The Founding of the Gay Liberation Front

by John Knoebel
(An excerpt from his memoir “50 Years from Stonewall: A Gay American Life in a Time of Change”)

It may surprise many people that only a few of the founders of the Gay Liberation Front were actually present at the iconic Stonewall Uprising. Unless they happened to be in the bar late that Saturday night—or lived close enough to get a call from a nearby phone booth at 1am to come out onto the streets to help fight the police—most future gay activists and GLF founders were not there.

The few future GLF members who were there that first night, like Marty Robinson and Mark Segal, recognized how this night was the start of something amazingly new and important. Mark remembers how Marty disappeared for a while and returned with some blackboard chalk. He then enlisted Mark and several others to join him writing the words, “Meet at Stonewall Tomorrow Night” on Christopher Street walls and sidewalks.

Street action with crowds confronting police on the streets night after night did continue for the rest of the week and, out of this turbulence, a new coalition of young gay and lesbian activists began to form. These were people with a fire in their bellies. Some had been restless, dissatisfied members of the New York chapters of the older homophile groups like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. Others had been deeply involved with anti-war protests who now grasped the opportunity to organize in a new more militant way around their own long-ignored issue. Others were simply sick of the oppressive bars they frequented, tired of the fear of police raids, seeing the example of the anti-war movement, the Black Power movement and the burgeoning women’s movement, thinking: Isn’t it time for us?

Over the next weeks in July 1969, these engaged gay and lesbian activists held several community meetings in hopes of finding a way to build on the passion that had emerged at Stonewall. To his credit, Dick Leitsch of the Mattachine Society organized a large open meeting at Freedom House attended by around 400 people where attendees discussed what to do next. The meeting was contentious and clear sides were taken. Leitsch—in his brown suit, starched shirt and tie—and others who had been active in the homophile movement argued for a measured protest against police actions. They suggested a public candlelight vigil to educate the straight community. In response, more radical speakers from the floor strongly objected. Future GLF member, Jim Fouratt, jumped to his feet yelling, “Bullshit!. We need to radicalize” The audience responded with raucous cheers and the old guard activists were unable to regain control of the meeting. The radical element proposed that a public street march should be held in the Village. This proposal won the approval of the overwhelming majority of the audience.

Within the next few days a march was organized to be held on July 27, 1969. Leaflets were widely distributed throughout the Village and on that Sunday around 200 openly gay and lesbian people marched from Washington Square to the now-closed Stonewall Bar. At the conclusion, organizers Martha Shelley and Marty Robinson addressed the spirited crowd gathered in Sheridan Square proposing that people keep up the fight.

Only a few days later, on Thursday, July 31, 1969, a core activist group of about 30 lesbians and gay men met at the upstairs offices of the leftist organization, Alternate U, on 14th Street and 6th Avenue, and officially formed a new organization to be called the Gay Liberation Front. “GLF” for short. Martha Shelley is widely credited as the person who gave the group its name. However, Martha has always said that the name was actually invented by someone else about a week earlier at a meeting at the Mattachine Society headquarters where forming the organization was discussed. As Martha relates it, she heard someone standing behind her quietly say the words “Gay Liberation Front.“ She got all excited and shouted out so everyone could hear, “That’s it! We’re the Gay Liberation Front” while slamming her hand on the table. So while insisting that she did not invent the name herself, she does agree that she was the one who brought the name to the July 31st founding meeting where it was adopted.

There is no definitive list of those who were present at the founding meeting, but the names of those known deserve to be listed. Here are the names I remember: Martha Shelley, Marty Robinson, Michael Brown, Lois Hart, Suzanne Bevier, Ron Ballard, Jerry Hoose, Bob Kohler, Jim Fouratt, Earl Galvin, Dan Smith, Bill Katzenberg, Charles Pitts, Pete Wilson, Susan Silverman, Billy Weaver, John O’Brien, Leo Martello, Marty Stephan and Mark Giles. Although many more activists joined the group all that summer and fall, these were the principal original founders of the Gay Liberation Front and their names should be honored.

The responsibility for writing an initial statement of purpose for GLF was given to Lois Hart, Michael Brown, and Ron Ballard—all founders of GLF, one a lesbian, one a white gay man and one a black gay man. From the start, GLF was committed to representing the diversity of voices in the community by being as inclusive as possible. The statement appeared in the next issue of Rat, a New York radical newspaper that over time covered the feminist, gay and anti-war movements. The core statement of that article was as follows: “We are a revolutionary group of men and women formed with the realization that complete sexual liberation for all people cannot come about unless existing social institutions are abolished. We reject society’s attempt to impose sexual roles and definitions of our nature.” Soon afterwards, Martha Shelley expanded on this position statement when she wrote: “We are women and men who, from the time of our earliest memories, have been in revolt against the sex-role structure and nuclear family structure.”

Stonewall  and the founding of the Gay Liberation Front only 30 days after Stonewall are connected as if with an electric cord. The energy of the first passed directly into the second. The modern movement for gay and lesbian rights was not formed by people talking around a conference table, but rather by oppressed, angry, heroic lesbian and gay activists in the streets of New York who formed this first truly militant organization to fight the forces united against them.

No prior organization deeply engaged so many thousands of LGBT people or spread across the nation at such record speed. As important as later more formal and mainstream organizations like NGLTF and HRC have been in the advancement of LGBTQ rights, our struggle was born out of a different ethos altogether. It was an urgency caused by being arrested by police in our bars, being gay-bashed in the streets, fired from our jobs, rejected by our families. These were the circumstances that triggered GLF’s actions and street protests of the next two years and its formation of the first LGBTQ pride march. In a real way, GLF with its passion and tactics was the forerunner of Act Up!, Queer Nation and so many other LGBTQ activist groups that have arisen whenever soft talk, however well-intentioned, had to be replaced by militant action.