Badpuppy Gay Today |
Monday, 02 June, 1997 |
At the end of this month many will celebrate, dancing
and marching, the proud bursts of self-esteem that led, at the
end of June, 1969, to the Stonewall rebellion. Each week during
this month, therefore, GayToday will celebrate outstanding
Stonewall Era personalities now gone, pioneers who lived proud
dreams of same-sex love and affection, dreams still struggling
to be actualized today more than ever before.
Jim Owles, in his mid-20's when this personality
sketch was written, was the first president of New York's Gay
Activist's Alliance (GAA) whose founders and membership burst
on the New York scene wielding bold strategies, shortly after
the Stonewall uprising, a Greenwich Village bar patrons' rebellion
against police oppression now celebrated-- only 27 years later--in
public parades across the globe.
Kay Tobin, already in 1969 a veteran pioneering activist
herself, is the author of The Gay Crusaders, a book
of seminal biographies of leading lesbian and gay activists, those
who dared to seize the moment during a particularly critical period
of social change. The following chapter has been excerpted from
Tobin's out-of-print book where her historic portraits enjoy
an unrivaled authority, having been written during the very timeframe
of the histories described. Tobin had also been present at the
December, 1969 founding of the legendary GAA, the most effective
and high-spirited New York direct-action gay and lesbian liberation
group ever. Those who danced at the GAA Firehouse and who bonded
affectionately across all racial, gender, and age groups, were
Manhattan's initiators of a much-needed dignified, principled,
in-your-face militancy, keeping all the while to a doctrine of
non-violence coupled with imaginative strategies that were sometimes
peppered with often humorous surprises.
At the time Kay Tobin spoke with him for this biographical
sketch, Jim Owles was serving his second presidential term as
the respected leader of Manhattan's feisty direct-action group.
As remembered by GayToday's editor Jim Owles was a man
of noticeable calm and civility, a quiet but keen thinker who,
when he spoke, commanded almost immediate allegiance from hundreds
of GAA members. In the midst of some very zany zaps-- GAA's unruly,
surprise protests--he stood like one unbothered-- always cool-headed,
a low-key barker of quickly-heeded strategies.
Jack Nichols,
GayToday
"Restrictive institutions have always drawn
my fire," Jim Owles exclaims, as he looks back over his 25
years as a rebel. He is still firing away at restrictive institutions
from his position in Gay Activists Alliance. At the time of this
interview Jim is now serving his second term as president of GAA
of New York.
This pioneer Gay Activist Alliance (now there are
others around the country) grew from a membership of 12 men and
women meeting in an apartment in January 1970, to a membership
of around 300 by the summer of 1971. Not bad for a year and a
half, Jim feels. He likes to recall that, even in its early months,
GAA was called by a Boston admirer "the hottest little gay
group on the East Coast." Now the New York organization has
a center of its own, a four story, 10,000 square-foot renovated
firehouse--"The GAA firehouse" as it's called--located
just below Greenwich Village proper. And Jim Owles is one of those
at the heart of the GAA success story.
Jim was born October 9, 1946, in Chicago. The eldest
of six children, Jim has two younger sisters and three younger
brothers. His father was a professional man, and both his parents
were "middle class, liberal Republicans." They sent
Jim to both public and private schools, and in both settings he
remained completely consistent: he was a known underachiever.
"I hate to use the word because its such a catch-all
word, but school always seemed oppressive to me," Jim says,
wincing slightly at the word, "oppressive." He dislikes
radical rhetoric. "I hung out with malcontents who were
also underachievers, and that was my pattern through school.
I hated things that were required, and found it repulsive to be
told to take certain courses. I wanted to go to school to learn
what I wanted to learn."
Jim argued with his teachers when he was required
to take social dancing. "I really resented that! What bull-shit!"
And the same with gym. "That was another rebellion. I hated
what seemed a militaristic, Hitler-jungend type of thing. I said,
'Throw me out! I refuse to go!' I was kind of proud of that, because
in high school then, everyone was rather docile and went along
with the requirements. Only a handful of us were rebels. And it
felt very good, rebelling against what I felt to be unjustified
intervention in our lives."
Fencing was the one sport that appealed to Jim. "I
was always drawn to that, as opposed to team sports where you're
part of a machine, taking orders from a coach or captain. I was
just too individualistic for that."
During two years of college at Northwestern University,
Jim cut classes, played pinochle, sat around at rap sessions,
again refused to do required reading, and "did political
agitations against the school." He did not participate in
the mainstream of school politics, which seemed to him "an
insult to my intelligence," Nonetheless he planned to major
in political science.
Jim says his parents felt his refusal to strive for
academic success was a phase that would pass. "My parents
never placed restrictions on me, and I respect them for that.
Discipline was kept to a minimum, and they let me have as much
freedom as I could handle. They believe in that very much and
they didn't nag me."
Nonetheless, Jim felt at odds politically with his
parents and felt forced to look at positions other than middle-of-the-road
Republicanism. "But I was never too satisfied with the extremes
either. I was no John Bircher or Minuteman. I was for a time attracted
to Ayn Rand, and to the new libertarianism that doesn't have the
authoritarianism that they extreme right and the extreme left
share, or the morality of the extreme right."
Today Jim feels that Ayn Rand's theories are too
dogmatic. "Romantically I lean toward 19th century anarchy,"
Jim explains, "but practically, I'm just an old Eugene McCarthy
liberal. I'll admit to being a militant reformer."
Jim's family were not religious. He recalls that
he felt no interest whatsoever in religion and fell asleep when
taken to church by friends or relatives. Today he says he feels
the utmost contempt for the churches. "I'm militant about
the church as an institution because of the damage done to the
minds of homosexuals by the churches. Most of organized religion
has been the moral enemy of thinking people. I don't want to destroy
the churches, but I want to save young homosexuals from being
damaged by the churches."
After two years of college, Jim's interest in becoming
a political science teacher faded. "I wouldn't be a martyr
and take those required education courses to become certified
by the state to teach," he says. In addition he had no taste
for taking the loyalty oath then required of teachers in the state
of Illinois. At twenty he dropped out of school, joined the Air
Force to avoid the draft.
"It never occurred to me to check the box,"
he says (meaning the "Yes" box under the question, "Do
you have or have you ever had....homosexual tendencies?"
on the old medical form then used by the services). Jim thought
of his homosexual feelings as a passing phase or that maybe he
was bisexual.
He chose the Air Force because it had "the least
amount of discipline. But even that was too much," he reports.
"There was an organized program to single out individuals
at random and get them to do humiliating things, to break down
their individualism. I knew I had years of hassle coming up. I
almost went AWOL. Instead, I applied for Air Intelligence and
was accepted."
He continued to pursue his own interests. "The
war in Vietnam was heating up, and there was a growing discontent
with it among servicemen. I attended local anti-war demonstrations.
They were, of course, monitored." In addition Jim disobeyed
a sergeant's order to stop distributing anti-war leaflets on base.
He was put through a summary court-martial, in which the American
Civil Liberties Union defended him but lost. Jim was downranked,
his literature was confiscated, and he was thrown out of Air Intelligence
and sent "with other malcontents" to an isolated area
of eastern Montana, "kind of like a little political Siberia."
Jim was made a water treatment specialist, but then
it was feared he might be a subversive and contaminate the water.
So he was made a typist--a two finger typist, to be exact. On
his free time he wrote letters to the Montana newspapers criticizing
the war, the air base, and the officers. "That made things
interesting," Jim recalls.
Ultimately Jim was shipped, under tranquilizers,
to another base for psychiatric observation. "The doctor
was a nice, liberal Jewish psychiatrist and he certified that
I was completely sane." Jim was then sent to California,
where he involved himself with the American Servicemen's Union
and with circulating anti-war petitions. He was given an administrative
discharge, a general discharge that is less than honorable, but
under honorable conditions, as the regulations say. He was issued
his discharge in California at twenty-two.
And in California Jim had his first homosexual experience.
He was at a party, everyone was high, and he drifted off into
a bedroom with a young acquaintance, Jim recalls. "I found
it quite enjoyable and felt no guilt. But I was embarrassed for
him because he felt so uneasy. He was a Southerner, from a fundamentalist
family. I felt a great deal of compassion for him, but I wasn't
sure what to say to him to reassure him. I couldn't find the words
to tell him why not to feel guilty.
"I wasn't bothered because I was against the
church, I was against the state--it had tried to tell me what
my politics should be, so I didn't respect it--and I was against
psychiatry. My parents don't have faith in psychiatrists but see
them as religious leaders without garb. I inherited a distrust
of psychiatrists from my parents. I regard psychiatrists as mystics
and soothsayers in their own way and never considered them men
of science."
Nonetheless, Jim did feel concerned about what his
friends would think of him if they knew. He thought it "a
flaw in their thinking that they didn't see it as part of individual
rights and liberties to do what they wanted with their own bodies!
But I valued their friendship then, so I hid my homosexuality."
Jim didn't know of any gay bars in the area. He had
two more sexual encounters with the young man, who was "very
afraid," Jim says. Jim decided to return to his home city.
In Chicago he got a job with a brokerage firm and
was eager for advancement. "I was under the mistaken impression
that if you were good and sharp, rules and regulations didn't
stand in your way. You could go up to the top. I found out it
wasn't true." He was unhappy with Chicago for other reasons.
"It's a very down city. It drives away non conformists. I
felt it would eventually break me if I stayed." So he moved
to New York and took a job on Wall Street.
Jim didn't know how to find the gay subculture, and
he didn't realize that homosexuals were all around him in the
Village. As he puts it, "I found the gay political movement
before I found the subculture." He had arrived in New York
just in time to read about history's first homosexual uprising
after the police raided the now-famous Stonewall bar. Then he
saw a notice for a meeting of "militant homosexuals."
Jim went to that meeting "after work, in a suit
with a vest and tie. Everyone looked at me--and I was scared to
death! I was really intimidated because I felt so out of place."
Dress acceptable during the working day on Wall Street was obviously
out of place here: jeans, bell-bottoms, and counterculture garb
were the order of the day in summer, 1969.
"But I met Marty Robinson and felt at home once
I saw we had areas of common interest politically." They
soon started to rap about whether or not the gay movement should
seek to align itself with movements of other oppressed peoples,
Marty being somewhat against alignment and Jim being somewhat
in favor of it in those days.
Jim quickly acquired a different set of clothes to
wear to meetings of the militant group that was then forming in
New York, the Gay Liberation Front. "I liked the individualistic
and decorative uniforms that military officers could, at certain
times and places in history, design for themselves." So Jim
put on tight jeans and a one-of-a-kind Civil War jacket, and he
let his hair grow into a Beatle bob.
Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was leafleting vigorously
in an effort to organize New York gays, and Jim went out to leaflet
with Marty. "Hand them only to gay people," Marty told
him. "How will I know them?" Jim asked. "Oh, you'll
get to know them," Marty replied. "And I did,"
Jim says. "I don't believe in ESP, but after a while you
just get to know."
It wasn't very long before Jim found himself in bed
with another GLFer. "It was a little awkward, partly because
of a disagreement on politics," Jim recalls. "He was
a Marxist and was a little up-tight about sex. I got the impression
he went to bed out of a sense of devotion to the cause."
"Then the first time I danced with a man was
at a GLF dance, and I really loved it! It was terrific! I kind
of have a cuddly nature, so I got into that very quickly. And
while leafleting in the Village, I picked up the jargon. From
the very start I thought: gay people are so easy to talk to! Gay
life is going to be really great!"
At that time, Jim says, GLF of New York (now defunct)
had a wide political spectrum. Factions were always jockeying
for control. For example, there were arguments over the content
of leaflets, and finally one would come out that was "impossible"
from Jim's point of view.
Four or five philosophies would be thrown in: a little
Marxism, a little classical liberalism, a little anarchist pitch.
How could such a group ever stay together? We didn't! There was
a bi-weekly debate over whom we align with, whom we endorse. When
the Black Panthers were endorsed I resigned as treasurer of GLF
and I left." He felt the Black Panthers were strongly anti-gay.
By this time Jim was convinced that GLF's attention was going
to almost every oppressed minority except gays, and that a non-alignment
policy, or at least one demanding reciprocity between the oppressed
groups, was the only sensible course.
GLF, Jim feels, wanted to keep "their hard-working
moderates, but I considered we were nothing more than window-dressing."
He says that extremists in GLF "blocked all attempts at starting
some kind of structure or continuity. It was actually an infantile
resentment of any kind of authority or structure."
Jim, Marty Robinson, and several others left the
chaotic, strife-torn GLF at the same time, the fall of 1969. "Then
in January 1970, after several preliminary get-togethers, we had
our first official meeting of Gay Activists Alliance in an apartment
on the Upper East Side." The small group had a constitution,
officers, an executive committee, a copy of Robert's Rules
of Order, and the determination to be focused on one issue
only: gay liberation. No alliances with other oppressed minorities
could be argued over, for none were to be sought. No political
ideology was to govern. There was to be room in GAA for gay people
of every political hue, as long as they were willing to work in
a structured organization with parliamentary procedure and work
militantly, though non-violently, for gay liberation.
Jim Owles was elected the first GAA president and
a year later was re-elected for a second term.
"You can't just say, organize politically and
liberate yourselves! That's too vague," Jim points out. Soon
after organizing, GAA members spelled out specific goals and reforms
that they felt would constitute first steps toward gay liberation:
1. Fair employment legislation for gays.
2. Fair housing legislation for gays.
3. Repeal of New York State's laws against sodomy
and solicitation.
4. Legislation forbidding police entrapment and
entrapment.
5. An end to the harassment of gay bars.
In GAA, working "militantly" for such reforms
usually means confrontation---very often (though not always) unexpected
and angry public confrontation. "An action," "a
zap," these are common terms in GAA. Jim explains: "Gays
have to develop anger just as blacks did. Anger isn't always destructive.
It's better than being depressed. Gays must redirect anger that
has been largely inward, outward---where it belongs. That
doesn't mean smashing windows. It means confronting people who
do have the power and saying, "Look here, ours are not ridiculous
or frivolous demands--they're something every American should
have!"
Jim tried force once, and then only symbolically,
as a protest. That was during one of GAA's very first actions,
the day the original twelve members plus several supporters went
to City Hall to get an appointment to see Mayor Lindsay about
problems facing New York gays. Naively they brought along picket
signs that revealed their plans to set up a picket and attempt
a sit-in if the appointment wasn't granted. Suddenly, Jim remembers,
the building was declared by police to be "closed to all
members of the public." Yet other members of the public were
going in. Police massed on the steps of City Hall and thwarted
all peaceful attempts of the tiny group of gays to enter the building.
Even mounted policemen suddenly appeared. Press people assigned
to City Hall poured forth with pads and pencils, and TV cameras
switched on to the scene."
"Limp wrists stiffened today at City Hall..."
a TV announcer chortled on the newscast that night as GAA got
its first round of publicity. News photos showed Jim Owles throwing
himself futilely against the line of police, then being shoved
off City Hall property. "He's the scrappiest little faggot
in New York," Marty Robinson whispered with admiration and
affection. Everyone laughed at the in-group joke and fell into
a pocket line. All Jim got at City Hall that day was a sore foot--those
mounted police aren't always too careful.
"I didn't think of it as using force,"
Jim comments. "I was simply trying to retain my right of
access to a public building." Since then he's been to City
Hall many times, usually by invitation, but not always.
Thereafter Jim quickly firmed up a standard role
in the many GAA confrontations with politicians that followed,
a role much more congenial to him. In a public confrontation with
politicians, for example, "a two pronged attack is usually
needed. First a segment of the group comes on with a very hard
approach; then another segment of the group comes on presenting
the same ideas in a much more reasonable tone. On the one hand
are the super-militants, people like Marty Robinson and Arthur
Evans; on the other, Mr. Moderate, Mr. Soft-Spoken, here's the
diplomat! He admits "it doesn't always work; the diplomat
and the firebrand may both be rejected." |
The sensible moderate, the one who is calm in the
midst of a stormy zap--that's the image Jim projects. "Glacial,"
some people call him. Jim sees his role more positively. "It's
just part of me that I believe people are basically good and can
be reasoned with and brought over."
Looking back over GAA's quest for gay power by action
tactics, Jim says, "it was only natural that we should first
concentrate our energies on those people in politics who should
naturally be our allies." Hence GAA started by attending
meetings of the Village Independent Democrats (VID), an influential
political club frequently addressed by liberal politicians on
both the state and local levels of government. One night, New
York City Council-woman Carol Greitzer was zapped at the VID by
about 20 GAA members who wanted to know why she had earlier refused
to accept from Jim Owles a petition with nearly 6,000 signatures
asking her help with GAA goals. Mrs. Greitzer's explanation was
that on the day Jim tried to give her the petitions she had too
many other papers to carry home, and anyway she felt that other
politicians could be of more help to homosexuals.
After the heat of the super-militants' shouts had
melted Councilwoman Greitzer's composure, Jim stepped up beside
her and addressed himself both to her and to the packed VID meeting.
He said (as reported in GAY , June 1, 1970) that "it
was an outrage that homosexuals should not be able to petition
their representatives for redress of grievances, and that if she
would not accept the petitions, 'she's no longer our representative
and we'll have to look elsewhere.' " Councilwoman Greitzer
took the petitions. A VID member told a GAA member, "Thank
you for shaking us up. Sometimes we need this."
Another GAA zap squad caught Arthur Goldberg, then
Democratic hopeful for the New York governorship, at a campaign
stop in Manhattan. They asked him what he would do to repeal the
sodomy law. When Goldberg replied that there were more important
things to think about and slipped into his limousine, Jim Owles
told Assemblyman Al Blumanthal, who was assisting Goldberg that
day, "I think we showed Arthur Goldberg that whenever he
appears here in this city, he can expect to be asked questions
by homosexual constituents." Before the campaign was over,
Goldberg had issued a pro-gay rights statement.
Bella Abzug, successful candidate for the U.S. House
of Representatives, came eagerly to GAA during her campaign and
received a standing ovation from over 200 gays for her pro-gay
remarks. On that occasion Jim told the militant gay organization,
"I can promise you that Bella isn't going to be the last
politician brought down here one way or another to speak to us."
Meanwhile, city councilmen and New York City's Commission
on Human Rights were approached by GAA about fair employment legislation
in New York City. All agreed the time was ripe, and, ultimately,
the Clingan-Burden-Weiss-Scholnick bill (Intro 475) was introduced
into City Council. Jim gave this legislation top priority, knowing
that fear of loss of job prevents gays from coming out into the
open and insisting on equal rights. He told the New York Post
on November 5, 1970: "You shouldn't have to be on guard
at your job against what you say and who you're seen with. The
point is that you shouldn't have to hide what you are."
Mayor Lindsay's support for gay rights, however,
was still missing, and this was considered vital to the passage
of the bill. GAA had started dogging Lindsay in public as early
as April, 1970, confronting him at the Metropolitan Opera, the
Metropolitan Museum, a peace rally, and a television filming.
The group got meetings with Lindsay's deputies, but Lindsay continued
his silence on gay rights.
Jim puts forth a vigorous defense of GAA's public
confrontations of Lindsay, which many New York gays found rude,
distasteful or hard to understand. "The New York gay community
was sold a package on Lindsay by old-line gay organizations that
almost sets him up as some sort of monarch. What he's done for
gays has always been unofficial, behind closed doors, and like
a royal whim, Lindsay has ended homosexuals' most obvious problem,
entrapment.
"But younger gays are not satisfied by unofficial
acts. There's no reason in the world why Lindsay couldn't reverse
himself. And no reason to believe that when he leaves, his successor
can't go back to the old ways. Both GAA and the gay press have
not been successful in letting gays know this. Gays have been
infatuated with the charisma of Lindsay, but in actuality he has
up to this time shown no visible support of gay rights."
"Furthermore," Jim says, "a lot of
gays are just afraid of GAA rocking the boat, that if we make
Lindsay mad, he'll reverse his royal decree. And that's the thing
that makes me angry, that whole attitude. It shouldn't
be up to him or to any legislator or administrator to give us
something and then have the power to take it right back. It should
be part of the law that police cannot entrap and that gays have
fair employment and housing rights.
"And if a mayor like Lindsay can speak out eloquently
for other minorities, then he owes it to the gay people who have
strongly supported him. We have a man who poses himself to the
city and the nation as being a very humane and liberal man. If
that is indeed his true image, then he owes it to that image to
be completely humane on all issues, not just those that are safe.
I'm interested in supporting people who are willing to take controversial,
non-popular stands. For the record, I was in favor of Lindsay's
election. Gays helped build Lindsay's margin of victory in New
York--and I don't particularly like being taken for granted. It's
up to a leader to lead and not to follow the Harris poll and put
some issues on the back burner until the public is ready for them.
"You don't get politicians on your side by keeping
quiet. You should convince people who should be your allies. They're
interested in you too as allies, and not as timid allies. So Lindsay
may be personally pissed off when we zap him, but I think he basically
respects us because he is a liberal and recognizes we are not
making unrealistic demands."
(Authors note: After the interview with Jim Owles
was taped, Mayor Lindsay issued on May 17, 1971, a statement backing
the fair employment bill in City Council.)
As for the chairman of the city's Commission on Human
Rights, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Jim maintains that in GAA's fight
for a fair employment law to cover gays, "she has been very
helpful, but I don't think she would have been as helpful if we
hadn't shown her how earnest we were, and that had to be done
through constant pressure. This may at times have made her personally
angry at us, but we showed her how earnest we were."
Jim relates that he and members of GAA's Fair Employment
Committee paid an unannounced visit to public hearings held by
the Commission on Human Rights to investigate alleged discriminatory
hiring practices in the city's schools. Members of other minorities
had been lined up to testify, but none from the gay community.
In front of the press covering the hearings, Jim and the other
gays announced they were prepared to disrupt the hearings unless
discrimination against gays was also probed. The Commission acceded
and accepted written testimony from gays claiming discrimination
by the Board of Education.
"They couldn't have been more surprised,"
Jim notes, adding that Mrs. Norton's reaction seemed positive
and that he trusts gays will not be overlooked in the future when
such testimony is being sought. He says further, "I think
when gays think about it realistically, blacks have gotten the
most when they've been angry, and rightfully so. I mean, you
shouldn't have to be out there picketing in order to talk about
fair employment legislation and so forth."
How does Jim's busy political life affect his social
and sexual life? Jim admits that it can no longer be said of him
that he is as active sexually as he is politically. "Not
at this present period. I hope it returns to that, but right now
I just don't have the time for even the flings that I used to
have, let alone try to have a love relationship." When he
stays up until 3 A.M., as he often does, it's quite likely he's
just reading the newspapers to keep abreast of political currents.
He champions the idea of many life-styles for homosexuals.
Although once he was attracted to the concept of communal-type
living, he admits that is perhaps utopian. "One may have
to settle at this point for a love relationship with just one
other individual at a time. But I also want to say that you don't
have to have one other person or group of people as lovers, in
order for you to be a happy homosexual. I think there are many
ways of being happy that don't require having a lover. I don't
think looking for a lover should be your prime drive. I know a
number of people who are happy without lovers, and I think you
shouldn't regard yourself as being incomplete until you find someone."
Jim's parents know now that he is gay and involved
in the gay movement. "They've been very understanding and
accepting about it. We've always kept a good but distant relationship,
and that's been best on both sides. About the only concern they
had was one of safety. My mother feels strongly about this--the
way the country is now with so many assassinations, she's very
worried."
Even Jim admits he's discussed with Marty Robinson
the possibility of the assassination of some up-front person in
the gay movement. He feels, however, that avoidance of personality
cults and the building of strong organizations will minimize any
drastic damage to the movement should an assassination occur.
The late Dr. Martin Luther King, whom Jim admires very much, made
a mistake in not building an organization strong enough to hold
up well under the loss of his leadership, Jim contends.
He also feels that Dr. King slowed the momentum of
the black rights movement by departing from a one-issue stance
and involving himself heavily with the peace movement. Jim still
attends the major peace demonstrations today, marching in the
gay contingent; but he does not and cannot participate as representing
GAA. Most of Jim's marching time nowadays is necessarily spent
for the gay cause.
As one of several gay speakers addressing a rally
of 2500 gays in Albany on March 14, 1971, Jim delivered one of
the more fiery speeches. He told the throng (pictured on the cover
of this book): "We're not here to ask for something. We're
here to demand. We're here to confront the legislators
and shake them up. We're here to give them one large consciousness-raising
session!"
That rally was in support of several bills to benefit
gays that were pending in the New York State legislature, including
a state-level fair employment bill and a measure to repeal the
sodomy law. "Repeal is important to gays because this law
is an insult, because its an affront to us to be listed by the
state as a criminal element." While he concedes that the
sodomy laws are seldom enforced, he sees repeal as an important
psychological victory.
Jim says that repeal of the sodomy law in Illinois
ten years ago didn't make much difference in the lives of gays
"because it wasn't accomplished by them but done for them.
Many were not even aware of the repeal." Harassment of gays
under other Illinois laws was simply stepped up, because there
was no gay power behind the repeal. Jim feels that gays' demonstrating
openly, lobbying vigorously, and exercising their new political
power for state law reforms will make things different in New
York.
Regarding chances of getting such bills passed in
the conservative New York State legislature, Jim says: "It
may be extremely naive of me, but I think that even conservative
Republicans can be won over on certain issues like sodomy law
repeal. If they are true to the rhetoric they espouse--that the
state has no right to interfere with a person's individual liberties
or freedom as long as he's no hurting anyone else--they should
be with us. I would like especially to try to get these conservatives
interested in sodomy law repeal." Unfortunately they were
not ready in New York State in 1971. Repeal was narrowly defeated
when most of the Republicans voted against it on a roll-call vote.
At this exciting juncture in his life, Jim is living
as a pauper. The sum total of his belongings can be put into two
laundry bags. He found that out when he moved into the tiny room
that he now rents in the apartment of a friend in GAA.
Early in GAA's history, Jim was told by his boss
on Wall Street that if he took any more time off from work he
would be fired. The next week there was a need for a major confrontation
by GAA. Jim made his choice--and was immediately jobless. He
then took part-time weekend work in a Greenwich Village news shop
and managed somehow on less than $50 a week. Now, because of the
recession, that job too, is gone; his boss let him go with apologies.
"I'm an even poorer parish priest now,"
says Jim. "I still get old clothes from friends, and people
have me over to their apartments for dinner. And every once in
a while I'll get an anonymous donation, or someone will stick
a five-or a ten-dollar bill in my jacket pocket. And that's how
I get by. I don't even think about tomorrow--I can't. I'm a true
existentialist! And while I can't seem to find any kind of part-time
work, I can't see going back to a full-time job because it would
mean cutting back on my involvement in GAA."
Jim glances at the handsome hand-crafted gold ring
given him by the membership just before the close of his first
term as GAA president. It bears the GAA symbol for gay activism.
"The thing I'm most proud of with Gay Activists Alliance
is that during our first year we placed all of our emphasis on
actions. Although we're getting into these things now, in our
first year we had no time to put out newsletters or hold conferences
or have consciousness raising groups. We devoted all our energies
toward specific, attainable goals--not abstractions. I think GAA
tends to draw the best the gay community has to offer in the way
of activists because we do get things done. In April of 1971 alone,
we took in 95 new members. We get professionals, students, all
types who've had enough talk and are interested in joining an
organization where they see quick results--and there are damned
few organizations I've seen where you can do this."
And that's about enough talk for Jim, as well. He
has a date, and not with a politician. For his date he simply
wears his GAA sweat shirt, jeans and boots. The person he's meeting
is "a real old-fashioned New England boy, the type you don't
see much anymore, a rugged individualist who knows he can start
and really run his own farm, a back-to-the-land person. He had
never even been in a gay bar until a couple of nights ago. He
blushed to see two men dancing together! I thought it was charming."
Just one more question: What are Jim's predictions
for himself and for the gay movement?
"I think there will no effective national gay
movement for at least three years. But starting this summer, GAA
will start to send out our organizers in a 'summer caravan' to
help gays in parts of the country where they are not organized.
I really look forward to getting into some of that myself, after
my presidency is up.
"Also we'll be confronting candidates in the
upcoming 1972 presidential election and demanding that they take
proper stands. But mostly, we'll be organizing gays around the
basic reforms. By going after these simple pieces of legislation,
we aren't throwing manna to the gays. We're getting them used
to working together as a bloc, as a minority united on common
goals, working for power for themselves."
What is gay power, this slogan that we hear so often?
"Gay power," says Jim, "is where you have a strong
pride in your own minority, not quite arrogance, and where you
feel that there's no institution and no person on this earth that
can take away your freedom or that has any right to tell you what
you may do as long as you don't interfere with the rights of others.
In blunt terms, it means that no matter which gang is running
City Hall or sitting in the White House, they're not going to
take any measures against your group!
That's when you know you have power.
"And it won't come to gays exclusively through
a gay voting bloc. Some minorities have an influence beyond their
numbers. It just depends on how organized you are and how you
put your brains together to protect your own group.
"As for myself, my own future," Jim concludes,
"I'm working for the time when there's no need for GAA. I
don't want always to be a gay activist. I have other interests
in the field of political science. Once we have the law changes
we want, this will be a small step toward gay liberation. After
that, I'm not sure there'd be any need for an organization geared
to that kind of political activity. The steps toward gay liberation
after law reform might well require a new kind of organization
and a new kind of individual. Planned obsolescence is always an
attractive idea."
___________________________________________________________________________________
This portrait of Jim Owles has been exerpted with
the permission of the authors, from THE GAY CRUSADERS by
Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker, published by Paperback Library, 1972
and reprinted (hardback) in 1975 by the Arno Press Series on Homosexuality:
Lesbians and Gay Men in Society, History and Literature.
___________________________________________________________________________________
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