9 Historic Contributions of the Gay Liberation Front
by Perry Brass
The Gay Liberation Front made many important, life-changing contributions to the struggle for LGBTQ equality and the safety and lives of our community.
They include:
Using feminist analysis to understand the oppression of LGBTIQQ people. We were discriminated against, oppressed, isolated, and even murdered because we were an offense to patriarchy, that is, the idea that men were inherently superior to women, and any individual who challenged that assumption by not adhering to commonly accepted sex or gender roles had to be isolated, marginalized, and claimed as “sick” or “sinful.” The Gay Liberation Front was in complete opposition to stances taken by groups like the American Psychiatric Association. When members of the Gay Liberation Front confronted the APA at its historic convention in Washington, DC in 1972, instead of knuckling under to the “conventional wisdom” that LGBTQ people were “sick,” GLF affirmed that it was society itself that pushed us into this “sickness model.” A year later, in 1974, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as an illness.
Not asking for “tolerance,” but demanding equality for all LGBTQ people, placing us openly within society. The Gay Liberation Front affirmed that gays and lesbians were an essential part of Nature; later, anthropologists, sociologists, and biologists recognized that homosexuality did exist in Nature and in virtually all societies, despite earlier academic insistence that it did not. Today there are active and powerful LGBTQ caucuses within many professional and political groups, including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Bar Association, and the Congressional LGBTQ Caucus, which was formed by Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank in 2008, and currently includes more than 150 members. This would have been impossible without the groundbreaking efforts of GLF.
Giving validation to more invisible and marginalized sisters and brothers within the LGBTQ family, including women, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, the poor, prisoners, the disabled, and youth. The Gay Liberation Front pioneered and lived diversity and inclusion years before these terms were welcomed into American society. It gave birth to important spin-off organizations like Radicalesbians, a politically-charged organization for women; STAR, Street Transvestite Action Revolution, the first organization for gender-non-compliant people in the world, formed by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson during a GLF demonstration at New York University in 1970; Third World Gay Revolution, a major focus for minority GLF members whose groundbreaking “Manifesto” was circulated throughout Latin America; and Gay Youth, also the first group for LGBTQ people under 21 in the history of the world. Upon its formation, Gay Youth was welcomed by GLF members, in contrast to earlier more conservative homophile organizations who were frightened of having young members because they feared being characterized as “seducers of youth.” GLF also supported liberation for Gay and Lesbian prisoners who were often minority members and formed important ties to revolutionary groups like the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, early vital organizations in the Black and Latino communities.
Insisting that to understand LGBTQ people you had to go directly to us, not to so-called “experts” in psychiatry, medicine, the law, education, religion, etc. To do this, we had to create our own media, leading GLF to produce Come Out! A Liberation Forum for the Gay Community, the first Gay Liberation newspaper in the world. Later, the Gay Activists Alliance, an early spin-off from the Gay Liberation Front created the first Media Committee by an LGBTQ organization, and the first queer video presentations of important moments from the early 1970s, such as GAA’s famous 1971 takeover of the New York Bureau of Marriage, after the Bureau refused to grant marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.
Community—the Gay Liberation Front invented “gay community” as a publicly accepted idea, opening the first Gay Community Center in the world in 1971, at 130 West 3rd Street in New York’s West Village. The Center, on an entire floor above the famous Gerde’s Folk City, served as a refuge for gay kids and transpeople like Marsha and Sylvia who, otherwise, would have been on the streets all day, and it became an LGBTQ-controlled site for the Gay Liberation Front’s famous dances, the first “gay community” dances in New York held outside Mafia control. To many of us, GLF dances and the Community became one idea: that we could go to our own dances and feel and be liberated at them. To be able to dance openly and freely within our community, allowed the community to expand its reach, especially among non-political people who could feel comfortable there. So, in effect, Disco itself became gay.
Actions needed to be out in the open, not limited to a few people making decisions behind closed doors and in dark rooms and bars. One of our main chants: “Out of the closets and into the streets!” We realized that only by a number of people “coming out,” that is, being open about themselves, could change come to all people. Therefore GLF planned and produced the first large-scale gay pride marches, actions that were soon copied all over the world. Today’s Gay Pride Month, and Gay Pride Parades, celebrated on every continent (except Antarctica!) come directly from GLF’s rule that our actions had to be liberated from shame and darkness.
Understanding the depth and scope of LGBTQ oppression, as well as the oppression of other groups, and how this oppression has affected all aspects of human society: politically, psychologically, economically, and in terms of physical health. Many Gay Liberation Front members stayed committed activists, helpers, teachers, and healers in the world. Former Gay Liberation Front members co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Project Clinic, the first clinic specifically for gay men on the East Coast, still existing as Callen-Lorde Community Health Services which provides health services for all people regardless of their ability to pay. GLF members were also instrumental in the birth of Liberation House, the first LGBTQ therapy center in New York, which later became a model for numerous LGBTQ therapy practices around the country.
Using the powerful tool of “consciousness raising”—that is becoming conscious of your own place in society and how that place has been distorted by oppression. You cannot truly become liberated until you can experience liberation through an awakened consciousness, and then work for the liberation of others. An “awakened consciousness” outside the usual culture of oppression, is central to many LGBTQ groups and ideas, such as the Radical Faerie movement, the Billy movement, the Lesbian Avengers, the National Black Justice Coalition, and many other groups.
Openly seeing the hidden role of LGBTQ people in the arts, human history, and culture, after it was repressed or ignored for thousands of years. GLF members called for “gay history,” “gay literature,” and “gay arts,” decades before such concepts gained public acceptance. Organizations today like the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Leslie-Lohman Gay Arts Foundation, the LGBTQ Caucus of the College Arts Association, Allies in Arts, and numerous local arts connections are the offspring of this important Gay Liberation Front contribution.