For Harry Hay Centenary, L.A. Dedicates Mattachine Staircase

East Coast queers like to believe the gay rights movement was born on their turf but nineteen years before Stonewall and eleven years before Frank Kameny started the DC chapter, Harry Hay co-founded the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles in 1950. (Before him, Henry Gerber created the Society for Human Rights in Chicago in 1924, which suffered a quick demise after members were arrested.)

Harry Hay would be 100 today. He is a forgotten hero of American history who deserves far greater recognition; you could make a case that his contributions were more important than Harvey Milk's. Yet it's easy to see why Gay Inc. prefers to ignore him -- he wasn't mediagenic, he was a Communist, he was strongly anti-assimilationist, and he and his longtime partner John Burnside also co-founded the Radical Faeries. So kudos today to Silver Lake for renaming the Cove Steps in his honor, The Mattachine Steps. Though I'm obliged to point out the sign omits the word gay and does nothing for queer visibility for passersby who don't know the Mattachine Society.

The play The Temperamentals has gotten plenty of press. Read Stuart
Timmons' newly updated biography or try the Hay collection, Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder. On Sunday April 15, the ONE Archives culture series will host a panel discussion about Harry Hay with film clips and readings. Or, shut up and dance: PJ DeBoy, John Cameron Mitchell, Amber Martin, and Paul Dawson host monthly party Mattachine, now in its fourth year at Julius.