When we started in the homosexual movement in 1951 we were all naturally mistrustful of government and politicians. They were the enemy. They represented the status quo whereas we were social outcasts — sexual outlaws to be exact. But we had the advantage; we were sexually emancipated — anti-authoritarian, free and independent. And having broken out of the centuries-old, rigid sex mold ourselves we wanted to help others do the same.

It was a spirited fight in those days. Our primary objective was to establish equal rights for all persons who perform socially non-conforming sex acts. We took into consideration the diversity of the people the movement represented, and were careful to avoid lumping this aggregate into a sexual category. It was, for instance, as part of the general Population rather than as “homosexuals” that we won the right of persons to “associate” in “known homosexual hangouts,” and the right to send homosexual propaganda through the mails, and later the right of persons who make a homosexual choice to teach in schools.

We were suspicious of all leaders then. We still are. Leaders want and need followers. While we certainly wanted and needed people to share our views and join the fight, we didn't want them to take our belief in sexual freedom for granted; we wanted them to experience it for themselves. And be independent. So we continued to bombard our enemy with propaganda and lawsuits. It paid off.

We gradually won the battle. Other sexual outlaws stirred: abortionists, adulterers, fornicators, prostitutes, transsexuals, swinging couples joined the sexual revolution. By the late 1960s repressive sex laws were crumbling everywhere. We were a force to be reckoned with. But an unstructured, leaderless movement is an irresistible temptation to all sorts of opportunists.

After it was comparatively safe for them to do so the gay liberationists came out of their closets. They promptly banded together for mutual support, and looked around for someone in authority. Having “come out” in a public way they felt unprotected; they desperately wanted to belong — to something, a “gay world” if nothing else — and to be respected. Like all clones the gay libbers could only find comfort in a collective identity. They didn't know that to “come out” is a matter of self-acceptance rather than public acceptance, and has nothing whatever to do with social approval. They called themselves “gays” as if trying thereby to avoid the sex in homosexual. Indeed, they never had the slightest doubt that here lay the key to all their troubles.

Naturally, there were plenty of gay gang bosses surfacing eager to precipitate and cash in on this turn of events. Here was a whole bunch of frightened plastic pansies already masochistically assembled for the picking.

From “the love that dared not speak its name,” homosexuality had become a love that wouldn’t shut its mouth. In 1966 we had published a brochure which estimated there were 20 million homosexuals in the United States. Actually, we

2.

fudged the count: the late Dr. Kinsey' s statistics showed that whereas at any given moment 10 percent of the American male Population is likely to be engaged in some form of overt homosexual behavior, only four percent fall into a “homosexual” category on the basis of their sexual proclivities. But the 20 million figure stuck.

In order to mobilize followers for their new Gay Liberation Front, the advocates of high visibility invoked the 19th century, hold-over belief in a “homosexual minority.” They called for “gay awareness,” the celebration of “gayness” and “gay pride,” and the raising of a “gay consciousness” among their adherents after the fashion of genuine racial and political minorities.

Initially the Gay Liberation Front tried to be radical and militant — egged on by left-wingers and liberal well-wishers — but it is hard to imagine anything less militant than most GLF programs which depended for success on the authority of the state and were calculated to appeal to prevailing American standards instead of challenging federal, state and local governments. For example, the GLF went in for the formation of gay churches providing a gospel for gay sinners; missionaries of gay marriage like pastor Troy Perry performed attention-getting, tearful wedding ceremonies for gay couples as evidence of the desirability of heterosexual values. Latter-day liberated gays — with a built-in proneness to guilt feelings — suddenly stood up and enlightened the world with the details of their private lives. While others told an inhibited Anita Bryant that they wanted to be good middle-class citizens and were only waiting to be accepted as such. Clearly, that blend of what Norman Mailer calls “radical conservatism” which once characterized the homosexual movement was gone.

Alert politicians and do-gooders were only too quick to register this softening shift in the disposition of the homosexual movement. They were considerably relieved to hear at last a rhetoric which reflected and shared the prevailing cultural bias: gay people are different, and share a lifestyle and oppressed socio-sexual existence in common with each other. Here was a traditional attitude even the most conservative politician could plausibly embrace without bothering his head about hostile reaction. Here was, in addition, the prospect of attracting a gay vote. And, since officials were already accustomed to administering a public cash-flow of millions to other oppressed groups why not to a “gay minority” as well?

It was not long, however, before the free wheeling Gay Liberation Front began to unravel. By the early 1970s the authority of those in charge in Los Angeles was being eroded. These not-so-free spirits regrouped into a tightly held, hierarchically run organization named the Gay Community Services Center. A few savvy local politicians got together with Gay Community services Center spokesmen, and a new political alliance was struck. The fact that the gospel of a collective betterment for gays expounded by GCSC and Troy Perry's Metropolitan Community Church is a social myth and represents the exact antithesis was irrelevant to the new partnership. It was partly irrelevant because politicians, like university professors and intellectuals of all stripes, are intrinsically susceptible to grotesquely obvious deceptions a la Rev. Jim Jones — swallowing unquestioningly statistics and other fabricated data whose falsity is immediately evident to the meanest intelligence. And partly because the partnership was based on mutual self-interest rather than human needs.

3.

The new political elite tended to favor order at the expense of freedom. There was a tacit understanding between the establishment gays and their city establishment counterparts that they could accomplish their symbolic purposes best through the establishment of “proper” channels instead of through revolutionary or legal recourse. The late councilman Robt. Stevenson, Mayor Tom Bradley, and County Supervisor Ed Edelman created “gay liaison” posts. Gay stooges were appointed to these positions to run interference between the elected bureaucracy and the “gay community” — to choose the right, “safe,” politically tasteful causes. Causes affluent gays and political operators could endorse, and steer clear of delicate issues smart politicians and cautious gays must avoid. Gays now sit down to $100 a plate dinners on behalf of Tom Bradley, councilwoman Peggy Stevenson, Ed Edelman, City Attorney Burt Pines, councilman Joel Wachs arranged by the Metropolitan Elections Committee of Los Angeles (HECLA), a gay political fund raising group which works on a sophisticated level, and from which these city officials have all accepted campaign funds. In return they support socially acceptable projects on behalf of the "gay community." Gayle Wilson, member of HECLA and onetime member of GCSC, has been quoted as saying: “You can’t just ask politicians to stick their necks out and not offer some support in return.” It is all very cozy. No more activists’ tactics, no more embarrassing, fights to lower the age of consent, void the sodomy, solicitation, lewd conduct, prostitution, sex offender registration statutes. In fact, some of the economic hustlers who occupy offices in city hall also sit on the boards of HECLA and GCSC.

Within a short time, by relying on the virtually extinct dogma linking the emotional, mental, and physical disorders of gays with their sexual behavior, The Gay Community Services Center was transformed into a smooth, efficient, professional agency of the government dispensing charity, subsidies, preferential treatment in the name of health and human services to a gay minority that doesn't exist. It had become a federally funded playground for gays. It was a gentle graft — certainly no worse than anyone of the hundreds of other social service swindles that daily gouge the public. But the trouble is that a prominent section of the homosexual movement was now doing and saying exactly what the government wants to see and hear. Incredibly enough, the con has been so successful that some of the less discriminating movement groups have been taken in, and now cooperate in the game. From the place where the first shots in the sexual revolution were fired, the LA movement has been converted into an instrument of government policy on homosexuality. All the years of hard work apparently produced no more strength within the organizations than that they will voluntarily give up their independence rather than be made to do so.

And so the gay grafters promoted their schemes to rehabilitate the gay needy "according to an approved plan" (because none of these agencies are prepared to refuse government edicts), and sheltered themselves behind social service programs channeled through the agency. As a means of livelihood it beat selling corn salve on street corners. Housing, employment, alcohol, VD and other medical services were instituted — the implication being that individuals who are homeless, jobless, alcoholic, syphilitic, etc. — and who are gay — require specialized help.

Who can measure the negative consequences of this naive assumption?

To the institutionalized gays who now preach submission to the state the highly visible collection of hunky hustlers on Santa Monica Boulevard in

4.

Hollywood and West LA have become a source of embarrassment. The new party platform requires opposition to this sort of free enterprise activity. Since early 1975 Peggy Stevenson and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce have been engaged in a program to “revitalize Hollywood.” At stake are several million dollars in federal and local funds, and purging Hollywood of its “undesirable elements” is a key factor in the program. By April of 1976, with the help of then police chief Ed Davis, and backed by Mayor Tom Bradley, most council members, supervisor Ed Edelman, city attorney Burt Pines, Mrs. Stevenson had launched a campaign to clean up Hollywood by means of a massive crackdown on porno shops, Selma street hustlers, and “obvious houses of prostitution masquerading as adult-entertainment businesses by undercover vice officers and uniformed police.” She was supported in her moralistic crusade by a “citizens committee” composed in part of gays from GCSC headed by her present servile footboy Newt Deiter. The 13th district councilwoman asked the police commission to declare a permit moratorium on sex businesses, and introduced a resolution in city council calling for the city attorney to draft a zoning ordinance to “eliminate and regulate” such businesses, and that the ordinance be made retroactive. Mrs. Stevenson explained, “The U.S. Supreme Court recognizes the community’s right to restrict blatantly sexually oriented businesses.” By a 12 to 0 vote the city council approved the restrictive ordinance, and mayor Bradley signed it saying he opposes sexual solicitations in public and male and female prostitution because these activities are related to other crimes in the city.

In the beginning of 1977 Mrs. Stevenson promised a still uneasy Hollywood Chamber of Commerce that if it supported her candidacy for reelection she would see that the gay parade held annually since 1970 on Hollywood Boulevard was moved. And that year she refused to participate in the parade on the boulevard. We don't know the deal made between Mrs. Stevenson and the parade’s sponsors Christopher St. West Assn, but after another year to the obvious relief of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and businessmen on the boulevard, CSW officials announced the event would be moved to West Los Angeles because it was “too big for its old route.” Deputy Mayor Grace Davis was selected as Grand Marshal; Peggy Stevenson was invited to be in the parade. And now for the second year in a row this public exercise in gay revivalism has taken the form of a quaint folk festival confined within the narrow boundaries of a self-imposed gay ghetto in West Hollywood where role-playing clones live surrounded by themselves, and, in a way, keep their place like society wants them to.

Such has been the negative impact of the concentrated law enforcement against victimless crimes and sex related businesses that innocent persons have been caught up in phony purges of child molesters and pornographers. The Stevenson/Pines Red Light ordinance has closed Plato’s Retreat, the Gold Cup, and has been used to harass the few remaining gay bars in the center of Hollywood, and continues to threaten the existence of the Hollywood Spa. A house on Whitley, wherein dwelled an independent and enterprising family of bootleggers, gamblers, and happy hustlers, was raided so often the occupants were forced out of the premises to be replaced by yet another publicly-funded, government-regulated Hudson “Whore” House for homeless gays run by that failed film-maker Pat Rocco. The street walkers have been pushed off Selma into supervisor Edelman’s territory along Santa Monica Bl. where they are repeatedly hassled and arrested by an LAPD anti-prostitution task force wasting money and manpower to control what should be regarded as a perfectly legitimate pastime and occupation. And instead of challenging the constitutionality of the prostitution statutes the Gay Community

5.

Services Center spends taxpayers’ money on a go-through-the-motions program (headed, ironically, by that ideological hustler himself, Dave Glascock) to rehabilitate and retrain young hustlers. For what? The sakes of Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority? And while the vigilantes have been busy cleansing the Sodom and Gomorrah of LA of its sin and sex, the thieves, thugs, and hoodlums have taken over, and now threaten the lives and safety of its citizens. Hollywood has undeniably become the crime center of Los Angeles.

The reconstruction of the social order to include a category of humans called “Gays” is an invention of the Gay Liberation Front. Although it is usually futile to try to alter the glacial course of language, the misuse of the word gay as a noun must be repudiated. GCSC spends hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on programs that reinforce negative attitudes toward homosexuality and isolate gays from the mainstream of society. It is the worst sort of sexual stereotyping to presume that the mental and physical problems encountered by men and women who perform homosexual acts are related to their sexual activity — unless, of course, it is now the purpose to establish new canons in sexual stereotyping in the health care field by singling out adulterers, fornicators, prostitutes, etc. so they may be treated for unrelated ailments according to the sexual category into which they fit as well. To treat persons by sexual labels — as the Army, Navy, Air Force, and GCSC do, when sexuality is irrelevant to the situation is to credit sexuality with more power than it actually has in our lives.

It would be different if those who use GCSC’s services had to cope with discrimination stemming from their homosexuality. But the effects of homosexuality are not evident in finding jobs or places to live. Homosexuality is not a “condition.” It is not a state of being any more than heterosexuality. Persons who have homosexual contacts cannot on that account be recognized and identified. It is impossible to define a person as homosexual in the sense of defining an activity as homosexual. Thus, discrimination in housing, employment, the armed forces, etc. based on the notion of a collective homosexual identity is absurd.

The solution to the problems faced by gays in the community rests on their learning these simple lessons, and on our success in changing public attitudes. The most efficient way to eliminate discrimination against gays is to integrate them into the community. This can best be done by social service agencies that do their job without regard to the sexuality of the persons they serve.

One might suppose that services such as those provided by GCSC that use up so much money and are so lacking in awareness of human sexual behavior would have been exposed as frauds by now and scrapped. But to the best of our knowledge, with the exception of our own, there is not one single voice in the homosexual movement raised to point out that the influence the Gay Community Services Center exerts is inimical to the goals of the homosexual movement. No one is willing to stop the flow of money. All that money creates a lot of jobs in the “gay community” and health care industry, and the people who control the money and jobs are not particularly anxious to embrace reforms that will jeopardize their power.

January, 1981

HIC has moved:

HIC (Homosexual Information Center) has moved its library and offices to Suite 208, 6758 Hollywood B1., Los Angeles, Ca. 90028. The telephone number remains the same: 213-464-8431.

The rooms are larger, occupying nearly half the second floor of an old Art Deco building. This allows us to consolidate our library, records, periodicals and files into the larger space. With proper planning there will be room for staff members to squeeze in, answer the mail and phone calls and solicit funds to continue operations. Speaking of funds: if you are not now a supporter of HIC, you should be. Here's where your dollars go: acquisition of new materials, replacement of old, to help fight court cases, and to help continue the policy of free distribution of the Center's publications to legislators, law enforcement officials, educators, etc. There is also the basic problem of rent, phone, and maintenance. Your contributions, all tax deductible, help us survive.

Volunteers also help keep us alive. How about helping us provide some our essential services? We need bodies and smiles. How about it?