Looking back on it, I’m astonished and proud — and scared.
A handful of raggedy-ass kids, including me, formed the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and made life infinitely better for LGBTQQ people, even saving the lives of many. But now all our gains might be undone.
Our predecessors in the homophile movement, brave as they were, pleaded for acceptance into American society and got nowhere. We in GLF had come up through the civil rights, anti-war, socialist, and feminist movements, and would not be satisfied with inclusion in a profoundly corrupt social order.
Rather than confining ourselves to a single issue, we allied with other radical organizations: the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, feminist, and socialist groups. We demanded, we didn’t beg. We stormed politicians’ offices and psychiatry conferences. We inspired the formation of gay liberation groups around the globe.
We changed the world.
Here’s what it was like before GLF:
—Gay sex was illegal in every American state except Illinois. Same-sex marriage was not legal anywhere on the planet.
—LGBTQ people could be imprisoned, thrown into mental hospitals, subjected to electroshock “therapy,” fired from jobs, evicted by landlords, and refused service in public accommodations. Gay bashers could murder us and be acquitted using the “gay panic” defense.
Here’s what we won:
—Same-sex marriage is now legal in 38 countries.
—There are openly queer people at all levels of the US government.
—LGBTQ people could serve openly in the US military, until 2025 when Trump ordered trans people removed.
—It’s illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ people in employment and housing.
Of course, we still have a long way to go:
—The “gay/trans panic” defense was eliminated in 20 American states, but the other 30 still allow it.
—Although 129 nations have no laws against gay sex between consenting adults, 53 others criminalize it, prescribing lengthy imprisonment, flogging, even the death penalty.
Ironically, what we did win was the inclusion our predecessors longed for. We can marry. We can adopt kids. We can enlist and kill and die to enrich the 0.1%.
However, we failed to dismantle the basic structure of society, so our victories may prove ephemeral. It’s not only LGBTQQ gains; it’s the gains of every allied group.
We’re up against a long-term, right-wing strategy to erase all the progress we’ve made since 1969. We’re up against billionaires who own more wealth than half of humanity. Here in America, they’ve purchased much of the media and all three branches of government.
Their tactic stays the same: target the most vulnerable groups — currently trans people and immigrants. Use the media to foment bigotry. Immigrants, even those with green cards, are being rounded up and put in concentration camps. States are passing anti-trans laws, restricting everything from medical care to driving to what bathroom you can use.
Trans and other queer literature is being removed from school libraries — as are books on slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, and feminist history.
Marriage rights are next. In 2021, 70% of Americans approved of same-sex marriage. By 2025, due to a deluge of conservative propaganda, that dropped to 54%. Right wing lawmakers have asked the Supreme Court to return marriage recognition to the states, just as they did with abortion rights.
I say we need to reach out and make new alliances. And this time, to go beyond a few rights here and there — we need to change an economic system that allows a handful of billionaires to divide us, to enslave us, and to plunder the planet.
What good will LGBTQQ rights, Black rights, immigrant rights do us, on an uninhabitable Earth?
Martha Shelley was the public spokesperson for NY Daughters of Bilitis (1967-1969). Soon after the Stonewall Rebellion, in July of 1969, she called for a protest march, the first march for LGBTQQ rights in history, and helped organize it. A founder of the Gay Liberation Front, the first, most radical, and influential LGBTQq organization to be formed after Stonewall, she is currently on the board of the Gay Liberation Front Foundation. She is the author of four books of poetry and a trilogy about Jezebel, Queen of Israel and her lesbian physician, and has also written a memoir, We Set the Night on Fire: Igniting the Gay Revolution, published by Chicago Review Press.
