Green Thursday, radio program, June 24, 1973, source recording

BRUCE JEWELL: How long have you been in the gay liberation

movement?

FRANK KAMENY: About twelve or thirteen years.

Since 1961.

There's no sharp date.

But since roughly that time.

I founded the Mattachine Society of Washington the end of 1961,

and was getting into the movement

somewhat prior to that.

BRUCE JEWELL: That seems to be an unusually long time.

You're an early gay liberationist.

Was there any reason that you entered into the movement

so early?

FRANK KAMENY: Well, by a process of personal evolution.

I lost a government job at the very end of 1957

on the basis solely of my homosexuality.

And I was the first person to fight

back on the basic issues all the way up to the Supreme Court.

And the court chose not to take my case in March of 1961.

And at that point, I felt I had gone

as far as I could go as an individual working

as an individual.

I had been in touch with what there

was of the movement at that time, a few organizations.

And I wrote my own brief for the Supreme Court,

and was forced in doing that to sit down and formulate

my ideas.

And I've been faced with the problems.

So I decided the time has come to move forward

as an individual through an organization.

So I have my own ideas of where the movement should go

and where it hadn't been going up to that point

that it should go.

And so, I found the Mattachine Society of Washington,

and proceeded to set the movement at that time

off on somewhat different directions

from where it had been.

BRUCE JEWELL: Could you tell me where it had been

and where you believe it should go?

FRANK KAMENY: The second part of your question

skips a gap of over ten years.

But at that time, keep in mind this is back in 1961 now,

the movement was a-- and I say this non-critically and

non-judgmentally, because the whole situation was very, very

different at that time.

But the movement was a rather bland, conservative,

non-assertive kind of movement, interested in research

in homosexuality in attempting by a process of education

to change public attitudes.

Such words as activism, and militancy, and the like

were considered very dirty words in the movement at that time.

I founded the Mattachine Society of Washington

as the first explicitly activist, explicitly

civil liberties organization in the movement.

And it proceeded to set the pace for the whole movement

for some years thereafter, and other organizations followed.

Now, since then of course, we've gone

through another whole phase.

And 1969 was the emergence of yet another phase.

And there have been perhaps two stages within that.

Any movement that isn't dying evolves and goes

through stages, and ours has over the twenty years

that the gay liberation movement in one form or another

has existed.

BRUCE JEWELL: You mentioned earlier

that you'd done some of your own legal work

in the Supreme Court case.

Have you continued to use this legal knowledge

on behalf of gay people and the gay movement?

FRANK KAMENY: Yes.

And more, I suppose by evolution than by original intent,

I've ended up becoming the authority

in the country on relationships between the homosexual citizen

and the federal government, specifically

in the areas of civil service employment, the armed services,

and security clearances, but also

in other areas of law that involve the homosexual.

I'm active, I'm consulted by attorneys across the country.

I serve as counsel at the administrative level,

that is below the court level, in a large number of cases.

And in general, function that way.

A lot of people have suggested that I

ought to go to law school and become admitted to the Bar.

But this would put a crimp into my style,

because I don't have to observe the amenities that lawyers do.

I don't have to observe the canons of legal ethics.

I can advertise for cases and solicit for them,

and create them, in fact.

And I don't have to be polite to my adversary lawyers, who

are anti-gay, and things of that sort that ordinary lawyers do.

And I have a lot of degrees of freedom.

One established and prestigious civil liberties organization,

non-gay, but friends of ours that I've worked with,

have referred to me as their lawyer without portfolio,

and have pledged themselves to defend me

if I ever get prosecuted for practicing law

without a license.

BRUCE JEWELL: What current actions are pending

in the Washington DC area?

And what things are you planning for the future?

FRANK KAMENY: Well, there are a number of things.

I don't know that I can give a complete listing at this point,

or an exhaustive one.

We expect momentarily a change in Federal Civil Service

Commission policy on homosexuals.

Don't know quite what the change will be,

but one is in the works.

We forced a meeting on the chairman of the commission

last August, and things have moved slowly,

but moved from there.

We have a number of security cases going, security clearance

cases, in Washington and elsewhere,

and have the Defense Department somewhat beleaguered on that.

A major decision is due to come down on that shortly.

And depending on which way it goes,

it will affect that whole situation.

Locally, we are attempting to-- we have some civil rights

legislation before our city council,

banning discrimination against homosexuals

in private and public employment,

housings, and rentals, and real estate, public accommodations,

and so on.

And we have every expectation that that

will pass, and pass rather easily, later on this summer.

There are a number of other things going along

as they arise in a number of other related and collateral

areas.

BRUCE JEWELL: You, among some others,

have taken a very-- a leading role

in dealing with the American Psychiatric Association.

Could you tell me why you think dealing with the American

Psychiatric Association, or a psychiatrist,

is important to the gay movement?

And secondly, what types of goals do you have in mind?

FRANK KAMENY: Society finds ways of putting down people

that it considers unpopular.

And one of the best ways of doing that

is to pin nasty name tags on them.

And the name tags vary from ear to ear,

depending on what's important to people.

In the past, if they didn't like you,

they called you sinful or a heretic.

Well, the high priests of past ages

have been replaced as authority figures in our society

nowadays, for better or for worse,

by the high priests of the 20th century, the psychiatrists.

And so now if they don't like you and if you're unpopular,

they call you sick, and that's exactly what

the psychiatrists have done.

And this allegation that homosexuality

is a sickness, which has absolutely no scientific basis

at all, has served to maintain and reinforce

popular prejudice.

And so, I feel it's necessary before we can really

achieve full personhood, full citizenship,

to get rid of the allegation that we are sick, or ill,

or mentally disturbed, or whatever you want to call it.

And so, we started approaching the psychiatrists,

oh, close to ten years ago.

And it's been a long, slow job.

We've had to invade their meetings.

On one occasion, I had to seize the microphone

and lay down the law to them.

But we're bringing them around.

And it looks now as if there will

be changes in the next number of months to a year or so,

hopefully, in their official categorization

of homosexuality.

And once, we're removed from the characterization of being sick,

a great many of the weapons of the bigots

will have been taken from their hands.

BRUCE JEWELL: You recently attended

the American Psychiatric Convention in Honolulu.

Would you tell me something about what

happened at the convention, your experiences there?

And what do you think came out of that particular convention?

FRANK KAMENY: It was a busy and productive week.

I came back very well satisfied, even

though we didn't come back with anything actually

in our pockets at that point.

The main formal feature of the meeting within this context

was a special morning session--

all morning session dealing with the question

of whether homosexuality should continue

to be included in the psychiatric nomenclature

in their diagnostic manual.

Their diagnostic manual is their sickness book.

If you're in it, you're sick.

If you're removed from it, you've been miraculously cured.

And we are seeking to get ourselves removed from it,

so that we can be "cured" in quotation marks, "cured en

masse" by semantics, instead of individually by therapy.

And the special session consisted of six people:

two psychiatrists who were very much in favor of our views,

and positions, and aims; two of the most prominent

of our opponents, Dr. Socarides and Dr. Bieber;

and one of our own people, Ronald Gold, from the Gay

Activist Alliance of New York.

I was invited to be Chief Discussant

to discuss the papers as a group after they'd been presented.

It went off very well.

The session was probably the best attended

of any during that whole meeting.

And Doctor Bieber and Socarides, who had--Doctors Bieber

and Socarides who had sort of reigned supreme in this area

for many, many years, were subjected to, for them I think,

the rather unaccustomed experience of being booed

and jeered and derided by their colleagues when they presented

their views.

They were very, very much on the defensive.

And I've interacted with both of them

on a number of occasions in the past.

And it was the first time I've seen them so.

They made a number of concessions even there.

However, they are just two individuals.

And more important, are the formal things that came out.

We have a number of resolutions at various stages

of processing now in the American Psychiatric

Association.

The internal structure of that association is enormously

complex, wheels within wheels within wheels

with many, many different levels--

boards of trustees, and the assembly of district branches

of various committees, and so on and so forth.

And in process are resolutions by the American Psychiatric

Association affirming civil rights for homosexuals

in a variety of specified ways, indicating

that the use that the government has

put to the listing in their manual

is an abuse, not a proper use in placing special burdens

on homosexuals to prove their stability,

or their judgment, or their reliability.

And most important of all, proposals

which are moving through the APA's machinery

to drastically modify the listings in this connection

in their manual.

And the net effect will be to remove homosexuality

from their diagnostic manual, which will mean that

to the extent that the American Psychiatric Association is

authoritative, and I guess in actual practice

it is, even if nobody's appointed it as such,

we will have been officially declared healthy.

BRUCE JEWELL: There was a caucus, I believe,

of gay psychiatrists at this convention.

Could you tell me something about this caucus?

And if they have any plans to do anything in the future?

FRANK KAMENY: This is one facet of a phenomenon

that, well, it has been long in existence

and is appearing more visibly in many, many, many different

professions.

10 percent of our general population, of course,

in all areas is gay.

And so, you would expect, even if you didn't know in advance

or hadn't taken a survey or checked it out,

that 10 percent of any particular profession

would be gay.

And so, of course, there are 10 percent of all lawyers,

of all doctors, you name it, all teachers, anything else,

are homosexual.

And so, 10 percent of psychiatrists are gay.

Now, in general in the past, gay professionals

have tended to remain very, very, very much covert,

in the closet as we express it, in some professions

more so than in others.

But certainly in the past, for rather good reason, a law

student, for example, known to be gay

could reasonably well count on not getting admitted to the Bar

when he finished his schooling.

Things of that sort.

This is beginning to change.

And so, we now have organizations

of gay law students, gay psychologists, gay doctors,

and others.

And a professional accreditation board,

whether it's from inside or outside the profession,

is a lot less likely to take on a mass group

to discredit than an individual.

You can pick off an individual easily,

but you can't pick off 10 percent of a law school class.

That kind of thing.

The psychiatrists have their gay people as well.

They have tended to be rather more covert

than some other professions.

And for many years, there has been

what has been somewhat facetiously called the GayPA.

Simply a group of-- nothing formal, nothing

organized at all.

Simply a group of gay psychiatrists

who knew each other and who would get together

quite informally, usually on a purely social basis,

at the annual meetings of the American Psychiatric

Association, which occur in one part or another of a country

every May.

This time, there was a particularly large meeting

of the GayPA.

A few people who are non-gay, but not unsympathetic,

came to the meeting a little bit to the dismay, I think,

of some of the gay psychiatrists.

And I must confess that Ron Gold and I brought them there.

And a great deal of pressure was put

on them, that is on the gay psychiatrists,

to begin to come out and declare themselves.

Most of them still are not.

It's going to be another few years.

But if you're a little bit sensitive to the nuances,

you can see movement there.

A few of them are beginning to.

And I think that there will be a slow, but definite movement

in that direction in the next few years,

because psychiatrists are particularly oppressed.

I know at last year's meeting, in 1972 in Dallas,

we had a panel discussion in which I participated along

with my colleague Barbara Gittings as representatives

of the gay community.

A panel on Psychiatry, Friend or Foe of Homosexuals?

And one of the people we had on the panel

was a gay psychiatrist who, because

of the attitudes of his own profession,

felt obliged to appear wearing a full head mask,

so that he was completely unidentifiable.

And it may sound rather overly dramatic,

but it served very, very effectively

to demonstrate exactly what the homosexual psychiatrist goes

through in terms of the attitudes of his own profession

toward him.

And I think he made his point, and made it very, very well.

So there again, you have a movement there

to try to do something ultimately

from inside the profession, as well as merely from outside it.

BRUCE JEWELL: Dr. Kameny, you've been,

as you mentioned earlier, in the movement for over ten years.

I'd be interested in knowing what kind

of changes in attitudes you've seen, first of all,

by homosexuals towards other homosexuals

and towards themselves.

And secondly, what kind of changes

you've seen in attitudes on the part of heterosexual people

towards homosexuals, and perhaps vice versa.

FRANK KAMENY: Well, the changes, of course, have been enormous.

And answering that question adequately

could easily take us another hour.

So any answers I give are going to have

to be somewhat superficial and necessarily inadequate

from any total viewpoint.

There's been, of course, an enormous amount of change.

When I joined the movement and right on up into the late '60s,

it was a rather small movement, which we used to lament.

When I founded the Mattachine Society of Washington,

there were five or six organizations in the country.

I could write to the whole movement after dinner,

and have the rest of the evening free to do other things.

By the late sixties, there was a tenfold increase, fifty

or sixty such groups.

But we were still lamenting with good and valid cause

that it was not a grassroots movement.

That it was not a popular movement.

That it still was very, very small.

People had become a lot more militant.

I remember when I organized the first picketing demonstration

by homosexual's in 1965.

That was a period when picketing was

the radical mode of expression of dissent par excellence.

And it was a rare day indeed when

you had as few as three groups picketing

in front of the White House.

Well, for gay people to picket was considered so extraordinary

that when a little band of ten frightened gay people marched

across Pennsylvania Avenue and took up a place in front

of the White House, we got, not only national,

but international TV coverage.

And that has expanded now, so that we

hope to have ten thousand, or perhaps,

several times that many marching down 7th Avenue today.

But at that time, as I said earlier,

words like militancy and activism

were really considered dirty words.

And they were considered radical in the bad and derogatory sense

of radical.

But people were beginning to push.

And the movement sort of turned a corner in June of 1969,

when the first gay riot in history occurred in New York.

And there again, whatever one may on a subjective basis

considered to be the merits or demerits

of a riot as an expression of dissent,

the message expressed was very, very clear.

And that is, that we've been pushed around

for three thousand years and we're fed up with it.

And we're starting to push back.

And if we don't get decent treatment and get it now,

there's going to be a lot more pushing back.

And that sort of changed the whole tone of the movement.

It pumped an enormous amount of energy,

and vigor, and enthusiasm into it.

It converted it very much from a small movement, the type

I described, to as close as it's come thus far to being

a mass grassroots movement.

So that, for example, a year and a half

ago when we had a mailing to all the groups

that we could find the names of in the country,

the mailing consisted of five to six hundred groups.

Or in other words, another tenfold

increase in the next year and a half,

and it's going up rapidly beyond that.

That got gay liberation into the news,

and homosexuality into the news.

The subject is discussed now.

And it's being-- approaches to it are being reconsidered

in many, many different ways.

Laws are changing and so on, so that there

is a great deal of very, very rapid change going on.

Perhaps one of the most important things

is the movement of homosexuals into politics.

And as I see it in somewhat long range terms,

but not very long range, that perhaps

is the wave or one of the waves of the future.

We started going into politics back in the middle sixties.

We would have done it in Washington earlier than that,

because we considered it the early sixties,

but Washington, at that time, had no politics at all

for us to go into.

There were no local politics.

And we had less leverage on national politics

than anybody else in the country.

So we didn't.

But groups in San Francisco began to,

in the middle sixties, secondhand

by approaching candidates running for office,

inviting them to a public forums,

sending out questionnaires to them, and so on.

And getting their responses, feeding those back

into the gay community to guide voting.

That was sort of going into things

second hand on the coattails of those politicians

who offered their coattails.

In early 1971, when for the first time

we had a congressional election in the District of Columbia,

some people in the gay community asked me to run,

and I did as the first publicly declared homosexual ever

to run for public office.

I didn't expect to win.

So there were no tears when I lost.

I did accomplish what I intended to, which

was impact on the governmental political structure, impact

on the general community, and perhaps most importantly,

impact on my own community to start politicizing them.

And so candidates in increasing numbers, openly gay candidates,

are now running for office over the country.

We had five people elected to the Democratic National

Convention, people running here in New York for city council,

and other offices.

I understand someone will be running

for Congress from one district here in the city later

on this year.

Elsewhere in the country.

In many instances, as is to be expected, people don't win.

They haven't.

That will change too gradually.

People will continue to run.

And I think, ultimately, we'll get in.

I think this is extremely important, because it

has to be realized that for--

and we're going through the same process

that other minorities have gone through along these lines--

this realization that for us, as homosexuals,

this is our society quite as much

as it is that of the heterosexuals,

and our country, and our government.

And they are our political officers.

And we are going to take what is ours.

And the way to take it in this context is to run for office,

and win and get in there.

And that's exactly what we're doing.

BRUCE JEWELL: You mentioned the first march

of about ten people.

Today, there's a march expected to be at least ten thousand.

How does that make you feel?

FRANK KAMENY: Well, very, very enthusiastic.

Very proud.

Well, that's about all I can say.

Very pleased.

I feel that a process that I helped set into motion

is now going on, has taken on a life of its own

very much as it should.

And (pause) well, very well satisfied.

That's all I can say.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you very much, Dr. Kameny.

(pause in recording)

BRUCE JEWELL: Can I ask you what you think of the gay parade

here?

SUBJECT 1: Love it.

Love it.

I'm with it.

And so is he.

SUBJECT 2: Beautiful.

Beautiful.

SUBJECT 1: Beautiful.

We can make it.

BRUCE JEWELL: How do you feel about the gay parade?

SUBJECT 3: I think they should have the right

to march and be as people and regarded as such,

no matter what the proclivity is.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you very much.

(pause in recording)

BRUCE JEWELL: How do you like the parade?

SUBJECT 4: Pretty good.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you.

How do you like the parade?

SUBJECT 5: I think it's nice.

Glad to see it so big.

We'll be in it soon.

BRUCE JEWELL: Good, thank you.

How do you like the parade?

SUBJECT 6: I love it.

SUBJECT 7: Fantastic.

BRUCE JEWELL: What do you think of the parade?

SUBJECT 8: I think it's fascinating.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you.

SUBJECT 9: Terrific.

SUBJECT 10: Wonderful.

Yeah, really good.

BRUCE JEWELL: What do you think of the parade?

Great.

Thank you.

How do you like the parade?

SUBJECT 11: I love it.

SUBJECT 12: It's fine.

SUBJECT 13: Great.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you.

CROWD: (chanting) Stop racist attacks against gay prisoners.

Stop racist attacks against gay prisoners.

BRUCE JEWELL: How do you like the march?

SUBJECT 14: I love it.

It's a lot of fun.

SUBJECT 15: Very, very good.

Enjoying it, sir.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you.

How do you like the parade?

SUBJECT 16: Beautiful.

SUBJECT 17: This is ridiculous.

SUBJECT 18: (laughs) Funny.

BRUCE JEWELL: How do you like the parade?

SUBJECT 19: Very good.

Different.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you.

Your sign says you're from the Gay Teachers Caucus.

I haven't heard of that.

What is it?

SUBJECT 20: It's an organization of gay teachers

within the National Education Association.

BRUCE JEWELL: Is it located here, in New York?

SUBJECT 20: No, it's based in Washington DC.

BRUCE JEWELL: Very good.

Glad to hear it.

How do you like the parade?

SUBJECT 20: It's really nice.

It's really big.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you.

You're a Marshal here.

How many people do you estimate are at this parade?

MARSHAL: I would estimate, now, this the fourth one I'm

with, I would estimate this one's

got to have at least eight thousand.

Eight to ten thousand.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you very much.

I see you are selling the Fag Rag, the Boston Newspaper.

You must be from Boston?

SUBJECT 21: Yes, sir.

Yes.

BRUCE JEWELL: How do you like the parade?

SUBJECT 21: Oh, I think it's great.

I'm really impressed so far anyway.

BRUCE JEWELL: You have any idea how long it is?

SUBJECT 21: I understand thirty-one blocks long.

It stretches to about thirty-one blocks.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thirty-one blocks.

Thank you very much.

How do you like the parade?

Wait.

(pause in recording)

SUBJECT 22: (singing) Mussolini Fascist (unintelligible)

Christianity!

There is Christianity!

Viva Mussolini!

Viva Bianchi!

Viva Bianchi!

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you, sir.

CROWD: (singing) (unintelligible)

when the gays go marching in. (unintelligible)

Oh, when the gays go marching in.

Oh, I want to be with that number.

When the gays go marching in.

BRUCE JEWELL: Do it for me again.

CROWD: (chanting) Radical femmes off the butch.

Radical femmes off the butch.

Radical femmes off the butch.

(bagpipe playing)

CROWD: (chanting) Back must stay oppression (unintelligible)--

BRUCE JEWELL: I'm with Madeline Davis of Buffalo.

And she's on the sidelines here watching the parade.

What do you think of it, Madeline?

MADELINE DAVIS: Well, it's the first time

I've ever had a chance to really watch the parade.

I've usually marched in it.

And this time, because I have to be at the square early,

I get a chance to stand by and watch it.

It's gorgeous.

It's, oh, wow!

It's just so beautiful.

I never saw so many people.

I'm really impressed.

I'm really impressed with my own people.

They're gorgeous.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you very much.

I notice your license plate is Gay1.

How did you get that?

SUBJECT 23: I just applied for a special plate,

as you can do in the state of Vermont.

You pay five dollars extra.

BRUCE JEWELL: What excuse did you

give them for wanting those particular initials?

SUBJECT 23: I told them that I had a seven-year-old son, which

I don't, whose name is Gaylord and who wanted his nickname

on the plate.

I got an answer back that Gay was already taken,

which may or may not be the case.

So I wrote back and said, my son was so disappointed

that he came up with a scheme that they could give us

Gay number one, or number two, or any gays they

had just so we got a Gay.

So we got Gay number one.

BRUCE JEWELL: How about a few honks from Gay number one here?

(car horn honking)

SUBJECT 24: Before the gay plates,

I had plates that said peace.

But I get much more response on the highways from gay

than I ever got from peace.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you.

What do you think of the parade?

SUBJECT 25: It's excellent.

Yeah.

I think it's pretty good.

BRUCE JEWELL: Very good to hear.

Enjoying it?

SUBJECT 25: Sure.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you.

SUBJECT 26: (singing) Come on, mama.

Come on, hon.

Let me play with your hot cross buns.

Well, come on, mama!

Come on, hon!

Say, let me play with your hot cross buns!

Come on.

Come on. (unintelligible) Do it, do it darling!

BRUCE JEWELL: I see by your sign you're with the Black Lesbian

Caucus.

SUBJECT 27: Yes, I am.

BRUCE JEWELL: Could you tell me something about that?

SUBJECT 27: It's a group in New York.

We meet at the firehouse every Sunday.

BRUCE JEWELL: Is it a fairly new group?

SUBJECT 27: No, it's been going on-- you might say fairly new.

It's been going on like about five or six months now.

And we meet for like two or three hours every week.

BRUCE JEWELL: How do you feel being at a parade like this?

SUBJECT 27: It's great.

It's great, because like I'm triply

oppressed for my blackness, as a woman, and as a lesbian.

So it's really great.

There's not too many of us out here, but we're here, you know,

and that's a good thing.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you very much.

CROWD: (chanting) So will we fight back!

Smash gay oppression!

So will we fight back!

Smash gay oppression!

So will we fight back!

Smash gay oppression!

So will we fight back!

Smash gay oppression!

BRUCE JEWELL: We are now entering the Washington Square

here, in New York City.

The crowds are filling out.

I'll have some more things later.

(applause)

SUBJECT 28: OK.

Listen to this loud and clear.

For the first time in four years,

we have the mothers and fathers of the gay community marching.

A standing ovation to our moms and dads.

(cheering)

SUBJECT 28: Standing ovation for moms and dads!

(applause)

(whistling)

BRUCE JEWELL: What's your reaction to the march?

SUBJECT 29: I think it's fantastic.

BRUCE JEWELL: Have you ever been on one before?

SUBJECT 29: Never.

Never before.

BRUCE JEWELL: From New York?

SUBJECT 29: From Long Island.

BRUCE JEWELL: How about you?

SUBJECT 30: I think it's great, really is.

BRUCE JEWELL: What do you like about it in particular?

SUBJECT 30: The people.

The gay people.

That's what's nice.

BRUCE JEWELL: Have you been on a march before?

SUBJECT 30: Nope.

First one.

BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you very much.

What's your reaction to this gathering?

SUBJECT 31: It's wild.

SUBJECT 32: Come on.

There are more of you than that!

Again!

CROWD: Gay power!

SUBJECT 33: --it's the first time I've been able to do--

SUBJECT 34: --I have never in my life

been so happy to see every single time she

walks into any room on the (unintelligible).

I'm sorry.

(live instrumental music)

SUBJECT 35: Yeah, C sharp (unintelligible)

SUBJECT 36: --once said something

on national television that has stayed close to my heart

ever since I heard it.

And every time I think of it, I think

of you looking at me like that.

She once said to David Susskind, "Screw you."

When I first realized that I was a lesbian,

I picked up a book in the library.

And the book said that all lesbians love the color green

and they dress like men.

So I came to New York looking for my people, dressed

like a man.

And I found out that those books were wrong.

And she has vowed to change that misinformation,

to change the information that we read in books, so

that young people will grow up learning the right thing

about themselves.

And I love her for that.

I love her for everything she stands for.

She's come back to New York to find

her people, Barbara Gittings.

(applause)

BARBARA GITTINGS: Hello, everybody.

CROWD: Hello Barbara

BARBARA GITTINGS: And welcome to the greatest consciousness

raising event in gay history.

(applause)

This may not be quite the total lavender revolution,

but it certainly is a revelation.

No more can people talk about us as

though we were a tribe of three hundred people

on a Polynesian island six thousand miles away.

(applause)

(bell ringing)

Because we are everywhere, aren't we?

CROWD: Yes!

BRUCE JEWELL: In the remainder of her speech,

Barbara Gitting's listed the accomplishments

of the gay liberation movement, and ended

by leading the crowd in a chant of, "Gay is good.

Gay is proud.

Gay is natural.

Gay is normal.

Gay is gorgeous.

Gay is positive.

Gay is healthy.

Gay is happy.

Gay is love."

Then she said, now turn to the person next to you,

and say, "You are beautiful," and that's what people did.

All smiles, they turned around.

Some people kissed one another.

It was really beautiful.

Following Barbara Gitting's speech,

Master of Ceremonies Vito Russo introduced the Los Angeles Gay

Community Leader Morris Kight.

During his speech, Mr. Kight mentions a little boy

by the name of Jason, who had been lost

and was found, just as Kight was about to begin his speech.

So here's Morris Kight.

VITO RUSSO: --man who founded the GLF of Los Angeles,

the President of the Board of Directors of the Gay Community

Services in Los Angeles, and was in the Peace Movement

before most of us were born.

He is the "Silver Thread" as he calls it.

From southern Los Angeles to New York City,

and he comes bringing us love.

"The Dean," as John Francis Hunter

calls him, of the Gay Liberation Movement, Morris Kight.

(applause)

MORRIS KIGHT: Brothers and sisters, I

bring you greetings of love.

I am delighted that Jason has been found.

I'm much happier that we've been found.

There was at this demonstration a picket

sign, which I think is classic.

One of the best I have ever seen in my life.

"Don't pretend to be somebody else.

Be yourself."

(applause)

(cheering)

If I did all the things in New York that I was assigned to do,

I would have to stay a year.

I'll come back.

Dick Michaels, the Publisher of The Advocate,

asked me, especially, to bring you his warm personal greeting.

The sisters who run the Lesbian Tide Collective

asked me to do the same thing.

Just before I left Los Angeles, the last person

that I saw other than my closest coworkers

at the Gay Community Services Center

was Reverend Troy Perry, who asked

me to bring you his greetings.

A great many of the people said, look up ole so and so.

Or, so and so I used to know them real well.

I don't have time to do that.

So if somebody in southern California says,

"Did Morris say hello?"

Please do that.

Say, "Yes, he looked me up.

He said hello."

OK?

Alright.

Now, let's talk.

In New York, I have been the recipient

of the most hospitality that I have ever

received in my entire life.

Don Goodman of the Mattachine Society

has had me to the society offices and to a lovely dinner.

I was at the West Side Discussion Group Fair

yesterday.

I couldn't have enjoyed myself more.

Last night, I was to the Gay Activist

Alliance of New Jersey.

For a thrilling and beautiful march, and afterwards

a delightful party.

Billy Rousseau, one of my coworkers in Los Angeles,

is in the city.

And he's provided transportation for me.

And I think you, Billy.

Beyond that, two beautiful people and many joining them,

Jonathan (unintelligible) and David (unintelligible),

had me to Coming Out.

And I never had such an emotional experience

in my lifetime.

Beyond that, the Gay Activist Alliance

has had me to the firehouse time and again, and I've enjoyed it.

My host in New York has been Morty Manford.

Thank him.

OK.

At this time every year throughout America, there

is held graduation exercises.

And they always talk about promises.

They're going to promise you a lot of things, the universe,

dominion, progress, domination over women,

over blacks, over Chicanos, over us, over children,

domination, domination.

I call it the great bullshit revelation (unintelligible).

(applause)

So that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about not dominating.

We're talking about sharing, and loving, and caring.

So we have a promise that we should make one another.

Other minorities have had those who promised them things.

Sojourner Truth said to black women,

"That white man over there says that that woman, that lady

must be lifted into a carriage.

Nobody ever lifted me into their carriage.

And ain't I a woman?"

Marcus Garvey said, "Liberty and justice for all?

Well, they must be talking about white folks,

because us black folks never had no liberty and justice.