Letter from Don Slater, from Dec. 1990

Historians are talking on C-SPAN about how much harder learning history will be now that people no longer write letters.  So I thought I would share one, not important, letter Don Slater wrote to me here in LA while he was working in L. A.  It may be interesting if someone wants to know what he thought at the time of Stuart Timmons’ book on Harry Hay. (Or Troy Perry.) This letter was received on Dec. 3, 1990

Yes.  I wrote some time ago that Stuart Timmons' book about Harry, The Trouble With Harry Hay, had been published by Alyson. We got 2 review copies: 1 from Alyson via Timmons, and 1 from Dale Jennings who had been given a copy by Timmons here in the house when I had them over to meet. Martin, of course, is keeping the review copy we have given him, but I haven't seen the review yet. The book in my opinion is quite good. But unfortunately loaded with unimportant errors—all the result of Timmons’ relying almost exclusively on Kepner for his peripheral information. He had interviewed me a couple of times, but always for confirmation of what others had told him. I explained that I wasn’t going to second-guess, Jim or anyone else. If he wanted information about me or you, or the work we did, etc. I would have talked more to him. For instance, although it is not bad, most of the small bit about our break-up with ONE came from either Bill or Jim-or maybe both. And I said, okay, if those are your sources let it be. Everybody is mentioned including Tony (incorrectly),  me (incorrectly), no mention of our Committee to Fight Exclusion of Homosexuals from the Armed Forces, at least by name (which is strange considering that Harry was our head), no mention of you, and Dale wants to sue because he feels he’s been misrepresented. He has even consulted Herb Selwyn. But I say a suit would be the best thing that could happen to the book; I say this even thought I am basically in favor of it.  I can assure you, it was not easy for Stuart to deal with a living Harry Hay and all of the rest of the prima donnas still living. With all its errors the book is the best thing yet, and it should be allowed to die it own death; it doesn't need to be prodded. 

My fight at the moment is trying to get a review copy of the new biography of Troy Perry.  Jim and everyone else has it, but Troy sent me a formal note saying I would have to contact St. Martin’s Press if I wanted a copy. The whole tone of the note was distant. I want Chas. to review it in the same issue of the newsletter with Martin’s review of Harry, but I have a feeling that Troy may be afraid Charles will trash it since he ghosted the first biography as you know, and is not too happy with Troy who refused to give him any royalty. 

I will be writing to Karyn Schacter. But I can’t imagine a high school student is doing any serious “research,” as you call it.  She’s probably doing a school paper that’s all. You are wrong about Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund. They send us things all the time, and always addressed to you. In fact, a lot of material coming to the box is in your name so it is likely that some directory or other lists us there with you as secretary. This is fine except large packages I can’t get if I go on Sundays, and United Parcel will not deliver to a PO Box so some things get sent back, I imagine because I never get them even when I phone, and ask that they be forwarded to the house. 

Yes, we get the Gay & Les. Hist. Co. Newsletter from SF. But I like the old cumbersome name better than the new one, and I haven’t seen your letter. However, I’m glad you are getting printed because despite the length of time you’ve been in the movm’t you're still generally unknown. 

Don 

Southern California Beaches: How Harry Hay's seeking names is interestng today

In Stuart Timmons’ biography of Harry Hay, The Trouble With Harry Hay, (p. 142 last two lines), there is proof of where Harry and Rudi went with their “Stockholm Peace Petition,” a rues to get names of people who might be interested in a discussion on homosexuality:

“We set about discovering new adherents on the two slices of beach Gays had quietly made their own,” he wrote later.  “The section of beach below the Palisades just west of Marion Davies’s huge waterfront estate, and that slice of Malibu between the pier and the spit—which would be taken over by the surfers in the 1960s.”

I still wonder what gay bars were there then and now. But it is interesting to read parts of this book today and see how things were then compared to now.

One important point is made about how many “causes” Harry got involved in (p. 291): “In the 1980s, he marched against the contras, the pope, apartheid, the spraying of insecticide on urban areas, the death penalty…nuclear disarmament, a national policy to fight AIDS…all-purpose protest sign…No U.S. intervention in Central anywhere!”

Considering the “issue” of his thoughts on homosexuals versus the view of ONE magazine (which in editorial after editorial said we had had ghetto life and wanted to integrate) it is interesting to read his first idea for an organization “need be no deterrent in integrating 10% of the world’s population towards the constructive social progress of mankind” (p. 137).

It is also interesting to once again be reminded of just how much the “industry” knew about the movement, and refused to help in any way—read of Rudi’s contacts on Page 142.  And to see how anti-gay the Communist Party was, and even though Harry never lost his idealism, he did admit that it would not have been a good idea to go to live in such a country. The irony of course is that he said/believed that they just had not really tried true communism—an argument used by fanatic Christians when they say we need to get back to olden times and follow the Bible. While many black Americans know how terrible those times were, they still seem to have no problem when the Bible is quoted to justify hatred for homosexual Americans.

JC Penney, RFD Magazine, and the theory and practice of assimilation versus ghetto

Many people, LGBT or non-LGBT, do not think much about theory and just practice living their lives.  Even though from the very start of the movement to gain equal/civil rights for homosexual Americans there were two views on who we are and what to do to make life better for us.  Harry Hay, as is covered once again in the current issue of RFD Magazine, thought we, in a sense as outsiders, had special insight.  Those who took the movement public, as ONE, took the view that while that may be true it did not mean we were so special we needed to be a “separate” people, as had been the experience of some Jews, etc.  While early immigrants to the United States first lived among those who spoke their language and knew their “history,” they soon moved into the mainstream.

The issue of assimilation is relevant as one part of it was the fear of the founders of ONE, Inc. that it would lead into or keep us in a ghetto, to be exploited. In a sense this happened in some cities with gay bars, where we were overcharged and often used in the battle between owners and Vice. Many thought lawyers used us in our sodomy arrests, overcharging us and not giving us real defense.

Today the opposite opportunity is here in the form, perhaps, of JC Penney and its problems. It may be that the use by that firm of Ellen in commercials, and thus reaching out to the LGBT community and our friends and families, has caused it to lose customers. It may be bad management. BUT here may be an opportunity to show society that supporting our community does NOT hurt a business, a church, a politician, etc. If we do not support those who are friendly, they will not support us in the future, as they lose the bigots support and did not gain our support.  

It doesn’t matter what theory we want to support, in the real world our practice will decide our future.  But for those who want to think about the issue, there are several thoughts in articles in the current issue of RFD Magazine.  While I will take, as many do when dealing with the Bible, etc, a few of these words/thoughts, it may be worthwhile for others to read the whole articles.

The issue leads with the conference in New york in September at CLAGS celebrating the 100th anniversary of Harry Hay’s birth. The event is discussed by one of its leaders, Joey Cain, giving us details of what discussions were held, and including some papers on the issue of Harry, the Radical Faeries, etc.

As an aside, the “issue” of helping older people in our community is covered by Cain and others who took care of Harry and John Burnside till their deaths. That is the example others are now following, such as buildings in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, etc.  The “group” also wanted to honor Harry’s memory and legacy, another example that some want to do with other founders and early leaders.

The differing view of the “movement” is shown in several places, and just a quote or two will show the differences even among those who honor Harry and share their memories of knowing him. Jason Baumann says, about the group (RF), “they searched through history, and across cultures, before there was even the luxury of something that could be called gay history, looking for evidence of men who loved men… It’s both too easy and very strange to dismiss their turn to the past for inspiration given that this historical turn is so fundamental for gay culture.”

“Husk” says something that is contradictory to what seems to be the mainstream of the community today.  “Who are we?  Where do we come from? and Why are we here?” In Hay wrote (see “A Separate People Whose Time has Come” on the Tangents Web site) that answering these questions is key to both the acceptance of gay men into US culture and tapping queer potential…(He looked for answers to medieval Europe and came up with Mattachines and yet the definition is male and “a queer person was ‘the fool’ or the Mattachine; this person did not marry or raise a family, but instead denounced unjust laws and oppressive taxation.”  Thus many today in practice reject this idea of who we are. The issue of same-sex marriage and the right to have and/or adopt children is the opposite of that definition.

And to complete the disagreement, Endora says, quoting a book discussion on women and seeking and inventing mythic historical claims says, “She (Cynthia Eller) argues that in trying to legitimize women’s power by rooting it in ahistorical claims about an ancient period of matriarchy, when, as Merlin Stone put, ‘God Was a Woman,’ women are shooting themselves in the foot.”  It doesn’t matter, Eller argues, whether women ever held power in the past; they deserve to hold it now, and it is dangerous to legitimate a movement by rooting it in questionable claims about history.

“One can make a very similar argument about Radical Faeries and the myth of ancestors.” And indeed—the whole movement.

Harry Hay mention in yesterday's L. A. TIMES

Thanks, Jeanne Barney, for finding this article about Woody Guthrie in yesterday’s newspaper....       

LaChapelle details his discovery of these tracks on two 78 rpm discs residing in obscurity in the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research in South Central L.A. They’d been donated long ago to the library along with other old records by longtime L.A./Hollywood political activist Harry Hay, who met Guthrie through their mutual friend, actor Will Geer.

Wow, that is interesting.  The hope is that people will want to use such archives—especially people writing and studying such a subject/person, etc.  Thanks for this.  I am not sure I know what archive this is.

Harry Hay and Don Slater: Two Views on Homosexuality from Pioneer Friends and Parallels with the Tea Party and the Founders of America

If it is worthwhile and even important to try to learn how this nation was founded and who the founders were and how they thought about the government they were establishing (Constitution/Bill of Rights) then it is equally important for citizens to know how and why a movement was started go gain civil/equal rights for homosexual Americans, and who the founders were and what they thought about homosexuality.

This civil rights movement is easy to document, and primary sources still exist with a few of the founders and historical material of their work and ideas. 

Each year there are more books written about the founding of America and the founders.  But there has been no such historical interest in the founders of this movement, even though issues of homosexuality are in the pages of most newspapers, and on tv talk shows and in the halls of Congress.

Why is there no interest in knowing the people who started a movement that was successful in about 50 years and continues to add success each year, despite opposition from bigots?  In a few cases, people working in this movement also worked in the black or women’s civil rights movements, including Dr. King’s co-worker, Bayard Rustin.  It should be worth knowing how Harry Hay, Dale Jennings, et al., started, in secret, the first organization, Mattachine (the foundation) in 1950, during the worst of times, the McCarthy anti-communist era when homosexuality was “joined” with communism to gain political power.  The irony is that most of the founders had been Communists but were kicked out of the party because of their sexuality—and thus they started this movement which has thrived while the Communist Party has essentially died.  But it is important to know that after early Mattachine was so wildly successful, with meetings all over Los Angeles and then California, it was “killed” and was reborn (the Society)  by Hal Call, et al., in San Francisco, by conservatives.

But before this happened in 1953, part of the organization had separated in 1952 to become the public voice, and publish a magazine, and thus under conservatives (Don Slater, Dorr Legg, et al) was born the first homosexual magazine, ONE, social service organization, educational work-with classes (and ONE Institute and Quarterly), some of the first homosexual books (Homosexuals Today, Game of Fools) and public lectures and legal efforts (a lawsuit against the Post Office that went to, and was barely won in, the U. S. Supreme Court (1958).

Like a new current book on America’s founders,  Madison and Jefferson, in which we again learn how the founders were able to work together while having different views on how america should be governed, a book should be written about how the pioneers of this movement also worked together, while having different views on homosexuality, how to change society, etc.

The two major views were important because they were so different.  The first was that of Harry Hay, covered in an article in one of the major glbt publications trying to discuss serious issues, The Gay & Lesbian Review, of January/February, 2008).  The author, Douglas Sadownich (and Chris Kilbourne) make the point perfectly before writing a word, by quoting Harry himself:  “We are a separate people, with, in several measurable respects, a rather different window, a different consciousness which may be triggered into being by our sexuality.”  There can be no exaggeration of the importance of Harry, and his views still exist, and his work is added to in the current issue of the Review by a co-worker, Don Kilhefner, discussing another organization/work harry co-founded, the Radical Faeries.

This view was welcomed by closet cases and bigots since it fit the stereotype that we are different, exotic and not like the majority.  

The second view was that of the ONE founders, mainly Don Slater and Dorr Legg.  Their view was based partly on the work of Dr. Kinsey and Dr. Hooker.  They took the view that this is not a lifestyle but a sex act, and all we needed was the right to privacy and we didn’t care what others thought but they should not be allowed to vote about our civil rights, especially if they based their views on some religious doctrine.  And further, we did not want to be separate—it was only society that forced us to be a minority by passing laws against us.  (This is also the view taken by a decision of the U. S. Supreme Court in a Colorado case.)  We sought integration, not ghettos.

This is relevant to issues of the Tea Party people. What authority the government has over our personal lives is what the Constitution and Bill of Rights say.  Don Slater said the legal people should re-read the Ninth Amendment.

The one point that has to be made, to newly “out” people and young homosexual men and women, is that, whether or not  they know it or like it, how they live today is based on the work and views of both Harry Hay and Don Slater.  Even though they disagreed on what they both considered basic issues, they always worked together on the major efforts, and from the start to the day they died, they loved and admired each other.  And they worked; they didn’t sit in meetings talking about terminology and making up academic words and phrases such as “gay identity,” “deconstructionism,” “gay essentialism,” “social construction,” etc.

Our rights do not depend on why we are or if we could change; they are granted to us as individual citizens. It is time for Americans to stop trying to “understand” us but to understand why some people seem to hate us and have a personal interest in denying us our rights.

And our cause will continue to become even more successful if young people and citizens interested in all citizens having equal right join us.  It is strange to hear some young people be so skeptical of politics and the ability to gain our goals.  Some even think we have gotten everything we needed—full (or close enough) equality.  The facts don’t support this—as suicides and bar raids in 2010 prove.  And to those who think we have not made positive changes over the years, I suggest they get in a time machine and go back and live in 1950.  

I say the same thing to some Tea Party people who want to go back to yesterday, when their kind were so happy and gay.  That is because they were in control, a clear majority, and thus benefitted from the way things were.  Let them try living in 1950 as a black or a homosexual citizen—and to do without the technology we have today.

Homosexual citizens and Tea Party citizens actually have the same problem with government: it is too involved in our personal lives.

My thoughts on harry Hay and John Burnside/RE: How do we view homosexuality? Harry Hay/Mattachine v. ONE/HIC

I met Harry and John at ONE in the early 1960s as they came to work and visit-worked on a Friday night committee as I recall. I still think that is how they met, although I/ve seen other versions. I think Harry had not been active for a few years after being kicked out of his Mattachine by Hal Call et al in about 1955 or 6. The publications section had already come out to publish ONE Magazine, and incorporated to do that and then the other needed things, such as have lectures, classes (the Institute) and help in social services and legal work. (Inbetween as I recall is when the Dale Jennings legal case, over his entrapment arrest, happened, as reported by him in I think the first issue of ONE. As a co-founder of Mattchine and ONE he was one of the main people at the time.)

Jim Kepner had just left ONE for the second time-over Dorr's not being honest about our tax-exemption-which he had not completed, which is why ONE never was tax-exempt, and had a license as we had the Bookservice. That is why in 1965 ISHR was formed, with Reed Erickson giving the funding for a tax-exempt part of ONE. Don and i switched to it, but then Dorr tried to force everyone out who disagreed with his priorities and Don led the separation that Easter Sunday. The Annual Meeting had been a disaster and right after John and Harry had become voting members, they quit over this as had Morgan Farley. They had all warned Don that Dorr was causing trouble and didn't think Don cared as he liked Dorr so much, and till then they had run different parts of ONE, Don the magazine and library.

In the early 1970s as I recall Don and Tony (Reyes) bought the house in Colorado and about the same time John and Harry moved to the cottage at San Juan Pueblo. In earlier years they had lived in Laguna Beach and other places. And they lived in Hollwood after moving back and then to San Francisco. I am not sure when they did the Faerie bit. They in I think the late 80s visited with me here in Louisiana while coming back from a speaking trip. I think they were in a Volkwagon or some such small car.

I/we of course went to their place on Washington Blvd at Western right around the corner from our office on Venice at Western (Around 1962-4). There they made the Teleidoscopes that John had invented, but later I think his wife took control. He had lived with her on Outpost in Hollywood, where we went once. But their material burned up in a fire that destroyed the Trading Post in New Mexico and tthen they were poor. (There Harry contuned his interest in American Indians/Native Americans, and did the work to stop the builidng of a dam that woud hurt the tribe there.)

We had a great time around May, 1966 when they and we worked on the Committee to Fight Exclusion of Homosexuals From the Armed Forces. They rode in a car (we did a Motorcade of a dozen or so cars thought L. A) .and were interviewed on some tv shows. Dale talked about Harry as dominating, such as choosing the name Mattachine, and yet his experiences in the early days, and communist work may have helped get it started, even if later it was a hindrance- which is a generic thing for lots of causes. But I never saw a downside of either of them. In theory Harry was the dominant one, but they both talked a lot.

I don't remember much of the conversations we had over the years, as I don't even remember much of the time with Don and Dorr. Fortunately Don's work is in print in the magazine and newsletters and a few columns in general newspapers. And Harry is in several books, stuch as Stuart Timmon's (The Troube with...) and the short biographical material in Vern Bulloughs' edited book, Before Stonewall, and C. Todd White's history of early Mattachine/ONE/HIC (Pe-Gay L. A).

Can we assume the history will be dealt with in what I understand is a 2012 celebration of Harry?

Good and bad in current Washington Blade

The historic news that the Republican party's candidates for president and vice president have said they are gay-friendly is good, and I have suggested that people view the McCain interview in your publication, online.

You also did a good coverage of our community/movement loss of Del Martin. I have not seen coverage of the loss of John Burnside. But this is the time in our movement’s history, which essentially started in Los Angeles in 1950 with Harry Hay, Dale Jennings, et al. and early Mattachine, from which came the first public organization and publication, ONE Inc and ONE Magazine (Jan. 1953), and then a different Mattachine under Hal Call, and then Del and Phyllis and the Daughters of Bilitis, SIR, etc., when those who got us started are leaving us.

So it is good that Equality Forum and others are aware of just who did start this movement. The question is why they have not been able to cite the words of Don Slater, Jim Kepner, Stella Rush, or mention the history as recorded in the book Vern Bullough edited, Before Stonewall, or in Paul Cain's Leading the Parade, etc.

And my worry is that in your pages some of us see the major event of McCain's interview, but what your columnist seems to only see is that Palin, equally historic, says that terribly un-pc word: choice. In what world is that the most important word she said? How does an intelligent, objective person ignore the other words? And who gave your columnist the authority to decide technical issues such as what makes us homosexual or heterosexual, etc? That sure sounds just like the bigots, who come from the most ignorant part of society but, seem to personally know when life begins and want the authority to force the rest of us to let them make our choice-in other words we have no choice.

Perhaps serious homosexuals or gays should go back and read a few of the great articles in ONE Magazine and Tangents where the founders put forth their ideas, and then tell us why such ideas are wrong. That might be difficult of course, since those are the ideas that have got us to where we are today—which is a great place to most of us.