43. Rainbow Rising: Homo-Feels about Homophiles, Part 2

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For this episode, Leigh is joined again by guest host Tyler Albertario, as we continue our discussion of the history of the Homophile movement. In the second and final part of this discussion, Leigh and Tyler cover the rise of East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), its restructuring as the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO), and the ultimate downfall of NACHO and most of its member organizations in the wake of the Stonewall Rebellion.

Tyler Albertario is an amateur LGBTQ+ historian specializing in the history of organizations integral to the struggle for queer liberation and equality. Since 2019, he has worked as a consultant on projects for a wide range of LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, educational nonprofits, and content creators.

Locate Tyler upon the internet:

ECHO

On January 26, 1963, representatives of the Daughters of Bilitis, the Mattachine Society of Washington, the Mattachine Society of New York, and Philadelphia’s Janus Society met in Philadelphia to discuss reorganizing the growing Homophile movement into a broader organization to promote better communication and coordination between various Homophile groups. The organization that was established as a result of this meeting was the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), which held its first official conference at the Drake Hotel in Philadelphia over Labor Day weekend.

A brochure for ECHO’s inaugural conference, held at the Drake Hotel in Philadelphia from August 31-September 1, 1963

Although not much came of this first conference, the second conference, held in Washington, D.C. in October of 1964 proved much more dramatic, and the participating organizations set an aggressive agenda of direct action going forward, which manifested in the form of picketing and public protest.

A brochure for ECHO’s 2nd annual conference, held in Washington, D.C. from October 10-11, 1964

In addition to a series of pickets at the White House and other federal buildings throughout 1965, ECHO also sponsored the “Annual Reminder” picket, a demonstration held every July 4th outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. 

Picketers at the 1966 Annual Reminder demonstration in Philadelphia.

By the end of 1965, with ECHO’s expansion and the emergence of other major Homophile organizations in the Midwest and on the West Coast, it became apparent that the structure of the movement needed to move beyond its base in the Northeast.

Delegates posing for a picture at ECHO’s 3rd annual conference, held in New York City from September 24-26, 1965

NACHO

Following ECHO’s 1965 conference, the decision was made to restructure the group into a national organization, in order to include newer and emerging Homophile groups in the Midwest and West Coast. At a planning conference held in Kansas City in February 1966, the decision was made to restructure ECHO into the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations, or NACHO.

Kansas City newspaper headline covering the February 1966 conference to restructure ECHO

NACHO continued many of ECHO’s activities and operations, while providing a substantive voice for Homophile organizations outside of the Northeast and providing a platform to coordinate national actions, such as the Armed Forces Day picket of May 21, 1966, the first multi-city gay rights picket.

Armed Forces Day picketers in San Francisco (May 21, 1966)

Despite this, NACHO’s cumbersome process for certifying and credentialing new organizations was a constant source of agitation, sometimes taking upwards of six months. Additionally, much of the decision-making influence within NACHO was soon concentrated into the hands of the regional sub-body of Northeast NACHO member organizations—the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations, or ERCHO—much to the anger of groups from the Midwest and West Coast.

Moreover, with the rise of the student movement against the Vietnam War, more radical politics began to infiltrate the ranks of NACHO, in particular with the rise of the Student Homophile League (SHL), lead by Columbia University student Stephen Donaldson.

Stephen Donaldson (1947-1996)

At the 1968 NACHO conference in Chicago—mere days before the police riot outside the Democratic National Convention there—a contingent lead by Donaldson and other SHL members pushed through a declaration of a “Homosexual Bill of Rights,” as well as a resolution approving of the slogan “Gay is Good,” a play on the radical Black Liberation slogan “Black is Beautiful.”

Change was clearly afoot.

The Downfall of the Homophile Movement

Even before the Stonewall Rebellion, NACHO’s organizing structure had already started to come under internal pressures from more radical youth-led organizations, who wanted to adopt more confrontational protest tactics, as well as escalating East-West tensions, the latter of which lead to the August 1969 NACHO conference being “practically boycotted” by West Coast organizations.

With the firestorm of action around the Stonewall Rebellion, NACHO leaders’ reluctance to let go of tactics that had served them to this point and give way to the new energy that was encapsulating the movement, caused the core tenets of the homophile movement and its organizing structure to somewhat crumble— homophile organizations were missing from the first Stonewall anniversary march, which had been proposed as a replacement for the Annual Reminder picket, and would evolve into New York Pride.

Regardless of how the homophile movement ended, we still need and want to express gratitude and awe at how instrumental and integral this work was in opening the door to what would become the gay liberation era of the 1970s.

If you want to learn more, check out our full list of sources and further reading below!

Online Articles & Resources:

Books and Print Articles:

  • Joan Fleischmann Collection; John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at the William Way LGBT Community Center, Philadelphia

  • "Convention Plans Axed by NACHO." The Advocate Sep 15 1971: 11. ProQuest. Web. 5 Aug. 2022

  • Cole, Rob. "Old, New Ideas Tangle at NACHO Convention." The Advocate Sep 30 1970: 1,2, 6-7, 12, 23. ProQuest. Web. 5 Aug. 2022 .

  • The Deviant’s War by Eric Cervini

  • City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves by Marc Stein

  • Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present by Neil Miller

  • Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the United States by Vicki L. Eaklor

  • Gay American History: Lesbians & Gay Men in the U.S.A. by Jonathan Ned Katz

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

42. Rainbow Rising: Homo-Feels about Homophiles, Part 1

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We return with another episode in your podfeeds today, this time from our long-since visited mini-series, Rainbow Rising! Leigh is joined by guest host Tyler Albertario to talk about pre-Stonewall gay rights and the rise, heydey, and subsequent fall of the Homophile movement and how the fight for gay civil rights evolved into the struggle for queer liberation. In this first episode of a two-parter, Leigh and Tyler discuss the birth of the homophile movement and some of the main players – gay civil rights organizations in 1950s-1960s America who dared to gather together amid communism moral panic, FBI raids, and spurious homomedicalist points of view about queer identity. Scandalous tales found within, including secret identities and anonymous cells, the gaslighting J. Edgar Hoover himself, fake “ancient Greek” lesbian poetry, and more!

Next time, we’ll come back in Part 2 to discuss how all these groups came together at regional and national conferences to organize, including all the juicy drama and disagreements, and the decline of homophile-style organizing post-Stonewall.

Tyler Albertario is an amateur LGBTQ+ historian specializing in the history of organizations integral to the struggle for queer liberation and equality. Since 2019, he has worked as a consultant on projects for a wide range of LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, educational nonprofits, and content creators.

Locate Tyler upon the internet:

Newspaper headline and article showcasing the atmosphere of panic and fear around the Lavender Scare, connecting queer people to communism and declaring them a national security risk.

Mattachine

Founded initially as the Mattachine Foundation by Harry Hay in 1950, Mattachine was instrumental in kicking off the homophile movement and offering up opportunities for gay men to meet, socialize, and organize.

The Mattachine founders at a 1951 Christmas party (left to right): Paul Bernard, Chuck Rowland, Stan Witt, Rudi Gernreich, Harry Hay, and Dale Jennings

Mattachine took its name from Renaissance French masque groups called sociétés mattachines, who would wear masks and perform public rituals and dances during the Feast of Fools mocking the rulers.

“Feast of Fools” engraving by Pieter Van der Heyden from 1559

May 1959 issue of Mattachine Review

Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s “The adjustment of the male overt homosexual” study was instrumental in starting to dismantle the homo-medicalist theories that gayness was a psychological sickness. At a time when homosexuality was in the DSM as a “sexual deviation” under the umbrella of “sociopathic personality disturbance” disorders, her pioneering study of 30 gay men who were not incarcerated, institutionalized, or under any sort of treatment, was groundbreaking in dispelling myths about the pathology of queer people.


ONE, Inc.

Evolving from the communist-leader purge of the Mattachine Foundation, ONE, Inc. was founded in 1952 in Los Angeles, and the founders featured some of the Fifth Order members of the original Mattachine Foundation, including Harry Hay, Chuck Rowland, and Ken Jennings, but also other pre-homophile activists like W. Dorr Legg and Merton Bird of the Knights of the Clock organization, Tony Reyes, Martin Block, Don Slater, and Jim Kepner.

October 1954 issue of ONE Magazine that was held by the post-office, leading to ONE v Olsen

Jim Kepner and W. Dorr Legg standing outside the ONE, Inc. office, the first public, physical location for a gay organization in the U.S.

Daughters of Bilitis

Early homophile organizing wasn’t just for gay men, though! The Daughters of Bilitis was founded as the first lesbian organization in the U.S., founded by four lesbian couples: Rose Bamberger & Rosemarie Sliepen, Noni Frey and Marcia Foster, a Chicana woman named Mary, and Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin.

Members of the Daughters of Bilitis around 1956, Del Martin on the far left, Phyllis Lyon on the far right

Drawing on the same strategy as Mattachine of using an obscure reference for the title of their organization to avoid scrutiny by authorities, DOB was named so after this 1894 book of poems by Pierre Louÿs, in which he claimed he had translated several Sapphic-style poem fragments written by a contemporary of Sappho, found in a tomb in Cyprus. It’s all BS, but it’s hilarious and wonderful.

Cover image of Pierre Louy’s Songs of Bilitis in the original french

Daughters of Bilitis membership card

Statement of purpose and guiding principles of Daughters of Bilitis, printed inside The Ladder.

First issue of Daughters of Bilitis’ publication, The Ladder, in 1956 — the first nationally-distributed lesbian magazine in the U.S.

October 1957 issue of The Ladder, alluding to the “masked” imagery commonly used among homophile organizations.

Barbara Gittings, president of the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, and editor of The Ladder. She would team up with Frank Kameny of the Mattachine Society of Washington and begin picketing for gay rights — which we’ll discuss in the next episode.

If you want to learn more, check out our full list of sources and further reading below!

Online Articles & Resources:

Books and Print Articles:

  • Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis by Marcia Gallo

  • The Deviant’s War by Eric Cervini

  • Domenico Rizzo, “Public Spheres and Gay Politics since the Second World War” in Gay Life and Culture: A World History, ed. Robert Aldrich

  • Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the United States by Vicki L. Eaklor

  • Amanda H. Littauer, "Sexual Minorities at the Apex of Heteronormativity (1940s-1965) in The Routledge History of Queer America, ed. Don Romesburg

  • Gay American History: Lesbians & Gay Men in the U.S.A. by Jonathan Ned Katz

  • “Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s” by Martin Meeker; Journal of the History of Sexuality, Jan. 2001, Vol. 10, No 1.

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!