The Mattachine Society existed before the National LGBTQ Task Force, before the Human Rights Campaign, and even before the Stonewall riots.
The organization was founded in Los Angeles in 1950 and is far from the first gay rights organization (no one was LGBTQ+ at the time). That honor went to the short-lived Human Rights Association, founded in 1924 and based in Chicago, which inspired Mattachine. But Mattachine can claim to be the first to last long into the 1970s.
Mattachine Society founders included labor organizers Harry Hay, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, Dale Jennings, Conrad Stevens, James Gruber, and Rudy Gernreich (the latter most famous as a fashion designer). The group’s name comes from the Société Mattachine, a medieval French satirical dance and theater group.
Initially, the Mattachine Society was secretive and the name of its leader was unknown to its members. It functioned as a support group for gay men, most of whom were men, and served to educate them about the fight for equal rights in conservative post-World War II America.
Hay, a member of the Communist Party, soon clashed with its conservatism. He was subpoenaed by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities in 1955, but the members of the committee deemed him to be an insignificant person, so he faced no punishment. But he had already left the Mattachine Society two years earlier because other leaders feared his presence would attract the attention of politicians seeking to purge communists. Mattachine was investigated by the FBI from 1953 to 1956. After Hay’s departure, the group became public, and in the 1950s and ’60s could have thousands of members in chapters in cities across the country, including San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC.
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In general, the Mattachine Society worked to promote gay rights within the political and legal system rather than on the streets. Members discussed how to avoid police traps and how to fight if criminal charges are brought against them. They discussed how to resist the pathologization of homosexuality by organized religious and mental health groups. They held a “drinking party” at a bar to make their presence known. they published one magazine, This was the first widely distributed gay publication, and several chapters included newsletters.
Although some considered the Mattachine Society to be hostile to women, certain branches had female members. For example, Eva Freund was one of the first women in the D.C. chapter, which was chaired by the now legendary Frank Kameny. She said she noticed that some men were being patronizing, but she confronted them. washington post “I didn’t act in a quiet, submissive manner, which was what was expected of me,” Freund said. She eventually turned her attention to the D.C. chapter of the National Organization for Women, where she became its first lesbian member.
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One of her memories of Mattachine is co-editing and distributing the D.C. chapter’s newsletter, “The Insider.” The news was primarily distributed in bars, and when one bar owner turned her and another Mattachine member away, fearing the newsletter would draw unwanted attention to the nightclub, Freund and her colleagues sneaked copies into the bathroom. “I knew eventually I would find it,” she said. post. “Perhaps our attempt to continue to push this forward has helped people rethink what they are doing on a personal level.”
Most of the Mattachine chapters had disbanded by the 1970s, and a new style of post-Stonewall activism began. Some members joined the Gay Liberation Front, which was founded after Stonewall, while others denounced the Stonewall uprisings, fearing it would set the movement back. Members of New York Mattachine posted signs in the windows of the Stonewall Inn urging “peaceful and quiet behavior.”
But Harry Hay praised those who stood up at Stonewall. “The importance of Stonewall is that Stonewall is synonymous with I to we,“When I told them at Stonewall that we were kicked out of the Mattachine Society for claiming we were a cultural minority rather than an individual, they couldn’t believe it,” Hay once told the Associated Press. By the time of Stonewall, they thought we were always a cultural minority. Hay was the founder of Radical Fairies and lived to be 90 years old, passing away in 2002. Although an attempt to make his Los Angeles home a historic landmark failed, the staircase leading to it, the Mattachine Steps, was given that name by the city.
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Some have taken on the Mattachine name. Mattachine Midwest It was founded in Chicago in 1965 as an independent organization after at least two chapters of the national organization disappeared. It lasted until 1986, offering support groups, crisis hotlines, and other services in addition to political activities.
In 2011, Charles Francis was reconsidered. Mattachine Society, Washington, DC; It does what he calls “archival work: identifying, preserving, and interpreting the LGBTQ historical record.”
The history of the Mattachine Society and its associated people is chronicled in books, plays, and films. The Problem with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement, A biography by Stuart Timmons was published in 1990. Behind the Mask of Mattachine Written by James TT Sears, published in 2007. temperamentals Written by John Marans, this play about the founding of the Society premiered off-Broadway in 2009. documentary Hope Along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay, The film, directed by Eric Slade, was released in 2002. And the New York City LGBT Historic Sites Project recently hosted a discussion entitled Zoom Discussion. “Homosexuals are different”: The Mattachine Society and LGBTQ rights in the 1950s; This was recorded and can be seen below.
– YouTube youtube.be
Source: Advocate.com – www.advocate.com
