Gay Rights in America: A Legacy of Exclusion
Are You Too Queer for this Club?
In 1950, communist and labor organizer Harry Hay, along with a small group of friends, formed one of the first gay rights organizations in the United States. This organization, which would come to be known as the Mattachine Society (a reference to a group of medieval French maskers), grew to become a national network and earn its permanent place in gay rights history. The Society, based in Los Angeles, would spawn a newspaper, a sister organization to advocate for lesbian rights (the Daughters of Bilitis), as well as chapters around the US in San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C, and Chicago.
In its short but influential lifespan, the Mattachine Society would begin to challenge the police raids then common in the gay community, building up several successful legal strategies as well as a grass roots community organization. These strategies and networks would bear fruit years later at the Stonewall Riots. And yet, this organization conceived by communists in 1950s America and dedicated to the then-radical notion that gay people could be part of society, would come to be completely eclipsed by the movement it helped spawn. The Society ended its life being scorned as too respectable and an impediment to gay rights.
