Stonewall (53 page)

24
. Gunnison, “Proposed Set of Constitutional Aims and Purposes for NACHO,” July 24, 1969, Gunnison Papers.

25
. Gunnison, “Proposed Set of Constitutional Aims and Purposes for NACHO,” July 24, 1969; Gunnison to Teal, n.d. (tactics)—both in Gunnison Papers. Foster once rebuked Kameny for being “a bit conservative” about confrontational tactics (Gunnison to Kameny, June 4, 1970, Kelley Papers).

26
. ERCHO was not an independently formed regional association, as had been the case with its regional predecessor ECHO, which it replaced; rather, it was an offshoot of NACHO.

27
. Rodwell insists to this day that nothing in Mary Baker Eddy's writings can be construed as homophobic. Indeed, he insists that Eddy discounted “male” and “female” as discrete categories, arguing that all human beings contain aspects of both. He further points out that in some of her writings Eddy attacks the institution of marriage. But Rodwell is well aware that the Christian Science
church
is today “one of the most homophobic institutions in the world.” There is a long standing split and constant tug of war between the comparatively liberal publishing society, which puts out the
Christian Science Monitor
, and the conservative
board of directors, which runs the church.

Beginning in the late seventies, Rodwell helped to organize an action designed to awaken the church to the plight of its gay and lesbian members: He and others distributed a pamphlet they had written, “Gay People in Christian Science?” asking the board of directors to “re-examine their thought on the subject of human sexuality … and to take whatever loving and practical steps are necessary to rectify the present wrongs being done to Gay people in the name of Christian Science.” Rodwell and his friends mailed out fifteen thousand copies of the pamphlet and then decided to attend the annual meeting of the church in Boston in June, 1980. Christine Madsen, then a reporter for the
Monitor
but later fired for being a lesbian, helped the group with logistical details. Dressed conservatively in suits and dresses, they stacked their pamphlets on card tables near the Mother Church Center—and put a decorative pot of geraniums on each table. But a unit from the Boston Police Department soon appeared, accompanied by the head of security for the Mother Church, and told them that if they failed to take the tables down at once, they would be arrested “for improper activity on public property.” The group caucused for a vote; Rodwell voted to go to jail, but a large majority voted against him. They took down the tables and then distributed the pamphlets by hand. The next day, some of their group stood up during the church service to offer silent protest against their treatment; later, outside, they displayed signs to the same effect. But from that day to this (1993), the board of directors has refused to reconsider its negative attitude toward gays and lesbians.

Rodwell no longer participates in Christian Science services, but does retain “great respect” for Mary Baker Eddy. To an outsider, this allegiance is somewhat perplexing. Toby Marotta, in
The Politics of Homosexuality
, p. 66n., suggests that in its emphasis on “the dignity of all things human and the importance of making things true by believing them so,” Christian Science doctrine “inspired Rodwell to work at encouraging homosexuals to think of themselves positively.” Perhaps so, but what still needs explaining is why the neo-Platonic insistence in Mary Baker Eddy's writings on the “unreality” of the material world, and the importance of transcending it, did not cause Rodwell (as it did so many other Christian Scientists) to steer clear of any political engagement with that evanescent world. Nor does it explain why Eddy's denigration of the body failed to restrain Rodwell from insisting on his right to bodily pleasure—unorthodox pleasure, no less.

28
. Wade and Cervantes, “Report to the Board,” Kelley Papers.

29
. Austin Wade (Arthur Warner) and Madolin Cervantes, “Report to the Board of MSNY Delegates to ERCHO,” n.d. (Nov. 1969); Gunnison to Robert Angell, Nov. 10, 1969 (dissociation); Gunnison to Gittings, Nov. 15, 1969—all in Kelley Papers. The resolutions passed by the conference are summarized and paraphrased in Gunnison to Robert Angell, Nov. 15, 1969; along with the two cited, they included a demand for control over one's own body as an “inalienable right” and a call to defend the “freedom from political & social persecution” of “all minority peoples.”

30
. Gunnison to Gittings, Jan. 12, 1970 (Lois Hart), Gunnison to Kelley, Nov. 5, 1969, both in Kelley Papers. Arthur Warner insisted that Fouratt had “physically assaulted” Cervantes (“Report to the Board of MSNY Delegates to ERCHO,” co-authored with Cervantes, n.d. [Nov. 1969]); but in his interviews with me Fouratt has categorically denied that.

31
. Kelley questionnaire response, Nov. 7, 1969, Gunnison to Kelley, Nov. 15, 1969—both in Kelley Papers.

32
. Gunnison to Kelley, Jan. 21, 1970, Kelley Papers; Gunnison to Donn Teal, n.d., Gunnison Papers (“thrilled”).

33
. Gunnison, “Subject: Gay Liberation Front,” Nov. 12, 1969, Kelley Papers. By the following summer, after attending many more GLF meetings in New York (and going to a few of their dances), he found even more “exceptions” and had his “fingers crossed” that GLF would “manage to straighten itself out and head off in constructive directions” (Gunnison to William Wynne, July 25, 1970, Kelley Papers).

34
. Gunnison, “Subject: Gay Liberation Front,” Nov. 12, 1969, Kelley Papers.

35
. The quotes in this and the next paragraph are from Gunnison to Kohler, Dec. 21, 1969, Kelley Papers. To Barbara Gittings, too, Foster wrote (Nov. 15, 1969, Kelley Papers), “I do sympathize with them [other social causes] and I am always ready to put the first nickel in the pot for them.” But as regards Kohler himself, Foster characterized him to Gittings as “a mealy-mouthed, sad-eyed, con man from way back.” Still later, after attending more GLF meetings, Foster once went so far as to say that “there is every possibility that GLF will evolve as a reasonable organization … “(Gunnison to Kameny, June 4, 1970, Kelley Papers).

36
.
Kepner to Duberman, April 29, 1992 (“bad cases”); “Austin Wade” (Arthur Warner) and Madolin Cervantes, “Report to the Board of the MSNY Delegates to ERCHO,” and Gunnison to Warner, Nov. 22, 1969—both in Kelley Papers. Foster wrote Kameny that those who opposed him were “nitwits” (Gunnison to Kameny, Nov. 22, 1969, Kelley Papers), and further evidence of Foster's devotion to Kameny is in Gunnison, “General Bulletin” (on Kameny's election to the Executive Board of the D.C. affiliate of the ACLU), Dec. 10, 1969, Kelley Papers. Yet Foster did acknowledge to Warner that Kameny was at times willful and intractable (Gunnison to Warner, June 5, 1970, Kelley Papers).

37
. Phillips to Gunnison, Jan. 27, 1970; Gunnison to Bobbi Simpson/Sandy Penn, Nov. 21, Dec. 20, 1969; Gunnison to William Kelley, Jan. 21, 1970—all in Kelley Papers.

38
. Bell,
Dancing the Gay Lib Blues
, pp. 20–24; Dennis Altman,
Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation
(Dutton, 1971), pp. 110–116.

39
. Gunnison to Kelley, April 9, 1971, Gunnison to Wynne, July 25, 1970—all in Kelley Papers.

40
. Marotta,
Politics of Homosexuality
, chapter 6, pp. 134–61.

41
. Arnie Kantrowitz,
Under the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay
(Morrow, 1977), pp. 147, 179–80; Kantrowitz to Duberman, May 11, 1992.

42
. An interview with “Ernestine Eppinger,” conducted by Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin is in
The Ladder
, June 1966, pp. 4–11. Jim Kepner sums up the role of blacks in the homophile movement this way: “There were usually one or two Blacks, two or three Latins and a very occasional Chinese, around ONE, DOB, Mattachine, and later groups such as Pride and SIR, but, except for Tony Reyes, who, as Don Slater's lover, then and now, was an incorporator of ONE, & long a silent vote on the Board of Trustees, they took no, leadership positions.” (Kepner, “Blacks & Women in the Early Gay Movement,” 24-page typescript, courtesy Kepner.)

43
. Joel Hall, “Growing Up Black and Gay,” in Len Richmond and Gary Noguera,
The Gay Liberation Book
(Ramparts Press, 1973), pp. 51–56; the manifesto “Third World Gay Revolution (New York City),” is reprinted in Karla Jay & Allen Young, eds.,
Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation
(NYU Press, 2nd ed., 1992), pp. 363–67; Alice Echols,
Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975
(University of Minnesota Press, 1989), especially chapter 5. See also the discussion of blacks and gays in Altman,
Homosexual
, pp. 179–94, and Teal,
Gay Militants
, pp. 169–78; and for blacks and feminism, see bell hooks,
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
(South End Press, 1981).

44
. Scarpi would also become active, in 1973, in planning the fourth Christopher Street Liberation Day—and would get into a tangle with Foster Gunnison, who was then in the process of disengaging from CSLDC (Scarpi to Gunnison, Jan. 15, April 30, 1973; Gunnison to Scarpi, Jan. 26, 1973; John Paul Hudson to Gunnison, April 12, 1973—all in Gunnison Papers).

45
. Arthur Bell Papers, Box 94, IGIC Papers, NYPL.

46
. I have written about the 1973 confrontation in
Cures
(Plume, 1992), pp. 278–79 (where—before Sylvia corrected me—I spelled her name “Silvia”). The confrontation was also captured on film; Vito Russo (who was emcee at the 1973
rally) screened it for me shortly before his death. In our interviews, nearly twenty years later, Sylvia was still full of bitterness at Jean O'Leary and at all the other “ingrates” in the movement who despised queens and refused to acknowledge their contribution during and after the Stonewall riots. O'Leary's recantation is in Eric Marcus,
Making History
(HarperCollins, 1992), p. 257.

47
. Interview with Kohler, Aug. 20, 1990.

48
. See Allen Young, “GLF Memories,”
Gay Community News
, June 23, 1979, for the inspirational role Fouratt played in his own coming out. Young, who in late 1969 was a closeted member of the Liberation News Service, also came to live in the Seventeenth Street commune.

49
. Leggett is the anonymous author of the moving “Father Knows Best,” in Richmond and Noguera,
The Gay Liberation Book
, pp. 165–68. Leggett died of AIDS.

50
. The relevant FBI documents, though heavily censored, are now available (I owe special thanks to Duncan Osborne for alerting me to that fact). But since many of the 4,500 pages of documents that I received have been inked out (on the absurd, continuing grounds of “national security”), research into their contents remains sharply limited. For the paragraph above, the relevant materials are SA to SAC, New York, 100-167120-19 through 100-167120-22 (12/10 & 16/69; 1/9 & 13/70); 100-167120-39 (5/22/70: “highly placed”); SA to SAC, Chicago, 100-49116-6 and 100-49116-7 (April 19, July 7, 1970); SAC Albany to Director (Hoover), 100-464380-1 (March 10, 1971 [Transvestites and Red Butterfly]; “gave” is in April 30, 1970 to Director (100-459225-X). For the FBI and early Mattachine, see Stuart Timmons,
The Trouble with Harry Hay
(Alyson, 1990), pp. 131–32. The information on “Wendy Wonderful” is from an interview with Karla Jay, Aug. 17, 1992.

51
. Along with Jim, a man named Lars Larson also came under suspicion in GAA (conversation with Arnie Kantrowitz, Jan. 3, 1992)—though, as in Jim's case, there was never a shred of evidence.

52
.
RAT
, v. 3, no. 3, April 4–18, 1970. For the disappointment and anger expressed by other feminists over the results of the action, see Echols,
Daring to Be Bad
, pp. 195–97; and see footnotes 297 and 298 (p. 341) for “Verna Tomasson” probably being a pseudonym and for Karla grabbing Firestone (as well as testimony to the effect that her doing so may have been unnecessary).

53
. Echols,
Daring to Be Bad
, p. 213 (Brown); Lois Hart, “Some News and a Whole Lot of Opinion,”
Come Out!
(Times Change Press, 1970), pp. 29–32. For more detail, see Marotta,
Politics of Homosexuality
, chapter 9, “Radicalesbians,” pp. 229–55. The debate over the lesbian-gay male relationship is well summarized in Rita Mae Brown, “Take a Lesbian to Lunch,” and in Gay Liberation Front Women (New York City), “Lesbians and the Ultimate Liberation of Women.” Both essays are reprinted in Jay and Young,
Out of the Closets
, pp. 185–95, 201–203.

54
. Radicalesbians (New York City), “Leaving the Gay Men Behind,” reprinted in Jay and Young,
Out of the Closets
, pp. 290–95.

55
. Interviews with Karla Jay; Jay, “The First Lesbian Dance,”
Gay Community News
, June 23, 1979. All the material in the next few paragraphs describing the dance comes from these two sources.

56
.
GAA held a demonstration one night in front of Kooky's to protest the bar's abusive treatment of its own lesbian customers, and their chant was “Kooky's gonna crumble” (Kantrowitz to Duberman, May 11, 1992).

57
. Bell,
Dancing the Gay Lib Blues,
pp. 145–46. Sylvia's memory of being turned down is corroborated by the minutes of the GAA general meeting on Nov. 12, 1970 (in IGIC Papers, NYPL). On at least one later occasion, however, GAA did allow STAR to borrow its sound system (minutes, Jan. 14, 1971).

58
. Bell,
Dancing the Gay Lib Blues
, pp. 157–58.

59
. Interview with Bob Kohler, Aug. 20, 1990; “Rapping with a Street Transvestite Revolutionary: An Interview with Marcia [
sic
]
Johnson,” reprinted in Jay and Young,
Out of the Closets
, pp. 112–119. On July 6, 1992, Marsha P. Johnson was found floating in the Hudson River, her body badly decomposed; foul play has not been ruled out (
New York, Newsday
, July 20, 1992;
New York Native
, July 20, 1992).