this date at random (if you know his actual date, I would appreciate getting that information).
He is currently the director of the doctoral program in Visual culture studies at SUNY Buffalo. He is also the former executive coordinator of the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale University. He is a former chair of the Department of Lesbian and Gay studies at the City College of San Francisco, and was the first tenured faculty in gay and lesbian studies in the United States. Katz was an associate professor in the Art History Department at SUNY Stony Brook, where he also taught queer studies. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1996.
Katz is the founder of the Harvey Milk Institute, the largest queer studies institute in the world, and the Queer Caucus for Art of the College Art Association.
Katz co-founded Queer Nation San Francisco. He has made scholarly contributions to queer studies the focus of his professional career. He was the first artistic director of the National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco and has published widely in the United States and Europe.
His forthcoming book, The Homosexualization of American Art: Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and the Collective Closet, will be published by the University of Chicago Press. An internationally recognized expert in queer postwar American art, Katz has recently published Jasper Johns' Alley Oop: On Comic Strips and Camouflage in Schwule Bildwelten im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Thomas Roeske, and The Silent Camp: Queer Resistance and the Rise of Pop Art, in Plop! Goes the World, edited by Serge Guilbaut. In 1995, Katz was kicked out of Rauschenberg conference at the Guggenheim for mentioning Rauschenberg's relationship with Johns.
Katz was co-curator with David C. Ward and Jenn Sichel of the 2010 exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington. This was the first major museum exploration of the impact of same-sex desire in the creation of modern American portraiture. David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly was removed from the exhibition in November 2010, causing controversy. Katz was not consulted before the work's removal.
|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8
Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8
Via [GBF] New Dharma Talk: "Responding When People Hate Us or Hurt Our Feelings"
Our latest dharma talk from Dave Richo is now live:
"Responding When People Hate Us or Hurt Our Feelings"
https://gaybuddhist.org/
Find the handouts mentioned in his talk here:
https://gaybuddhist.org/wp-
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)