October 2016

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [I’d rather fight than switch]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

The year was 1970. The year of the first Earth Day, the year that the United States invaded Cambodia, the year when National Guardsmen shot four student demonstrators at an antiwar rally at Kent State University. A year in the continuing fight for social and political rights, be they black, female or gay. As part of the larger push for Civil Rights in the 1970s these photographs, though mainly unpublished at the time, document that struggle. Today these important and joyful photographs taken by Mother Boats C.P. act as testament to the first-ever Gay Pride Parade in the world [because of the time zone], which was held in Los Angeles on June 28, 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots the previous year. Although one of several gay pride parades that took place that day around the United States, this was the only “street closing” gay pride parade held in 1970″1 The Advocate reported, “Over 1,000 homosexuals and their friends staged, not just a protest march, but a full blown parade down world-famous Hollywood Boulevard.”2 The photographs evidence that very first flowering of mass gay visibility and freedom the world had ever seen.

From a personal perspective, the scanning and digital cleaning of the images and the research that has gone into this posting has been a labour of love, as it should be, for something that you care deeply about and that is important to culture and community. I came out in London in 1975 only six short years after the Stonewall Riots and, looking at the these photographs, I know how strong and resolute these fellow human beings would have had to have been, to be out of the closet and be photographed in public at such a point in the fight for gay liberation

Early gay activism

For those people engaged in research into gay identity and gay and lesbian history there is an awareness of groups like the Mattachine Society3 (founded in 1950, one of the earliest gay rights organisations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago’s Society for Human Rights4) and the Daughters of Bilitis5 (founded in 1955, the first lesbian civil and political rights organisation in the United States), which formed part of the homophile moment pre-Stonewall and gay liberation. Following these early groups, there is a really interesting period in the mid- late 1960s where there is an increasing level of activism right across America. Now however, there seems to exist a simplified narrative of this period that is skewed towards New York when in actuality there were a lot of things happening prior to and leading up to Stonewall all over the United States. Of course, events that flow on from Stonewall stand alone, but I believe that there is not a broad public awareness of the nuances of what was happening across the country: for example, in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D. C., San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In August 1966 there was the Compton’s Cafeteria riot in Los Angeles,6 which occurred in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. This incident was one of the first recorded transgender riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City; in April 1965 in Philadelphia an estimated 150 people participated in a sit-in when the manager of Dewey’s restaurant refused service to several people he thought looked gay and in July of that year in the same city demonstrators picketed at Independence Hall, returning each year through 1969 for what came to be known as the Annual Reminder7 beginning a new era in Philadelphia LGBT culture as a presence in the community8; while in April 1969 in San Francisco, quite a prominent event took place which was picked up by student newspapers across the country – “when gay activist and journalist Gale Whittington was fired by the States Steamship Company after coming out in print, a small group of activists operating under the name “Committee for Homosexual Freedom” (CHF) picketed the company’s San Francisco offices every workday between noon and 1.00pm for several weeks.”9 An incomplete list of LGBT actions in the United States prior to the Stonewall riots can be found on the Wikipedia website.1

Artist and photographs

Mother Boats C.P. (a.k.a. Brian Traynor) undertook journalism and photojournalism for a few semesters between 1962-66 using old flat plate cameras and top view 120 roll film cameras, developing his prints in the dark room. He went to Vietnam on active service in 1967: “There was duty free exchange and I got an Olympus SLR c. 1967. I had up to three cameras around my neck, one black and white, one colour, and I even had a 16mm spy camera.”11 When he got back from Vietnam in 1969 with his equipment shipped back in a cargo container he went to a Sexual Freedom League (SFL)12 meeting at the Bi Centre San Francisco, joined the league and started shooting everything he could until all his gear got ripped off in the back of a hippie van a year and a half later. As Boats states, “I shot whatever was happening.”13 He became a freelance writer for the Berkeley Barb, a weekly underground newspaper that was published in Berkeley, California, during the years 1965 to 1980 – “one of the first and most influential of the counterculture newspapers of the late 1960s.”14 By this time Brian had got new cameras and founded the darkroom and took photographs for the paper. At night he completed a year course at Lanny College in Oakland (TAFE) in printing and print camera dark room techniques.

“Leo Laurence then co-founded a militant group the Committee for Homosexual Freedom (CHF) with Gale Whittington, Mother Boats, Morris Kight and others. Gale Whittington a young man who had been fired from States Steamship Company for being openly gay, after a photo of him by Mother Boats appeared in the Berkley Barb, next to the headline “HOMOS, DON’T HIDE IT!”, the revolutionary article by Leo Laurence. The same month Carl Wittman, a member of CHF, began writing Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto, which would later be described as “the bible of Gay Liberation”. It was first published in the San Francisco Free Press and distributed nationwide, all the way to New York City, as was the Berkeley Barb with Leo’s stories on CHF’s gay guerilla militant initiatives and Mother Boats’ photographs. CHF was soon to become renamed as GLF (Gay Liberation Front).”15

Boats participated in the emerging gay liberation movement, becoming president of the Psychedelic Venus Church (Psyven) which was founded by Jefferson Poland in 1969. Organised sexual radicalism reached its zenith in the activities of the church, which fused group sex with marijuana consumption with Eastern mysticism and paganism. “”We believed,” Boats later recalled, “in breaking the chains of restriction, to liberate the body and turn it on and enjoy hedonistic comforts.” Under Boat’s guidance, Psyven became the epicentre of some of the most radical and performative sexual experimentation of the era.”16 Boats permanently left the United States in 1973, first for New Zealand and then Australia: “… he sailed off into the sunset with the mostly nude crew of the three-masted cargo schooner S.V. Sofia.“17

Turning to the photographs themselves, what is fascinating about them is the fluid energy that they embody. Up until this point, gay liberation protests had either been respectful pickets or small protests by a tight coterie of people. In the sense that this was an organised public event, gay people – on this day, with this march – became visible in large numbers. For gay people this was a new and unique experience. To be out in public, and to be “out” in public was for most a daring escapade, an escape from a denial of their existence. For a culture that had been hidden and oppressed for so long this venturing out in public (instead of “passing” in the shadows) was a first: there was no point of reference for what they were doing. The point of view of these photographs captures that feeling with élan. They capture the feeling of the possibility of sexual freedom and … they just feel so very alive with that energy.

This newfound freedom was a release from oppression, if only for a short period (Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s “carnivalesque”). As Boats moves in an out of the parade, varying his camera height and angles (in some images almost seeming to hover above the crowd), the ephemeral, fluid, fleeting moments that he captures are like a performative dance, something different from the usual static parade photographs of the time. Boats’ point of view is vital and alive and his photographs are redolent of the beginning of an openly gay sensibility. In the crowd we observe African Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans, young straight couples, hippies, young children and families, gay sons with their mothers, old men and elderly husbands and wives. Most seem to be laughing and having a good time. For example, in Untitled (June 1970, below) two middle-aged women, one in a white cardigan and patterned dress, the other in a check dress, clutching a raffia type handbag with neatly permed hair are accompanied by a man in glasses with his arms folded resting his behind on a car. All three are smiling broadly for the photographer, as are the couple at left and the man behind them. It is a wonderful portrait of the spectators enjoying the spectacle of the parade and perhaps the visage of the photographer. The group portrait is grounded by the feet, particularly the two pairs of white shoes of the women planted on the tarmac, one women’s shoes bisected by a large crack in the white paint that has been laid down on the road, perhaps a metaphor for the fractured society that lives and breathes in plain sight once the festivities are over.

As much as a parade is a spectacle and performance, these photographs capture the authenticity of the display. With their link to the indexical nature of photography (this happened, on this day, in this place) the photographs acknowledge that the multicultural crowd (in some photographs up to three deep) enjoyed the spectacle. And in so doing they, the spectators, move from objective observers to becoming active participants in the parade. The clear denouement of these photographs can be summed up as this: once that sense of freedom for gay people came into being in public (and was accepted by the crowd lining the parade route) – in future, that ecstatic feeling could not be so easily put back into the closet. The genie was out of the bottle.

Legacy

To date, we must acknowledge that most of the research and visual contextualisation has been based around the New York march and the vast majority of material available is from that city. If mention is made of the march in Los Angeles, it is essentially as a footnote to the march in New York which happened on the same day. But at the time, in the July 22-August 4, 1970 issue of The Advocate (below), we can see that the New York and Los Angeles marches were given equal billing on the front page. To this point, there has been little research into this documentation of the beginnings of Gay Liberation in California. Unfortunately, most of the people involved in this activism are now in their 80s or have passed on. This is why these mainly unpublished photographs of the Los Angeles march in June 1970 are so important: they bear witness to the people, the places and the event as it was taking place. They are now our visual memories, in which we too can celebrate the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots as it took place around the country.

© Dr Marcus Bunyan

Word count: 1,980

Footnotes

1/ Anonymous. “Christopher St. West,” on the Centre for the Study of Political Graphics website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016. No longer available online

2/ Christopher Harrity. “#TBT: What Gay Pride Looked Like in 1970,” on the Advocate.com website, June 05 2014 [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

3/ Anonymous. “Mattachine Society,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

4/ Anonymous. “Society for Human Rights,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

5/ Anonymous. “Daughters of Bilitis,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

6/ Anonymous. “Compton’s Cafeteria riot,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

7/ Anonymous. “Annual Reminder,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

8/ Anonymous. “LGBT culture in Philadelphia,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

9/ Anonymous. “1960s in LGBT rights,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

10/ Anonymous. “List of LGBT actions in the United States prior to the Stonewall riots,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

11/ Email to the author from Mother Boats C.P. 28/02/2016.

12/ “In 1965, Jefferson Poland returned to San Franciso from New York where he and Leo Koch had founded the New York City League for Sexual Freedom in 1964, an organisation to promote and conduct sexual activity among its members and to agitate for political reform. In San Francisco Poland “lent his support to the creation of the Sexual Freedom League (SFL), a West Coast analogue of the New York group. … Poland began hosting weekly lectures and discussion on topics such as “Sex in the Mental Hospital,” “How to Be Queer and Like It,” and “Sex and Civil Right.” … Part of his goal was to “free bohemia from monogamy, possessiveness, jealousy, and sexual ‘faithfulness.'””
John Sides. Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco. Oxford: OUP, 2009, p. 70.

13/ Email to the author from Mother Boats C.P. 28/02/2016.

14/ Anonymous. “Berkeley Barb,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

15/ Anonymous. “Gay liberation,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

16/ Sides, Op. cit., p. 71.

17/ Ibid., p. 71.

Many thankx to Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting; and for the advise of Nick Henderson on the text. It is very much appreciated. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All images © Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives. Any reproduction of the images must include full attribution and permission must be gained from the Australian Queer Archives.

“If I could send back a message, it’s never give up. We had no way of knowing 45 years ago that we would affect the world by giving people the wherewithal to speak up in their own cultures. The majority of gay pride celebrations [around the world] are now gay pride parades. The bittersweet thing is, ‘Oh, if Morris [Kite] could have lived to see gay marriage before the Supreme Court.’ It’s funny to look back think that so much of this started from a gay pride parade in Los Angeles.”

Reverend Bob Humphries, 2015 in Shayna Rose Arnold. “We’re Going to Do a Parade. This Is Hollywood,” on the Los Angeles Magazine website June 10, 2015 [Online] Cited 10/10/2016

“Reverend Bob Humphries, United States Mission founder, a gay welfare organisation; Morris Kight, Gay Liberation Front founder; and Reverend Troy Perry, Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches founder; gathered at Rev. Perry’s home to discuss how to commemorate the one year anniversary of Stonewall. Before the three left that evening, Christopher Street West was born and calls went out, “We are going to have a parade!” Soon after, Rev. Perry stunned his congregation announcing that MCC and GLF would sponsor the parade. Aware that some identifying graphic was needed, Morris took a pop bottle and sketched out a pin. Rev. Humphries set about getting together a steering committee.

As Rev. Perry remembers, “We went to the Los Angeles Police Commission to secure a permit. When we got there, we met a policeman. He informed us that our hearing wouldn’t come up until about 3.00pm. If we wanted to leave, we could. He informed us that the Police Commission was having lunch with the Parks Commission and they were going to be late in getting started. When we came back around 2.15pm they’d already passed everything on the agenda, except us. The committee asked me to act as spokesperson for our group. I didn’t know that Edward M. Davis, the chief of police of the City of Los Angeles, was going to be there. They started questioning me. It seemed like an eternity. Chief Davis then spoke up. He said, ‘Did you know that homosexuality is illegal in the state of California?’ I looked at him, and I said, ‘No, sir, it’s not.’ We then debated the issue. And he said, ‘Well, I want to tell you something. As far as I’m concerned, granting a parade permit to a group of homosexuals to parade down Hollywood Boulevard would be the same as giving a permit to a group of thieves and robbers.’ Finally, the motion was made. One commissioner said, ‘There’ll be violence in the streets.’”

Rev. Perry recalls, “They debated among themselves. The commission was against it, but they said, ‘We’re going to give the permit, if you can post two bonds, one in the amount of $1 million, one in the amount of $500,000. And you will post in cash the amount of $1,500 to pay for the policemen that it will take to protect you. And, you must have at least 3,000 people marching. If not, you go to the sidewalks.’ I thanked them and left. We called the American Civil Liberties Union and they then entered the case. We were determined to hold that parade on June the 28th!” The next day Rev. Perry met with Herbert Selwyn, an ACLU attorney. They appeared at the Police Commission the following Friday. The Commission dropped all of its specifications except the requirement to pay $1,500 for police protection.

The following Monday the California Superior Court ordered that CSW was to receive the parade permit but also required the police to provide whatever protection needed to maintain an order. In making his ruling, the judge said “all citizens of the State of California are entitled to equal protection under its laws”. The Los Angeles Police Department was ordered to protect the participants as they would any other group, and CSW would not pay any extra taxes or fees.”

With the court order secured, the ambitious team had exactly two days to throw together a parade. It was decided to march down Hollywood Boulevard from an assembly area near Hollywood and Highland, east to Vine Street and then back to their starting point. The parade was an opportunity to be proud, see and be seen, and experience, in a public setting, that you were not alone. The parade kicked off with a VW Microbus playing some recordings of marches over an amplification system. The order ran the gamut of just about anything you could name, from the Advocate Magazine’s float with a carload of men in swimsuits, to a conservative gay group in business suits from extremely conservative Orange County.

The Gay Liberation Front came marching down the street carrying banners and shouting, “Two, four, six, eight, gay is just as good as straight.” Another organisation marching was a group of friends carrying a large sign reading, “Heterosexuals for Homosexual Freedom.” It was a direct, welcome, and reassuring gesture.

What they didn’t know at the time was that while other cities were hosting marches, it was Los Angeles that held the world’s first TLGB Pride Parade. The success of the 1970 parade led immediately to talk of making the parade an annual event. The 1971 and 1972 parades had entries that created controversies; and disagreements within the steering committee lead to no parade being produced in 1973.”

Text from the LA Pride website [Online] Cited 10/10/2016. No longer available online

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Metropolitan Community Church]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Metropolitan Community Church

“The Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), also known as the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC), is an international Protestant Christian denomination. There are 222 member congregations in 37 countries, and the Fellowship has a specific outreach to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families and communities.

The Fellowship has Official Observer status with the World Council of Churches. The MCC has been denied membership in the US National Council of Churches, but many local MCC congregations are members of local ecumenical partnerships around the world and MCC currently belongs to several statewide councils of churches in the United States…

The first congregation was founded in Huntington Park, California by Troy Perry on October 6, 1968. This was a time when Christian attitudes toward homosexuality were almost universally unfavourable. The first congregation originally met in Perry’s Huntington Park home. The church first gained publicity by ads taken out in the Advocate magazine.

In 1969 the congregation had outgrown Perry’s living room and moved to rented space at the Huntington Park Women’s Club. It was at this point in time membership in the church grew to about 200 people. Due to discrimination the church was forced to move, and had a hard time finding a permanent place. During this period during the spring and summer of 1969 the church moved first to the Embassy Auditorium, and then a United Methodist Church for two weeks. The church ended up renting out the Encore Theatre in Hollywood from 1969 through 1971.

Within months of the first worship service, Perry began receiving letters and visits from people who wanted to start Metropolitan Community Churches in other cities. MCC groups from eight U.S. cities were represented at the first General Conference in 1970: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Costa Mesa, California; Chicago, Illinois; Phoenix, Arizona; Kanohe, Hawaii; and Dallas, Texas. An MCC group existed in Miami, Florida, but did not send a delegate.

The church had its final move to a building it purchased at 2201 South Union Avenue in Los Angeles in early 1971. The building was consecrated on March 7, 1971. MCC worshiped there until January 27 of 1973, when the building was destroyed by what the Fire Department called a fire “of suspicious origin.”

The MCC has grown since then to have a presence in 37 countries with 222 affiliated churches. The largest presence is found in the United States, followed by Canada. The denomination continues to grow: In 2010, El Mundo reported that the first MCC congregation in Spain would be established in Madrid in October. It would be the first church to recognise and perform religious same-sex marriages in the country, as the Roman Catholic Church (the former state church) refuses to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies or adoptions.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Gay Liberation Front]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Gay Liberation Front

The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was the name of a number of gay liberation groups, the first of which was formed in New York City in 1969, immediately after the Stonewall riots, in which police clashed with gay demonstrators.

The American Gay Liberation Front (GLF) advocated for sexual liberation for all people; they believed heterosexuality was a remnant of cultural inhibition and felt that change would not come about unless the current social institutions were dismantled and rebuilt without defined sexual roles. To do this, the GLF was intent on transforming the idea of the nuclear family and making it more akin to a loose affiliation of members without biological subtexts. Prominent members of the GLF also opposed and addressed other social inequalities between the years of 1969 to 1972 such as militarism, racism, and sexism, but because of internal rivalries the GLF officially ended its operations in 1972.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Unity in our community]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

“Because we were all involved with the court case, we really didn’t have much of a parade planned! Well, we got on the phones and started calling everybody. And, my goodness, that Sunday afternoon when we marched – thank God – we had a lot of people marching. We had about 50,000 people on the sidewalks. I had never seen more people with hats and dark shades on in my life. I was surprised that more of them didn’t get in the streets with us, but people were worried. They had jobs. They were concerned about being on television, being photographed. And yet, it was the best feeling in the world.”

Reverend Troy Perry

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Outside Lucy’s]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Morris Kight and friends outside Regal Shoes]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Queens outside Marty’s]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Gays are people too]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [The Boys in the Band]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

The Boys in the Band

“The Boys in the Band is a 1970 American drama film directed by William Friedkin. The screenplay by Mart Crowley is based on his Off Broadway play of the same title. It is among the first major American motion pictures to revolve around gay characters and is often cited as a milestone in the history of queer cinema.

The ensemble cast, all of whom also played the roles in the play’s initial stage run in New York City, includes Kenneth Nelson as Michael, Peter White as Alan, Leonard Frey as Harold, Cliff Gorman as Emory, Frederick Combs as Donald, Laurence Luckinbill as Hank, Keith Prentice as Larry, Robert La Tourneaux as Cowboy, and Reuben Greene as Bernard. Model/actress Maud Adams has a brief cameo appearance as a fashion model in a photo shoot segment in the opening montage of scenes.

The film is set in an Upper East Side apartment in New York City in the late 1960s. Michael, a Roman Catholic sporadically-employed writer, and recovering alcoholic, is preparing to host a birthday party for his friend Harold. Another of his friends, Donald, a self-described underachiever who has moved from the city, arrives and helps Michael prepare. Alan, Michael’s (presumably straight) old college roommate from Georgetown, calls with an urgent need to see Michael. Michael reluctantly agrees and invites him to come over.

One by one, the guests arrive. Emory is a stereotypical flamboyant interior decorator; Hank, a soon-to-be-divorced schoolteacher, and Larry, a fashion photographer, are a couple, albeit one with monogamy issues; and Bernard is an amiable black bookstore clerk. Alan calls again to inform Michael that he won’t be coming after all, and the party continues in a festive manner. But, unexpectedly, Alan has decided to drop by after all, and his arrival throws the gathering into turmoil.

“Cowboy” – a male hustler and Emory’s “gift” to Harold – arrives. As tensions mount, Alan assaults Emory and in the ensuing chaos Harold finally makes his grand appearance. In the midst of the scuffle, Michael impulsively begins drinking again. As the guests become more and more intoxicated, hidden resentments begin to surface, and the party moves indoors from the patio due to a sudden downpour.

Michael, who believes Alan is a closeted homosexual, begins a telephone game in which the objective is for each guest to call the one person whom he truly believes he has loved. With each call, past scars and present anxieties are revealed. Bernard reluctantly attempts to call the son of his mother’s employer, with whom he’d had a sexual encounter as a teenager, while Emory calls a dentist on whom he’d had a crush while in high school; both Bernard and Emory immediately regret having made the phone calls. Hank and Larry attempt to call one-another (via two separate phone lines in Michael’s apartment). Michael’s plan to “out” Alan with the game appears to backfire when Alan calls his wife, not the male college friend Justin Stewart whom Michael had presumed to be Alan’s lover. As the party ends and the guests depart, Michael collapses into Donald’s arms, sobbing. When he pulls himself together, it appears his life will remain very much the same.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

The Boys in the Band 1970 (part 1)

The highly quotable campy gay classic from the last days of the era before the Stonewall Riots. Michael (Kenneth Nelson) throws a birthday party for Harold (Leonard Frey) and invites their crowd of gay friends. In attendance are Donald (Frederick Combs), whose homosexuality has put him into therapy; Emory (Cliff Gorman), a flaming queen; Bernard (Reuben Greene), a black bookstore clerk; Hank (Laurence Luckinbill), a teacher who’s separated from his wife; and Larry (Keith Prentice), his boyfriend, who doesn’t think their relationship should mean that he has to stop sleeping around. Things are complicated by the arrival of Alan (Peter White), Michael’s presumably straight friend from collegee, and Cowboy (Robert La Tourneaux), a prostitute who is Emory’s birthday present for Harold.

Written by Mart Crowley and based on his play of the same name, directed by William Friedkin, who went on to direct The Exorcist. Tragically, several of the cast members are now dead from AIDS. Rated R for a lot of sex talk and a brief bare butt shot.

Text from the YouTube website

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Gay Liberation with Morris Kight at centre, Troy Perry behind]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Brian Traynor and the Australian Queer Archives

Morris Kight (American, 1919-2003)

“Morris Kight (born November 19, 1919 – died January 19, 2003) was an American gay rights pioneer and peace activist. He is considered one of the original founders of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement in the United States…

In 1958, Kight moved to Los Angeles, where he was the founder or co-founder of many gay and lesbian organisations. The first such organisation was the ‘militant’ Committee for Homosexual Freedom or CHF, with Leo Laurence, Gale Whittington, Mother Boats and others, later to be renamed the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in October 1969, the third GLF in the country (after New York and Berkeley). The name was used to show solidarity with the Vietnamese National Liberation Front. By the next year, there were over 350 GLF organisations around the country. He also co-founded Christopher Street West gay pride parade in Los Angeles in 1970, Aid For AIDS in 1983, and the Gay Community Center in 1971, (now the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center), the Stonewall Democratic Club in 1975, and many others. Kight remarked that creating the Community Center was the achievement of which he was most proud.

Kight brought his experiences in political action into the realm of gay rights. One of the first actions by the LA GLF was against a local eatery called Barney’s Beanery. The restaurant, located in West Hollywood, not only had a sign above bar that said “Fagots [sic] Stay Out”, but also printed up matchbook covers with the same saying. Kight, along with Troy Perry and 100 activists protested outside, sending in protesters occasionally to order coffee and take up space at the tables. The protest was initially successful – the owner eventually handed Kight the sign in front of news cameras. But after the media left the owner replaced the sign, where it remained until West Hollywood’s first lesbian mayor, Valerie Terrigno, took it down when the city council passed an anti-discrimination ordinance. Perry vowed at the initial protest to never set foot in the place again until the owner apologised, which finally happened in 2005…

(The owner John Anthony put up a sign among the old license plates and other ephemera along the wall behind the bar that read “FAGOTS [sic] – STAY OUT”. Though the owner was known to be antagonistic towards gays, going as far as posing (in front of his sign) for a picture in a 1964 Life article on “Homosexuality in America” over a caption where he exclaims “I don’t like ’em…”, the sign was ostensibly put up as a response to pressure from the police who had a tendency towards discriminatory practices against homosexuals and consequently establishments that catered to the group… After the then-mayor, Valerie Terrigno, the entire city council and gay rights activists marched into Barney’s and relieved the wall of the offending sign in December 1984, it was held by Morris Kight for many years and now rests in the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

Text from the Wikipedia website

In September 2001, he made a video documentary with West Hollywood Public Access host James Fuhrman called “Early Gay and Lesbian History in Los Angeles”, which included his recollections of the Beanery protest and other actions. He had a longtime companion named Roy Zucheran. Three days before his death, he donated his memorabilia and archives to the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles. UCLA also has possession of some of his archives.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Emperess of Beautifull Downtown Burbank]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Imperial Court System

“The International Imperial Court System (IICS) also known as the International Court System is one of the oldest and largest LGBT organisations in the world. The Imperial Court System is a grassroots network of organisations that works to build community relationships for equality and raise monies for charitable causes through the production of annual Gala Coronation Balls that invite an unlimited audience of attendees to be presented at Royal Court in their fanciest attire throughout North America along with numerous other fundraisers each year, all for the benefit of their communities. The Imperial Court System is the second largest LGBT organisation in the world, surpassed only by the Metropolitan Community Church.

The Imperial Court System in the United States was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1965 by José Sarria. Sarria, affectionately known as “Mama José” or similar among Imperial Court members, adopted the surname “Widow Norton” as a reference to Joshua Norton, a much-celebrated citizen of 19th-century San Francisco who had declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico in 1859. Sarria soon became the nexus of a fundraising group with volunteer members bearing titles of nobility bestowed by yearly elected figurehead leaders of Emperor and Empress. In the United States, the first court outside of San Francisco was in Portland, Oregon, which joined with San Francisco in 1971 to start the Court System, followed by Seattle, and then by Vancouver (by the self-proclaimed Empress of Canada, ted northe (who always spelled his name in the lower case), who founded the Canadian Court System in 1971, after being inspired by attending a ball in Portland OR, and thus became the International Court System). These empires operated and formed policies more-or-less independently until an Imperial Court Council led by Sarria was formed to prevent participation by groups that were not strictly and solely involved with charitable fundraising…

Titles

Each court holds an annual “coronation” (or “adornment” in the case of baronies and ducal courts) which is usually the chapter’s largest fundraiser and is attended by both local people and members of other chapters from across North America. The evening culminates with the ceremony in which the new monarch or monarchs are crowned. The method by which monarchs are selected varies from chapter to chapter, ranging from election by vote among the active membership in closed session to election by open vote of the community region in which individuals are residents… held between one week to up to six months before the coronation to election by all in attendance on the night of the ceremony.

The office of monarch is taken very seriously within the court system and requires a large commitment of the holder’s time and money. Accordingly, while the presence of an “imperial couple” is the norm, it is not uncommon for an emperor or empress to reign alone depending on the availability of suitably dedicated and charismatic candidates with the necessary resources to fulfil the requirements of a one-year reign.

In the most frequent case, several weeks after coronation the new monarch or monarchs present their court titles at a fundraiser called investitures. The titles given to members vary from one chapter to another and are primarily left to the discretion of the reigning monarch or monarchs, the fons honorum (fountain of honor) of their chapter. Typical titles awarded are Imperial Crown Prince, Grand Duchess, Marquess, Viscount, etc. Other appellations bestowed resemble offices or professions within a medieval or modern noble court rather than titles of nobility, such as “Court Jester” or “Chancellor of the Realm” and so forth. These titles may be as serious-sounding or as humorously campy as the monarchs wish.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

Beautiful Downtown Burbank

“It occurs to me that perhaps some (younger) people have heard the phrase “Beautiful Downtown Burbank” applied to Burbank, California, but aren’t aware of how the phrase got started.

It was first used on a television show, “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” which premiered in 1968 on the NBC television network. NBC is, of course, located in Burbank. Gary Owens served as the announcer for it, and coined the phrase from the beginning, so the phrase dates from 1968. (Short video here.) It soon caught on and put Burbank on the map with television viewers all across the country. It wasn’t long before postcards began to be printed with this phrase.

The joke, of course, is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While there are many who insist that Burbank is indeed beautiful, others, like Frank Zappa, have claimed that the San Fernando Valley is the ugliest and most charmless place in the country. Whether that is the case, you may decide.

But that’s where the phrase came from.”

Wes Clark. “Beautiful Downtown Burbank,” on the Wes Clark website [Online] Cited 10/10/2016

Anonymous photographer
Beautiful Downtown Burbank
c. 1960-1970s
Postcard

Anonymous photographer
Beautiful Downtown Burbank
c. 1960-1970s
Postcard

Anonymous photographer
Burbank, California
c. 1960-1970s
Postcard

Anonymous photographer
Burbank Mall
c. 1960-1970s
Postcard

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Vaseline]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

The July 22-August 4, 1970 issue of The Advocate

On June 28, 1970 – a year and a day after the spontaneous protest that took place in New York after the raid on the Stonewall Inn – large-scale parades were held in N.Y., L.A., and Chicago.

“Two side-by-side articles from The Advocate, July 22-August 4, 1970, offer descriptions and photos of the first parades and celebrations following the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Nancy Tucker wrote of the New York march, “Some two to three thousand homosexuals from cities around the East Coast gathered here on June 28 and marched from Greenwich Village to Central Park to demonstrate for ‘Gay Pride’ and ‘Gay Power.'”

Covering the Los Angeles Pride Parade, an accompanying article states: “The Gay Community of Los Angeles made its contribution to Americana on June 28. Over 1,000 homosexuals and their friends staged, not just a protest march, but a full blown parade down world-famous Hollywood Boulevard.””

Christopher Harrity. “#TBT: What Gay Pride Looked Like in 1970,” on the Advocate.com website, June 05 2014 [Online] Cited 08/10/2016.

The first-ever Gay Pride Parade was held in Los Angeles on June 28, 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York City. The CSW parade was started by a number of Los Angeles gay activists, prominent among them Morris Kight, Reverend Troy Perry, and Bob Humphries. Although one of several gay pride parades that took place that day around the United States, this was the only “street closing” gay pride parade held in 1970 – something emulated by the other parades the following year. After several troubled years (no parade was held in 1973), the CSW parade returned in 1974, and originated yet another feature of the modern gay pride movement by adding a festival to its annual event. There was always a tense relationship between CSW, the businesses on Hollywood Boulevard and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), so in 1979 the parade and festival were moved to the more friendly environs of Santa Monica Boulevard, in the soon-to-be-incorporated (1984) City of West Hollywood. CSW is now celebrated every June in West Hollywood, and involves an all-weekend festival. This poster was for the second Christopher Street West Parade held in Los Angeles. No offset printshop was willing to print this poster until organisers contacted Peace Press. A workers’ collective founded by anti-Viet Nam War activists in 1967, Peace Press not only printed this poster, but were also enthusiastic about printing pamphlets about gay rights when arrested, drafted, etc.

Anonymous. “Christopher St. West,” on the Centre for the Study of Political Graphics website [Online] Cited 10/10/2016. No longer available online

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Reverend Troy Perry and Reverend Bob Humphries]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Reverend Troy Perry

Troy Deroy Perry Jr (born July 27, 1940) founded the Metropolitan Community Church, a Christian denomination with a special affirming ministry with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities, in Los Angeles on October 6, 1968.

Founding the Metropolitan Community Church

In 1968, after a suicide attempt following a failed love affair, and witnessing a close friend being arrested by the police at the Black Cat Tavern, a Los Angeles gay bar, Perry felt called to return to his faith and to offer a place for gay people to worship God freely. Perry put an advertisement in The Advocate announcing a worship service designed for gays in Los Angeles. Twelve people turned up on October 6, 1968 for the first service, and “Nine were my friends who came to console me and to laugh, and three came as a result of the ad.” After six weeks of services in his living room, the congregation shifted to a women’s club, an auditorium, a church, and finally to a theatre that could hold 600 within several months. In 1971, their own building was dedicated with over a thousand members in attendance.

Being outspoken has caused several MCC buildings to be targeted for arson, including the original Mother Church in Los Angeles. Perry’s theology has been described as conservative, but social action was a high priority from the beginning of the establishment of the denomination. Perry performed same sex unions as early as 1970 and ordained women as pastors as early as 1972. MCC has over 300 congregations in 18 countries. The 2007 documentary film titled Call Me Troy is the story of his life and legacy, including the founding of MCC and his struggles as a civil rights leader in the gay community

Activism

Perry’s activism has taken many turns, including positions on a number of boards of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender organisations. He held a seat on the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations in 1973. Perry worked in political arenas to oppose Anita Bryant in the Save the Children campaign in 1977, that sought to overturn an anti-discrimination ordinance passed by the city of Miami. Unsuccessful in Miami, he also worked to oppose the Briggs Initiative in California that was written to ensure gay and lesbian teachers would be fired or prohibited from working in California public schools. The Briggs Initiative was soundly defeated in 1978, due in large part to grass-roots organising, which Perry participated in. Perry also planned the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979 with Robin Tyler.

In 1978 he was honoured by the American Civil Liberties Union Lesbian and Gay Rights Chapter with its Humanitarian Award. He holds honorary doctorates from Episcopal Divinity School in Boston, Samaritan College (Los Angeles), and La Sierra University in Santa Monica, California for his work in civil rights, and was recently lauded by the Gay Press Association with its Humanitarian Award. Rev. Perry was invited to the White House in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter to discuss gay and lesbian civil rights, and by President Bill Clinton in 1995 for the first White House Conference on HIV/AIDS. In 1997 he was invited to the first White House Conference on Hate Crimes. Perry was also a guest of the President that same year for breakfast in the state dining room in the White House, to be honoured with 90 other clergy for their work in American society.

On Valentine’s Day 2004 he spoke to a crowd of gay newlyweds at the Marriage Equality Rally at the California State Capitol. He retired as Moderator of the MCC in 2005, and the Reverend Elder Nancy Wilson succeeded him at an installation service on 29 October 2005. He remains active in public speaking and writing.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Reverend Bob Humphries (American, 1934-2002)

Reverend Bob Humphries founded the United States Mission, a non-sectarian religious organisation, in 1962 to provide social services to homeless residents of downtown Los Angeles. Branches of the Mission were also established in cities in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest. Beginning in the late-1960s the US Mission advocated for gay rights and social services in Southern California.

“Born on April 24, 1934, and raised in Bisbee, Arizona, Robert Humphries, was the kind of person who only comes along once in a 100 years. Finding an overwhelming need among the poor in Los Angeles he and a group of his friends, turned an ideal, into one of the oldest organisations still in existence in the Gay and Lesbian Community. Thus in 1962, the United States Mission was born. The Mission provides shelter, food, clothing, self-help, and transitional housing for those in need, as well as meals and other services to the elderly. His legacy lives on in facilities in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento, Salinas, Modesto, Portland, Oregon, Seattle Washington, San Antonio Texas, Houston Texas, Phoenix Arizona, Kansas City Missouri, Omaha Nebraska, Pahoa Hawaii and the Missions Corporate headquarters in Fresno California.

Rev. Humphries was a pioneer in supporting the Gay Liberation Movement, co-founding and participating in the Christopher Street West March, he became a force in the fight for Civil Rights for all. He was often interviewed about his beliefs, and his program of “People Helping People,” he stated, “It’s not our purpose to build ivory towers for ourselves.” He preserved in his beliefs, and found many others who helped make his program become larger and stronger, and become the first organisation of its kind to be officially commended, not only be the mayor of Los Angeles, but the city council, Human Relations Commission and the California State Assembly. He had a remarkable, ability not to judge or give up on any one, and as he leaves behind no blood relatives, he will be mourned and dearly missed by the family, his forty years of ministry created.”

Reverend Bob Humphries died in Fresno, California, on January 30, 2002. He was 67.

Published in the Los Angeles Times on April 16, 2002

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Tambourine player]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Woman with a cine camera leaning on a Volkswagen Beetle]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Photographer at the parade]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [His]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Conductor outside Marty’s]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [David and Nathan! Ruth and Naomi?]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Gay Liberation Front, Los Angeles]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Holding hands outside Foreman & Clark]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Grand Duchess de San Francisco]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [TAO]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

TAO (Transvestite/Transsexual Action Organization)

“Aside from the EEF, only one transsexual organization had a national presence in the early 1970s. Angela Douglas was the force behind the group. From the mid-1960s Douglas, still living as a man, had scraped by as an aspiring rock musician and gadabout hippie, frequently high on various drugs. In 1969, shortly after she began to dress publicly as a woman, she joined the Los Angeles Gay Liberation Front, even though she did not consider herself to be gay. (She considered herself transsexual. Both before and after she lived as a woman, she was attracted primarily to women). She traveled around the country and participated actively in gay liberation protests and demonstrations. She split with GLF when she discovered the “anti-transvestic” attitudes of the gay men she encountered and when she found that GLF ignored the transsexuals who wanted to push for a clinic in Los Angeles. “I’d had my fill,” she wrote, “of insults from gays, all demanding I be a man and stop messing as a woman.” As the sexual liberation movement splintered into distinct groups for gay men, lesbians, drag queens, and transsexuals, Douglas started her own militant organisation, TAO, in Los Angeles, first for transvestites and transsexuals and then for transsexuals only.

At its founding in 1970, TAO stood for Transvestite/Transsexual Action Organization, and a year later Transsexual Action Organization. It used the same militant tactics found in gay liberation and other radical social movements. With her countercultural style, Douglas had an outspoken, in-your-face approach to political activism, and under her leadership TAO called for confrontational protests and sets demonstrations. In an early action, Douglas and another transsexual “blocked the entrance” to the theater showing the film Myra Breckinridge to protest the exploitative and ill-informed portrayal of a transsexual and also the used of a non transsexual actor (Raquel Welch) to play the transsexual role. TAO also protested when Los Angeles welfare officials refused to continue aid to men who dressed as women… As part of the more radical “second wave,” it spoke out against sexism and worked with women’s liberation groups and also maintained contact with the Gay Liberation Front. “As I progress as a transsexual,” Douglas wrote to Harry Benjamin, “I find myself more attune[d] to Women’s Liberation, in particular, the demands and ideas of gay women.” In a letter to Playboy magazine, published in 1970, Douglas explained that TAO supported “both gay liberation and women’s liberation: we believe that all victims of prejudice and discrimination must work together to change this society.”

Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 237-238.

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [We Believe, Tinkerbell, We Believe]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

“We Believe, Tinkerbelle, We Believe”: a complex mixture of semiotics.

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [We Believe, Tinkerbell, We Believe]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Outside the California Stevedore & Ballast Co.]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Man in a leopard print leotard with snake]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor)
Untitled [Morris Kight]
June 1970
From the series Los Angeles Pride Parade
Silver gelatin print
© Mother Boats C.P. (Brian Traynor) and the Australian Queer Archives

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