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Ryan James Yezak has released another spectacularly edited montage of vintage news clips that weaves the narrative of the federal ban on blood donation by gay men into a larger picture of the LGBT civil rights struggle.
It will shock you. It will make you cry and it will make you angry. And hopefully, it will make you FIGHT because in reality it’s not that much different today.
On April 17th, 1965 Dr. Frank Kameny along with gay rights pioneer Jack Nichols, who co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, DC bravely led the first “homosexual rights” protest at the White House at a time in history when being gay and lesbian was viewed as an abomination in this country.
The Mattachine Society fought for the equal treatment of gay employees in the federal government, the repeal of sodomy laws, and the removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s manual of mental disorders..
Ten MSW members along with members of the Daughters of Bilitis picketed in front of the White House against Cuban and the US governments repression of homosexuals.
The group also included: Gail Johnson, Gene Kleeberg, Judith Kuch, Paul Kuntzler, Perrin Shaffer, Jon Swanson, Otto Ulrich, Lilli Vincenz (editor of MSW’s quarterly).
Of the protest, Jack Nichols wrote “Never before had gay people as an organized group paraded openly for our rights.”
The picket took place during mid-afternoon. It was the Saturday before Easter, and tourists walked the downtown streets. Lige [Clarke], driving the convertible, took me to the White House curb and helped me unload signs. Then he drove off to work the afternoon shift at the Pentagon. Gail arrived at the site on the back seat of Ray’s motorcycle. It was agreed I should lead the picket line. The reason for this was that I was tall and an all-American sort. Also, I suppose, because I’d conceived the event. Frank Kameny marched behind me and Lilli Vincenz behind him ..
As we marched, I looked about at our well-dressed little band. Kameny had insisted that we seven men must wear suits and ties, and the women, dresses and heels. New Yorkers later complained that we Washingtonians looked like a convention of undertakers, but given the temper of the times, Kameny’s insistence was apropos. “If you’re asking for equal employment rights,” he intoned, “look employable!” In the staid nation’s capital, dressing for the occasion was, in spite of New York critics, proper.
We paraded in a small circle. Behind lampposts stood unknown persons photographing us. Were they government agents? Perrin and Otto wore sunglasses so absolute identification would be difficult should they fall prey to security investigations. We walked for an hour that passed, as I’d predicted, without incident. A few tourists gawked and there were one or two snickers, more from confusion than from prejudice.
We’d hoped for more publicity than we got. Only “The Afro-American “carried a small item about what we’d done. But we’d done it, and that was what mattered. We’d stood up against the power structure, putting our bodies on the line. Nothing had happened except that we’d been galvanized, and, to a certain extent, immunized against fear.”
The Mattachine Society protest was not welcomed by the even more conservative leaders of the gay movement who felt picketing would draw adverse publicity and even greater hostility.
The Mattachine Society’s protest of the White House, along with the Stonewall Riots are among two of the most significant events in LGBT History. But sadly as we look at the pictures and read the slogans on the picket signs of our LGBT activist forefathers and we realize many of the slogans on these signs could still be carried in protests today almost 60 years later.
This is still our time. This is still our fight.
Coretta Scott King, the wife of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., was a prominent figure in the struggle for equality and justice. In addition to her work in the African American community, King was also an advocate for LGBT+ rights. She believed that the fight for civil rights was not limited to race, but extended to all marginalized communities.
King’s support for LGBT rights began in the 1980s when she spoke out against the discrimination and violence faced by the community. She believed that everyone deserved to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. King was particularly vocal about the importance of protecting the rights of LGBT youth, who often face bullying and harassment in schools and other settings.
In 1994, King delivered a landmark speech at the annual convention of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. In her speech, she called for an end to discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and urged the black community to support their struggle for equality. She also spoke about the intersections between the civil rights and LGBT rights movements, saying, “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.”
Coretta Scott King’s support for LGBT rights was not without controversy, and she faced criticism from some members of the black community who saw the issue as a distraction from the fight for racial equality. However, King remained steadfast in her beliefs and continued to speak out on behalf of the LGBT community until her death in 2006.
Coretta Scott King was a courageous and compassionate advocate for LGBT+ rights. Her support for the LGBT+ community was rooted in her belief that all people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and that the struggle for civil rights extends to all marginalized communities. Her legacy continues to inspire activists fighting for equality and justice today.
Bayard Taylor Rustin was born in West Chester, Pa., March 17, 1912. He had no relationship with his father, and his 16-year-old mother, Florence, was so young he thought she was his sister. From his grandparents, Janifer and Julia Rustin, he took his Quaker “values,” which, in his words, “were based on the concept of a single human family and the belief that all members of that family are equal,”
As a teenager, Rustin wrote poems, played left tackle on the high school football team and, according to lore, staged an impromptu sit-in at a restaurant that would serve his white teammates but not him. When Rustin told his grandmother he preferred the company of young men to girls, she simply said, “I suppose that’s what you need to do.”
In 1937, Rustin moved to New York City after bouncing between Wilberforce University and Cheney State Teachers College. Enrolling at City College, he devoted himself to singing, performing with the Josh White Quartet and in the musical John Henry with Paul Robeson. He also joined the Young Communist League. Though he soon quit the party after it ordered him to cease protesting racial segregation in the U.S. armed forces. By this time he was already on the radar of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.
Disappointed when the 1941 March on Washington was called off, Rustin joined the pacifist Rev. A.J. Muste’s Fellowship of Reconciliation, and when FOR members in Chicago launched the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942, Rustin traveled around the country speaking out. Two years later, he was arrested for failing to appear before his draft board and refusing alternative service as a conscientious objector. Sentenced to three years in prison, he ended up serving 26 months, angering authorities with his desegregation protests and open homosexuality to the point they transferred him to a higher-security prison.
In 1974, gay activists in New York City were fighting to pass a city-wide gay rights ordinance. Then NY Representative to Congress Bella Abzug (pictured above), inspired by the emergence of the first national gay rights organization, the then newly formed National Gay Task Force (NGTF), had the idea to circumvent local homophobes by introducing federal legislation that would give gays and lesbians full FEDERAL equality under the law.
Enlisting the co-sponsorship of Ed Koch (D-NY), (the closeted New York Congressman who would go on to become the mayor of New York City), Abzug courageously introduced the Equality Act on January 14th of 1974 — the first piece of federal legislation to address discrimination based on sexual orientation. The act would amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, marital status, or sexual orientation in public accommodations, public facilities, public education, federally assisted programs, housing, and financial services. Anticipating contemporary “hate crime” legislation, the act further stipulated penalties for anyone who willfully injured, intimidated, or interfered with a person on the basis of sex, marital status, or sexual orientation and empowered the U.S. Attorney General to take civil action against such discrimination
Of course it failed.
In 1975, the National Gay Task Force urged Abzug and Koch to try again. This time, the pair got twenty-four members of Congress (including themselves) to co-sponsor their proposed legislation: the Civil Rights Amendment of 1975. Bruce Voeller, director of the NGTF, along with NGTF national coordinator Nathalie Rockhill, organized a press conference on Capitol Hill, inviting prestigious organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Organization for Women (NOW), to attend. Rockhill was slated to introduce Congresswoman Abzug, who would then explain the bill to the press. The Civil Rights Amendment of 1975, Abzug explained as she spoke into the microphone, would extend the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 to protect gays and lesbians in all of the areas covered by the proposed Equality Act of 1974; and like the Equality Act, the amendment would penalize anyone who discriminated against someone on the basis of their sexual orientation.
And once again the bill did not pass.
New Jersey State Senator Edward Durr Jr., a Republican and former commercial truck driver and current homophobe has introduced a bill prohibiting kindergarten through sixth-grade teachers from engaging in classroom instruction related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Seventh- through twelfth-grade students may only be educated on either topic if consent is given by a parent or guardian.
Via The Hill:
“Any student whose parent or guardian does not provide prior written consent shall be excused from that portion of the course where such instruction is provided and no penalties as to credit or graduation shall result therefrom,” reads a portion of the bill introduced Monday. Under the bill, a parent or guardian may take legal action against their child’s school if their child has been taught about sexual orientation or gender identity without their consent. If a school district or employee “knowingly violates” the proposed law, the state Office of the Attorney General may seek an injunction.
GOP legislators in 16 other states this year have argued that lessons related to sexual orientation and gender identity don’t belong in the classroom and are “inappropriate”. They are using this as a wedge issue going into the midterms and as an opportunity to score political points with the Christofascist GOP all while trying to destroy what we have fought for and hold so dearly.
Our rights. OUR LIVES are being attacked.
STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK!
If you don’t those rights that get lost, will be yours.
Sen. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, has filed two floor bills to mirror Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and to prevent minors from receiving gender dysphoria treatment. House Bill 1074 is modeled after Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, commonly referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. The legislation would prohibit educators or other school personnel from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity for grades kindergarten through fifth.
If it passes the legislative branch then there is no doubt that Oklahoma’s christofascist Governor will sign it into law.
At least 20 states have introduced “Don’t Say Gay” laws this year, which have made waves around the country. But in a handful of states, versions of the legislation have existed for decades. According to the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), which tracks LGBTQ+ policy throughout the country, 19 percent of the country lives in a state with an LGBTQ+ curriculum ban. Most are in states with laws that predate Florida’s and Alabama’s. Still, most Americans are largely unaware of the fact that Florida is not the first state to pass such a law, advocates said.
At least 20 states have introduced “Don’t Say Gay” laws this year
But why are our LGBT rights organizations not fighting back? Has the curtain finally been drawn to show exactly how useless they have been and are?
Do not depend on HRC, GLAAD, or The Task Force. Their folly has been exposed.
We are all going to have to fight in this if we don’t want to lose what precious ground we have earned. Are you ready?
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday signed the state’s controversial Parental Rights in Education bill – known to its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill – into law. It will take effect July 1 thus sending Florida back in time almost 40 years to Anita Bryan’s “Save The Children Campaign.”
The governor, standing behind a podium reading “Protect Children” and “Support Parents,” also claimed to have found at least six school districts in Florida had policies to “cut parents out of decisions regarding their child’s well being.
Under the now-law, Instruction related to sexual orientation or gender identity will be restricted in the state’s primary schools. Educators of all grade levels are prohibited from engaging in instruction on those topics in a manner that is not “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” for children.
This law doesn’t solve any problem that currently or has existed in Florida. Instead, HB 1557 was introduced and has weaponized by the Governor’s office to launch a bigoted smear campaign to attack and defame Lesbian and Gay Americans with baseless accusations of grooming and pedophilia. The bill’s intentionally vague language leaves teachers afraid to talk to their students and opens up school districts to costly and frivolous litigation from those seeking to exclude LGBT people from any grade.
And everyone please remember to thank the Walt Disney Company for throwing us all under the bus for a few dollars.
Texas or Florida. Which sucks the most right now? It’s like they are in a race to the WORST.
Reading is Fundamental Except in Texas:
In early January, a day before students returned from winter break, Jeremy Glenn, the superintendent of the Granbury Independent School District in North Texas, told a group of librarians he’d summoned to a district meeting room that he needed to speak from his heart. “I want to talk about our community,” Glenn said. He noted that members of Granbury’s school board — his bosses — were also very conservative. And to any school employees who might have different political beliefs, Glenn said, “You better hide it,” adding, “Here in this community, we’re going to be conservative.”
Glenn added the was concerned about the inclusion of books with LGBT themes, even if they do not describe sex.
“There are two genders. There’s male, and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women. And there are women that think they’re men. And again, I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.”
“Specifically, what we’re getting at, let’s call it what it is, and I’m cutting to the chase on a lot of this,” he said. “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ and the sex — sexuality — in books. That’s what the governor has said that he will prosecute people for, and that’s what we’re pulling out.”
Legal experts say the North Texas superintendent’s comments raise concerns about possible violations of the First Amendment and federal civil rights laws that protect students from discrimination based on their gender and sexuality.
PRIDE Illegal in Texas Schools
The Hill reports:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said in a letter to the Austin Independent School District (AISD) this week that its Pride Week was “breaking state law.” Paxton wrote Tuesday that by hosting pride week, the district “has, at best undertaken a week-long instructional effort in human sexuality without parental consent. Or, worse [the] district is cynically pushing a week-long indoctrination of [students] that not only fails to obtain parental consent, but subtly cuts parents out of the loop.” The Texas AG also wrote that the Austin ISD’s curriculum and lesson plans “deal head-on with sexual orientation and gender identity—topics that unmistakably constitute ‘human sexuality instruction’ governed by state law.”
No more than 45 minutes after Paxton’s office tweeted out the letter, the school district’s superintendent, Stephanie Elizalde, replied back: “I want all our LGBTQIA+ students to know that we are proud of them and that we will protect them against political attacks.”
District spokesman Jason Stanford told The Washington Post the celebration will continue as planned. “We’re going to react to this by doubling down on making sure our kids feel safe and celebrating Pride.”
I want all our LGBTQIA+ students to know that we are proud of them and that we will protect them against political attacks. https://t.co/fNGiaoNM3q
— Dr. Stephanie S. Elizalde (@AustinISDsupt) March 23, 2022
1915: Albert D. J. Cashier (born Jennie Irene Hodgers, was an Irish-born immigrant who served as a male soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Cashier returned to Belvidere, Illinois for a time where he lived as a man, vote in elections and later claimed a veteran’s pension. On May 5, 1911, Cashier was moved to the Soldier and Sailors home in Quincy, Illinois. He lived there as a man until his mind deteriorated and was moved to the Watertown State Hospital for the Insane in March 1913. Attendants at the Watertown State Hospital discovered that he was female-bodied when giving him a bath, at which point he was forced to wear a dress.
Albert Cashier died on October 10, 1915. He was buried in the uniform he had kept intact all those years and his tombstone was inscribed “Albert D. J. Cashier,
1949: The periodical Newsweek published a story titled “Queer People” calling out “gay perverts” and comparing them to exhibitionists and sexual sadists. It challenged the idea that homosexuals hurt no one but themselves and are in truth EVIL!
“The sex pervert, whether a homosexual, an exhibitionist, or even a dangerous sadist, is too often regarded merely as a ‘queer’ person who never hurts anyone but himself. Then the mangled form of one of his victims focuses public attention to the degenerate’s work. And newspaper headlines flare for days over accounts and feature articles packed with sensational details of the most dastardly and horrifying crimes.”
The editorial reviewed The Sexual Criminal, a book by J. Paul DeRiver who headed the Los Angeles Police Department’s Sex Offenses Bureau. Newsweek lauded the “factual scientific book” with 43 case histories, including “lots of very queer people” including “the sadistic pedophile,” “zoophiles, psychopaths who performed sadistic acts on animals, and the necrophiles, who …commit acts of moral degeneracy upon or in the presence of dead bodies.” Eugene D. Williams, a California “special assistant attorney general,” wrote the introduction to the book, in which he warned that “the semi-hysterical, foolishly sympathetic, and wholly unscientific attitude of any individual engaged in social work and criminology to regard sex perverts as poor unfortunates who are suffering from disease and cannot help themselves, has a tendency to feed their ego.” To which Newsweek added:
A sterner attitude is required, if the degenerate is to be properly treated and cured. Williams suggests that the sex pervert be treated, not as a coddled patient, but as a particularly virulent type of criminal. “To punish him,” he concludes, “he should be placed in an institution where the proper kind of rehabilitory work can be done so that, of capable of being brought to the realization of the error of his ways, he may be brought back to society prepared to live as a normal, law-abiding individual, rather than turned out as he now is from the penitentiary, confirmed in his perversion.
1964: The East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) Hosts First Conference Calling for Direct Action:
The Daughters of Bilities, the Janus Society of Philadelphia, and the Mattachine Societies of New York and Washington, D.C., met in the nation’s capital for the second conference of the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), a loose confederation formed in 1962. Attendance was light: only about a hundred people showed up at the Sheraton Park Hotel, thanks to ECHO’s difficulty in getting the word out about where the event would take place. The Mattachine Society of Washington (MSW), which was hosting the conference, saw three other hotels cancel their bookings and three newspapers refusing to run ads for the conference. Those who showed up were charged up and impatient with the old ways of doing things. The DoB’s newsletter, The Ladder, set the scene:
“I’m an activist,” said a handsome young man present at the ECHO conference for 1964. “I’ve read nearly 75 books in the New York Mattachine Society library, and I’m fed up with reading on the subject of homosexuality.” His statement seemed to typify the attitude pervading this serious conference.
Any disappointment over the small attendance (less than 100 persons) could be offset by the fact that this was a down-to-business meeting attended primarily by those dedicated to immediate action. It was a gathering of men and women impatient to remedy the discriminations against the homosexual citizen in our society.
We talked with a long-time friend of one of the sponsoring organizations, and his remarks confirmed our view. “A few years ago,” he said, “ours was a sweeter, clubbier, less insistent organization. Now there seems to be a militancy about the new groups and new leaders. There’s a different mood.”
Signs of that different mood were everywhere, beginning with MSW’s Robert King’s prescient keynote address , which described that growing new mood. He said that gay people were asking for “the rights, and all the rights, afforded the heterosexual. We are still in the asking stage. We will soon reach the demanding stage. (… A) dormant army is beginning to stir.” J.C. Hodges, president of the Mattachine Society of New York, challenged the prevailing timidity of previous homophile leaders to get involved with politics, declaring that “politics is everybody’s business.” He urged attendees to throw themselves into established political organizations. “Involve yourself if you are to have any voice on your own behalf.”
1987: As a sign of protest over two thousand gay and lesbian couples are “married” in a mass mock wedding in front of Washington, DC’s Internal Revenue Service building as part of the Second National March on Washington.
1990: Members of the London-based LGBT rights group OutRage held a kiss-in at Brief Encounter, a gay pub that previously banned same-sex kissing. A month prior to the kiss-in, the organization delivered a formal letter of complaint to the pub in an effort to lift the ban.
1995: Romer v. Evans went to trial and the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments. A landmark legal battle, it was the first Supreme Court case to address issues of LGBT rights since Romer vs. Evans laid the foundation for the historic Lawrence v. Texas case years later.
1997: The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) took part in the National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights, involving around twenty congregations. Within this same time period, MCC founder Reverend Elder Perry oversaw a massive commitment ceremony in conjunction with this event for over 2,000 gay and lesbian couples.
1998: Prominent British actor, broadcaster and lesbian activist Jackie Forster passed away. Following her coming out in 1969, she joined the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and later became a founding member of London’s Gay Liberation Front. She was immortalized by the LGBT rights group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as “Saint Jackie of the Eternal Mission to Lay Sisters” in 1994.
2008: In Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 vote that the state’s constitution protects the right to same-sex marriage. The decision made Connecticut the third state, after Massachusetts and California, to have its state supreme court declare a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.