Audio Interview, Larry Fine, March 21, 1973
- BRUCE JEWELL: Larry Fine, February 8, 1974.
- Larry, I first met you when I joined the Gay Liberation Front
- at the University of Rochester.
- At that time, you had been with that organization
- since, I believe, almost its founding.
- And I'm wondering if you could tell me
- something about the early days of the GLF.
- LARRY FINE: Well, the first meeting
- was the first week of October.
- I think it was the second or third week of October, 1970.
- And I had just come back from San Francisco
- just after I had come out.
- And I came back with the idea of starting a gay liberation
- group.
- I got back and I found that someone else
- had had the same idea, Bob Osborne,
- and had already done some organizing efforts
- and had put a notice in The Campus Times
- about a meeting, the first meeting.
- So I went to the meeting wondering
- if anyone would show up.
- I had already contacted Bob to tell him that I was interested.
- And there must have been about sixty people
- there, mostly non-students.
- I was very surprised to see so many people.
- There were only I would imagine about five
- at most U of R students there.
- Well, in the succeeding weeks, most of the people
- didn't show up.
- Most of the original sixty had come out
- of initial curiosity, the bar people, and didn't come back.
- Some of them came back for a while, did a little work,
- and then left.
- BRUCE JEWELL: What happened to the group
- after this initial meeting?
- I know it grew in size.
- What forms and shapes did it take?
- How long did it take for it to become, well,
- what was the largest, most active organization
- on the U of R campus?
- LARRY FINE: Well, I'd say it took about another six months
- at least until it really started to grow.
- The first few months, the first four or five months I'd say,
- involved just a very few people planning the weekly meetings,
- or they might have been every other week at that time,
- I've forgotten.
- Meetings about gay people in the draft, gay people in the law,
- and all those various topics that are generally covered.
- And there would be an attendance of maybe fifteen or twenty,
- or maybe even thirty people at the meetings,
- but only a very, very few people were really
- involved in any kind of organizing efforts.
- Around January or February and into the spring,
- a few more people here and there started to get interested.
- And by the late spring, it really
- started growing a tremendous amount.
- We had our first dance I remember in December,
- which is a fantastic thrill.
- We didn't know how many people would show up.
- About 200 people showed up.
- It was terrific.
- But until the late spring, only a very few people really
- did a great amount of work.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I know that shortly after I
- joined, actually, you left.
- What events caused you to leave?
- LARRY FINE: Well, I dropped out of the U of R in April,
- and actually I had started to drop out long before that.
- It was just finally in April I was fed up enough,
- and got my official whatever it was.
- I was a psychology major, and I was
- taking courses in abnormal psychology and sociology
- of deviant behavior and all these kinds of things.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Trying to find out about yourself?
- LARRY FINE: Well, not so much trying to find out.
- More just trying to direct my academic experience
- to have something to do with my working experience
- in gay liberation, because by that time,
- I was working full time on gay liberation.
- Almost since the beginning of the movement here,
- I just spent all my energies on that.
- It was so much more meaningful to me than my academic work.
- And I had a gradual realization that what
- I was learning in courses was not really at all important
- to me, that I was learning everything
- I could have learned in courses, and learning it much
- better with my actual work.
- I was learning not only things about psychology and sociology,
- but I was learning things about literature
- in developing a library for the group.
- I was learning things about bookkeeping and accounting
- in being treasurer for the group.
- And I was just learning so much of so many areas of life
- that I couldn't possibly learn in college
- that I decided the college was just a waste for me
- at that point.
- And that it was time for me to drop out.
- I stayed on in Rochester through most of the summer working
- full time.
- One problem I have is that I'm not really a very good leader.
- I work full time and I take on a huge amount of work,
- and sometimes I have a feeling that I can do it better
- than anyone else.
- And the result is that I don't delegate responsibility well
- and others don't learn how to do the work.
- So by the middle of the summer, I
- felt like I had practically created a monster corporation.
- I don't mean to give the impression that other people
- weren't involved too.
- There were certainly other people.
- I was just spending the most time on it.
- So I had my hands in so many things.
- At about that time, I felt that Rochester was not really
- the place I wanted to live.
- And I had ideas about traveling to other parts of the country.
- BRUCE JEWELL: You took off for Lincoln, Nebraska.
- LARRY FINE: Well actually, I didn't know I would end up
- in Lincoln, Nebraska.
- BRUCE JEWELL: At the time, I remember
- thinking that you were practically exiling yourself.
- LARRY FINE: I decided to go on a vacation
- in the middle of August.
- And I think I had thoughts only in the very back of my mind
- that I might not return.
- I got rid of as many responsibilities as I could,
- and I was going to visit a friend in Denver.
- I planned my stopover points at nights
- to coincide with places where there were gay liberation
- groups so I could find a place to stay at night.
- One of the places was Lincoln, Nebraska.
- The night that I got there, they happened
- to have one of their biweekly coffee houses.
- And I met a lot of really nice people
- there and told them that I would return after I visited
- my friend in Denver, and I did.
- And I liked the place a lot, and I just
- decided to do one of those spontaneous and ridiculously
- unpredictable moves and move there.
- And it was one of the best things I ever did.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, now you're involved
- in gay activities in Lincoln, the heartland
- that you hardly ever hear about.
- LARRY FINE: Lincoln is very much misunderstood in most places
- in the country, especially in the metropolitan areas.
- People think that it's just a small farm town
- or they do nothing but grow corn there or whatever.
- Lincoln is actually a fairly good sized town,
- about close to half the size of Rochester I'd say.
- About 150,000 people.
- It's the state capital of Nebraska,
- and it has a large university.
- The University of Nebraska has about 20,000 students.
- It's actually more liberal a place than Rochester.
- For instance, it went very heavily
- McGovern in the last election.
- And a lot of alternative lifestyles,
- long hair and all those kinds of things,
- are more readily accepted there than they
- were until fairly recently say, even in Rochester.
- Now, the rest of Nebraska is very different, of course.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, I have the impression
- that the Middle West is perhaps more
- liberal than given credit for.
- It always has been liberal to a certain degree.
- LARRY FINE: Well, parts of it have.
- BRUCE JEWELL: There's a certain type of liberalism that
- has come out of the Midwest.
- I note, for example, that some states
- are much closer in the Middle West
- to legalizing marijuana use--
- LARRY FINE: Well, you almost have to.
- BRUCE JEWELL: --than liberal New York is here.
- LARRY FINE: In Nebraska, it grows in your backyard.
- There's a limit to how much they can do to you.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I see.
- LARRY FINE: They try, but--
- BRUCE JEWELL: It's ecology.
- LARRY FINE: Really.
- BRUCE JEWELL: So what is happening
- in the way of gay activities in Lincoln?
- LARRY FINE: Well, the Gay Action group in Lincoln
- began just around the time that the University of Rochester GLF
- started, in October, November 1970.
- And it started as a university organization.
- Its first event, I guess, was to start a coffee house.
- And it's still called the coffee house,
- but really it's a dance that grew larger and larger.
- And that's the main function of the group.
- Well, I won't say the main purpose,
- but the main function, continuing function
- that's ongoing is the coffee house every other Sunday night.
- And it draws anywhere between one and 200 people.
- This is in Lincoln, Nebraska.
- BRUCE JEWELL: That's better than we do here
- in Rochester actually.
- LARRY FINE: Really.
- There are no gay bars in Lincoln,
- so it serves a similar purpose to that.
- But lately, there's been much more of a feeling of community
- there, less of a cruising feeling.
- There's some cruising for us, but--
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, I would hope so.
- LARRY FINE: Yeah, there's no reason why it shouldn't be,
- but there's also a feeling of people
- wanting to go there to dance with their friends.
- And it's a good feeling.
- There have been a lot of complaints about it,
- because the music is very loud and the lights
- tend to be very dim.
- But it certainly serves a purpose.
- Since then, there have also been some discussion groups started
- on various evenings, and here and there a little bit
- of political activity and talking to some state senators
- about repealing the sodomy law, things like that.
- But political activities are not in the forefront.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I understand you now have a bar as well.
- LARRY FINE: Well, that's very, very recent in Lincoln.
- There's always been a bar in Omaha, one gay bar in Omaha,
- which everyone would go to.
- But Omaha's fifty miles away.
- Under the leadership of the women
- who had separated themselves from the Gay Action Group,
- and really gotten themselves together
- much better than the men ever did,
- it was announced that a particular bar--
- which was a straight, redneck bar,
- but was practically going into bankruptcy--
- that this particular bar welcomed new patronage.
- And one of the women happened to know
- someone who worked at the bar and told the manager that well,
- maybe we should make this into a gay bar
- and the manager might make a little money.
- Well one night, 100 of us--
- actually, I shouldn't say us.
- I wasn't there.
- I was sick with a very bad chest cold and laryngitis.
- But this happened about a month ago or three weeks ago.
- 100 people went to the bar and started dancing.
- And there was a little bit of hassle.
- There was one fight that some straight guy picked,
- but the manager clearly let him know
- whose side he was on and bounced him out pretty quickly.
- The band loved us.
- We love to dance.
- The straight people never danced very much, and when they did
- it was kind of a very slow, stiff-legged kind of dance.
- The band for once didn't just have
- to play country music, country western music.
- They could play some boogie stuff
- and they really got off on us.
- The problem, of course, will be to keep this going.
- This particular bar is not very close to downtown.
- It's a little bit on the outlying areas,
- and it's not easy to get to if you don't have transportation.
- So it'll be a problem keeping enough support
- so that it can remain a place that we can go and dance and be
- ourselves without having to worry about people kicking
- us or shoving us around.
- We don't necessarily want it to be
- an exclusively homosexual bar.
- We welcome heterosexuals who want to dance, you know,
- if they can be with us there.
- There's a lot of enthusiasm that's
- been generated out of this, and there's
- some people who want to liberate a bar a month in Lincoln,
- but I'm not sure that'll happen.
- BRUCE JEWELL: You periodically come back here to Rochester
- as a student at the Empire State College.
- You didn't entirely lose your interest
- in academic activities.
- LARRY FINE: That's true.
- BRUCE JEWELL: What are you engaged in?
- LARRY FINE: Well, under my parents influence especially
- in urging me to get my BA, I've gone back to school
- under a program with the State University of New York called
- Empire State College.
- If you're familiar at all with the concept called University
- Without Walls that some colleges have, this is similar.
- There's no set curriculum or course of study,
- and you don't have to have a major,
- declare a major, any particular major.
- You can do almost anything, from reading ten books to meditating
- in a cave, although they do like to have a program that's
- somewhat cohesive and revolves around
- some kind of central theme.
- You can get a four year degree on this in this college,
- or you can transfer credits from some other place.
- You can do it in conjunction with a job
- or some kind of interest that you have.
- And I decided that if I was going to get my BA
- I would do it in the area of gay liberation
- or not get a degree at all.
- And they were very receptive to this.
- I wondered if they might question it a lot,
- but they didn't.
- And what I'm particularly involved in doing
- is developing social services in the gay community-- counseling,
- crisis lines, discussion groups, and other kinds
- of social services, which I think are very much needed.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, now it has sometimes bothered me that when
- we think of social services, and we do think along the lines,
- of course, counseling and crisis counseling, because those
- meet very realistic needs.
- Have you examined the possibility
- for creating a more positive kind of social service
- to the gay community?
- I mean, currently the places where we can meet
- are very limited within bars and at various functions sponsored
- by gay liberation groups.
- There are not enough gay people out to function as gay people
- in their everyday lives.
- So what kind of alternative institutions or--
- LARRY FINE: Are you thinking in terms of community centers
- and that kind of thing, or a--
- BRUCE JEWELL: Not in particular.
- LARRY FINE: Oh, I wasn't sure what you meant by creative--
- BRUCE JEWELL: I'm just wondering what you're
- thinking along those lines.
- LARRY FINE: Well, I wasn't sure exactly what you
- meant by creative forms of social services,
- but there is a need for community centers.
- And the best thing, of course, would
- be to have gay people just interact
- in the present kinds of institutions as people
- and as gay people and not have to have separate institutions
- for themselves.
- But at least initially, it's an important thing
- to have some separate kinds of institutions
- to form a sense of community and to have people
- develop a sense of identity.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well in doing so we're really following
- a very time-honored tradition.
- We're forming what amounts to the gay club, which
- is equivalent, or we call it a community center,
- and it's the same thing as the German club,
- or the Italian club, or the Scandinavian club, or whatever.
- LARRY FINE: In a sense that's true.
- One of the--
- BRUCE JEWELL: An attempt to form institutions
- that for specialized minorities.
- LARRY FINE: One of the things that troubles me about that
- is that it may tend to limit people
- into thinking that one's sexual identity, that one has to have
- a sexual identity, either being homosexual or heterosexual,
- and you have to align yourself with one or the other
- and shut off anything else you might feel.
- It tends to bother me that the gay movement may
- be doing this, in a sense reinforcing the very norms,
- stereotypes that straight society has already
- placed on us.
- That everyone is either homosexual or heterosexual,
- supposedly.
- It puts people in a box, you might say.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, how do you see people
- as actually functioning?
- LARRY FINE: Well, people have a whole range
- of feelings that are not easy to classify
- as strictly sexual, emotional, social, et cetera.
- Feelings may get themselves felt in many, many different ways.
- Now in a sexually repressive society,
- two things tend to happen.
- Many things get felt in an exaggeratedly sexual kind
- of way, without maybe having a sensual component to it.
- Just very kind of a very gut level sexual thing
- that might otherwise be felt on more emotional levels.
- BRUCE JEWELL: For example?
- LARRY FINE: Let me see if I can give an example.
- BRUCE JEWELL: You mean just seeing somebody, liking
- that person and going to bed with them is a kind of--
- LARRY FINE: That may be.
- The whole cruising thing--
- people tend to, I think, change emotional needs
- into sexual needs so that they often
- don't realize the other kinds of needs that they have.
- They think that just by getting a trick for the night
- they're going to satisfy a lot of their other needs.
- Or they may think that by doing that they'll be happy,
- and they have one trick after another, and--
- BRUCE JEWELL: That is your homosexual life, yeah.
- LARRY FINE: Right.
- Of course, with a repressive society
- the opposite happens, that feelings
- which may be very much sexual get felt other ways,
- and the person doesn't realize that they
- may be feeling sexual feelings for someone
- of the same sex in this case.
- In a less repressive society, there
- would be a whole range of feelings
- and there might not be the necessity
- to classify them as being sexual, emotional, et cetera.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, as you mentioned to me
- in another conversation, the women's groups,
- women are finding that they can relate to one another
- in a manner for many of them apparently
- that's quite unexpected.
- LARRY FINE: Right, there are a lot of women who have always
- defined themselves as heterosexuals,
- and that their gut level feelings, sexual feelings,
- have been toward someone of the opposite sex.
- But they may be finding that they
- can have a warmth and a quality relationship that
- is more meaningful to them with another woman,
- and which can be expressed sexually,
- even though their original gut kind of sexual feelings
- were not toward women.
- This has happened with some men also,
- but with men there's a much greater problem.
- Men are much more constricted in the kinds of behaviors
- and feelings they're allowed to feel in this society.
- But there's a whole problem in defining sexual identity.
- If someone who thought of themselves as heterosexual
- and still feels gut level sexual feelings for someone
- of the opposite sex now finds that they
- have emotional kinds of feelings which can be expressed sexually
- toward someone of the same sex, do they
- think of themselves as a homosexual,
- as a heterosexual or what?
- There's a lot of ambiguity there.
- And in counseling, this is a special problem.
- People want to know where they stand
- and what kind of lifestyle they're expected to live,
- and it's not so easy to say.
- And there are not very clear models or roles
- in society for people who don't fit
- into one or the other category.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well I think it was Saint Thomas Aquinas,
- I'm not quite sure that it was he,
- but it was one of the very famous medieval saints who
- pointed out that sexuality had a definite function
- in friendship.
- He wasn't just talking about marriage, but about friendship.
- And so I suppose for some people,
- a friendship can become a sexual relationship
- without putting the particular individuals
- in a category of homosexual, or heterosexual for that matter.
- Certainly homosexual people sometimes
- have sexual relationships with members of the opposite sex
- really based on friendship.
- LARRY FINE: Sure.
- I tend to think that probably the most lasting kinds
- of relationships, sexual relationships,
- are actually with friends.
- People that you have already established a friendship
- with, and sexuality is an extension of that friendship.
- Traditionally in heterosexual tradition
- it's not been especially important
- whether you like the person you are marrying.
- The parents would marry you off to somebody
- and it was something you did as a duty and as a tradition.
- And I think especially in the Western world
- that that kind of tradition is waning.
- I'm not sure whether it'll disappear completely.
- But more and more people are expecting
- to love the person they marry, something
- that used to be unheard of.
- And maybe we're gradually seeing a whole change
- in the nature of the purpose of sex, which
- used to be just as something for reproduction and to pass on,
- you know, to pass on the heritage.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well, officially.
- LARRY FINE: Officially, at least, yeah.
- But, well, I've known many men, for instance,
- who just felt that sex was--
- well women, actually, more women who felt that sex
- was a duty and something to be put up with because they
- didn't really enjoy it.
- And even men sometimes who really,
- when they were able to be open about their feelings,
- would say that sex was something they really
- didn't enjoy all that much.
- It was just the release, the tension release,
- but they did it more as a duty.
- But I think more and more, sex is becoming something which
- can be for expression of friendship,
- which can be just for the purpose of mutual pleasure,
- taking on many different forms.
- And the kinds of lifestyles which will develop out
- of that may be very different from the traditional kinds
- of monogamous relationships, so that's
- of course already being felt. (Recording
- ends and begins again)
- BRUCE JEWELL: Larry, I know you have
- some personal feelings about tradition and personal events
- in your life which have changed your attitudes
- towards traditions and so on.
- Could you share those with us?
- LARRY FINE: I think when I first came out
- my tendency was to toss tradition to the wind,
- to toss the idea of family to the wind.
- And I guess I needed to do that at the time
- in order to feel good about my being gay
- and not be held down by those feelings of tradition.
- And you know I'm Jewish, and in Jewish culture,
- tradition and family are extremely important.
- Well, now that being gay is not an issue with me
- and I've accepted my gayness as a good and positive thing,
- I can think more freely about tradition.
- And some events in my life have made
- me think about it much more quickly.
- My mother is not well, and in fact I came back to New York
- very quickly last week because it was a possibility
- she might be dying.
- She's a little better now.
- But my sister and I talked a great deal
- and we both have this realization
- that our parents are in the process of disappearing,
- and our neighborhood is changing,
- and all our friends, or many of our friends
- are getting married, getting established jobs, et cetera,
- careers, and that it's kind of getting time
- for us to carry on the responsibilities of our family,
- you might say, and to carry on the tradition.
- And I do have a feeling of needing
- to carry on this tradition.
- Now for a heterosexual, it presents a lot less problem.
- You get married and have children,
- and everyone says that's the right thing to do.
- For someone who's gay, who knows that they're oriented
- towards someone of the same sex, and that a heterosexual
- marriage would not fulfill many of their very important needs,
- this is really a much more serious kind
- of decision of what kind of lifestyle to live.
- And it weighs on my mind in a sense.
- For instance, there are many gay people who
- would like to have children.
- And we have to ask the question, how much should a person be
- limited by their biology?
- Just like there are many women in the women's liberation
- movement who are deciding that their biology,
- their being female, should not determine the role they take
- and prevent them from having a career,
- should not determine that they must have a child.
- I think that people who are homosexually oriented
- would also have a reason to object
- to their being limited biologically
- from having children.
- On the other hand--
- BRUCE JEWELL: In other words, they should be able perhaps
- to adopt children.
- LARRY FINE: Well, perhaps to adopt,
- but there are some people who would like to have children
- naturally, and who know that the problem, of course,
- is not whether or not they'd be able to have sex with a woman.
- For instance, I'm sure I'd be able to perform
- with a woman who I was comfortable with and liked.
- That's not the question.
- The question is that I would prefer being with a man,
- much prefer.
- So there's a conflict in many people's lives.
- On one hand, they may want to follow a tradition that they
- see many advantages to.
- On the other hand, they feel that their nature leads them
- in another way, and what kind of lifestyle to choose
- is a difficult decision.
- BRUCE JEWELL: Well I think being cut adrift
- from traditions is something many,
- if not most, if not all homosexuals experience.
- LARRY FINE: As a matter of fact, I think in my counseling
- that I've done, and even in my personal life,
- I found that the times when one feels not very
- good about being gay, if you analyze those feelings,
- that you find that the major feeling is not
- one of being sick or of being immoral or irreligious
- or whatever.
- Those can easily be refuted.
- It's a feeling of being cut off from tradition,
- a feeling of being cut off from a heritage.
- And that is a serious problem with dealing with that.
- BRUCE JEWELL: I wouldn't deny what
- you're saying, that it's a serious problem, at least
- for some people.
- I would say, however, that I think
- it can be a positive value.
- Though it's not often discussed, I
- don't know why at this point the homosexual movement,
- the gay movement is loath to discuss history,
- maybe because it's not been explored.
- LARRY FINE: Well, I think there's a tendency
- to put down people who discuss great figures in history who
- were gay because they say that well, this will not
- solve our political needs at the time and all that.
- I used to say that too, but I am now changing my mind somewhat.
- BRUCE JEWELL: My own feeling is that if we look at history,
- we will encounter a number of men of outstanding abilities
- at crucial points, crucial historical turning points, many
- who were--
- I'm just getting a clumsy sentence--
- but who were homosexual.
- And I think to a certain degree, this is not only true,
- by the way, of the Western world.
- You can also find the same parallels in the east.
- And I think that part of this is because the homosexual being
- cut adrift from tradition, being in so far
- as so much tradition is based upon biological roles,
- has been able to take a view point.
- See things slightly differently.
- LARRY FINE: From a wider perspective, you might say.
- BRUCE JEWELL: From a wider perspective.
- And for that reason, I think homosexuals,
- at various times in history have been
- able to offer necessary leadership.
- LARRY FINE: I very much agree.
- That's something I'm very interested in doing
- some reading and maybe even some writing about it at some point,
- especially in conjunction with my Empire State College
- studies.
- I think that what I was going to get into,
- I actually left off at a very negative note,
- and I'm glad that you continued on a more positive level.
- I'm interested in finding what you might
- call homosexual traditions.
- Now we all know there are heterosexual traditions
- of marriage and family, but homosexual traditions
- are not as easy to find in literature unless you
- look between the lines.
- It's not something that's been written about all that much.