What was gay rights like in the "early days"?

[wonderwort]

Before I answer, I have a few questions on your perspective so I can understand where you are coming from and what you want to know...

Do you have the right to marry where you Live?

Are you protected from hate crimes in your state?

Are you protected from being fired for being gay?

Are you openly gay and out of the closet, at least to your family and friends?

No right to marry.

Yes......EVERYONE is protected from hate crimes.

Yes....we're protected from firing.....I think that's covered under sexual harrasment laws.

Im openly gay.

 

[BostonPirate]

No right to marry.

Yes......EVERYONE is protected from hate crimes.

Yes....we're protected from firing.....I think that's covered under sexual harrasment laws.

Im openly gay.

thanks..

then much has indeed changed and your perspective is alot different.

There were beatings and murders of gays regularly, and specifically the transgendered and Dragqueen communities carried the brunt of that. Police raids and jail time just for being in a gay bar.

In the early eighties I became involved in Act-Up, an organisation that engaged in civil disobedience, peaceful civil disobedience, to protest the fact that no one was even trying to figure out what aids was much less what caused it.

We would lay down in traffic and pretend to be dead HIV patients. OF COURSE, we always got the national press to follow us, and we always told them where we were going to be. Our Goal was to get arrested, so that the press and the cameras would see the police dragging limp bodies out of the street.

We actually had classes on how to pretend to be dead, and how to get arrested in a way that is respectful of the police who were only doing their jobs.

People in Hospitals who were late stage HIV patients would lie in their own urine and excrement, as the food trays piled up outside the doors, because the nurses were too afraid to breath the same air as the AIDS patients.

That mentality spilled over into rage against the gay community. The conservatives actually BLAMED the gay community for aids, much as they do the poor for being poor, and it caused alot of misery and death.

In those early days I went to one funeral a week. There is a whole generation of the gay community gone, dead, because of that.

standing up for gay rights in those days meant exposing yourself to harm, even death, but we already had that threat from HIV, so it didn't matter.

In Massachusetts we were able to transform our activist infrastructure into more mainstream endeavors and now we have the full ticket here. Our experiment has overflown into the entire New England area.

GAY community centers that tested for HIV and had "doctors nights" started turning into general gay mens healthcare centers, and now, one of the nations leading HIV research orgs is one of those in Fenway in Boston. Indeed, the movement toward healthcare community centers and in turn universal healthcare arose from our privately funded outreach programs of the early days.

I remember the big argument when Clinton came in office and started giving grants out to the HIV centers, as to whether we should take the money, because we feared they would divert us and regulate the Gay out of Gay mens Health. In the end we chose to trust Clinton. The gay communities relationship with clinton was not so good. He had exacted DADT, after promising to order gays to be allowed to serve in the military as Commander in Chief. To date, Cliton still remains the only president to sign legislation making it illegal for openly gay people to serve in the military. Before then it was merely policy set by the commander of the armed forces.

And we are all alarmed that you guys are not motivated to continue where we left off. We wanted to give you the gift of freedom from oppresion, and we would up giving you guys complacency instead.

Not good.

It is an ongoing battle, and the older of us really don't understand why the younger gays don't get off their asses and fight for equality.

 

[construct]

I thank anyone that worked in any way to push the "homosexual agenda"........

Thank you!!!!!

I'm grateful to them, too. The groundbreaking work was being done in the really big cities. For the South in the 1970s, "gay rights" was something that happened somewhere else. For the right, it was something alien to be repelled. For the left, there were other issues of human liberation that were much more pressing. (Miami isn't really the South.) We were about ten years behind the rest of the country. Race was the principle discrimination issue with gender coming in a close second, but the concepts that were being worked out were the blueprint for what would come later. Asking what it was like in the South in the 1970s is like asking the rest of the country what it was like before Stonewall.



Edit to add in light of BostonPirate's post: AIDS was a huge, HUGE, game-changer. Starting somewhere around 1983 or 84, everything changed.

 

[BostonPirate]

Edit to add in light of BostonPirate's post: AIDS was a huge, HUGE, game-changer. Starting somewhere around 1983 or 84, everything changed.

It was...

The late seventies saw the sexual revolution, and it looked like things were going to start changing then.

AIDS gave the Conservatives a reason to vilify the gay community.

This, of course, forced us to organize in ways we hadn't before. All of the gay legal orgs were first begun at that point to defend HIV patients, and insure their housing rights.

 

[Kulindahr]

It is an ongoing battle, and the older of us really don't understand why the younger gays don't get off their asses and fight for equality.

Or why the supposedly enlightened younger generation supported Proposition 8 de facto by sitting at home instead of voting.

 

[White Eagle]

Luckily in the 60s I lived in San Antonio. There was a law that sodomy was a crime. You had to take your chances on that. The gay bars were basically left alone. I was bartender in one bar once and the FBI came in looking for someone who was robbing gays. They were protecting gays. Unusual.
In the 70s I lived in Houston and my apt was in the gay friendly zip code. The law left us alone,but there were groups of thugs south of Houston that would come in and beat up gays. But the police would arrest the thugs. Really a gay friendly area and city. There were many many gay bars compared to say here. There are only 2 now.
Everywhere I lived was no problem for me.
I think I was just lucky.

 

[construct]

My first post is anything BUT off-topic. You want to know what life was like back in the day? If the GOP has its way, you'll find out first hand. Seriously...check out the state GOP platforms for Montana and Texas. Both call for re-criminalization of homosexual activity.

Yet still...there are gay men and women who blindly support the party. I figure they place a higher value on a tax break than on basic human dignity.

What was your own experience like, Donny?

 

[chrisrobin]

Well, we have a new nominee for "Most Moronic Post of the Year".

One tries... despite all the competition.

 

[construct]

I was born in '61, Little Rock, AR...

Very happy childhood and teenage years, but I do remember feeling a secret shame when I'd hear religious leaders or politicians talking about the "sin of homosexuality" and crap like that. That's why when people pull that shit today (see: Bachmann, Michele and Marquesa), I tend to get rabid. People like the Bachmanns have the blood of suicide victims on their perfectly-manicured hands.

I've been in the entertainment industry for 30 years, so it's easy for me to lose sight of the fact that the appreciation of diversity in my line of work rarely extends to others' arenas of employment. I'm blessed in that regard.

For me, it's been a fairly easy road; that's why I try to remain mindful of those who AREN'T having an easy go of it, primarily due to neanderthals like the two mentioned above.

Little Rock, Arkansas. Well, we'll not bring up the football rivalry.

I grew up in western Tennessee. I expect our experiences growing up weren't much different. I don't remember hearing politicians talking much about the sin of homosexuality. I do know that there'd be periodic sweeps for prostitutes . . . particularly when election time rolled around. And I know the cops would sometimes get het up about the parks and the public restrooms. And the newspapers would publish all the arrests . . . WITH ADDRESSES of the men arrested. That caused a lot of problems for some people, especially if they had families. It could cost you your job.

Now the preachers were a different matter, but even there homosexuality wasn't an obsession the way it is for a lot of them today. Sure there were exceptions, but obsession wasn't the rule. In my experience, preachers were more concerned about drinking, gambling, and adultery. Oh, and tithing.

Like I said, there were exceptions about preachers. My pastor was one of them. On bicentennial Sunday, July 4, 1976, Bro. Ray Newcomb, my pastor, preached on Jude 5-7. One THIRD of the sermon was a blistering condemnation warning that God would punish America if she tolerated homosexuals. Trust me, the congregation were not thrilled about that sermon on that day. Mostly, they were confused about why he had been so vehement about that particular subject on that particular day. Needless to say he wasn't very helpful after I told my parents I was gay.

Thanks for expanding the description of all this. I was so focused on college that I didn't talk about what I remembered of earlier life.

 

[pat grimshaw]

Wow. That's all. Just "wow."

And you don't intend to be condescending about it. That's all.

 

[rocabar]

Grew up in the deep south.

Got married at 18, like Y'all were supposed to do. After Seven years of marriage, the Wife and I decided to call it quits. Her parting gift, was to tell everyone that I was gay. It didn't take long for the answering machine to fill up with comments like " Leave or Die F----t" and the like. I lost the job I had, And the Church I went to, asked me not to attend any more. The end nearly came for me, one night, when some "good 'ol boys" came around, and shot out all the windows in the house. I called the Sherrif's office, but no one came.

I left the next morning.

Folks say things have changed, but I'm a little sceptical of that...

 

[BostonPirate]

Grew up in the deep south.

Got married at 18, like Y'all were supposed to do. After Seven years of marriage, the Wife and I decided to call it quits. Her parting gift, was to tell everyone that I was gay. It didn't take long for the answering machine to fill up with comments like " Leave or Die F----t" and the like. I lost the job I had, And the Church I went to, asked me not to attend any more. The end nearly came for me, one night, when some "good 'ol boys" came around, and shot out all the windows in the house. I called the Sherrif's office, but no one came.

I left the next morning.

Folks say things have changed, but I'm a little sceptical of that...

Come to Massachusetts. It HAS changed here. Better education, universal healthcare, gay marriage and an unemployment rate around 7 percent.

You can take a train in to Manhattan to see a show in winter and you can hang out in Ptown on the weekends in the spring and summer.

And the Autumn colors and green and blue granite hills and mountains are beautiful in the berkshires

OF course we get a bit more snow than most cities...

 

[pat grimshaw]

…I still can't believe JQ's naivete.

That's easy to say coming from a beautiful man-of-the-world in his prime (with a gorgeous body) such as you. Other people don't have your financial advantages and access to information, especially those who were raised in other countries.

(Besides, I agree with those who say that we go on learning until the day we die)

 

[degrandm]

thanks..

then much has indeed changed and your perspective is alot different.

There were beatings and murders of gays regularly, and specifically the transgendered and Dragqueen communities carried the brunt of that. Police raids and jail time just for being in a gay bar.

In the early eighties I became involved in Act-Up, an organisation that engaged in civil disobedience, peaceful civil disobedience, to protest the fact that no one was even trying to figure out what aids was much less what caused it.

We would lay down in traffic and pretend to be dead HIV patients. OF COURSE, we always got the national press to follow us, and we always told them where we were going to be. Our Goal was to get arrested, so that the press and the cameras would see the police dragging limp bodies out of the street.

We actually had classes on how to pretend to be dead, and how to get arrested in a way that is respectful of the police who were only doing their jobs.

People in Hospitals who were late stage HIV patients would lie in their own urine and excrement, as the food trays piled up outside the doors, because the nurses were too afraid to breath the same air as the AIDS patients.

That mentality spilled over into rage against the gay community. The conservatives actually BLAMED the gay community for aids, much as they do the poor for being poor, and it caused alot of misery and death.

In those early days I went to one funeral a week. There is a whole generation of the gay community gone, dead, because of that.

standing up for gay rights in those days meant exposing yourself to harm, even death, but we already had that threat from HIV, so it didn't matter.

In Massachusetts we were able to transform our activist infrastructure into more mainstream endeavors and now we have the full ticket here. Our experiment has overflown into the entire New England area.

GAY community centers that tested for HIV and had "doctors nights" started turning into general gay mens healthcare centers, and now, one of the nations leading HIV research orgs is one of those in Fenway in Boston. Indeed, the movement toward healthcare community centers and in turn universal healthcare arose from our privately funded outreach programs of the early days.

I remember the big argument when Clinton came in office and started giving grants out to the HIV centers, as to whether we should take the money, because we feared they would divert us and regulate the Gay out of Gay mens Health. In the end we chose to trust Clinton. The gay communities relationship with clinton was not so good. He had exacted DADT, after promising to order gays to be allowed to serve in the military as Commander in Chief. To date, Cliton still remains the only president to sign legislation making it illegal for openly gay people to serve in the military. Before then it was merely policy set by the commander of the armed forces.

And we are all alarmed that you guys are not motivated to continue where we left off. We wanted to give you the gift of freedom from oppresion, and we would up giving you guys complacency instead.

Not good.

It is an ongoing battle, and the older of us really don't understand why the younger gays don't get off their asses and fight for equality.

i remember them days im from New England N H as amateur of facet and have ben to the ACT-UP protest in the 80s and i thought we where doing good and we did

 

[BostonPirate]

i remember them days im from New England N H as amateur of facet and have ben to the ACT-UP protest in the 80s and i thought we where doing good and we did

'
we did good.

people aren't dying anymore. Gay people aren't thought of as the plague.\ by the mainstream of america now. We gave a face to a people that used to live in the shadows.

Thanks for being there. I wish the young gay men understood how hard it was, how scared we were, and how we did it anyway.

Just because nobody else would.

 

[MoltenRock III]

Grew up in the deep south.

Got married at 18, like Y'all were supposed to do. After Seven years of marriage, the Wife and I decided to call it quits. Her parting gift, was to tell everyone that I was gay. It didn't take long for the answering machine to fill up with comments like " Leave or Die F----t" and the like. I lost the job I had, And the Church I went to, asked me not to attend any more. The end nearly came for me, one night, when some "good 'ol boys" came around, and shot out all the windows in the house. I called the Sherrif's office, but no one came.

I left the next morning.

Folks say things have changed, but I'm a little sceptical of that...

This is why the hate crimes laws have been needed; because of many law enforcement officials not doing their job in prosecuting "fag bashing" with an attitude of "well they deserved it". Ideally there would be no need for such hate crimes laws, but history has proven otherwise, and thus the very necessity of them!

 

[scream4ever]

You got one young person (24) right here who's fighting for GLBT rights and is VERY greatful to past generations who made life that much better/easier for me! In fact, when I first learned about AIDS, I had no idea it had (not as much anymore but still) such a stigma attached to it, and everything that happened in the 80's as a result.

Among my straight peers where I live (Minnesota, not Bachmann territory though!) it's a non-issue. My mom is constantly baffled by how I can be so out and unafraid (being 6'5 and 300lbs + doesn't hurt either, but words hurt way more than punches). I don't live anywhere near the Twin Cities, but my community is very gay friendly (being a big college town helps). My university has one of the top 25 best QASU groups in the nation, we have several gay bars, and every year a HUGE GLBT Pride weekend (Ru Paul performed one year).

In regards to Bill Clinton, blame Congress for DADT. They would not allow gays to serve openly in the military at the time. Prior to DADT, it was flat out illegal for gays and lesbians to serve in the military, and they would be asked about it and have their personal lives invaded. DADT was a step in the right direction, even though it got abused. Prior to Obama, Bill Clinton did more for GLBT Americans then any other President in history.

 

[chrisrobin]

That's okay. Texas makes better football players; Arkansas makes better presidents!

Are you insinuating that Bill Clinton was a better president than George W. Bush?

 

[BostonPirate]

my right nut is a better president than Dubya

 

[construct]

Grew up in the deep south.

Got married at 18, like Y'all were supposed to do. After Seven years of marriage, the Wife and I decided to call it quits. Her parting gift, was to tell everyone that I was gay. It didn't take long for the answering machine to fill up with comments like " Leave or Die F----t" and the like. I lost the job I had, And the Church I went to, asked me not to attend any more. The end nearly came for me, one night, when some "good 'ol boys" came around, and shot out all the windows in the house. I called the Sherrif's office, but no one came.

I left the next morning.

Folks say things have changed, but I'm a little sceptical of that...

I'm sorry to hear all this. So you moved where? To Edmonton? Has that been better? Well, I guess it couldn't get much worse.

As for things changing, well, maybe not in much of the South. But there are now hate crime laws that include sexual orientation in four of the former confederate states--Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Louisiana. So I guess there's been a little change around the edges. I visited a few offices and made a few phone calls and marched in Austin on the hate crimes issue. The Texas law was passed in 2001.

In addition, here in Texas there are four cities that have general anti-discrimination ordinances that include LGBT protections--Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and El Paso. I myself was involved in the Fort Worth effort. Sexual orientation was added in 2000, and gender identity was added in 2010.