Zap the gay away
Coming of Age During the 1970s — Chapter Four: Respectable
Episode Notes
Gay rights activists in NYC are first out of the gate to propose anti-discrimination legislation, confident it will sail through the City Council. Instead, they smash a wall of ignorance and bigotry. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Eric happens upon some revelatory literature in his dentist’s waiting room.
Episode first published May 25, 2023.
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Learn more about some of the topics and people discussed in the episode by exploring the links below. For contemporary press about the New York City Council hearings on Intro 475, have a see at the PDFs of the coverage in GAY embedded on this page.
Consenting Adult by Laura Hobson:
1970s efforts to pass a Modern York City lgbtq+ civil rights bill:
- A short history (NYC Department of Records and Information Services).
- Contextualizing Intro 475 (OutHistory).
- Overview of GAA’s conduct at City Hall , 1970-75 (NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project).
- Video presentation “ZAP!: The Push for a Gay Rights Bill, 1970-75” (Jay Shockley/
The Lavender Menace Forms
Educator Elaine Noble was encouraged to run for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1974 by former Congress member Barney Frank’s sister, Ann Wexler. The two women had formed the Women’s Political Caucus, and Wexler thought Noble would represent her Irish Catholic Boston district well, even though she was LGBTQ+.
It was the height of desegregation, so Noble rode buses with children of color and had campaign workers monitor school bus stops to demonstrate her deep belief in equality. A gay newspaper correspondent told her, “You should stick to your control kind, or we’re going to get someone else to represent us.” Noble responded, “Well, I assume, David, I am sticking with my own kind,” according to an interview Noble gave Ron Schlittler for his “Out and Elected in the USA: 1974–2004” project for OutHistory.org. “You can’t say that you want progress or change for one collective and not for another. It doesn’t happen that way.”
Noble experienced such harassment—from bomb threats to entity spat upon by an eighty-five-year-old man—that at one point she campaigned protected by state troopers. “It was a very plain campaign. Ugly,” she told Schlittler. “There wa
Gay Activists Alliance Zap at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
History
On April 13, 1970, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was celebrating its 100th anniversary. Mayor John V. Lindsay was invited to participate in a morning ceremony on the front steps that also inaugurated the new fountain in front of the museum. The Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) was furious over the police raid at the Snake Pit on March 8, and had been trying without victory to engage the mayor over the issues of police harassment of, and job discrimination against, the LGBT community. GAA decided to confront Lindsay at the museum in its first public zap. (See our curated theme for background on the “zap” tactic.)
Arthur Evans, GAA member, c. 2004
Marty Robinson briefly interrupted Lindsay’s museum speech, but was pulled away by police. After the ceremony, the mayor was handed a GAA flyer, and GAA president Jim Owles said to him, “You have our tract. Now when the hell are you going to speak to homosexuals?” About fifteen GAA members with leaflets, including Arthur Bell, Arthur Evans, and Morty Manford, also managed to join the receiving
by Mashka Sutton, Class of 2022, Government and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Zaps were a key part of gender non-conforming activism and organizing at Cornell in the 1970s through the 1990s. These zap workshops usually involved two women and two men from GAYPAC (Gay People at Cornell) speaking to a group about homosexuality and dispelling myths about it. This environment “creat[es] a living workshop in which the life-giving gay-straight interaction takes place, where we share our control selves and where they experience their true feelings about it,” as Wayne Jefferson writes. These workshops included an overview of the history of lgbtq+ liberation at Cornell University, describing the services that the Gay Center provided, and taking questions from participants. Participants asked questions that were centered around the themes of coming out and gay relationships, including promiscuity, “naturalness,” oppression, and PDA. The feedback portion of the zap intake sheet from 1982 reflects the actual world of zap workshops, that oftentimes there was mixed or negative feedback from participants as facilitators broached still-taboo topics surrounding queerness and were met with bigotry.
Discus
How Gay Activists Challenged the Politics of Civility
From pie-throwing to shouting down universal figures, these groups disturbed the establishment to outcome change
On April 13, 1970, New York Mayor John Lindsay and his wife arrived at the Metropolitan Opera House. It was opening night of the season, and Romeo Et Juliette was playing. The Republican mayor had no idea he was about to be ambushed by members of the newly formed Gay Activist Alliance (GAA). The protesters infiltrated the event, dressed in tuxedos as to fuse in with the elite crowd, and shouted “End Police Harassment!” and “Gay Power!” Their pleas, aimed at the mayor, rang through the packed lobby. Despite the headlines made a year earlier during the Stonewall riots, Lindsay had refused to enact a city-wide anti-discrimination ordinance. Gay rights activists would continue to confront him in public over the next two years, demonstrating up to boo, stomp shout, and rush the stage at his weekly television show tapings.
In 1972, in response to the unrelenting pressure, Lindsay at last signed an executive order prohibiting city agencies from discriminating against profession candidates based on sexual orientation.
From its incep