In fact, he insisted, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won, and the poet sang songs for losers too. He knew especially how history's contributions have great textural variety. They are conceived and executed, he indicated, during unique and often secret moments.

In New York, on the immediate heels of 1969s Stonewall paradigm change, the Gay Liberation Front emerged first as a radical response, claiming a desire for inclusiveness but practicing the dubious art of acrimony and, oddly, suggesting trips to help Castro's Cuba.

This reporter, present at the Stonewall Inn on the third day after the first night of the uprising, immediately co-wrote an account of that august happening, and then attended New York's 1969 Gay Liberation Front meetings. Proof emerged in those meetings that righteous anger—though a motivating force for some—is ineffective compared to such strategic— nay, spirited-- weapons as surprise and laughter.

In fact, the much-too-humorless Gay Liberation Front drove away much of its best blood, earnest young idealists and wise lesbian observers. And the story of what one small breakaway group accomplished with good humor in New York— by wisely channeling tensions--has been neglected until recently.

With the republication in 1995 of the 1971 historian's detailed account, The Gay Militants: How Gay Liberation Started in America (by Donn Teal) and the newly published, much-acclaimed reverie of colorful, unforgettable decades, The Gay Metropolis, 1940-1996, ( by Charles Kaiser) many unremembered heroes and heroines have been resurrected.

Another history, out of print, is The Gay Crusaders (1972) by Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker. This book is, in fact, solely the work of Kay Tobin Lahusen whose journalistic work and photos appeared regularly in the first lesbian magazine, The Ladder. Along with Teal's work, Tobin's work stands as a genuine reflection of the Stonewall period.

There were few gay newspapers in that dawning day, but some, at least, saw to it that their duties included leaving behind a proud and joyous record of the times.

The Gay Liberation Front published limited editions of Come Out, which expended energy in its first issue calling for a boycott against the more successful GAY newspaper because it had a heterosexual publisher. Al Goldstein, however, never interfered editorially with GAY's lesbian and gay editors and writers. (1969-1973.)

GAY newspaper, according to journalism historian Rodger Streitmatter's UNSPEAKABLE: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America, (Faber & Faber) became "the newspaper of record for Gay America."

In 1994 a small breakaway band whose members had attended GLF meetings, celebrated a quarter century later its emergence as The Gay Activists Alliance of New York. GAA became truly inclusive, its earthy leaders respected and loved, presiding over a hearty band of affectionate people who, with solid planning, set out to change the way the world views same-sex love.

Colorful Saturday night dances at the legendary GAA Firehouse were the talk of New York's boroughs. GAA as a consciousness raising vehicle and as a classic study in direct-action strategy—zaps—remains as a primary text for later generations. A 1971 GAA flyer, written only a year after the group's founding, reflects early members' awareness that even then they had walked across history's stage:

"From common experience in other organizations they all agreed that a structured, single-issue approach would best accomplish their initial goal of law reform, to give the homosexual citizen the rights and freedoms granted to every other citizen. In January of 1970, after framing a constitution, choosing a name, a symbol, and officers, this small group rented a meeting space, put an ad in the Village Voice, and when two new people showed up,…. an organization was born."

By all accounts those at the historic GAA reunion in 1994 were immeasurably moved. A special souvenir magazine was published to mark the organization's 25^th Birthday, with pictures of its founders and tributes to its deceased comrades-in-arms as "Fallen Heroes".

Strangely, four years later—in 1997—a GAA-pretender emerged, a malcontent lugging a revised historical agenda, one to promote GLF. He or she attempted a belated staining of the GAA reunion and lectured its attendees to revise their memories about what had actually happened , namely that GAA had succeeded as an organization until at least 1973, whereas GLF, in New York, its membership dwindling to naught, had not.

That unhappy revisionist pasted up an official looking but counterfeit GAA document, unsigned and titled GAA Reunion. The 4-pager is decorated with GAA's famous Lambda symbol to give it an authentic air.

The manipulative malcontent also used—without permission-- a prominent GAA member's return address, and, after having secured the GAA reunion mailing list, used it to bitterly accuse well-known GAA members with excluding many among the Reunion's wanna-be attendees.

This untruth, denounced in print after its receipt by GAA's surviving democratic leadership, was—suspiciously-- accompanied with curious concerns, namely promoting a particular version of history, a version in fierce conflict with valid source material.

The mailbox saboteur advised buying OUTRAGE 69, part of a series of videos called THE QUESTION OF EQUALITY. "Also," says the first item of importance in the fabricated missive, "There is a fine and beautiful book to accompany these videos by the same name."

In fact it is now clear, because of more careful scholarship, that the aforementioned video and its accompanying book are both disingenuous fantasies about the Stonewall era, little more than revisions and distortions.

Filmmaker Arthur Dong , collaborated with a questionable sourceman, historian Martin Duberman, a chronicler since denounced as untrustworthy by several characters profiled in his politically correct "history" book, Stonewall.

Duberman lists his credits as both historian and playwright. He has been charged with allowing his playwright's urges to tempt his historian within and to tamper with bald facts so as to feed into the historian-playwright's idea of good, politically correct drama.

In GAA's 25^th anniversary souvenir journal (p. 3) stands "The Gay Activists Alliance Family Tree", a tree drawn with obvious roots in The Gay Liberation Front, the Daughters of Bilitis, as well as ONE, Inc. and the Mattachine Society. Thus the tree acknowledges other sources of inspiration and counters claims made by Duberman & Dong in Outrage 69 and its companion volume.

There is no doubt but that The Gay Liberation Front and several of its members played significant parts in the Stonewall period, especially as travelling GLF missionaries who created less dogmatic (and more effective) GLF groups in other cities.

If it had not been for the acrimonious nature of GLF-N.Y., GAA would never have been born, nor would the spirit of affection have saturated the latter organization as it did in response to GLF attitude.

It is GAA that, without rancor, has managed, not rejecting its GLF past, to list it instead as a source of inspiration. One side of the coin— the single issue or same-sex only concerns of GAA therefore melds into the other GLF approach multi- political or rainbow concerns.

And now that rainbow coalition politics predominate in major 1997 lesbian and gay organizations (including networking with black civil rights organizations, feminist groups, protectors of free speech, and general guardians of the planet's health) some of such cause-mixing—a revolution of many human types who network-- guarantees that the Gay Liberation Front's long-awaited hopes may finally bloom, though without its founders and under an altogether different name. GLF rainbow-networking has finally arrived a quarter century later, minus its old well-meaning members, but at a more politically appropriate time.

New York controversies continue to erupt , just as they previously have, now mainly between neo-puritans and libertines, arguing mainly over marriage and promiscuity. But newspaper turf battles also rage anew—as they did when Come Out attacked GAY while heterosexual/homosexual publishing partnerships are once again becoming—after 28 years—an issue in Manhattan.

"The more things change, the more things remain the same," said the New York Mattachine Society's Dick Leitsch, quoting an old French proverb.

New York activism, it seems thrives on such two-sided controversies. But even so, each antagonist plays his or her own part. While it may be that the participants in such arguments later fade from humanity's collective memory, the returning issues, nevertheless, are aired again, clearing the way for new generations to create their own conclusions.

Each dimension of thought and strategy plays out its part in provoking an ascending spiral of social awareness.