June 1, 2009.
As I would understand it, C. Todd White marshaled all the facts on what happened at ONE, Inc., in his book Pre-Gay L.A. and gave readers a background, starting with early Mattachine.
It could be that he gave too much for average readers, but I assume serious researchers will want to see all the notes and minutes, etc. I didn’t then, nor do I now.
The irony, as I said to everyone then, is that I am one person who has always been in a position to do what I wanted to.
I have made some mistakes, as I confessed to Prof. Rodney Grunes Political Science students Friday, as I think now that the issue of me and the Army was more my fault than theirs although it is probably true that sooner or later I would have been kicked out for homosexuality. But I was, from a logical Army view, not a very good soldier if I fell apart when they had to change the goal of sending me to Germany — unless I reenlisted and had more time. I liked the Army and was not mistreated, even when living the last few weeks on a cot in the Headquarters Company of the First Infantry Division. But I would never have stopped having sex. I also once did not show up for KP duty when I had been ordered to do so as I thought they were wrong. I went, naturally, to the library and read magazines. Nothing ever came of it.
But few people had income from a family so that they could choose what they wanted to do, as I could take a the job at ONE, which paid nothing, really, and paid really nothing at HIC. In fact, more than once I had to put money into HIC, one time $2,000 my folks gave me to help get an issue of the magazine out.
This is being said to make it clear that W. Dorr Legg should have understood, and Don Slater, that it made no difference to me personally if I were a voting member.
I said then, and poor Todd understands now as even Don did a few times, that I would not do anything I did not want to do. So it would give me no more “power” to be a voting member. If the board instructed me to do something I didn’t want to do, I simply would refuse and, if necessary, leave.
Which is what I think some editor said when she had to quite ONE as she had to do work at a job that paid her a salary. It is hard to tell volunteers what to do if they don’t want to. That of course was Dorr’s fear. Most of ours were not too smart about the workings of ONE and didn’t care — as I didn’t until Dorr stupidly started fearing what I might or might not do. It was one thing for me to not show up for work a day after I had found a good Marine, but when I actually started understanding the workings, that was threatening to Dorr.
