FBI Files: Early Gay Groups No Fan of the Mob.

OK, you want to take some pride in our GLBT history?  Well here is a treasure trove of information released late last year by the FBI. Since I was an activist during the years reported, I take special pride in some of these documents.  As you will read, the FBI had no idea what to do with our activism and honesty.  Here's a taste:

Released FBI files reveal that early gay rights groups such as the Mattachine Foundation or Mattachine Society, the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance took on the Mafia which in the late 1960s and early 1970s had a near-monopoly on their watering holes.
Indeed, no less than the mainstream Time magazine reported on the courage of gay activists in their campaign against the wise guys in its "Gay Pride" article from the July 13, 1970 issue:

Homosexuals, as Gore Vidal has noted, are one of the last minorities in the nation about whom it is still safe to make public jokes. That may not last much longer. * * *  And with the proliferation of such radical groups as the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance, they are taking to the streets. Hard on the heels of Women's Liberation and the Black Power movement, hundreds of male and female homosexuals in New York and Los Angeles wound up "Gay Pride Week" with parades that displayed, in turn, an angry solidarity and outrageous camp, proving that homosexuals are capable of some assertive wit about themselves and their sexual preferences.  * * * With cause, the homosexuals were protesting police harassment, Mafia control of some gay bars and other injustices.

The Mattachine Society was ringing alarm bells about mobbed-up gay bars long before the famous June 1969 Stonewall riots outside the Genovese-controlled dive.  For example, an August 1965 article from the Eastern Mattachine Magazine states:

In June, the Nassau County police department reportedly completed an investigation into fires which destroyed five nightclubs "catering to sexual deviates."  (See Eastern MATTACHINE Magazine, July 1965, page 9.)  A reputed member of the Cosa Nostra and two aide were arrested as a result of this investigation in which a famous establishment in Island Park, New York was closed.  * * * Arson and the connections of the proprietors are acknowledged facts about south shore bars.  It is the public and the State Liquor Authority who are responsible for criminal activity by their denial of our right to assemble and -- just as those other "keepers of our morality" who banned alcoholic beverages in the 1920s -- they are no better than the criminals they engender.

This historic post is at FRIENDS OF OURS and an awesome reporting job it is.  Follow the links to the FBI files on the activism of The Mattachine Society, Gay Activist Alliance, Gay Liberation Front, and learn more about our history. You owe it to yourself and to those who will come after.

While the activist methods are very different and more sophisticated today, it is important to know our history so as not to repeat mistakes of the past. And there were plenty of them!

And so it goes.
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