Lesbian activist Barbara Gittings at Catholic U.: 1970 (1)
Barbara Gittings (left), an early lesbian rights activist, takes part in a panel discussion before a 50-member audience composed mostly of Catholic clergy November 12, 1970 at Catholic University.
Seated are Gittings, Lilli Vincens, a woman identified only as Misty, and Mo Starr.
Gittings and long-time gay activist Franklin Kameny were the gay “luminaries” invited to the conference on theology and homosexuality.
The five-day conference was interrupted that day by about 35 members of the Gay Liberation Front took who over the auditorium stage at McMahon Hall auditorium.
The protesters began their disruption about 2:00 in the afternoon as conference chair Dr. John R. Cavanagh began reading a treatise on homosexuality as a cause of marital discord.
While his companions hugged, held hands and occasionally kissed, a spokesperson produced a pink sheet and began reading from it.
“As members of the Gay Liberation Front, we deny your right to conduct this seminar.”
“It is precisely such institutions as the Catholic church and psychiatry which have created and perpetuated the immorality, myths and stereotypes of homosexuality which we as homosexuals have internalized and from which we now intend to liberate ourselves.”
“Only we as homosexuals can determine from our own experiences what our identity will be.”
The group then left the stage, paraded their pink flag around the room and regrouped outside where they left in a car caravan.
Dr. Cavanagh said afterward, “This conference isn’t supposed to be a forum to promote homosexuality. Our purpose here is to instruct these people in religious instittuions who don’t know anything about homosexuality. These things don’t prove anything to me but bad manners.”
Kameny, president of the Mattachine Society—an early gay rights group, smiled and told reporters, “I’m the token homosexual of the conference.”
The conference was sponsored by the School of Sacred Theology at Catholic University and the program included topics such as the clinical and psychological aspects of homosexuality, its relationship to theology and homosexuals in marriage.
Gittings and Kemeny were early gay rights advocates establishing groups in the 1950s and picketing the White House, Pentagon and the Civil Service in 1965—the first known organized public protests by gay rights advocates.
Gittings was edtor of The Ladder, an early lesbian magazine in the 1960s and was headed the American Library Association’s Gay Task Force.
Kameny waged a 30 year campaign to overturn D.C.’s sodomy laws and, along with Gittings, was successful in getting the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the list of mental diseases in 1973.
Kameny remarked tongue-in-cheek that December 15, 1973 was the day "we were cured en masse by the psychiatrists..”
He ran for office a number o times and remained an activist the rest of his life.
Kamendy died in 2011. Gittings died in 2007.
The Gay Liberation Front
In D.C. at least two communal collectives existed in the Dupont Circle area. They were multi-racial and initially included members of both sexes, but as time passed the women moved on to form their own groups like the Furies.
Locally the GLF staged the Nov. 28, 1970 demonstration at the Zephyr Bar on upper Wisconsin Avenue after four GLF members were refused service.
Several dozen GLF members and supporters came to the restaurant and staged an impromptu demonstration chanting slogans inside the restaurant. Some minor property damage occurred and twelve GLF demonstrators were arrested, although charges were later dropped.
The GLF also was responsible for the Nov. 1970 disruption of a conference on the “psychiatric treatment of homosexuals” at Catholic University.
The D.C. GLF also played a role in the Panther’s Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention also in Nov. 1970. They wrote an expansive platform proposal on gay and lesbian rights that was adopted by the convention.
Press reports indicated the collectives lingered for some time, but disbanded in the mid 1970s.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsjCQ69wA
Photo by Bill Beall. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.
Lesbian activist Barbara Gittings at Catholic U.: 1970 (1)
Barbara Gittings (left), an early lesbian rights activist, takes part in a panel discussion before a 50-member audience composed mostly of Catholic clergy November 12, 1970 at Catholic University.
Seated are Gittings, Lilli Vincens, a woman identified only as Misty, and Mo Starr.
Gittings and long-time gay activist Franklin Kameny were the gay “luminaries” invited to the conference on theology and homosexuality.
The five-day conference was interrupted that day by about 35 members of the Gay Liberation Front took who over the auditorium stage at McMahon Hall auditorium.
The protesters began their disruption about 2:00 in the afternoon as conference chair Dr. John R. Cavanagh began reading a treatise on homosexuality as a cause of marital discord.
While his companions hugged, held hands and occasionally kissed, a spokesperson produced a pink sheet and began reading from it.
“As members of the Gay Liberation Front, we deny your right to conduct this seminar.”
“It is precisely such institutions as the Catholic church and psychiatry which have created and perpetuated the immorality, myths and stereotypes of homosexuality which we as homosexuals have internalized and from which we now intend to liberate ourselves.”
“Only we as homosexuals can determine from our own experiences what our identity will be.”
The group then left the stage, paraded their pink flag around the room and regrouped outside where they left in a car caravan.
Dr. Cavanagh said afterward, “This conference isn’t supposed to be a forum to promote homosexuality. Our purpose here is to instruct these people in religious instittuions who don’t know anything about homosexuality. These things don’t prove anything to me but bad manners.”
Kameny, president of the Mattachine Society—an early gay rights group, smiled and told reporters, “I’m the token homosexual of the conference.”
The conference was sponsored by the School of Sacred Theology at Catholic University and the program included topics such as the clinical and psychological aspects of homosexuality, its relationship to theology and homosexuals in marriage.
Gittings and Kemeny were early gay rights advocates establishing groups in the 1950s and picketing the White House, Pentagon and the Civil Service in 1965—the first known organized public protests by gay rights advocates.
Gittings was edtor of The Ladder, an early lesbian magazine in the 1960s and was headed the American Library Association’s Gay Task Force.
Kameny waged a 30 year campaign to overturn D.C.’s sodomy laws and, along with Gittings, was successful in getting the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the list of mental diseases in 1973.
Kameny remarked tongue-in-cheek that December 15, 1973 was the day "we were cured en masse by the psychiatrists..”
He ran for office a number o times and remained an activist the rest of his life.
Kamendy died in 2011. Gittings died in 2007.
The Gay Liberation Front
In D.C. at least two communal collectives existed in the Dupont Circle area. They were multi-racial and initially included members of both sexes, but as time passed the women moved on to form their own groups like the Furies.
Locally the GLF staged the Nov. 28, 1970 demonstration at the Zephyr Bar on upper Wisconsin Avenue after four GLF members were refused service.
Several dozen GLF members and supporters came to the restaurant and staged an impromptu demonstration chanting slogans inside the restaurant. Some minor property damage occurred and twelve GLF demonstrators were arrested, although charges were later dropped.
The GLF also was responsible for the Nov. 1970 disruption of a conference on the “psychiatric treatment of homosexuals” at Catholic University.
The D.C. GLF also played a role in the Panther’s Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention also in Nov. 1970. They wrote an expansive platform proposal on gay and lesbian rights that was adopted by the convention.
Press reports indicated the collectives lingered for some time, but disbanded in the mid 1970s.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsjCQ69wA
Photo by Bill Beall. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.