Harry Hay
Harry Hay (born April 7, 1912 , Worthing , United Kingdom ; † October 24, 2002 , San Francisco , United States ) was an American activist of the LGBTQ movement. Hay was a member of the Communist Party and founded several gay political organizations, notably the Mattachine Society , which was important in the 1950s and 1960s .
Life
Born in Worthing, Great Britain, in 1912, Hay immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1919. He attended Stanford University and after dropping out, lived as an artist and filmmaker in San Francisco. As a young man he had a love affair with the actor Will Geer , known from The Waltons . Hay was later married and had two children, but divorced in 1951 and lived with his partner, the physicist and inventor John Burnside , from 1962 until the end of his life . He died of lung cancer in San Francisco in 2002 at the age of 90 .
Political activity: Foundation of the Mattachine Society
Harry Hay authored the United States' first publicly recognized manifesto on LGBT Q rights in 1948 . At that time he was already a member of the Communist Party (CPUSA) - which in turn banned homosexuals from membership. When Hay became increasingly publicly active in homosexual groups in the coming decades, he advised the leadership of the CPUSA to expel him. However, the party excluded him not because of his homosexuality, but as an alleged security risk.
Together with other activists, Hay founded the Mattachine Society in 1950, the first political organization for equal rights for homosexuals in the United States. The organizational structure and political approach were initially based on that of the Communist Party in the McCarthy era . The cells, which were largely isolated from one another in order to protect against state persecution, initially advocated the public perception and acceptance of homosexuality, which in turn was intended to strengthen the self-confidence of homosexuals as part of a cultural minority. The organization thus followed Hays' view, which was very radical at the time, that homosexuals are an oppressed cultural minority who can only free themselves from this situation through a shared political self-confidence.
More political actions
As the Mattachine Society grew, the group moved away from the radical attitudes of its founders. Large parts of the group advocated a moderate public stance and, conveyed by the public opinion of the McCarthy era, also a distancing from radical forces. The group around Hay had to give up the leadership positions of the organization. Hay and some of the founding members close to him then left the group in 1953.
When Hay finally had to appear before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in 1955 , it was difficult for him to find a leftist lawyer. He felt abandoned by the left as well as by the early LGBTQ movement. In the following years he worked with the peace movement during the Vietnam War and with activists of the North American indigenous peoples. In 1979, Hay and others founded the Radical Faeries , a homosexual political group whose goal, unlike other homosexuals, is not to imitate the heterosexual lifestyle.
literature
- Vern Leroy Bullough : Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context . Harrington Park Press, 2002, ISBN 1-5602-3193-9
- Stuart Timmons : The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement . Alyson Publications , 1990, ISBN 1-5558-3175-3
- Owen Keehnen: Remembering the Amazing Harry Hay , March 24, 2005
- Harry Hay, Will Roscoe (Eds.): Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of its Founder , Boston, Beacon Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8070-7080-7
Individual evidence
- ^ IMDb biography of Will Geer
- ↑ Michael Kahn, AP, October 25, 2002, Gay Rights Pioneer Harry Hay Dies at the Age of 90 ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Stuart Timmons, CounterPunch, October 25, 2002, Harry Hay Dies at 90
- ^ Philip Hoare, The Independent, October 29, 2002, Harry Hay
- ↑ Interviews by Owen Keehnen at Infopt.demon.co.uk ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hay, Harry |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American LGBT activist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 7, 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Worthing , UK |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 24, 2002 |
| Place of death | San Francisco , United States |