…how Harry Hay’s seeking names is interesting today.
July 12, 2013.
In Stuart Timmons’ biography of Harry Hay, The Trouble With Harry Hay, (p. 142 last two lines), there is proof of where Harry and Rudi went with their “Stockholm Peace Petition,” a rues to get names of people who might be interested in a discussion on homosexuality:
We set about discovering new adherents on the two slices of beach Gays had quietly made their own,” he wrote later. “The section of beach below the Palisades just west of Marion Davies’s huge waterfront estate, and that slice of Malibu between the pier and the spit—which would be taken over by the surfers in the 1960s.
I still wonder what gay bars were there then and now. But it is interesting to read parts of this book today and see how things were then compared to now.
One important point is made about how many “causes” Harry got involved in (p. 291):
In the 1980s, he marched against the contras, the pope, apartheid, the spraying of insecticide on urban areas, the death penalty…nuclear disarmament, a national policy to fight AIDS…all-purpose protest sign…No U.S. intervention in Central anywhere!
Considering the “issue” of his thoughts on homosexuals versus the view of ONE Magazine (which in editorial after editorial said we had had ghetto life and wanted to integrate) it is interesting to read his first idea for an organization “need be no deterrent in integrating 10% of the world’s population towards the constructive social progress of mankind” (p. 137).
It is also interesting to once again be reminded of just how much the “industry” knew about the movement and refused to help in any way—read of Rudi’s contacts on page 142. And to see how anti-gay the Communist Party was. (Even though Harry never lost his idealism, he did admit that it would not have been a good idea to go to live in such a country.)
The irony of course is that he said/believed that they just had not really tried true Communism—an argument used by fanatic Christians when they say we need to get back to olden times and follow the Bible. While many black Americans know how terrible those times were, they still seem to have no problem when the Bible is quoted to justify hatred for homosexual Americans.
