The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

00:00:00.280 You've been sold a particular story about the gay rights movement.

00:00:03.880 The abridged version goes something like this.

00:00:06.640 Gay and queer people were oppressed by a legal system that forced repressive Christian sexual

00:00:12.320 standards on society and persecuted them unfairly for simply loving the men and women they loved.

00:00:19.280 Somewhere in the 1960s a movement emerged from the sexual revolution galvanised by the

00:00:24.160 famous Stonewall Riots and gay rights was born. 1.00

00:00:28.800 It overcame resistance in the 1970s and persevered through the disaster of AIDS in the 1980s

00:00:34.840 before finally achieving public acceptance sometime in the 1990s.

00:00:40.060 In the mid-2010s homosexuals declared a triumphant victory when the US and the UK legalised gay 1.00

00:00:47.120 marriage.

00:00:48.120 All that was left to do now was spread the virtue of tolerance throughout the entire world.

00:00:54.640 Tragically gay rights has now gone too far. 1.00

00:00:57.680 I mean, it was all well and good when they just wanted to love one another and get married

00:01:01.680 legally.

00:01:03.020 But now, now it's targeting children.

00:01:06.280 And it's been co-opted by the trans movement. 0.50

00:01:08.700 And now we're beyond the pale.

00:01:10.940 Where are the days of respectable gay rights heroes like Harvey Milk and Larry Kramer? 0.97

00:01:17.060 The solution requires that we return to a sensible, even conservative dare I say, moment in the

00:01:24.240 gay rights movement that resembles something like the 90s but with gay marriage still intact.

00:01:30.660 This story is honestly compelling.

00:01:32.960 It works off the archetypal narrative that fits all of the civil rights movements of the 20th

00:01:38.400 century.

00:01:39.660 If you know it, you recognise the formula straight away because you have been conditioned to respond

00:01:46.040 positively to it, conditioned even from birth.

00:01:49.680 It's the story of civil rights and desegregation in the 1960s, of women's liberation, of sexual

00:01:55.400 revolution, of secularisation, of decolonisation, of the creation of the welfare state and of democracy

00:02:02.800 spreading across the world.

00:02:05.380 It's the story of the oppressed and repressed masses rising up against their immoral rulers

00:02:12.400 and demanding their right to equality and equity.

00:02:16.740 Questioning this narrative and all of its implicit assumptions amounts to heresy.

00:02:22.520 There is no going back.

00:02:24.600 We can only ever move forwards on the road to capital P progress.

00:02:29.920 But doesn't it all seem a bit too neat?

00:02:32.700 How well does all of this hold up to real history?

00:02:36.200 Is the history of gay rights really as cut and dry as it seems?

00:02:39.720 Was it really a noble movement led by otherwise normal people fighting for their rights?

00:02:45.660 Or has it always been a vehicle for queer in culture, led by shady men and aided by the 1.00

00:02:51.400 state and mass media?

00:02:53.400 These are the questions that I intend to answer in this short series that are taking a deep

00:02:57.400 dive into the figureheads of the movement.

00:02:59.780 I'll be mainly focusing on the primary figures and events that took place in the US going

00:03:05.380 back to the 1950s.

00:03:06.800 But hopefully it'll give you a good overview of how we got to where we are now.

00:03:10.800 To kick off this series we'll be looking at Harry Hay.

00:03:14.020 You may not have heard of Harry Hay, but he is vitally important to the real history of

00:03:19.160 gay rights.

00:03:20.440 Once you get to know him a bit better, you'll understand why he was swept under the rug.

00:03:25.780 First of all, his most important work was prior to Stonewall, and modern historiography sometimes

00:03:30.460 brushes over this period in the aid of telling a simplified narrative.

00:03:35.380 And Hay has been dubbed the founder of gay liberation.

00:03:39.200 So skipping over his legacy seems a bit strange, doesn't it?

00:03:43.480 And in a way, the whole gay rights movement, as you'll come to see from its aims to its

00:03:48.720 methods, is his legacy.

00:03:53.200 Hay was the co-founder of the first major American gay rights organisation, the Mattachine Society.

00:03:59.380 Now, the Mattachine Society was not the first gay rights activist organisation within the

00:04:05.200 US.

00:04:06.200 Its precursor was the Society for Human Rights, a Chicago-based group that existed very briefly

00:04:12.780 in the 1920s, that was formed by Henry Gerber.

00:04:16.420 Gerber himself was inspired by the work of Magnus Hirschfeld, who he became aware of through

00:04:21.460 his time stationed in Germany with the US Army.

00:04:25.720 Despite only lasting from 1924 to 1925, well, less than a full year all told, its impact

00:04:32.480 is still felt through the influence it had on Harry Hayes.

00:04:37.040 In 1929, 17-year-old Harry Haye was living in Los Angeles and partaking in the Pershing

00:04:43.980 Square gay cruising scene. 0.99

00:04:46.980 You don't want to ask. 0.83

00:04:48.580 Where he met Champ Simmons, a former member of the Society for Human Rights.

00:04:54.200 This told Haye all about the Society and its tragic demise, and this inspired Haye going

00:05:00.020 forward.

00:05:01.240 This idea of gay rights or homophile groups, as they were then known, lay dormant in Haye's

00:05:07.420 mind until 1950, when he formed the Mattachine Society alongside the fashion designer Rudi Gernreich.

00:05:15.300 In the meantime, Haye had lived an eventful life, serving as an organist for Alistair Crowley's

00:05:22.560 Order of the Temple Orientis in 1935 and joining the Communist Party USA in 1934 after being

00:05:29.800 converted to the cause by the actor Will Greer, who was one of Haye's many, many gay lovers.

00:05:38.280 Through his time in the party, he became pretty well connected.

00:05:42.000 He taught at the party headquarters in Los Angeles alongside notable figures such as John Howard

00:05:47.140 Lawson, head of the Hollywood Ten, a group of communist writers who were blacklisted in

00:05:52.060 the 1950s.

00:05:54.060 Interesting how that happens, isn't it?

00:05:58.060 Even for what was, at the time, a very radical group, Haye was the radical among the Mattachine

00:06:04.220 society.

00:06:05.220 Owing from his time within the Communist Party, which he left in 1951, Haye was adept at rhetorical

00:06:12.920 tricks and political organising.

00:06:15.620 Unlike many other members of the society who sought a form of assimilation, Haye held categorically

00:06:23.060 that homosexuals were not like heterosexuals and should not seek acceptance or assimilation

00:06:30.660 within heterosexual society and all of its heteronormative characteristics. 0.66

00:06:37.260 They, to Haye, were an oppressed minority.

00:06:41.780 Now this probably sounds familiar to you.

00:06:44.440 The argument that an abstract pressure to assimilate or conform into heteronormative society causes

00:06:52.160 psychic harm to sexual minorities is a favourite of the modern left. 1.00

00:06:57.080 In fact, an unfair pressure to conform to society has always been a mainstay of leftist myth-making,

00:07:04.200 and a well-worn excuse on top of it for any violence committed in the name of leftist causes.

00:07:12.180 Haye's mythologising, therefore, fits neatly within this tradition.

00:07:16.540 Instead of assimilation which surely would have caused incalculable and inexcusable harm 1.00

00:07:22.720 to homosexuals somehow, he preached in a manifesto that homosexuals were spiritually different,

00:07:30.280 superior even, and that heterosexuals could learn a lot about how to better live their 0.98

00:07:35.900 lives from homosexuals. 1.00

00:07:38.780 You could consider this an early form of the modern idea of queering a society, wherein 0.90

00:07:44.800 normal people behave more like gays and adopt their lifestyle quirks. 1.00

00:07:49.200 Now, as far as I can tell, this seems to consist of constant hard partying, casual sex, and 0.99

00:07:57.520 behaving catty. 0.72

00:07:59.380 It's also straight from the communist agitator playbook.

00:08:02.980 Haye even accused more moderate members of the society who sought assimilation of being

00:08:08.400 conservatives.

00:08:11.200 Even gay rights activists can thank Haye for the hysterical verbal flourishes that he popularised 1.00

00:08:17.420 with all of this honestly quite overwrought rhetoric.

00:08:21.960 Now, the Mattachine Society had a magazine that they published in 1953, called One, which

00:08:29.000 the US Postal Service initially refused to deliver due to obscenity laws.

00:08:34.340 But after the ruling in the Supreme Court case Roth v United States, which redefined the test

00:08:39.900 for what constitutes obscenity, the magazine was able to be distributed.

00:08:45.280 Other outreach work the group did included featuring in a 1961 documentary produced in

00:08:50.460 San Francisco called The Rejected.

00:08:53.560 The Rejected is actually an interesting time capsule of civil rights activism in the 1960s,

00:08:59.160 especially the early 60s, as it pretends to be objective and not take any personal positions

00:09:04.620 despite clearly favouring the activists.

00:09:07.960 The documentary, for instance, relies heavily on the work of Alfred Kinsey and his reports

00:09:12.080 on sexuality which had been published in the late 1940s through to the 50s.

00:09:17.100 Kinsey himself is vital to understand the sexual revolution of the 60s, and so I might revisit

00:09:23.400 him at some later date.

00:09:25.680 But for now, it's enough to look over some of the stats and figures that are cited and

00:09:30.320 rejected that come straight from Kinsey.

00:09:32.920 Among the frankly absurd claims made throughout this documentary are that at least 37% of American 0.55

00:09:39.180 males had some kind of orgasmic sexual contact following adolescence with another male, that 0.83

00:09:47.080 18% of men are more homosexual than heterosexual, and that at least half of all married men have

00:09:54.020 committed adultery.

00:09:56.120 Kinsey himself had once testified to an American committee that 46% of the United States population

00:10:02.720 had had a homosexual experience at least once in their lifetimes.

00:10:09.340 What's interesting to consider when we look at these figures and how they were popularised

00:10:14.380 is that the seeds for homosexual liberties were being planted all the way back in the late

00:10:19.440 1940s through Alfred Kinsey's work, which was immediately picked up by the media and promoted

00:10:24.800 as revolutionary.

00:10:26.960 His books even became bestsellers.

00:10:30.160 This is despite the sensational and often controversial nature of Kinsey's work which

00:10:34.800 has since been utterly, utterly discredited.

00:10:38.920 Consider as well that his research was largely funded through grants received from the Rockefeller

00:10:43.860 Foundation, so it had secure institutional backing, which suggests, to me at least, that in some

00:10:51.320 way there were moneyed actors behind the scenes who had an interest in normalising what was

00:10:57.160 then considered deviant sexual behaviour.

00:10:59.960 I'll allow you to speculate in the comments below as to why they would have that interest

00:11:05.320 to begin with.

00:11:08.260 Kinsey's work is worth its own deep dive, as I've mentioned, but it should be clear through

00:11:11.960 his inflated numbers that the documentary was laying the groundwork to give viewers the

00:11:17.260 false impression of homosexuality being commonplace and therefore to help normalise it. 0.99

00:11:25.220 Which is ironic as it contradicts the anti-assimilationist and minoritarian rhetoric of Harry Hay, although

00:11:33.280 I would argue that this more moderate and patient approach has proven, over time, far more effective

00:11:39.920 and swaying public opinion.

00:11:42.100 The Mattachine Society's role in The Rejected is a short interview where they disavow any

00:11:46.080 association with queens, effeminate to homosexual men, and label them minorities within the homosexual 0.67

00:11:53.020 community, something that may in fact have been accurate at the time.

00:11:56.720 They state that the purpose of the society is to dispel harmful stereotypes and go out of

00:12:01.300 their way to emphasise the importance of laws protecting innocent young people.

00:12:06.180 Interestingly enough, on the subject, one of the men states that he believes that most

00:12:10.640 homosexuals wouldn't have ended up gay if they had had heterosexual experiences earlier 0.98

00:12:16.360 in their lives.

00:12:17.640 This is something that will come up again.

00:12:20.160 One of the relevant criticisms of contemporary law that they discuss is the threat of security

00:12:25.020 risks, homosexual men in important federal or state positions being blackmailed due to their

00:12:30.460 concealed sexuality. 0.92

00:12:32.620 Then and again, they emphasise the normalcy of gay men and their entitlement to the same 0.99

00:12:37.800 rights as everyone else.

00:12:39.080 Certainly, the men chosen to feature in the interview seem to represent the more conservative

00:12:44.500 arm of the group that Hay stood against.

00:12:47.780 It'll be no surprise to you, then, that Hay had been all but pushed out of the Mattachine 0.64

00:12:51.520 Society by 1954.

00:12:54.020 An avid supporter of sexual liberation, Hay claimed that he had slept with between two to three

00:13:00.120 men a day between 1932 and 1936, taking his overall headcount into what must be the thousands.

00:13:07.500 And he believed that this hedonism should be emphasised as an essential feature of homosexual 0.99

00:13:12.800 lifestyles.

00:13:14.040 So you can see how this would conflict with the information and disavowals of queens and

00:13:18.840 hedonism that was being portrayed by Mattachine in The Rejected.

00:13:24.200 After his ejection from Mattachine, Hay eventually formed another activist organisation called the

00:13:29.580 Radical Fairies in 1979, which emphasised the supposed spiritual aspects of homosexuality.

00:13:37.800 These has included being more in touch with nature and claimed that they represented the

00:13:42.560 true essence of what it means to be human.

00:13:45.960 As part of the Radical Fairies project, they promoted different gender categories, popularising

00:13:51.340 the two-spirit idea, which is now recognised by some sources as an official gender identity

00:13:59.040 that must be respected.

00:14:01.120 The Radical Fairies is one of the earliest examples of a group actively and openly seeking 0.70

00:14:06.840 to queer society through subverting cultural norms. 0.67

00:14:10.360 But all of this fails to touch on Harry Hay's most controversial belief.

00:14:15.500 The belief in the legitimacy of paedophilic relationships.

00:14:20.120 Hay claimed that his first gay sexual experience was when he was nine years old and that this

00:14:24.160 proved to be the most important experience of his young life that informed everything else

00:14:29.920 that he did.

00:14:31.040 Hay even went on to claim that he was acting as jailbait to his accuser and had wanted it.

00:14:37.360 Coming up his belief succinctly in a speech given at the 1983 Gay Academic Union Forum at

00:14:42.380 New York University, Hay stated that, quote, the relationship with an older man is precisely

00:14:49.500 what 13, 14 and 15 year old kids need more than anything else in the world, end quote,

00:14:56.700 and referenced his own sexual encounters with older men as a 14 year old boy in a positive

00:15:02.360 light.

00:15:04.080 His uncompromising stance on the subject led to him being somewhat of a pariah in the movement

00:15:09.580 as it advanced through the 70s and 80s, mainly because the more moderately minded knew that

00:15:16.260 a full on support of paedophilic relationships was, let's say, not a popular position to assume,

00:15:23.780 and wasn't going to win any mainstream backing.

00:15:27.740 Founded in 1978 by the activist and journalist David Thorstad, the North American Man-Boy

00:15:33.240 Love Association, otherwise known as Nambler, is a group that lives in infamy.

00:15:38.920 Nambler is now widely condemned as a paedophile rights organisation and support for it can destroy

00:15:44.660 your reputation, and rightfully so.

00:15:47.920 What many don't know is that David Thorstad, who founded the organisation, was also a former

00:15:53.840 president of the New York Gay Activist Alliance and a key activist in the early post-Stone

00:15:58.920 War movement, as well as, imagine my shock here, a member of the Socialist Workers' Party 0.72

00:16:05.420 and a writer for the Trotskyist paper, The Militant.

00:16:09.340 Nambler was even the first US-based member of the International Lesbian and Gay Association,

00:16:16.540 alongside other paedophile groups.

00:16:19.000 The ILGA actually had a consultant role with the UN, but the UN became critical of the inclusion

00:16:25.800 of paedophile rights groups in 1994 and duly dropped them.

00:16:30.380 You'd think it would have been a bit sooner that they thought that was a problem, but oh well,

00:16:34.500 better late than never.

00:16:36.180 This was around the time when any association with paedophile rights was being publicly expunged

00:16:41.100 from the movement due to all of the bad press that it garnered.

00:16:44.600 Now, you may be thinking, that's all well and good, but what does Nambler have to do

00:16:48.720 with the paedophile rights activist Harry Hay?

00:16:51.640 Well, Harry Hay was a fervent supporter of Nambler ever since its inception and never compromised

00:16:57.880 on this position.

00:16:59.600 While he was never a member himself, he did give numerous speeches at meetings the group

00:17:03.580 held and wore a sign saying, Nambler walks with me, at a 1986 Los Angeles gay rights rally

00:17:10.000 after controversy surrounding the group's inclusion at the event.

00:17:13.640 So you can see that at least there was always a very divisive element to the inclusion of

00:17:19.260 Nambler and other groups, although not enough.

00:17:23.340 Despite how discredited they became in the 1990s, particularly following the release of documentaries

00:17:27.940 like Chicken Hawk Men Who Love Boys, Hay maintained his support of Nambler, and everything it 0.98

00:17:34.500 fought for all the way up until his death in 2002.

00:17:39.800 So this look at Harry Hay isn't the whole story.

00:17:43.320 In fact, it's just the tip of the iceberg.

00:17:45.360 I'll be examining the other essential figures and events that formed the gay rights movement

00:17:49.940 as this series progresses.

00:17:52.200 But bear in mind that the person that many publications, even those as mainstream as the

00:17:57.320 New York Times in their 2002 obituary for Harry Hay, celebrate as the father of gay liberation,

00:18:05.840 was an unapologetic paedophile and fought fiercely for the right of grown men to abuse children.

00:18:13.220 His paedophilic inclinations and communist agitation tactics have left an undeniable mark on the

00:18:19.220 movement, even as it exists today.

00:18:22.700 While there are and were many moderate voices campaigning on behalf of homosexuals, ones

00:18:27.720 who disagree vehemently with the values that Hay stood for, the extremist activists embedded

00:18:34.180 in academia and the media share the spirit, values and goals of Harry Hay.

00:18:42.660 Thank you for watching, I hope you found it informative, I look forward to seeing you

00:18:47.580 in part 2 where I should be looking at what actually happened at the Stonewall riots.

00:18:52.960 Take care, I'll see you then.

00:18:55.540 To watch the full video, please become a premium member at LotusEaters.com

Queer History： Part I ｜ Harry Hay and the Beginnings of American Gay Rights

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