Gay
Rights in St. Louis, Missouri in 1977
Jim Andris © 2013
1977 was a pivotal year in the U.S. struggle for gay and lesbian rights.
The year began with great promise and ended with disheartenment and frustration.
This was the year that Anita Bryant became the front person for a campaign
of terror waged against gays and lesbians.
Background on the Save our Children Campaign
During the decade of the 1960s, a voice for gay liberation emerged
as a clear harmonic in the general chorus which was crying out for civil
rights for women and minorities. In June of 1970 organized demonstrations
by
thousands
of gay and lesbian people occurred in several major U.S. cities on the
one year anniversary of the Stonewall
Riots on June 28, 1969. Gay liberation organizations formed
during this period, notably the Gay
Liberation Front and the Gay
Activists Alliance. In particular, "GAA members performed zaps,
public peaceful confrontations with officials to draw media attention." Their
goal was simply full civil rights for all gay people, but there was an
additional element of sexual liberation in their call. As the first half
of the 1970s passed by, more and more the general public was exposed
through TV and print media to both demonstrations by gay activitsts
and by exhibitions of pride by gay people.
Notable milestones were achieved in the early to middle 1970s as a result
of these calls for gay rights and gay liberation. The number of gay organizations
exploded in a period of two or three years from a few to thousands nationwide.
As early as 1972, the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, through actions of
the
left
wing
Human Rights Party,
enacted
a city-wide anti-discrimination ordinance that included sexual orientation.
Other cities followed suit. Gay activists sought to alter the existing
legal and professional structure which viewed homosexuality in a negative
light. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality
as a
mental
disorder.
The American
Psychological
Association Council of Representatives followed in 1975. Gay publications
depicting positive views of living an openly gay lifestyle and of gay
and lesbian history and contributions to society were increasingly available
on the news stand and by subscription. The Advocate was one
such publication that had a dramatic influence on gay men. This magazine
included an extensive section of ads mainly by men seeking other men
for social and sexual relatationships.
These positive achievements notwithstanding, there was a growing swell
of resentment in more conservative elements of the country, by people
who were, in fact, revolted by this open display of pride by gay and
lesbian people and were staunchly opposed to removing legal and other
barriers to full acceptance. These forces began to more and more find
their own effective voices and organize opposition to all forms of gay
liberation. They sought, in fact, to demonize any and all public and
open displays of pro-homosexual thought and behavior.
It was the 1977 campaign of the organization Save
Our Children, Inc. that finally galvanized
these homophobic social forces and welded them into high voltage cables
of hate and fear that crisscrossed the country. In January of 1977 in
Miami-Dade County, Florida—home to an increasingly liberated
homosexual community—the Metro Dade County Commission met to
amend the Dade County antidiscrimination ordinance by adding a prohibition
of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. To their surprise,
they were met by a large number of residents opposed to the legislation.
While the Commission decided to pass the amendment anyway, organized
opposition grew in the form of Save Our Children. Led by singer-entertainer
Anita Bryant as their president, Save Our Children, Inc.—formed by
a coalition of over thirty conservative political professionals and
ministers
from
various
faiths—set
out to
change the minds of Miami voters by spreading outright lies about homosexuality.
They
called
homosexuality immoral, and charged that homosexuals were promiscuous,
defiant of traditional gender roles, and child molesters. The public
campaign
was a prime
example
of fear-driven
hate mongering in the extreme. They gained enough signatures to force
a referendum, and the amendment was defeated on June 7, 1977.
That might have been just a local defeat, but Anita Bryant and her cause
began to attract national attention: both support and opposition. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina is an example of a conservative person who had mobilized anti-liberal resources and lent aid to the nationalization of the Save Our Children campaign. He was staunch enemy of liberal forces during the Civil Rights Era of the 1960's, and when Roe v. Wade was decided in 1974, Helms and others immediately lobbied for a constitutional amendment enshrining a constitutional right to life from conception on. Another such person who joined forces with Bryant in 1977 was Jerry Falwell, a founding member of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in 1952, the radio and television ministry Old Time Baptist Church in 1976, and Liberty University in 1971. Energized by the Save Our Children struggle, he and Paul Weyrich founded the Moral Majority in 1979, and organization which had a tremendous anti-liberal effect in the subsequent decade.
Bryant led several more campaigns around the country to repeal
local anti-discrimination ordinances including St. Paul, Minnesota, Wichita,
Kansas, and Eugene, Oregon. Eventually, she parlayed her campaign
into becoming a nationally known spokesperson for "traditional family
values," appearing on "Christian"
TV and radio shows hosted by Pat Roberson and by Jim and Tammy Faye Baker.
In Arkansas and Oklahoma, the state legislatures banned gays and lesbians
from serving in the classroom.
But just as Save Our Children gave form and structure to opposition
to gay rights, so did it generate a tremendous amount of resentment
and resistance. By June of 1977, when Anita Bryant arrived to entertain
at a banquet in Houston, Texas, a protest demonstration of 6,000 gays,
lesbians and supporters marched through downtown.
St. Louis Gays and Lesbians Organize against
the Save Our Children Campaign
There were existing organizations in St. Louis that marshalled individuals
and resources into a front of resistance to the Save Our Children campaign.
Rodney C. Wilson has carefully documented the rise of two such organizations
in his article "The Seed Time of Gay Rights: Rev. Carol Cureton,
the Metropolitan Community Church and Gay St. Louis, 1969-1980." When
MCC arrived in St. Louis late in 1973 "the city's landscape was
practically barren. After a seven-year role as a creating and sustaining
institution
of the
gay
community, MCC backed away. Nevertheless, the "children" of
MCC lived on and struggled for gay rights throughout the 1980s." The
Metropolitan Life Services Corporation was a secular organization that
was born
within and grew out of MCC as St. Louis' first true gay community center.
It published
several issues of a newsletter called Prime Time
for
the period
1975-8, established and maintained a gay hotline, and sponsored community-oriented
activites.
The Wilson article
draws on these newsletters as well as interviews with eyewitnesses
to build
a compelling account of what he calls "St. Louis' Second
Annual Gay Pride Rally." This rally occurred at the
St. Louis Metropolitan Community Church on June 9, 1977. Just two
days
before that, June 7, in Dade County/Miami,
Florida, the Save Our Children
campaign had forced
a
succesful
ballot
initiative
that struck down the ban on discrimination by reason of sexual orientation
that had been put in place by the County Board in January of
1977. Back at MCC St. Louis, in the crowd of over 300 people were many
of St. Louis' lesbian and gay leaders, as well as two nationally
known
leaders.
The Rev. Carol
Cureton, founder of MCC St. Louis in 1973 and the Rev. Troy Perry, founder
of the Metropolitan Community Church itself in Los Angeles in the late
1960s both gave inspirational and encouraging messages, despite the recent
setbacks for gay rights. It was not the first or the last time that Troy
Perry would make the trip to St. Louis MCC. Also speaking was Catholic
Dignity St. Louis' Jim Alexander. Other secular gay leaders spoke at
the rally, from the very young to the elder spokesman. Rick Garcia,
a young adult who founded the St. Louis Task Force for Gay Rights to
raise money for pro-gay forces in Dade County was a speaker, as was
Galen Moon, long-time gay
activist, founder
of MLSC in 1975, and tireless worker for gay and lesbian rights. Many
other St. Louis gay and lesbian leaders were present, such as Bill
Cordes and Lisa Wagaman. Fund raising events for the Dade
County effort were held in St. Louis in 1977. Garcia's organization arranged
a benefit screening of the movie A
Very Natural Thing at the Maplewood Theatre that was attended by
1000 people.
According to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, a meeting of St. Louis
gay leaders, in response to the antihomosexual Save Our Children crusade,
occurred on Thursday, June 16, 1977, when "representatives of about
half a dozen local gay organizations met to disuss how they can work
together.
The groups, which have co-operated with one another little in the past,
plan to work together in such areas as educational campaigns and lobbying
efforts." Mentioned by name are the Metropolitan Community Church,
The Midcontinent Life Services Corp., The Gateway Motorcycle Club and
the
St. Louis Task Force for Human Rights. Persons mentioned by name in the
article are Jim Thomas, Fred Kerr and Rick Garcia. This same article
claims "women homosexuals here are generally not organized around their
homosexuality but are active in feminist groups organized around issues
affecting all women."
Bryant's ugly crusade continued to forge ahead across the U.S.A. in
the wake of the Dade County defeat, and Missouri saw the Save Our Children
campaign coming to it. By the end of 1977, however, there was significant
public opposition to Bryant's moralistic harangues, including a
full-blown demonstration of 225 people—100 of them bussed in or by car from
St. Louis—in Joplin, Missouri on Sept. 24. It is clear that in
St. Louis and in Missouri there was significant organizing and resistance
to the Save Our Children campaign. The letter from
Fred Kerr, then president
of MLSC, St. Louis' first gay community center, shows that significant
work was going on in that organization.
Equally fascinating is the evidence
of lesbian feminist work towards lesbian and gay rights. Rodney
Wilson writes in his article that
In the early and mid-1970s, a group called the Lesbian Alliance began
promoting lesbian-feminist causes [but] … also folded in the mid-1970s
without having successfully focused the attention of St. Louis at large
on the needs of the homosexual community.
That may not be the whole story, however. I believe that careful study
will show that a strand of lesbian-feminist support for gay and lesbian
causes continued throughout the 1970s, and is a part of the picture of
the development of pride activities in St. Louis and Missouri. We see
this both in the organization of the demonstrations in Joplin, in
the continued publication of Moonstorm, and in the work of Glenda
Dilley and other women in organizing the Magnolia Committee.
According to an article in the Tuesday, Nov. 22 issue of the Missourian,
Anita Bryant returned to Jefferson City, Missouri on a "religious crusade."
The Missouri Gay Caucus organized a protest march in Columbia, Missouri.
Larry Eggleston, the Executive Director of that organization, spoke to
the press about the demonstration. The march started at Ash and went
down Broadway to the University. [Eggleston was one of the four students
bringing suit at the time against University of Missouri Columbia for
the right to meet on campus and receive student funds.] Apparently, there
was a peaceful coalition of "Christian churches" whose representatives
may have outnumbered the marchers that day. Both sides carried signs.
MCC's Christian Social Action Committee
Led by its founder, Rev. Troy Perry, the Universal Fellowship of the
Metropolitan Community Church had been broadly influential in encouraging
gay and lesbian people to live their lives proudly and freely. The year
of 1977, with its surge of anti-gay hysteria, brought not only Troy Perry
to St. Louis in early June, but just before that in late May, Rev. Adam
DeBaugh, the Director of the UFMCC Department of Christian
Social
Action
from
1975-1986.
Early in 1977, Rev. Carol Cureton informed Ray Lake that the
Board of the Metropolitan Community Church
for Greater St. Louis had appointed him as the local
Chairperson of the Christian Social Action Commission. We are fortunate
to have copies of the Minutes of that Committee for most of the months
in 1977 and half of the months in 1978. They show many details of the
day-to-day life of gay and lesbian activists in many local and national
organizations.
One of the details is that these activists were working
out effective means of collaborating with one another and with supporting
each other's causes, and causes beneficial to a broad range of people.
To take one example, one can see clearly how the common effort to counter
the Anita Bryant blitz grew into other common efforts, such as an early
1978 benefit with speaker Elaine Noble at Washington University sponsored
by the Lesbian Rights Alliance, the Gay People's Alliance (Wash U),
and MLSC. Women were very concerned in that time period with the ratification
of ERA, set to expire in 1979.
1977 Activities of the National Gay Task Force
The National Gay [and Lesbian] Task Force was founded in 1973 by prominent
gay activists at the time. Dr.
Bruce Voeller and Jean O'Leary co-directed the organization for a number
of years, including 1977. According to It's Time [NGTF newsletter]
"Three events this year should long be remembered as milestones on
the way to full gay liberation: NGTF's unprecedented February 8th and
March 26th White House meetings with Presidential Assistant Margaret
Costanza, [Jimmy Carter took office in January, 1977] which laid the
basis for a series of talks with federal agencies that has already
produced
significant
reforms; the June 7 defeat of the Dade County, Florida, gay-rights
ordinance, a victory for bigots but one that has served to galvanize
the gay movement and produce pro-gay effects all over the country;
and the November 18-20 National Conference (in Houston) on the Status
and Role of Women in National Life, where large-scale open lesbian
participation and effective preliminary work in the earlier state conferences
ensured serious consideration for gay issues."
Much can be learned about the issues of the day (1977) from studying
this newsletter, but this statement from it is probably fairly accurate:
"The White House meeting of March 26 was the culmination of months of
quiet planning and negotiating by NGTF, and it was a major step in legitimizing
the gay-rights strugge in the eyes of the media, the general public,
and governmental officials."
Regarding the effects of the Save Our Children hate campaign, the newsletter
says, "Gay-activist organizations have been busily harvesting the gay
(and non-gay civil libertarian) rage Anita so effectively generates,
and many lesbians and gay men who had never before contributed to the
gay movement are joining up, giving money, and donating their time and
energy in all sorts of productive ways. NGTF has been one of the major
beneficiaries of this new sense of urgency: in only four months our membership
nearly doubled." NGTF started a campaign called "We Are Your Children"
to counter the negative images being projected by the Save Our Children
campaign.
Connection between the Women's Movement and Gay Rights in 1977 Nationally
and in Missouri
One of the fascinating offshoots of the meeting of NGTF with the Carter
administration was that NGTF co-director, Jean O'Leary was appointed
by President Carter to the National Commission for the Observance of
International
Women's
Year (IWY). She was the only openly gay person on the commission, and
worked
hard to promote and coordinate lesbian participation in IWY. A conference
was held in Huston in November. The newsletter writes, "The strong
lesbian presence will be a counterweight to the radical-right, anti-ERA
forces
who have already tried to wreck the conference in advance, and should
serve to demonstrate the community of interest between the women's and
gay movements."
Even more fascinating is the fact that the Missouri delegation to the
IWY conference in Huston was staunchly anti-abortion and mostly anti-ERA.
Documentation for this claim—as well as evidence that preparation for
the IWY November conference in Houston provided the occasion back in
Missouri for a pitched battle between opposing forces—can be found in
the International Women's
Year, 1977 Collection at UMSL.
References
Wagman, Paul, "Antihomosexual Campaign Challenges Area's Gays," St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday, June 19, 1977, p. 8A.
"1977: The Year in Review," It's Time: Newsletter of the
National Gay Task Force, Vol. 4, No. 3, December, 1977, pp. 1-3.
sl 228 International Women's
Year, 1977 Collection, 1975-1978, 93 folders, 32 photographs, 5 oral
histories, [guide online at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection
at UMSL], http://www.umsl.edu/~whmc/guides/whm0228.htm
|