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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJuly 8th, 2016
Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke. Photo by Kay Lahusen (see Jan 5).
Jack Nichols (Mar 16) and Lige Clarke had cut their activists’ teeth as members of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C.. Nichols helped to organize the the first White House protest in 1965 (Apr 17), while Clarke lettered nine of the ten picket signs. Nichols and Clarke moved to New York in 1968, where the couple became regular columnists for the straight, unabashedly-pornographic Screw magazine. Their column, “The Homosexual Citizen,” was the first regular LGBT column to appear regularly in a non-LGBT publication, and it made them arguably the most visible gay couple in the country.
Nichols and Clarke devoted their July 8 column to a description of the Stonewall riots, which had occured the week before. “Last week’s riots in Greenwich Village,” they wrote, “have set standards for the rest of the nation’s homosexuals to follow.” They also reported that the Electric Circus, a popular and hip night club, took the unusual step of publicly inviting gay people to dance with their straight patrons on the dance floor. “If you’re tired of raids, Mafia control, and checks at the door, join us for a beautiful evening on Sunday night, July 6.”
According to Nichols and Clark, “for the first time in New York’s history, a huge club was experimenting with social integration between heterosexuals and homosexuals.” Nichols and Clarke went, and found “a groovy crowd. … hip moustaches, long hair, and hundreds of handsome young men. The acid-rock band blared forth a medley of fast tunes.” They found that the Electric Circus’s experiment was successful, mostly, with the exception of one “uncool creep” who was shouting “Goddamn faggots” as he was hustled out of the club. They closed their column with the following “call to arms,” which Nichols later attributed solely to Clarke:
The revolution in Sheridan Square must step beyond its present boundaries. The homosexual revolution is only part of a larger revolution sweeping through all segments of society. We hope that “Gay Power” will not become a call for separation, but for sexual integration, and that the young activists will read, study, and make themselves acquainted with all of the facts that will help them carry the sexual revolt triumphantly into the councils of the U.S. government, into the anti-homosexual churches, into the offices of anti-homosexual psychiatrists, into the city government, and into the state legislatures which make our manner of love-making a crime. It is time to push the homosexual revolution to its logical conclusion. We must crush tyranny wherever it exists and join forces with those who would assist in the utter destruction of the puritanical, repressive, anti-sexual Establishment.
[Sources: Charles Kaiser. The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America 2007 ed. (New York: Grove Press, 2007): 201-202.
James T. Sears. Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press , 2001): 28-29.]
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Charin Davenport
July 8th, 2016
From what I can discern from this article, I find it sad that neither Nichols or Clarke realized their own constraints. In the end, I suppose they’re right — it’s been a gay revolution right from the start. One wonders if we wouldn’t be more honest to dispense with LGBT Pride altogether and choose instead to to go with just, Gay Pride.
Jim Burroway
July 8th, 2016
The term “transgender” was apparently coined sometime around 1969 and didn’t come into widespread usage until a decade or more afterwards.
http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/2011/07/13/transgender-origins/
Language has a way of shifting as people come into new ways of understanding themselves. In the 1950s and 1960s, “homosexual” and “gay” were often used as an umbrella term for Ls, Gs ,Bs, and Ts, although in the 1960s lesbians became much more proud of a separate lesbian identity with the rise of the women’s movement.
When reading historical writings, its always important to understand how words were used differently then as opposed to how they are used now. I think it would be a mistake to fault Nichols or Clarke for “their own constraints” based on the language they used in 1969, when in fact it was that very language of 1969 that makes their remarks appear to make them constrained today in 2016 in ways I don’t think they were then. (Did that make sense?)
Priya Lynn
July 8th, 2016
“One wonders if we wouldn’t be more honest to dispense with LGBT Pride altogether and choose instead to to go with just, Gay Pride.”.
I don’t know how you figure that – LGBT often are all in the same community.
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