Harry Hay: Founding the Mattachine, part 2

Continued from: Harry Hay: Founding the Mattachine Society, 1948-1953

Discussion Group Reports

Three surviving discussion group reports from a slightly later date (September-October 1951) describe the group's consensus, as recorded by the chairman. The subject of two discussions is "Sense of Value," the third is "Social Directions of the Homosexual." The chairman for this last group is Henry Hay, and his report contains a variety of conclusions, among them:

Sexual energy not used by homosexuals for procreation, as it is by heterosexuals, "should be channelized elsewhere where its end can be creativity!'

"Homosexuals are 'lone wolves' through fear" of: heterosexual society; they "understandably retreat more within themselves."

"A homosexual has no one to whom he must account, and in the end…he must decide everything for himself!'

"Those in greatest need are sometimes the most reluctant to help each other or themselves, tending to think of personal experiences as things apart from the mutual effort towards betterment.”

"Some glad day there shall be a body of knowledge which would…show that homosexuals….have much in common."

Society's attack on homosexuals would lessen if society realized homosexuals' "potential ability to offer a worth-while contribution."

The Mattachine Society of California

In April 1951, the "Missions and Purposes" of the Mattachine Society, a California corporation, were written; they were ratified on July 20. The first stated purpose is "TO UNIFY” those homosexuals "isolated from their own kind," to provide a principle from which "all of: our people can . . . derive a feeling of 'belonging."' The second principle is "TO EDUCATE homosexuals end heterosexuals. In reference to education, the society is said to be developing an "ethical homosexual culture…paralleling the emerging cultures of our fellow-minorities-the Negro, Mexican, and Jewish Peoples." The third purpose is 'TO LEAD"; the "more…socially conscious homosexuals [are to] provide leadership to the whole mass of social deviates." An additional "imperative" need is for "political action" against "discriminatory and oppressive legislation." The social is said to assist "our people who are victimized daily us a result of our oppression," and who constitute "one of the largest minorities in America today.”

H.H.: We didn't start calling ourselves the Mattachine Society until the spring of 1951.

J.K.: What was the origin of the name "Mattachine"?

H.H.: One of the cultural developments I had discussed and illustrated in my Labor School class on "Historical Materialist Development of Music" was the function of the medieval-Renaissance French Societe Joyeux. One was known as the Societe Mattachine. These societies, lifelong secret fraternities of unmarried townsmen who never performed in public unmasked, were dedicated to going out into the countryside and conducting dances and rituals during the Feast of Fools, the Vernal Equinox. Sometimes these dance rituals, or masques, were peasant protests against oppression-with the maskers, in the people's name, receiving the brunt of a given lord's vicious retaliation. So we took the name Mattachine because we felt that we 1950s Gays were also a masked people, unknown and anonymous, who might become engaged in morale building and helping ourselves and others, through struggle, to move toward total redress and change.

About the fall of 1951 I decided that organizing the Mattachine as a call to me deeper than the innermost reaches of spirit, a vision-quest more important than life. I went to the Communist party and discussed this "total call upon me, recommending to them my expulsion. They rejected "expulsion," and, in honor of my eighteen years as a member and ten years as a teacher and cultural innovator dropped me as "a security risk but as a life long friend of the people.

At the start of our organizing, "X" and others felt that if we made bad mistakes and ruined the thing it might be many, many years before the attempt to organize Gay people would be tried again. So we had to do it right, if possible. That's why we operated by unanimity and were very slow moving. We talked about the prospectus of the foundation, made our contacts with a fighting lawyer, who had defended one of us in court on a Gay charge, applied for a preliminary charter for a nonprofit corporation, and began (as of late November 1950) to have our discussion groups.

J.K.: Did any women come to the early meetings?

H.H.: The meetings were mostly male. A few women came and protested that they were not included, and after that more women came.

J.K.: What about the "two mothers" and a "sister" I've read were involved in the original Mattachine?

H.H.: When my wife decided that we had to go through a divorce because of my activity in the new society-which she felt was inimical as far as the children were concerned-I told my mother about it. About then we were beginning to think in terms of a foundation, and I asked my mother, "Would you act as one of the directors?" She said, "Yes."

J.K.: What kind of a woman was your mother that in the early 1950s she would be that positive about Gays?

H.H.: She wasn't. That isn't the point at all. She was a very well-developed Edwardian lady, and anything that her older son did was bound to be good. I don't think the sexual part of it ever crossed her mind.'?' Homosexuality meant that I was in love with men,-not with women. She had nothing more' than an understanding of "homophile” -don't you see? The sex part of it never occurred to her. When she met the men and women of our original organizing committee, they were all very sweet, nice people; as far as she was concerned, that was it.

J.K.: Who was the Romayne Cox reportedly associated with the original Mattachine?

H.H.: "X" was number two. Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, and Dale Jennings were three, four, and five. Then came Konrad Stevens and James Gruber, a couple. Stevens's sister was named. Romayne Cox. And Stevens's mother was named Mrs. D. T. Campbell, Helen Campbell-they're the women you asked about. Stevens's mother knew he was Gay, and knew about his pair relationship with Rm. Stevens's sister thought they were both fine people, and he had a good relationship with her children. So their support was natural.

J.K.: What kind of role did these women play in the organization?

H.H.: I think both Helen Campbell and Romayne attended a couple of discussion groups; one discussion was held at their house. It was kind of constrained as far as the fellows were concerned, but it passed off OK. The address of the foundation was my mother's home. She was at all the foundation meetings, but she never attended a discussion group. All the guys loved her; she was a sweet, warm sort of lady of the manor; she had that presence, which, made the Mattachhe people feel that they were something fine, special.

The Dale Jennings Case

In the spring of 1952, Dale Jennings, one of the original Mafiachine members, was arrested by the Los Angeles vice squad on the charge of soliciting an officer to commit o homosexual act. Jennings denied the charge, but, as he later said:

Even if I had done all the things which the prosecution claimed….I would have been guilty of no unusual act, only an illegal one in this society.

The Mattachine Foundation took over Jennings's defense; Jennings publicly admitted his homosexuality but claimed himself innocent of the specific charges. The Mattachine Society of 10s Angeles Citizens' Committee to Outlaw Entrapment issued leaflets, one headed "Now Is the Time to Fight," and another "Anonymous Call to Arms," proclaiming:

Now Is the Time to Reveal….the Full Threat to the Entire Community of the Special Police Brutality Against the Homosexual Minority.

"THE ISSUE," said the committee, "IS CIVIL RIGHTS." The public was invited to be present when the case of Los Angeles versus William Dale Jennings was called to trial on May 19, 1952. A 21/4 page, single-spaced letter to media representatives invited their attendance.” Hay recalls that not one of the newspapers sent a reporter.

In ONE Magazine, soon after the event, Jennings described his hearing:

The trial was a surprise. The attorney, engaged by the Mattachine Foundation, made a brilliant opening statement to the jury…

His client was admittedly homosexual, the lawyer said, but

the only true pervert in the court room was the arresting officer. He asked…that the jury feel no prejudice merely because I'd been arrested; these two officers weren't necessarily guilty of the charges of beating another prisoner merely because they were so accused; it would take a trial to do that and theirs was coming the next day. The jury deliberated for forty hours and asked to be dismissed when one of their number said he'd hold out for guilty till hell froze over. The rest voted straight acquittal. Later the city moved for dismissal of the case and it was granted….

Actually I have had very little to do with this victory. Yes, I gave my name and publicly declared myself to be a homosexual, but the moment I was arrested my name was no longer "good" and this incident will stand on record for all to see for the rest of my life. In a situation where to be accused is to be guilty, a person's good name is worthless and meaningless. Further, without the interest of the Citizens' Committee to Outlaw Entrapment and their support which gathered funds from all over the country, I would have been forced to resort to the mild enthusiasm of the Public Defender. Chances are I'd have been found guilty and now be either still gathering funds to pay the fine or writing this in jail.

Yet I am not abjectly grateful. All of the hundreds who helped push this case to a successful conclusion, were not interested in me personally. They were being intelligently practical and helping establish a precedent that will perhaps help them-selves if the time comes. In this sense, a bond of brotherhood is not mere blind generosity. It is unification for self-protection. Were all homosexuals and bisexuals to unite militantly, unjust laws and corruption would crumble in short order and we, as a nation, could go on to meet the really important problems which face US.

Were heterosexuals to realize that these violations of our rights threaten theirs equally, a vast reform might even come within our lifetime. This is no more a dream than trying to win a case after admitting homosexuality.

In July 1952, the Citizens' Committee to Outlaw Entrapment issued o leaflet headed:

Victory!

"You didn't see it in the papers, but it…did happen in L.A." For the "first time in California history an admitted homosexual was freed on a vag-lewd [vagrancy-lewcdness] charge." The victory was "the result of organized work," the contributions of time, effort, and money by "people who believe in justice for…the homosexual." The victory publicized and brought new recruits into the Mattachine Society.

Rumors of "subversive" Communist influence among the Maitachine leadership were already circulating. George Shibley, the lawyer who had won Dale Jennings's case, was said to have left-wing connections (he was later called before the House Un-American Activities Committee). Henry Hay reports that he himself was "fingered and quoted as a prominent Marxist teacher" when a Congressional committee investigated Communist activity in Los Angeles in March 1952. In February 1952, a Mattachine "Oficial Statement of Policy on Political Questions…”emphasized that the organization took no stand on political matters, except those related to "sexual deviation!' The group "has never been, is not now and must never be identified with any 'ism’."

In the fall of 1952, Mattachine questionnaires were sent to candidates in the upcoming Los Angeles City election. Board of Education candidates were asked if they supported "a non-partisan psycho-medical presentation of homosexuality" in required senior high school hygiene courses. They were also asked if they favored a guidance program for young people beginning "to manifest subconscious aspects of social variance." Finally, candidates were asked if they favored high-school counselors' being trained to guide "young people manifesting such problems." The questionnaire sent to city council candidates asked their positions on Los Angeles vice squad behavior and on entrapment.

Paul Coates: a strange new pressure group"

On March 12, 1953, Paul Coates, a columnist for the Los Angeles Mirror, reported that "a strange new pressure group" claiming "to represent the homosexual voters of Los Angeles is vigorously shopping for campaign promises." Coates mentioned that the Mattachine articles of incorporation

were drawn up by an attorney named Fred M. Snider, who was an unfriendly witness at the Un-American Activities Committee hearing. Snider is the legal adviser for Mattachine, Inc.

Coates's column ends: "It is not inconceivable" that homosexuals, "scorned" by the community,

might band together for their own protection. Eventually they might swing tremendous political power.

A well-trained subversive could move in and at power into a dangerous political weapon.

To damn this organization, before its aims and directions are more clearly established, would be vicious and irresponsible.

Maybe the people who founded it are sincere.

It will be interesting to see.

Henry Hay reports the Mattachine reaction to the Coates column.

H.H.: We all thought it was pretty good, and so we ran off twenty thousand copies to send out to our mailing list and to be distributed city- and statewide. Wow! Whammo! We'd forgotten what the detail 'about Fred Snider's being unfriendly to the House Un-American Activities Committee would do to the middle-class Gays in Mattachine. We had been getting in this status-quo crowd; the discussion groups had been growing by leaps and bounds. When Paul Coates's article appeared, all the status-quo types in the discussion groups were up in arms; they had to get control of that damn Mattachine Foundation, which was tarnishing their image, giving them a bad name. This is when the real dissension began between the founders and the middleclass crowd.

J.K.: Can you describe the history of the 1953 split between the Mattachine founders and their opponents?

H.H.: What the opposition wanted was an open, democratic organization. In order to be such an organization, all the idealism that we held while we were a private organization would have to go. In 1953, Joe McCarthy was still around, and we would have to become respectable. "All we want to do is to have a little law changed, and otherwise we are exactly the same as everybody else, except in bed." That position-"we're exactly the same"-characterized the whole Mattachine Society from 1953 to 1969.

In 1953 we had a convention. It was to meet at the little First Universalist Church at Ninth and Crenshaw in Los Angeles. The minister, Wallace Maxey, was on the foundation's board. On the second weekend in April 1953, -on April 11, the convention was called-and five hundred people showed up. Now, mind you, this was 1953, and five hundred Gay people show up in one place, as representatives of Gay organizations each delegate presumably representing up to ten people. Can you imagine what that was like? This is the first time it's ever happened in the history of the United States. There we were, and you looked up and all of a sudden the room became vast--well, you know, was there anybody in Los Angeles who wasn't gay? We'd never seen so many people. And in each other's presence you can't shut 'em up. This isn't the period when you hugged much yet--but nevertheless there was an awful lot of hugging going on during those two, days.

That Saturday, April 11, 1953, Hay addressed the convention. His speech was published the following month in 'ONE Magazine, anonymously, under the title, "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Homosexual?" It was designed to answer charges of Communist influence over the Mattachine Society. In this long, wide ranging talk Hay reiterates that the Mattachine Foundation "chooses to consider itself strictly non-partisan and non-political in its objective and in its' operations." Its goal is to stir up debate about the place of homosexuals in American society:

But in the very raising of the need for such debate, The Mattachine Foundation deliberately put itself squarely in opposition to a dominant section of the status quo, and elects to become a victim of the myriad implications and slanders derivative of that opposition.

Hay recalls the then recent homosexual purges of United States government agencies, based on the principle that the susceptibility of homosexuals to blackmail by a foreign power makes them security risks. "It is notable," says Hay,

that not one single political or pressure group among the liberals, let alone the left wing, lifted either voice or finger to protest the monstrous social and civil injustice and sweeping slander of this dictum. The complete hostility with which the [homosexual] Minority was surrounded by this indictment was a clear barometer of the outright antipathy unitedly maintained by every color of political opinion. It is significant to note that no alarm was raised then…or since….and no purge directed, at married [male] heterosexuals with a weakness for bulging busts, blonde secretaries, or National Hop-Week Queens.

The government purges, and later those of state and private employers, had included not only those who were themselves allegedly homosexual, but also their friends, says Hay. As he points out, any group that

sets itself up as a vehicle by [which] the articulate homosexual minority can at least be heard…in effect sets itself up in opposition to a majority opinion held equally by the right wing, the liberals, and the left. The Foundation has known from the beginning that it could expect support only from those non-prejudiced people who could recognize the enormous potential of the Minority even in the face of the social struggle that would be required. It should be stated here that the Left was the first political grouping to deny any social potential to the Minority by going on public record with the opinion that the perverts (note the term) were socially degenerate and to be avoided as one avoids the scum of the earth. The Foundation idea was conceived only when the Right, in the substance of the State Department actions, followed suit some ten years later.

Hay defends the refusal of the Mattachine's lawyer, Fred M. Snider, to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, based on his Fifth Amendment right not to be forced to testify against himself. Hay continues:

The Foundation, in a modest way, constitutes itself a guardian of the homosexual minority's right to keep its own counsel and social conscience. To do this, the Foundation must deliberately oppose the present status quo policy of our National Administration concerning homosexuals. . . . In order to guarantee that it wiI1 be able to do this, the Foundation must keep itself clear as a b d y to be able to invoke the safeguards of the 1st; 5th, 9th, and 10th amendments….

In taking such a stand as a body, and by simultaneously re-affirming its basic principle of aligning itself with, and participating in, no partisan political action whatsoever at any time, the Foundation is declaring that it hereby reserves the right to advance suggestions, to criticize, and to evaluate at any and at all times the status quo between the begrudging community majority and the contending coalition of the homosexual minority…The Foundation is acutely aware that such a declared role invalidates it completely as a fountain-head of leadership. But, in truth, it must be recorded that the Foundation never conceived of its contribution as more than that of a modest fountain-head of inspiration and encouragement.

Hay closes by affirming the Mattachine lenders' determination to protect the anonymity of members by refusing to testify before governmental investigating agencies-even if this refusal should loose the Mattachine the support of prominent professional people. "It would be pleasant," Hay continues,

if the social and legal recommendations of the Foundation could be found impeccable both to the tastes of the most conservative community as well as to the best interests of the homosexual minority. But since there must be a choice…the securities and protections of the homosexual minorities must come first.

On Sunday, the second day of the Mattachine convention, Hay recalls,

about ten o'clock in the morning, the other members of the original board showed up at my house. Bob Hull reported that a congressional investigating committee was coming out West to look into nonprofit foundations which were feeding the left, part of the whole Red-baiting campaign. We realized that we couldn't bear investigation. We original Mattachine founders and our lawyer would all show up as either having been "fellow travelers" or actual Communist party members. None of us were party members any longer, but some had been. We couldn't answer that 'Wave you ever been?" question without taking the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. Bob Hull said to me, "Look, we can't hold this thing. That speech you made yesterday, that was a disaster." The middle-class groups were all for pulling out, the whole society seemed to be falling apart-it looked like the Titanic going down.

At that moment I suddenly realized for the first time that we weren't unanimous any more. Our original dream was gone. I thought, "We'll have to dissolve anyway, because of this investigating committee. What we'll do is I'll make an announcement to the convention that the original board has decided to dissolve itself-and we will give the convention the Mattachine name." They were already having committee meetings to find new names:

So at the convention that afternoon I made the announcement that the foundation, for reasons important to itself, had decided to dissolve.

J.K.: You decided to pull out because of the Red-baiting, because of the investigation coming up?

H.H.: That was one reason. Also, several of the guys on the steering committee were saying, "The convention's running in this direction, and we have to run with it." They were being opportunistic. It was more important to them to run with the crowd than oppose it.

J.K.: Do you think you may have withdrawn at the wrong time, that you should have stayed and fought?

H.H.: I didn't feel I had the forces to withstand the investigation, the Red-baiting. I was pretty sure we couldn't-that we would go under.

J.K.: What were the basic ideological differences between the original Mattachine and the group after 1953?

H.H.: The original society was based upon this feeling of idealism, a great transcendent dream of what being Gay was all about. I had proposed from the very beginning that it would be Mattachine's job to find out who we Gays were (and had been over the millennia) and what we were for, and, on such bases, to find ways to make our contributions to our parent hetero society. It would be upon such contributions that we would renegotiate the relationships of Gays to the hetero majority. But such bargaining was always to be between Gays and straights as groups, never as individual Gays making deals behind the scenes. The Mattachine after 1953 was primarily concerned with legal change, with being seen as respectable-rather than self-respecting. They wanted to be dignified by professional "authorities" and prestigious people, rather than by the more compelling dignity of group worth.

Jim Kepner

The meeting that ended Henry Hay's principal involvement in the emancipation organization he had conceived and founded was a major event at the start of Jim Kepner's long activity in the homosexual movement. Although just one of those involved in homosexual emancipation, Kepner is mentioned here to emphasize the continuity within this movement--that an ending for one man was a beginning for another. Kepner's account, in a letter to the present author, of the 1953 Mattachine convention differs somewhat from Hay's: the exact details and implications of this historic turning point in the American gay liberation movement will no doubt be modified and amplified by others who were present, and by future researchws. Jim Kepner sums up his recollections of the Mattachine convention of 1953:

Starting with boundless optimism, we bogged down hopelessly in organizational details. The antagonisms between the conservatives and the founders were bubbling to the fore. Still, I don't think the optimism was quite shattered. In spite of the loss of a good many people, the needless and endless fights on constitutional amendments, the whole thing remained an exhilarating experience. At least those of us who knew that new organizations are not easy to build from the ground up retained the feeling that we at last had a viable homophile movement that was organized, however badly, and that we were on our way. That was really big news, setbacks notwithstanding, and we were determined to make good on the setbacks.

See also:

Hope Along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay