Mitchell Halberstadt: A Gay Youth Group, the FBI, and the Community, November 28, 1984

In November 1984, I authored an article titled "Gay Youth Group Admits FBI Involvement," published in The Connection, a bi-weekly gay newspaper published on Long Island and distributed widely in New York City. (It billed itself as "New York's Gay Newspaper," in direct competition with The New York Native). At the time, I was The Connection's staff reporter in New York City.

The story revealed that Gay and Lesbian Youth of New York (GLYNY), New York's fledgling peer organization of gay youth, which had an advisory board of adults prominent in the gay community, had a policy of forwarding information to the FBI in situations that GLYNY suspected might involve adults seeking sexual relations with underage youth.

The information supplied to the FBI about suspected parties included, for example, license-plate numbers recorded at a cruising area around the West Village piers. The data was gathered by GLYNY members on behalf of the organization, based on their own initiative and suspicion, rather than in response to any complaint made by an exploited youth. Decisions to forward this information to the FBI were, likewise, to be considered by GLYNY based solely on its own judgment as an organization (absent any requirement that this be in response to any complaint of exploitation or abuse).

I'd been told about this relationship with the FBI by GLYNY's newly-installed Executive Director, Stan Isaac, who complained that he'd inherited the policy from his predecessor (Joe Van Es), and confided that he wasn't entirely comfortable with it.

I'd been interviewing Isac (along with the officials of other relevant organizations and a variety of activists) in conjunction with a broader story I was researching regarding evolving community attitudes toward relationships involving gay youth, including those where age differences were a factor.

When I then asked GLYNY's adult advisory board members about the policy, they told me they'd previously been unaware of it. On learning of the policy's existence, their range of reactions, in various proportions, combined outrage at the implicit FBI surveillance and its potential for misuse, with an understanding of the otherwise powerless predicament of gay youth.

Van Es defended the policy in a brief speech at a GLYNY Thanksgiving dinner, describing the collaboration as empowering gay youth to resist exploitation and abuse.

The broader story I'd planned, "Our Man/Boy Love Problem -- and Mine," was published in the subsequent issue of The Connection.

The same issue of The Connection published two letters signed by the GLYNY's peer Board of Directors (including Isaac) and its adult advisory board, both of which condemned as injurious to GLYNY my previously-published story on FBI involvement . Beneath these letters was a brief response in which I noted that those letters had failed to specify a single error of fact in what I'd written, plus my insistence that -- by opening a controversial or flawed policy to criticism and possible correction -- such stories can potentially strengthen a community and its institutions.

My broader story, "Our Man/Boy Love Problem -- and Mine" (in that same issue) was replete with quotes from many community leaders (including several of the same members of the adult advisory board who'd signed the aforementioned letter!) expressing deep misgivings about GLYNY's FBI involvement.

The quotes in my story also documented a history of long-standing antagonisms and divergent interests, fed by an assortment of ongoing personal dramas, <<that had left the community open to such an outcome.>><<WHAT OUTCOME? PLEASE CLARIFY--JNK Do you mean "left this community group open to serious criticism for its working with the FBI>> At the time, I also heard there was talk in many community circles of how the organization's existing policy was subject to the sort of abuse by the FBI that was had been an all-too-recent reality for many people.

Ginny Apuzzo, at that time the Governor's liaison to the lesbian and gay community, acknowledged her awareness of the need to empower gay youth to resist exploitation. But then she exclaimed, "That doesn't mean you go to the oppressor!" <<MEANING WHO?, WHAT? The FBI?>> She vowed to work behind the scenes for a more acceptable resolution.

Eventually, Charlie Cochrane, a member of GLYNY's adult advisory board (and the founder of the Gay Officers' Action League (GOAL), the organization representing gay New York City cops), made it known to GLYNY that his organization would henceforth be available to intervene on behalf of the community whenever there might be need to come forward with a complaint involving the exploitation or abuse of gay youth. That provided a potential and necessary first step toward finding the most appropriate means to resolve the situation, from within the community or as otherwise might prove necessary -- and thus (so I was told) GLYNY's FBI involvement quietly came to an end.

<<WHY NOT ADD YOUR MORE PERSONAL SUMMING UP HERE, re the height of AIDS era: In retrospect, .......>

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