Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff your
Speaker 1: podcast that comes out every week, the only podcast that
Speaker 1: comes out every week. Most of them don't. None of
Speaker 1: the other ones do. I'm your host, Margaret Kilroy, and
Speaker 1: with me today as my guest, is Daniel Goodman. Hello him, Margaret,
Speaker 1: How are you doing? I'm good. People who listen to
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media probably know who you are. You're an
Speaker 1: audio engineer, but you're not our audio engineer. You're not
Speaker 1: this one. No, I'm not Ian, No, that is true. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm a. I'm a I'm thrilled to be
Speaker 1: part of the engineering team for this wonderful slice of
Speaker 1: the network. Yeah, I'm I don't know. Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: have anything clever to say about it. I'm just glad
Speaker 1: that you're the guest. I'm really excited about that. I'm
Speaker 1: happy to be here.
Speaker 2: I love your show and and I if I may,
Speaker 2: if I may? What's the word when you like? It's
Speaker 2: not splurred, when you like go off about somebody and
Speaker 2: how much you appreciate their work. You're one of my
Speaker 2: favorite voice actors that I've been able to work with
Speaker 2: on many of the different things that I've worked on.
Speaker 2: On the show, like you've done vocal work for Jamie,
Speaker 2: You've done vocal work for Garrison, and all of your
Speaker 2: voice acting is incredible. I think you are very, very
Speaker 2: talented on Mike, and your delivery is flawless every time.
Speaker 2: So I'm happy to be here to support your show
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Where do I vendo? You the twenty bucks
Speaker 1: for saying? Okay? So we're closing out Pride month. It's
Speaker 1: June twenty twenty three as we record this, possibly even
Speaker 1: as you listen, possibly not. I don't know. You can
Speaker 1: listen whenever you want. That's the fun thing about podcasts.
Speaker 3: Hey, Margaret, you forgot the second half of your preamble
Speaker 3: that you do every episode.
Speaker 1: Hi Sophie, Hi, producer is Sophie. That's not the part
Speaker 1: I was talking about. I was talking about the part
Speaker 1: where we make everyone say hi to Ian.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I think that's really beautiful.
Speaker 1: Did you know that?
Speaker 3: Did you you know that Dan and Ian go way back? Well?
Speaker 2: Their dj is together. We were DJs together. He was
Speaker 2: also my I volunteered to be a like a high
Speaker 2: school buddy for all entering ninth graders in high school.
Speaker 2: I was paired up with Ian in ninth grade when
Speaker 2: we were when we were young young lads, and we've
Speaker 2: been friends ever since.
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, I didn't know that you
Speaker 1: all want that far back. That's cool. We go back
Speaker 1: quite quite a ways. I love that dude.
Speaker 3: So, Daniel, can you say hi to Ian real quick?
Speaker 1: Everyone's say I Ian, my dude, how you doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope my audio levels are good. I
Speaker 1: will do some nice light processing for you so it's
Speaker 1: not that much work to edit this episode, and I
Speaker 1: will I will try to stay far away from the
Speaker 1: mic when I do my annoying mouth sounds and whatnot
Speaker 1: for you, so you don't have to mute too much.
Speaker 1: I love you. It's nice that you have that bag
Speaker 1: of Utts chips.
Speaker 2: Which exactly yeah and straight, just real asmr up in here, Sophie,
Speaker 2: how you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm good? Who wrote our theme song? Magfi?
Speaker 1: It was n woman, unwoman wrote our theme song? Okay,
Speaker 1: So what happened is I used to write out the
Speaker 1: opening stuff you need every single time? Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't need to write that out anymore.
Speaker 1: I say it several times a week.
Speaker 3: You don't do you need it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Apparently, when I'm already writing nine thousand words, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: skimp on another fifty. So Pride Week as we record this,
Speaker 1: and I thought, let's do some more gay history. We've
Speaker 1: done a bit of gay history on the show. I
Speaker 1: usually don't actually time things to Pride month because I'm
Speaker 1: not a very oh whatever, I'm trans. Every week is
Speaker 1: whatever anyway, if listeners go way back in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: we did Queer Resistance to the Nazis. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: we did a four partter on stone Wall, and we've
Speaker 1: also done a couple on like transcestors throughout history. This
Speaker 1: one is going to be a three parter, our first notes,
Speaker 1: not our first three partter, but it's one of our
Speaker 1: three parters because we have a half week next week.
Speaker 1: If you if you look on Monday and you're like,
Speaker 1: where did they go? It's because the company that we
Speaker 1: do this for celebrates the fourth of July. Right, oh right, that's.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, But the actual reason we're doing is so
Speaker 3: that Ian, our beautiful editor, can enjoy his time off.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It has nothing to do with like fuck fourth of July. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know, it's just it's just for our sweet
Speaker 3: boy Ian.
Speaker 1: One day, I'm going to do the podcast Lateral Moves
Speaker 1: of History, and it's going to be about the American
Speaker 1: Revolution and also the English Civil War. This is the
Speaker 1: lateral Moves of History. But this one's not a lateral move.
Speaker 1: This one is what came after stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front.
Speaker 1: You ever you ever heard of the Gay Liberation Front?
Speaker 2: Only only in passing? I would say my research is
Speaker 2: embarrassingly lacking. No, I mean mine was before I sat down.
Speaker 2: It's fun because I get to come on Mike and
Speaker 2: be like I know everything because I pick a topic
Speaker 2: and then I spend like maybe fifty hours reading about it.
Speaker 1: Perfect. So we're going to talk about the Gay Liberation
Speaker 1: Front and we're going to talk about some of the groups.
Speaker 3: Are you going to call it the GLF or the
Speaker 3: Gay Liberation Front? Because I know how you feel about
Speaker 3: the when you shorten.
Speaker 1: Things, TLA is m Well, I've been waiting for some
Speaker 1: time in history for someone to start either the Total
Speaker 1: Liberation Army or the Transliberation Army so that there can
Speaker 1: be the TLA, the three letter acronym. But so if
Speaker 1: someone feels like doing that, you have my blessing to
Speaker 1: start the DLA. That's funny. That's why don't hold me
Speaker 1: legally on the hook for whatever. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call them the GLF for the Gay Liberation
Speaker 1: Front throughout'll find out. I probably end up probably because
Speaker 1: I was like typing it, I probably mostly wrote GLF.
Speaker 1: But it's not that much shorter to say than Gay
Speaker 1: Liberation Front.
Speaker 3: No, your choice, your choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll just we'll see how it goes. Some of
Speaker 1: the groups they worked alongside of as well, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about their struggle to not just kiss
Speaker 1: who they wanted to kiss, but to liberate themselves and
Speaker 1: the world from the chains of oppression and kissing the
Speaker 1: people that they want to kiss along the way. So
Speaker 1: we mentioned the Gay Libration Front ever so briefly at
Speaker 1: the end of our four part are on Stonewall. Stonewall,
Speaker 1: of course, being the riots outside of a gay bar
Speaker 1: called Stonewall in New York City in nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: that sparked the modern pride movement. I actually always thought
Speaker 1: that that was one of those things that was sort
Speaker 1: of exaggerated because people like being like, oh, this was
Speaker 1: the turning point, and usually it's like well, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff, and there was a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: but Stonewall really was the turning point. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: really was the spark, and that sparked the modern pride movement.
Speaker 1: But we didn't get into the g more deeply, and
Speaker 1: they did an awful lot in only a few short
Speaker 1: years before Stonewall. In the US, the most visible and
Speaker 1: organized gay groups were what's generally known as the homophile movement,
Speaker 1: and they were largely assimilationists. That is, they like, they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: if we act kind of straight except for who we
Speaker 1: fuck and marry, then we might get accepted, right. The biggest,
Speaker 1: the two biggest and most memorable of these were the
Speaker 1: Mattachine Society for gay men and the Daughters of Bolitis
Speaker 1: for lesbians, who both have fucking cool names. Their names,
Speaker 1: I know, their names actually sort of outweigh the I'm
Speaker 1: actually not really trying to slight them super hard, but
Speaker 1: like they weren't as like exciting and radical, right, they
Speaker 1: just had really fucking metal names. That's half the battle.
Speaker 1: I feel like, I know, I know, and that's I
Speaker 1: think why we're not doing as well anymore. I've talked
Speaker 1: about this before in the show but we really need
Speaker 1: to bring back the league as a as a type
Speaker 1: of formation. Yes, at least in our names. I'm down
Speaker 1: with the Zone League, the League of Cool Zones, the
Speaker 1: League of Extraordinary Podcasters. Yes, sir, into it. I'm into it.
Speaker 1: So there are these assimilationist groups. But even in these
Speaker 1: assimilationist groups, it's not that everyone agrees with that strategy.
Speaker 1: It's that that's the only thing going and they're pretty
Speaker 1: much convinced that if they do anything else, they'll all
Speaker 1: get murdered because they're all getting murdered anyway, because they
Speaker 1: live in a terribly homophobic society where people like murdering
Speaker 1: gay people. So in June nineteen sixty nine, Stonewell happened.
Speaker 1: It broke the pall of assimilation that had been sitting
Speaker 1: like a miasma on queer people. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to pronounce my asthma. Apparently you nailed it. Oh great.
Speaker 1: There've been uprisings before, and there've been activists before, but
Speaker 1: it was just the right spark, catching the right tinder
Speaker 1: at the right time to start a flame, or to
Speaker 1: use the leftist jargon at the time. And this is
Speaker 1: a MAO quote that they all liked it takes one
Speaker 1: spark to start a prairie fire. Huh. I know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a nice quote. I'm not a big maw lady.
Speaker 1: But Stonewell happened, and people were like, all right, now
Speaker 1: what And so a bunch of folks from the Daughters
Speaker 1: of Blitess and the Mattachine Society met up and they
Speaker 1: were like, man, what if we just what if we
Speaker 1: just stop pandering to straight society? Like what if we, uh,
Speaker 1: what if we joined the new left like all the
Speaker 1: black like the Black Panthers and Young Lords and all
Speaker 1: that shit, right right right? And I don't know, what
Speaker 1: if we like just fucking overthrow capitalists, imperialism and uh
Speaker 1: as a way to get our rights as queers, and
Speaker 1: society views us as a threat. Maybe it should We
Speaker 1: could be a threat, could be.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things that like, I realize more
Speaker 1: and more when I when I read all this history,
Speaker 1: because it's like, in my mind, all the people, like
Speaker 1: the queer folks around me are like a lot of
Speaker 1: them live very dangerous lives and are incredibly brave, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them are fairly dangerous people. Frankly, like
Speaker 1: people that I wouldn't choose to cross. But I I
Speaker 1: didn't quite realize how in early twentieth century there was
Speaker 1: this content everyone thought like, oh, gay men are just
Speaker 1: like to see little cowards, you know, And so they
Speaker 1: were like, well we can we can break people's assumption
Speaker 1: about that. Hell yeah.
Speaker 2: So it seems like a respective strength. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: I think, I think, I think the idea of like
Speaker 2: being a threat comes with this like fear that we're
Speaker 2: going to attack you. But it's more it's like a
Speaker 2: we can hold our fucking own yeah, and that's how
Speaker 2: we should be standing.
Speaker 1: Up to these people. It's like, don't fuck with us. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like when you walk down the street, the way
Speaker 1: that you carries yourself changes the way that people interact
Speaker 1: with you. Yes. Completely. I used to when I wore
Speaker 1: a mini skirt, I made this very large knife and
Speaker 1: I just wore it at the small of my back
Speaker 1: and like, I'm not going to fight anyone with a knife.
Speaker 1: That's sucking dumb. Yeah, but like no one forgot me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my gosh, Margaret's tough as shit. Yeah yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to like a tangent. I used to when
Speaker 1: people would yell things at me from the car, right,
Speaker 1: And this happens to me a lot. It happens to
Speaker 1: anyone who doesn't present the way that society expects them to,
Speaker 1: or anyone who looks kind of like a woman. This
Speaker 1: happens to a lot. And so people would yell things
Speaker 1: at me from cars and I would just like scream
Speaker 1: and chase them. And people were like, why do you
Speaker 1: do that? And I was like, because they always run away.
Speaker 1: And they were like, well, what will you do if
Speaker 1: they don't run away? And they'll be like, then I'll
Speaker 1: run away. That's funny. Yeah, So it told that to
Speaker 1: one of my lawyer friends. I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: tell the further part that gets into the felonies I
Speaker 1: committed in the process of that, which I never did,
Speaker 1: never did, so limitations ago. Anyway, they started the Matachine
Speaker 1: Action Committee. That's what I meant to say, yay, And
Speaker 1: pretty much immediately they were like, actually, we don't want
Speaker 1: to be the Machine Action Committee, we don't want to
Speaker 1: be part of mataching society at all. They also embraced
Speaker 1: the word gay, which previous groups had avoided, and they
Speaker 1: formed the Gay Liberation Front. Interesting and yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is another part. I didn't realize because I was like
Speaker 1: when I when I talked more about Matachine and Daughter's
Speaker 1: Bolitis and a Stonewall four part, right, I was like, man,
Speaker 1: why do they all use to have such sick metal names?
Speaker 1: And it was actually because they were afraid to use
Speaker 1: the word gay in their names or lesbian in their names,
Speaker 1: Like you couldn't have the League of Lesbians or whatever.
Speaker 1: You couldn't have the like League of Gay Men with Swords,
Speaker 1: as badass as that is, I know, but now we
Speaker 1: can have that, and I just want to put that
Speaker 1: out there and we should have that, I know, I know.
Speaker 2: And just and just to be clear before you're saying,
Speaker 2: it's it's not that they was another word that they used.
Speaker 2: It was that like it's because you're still at this
Speaker 2: time you're hiding your identity. Yeah, right, it's like it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, we're not putting gay out there at all
Speaker 2: because we don't even want people to or you know,
Speaker 2: we can't risk people knowing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they all had different words that they used, sure,
Speaker 1: but they were all a little bit like wink nudge
Speaker 1: nudge was sure, sure, yeah, And I don't know, so
Speaker 1: I think we can now have both. I think we
Speaker 1: can have the word gay a very weird esoteric references
Speaker 1: the things that I even rode into an episode, and
Speaker 1: I still don't remember what Mattachine and Belaitis mean. They
Speaker 1: sound cool, They do sound very cool. So they joined
Speaker 1: the New Left, and we'll talk about that really quickly.
Speaker 1: This is, as the name implies, a break from the
Speaker 1: old Left, and so a lot of the New Left
Speaker 1: is like Marxist and communists like the old Left in
Speaker 1: this context, but there was also anarchists and other leftists
Speaker 1: in the New Left, and more importantly, it was a
Speaker 1: break from the old model that basically that was like
Speaker 1: ever since the USSR formed, the left worldwide was a
Speaker 1: little bit like we all obey the Communist Party and
Speaker 1: we are all into workers stuff and don't talk about
Speaker 1: anything else. This is an exaggeration. Actually, some people in
Speaker 1: the old Left an incredible amount of anti racist work,
Speaker 1: and even though I disagree with them about a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, I'm not trying to whatever. People wanted a
Speaker 1: new left, and specifically the old left Marxist line was
Speaker 1: anti gay, not more than the capitalist countries, but it
Speaker 1: really wasn't good for gay people in the Communist bloc
Speaker 1: and in communist countries, homosexuality was seen as bourgeois Western
Speaker 1: decadence that distracts the good worker from being like a
Speaker 1: good proletarian man or whatever. The fuck. Well, well, I
Speaker 1: know I see shadows of this every now and then,
Speaker 1: especially when I travel in other countries, and I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: what wait really right, y'all think what that's amazing? Wow? Anyway,
Speaker 1: so being gay would distract the good communist workers from
Speaker 1: identifying with only their class interests because they're too focused
Speaker 1: on like being gay and weak and effeminate and all
Speaker 1: that shit or whatever. And so like the new Left
Speaker 1: was like, well what if the left wasn't fucking boring
Speaker 1: and regressive? What it was like cool and good instead? Right,
Speaker 1: they wanted to be able to be feminists, they want
Speaker 1: to be able to be Black power activists. They wanted
Speaker 1: to be weirdo, druggy hippies, and or gay. A lot
Speaker 1: of the people actually that we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: are all four of those things. The holy quad quadrant, quadrilateral. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to like I think it was cool
Speaker 1: that people did a lot of acid stuff. I do
Speaker 1: think hard drugs have had a negative impact overall on
Speaker 1: social movement. So I'm not trying to shame the individual
Speaker 1: users or whatever, but totally you know, people want to
Speaker 1: be weird hippie, feminist, gay people like that's great. Amen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: many of them, maybe most of them, stayed Marxist of
Speaker 1: some stripe and just decided Marxism was a living ideology
Speaker 1: that they could work with. This is the new Left.
Speaker 1: So the GLF forms and their first actions were alongside
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers outside the Women's House of Detention, which
Speaker 1: was this women's prison with a very old timing name,
Speaker 1: which was right across from Stonewall and was full of,
Speaker 1: among other things, lesbian black panthers who needed support. The
Speaker 1: GLF forms. Their slogan, or maybe just one of them,
Speaker 1: was come out, Come together, Unite with the revolutionaries of
Speaker 1: the world. Nice. I know, it's very rules. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the plan of action in a slogan. It's like, truly,
Speaker 1: what do you all believe? Well, did you see the slogan?
Speaker 1: What's your plan? I refer you again to the slogans
Speaker 1: the sign Yeah, yeah, exactly. And here's a quote from
Speaker 1: the first issue of their paper called come Out, a
Speaker 1: newspaper buy and for the gay community. That's the name
Speaker 1: of the paper. The quote is, we will not be
Speaker 1: gay bourgeoisie searching for the sterile, sterile American dream of
Speaker 1: the ivy covered cottage and the good corporation job. But
Speaker 1: neither will we tolerate the exclusion of homosexuals from any
Speaker 1: area of American life. And they met at the Church
Speaker 1: of Holy of the Holy Apostles, which is an Episcopalian
Speaker 1: church whose congregation has been very inclusive for a very
Speaker 1: long time. Later, just to shout out these cool people.
Speaker 1: Later in nineteen seventy seven, they ordained a lesbian priest.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty two they started serving thousands of free
Speaker 1: meals every weekday. And it's always worth pointing out since
Speaker 1: a lot of the glf's enemies ah GLF, the answer
Speaker 1: is going to be Sophie to your question, boom ding
Speaker 1: ding ding ding ding ding. Since a lot of the
Speaker 1: glf's enemies are going to be closed minded religious zealots,
Speaker 1: it's worth pointing out that some of their strongest infrastructural
Speaker 1: support was an open minded religious community looking to counter
Speaker 1: those closed minded zalots. Their name Gay Liberation Front is
Speaker 1: a reference to the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, the communist
Speaker 1: army that was currently kicking the shit out of the
Speaker 1: US and Vietnam. Nice. There's a very confrontational thing to do,
Speaker 1: especially at the time. And so they were mostly white
Speaker 1: in the GLF, but immediately they were linking up with
Speaker 1: gay activists within the POC or organizations around and importantly,
Speaker 1: they weren't overwhelmingly white. They were just mostly white. And
Speaker 1: it's easy to leave out all the people of color
Speaker 1: who were involved in it just by mislabeling that movement.
Speaker 1: I've heard that they were mostly Catholic and Jewish, with
Speaker 1: some Protestant membership and at least one Quaker, but realistically
Speaker 1: they were mostly secular Catholic and or Jewish, and mostly
Speaker 1: they were really new Agy. There's this whole dissertation that
Speaker 1: I didn't have time to read that I'm sad about,
Speaker 1: or I'm sad that I didn't get time to read.
Speaker 1: That just gets into how much they're all into like
Speaker 1: magic and non rational approaches to activism, which yeah, very
Speaker 1: fucking cool. Yeah, And when you read the like sterile
Speaker 1: histories of them, it leaves out, hey, they spend all
Speaker 1: their time hanging out with black panthers, and it also
Speaker 1: leaves out like, hey, several of them were practicing witches
Speaker 1: and like into like really weird shit, you know. Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: I listened to interviews with six different members in like
Speaker 1: Contempt Modern Interviews, Current interviews, and all six of them
Speaker 1: happened to be Jewish. A lot of them were veteran
Speaker 1: organizers from civil rights and anti war movements, and they
Speaker 1: had a sort of fast forward radicalization, right because they
Speaker 1: come out of the Mattachine Society, they come out of
Speaker 1: this non radical space they form as the GLF with
Speaker 1: that super radical name. But there was contention about their
Speaker 1: role within the larger movement. At one point, really early on,
Speaker 1: someone was like, hey, I have a thing where you
Speaker 1: tell everyone emotion emotion, let's donate five hundred dollars to
Speaker 1: the Panthers as a sign of solidarity. And some other
Speaker 1: people were like, no, the Panthers use homophobic language, so
Speaker 1: let's not the motion to offer solidarity past and a
Speaker 1: few of the GLF members resigned in protests because they
Speaker 1: didn't approve of it. You know, like people will probably
Speaker 1: argue about whether or not that's like, oh, because they
Speaker 1: didn't want to ally with a black movement, or oh
Speaker 1: they were sticking to their guns about for sure. You know,
Speaker 1: the gesture of solidarity paid off very shortly thereafter, not
Speaker 1: specifically because of this like money that came in, but
Speaker 1: because they were part of this movement. The Panthers came
Speaker 1: out as very explicitly pro gay. Nice, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they I've been like, I feel like I've been like
Speaker 1: building around talking about the Panthers, like they come into
Speaker 1: like every episode about the sixties, right, no doubt. And
Speaker 1: the reason I haven't done an episode about them is
Speaker 1: I'm like, that one's gonna be long, probably probably, But
Speaker 1: you know what isn't long is how long it takes
Speaker 1: to press forward fifteen seconds approximately four times. Fuck yes,
Speaker 1: because now it's time for an ad break, unless you
Speaker 1: pay for cooler zone Media, in which case you just
Speaker 1: hear us rambling about this and then you'll be like,
Speaker 1: why do I have to hear the ads about cooler
Speaker 1: zone media when I pay for the thing that doesn't
Speaker 1: come with ads, And we don't have an answer for you.
Speaker 1: We don't, So here's some aths and we're back. So obviously,
Speaker 1: the Panthers came out as pro gay for a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons. One of them is that a lot of
Speaker 1: them were gay, right, Like, that's the gay folks are
Speaker 1: really everywhere we are in every movement, even although like
Speaker 1: right wing fucks who are trying to kill us all
Speaker 1: right now, I bet you they are the same percent
Speaker 1: gay as everyone else. Yeah. God, the I haven't even
Speaker 1: I touch on it very briefly every now and then.
Speaker 1: But the Kinsey report that it came out, and I
Speaker 1: want to say in the forties was like something like
Speaker 1: a third of men in the forties had had experiences
Speaker 1: to orgasm with other men. Wow. Yeah, that's a high
Speaker 1: number for the forties. Yeah, but it it just wasn't
Speaker 1: you just didn't have gay identity, right right. It was
Speaker 1: just a thing that people do, like being anti gay.
Speaker 1: It's almost like in the twenties when you like when
Speaker 1: it was like immoral to drink alcohol, right.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, you know exactly, like, ah, I let myself
Speaker 2: get jacked off by my friend again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my wife's going to be so.
Speaker 2: Mad, so mad, you know whatever, See you next Thursday, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the GLF structure was really interesting and for the first
Speaker 2: few months as a traditional organization had voting, the person
Speaker 2: passes tries to get that motion passed, and it gets passed,
Speaker 2: and all this stuff. By fall nineteen sixty nine, it
Speaker 2: used what they called a structureless structure. Decisions were no
Speaker 2: longer voted upon, but instead things were determined by consensus
Speaker 2: of individuals and more importantly, by affinity groups, which they
Speaker 2: called cells, which makes sense sence they're calling themselves the Liberation.
Speaker 1: Front, and it actually prefigures the occupy movement in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. A lot of the ways that they
Speaker 1: are organizing is fairly similar to that. Cells were autonomous,
Speaker 1: and everyone was encouraged to form an act under the banner,
Speaker 1: form a cell, and then act under the banner of
Speaker 1: the GLF. The Marxists in particular were not pleased by
Speaker 1: this method of organizing, and at least one Marxist cell
Speaker 1: wrote that this is what caused the group to fall apart.
Speaker 1: In the end, they might be right. It also might
Speaker 1: be why the GLF was so wildly impactful for the
Speaker 1: years it lasted, because it was this explosion of energy
Speaker 1: and all of these different types of people doing all
Speaker 1: of these different types of things and coming together to
Speaker 1: have each other's backs. Most history wants to look at
Speaker 1: the GLF in a vacuum. And they never mentioned that
Speaker 1: they were like radical leftists, that their first protests were
Speaker 1: at a prison. Most only talk about the gay specific stuff.
Speaker 1: What often gets called their first protest, which is still
Speaker 1: a cool protest, but was not. It was the prison thing.
Speaker 1: Their first protest that people talk about was against the
Speaker 1: Village Voice, which is the local alternative paper in Greenwich Village. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, and this actually because I think of the
Speaker 1: Village Voice. You know, I lived in New York in
Speaker 1: the early aughts, right, and you know, village voices like
Speaker 1: the lefty paper, right, sure, and I think it even
Speaker 1: kind of was then, but kind of not the radical
Speaker 1: lefty paper, you know. Sure. So this protest happened on
Speaker 1: September twelfth, nineteen sixty nine, and there are two reasons
Speaker 1: for this picket. They picketed the offices. First, after Stonewall,
Speaker 1: they ran an article called too Much My Dear, Oh
Speaker 1: fuck that. Yeah, it was contemptuous of the riots. It
Speaker 1: accused the queers of harassing cops to fuck off with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people would come into arrest them for wearing women's clothes
Speaker 1: or whatever. Shit, Yeah, that's fucked up. And that article
Speaker 1: used all kinds of slurs not just for the gay people,
Speaker 1: but also well for gay people, but also used all
Speaker 1: kinds of racial slurs for the people of color who
Speaker 1: are gay, who are there, and like the kind of
Speaker 1: slurs that I will not even dream of telling you
Speaker 1: on air. Yeah, no, of course, not horrible shit. Yeah
Speaker 1: yeah it was. It was not not good. And the
Speaker 1: other reason that they picketed is they actually so they
Speaker 1: banned ads from using the words gay or homosexual because
Speaker 1: those were obscene. Oh my god, one protest soul. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: very very progressive, very cool, thank you, village voice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like when like if I get censored
Speaker 1: for saying a word that, like if I got censored
Speaker 1: on Twitter for saying tranny or something, which now I mean, now,
Speaker 1: of course on Twitter you can say that all you want,
Speaker 1: but God forbid you say sis. Yeah yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: I mean that's just a step too far. We all,
Speaker 1: we can all agree. I I can't wait for Twitter
Speaker 1: to just actually announce that straight is a slur. That's oh,
Speaker 1: you're right, that's happening, that's gonna happen. Yeah, Like no,
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm I'm normal sexuality. Oh god, like, look,
Speaker 1: you're straight. It's fine. A shiver ran down my spine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One protest sign from the time sums it up nicely
Speaker 1: from the picket. The sign says Village Voice won't print
Speaker 1: gay and ads, but calls us dikes and faggots. And
Speaker 1: it's just like, yeah, why do they get to say
Speaker 1: actual slurs but you can't say gay? Right? Maybe it's Florida.
Speaker 1: I don't know, uh exactly got it. So if I
Speaker 1: had done this are this episode ten years ago, it
Speaker 1: would have been such a like wow, could you imagine
Speaker 1: you imagine? Yes, totally it is that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's it's funny how the the slippery slope logic that
Speaker 2: so often gets used for like well, if we start letting,
Speaker 2: if we let the gaze get married, then what's gonna
Speaker 2: happen next? It's just truly been the other way. It's
Speaker 2: been the let's just go in the full slippery slope
Speaker 2: of banning everything, such that saying cis on Twitter is
Speaker 2: bannable offense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just like what, Yeah, the slippery slope is real,
Speaker 1: just not for who you think it's real for totally totally.
Speaker 1: And it's like, oh, if we let them come for
Speaker 1: the trance people, they will come for the game. The
Speaker 1: cis game end next, you know, yea and so and
Speaker 1: the GLF. They didn't start by picketing, even does. They
Speaker 1: have this like very fiery name, right, But they're not
Speaker 1: like running around burning things down. They are trying, in
Speaker 1: their way, in all these different ways to get shit done.
Speaker 1: And so they went to the Village Voice and they
Speaker 1: were like, hey, like, let us run the ads that
Speaker 1: they want to run is they want to run ads
Speaker 1: for their dances, right, And the whole point is that
Speaker 1: they have these dances. Yeah, and they have these dances
Speaker 1: so that they don't all have to meet up at
Speaker 1: mafia controlled places, right. And so they go to the
Speaker 1: Village Voice and they're like, hey, why can't you say
Speaker 1: all this terrible stuff about us in print? But we
Speaker 1: can't even run ads and say gay. And the Village
Speaker 1: Voice is like, get out of here, you slur or
Speaker 1: whatever you know. And and so they had endless conversations
Speaker 1: with the Village Voice and finally they were like, this
Speaker 1: isn't working. We're picketing you. And it was successful. After
Speaker 1: talking and talking and talking and nothing changed. After a
Speaker 1: single day of picketing, the Voice agreed that ads could
Speaker 1: say gay or homosexual and that the GLF could write
Speaker 1: that people, not just the GLF, that people could write
Speaker 1: in and refute the anti trends, the anti gay articles.
Speaker 1: And they were like, oh, we're not going to censor.
Speaker 1: You know, We'll still let people write that stuff about you,
Speaker 1: but we'll let you refute it. Great like community notes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys could do community notes on Twitter. We'll still
Speaker 1: let all the stuff sit there, but like you can
Speaker 1: do the community notes. No, that's exactly it. That is
Speaker 1: exactly it, and it no. And newspapers at the time,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, I mean, now newspapers are basically dead,
Speaker 1: but like they were the Twitter for hundreds of years,
Speaker 1: you know, truly newspapers the Twitter for hundreds of years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's a spectacular quote. Thanks. And so a
Speaker 1: letter from a gay man named Kevin Lisco was published
Speaker 1: in The Voice and a quote from it, I just like,
Speaker 1: is we are people with something to fight for. The
Speaker 1: age of the scared Little Queen's is gone. Hail Aquarius.
Speaker 1: I don't know what means, but it sounds cool. It
Speaker 1: is very tight, Hail aquarius. Yeah, I'm with it, and
Speaker 1: I know that in general, the HIPPI has had this
Speaker 1: like the dawning of the Age of Aquarius thing, and
Speaker 1: everything's going to change. I just don't fuck with astrology
Speaker 1: to totally understand. And the article about this action and
Speaker 1: come out there. The glf's magazine was co written by
Speaker 1: a man named Leo Martello, who is described as quote
Speaker 1: at practicing which who kept a boa constrictor under the bed?
Speaker 1: Under the bed?
Speaker 2: I know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean hopefully it's like a heat lamp.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, a well cared for boa constrictor
Speaker 2: under the bed. Yeah, yeah, I can only assume. So
Speaker 2: imagine getting out of bed at the boarding. You gotta
Speaker 2: be careful.
Speaker 1: You're like, there's no monster under the bed, and there's
Speaker 1: this like twelve foot snall.
Speaker 2: Having somebody over and being like, oh, right by the way,
Speaker 2: before you know, before sex and whatnot, there is the
Speaker 2: snake under.
Speaker 4: The yeah, oh god, And then like, I hope the
Speaker 4: bed is well constructed because otherwise the snake has just
Speaker 4: put on his ear muffs and be like, ugh, there's
Speaker 4: Leo again, just going at it.
Speaker 1: It's cool. I appreciate your right to have gay sex,
Speaker 1: but could you not have it two feet above me? Oh?
Speaker 1: That's so good. That's fucking funny. Poor snake. So they
Speaker 1: had these gay dances and they were incredibly popular. I
Speaker 1: found only found numbers for one. One random one had
Speaker 1: nine hundred people coming to the dance. Yeah that's a dance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: considering all of the other dance stuff that I have
Speaker 1: read about is these like small a mafia controlled bars
Speaker 1: where I can't imagine. Then they're packed to the gills,
Speaker 1: but I can't imagine. You're talking about more than like
Speaker 1: two hundred people in one place. And there was a
Speaker 1: split off group called gay Youth that ran dances for
Speaker 1: queers under twenty one, and specifically only for queers under
Speaker 1: twenty one. I guess it wasn't groomers after all. One
Speaker 1: of the whole points of gay Youth was to allow
Speaker 1: an avenue for gay youth to develop their sexuality without
Speaker 1: sleeping with older men, which is like, is some of
Speaker 1: the way that gay culture has existed in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Not that that isn't true of heterosexual society also, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: ain't nothing new. Yeah, Gay Youth wound up with at
Speaker 1: least forty chapters all over the country, and I think
Speaker 1: in other countries as well, I think Canada, maybe the
Speaker 1: UK and many of which many of these chapters consider
Speaker 1: themselves entirely independent from the Gay Liberation Front, they actually
Speaker 1: outlast their parent organization. And this is something that really
Speaker 1: stuck with me. So a lot of these groups outlast
Speaker 1: Gay Liberation Front because structuralist structure, even though it isn't
Speaker 1: a good way to make something that's going to last
Speaker 1: for generations, it's a really good tool for incubating affinity
Speaker 1: between various people who then go off and do their
Speaker 1: own thing independently. Right, So people come to the golf
Speaker 1: and then they're like, they find their people, and then
Speaker 1: they go organize. The Gay Liberation Front ran classes at
Speaker 1: a local free university called Alternative View. They didn't run
Speaker 1: this place. That's just a place that existed that they
Speaker 1: made use of. They ran classes on medical care, they
Speaker 1: ran classes on how to squat buildings, they ran classes
Speaker 1: on anti racism, on gay history, on anti sexism, on Marxism,
Speaker 1: and other politics. And you'll be shocked to know that
Speaker 1: the Bay Area chapter started really quickly. Also, oh well
Speaker 1: there you go. Yeah, I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: the history stuff is like these like competitions between the
Speaker 1: East Coast and the West Coast to be who can write,
Speaker 1: who can do the like rad thing faster? Sure, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: you know, since I'm from the coast, I always have
Speaker 1: this like a little bit like yeah, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit grittier and we don't have a culture of it,
Speaker 1: but we do it anyway, you know, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: But overall the Bay is like I was like researching
Speaker 1: this and I actually drove into the Bay the other
Speaker 1: day and there's been all this Like I used to
Speaker 1: like kind of not give a shit about like all
Speaker 1: the like sort of assimilations queer stuff, and I honestly
Speaker 1: didn't care all that much about Pride as a parade
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. I was like way too cool
Speaker 1: for a lot of that. And I don't know, I
Speaker 1: was like driving into the Bay and up on the
Speaker 1: hill there's just a giant pink triangle, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a that like matters right now and
Speaker 1: it probably always mattered and I was just an asshole,
Speaker 1: but like it's a good on you, Bay, thanks for
Speaker 1: having a giant pink triangle. As I drive the hell
Speaker 1: city of self driving cars that kill.
Speaker 2: People, at least there is there's some positives, coming out
Speaker 2: of the coming out of the area.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally fun. And so on Halloween nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: so really shortly after the formation of the GLF, sixty
Speaker 1: folks from the GLF and a few other groups get
Speaker 1: together to do this thing. One of the other groups
Speaker 1: is the Committee for Heterosexual Freedom. Sorry Homosexual Freedom, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, yeah, the Committee for Homosexual Freedom. They're
Speaker 1: kind of cool. They're a group. They are a couple
Speaker 1: months older than the GLF, and they formed to get
Speaker 1: justice for a gay a fired gay employee from a
Speaker 1: steamship company and nice. And they formed because like a
Speaker 1: gay employee was like seen in public or in a
Speaker 1: photo or something like hogging his lover or whatever, God forbid,
Speaker 1: and so the gay the boyfriend was like, you can't
Speaker 1: fuck with my man like that, and started a whole
Speaker 1: ass activist organization to pick at the steamship company for
Speaker 1: fucking with his boyfriend. That's fucking sick. Hell yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's dope. Another one of the groups that's involved in
Speaker 1: this Halloween action is the Gay Gorilla Feeder Group, and
Speaker 1: then another even older gay rights group, the Society for
Speaker 1: Individual Rights, which is such a a classic formation for
Speaker 1: like a gay group right is to be like I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's entirely fine to be.
Speaker 1: Like the reason you just kind of can't tell us
Speaker 1: what to do. These are individual rights, like why yes,
Speaker 1: there you go, yeah, and I don't don't. It's like,
Speaker 1: why why does it have to be about sexuality. It's
Speaker 1: about rights in general? Yeah, yeah, which interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: is actually a decent formulation also for understanding like the
Speaker 1: right to like have an abortion or not have an abortion,
Speaker 1: or all kinds of other rights, you.
Speaker 2: Know, absolutely rights of the human Yeah, yeah, Okay. So
Speaker 2: they this protest that they all do together is against
Speaker 2: the local paper, the San Francisco Examiner, and it had
Speaker 2: been dosing arrested gay men. A lot of papers, at
Speaker 2: least in LA in the Bay. I bet it was
Speaker 2: all over the place, but I've only specifically read about
Speaker 2: papers in the LA and the Bay do that doing this.
Speaker 2: They just name and shame arrested gay men. Right, cruising
Speaker 2: is illegal, like going to a park and trying to
Speaker 2: find other gay men to have sex with is illegal
Speaker 2: at this time. So when men get arrested for that,
Speaker 2: the local papers will print their mugshot and be like, ah,
Speaker 2: do you know Joe's gay, he's one of the gays. Eh,
Speaker 2: here's his address.
Speaker 1: Terrible. Yeah, it's not very nice and yeah no yeah
Speaker 1: no it It wrecked so many people's lives. And it
Speaker 1: was like specifically like a plan to keep people from
Speaker 1: being able to do this, you know, right from like
Speaker 1: meeting other adults to have consensual sexual relations with Yeah
Speaker 1: for real. The gay Also, the Examiner had written a
Speaker 1: slur filled article with the headline the Dreary Revels of
Speaker 1: San Francisco Gay clubs, gay gets scare quotes, and they
Speaker 1: had written it basically to counter the rising gay organizing
Speaker 1: in the city. So the rising gay organizing in the
Speaker 1: city was like, well then fuck.
Speaker 2: You, yeah exactly, thank you for recognizing us.
Speaker 1: Fuck you. Yeah. So the is picketed and because everything
Speaker 1: is better when its name sounds metal as hell. As
Speaker 1: we've discussed, this protest is called the Friday of the
Speaker 1: Purple Hand. Wow. Yeah that wow, that goes super hard.
Speaker 1: I know that. Yeah, what else rips? Daniel? Can you
Speaker 1: guess what else rips? Oh?
Speaker 2: Geez uh the uh, the the the Reagan coins as
Speaker 2: they fall from your pocket onto the the the paper
Speaker 2: floor of the the the I don't know something that
Speaker 2: something flimsy that people are standing on.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, products, there's some here's some stuff,
Speaker 1: and we are back.
Speaker 3: Yay.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Friday of the Purple Hand, which rips.
Speaker 1: Sixty folks show up to this protest and it's a
Speaker 1: peaceful picket. But it's like there's one of these things
Speaker 1: where it's like often people be like it was a
Speaker 1: peaceful protest. People brought eggs to throw at the building,
Speaker 1: which is like, fine, that's not even property destruction. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's still extremely peaceful. Yeah. The chance that they had
Speaker 1: was say it loud, we're gay and we're proud. Nice
Speaker 1: and I know. So two newspaper men climbed up on
Speaker 1: the roof and dropped bags of purple ink onto them
Speaker 1: from the roof of the building. Oh yeah, so the
Speaker 1: gay folks gave up and went home dejected. Just kidding.
Speaker 2: They they were like, great, we look awesome, now, yeah
Speaker 2: exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: They dipped their hands in the ink. It was like
Speaker 1: kind of like all over them, splashed a little bit.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like fifty gallon barrels. It wasn't like ash,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like a Nickelodeon sliming. But it is also
Speaker 1: funny because it's like clearly them initiating the actual property destruction,
Speaker 1: the actual graffica.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, yes, so they like they dipped the bricks out, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: It's like dropping bricks but missing, and they're like, the
Speaker 1: bricks now no. Yeah, So they dipped their hands in
Speaker 1: the ink and then left their handprints all over the
Speaker 1: walls of the building and also nearby buildings. One version
Speaker 1: of the stories that they like then went through downtown
Speaker 1: left purple hand prints everywhere. Another version says it was
Speaker 1: mostly in this area I don't know. And then they
Speaker 1: use the purple ink to scrawl gay power and other
Speaker 1: slogans on the wall of the building. Oh yeah. So
Speaker 1: the police show up, and of course they're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: people dropping things from rooftops. That's the real danger. I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding. They went after the queers and beat the
Speaker 1: shit out of people. A dozen people were arrested. One
Speaker 1: protester lost their front teeth. Oh yeah, there is like
Speaker 1: not just a yeah, it was bad. Another suffered terrible yeah.
Speaker 1: Another suffered a broken rib. The gays fought back. At
Speaker 1: least one cop caught a picket sign over his head.
Speaker 1: Another the only person who's fell any charges later stick
Speaker 1: bit a cop. Hell yeah, contributing to the metalness of
Speaker 1: the causes. Yeah, exactly. God if that had happened in
Speaker 1: the eighties, could you imagine extremely extremely metal. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think cops getting bit is going to wind up on
Speaker 1: cool people bingo at this point, because I think it
Speaker 1: was like two weeks ago or yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: two weeks ago that a grandma in England. Not go,
Speaker 1: it was nineteen thirty six, but two weeks ago and
Speaker 1: cool people time, I had it. We had an episode
Speaker 1: a weeks ago grandma been a police Officeah, now down
Speaker 1: to the bone a grandmother. Oh, because the cop was
Speaker 1: protecting fascists in nineteen thirty six in England. Oh well
Speaker 1: fuck that guy. Ok, Yeah, well there you go. Uh anyway,
Speaker 1: so the rest of the crowd they go, they immediately
Speaker 1: move from the building the examiner to city Hall to
Speaker 1: protest the arrests, and three more of them get arrested
Speaker 1: at city Hall protesting, and I think what happens there
Speaker 1: is that they like don't leave. They're like, oh, the
Speaker 1: building's closed, you got to leave, And then they like
Speaker 1: just arrest them. This was in the end a massive
Speaker 1: win for gay liberation. This protest, it mobilized people, a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and it in particular, it actually mobilized
Speaker 1: the the gay assimilationist old guard who had kind of
Speaker 1: been like, oh, we don't know about this liberation stuff, right.
Speaker 1: They just wanted everything to be like peaceful and get along.
Speaker 1: And then they were like, oh, that's not going to work,
Speaker 1: is it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So the Daughters of Belitis helped the felony arrestees find
Speaker 1: lawyers and spoke out in support of those facing charges
Speaker 1: because when the chips were down, they knew what side
Speaker 1: they were on. It's probably a mixed metaphor ships being
Speaker 1: down and side anyway, One arrestee wrote, I was scared
Speaker 1: and felt alone in jail until I learned of the
Speaker 1: help mobilized outside. And that's something every movement needs to internalize.
Speaker 1: Amen Slowly, more and more papers stop running anti gay
Speaker 1: hit pieces. This is not overnight, and this is not
Speaker 1: because of this one action, but because of action after action,
Speaker 1: and because of more and more people coming out, which
Speaker 1: is one of the main things. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: in a little bit.
Speaker 2: Mancho for just one second, Yeah, just about the day
Speaker 2: of the Purple Hands, you know, especially since you know
Speaker 2: people were literally like painting, quote unquote painting the town
Speaker 2: with purple hands. Is there any preservation of that in
Speaker 2: San Francisco, is still to this day like a paper
Speaker 2: or are their purple hands around the city or anywhere
Speaker 2: for that matter.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about in San Francisco. I know that
Speaker 1: a bunch of different queer groups around the world, including
Speaker 1: Australia and then one in Eastern Europe somewhere, named themselves
Speaker 1: like the Purple Hand and things like that. Nice. There
Speaker 1: was also apparently I couldn't find a source on this.
Speaker 1: Apparently for a little while, people started sending threatening letters
Speaker 1: that instead of like the black hand as like the
Speaker 1: like mark that the pirates are going to kill you,
Speaker 1: they would send like purple hands to people who are
Speaker 1: being bigots. That's pretty cool, I know. I want to
Speaker 1: It's not in the script because I couldn't find an
Speaker 1: actual source on it. Sure, but I want to believe.
Speaker 2: I'm committing that to my canon memory of yeah, of
Speaker 2: this movement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't know. I actually I think it
Speaker 1: would be interesting someone knows, and it would be cool
Speaker 1: if San Francisco did when I first there's so many
Speaker 1: things that are just sort of like throw away lines.
Speaker 1: If you read like the history of the Gay Libration Front,
Speaker 1: they'll be like, oh, and then they protest San Francisco
Speaker 1: Examiner and some people are arrested. And then it's like
Speaker 1: the more you dive into it, the more the story
Speaker 1: opens up, and you start realizing how impactful this was
Speaker 1: to the area. You know, And these days the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Examiner is actually one of the better sources about
Speaker 1: this thing that happened. They run articles. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: they ran an article about that was like we were
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of this, Like that's good, I
Speaker 1: mean good, yeah, And you know, they're also like almost
Speaker 1: everyone who works for this paper wasn't born when this happened,
Speaker 1: all a bunch of progressive queers, like you know, which
Speaker 1: is like one of the ways we win. It's kind
Speaker 1: of assimilationist to me to say, maybe whatever, but like, well,
Speaker 1: now we're just like everywhere, like we've always been everywhere,
Speaker 1: but now we're out and everywhere and the greatest achievement
Speaker 1: of the golf, at least according to some of the founders.
Speaker 1: I listened to an interview with was that they changed
Speaker 1: the politics of the new left and of leftism and
Speaker 1: progressive in general, which then left a massive mark on
Speaker 1: the mainstream culture of America within two years. In order
Speaker 1: to be taken seriously as a radical, you had to
Speaker 1: accept gay rights in a similar way that like when
Speaker 1: a lot of these organizations start, they would be like
Speaker 1: really sexist, right, and then immediately people are like, you
Speaker 1: just can't do that. You have to take women's liberation seriously,
Speaker 1: and it got through people's thick skulls or and the
Speaker 1: same thing happened with gay rights and more and more
Speaker 1: people in the anti war movement, black power in Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican power movements, all these people came out of the closet.
Speaker 1: Like the GLF would just go to table anti war
Speaker 1: conferences and they just have a table that's like basically
Speaker 1: like full of stuff that's like, hey, you know, you
Speaker 1: can just like be gay right, and people are like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, thank god, and then they would all come
Speaker 1: out height and they also tried to tie in anti
Speaker 1: war and like women's lib and and gay rights stuff.
Speaker 1: Altogether they had chance like one, two, three, four, we
Speaker 1: don't want your macho war and slogans like come out
Speaker 1: against war and depression, which is very nice, little clever
Speaker 1: play on words. I would never have if I didn't
Speaker 1: read this in this context with something that's come out
Speaker 1: against war impression, I wouldn't realize that they mean like
Speaker 1: come out of the closet. But you know, and since
Speaker 1: gays weren't allowed in the military, you get people with
Speaker 1: T shirts that's things like suck cock to beat the draft.
Speaker 1: That ribs. Yeah, that is very cool. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: other big accomplishment that gets attributed to the USGLF is
Speaker 1: that their direct action intervention against the American Psychiatric Association
Speaker 1: led to homosexuality being delisted as a disorder in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three. Nice the GLF, Yeah, no, I yeah. The
Speaker 1: GLF fell apart as various groups split off to do
Speaker 1: their own thing, and some of them came to odds
Speaker 1: at odds with one another. But people keep trying to
Speaker 1: look at the GOLF as like on its own right,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, it fell apart because of these reasons.
Speaker 1: But I think you have to look at it. The
Speaker 1: entire New Left fell apart in the early seventies. This
Speaker 1: was not the Golf and its structuralist structure or you know,
Speaker 1: arguments about drag queens and stuff that I'll get into
Speaker 1: very soon. It's the New Left fell apart, and every
Speaker 1: single radical group at the time fell apart due to
Speaker 1: combination of repression and co intel, pro growing apathy, internal divisions,
Speaker 1: and also people just like kind of like kind of
Speaker 1: selling out or whatever. And the GLF was not unique
Speaker 1: and actually, like all these other movements, things came out
Speaker 1: of them. They were this fertile soil. Eventually, the GLF
Speaker 1: was supplanted by the far more orderly Gay Activist Alliance
Speaker 1: the GAA, which used Robert's Rules of Orders to run
Speaker 1: its meetings and was single issue about gay rights. And
Speaker 1: the GAA wasn't counter to the GLF. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of overlap between these groups. The public didn't really
Speaker 1: understand the difference though, so the GAA every time they'd
Speaker 1: have an action, people would be like, you GLF bastards,
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, God damn it. With the GAA,
Speaker 1: new ones, what do you do? The People's Judea movement
Speaker 1: of the Monty Python reference for anyone, Ah, yes, I'm
Speaker 1: like if I just say, I'm like, if I don't
Speaker 1: get it right, and people are gonna wonder why I'm
Speaker 1: bringing Jude into it reference the Life of Brian, which
Speaker 1: is gonna come up in the many Python's coming into this.
Speaker 1: It is yeah, yeah, cool, okay. But and so the
Speaker 1: GAA kept fighting their headquarters were destroying a fire in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, but that didn't take it out. They
Speaker 1: kept They had to protest against the Village Voice again
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five. There was also a group called
Speaker 1: the Lavender Menace, which is a lesbian group that started
Speaker 1: as a combo move from the GLF and the National
Speaker 1: Organization for Women. Later they changed their name to the
Speaker 1: Radical Lesbians one word with an L, one L in
Speaker 1: the middle. Oh, and there's another group that came out
Speaker 1: of the GLF that I particularly want to talk about, though,
Speaker 1: the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries or Star Nice and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about them on Wednesday. Yay. Wow, brilliant
Speaker 1: conclusion to the episode. Thank you, thank you. I'm always
Speaker 1: I'm working on my cliffhangers, you know, Yeah, I was. Wow.
Speaker 2: I was sitting on the edge of my seat just like, oh, cool, name,
Speaker 2: what's up with them? And then boom, you don't get
Speaker 2: to know. Yeah, you can't google it. Between now and
Speaker 2: then I shan't.
Speaker 1: I simply shall not. Well you don't have to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if people want to know more about you, Daniel,
Speaker 1: oh me, oh gosh, DJ Danel, you can find me.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 2: I did the thing so when Ian and I were
Speaker 2: never mind doesn't matter. I did the thing of deciding
Speaker 2: to brand myself consistently. It's DJ Underscore Daniel d A
Speaker 2: n L on everything. So if you're looking for me
Speaker 2: on Twitter, that's where I am. Instagram that's where I am.
Speaker 2: If you want to find me on Twitch, twitch, dot tv, slash,
Speaker 2: DJ Underscore Danel a stream Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, and
Speaker 2: it's a lot of fun over there. We do a
Speaker 2: bunch of umb ship and most of my stream is
Speaker 2: dedicated to giving you the viewer, the ability to fuck
Speaker 2: with me while I'm streaming. So if that sounds fun
Speaker 2: to you, then come on by because it's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, Hell yeah, Sophie, you got anything.
Speaker 3: First of all, I love you, Daniel, Daniel's the best.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you're I'm so glad you're here. Yeah me, Tim,
Speaker 3: I would like to plug Coolson Media's newest show. It's
Speaker 3: called Sad oligarch. It is research hosted and created by
Speaker 3: j Canrahan and it is.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry, Oh, you have plenty of time to
Speaker 1: do that. And then one of the.
Speaker 3: Episodes it's really good, and uh, it's it's it's uniquely
Speaker 3: interesting and has really good music on it. So check
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Magpie, Well this week and this week only, unless
Speaker 1: you're listening to this in the future, in which case
Speaker 1: you missed the kickstartter Miss, I am kickstarting a tabletop
Speaker 1: role playing game called pan Number City, which is about
Speaker 1: various groups of people coming together trying and overthrow the
Speaker 1: God Gang, or just hang out and eat mushrooms and
Speaker 1: talk to rats and hang out in the sewers, or
Speaker 1: however you want to play your tabletop role playing game.
Speaker 1: It's called The Number City. It's on Kickstarter right now.
Speaker 1: We've unlocked more stretch goals than we originally came up with.
Speaker 1: So now if you back it, I know we like.
Speaker 1: So now if you back it, in addition to getting
Speaker 1: the book of how to play the game, you're also
Speaker 1: going to get a whole other book that is a
Speaker 1: series of adventures, and you can get a whole other
Speaker 1: book that is a novella written by me, and you're
Speaker 1: going to get now on top of that, a full
Speaker 1: color map of the city. Because we just right before
Speaker 1: recording this hit our I'm going to say our last
Speaker 1: stretch goal, but we actually have one stretch goal that's
Speaker 1: like kind of our fake stretch goal, which is that
Speaker 1: we've managed to get one hundred thousand dollars. We're going
Speaker 1: to have a hot tub party where we all costplay
Speaker 1: and eat pizza. You're not invited, but we'll live stream it,
Speaker 1: but we're going to have it. Yeah, but we'll live
Speaker 1: stream it and dope and that one's the joke one.
Speaker 1: But if we do hit that, we will do it
Speaker 1: and I'll see you all on Wednesday. Bye bye.
Speaker 3: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 3: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 3: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 3: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 3: your podcasts.