The Red Roots of Modern Gay Liberation

It’s 1953. Founders of the first viable gay civil rights group the Mattachine resign due to their Communist pasts. Meet the players whom the FBI know are gay and Red. Uncover the parallels between activism in the 1950s and 2020s.

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In 2023 after I moved to my apartment building in Denver I gave a talk in our little theater: The Midwestern Roots of Modern Gay Liberation. It focused on the lives of Bob Hull and Chuck Rowland, two founders of the aforementioned Mattachine. In 1949, Bob and Chuck relocated from the Twin Cities to Los Angeles, where they met Harry Hay and formed the group. This year I decided to present a new version of the talk at our local LGBT+ center.

I gave it what I thought was a sexier name, in light of Chuck and Bob’s Midwest work in the American Communist Party as well as the Red roots of the other Mattachine founders.

As I say near the end of the talk, following the founders’ resignation:

This was merely the climax
     to a highly improbable scenario… 
At the height of both the Red and Lavender Scares…
  having been named Red in the pages of Los Angeles dailies…
    having been reported on by the FBI as “homo-sexual” and Red…
      Reds had prevailed in sustaining the first viable gay group

In creating the slides, I surprised myself further with the painful parallels between Now & Then, inserting seven such instances. The last “Now” highlights an alliance between a current Democratic icon and a lame duck Republican whose primary campaign featured a garish anti-gay, antisemitic attack ad that’s almost unbelievable.

An adaptation of my talk went live on YouTube last night, the first public post on what heretofore has been a private channel.

I begin the presentation with personal connections to my subject(s) through my late friend Stuart Timmons as well as my late mother Phyllis Hughes. Chapters are listed in the description, along with links to my relevant writings. Feel free to share far and wide. I’m especially interested in critiques and contrary points of view.

Mattachine Live(s)

A 75th Anniversary: The Mattachine Society, a live presentation and discussion about the organization, will be held on Sunday, November 8, 2–3:30 p.m., at One Gallery in West Hollywood. Featured speakers are Don Kilhefner PhD, local liberationist for the past sixty years, and Craig M. Loftin PhD, author of Masked Voices: Gay Men and Lesbians in Cold War America and the editor of Letters to ONE: Gay and Lesbian Voices from the 1950s and 1960s.