The Daily Agenda for Sunday, April 19

Jim Burroway

April 19th, 2015

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebration This Weekend: Ã…re, Sweden (Winter Pride); Mobile, AL; Phuket, Thailand; Potsdam, Germany.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Honolulu, HI; Las Vegas, NV.

TODAY’S AGENDA is brought to you by:

From the Columbia Daily Spectator, May 9, 1967, page 3.

From the Columbia Daily Spectator, May 9, 1967, page 3.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
 First Gay Student Group Registered at Columbia University: 1967. Stephen Donaldson, a member of the Mattachine Society of New York, enrolled at Columbia University in the fall of 1965 as an openly bisexual student. After his suitemates in his dorm complained about living with a bisexual, school officials forced him to move out of the dorm. That experience led him and other gay students to form a campus Mattachine-type group, which he envisioned as “the first chapter of a spreading confederation of student homophile groups.”

But getting that first chapter off the ground was no easy thing. Donaldson and another student were willing to lead the Student Homophile League under pseudonyms, but none of the other students were willing to officially join the organization unless they could do so anonymously. Columbia however wouldn’t recognize any student group without a membership list. Donaldson finally got around that problem by recruiting some of the university’s more prominent social-justice student leaders as pro-forma members. With that, Columbia granted the very first charter for a student gay rights group in the country.

The following May, The New York Times published a front-page story about the SHL being granted a charter. Time magazine followed suit a week later with a small article that gave the still-secretive group national exposure:

While declining to identify himself or other members by name (“We would be losing jobs for the rest of our lives”), the league’s chairman insists the group is educational, not social, and “plans no mixers with Harvard.” So far, Columbia students seem little interested in joining. Shrugged Sophomore Elliot Stern: “As long as they don’t bother the rest of us, it’s O.K.” The league’s biggest problem will probably be its self-imposed secrecy. As some students asked: How do you treat them equally when you don’t know who they are?

The exposure provoked widespread controversy, and criticisms followed in the pages of the Columbia Daily Spectator and in letters to the administration. Dr. Anthony Philip, director of the counseling service, warned in a letter to the Spectator that having such an open group would pose a danger to those “who perhaps more so than others their age are troubled by questions of masculinity, sexuality and more generally with their sense of personal identity. If there is one thing such students certainly can do without, it is the mythology that they really are homosexuals whose “latent homosexuality” needs only to be “brought out” by the sympathetic, tutorial attention of the Student Homophile League.” He also told reporter for the Spectator that even though the SHL’s goal was to have speakers and seminars to address anti-gay bigotry on campus, he worried that the SHLs members were “angry and militant,” and were bent on “proselytizing” students.

In the end, Columbia officials decided against revoking the group’s charter. But they also decided to forbid the group from serving in any social functions for fear that it would run afoul of the state’s sodomy laws. But the exposure, on balance, was far more beneficial to the group. By the end of the year, more than 20 people had joined the SHL at Columbia, and students at Stanford, the University of Pittsburgh, and Cornell expressed interest in starting chapters on their respective campuses.

[Sources: Brett Beemyn. “The Silence is Broken: A History of the First Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual College Student Groups.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12, no. 2 (April 2003): 205-223.

“Students: Equality for your fellow man.” Time (May 12, 1967). Available online with subscription here.

“Homophile Group is Viewed as Danger to Some Students.” Columbia Daily Spectator (May 9, 1967): 3.

Anthony F. PHilip. Letter to the editor: “The Homophile League.” Columbia Daily Spectator (May 9, 1967): 4.

Daniel M. Taubnam. “Breaking the Ice: New Student League Backs Homosexuals.” Cornell Daily Sun (November 11, 1967): 8.]

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
 85 YEARS AGO: Dick Sargent: 1930-1994. His best known role was that of the second Darrin in the 1960s sitcom Bewitched, after having taken over that role in 1969 when Dick York was forced to leave due to ongoing health problems. It was a fortuitous second chance for Sargent: he was the producers’ first choice for the role in 1964 but was forced to turn it down because he was under contract with Universal Studios to appear in the short-lived sitcom Broadside, a WWII comedy about four girls on an island with 4,000 sailors. (Hilarity allegedly ensued, but only for one season.) Before he got his second chance at Bewitched, Sargent appeared in several films and television programs which helped pad his resume with a growing list of solid if not particularly memorable roles.

He never really made it onto the A-list, but he did have a solid run opposite Elizabeth Montgomery as America’s favorite put-upon mortal. And what a strange, gay time he must have had on the set, with openly-flamboyant Paul Lynde as practical-joker Uncle Arthur and the closeted and conflicted Agnes Moorhead as Endora (a character whose style and sarcasm deserves unceasing genuflections from drag queens everywhere). The series ended in 1972 and immediately went into syndication for whole new generations to enjoy. Meanwhile, Sargent kept working in minor roles and voiceovers for commercials and cartoons.

In 1974, Sargent appeared with lesbian Fannie Flagg (see Sept 21) in the game show Tattletales, in which Hollywood couples would try to guess each others’ answers to embarrassing questions about marriage, sex, or other coupley topics. They were, ostensibly, “dating” for the game show’s purposes. Sargent finally came out on National Coming Out Day, October 11, 1991, over concerns about high suicide rates among gay teens. He revealed that when he was a student at Stanford he twice tried to kill himself when he realized he was gay. The following summer, he was Grand Marshall of the Los Angeles Gay Pride parade alongside his former Bewitched co-star and forever friend, Elizabeth Montgomery. He became involved with the AIDS Project Los Angeles and the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Sargent died in 1994 of prostate cancer.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

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