Queer History： Part I ｜ Harry Hay and the Beginnings of American Gay Rights
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Summary
Harry Hay was the co-founder of the first major American gay rights organisation, the Mattachine Society, and one of the most influential gay activists of the 20th century. But was he also a closeted homophobe? And was he a member of the secret society known as The Orientist Order?
Transcript
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You've been sold a particular story about the gay rights movement.
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Gay and queer people were oppressed by a legal system that forced repressive Christian sexual
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standards on society and persecuted them unfairly for simply loving the men and women they loved.
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Somewhere in the 1960s a movement emerged from the sexual revolution galvanised by the
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famous Stonewall Riots and gay rights was born.
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It overcame resistance in the 1970s and persevered through the disaster of AIDS in the 1980s
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before finally achieving public acceptance sometime in the 1990s.
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In the mid-2010s homosexuals declared a triumphant victory when the US and the UK legalised gay
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All that was left to do now was spread the virtue of tolerance throughout the entire world.
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I mean, it was all well and good when they just wanted to love one another and get married
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Where are the days of respectable gay rights heroes like Harvey Milk and Larry Kramer?
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The solution requires that we return to a sensible, even conservative dare I say, moment in the
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gay rights movement that resembles something like the 90s but with gay marriage still intact.
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It works off the archetypal narrative that fits all of the civil rights movements of the 20th
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If you know it, you recognise the formula straight away because you have been conditioned to respond
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It's the story of civil rights and desegregation in the 1960s, of women's liberation, of sexual
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revolution, of secularisation, of decolonisation, of the creation of the welfare state and of democracy
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It's the story of the oppressed and repressed masses rising up against their immoral rulers
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and demanding their right to equality and equity.
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Questioning this narrative and all of its implicit assumptions amounts to heresy.
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We can only ever move forwards on the road to capital P progress.
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How well does all of this hold up to real history?
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Is the history of gay rights really as cut and dry as it seems?
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Was it really a noble movement led by otherwise normal people fighting for their rights?
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Or has it always been a vehicle for queer in culture, led by shady men and aided by the
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These are the questions that I intend to answer in this short series that are taking a deep
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I'll be mainly focusing on the primary figures and events that took place in the US going
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But hopefully it'll give you a good overview of how we got to where we are now.
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To kick off this series we'll be looking at Harry Hay.
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You may not have heard of Harry Hay, but he is vitally important to the real history of
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Once you get to know him a bit better, you'll understand why he was swept under the rug.
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First of all, his most important work was prior to Stonewall, and modern historiography sometimes
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brushes over this period in the aid of telling a simplified narrative.
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And Hay has been dubbed the founder of gay liberation.
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So skipping over his legacy seems a bit strange, doesn't it?
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And in a way, the whole gay rights movement, as you'll come to see from its aims to its
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Hay was the co-founder of the first major American gay rights organisation, the Mattachine Society.
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Now, the Mattachine Society was not the first gay rights activist organisation within the
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Its precursor was the Society for Human Rights, a Chicago-based group that existed very briefly
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Gerber himself was inspired by the work of Magnus Hirschfeld, who he became aware of through
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his time stationed in Germany with the US Army.
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Despite only lasting from 1924 to 1925, well, less than a full year all told, its impact
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is still felt through the influence it had on Harry Hayes.
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In 1929, 17-year-old Harry Haye was living in Los Angeles and partaking in the Pershing
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Where he met Champ Simmons, a former member of the Society for Human Rights.
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This told Haye all about the Society and its tragic demise, and this inspired Haye going
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This idea of gay rights or homophile groups, as they were then known, lay dormant in Haye's
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mind until 1950, when he formed the Mattachine Society alongside the fashion designer Rudi Gernreich.
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In the meantime, Haye had lived an eventful life, serving as an organist for Alistair Crowley's
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Order of the Temple Orientis in 1935 and joining the Communist Party USA in 1934 after being
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converted to the cause by the actor Will Greer, who was one of Haye's many, many gay lovers.
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Through his time in the party, he became pretty well connected.
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He taught at the party headquarters in Los Angeles alongside notable figures such as John Howard
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Lawson, head of the Hollywood Ten, a group of communist writers who were blacklisted in
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Even for what was, at the time, a very radical group, Haye was the radical among the Mattachine
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Owing from his time within the Communist Party, which he left in 1951, Haye was adept at rhetorical
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Unlike many other members of the society who sought a form of assimilation, Haye held categorically
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that homosexuals were not like heterosexuals and should not seek acceptance or assimilation
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within heterosexual society and all of its heteronormative characteristics.
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The argument that an abstract pressure to assimilate or conform into heteronormative society causes
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psychic harm to sexual minorities is a favourite of the modern left.
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In fact, an unfair pressure to conform to society has always been a mainstay of leftist myth-making,
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and a well-worn excuse on top of it for any violence committed in the name of leftist causes.
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Haye's mythologising, therefore, fits neatly within this tradition.
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Instead of assimilation which surely would have caused incalculable and inexcusable harm
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to homosexuals somehow, he preached in a manifesto that homosexuals were spiritually different,
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superior even, and that heterosexuals could learn a lot about how to better live their
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You could consider this an early form of the modern idea of queering a society, wherein
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normal people behave more like gays and adopt their lifestyle quirks.
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Now, as far as I can tell, this seems to consist of constant hard partying, casual sex, and
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It's also straight from the communist agitator playbook.
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Haye even accused more moderate members of the society who sought assimilation of being
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Even gay rights activists can thank Haye for the hysterical verbal flourishes that he popularised
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with all of this honestly quite overwrought rhetoric.
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Now, the Mattachine Society had a magazine that they published in 1953, called One, which
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the US Postal Service initially refused to deliver due to obscenity laws.
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But after the ruling in the Supreme Court case Roth v United States, which redefined the test
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for what constitutes obscenity, the magazine was able to be distributed.
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Other outreach work the group did included featuring in a 1961 documentary produced in
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The Rejected is actually an interesting time capsule of civil rights activism in the 1960s,
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especially the early 60s, as it pretends to be objective and not take any personal positions
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The documentary, for instance, relies heavily on the work of Alfred Kinsey and his reports
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on sexuality which had been published in the late 1940s through to the 50s.
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Kinsey himself is vital to understand the sexual revolution of the 60s, and so I might revisit
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But for now, it's enough to look over some of the stats and figures that are cited and
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Among the frankly absurd claims made throughout this documentary are that at least 37% of American
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males had some kind of orgasmic sexual contact following adolescence with another male, that
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18% of men are more homosexual than heterosexual, and that at least half of all married men have
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Kinsey himself had once testified to an American committee that 46% of the United States population
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had had a homosexual experience at least once in their lifetimes.
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What's interesting to consider when we look at these figures and how they were popularised
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is that the seeds for homosexual liberties were being planted all the way back in the late
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1940s through Alfred Kinsey's work, which was immediately picked up by the media and promoted
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This is despite the sensational and often controversial nature of Kinsey's work which
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Consider as well that his research was largely funded through grants received from the Rockefeller
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Foundation, so it had secure institutional backing, which suggests, to me at least, that in some
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way there were moneyed actors behind the scenes who had an interest in normalising what was
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I'll allow you to speculate in the comments below as to why they would have that interest
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Kinsey's work is worth its own deep dive, as I've mentioned, but it should be clear through
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his inflated numbers that the documentary was laying the groundwork to give viewers the
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false impression of homosexuality being commonplace and therefore to help normalise it.
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Which is ironic as it contradicts the anti-assimilationist and minoritarian rhetoric of Harry Hay, although
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I would argue that this more moderate and patient approach has proven, over time, far more effective
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The Mattachine Society's role in The Rejected is a short interview where they disavow any
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association with queens, effeminate to homosexual men, and label them minorities within the homosexual
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community, something that may in fact have been accurate at the time.
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They state that the purpose of the society is to dispel harmful stereotypes and go out of
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their way to emphasise the importance of laws protecting innocent young people.
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Interestingly enough, on the subject, one of the men states that he believes that most
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homosexuals wouldn't have ended up gay if they had had heterosexual experiences earlier
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One of the relevant criticisms of contemporary law that they discuss is the threat of security
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risks, homosexual men in important federal or state positions being blackmailed due to their
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Then and again, they emphasise the normalcy of gay men and their entitlement to the same
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Certainly, the men chosen to feature in the interview seem to represent the more conservative
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It'll be no surprise to you, then, that Hay had been all but pushed out of the Mattachine
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An avid supporter of sexual liberation, Hay claimed that he had slept with between two to three
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men a day between 1932 and 1936, taking his overall headcount into what must be the thousands.
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And he believed that this hedonism should be emphasised as an essential feature of homosexual
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So you can see how this would conflict with the information and disavowals of queens and
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hedonism that was being portrayed by Mattachine in The Rejected.
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After his ejection from Mattachine, Hay eventually formed another activist organisation called the
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Radical Fairies in 1979, which emphasised the supposed spiritual aspects of homosexuality.
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These has included being more in touch with nature and claimed that they represented the
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As part of the Radical Fairies project, they promoted different gender categories, popularising
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the two-spirit idea, which is now recognised by some sources as an official gender identity
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The Radical Fairies is one of the earliest examples of a group actively and openly seeking
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to queer society through subverting cultural norms.
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But all of this fails to touch on Harry Hay's most controversial belief.
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The belief in the legitimacy of paedophilic relationships.
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Hay claimed that his first gay sexual experience was when he was nine years old and that this
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proved to be the most important experience of his young life that informed everything else
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Hay even went on to claim that he was acting as jailbait to his accuser and had wanted it.
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Coming up his belief succinctly in a speech given at the 1983 Gay Academic Union Forum at
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New York University, Hay stated that, quote, the relationship with an older man is precisely
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what 13, 14 and 15 year old kids need more than anything else in the world, end quote,
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and referenced his own sexual encounters with older men as a 14 year old boy in a positive
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His uncompromising stance on the subject led to him being somewhat of a pariah in the movement
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as it advanced through the 70s and 80s, mainly because the more moderately minded knew that
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a full on support of paedophilic relationships was, let's say, not a popular position to assume,
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and wasn't going to win any mainstream backing.
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Founded in 1978 by the activist and journalist David Thorstad, the North American Man-Boy
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Love Association, otherwise known as Nambler, is a group that lives in infamy.
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Nambler is now widely condemned as a paedophile rights organisation and support for it can destroy
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What many don't know is that David Thorstad, who founded the organisation, was also a former
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president of the New York Gay Activist Alliance and a key activist in the early post-Stone
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War movement, as well as, imagine my shock here, a member of the Socialist Workers' Party
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and a writer for the Trotskyist paper, The Militant.
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Nambler was even the first US-based member of the International Lesbian and Gay Association,
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The ILGA actually had a consultant role with the UN, but the UN became critical of the inclusion
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of paedophile rights groups in 1994 and duly dropped them.
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You'd think it would have been a bit sooner that they thought that was a problem, but oh well,
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This was around the time when any association with paedophile rights was being publicly expunged
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from the movement due to all of the bad press that it garnered.
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Now, you may be thinking, that's all well and good, but what does Nambler have to do
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Well, Harry Hay was a fervent supporter of Nambler ever since its inception and never compromised
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While he was never a member himself, he did give numerous speeches at meetings the group
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held and wore a sign saying, Nambler walks with me, at a 1986 Los Angeles gay rights rally
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after controversy surrounding the group's inclusion at the event.
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So you can see that at least there was always a very divisive element to the inclusion of
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Despite how discredited they became in the 1990s, particularly following the release of documentaries
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like Chicken Hawk Men Who Love Boys, Hay maintained his support of Nambler, and everything it
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fought for all the way up until his death in 2002.
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So this look at Harry Hay isn't the whole story.
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I'll be examining the other essential figures and events that formed the gay rights movement
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But bear in mind that the person that many publications, even those as mainstream as the
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New York Times in their 2002 obituary for Harry Hay, celebrate as the father of gay liberation,
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was an unapologetic paedophile and fought fiercely for the right of grown men to abuse children.
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His paedophilic inclinations and communist agitation tactics have left an undeniable mark on the
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While there are and were many moderate voices campaigning on behalf of homosexuals, ones
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who disagree vehemently with the values that Hay stood for, the extremist activists embedded
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in academia and the media share the spirit, values and goals of Harry Hay.
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Thank you for watching, I hope you found it informative, I look forward to seeing you
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in part 2 where I should be looking at what actually happened at the Stonewall riots.
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