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Arthur Evans' Stonewall Era History

GAA Founder Arthur Evans was always too radical for an earlier Homosexual League of New York militant like myself. However, I've missed hearing his voice in the debates over our history. And, looking back at the video tape I made of GAA's NYC Marriage Bureau "Zap", I've come to have a new respect for "instant anger" Arthur.

Randolfe Wicker and Arthur Evans, pictured in 1960

I'm especially happy to see his account of history in GayToday. Previously he seemed to have had an anti-media attitude preventing most researchers from hearing his descriptions of events in which he was deeply involved.

I voted against Arthur Evans in the fierce election for the presidency of GAA and supported the more "moderate" Jim Owles, a decision that I would choose to make again today. However, I found Arthur Evans article in GayToday very factual and informative. I am happy he is writing. I think he is still too radical for me but I welcome the sound of his voice in this historical debate.

I have just one major objection to his account of historical events. He says "WE" videotaped the GAA zap at the NYC Marriage License Bureau. The "we" was myself, Randy Wicker and my lover Peter Ogren. It was my first videotape and one that survived and went down in history. No one else had a video camera in those days. They were too expensive.

I don't want to annoy Arthur. I just want him to realize that Randy Wicker, a Mattachine member going back to l958 and fellow GAA-activist, was the one who made that video tape. Watching the tape makes me realize that, although I did not agree with Arthur Evans' politics, he had great sense of timing, theatrics and strategy.

I just wish he would recognize that I, the first homosexual to speak out on radio as a self-identified homosexual, the first "homosexual civil rights activist" (would someone please tell me what a 'gay right' is as opposed to a 'civil right' is?-- It was a 'linguistic debate that we early movement, people lost to the new militant "gay rights" folks.) Losing that debate has now put us into the position of defending our simple "civil rights" to security in housing, employment, etc. against the religious right's attack on those rights as "special" rights. They're not special rights, they're civil rights. We early activists had the right terminology.

Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
Zap, You're Alive!

GAA Must Be Restored to History

India's First Gay Newsmagazine Going On-Line

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Bombay Dost
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Those newcomers were so quick to discard careful thought for verbally easy and catchy terms like 'gay rights'--so much easier to say than the longer and more accurate term "civil rights for homosexuals'!...

I'm wandering here. We all have so much to say. But I demand that the early pre-Stonewall activists not be ignored. Where was the "more radical than anyone" Arthur Evans when the Sex Freedom League and the Homosexual League of New York held the first public demonstration for civil rights for homosexuals outside the U.S. Army Induction Center in September, l964? Perhaps he was not yet pubescent. Perhaps he was just another homosexual growing up in America thinking he was the only one!

Arthur Evans (right) confronts Household Finance
Photo Courtesy: Gay

Where were all these "enlightened heroes" of post-Stonewall when we picketed the United Nations in NYC and the White House in Washington to protest Fidel Castro's rounding up of homosexuals in Cuba and sending them to "camps" for rehabilitation because homosexuality was a "capitalist" disease? If they weren't still teenagers, they were "unborn" gay activists who would pop out of the womb in 1969-1970 and declare themselves the founders of the "new" 'gay rights' movement.

How charming these "Johnny-come-latelies" were. The first thing they did was disown, discredit and distance themselves from the very people who had created the "ideology" that they embraced (at long last) as a new public community. No one gives credit to Magnus Hirschfeld, the German who really founded our Movement in the 1890s only to be run out of Germany by Hitler in 1932. We, the early American activists challenged the psychiatrists who declared us sick and tried to milk the guilt-laden gay folk of as much money as possible, promising that they could 'cure' this 'disease' called homosexuality in just eight sessions at $50 per session--which in l960 dollars was more like $200 per session.

And these new post-Stonewall "Gay Militants" were so thrilled when they finally got the American Psychiatric Association to declare them "non-sick." But we pre-Stonewallers had laid the groundwork for this change. We early militants knew that these slimy bloodsucking psychiatrists knew nothing about homosexuality. They had theories, stupid theories at that. WE lived homosexuality. We WERE the authorities on our own lives. Are we sick again if they change their minds tomorrow?

Oh well, my darlins, I've let off a little steam for now. Let me say goodnight to Arthur Evans and all the rest of you children. I rarely get fired up like this. It must be that Arthur Evans' talent for hitting "bottom line notes." I don't always agree with him but it's sure nice to hear one of the generation that followed ours speaking out at last.

Arthur, welcome to the "correcting official history" club. Glad to have you on board.

Cloningly yours,
Randolfe (Randy) Wicker
Secretary
NYC Mattachine Society
1964 (or was it 1965?)

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Cheers
Warm regards
Ashok Row Kavi