Out of the Closets and Onto the Campus: the Politics of Coming out at Florida Atlantic University, 1972-1977

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Out of the Closets and Onto the Campus: The Politics of Coming Out at Florida Atlantic University, 1972-1977.

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Williams, E. D. (2011). Out of the Closets and Onto the Campus: The Politics of Coming Out at Florida Atlantic University, 1972-1977 [University of Miami]. https://scholarship.miami.edu/discovery/fulldisplay/alma991031447742202976/01UOML_INST:ResearchR epository

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UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

OUT OF THE CLOSETS AND ONTO THE CAMPUS: THE POLITICS OF COMING OUT AT FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY, 1972-1977

Elliot D. Williams

A THESIS

Submitted to the Faculty of the University of Miami in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Coral Gables, Florida

May 2011

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

OUT OF THE CLOSETS AND ONTO THE CAMPUS: THE POLITICS OF COMING OUT AT FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY, 1972-1977

Elliot D. Williams

Approved:

______Robin Bachin, Ph.D. Terri A. Scandura, Ph.D. Associate Professor of History Dean of the Graduate School

______Richard Godbeer, Ph.D. Brenna Munro, Ph.D. Professor of History Assistant Professor of English

WILLIAMS, ELLIOT (M.A., History) Out of the Closets and Onto the Campus: (May 2011) The Politics of Coming Out at Florida Atlantic University, 1972-1977

Abstract of a thesis at the University of Miami.

Thesis supervised by Professor Robin Bachin. No. of pages in text. (76)

This thesis examines gay student organizing to understand the role of college students in the burgeoning lesbian and gay movement of the 1970s. Although students are widely recognized as participants in gay activism in this period, few studies have attempted to explore their particular role. The Gay Academic Union (GAU) at Florida Atlantic

University in Boca Raton, FL, is presented as a case study, using archival and oral history research. Lesbian and gay students participated in the construction of a new political strategy based on visibility and community, which positioned “coming out” as its central metaphor. During the early to mid-1970s, students were especially well positioned to play a role in the gay movement, which relied on small, local organizations to spread gay politics throughout the nation. However, in the wake of the Anita Bryant-led effort to repeal Miami-Dade’s gay rights ordinance in 1977, the growth of national gay organizations and a national media discourse on homosexuality began to eclipse the type of organizing at which college students had excelled. By extending the narrative of gay organizing in the 1970s outside of urban centers, the story of the GAU at Florida Atlantic demonstrates that college students played a crucial part in disseminating the new forms of gay identity and culture associated with the gay movement.

Acknowledgments

I must first extend my sincere thanks to my advisors, Robin Bachin and Richard

Godbeer, whose guidance and encouragement made it possible for me to complete this thesis. Many thanks also to Brenna Munro, whose insightful comments and intellectual generosity have meant a great deal to me. Guido Ruggiero guided an early version of this project, and it still bears the marks of his excellent advice. Julio Capo graciously gave me the benefit of his critical eye and extensive knowledge. My fellow graduate students in the University of Miami History Department provided invaluable feedback on this project throughout its development, and kept me sane in the meantime.

Many thanks also to the talented archivists who assisted me in various archives, including: Stonewall National Museum and Archives, FAU University Archives, Lesbian

Herstory Archives, and Broward College Archives, as well as the Library of Congress and New York Public Library. Their tireless work preserving LGBTQ history made this thesis possible.

My parents, Byrch and Katie Williams, have been unfailingly supportive, and I hope they know how much I value that. Baylor Johnson, in addition to reading numerous drafts, put up with me while I was working on them. I am so lucky to have him in my life.

Finally, my deepest thanks to Mark Silber and Gary Tortora, for sharing their memories with me and allowing me to tell this story. They, and the other members of the

GAU, have been a true inspiration.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Chapter

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2 VISIBILITY, COMMUNITY, AND THE POLITICS OF COMING OUT IN THE 1970S ...... 4

3 EXPANSION AND CONFRONTATION: THE GROWTH OF GAY STUDENT ACTIVISM IN THE U.S. AND BOCA RATON ...... 11

4 THE FAU GAY ACADEMIC UNION: ORGANIZATION BUILDING THROUGH INCLUSIVITY ...... 23

5 CAMPUS POLITICS, COMMUNITY NEWSLETTERS: THE GAU IN LOCAL, REGIONAL, AND NATIONAL CONTEXTS ...... 36

6 PROTEST AND PRIDE: VISIBILITY ON AND OFF CAMPUS ...... 44

7 PROTESTING THE BOYS IN THE BAND: THE NEW GAY IDENTITY AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION...... 51

8 ANITA BRYANT, NATIONAL ORGANIZING, AND THE DECLINE OF GAY STUDENT ACTIVISM ...... 57

9 WHY GAY STUDENT ACTIVISM?: THE LEGACY OF THE 1960S ...... 64

10 CONCLUSION...... 70

Bibliography ...... 72

Chapter 1 Introduction

In 1975, Gary Tortora, a student at Florida Atlantic University, told a local newspaper, “It takes someone out in the forefront to get the word out that homosexuals aren’t evil people.”1 During the 1970s, those people “out in the forefront” were often lesbian and gay college students. As gay activism exploded during the decade following the Stonewall Riots in 1969, students played an important part, but one that is now often overlooked. In this incredibly vibrant period for lesbian and gay America, as activists eagerly sought to remake the world around them, they forged a new type of politics based on individual and collective declarations of gay pride and solidarity: a politics of coming out. This thesis examines gay student organizing at Florida Atlantic University in Boca

Raton, FL, to understand the particular role that lesbian and gay college students played in the gay movement of the 1970s and in the construction of new forms of gay politics and identity. From the first organizing efforts by FAU students in 1972-1974, through the founding of the university’s first official gay student organization, the Gay Academic

Union (GAU) in 1975, until the GAU’s decline in 1977, students at Florida Atlantic

University actively participated in and constructed a gay political discourse based on visibility and community. College students, like those at FAU, used the resources and opportunities available to them through their university affiliation, making them uniquely situated to disseminate this new politics across the United States and contribute to the growth of a national lesbian and gay movement.

1 Andy Mead, “Gay life is ‘rough’ in Boca,” Boca Raton News, 16 Feb 1975, 1A & 12A.

1 2

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, an unprecedented expansion of grassroots political mobilization took place among lesbians and gay men, leading to a dizzying array of new organizations, new forms of activism, and new goals. The growth of this “gay liberation” activism is commonly associated with the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots in

June 1969, although historians increasingly recognize that its origins were more complex.

Student activism was an important part of the panorama of lesbian and gay movements of the 1970s, and references to college and university groups are ubiquitous in accounts of the rapid growth of lesbian and gay politics after Stonewall. For example, gay activist and

New Leftist Allen Young, in the classic gay liberation collection Out of the Closets, emphasized the events that were held on college campuses and the struggles of gay and lesbian students to be recognized.2 Many participants in early gay liberation groups around the country later remembered seeking out college-based organizations as their first entry into gay and lesbian politics.3 Younger lesbians and gays had been generally excluded from most homophile organizing in the early to mid-1960s, by both formal exclusion from most homophile organizations and a cultural gap between younger and older gay people, making their high visibility in the post-Stonewall period all the more striking.4

Despite the importance of gay student activism in the late 1960s and 1970s, however, there has been very little scholarly work that addresses its significance for the history of gay politics. A handful of fine case studies of individual organizations and

2 Allen Young, “Out of the Closets, Into the Streets,” in Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation, eds. Karla Jay and Allen Young (New York: Douglas/Links, 1972), 27-28. 3 Tommi Avicolli Mecca, ed. Smash the Church, Smash the State!: The Early Years of Gay Liberation (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2009), 12, 24, 64. 4 Justin David Suran, “Coming Out Against the War: Antimilitarism and the Politicization of Homosexuality in the Era of Vietnam,” American Quarterly 53 (2001): 464. 3 universities exists, a group to which I hope this work can be added.5 However, the existing works generally privilege narrative over analysis, or use gay student groups as windows to understand other topics, namely the sexual revolution and identity formation in college men.6 My goal in this project is to place gay student activism firmly within the larger story of gay politics in the 1970s. This paper is, to an extent, a local history, telling a story that has never been told before, but it moves beyond that to situate this particular organization in the landscape of the gay movement as it underwent a series of seismic changes over the 1970s. I chose Florida Atlantic University as a case study in large part because of the exceptionally rich archival record of its gay organizations, and I make no claims for its uniqueness. Similar stories could almost certainly be told about many other universities throughout the United States in the 1970s. Precisely because lesbian and gay student organizations were so common, they provide an excellent window into the nature and transformations of gay politics during this period.

5 Brett Beemyn, “The Silence Is Broken: A History of the First Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual College Student Groups,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12 (April 2003): 205-223; Beth L. Bailey, Sex in the Heartland (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999), 175-190; Patrick Dilley, Queer Man on Campus: A History of Non-Heterosexual College Men, 1945 to 2000 (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002); Valere J. Korinek, “’The most openly gay person for at least a thousand miles’: Doug Wilson and the Politicization of a Province, 1975-83,” Canadian Historical Review 84 (Dec 2003): 517-550. 6 Korinek’s portrait of a gay student activist in Canada has important implications for that country’s gay movement. Her argument about the role that students played in transporting gay activism to new areas resonates with mine, but any attempt at cross-national comparison is beyond the scope of this paper.

Chapter 2 Visibility, Community, and the Politics of Coming Out in the 1970s

Over the last few decades, historians have been at great pains to demonstrate that gay activism did not begin at Stonewall, with studies variously identifying older political organizations or pre-political forms of resistance as precursors to the post-Stonewall boom.7 Nevertheless, the 1970s continue to be recognized as a dynamic period during which lesbian and gay politics and culture underwent significant transformations. Many scholars have argued that over the course of the 1970s, lesbian and gay people came to think of themselves as a “minority,” a discrete group of people with unified political interests as well as a shared cultural identity.8 As historians have sought to trace the dissemination of new forms of gay identity during the decade, they have often focused on forms of cultural production, such as literature and music, as a means by which gay identity was constructed and contested.9 This cultural approach has offered important new insights; however, it runs the risk of privileging certain sites (often cities) as the hearts of cultural production and ignoring the vibrant activity of grassroots organizations during this period, as well. Issues of defining the “correct” way of being gay were

7 Among the most well-known works of this large historiography are: John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940- 1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1983); Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993); Marc Stein, City of Sisterly & Brotherly Loves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 8 Dennis Altman, The Homosexualization of America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982); Steven Epstein, “Gay Politics, Ethnic Identity: The Limits of Social Constructionism,” Socialist Review, 93-94 (1987): 9-54. 9 Two excellent recent examples of this approach are Alice Echols, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2010), esp. Ch 2 & 4; and Brian J. Distelberg, “Mainstream Fiction, Gay Reviewers, and Gay Mal Cultural Politics in the 1970s,” GLQ, 16 (2010):389-427.

4 5 broadly shared throughout the lesbian and gay world, and this project attempts to show how they were addressed in political, as much as cultural, contexts.

While the 1970s saw the spread of new types of gay identity, culture, and life around the United States, the process through which that occurred was not straightforward or immediate. Studies that look outside of major urban centers, especially works by historians of the queer South like John Howard and James T. Sears, show that a nationally unified gay movement, and the culture and identity that evolved along with it, developed more slower than is often thought.10 Many people, particularly in rural and small town areas, continued to rely on older cultural strategies and ignored, if not opposed, the growth of gay liberation politics in their communities. Sears has provocatively argued that for most of the South in the 1970s, no gay and lesbian

“community” existed; instead, he offers the model of “local queer ecologies,” “queer spaces occupied by various groups with differing beliefs, symbols, identities, lifestyles, languages, and interests operating inside a common border and within a cultural context of homophobia and heteronormativity.”11 Among those multiple groups were clusters of self-conscious activists, like those who appear in this paper, who did see themselves as part of a national gay community and movement. They were not representative of all lesbian and gay people, though, and their efforts to bring gay liberation to cities and towns around the country faced real challenges, not the least of which being the heterogeneity of their “constituency.”

10 John Howard, Men Like That: A Southern Queer History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); James T. Sears, Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001). 11 Sears, Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones, 319.

In attempting to meet those challenges, activists built new forms of political action, which I call the politics of coming out. The gay liberation movement fundamentally transformed the goals and tactics of lesbian and gay politics. Historian

John D’Emilio has characterized this transformation as a move from a focus on influencing non-gay institutions and leaders to an assertion of lesbian and gay pride and demand for full inclusion, not merely tolerance.12 The radical character of the movement in the years immediately following Stonewall quickly tempered into a more reform- oriented position, but that transition never fully eliminated many of the central tenets of early-1970s radical gay liberation politics. In particular, as D’Emilio notes, a “quest for visibility and community-building” became entrenched as the primary strategy for lesbian and gay activists.13 “Visibility,” meant educating non-homosexuals and dispelling stereotypes about lesbian and gay people, in order to increase social acceptance. The goal of “community,” in turn, was finding other lesbians and gays and working together to heal the wounds of oppression through independent, even separatist, institutions and events. The two goals were inextricably intertwined and mutually supporting: increased visibility would bring lesbians and gays together, and a strong community would be a powerful tool for fighting homophobia, as well as provide the support structure for individual acts of visibility. These dual goals were solidified in the imperative to “come out,” a phrase whose meaning changed from acknowledging one’s homosexuality to

12 John D’Emilio, “Cycles of Change, Questions of Strategy: The Gay and Lesbian Movement After 50 Years,” in The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 82-83. 13 D’Emilio, “Cycles of Change,” 96.

7 oneself or other gay people to publicly announcing to the world one’s membership in a gay community.14

Coming out became understood as the precondition for social acceptance, personal freedom, and shared identity among lesbian and gay people. This drive to bring homosexuality into public discourse emerged from a range of cultural influences in the

1960s and early 1970s, including the sexual revolution’s challenge to the relegation of sexuality to the private sphere, the counterculture’s emphasis on personal authenticity, and the feminist movement’s insistence on the politics of personal life.15 The new politicized coming out also built on the older homophile political strategy of education, but expanded and personalized it. Straight people needed to be “educated” about homosexuality, and the new activists believed that the best way to do that was through individual acts of coming out. Lesbians’ and gay men’s personal lives became dramatically politicized, since their relationships with family, friends, co-workers, and even strangers were now understood to have implications for the overall social understanding and acceptance of homosexuality. By making themselves visible and participating in a perceived lesbian and gay community, individuals were engaging in political acts, which they believed would both improve their own lives and effect positive change in society.

14 On earlier meanings of the phrase, see George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 7- 8. Coming out had been used as a political strategy as far back as the 1940s, but its importance grew dramatically as the gay movement itself grew in the 1970s. See Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990), 250-251. 15 George Chauncey, Why Marriage?: The History Shaping Today’s Debate Over Gay Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 32-35; Beth Bailey, “Sexual Revolution(s),” in The Sixties: From Memory to History, ed. David Farber (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 235-262.

For activists struggling to bring gay liberation politics to places without a history of lesbian and gay organizing, the advantages of coming out were clear: it allowed them to mobilize a constituency by meeting gay people’s social needs and constructing a unified understanding of gay experience, while at the same time connecting that to a concrete political strategy. Of course, like most political strategies, coming out was imperfect. It could be physically dangerous, as too many victims of antigay violence would learn, and was often feasible only in certain self-consciously “liberal” locations.

As we shall see, it also excluded some same-sex loving people who felt uncomfortable with its dictates. However, those limitations were either unknown to proponents of coming out or outweighed by its perceived benefits.

Coming out became the single most important strategy of the lesbian and gay political movement in the US, and increasingly came to dominate the narratives that lesbian and gay people told not only to the world, but also to themselves.16 Obviously, many lesbians and gay men feel a very deep, personal connection to the coming-out narrative; it speaks to some degree to our own experiences and the way many of us understand our lives. Nevertheless, it is a specific historical construction, which was elaborated and solidified in a particular place and time. The practices of lesbian and gay organizations, in addition to the wide variety of cultural production that other scholars have analyzed, helped to create the politics of coming out through a repeated emphasis on visibility and community building. Through newsletters, political protest, and social

16 Paul Robinson, in his study of gay men’s autobiographies, argues that the coming-out narrative has dictated certain ways of presenting and understanding gay men’s lives. He also suggests that coming out, and the forms of narrative and politics it implies, is a distinctly American phenomenon. Paul Robinson, Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul Monette (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 307-311, 394.

9 events, lesbian and gay organizations around the country reinforced the new form of gay identity that went along with coming out. In particular, I argue that college students and university-based organizations played an especially important role in establishing this new form of gay politics. The politics of coming out was undoubtedly a much more extensive project than only lesbian and gay student activism, but by looking at this one form of activism we can get a clearer picture of the larger solidification of the post-

Stonewall lesbian and gay movement.

For a period of time in the early to mid-1970s, student groups, like those at

Florida Atlantic University, were able to play an important role in solidifying a new form of gay politics, by using the unique set of possibilities inherent in university-based activism to foster gay visibility and community. By operating as university organizations, student activists had access to material resources and communication strategies to support their efforts. The social movements and upheavals of the 1960s had made campuses particularly important political spaces, and the student power activism that bridged the

1960s and 1970s had increased students’ rights and power on campus. As they built small, local organizations, gay activists had good reason to think that their efforts would be well received on college campuses. Ultimately, as the national gay movement continued to grow, particularly in the wake of the 1977 anti-gay campaign led by Anita

Bryant in Miami, the dynamics of coming out changed. Gay issues received more attention in the mainstream press, and gay and lesbian people found a new sense of community in the face of a well-organized opposition, dramatically expanding the scope of the politics of coming out. As the gay community as a whole came out during those

10 years, small, localized organizations, including university groups like the one at FAU, ironically found themselves superseded.

Chapter 3 Expansion and Confrontation: The Growth of Gay Student Activism in the U.S. and Boca Raton

Organized lesbian and gay activism by college students began in 1966, with the founding of the Student Homophile League at Columbia University, which spread to a handful of other universities around the country.17 Gay student organizing did not really take off, however, until after Stonewall. The spirit of gay liberation that fueled the first major organization of the post-Stonewall era, the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in New

York City, also reached onto colleges and universities around the country, spawning dozens of new lesbian and gay student organizations in the early 1970s.18 Reliable statistics on the number of groups during this period are hard to come by, but one listing of U.S. and Canadian gay liberation groups in the summer of 1971 already included 41 groups with the words “student” or “university” in the name, as well as many others that undoubtedly had high student participation, especially those in college towns such as the

Lawrence (Kansas) GLF.19 In 1971, the National Student Association created the

National Gay Student Center (NGSC) to serve as a resource and communications hub for this burgeoning movement, a task at which it had some limited success.20 The vast majority of university lesbian and gay organizations, however, functioned autonomously, reflecting gay liberation groups’ focus on local politics and the lack of centralized national lesbian and gay organizations. By 1977, the number of gay student organizations

17 Beemyn, “Silence Is Broken.” 18 Groups named “Gay Liberation Front” appeared throughout the country in 1969 and the early 1970s, but they had no formal relationship with each other or the original GLF in New York City. 19 List of gay organizations, ca. summer 1971, Box 77, Frank Kameny Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter: Kameny Papers). 20 J. Angus Johnston, “The United States Student Association: Democracy, Activism, and the Idea of the Student, 1947-1978” (PhD diss., CUNY, 2009), 434-5.

11 12 had surged to at least 209.21 Another survey reported that 11 percent of U.S. colleges and universities had lesbian and gay groups in the 1977-1978 school year.22 When considering the number of groups that had no doubt flickered into and out of existence without appearing on any of these surveys, the growth of lesbian and gay student activism during the 1970s is truly remarkable.

Gay activism came to Florida Atlantic University after the earliest wave of gay student activity in the early 1970s, in part because of the school’s character and history.

FAU, located in Boca Raton, opened in 1964 as an “upper-division” two-year university, meaning that it did not accept freshmen or sophomores. By the mid-1970s, it had started a program that allowed advanced high-school graduates to enroll and complete a

Bachelor’s degree in three years, but it still did not have typical freshmen or sophomore classes. Florida Atlantic was predominantly a “commuter” school, drawing students from anywhere within a one and a half hour driving radius. In 1970, barely over a quarter of the student body lived on campus, and that percentage stayed low throughout the decade.23 Boca Raton itself was a small city in the 1970s, but it was within driving distance of the larger cities of West Palm Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, and Miami, as well as their surrounding communities, placing it within a much larger tri-county area. A relatively young university, FAU did not have a strong tradition of student activism.

There was some political activity on campus in the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly surrounding the Kent State killings in 1970 and the 1972 Republican and

21 “Gay Student Groups,” NGSC, Jan 1977, 5th ed., Box 105, Kameny Papers. 22 Philip G. Altbach and Robert Cohen, “American Student Activism: The Post-Sixties Transformation,” in Philip G. Altbach, ed. Student Political Activism: An International Reference Handbook (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 461. 23 Roger H. Miller, Florida Atlantic University: Its Beginnings and Early Years: The Inside Story, 1989, FAU Archive, 3, 25, 91.

Democratic conventions in Miami Beach, but one administrator-turned-historian wrote that Florida Atlantic students were in general less radical and less violent than at other universities.24 FAU was not a highly politicized campus, making the emergence of gay political activity there more interesting and perhaps more indicative of how gay liberation ideas spread across the country.

Joel Starkey, a gay man getting his second bachelor’s degree at FAU in the early

1970s, was an early leader in gay organizing in the Boca Raton area and one of the first to politicize homosexuality at Florida Atlantic. As an undergraduate at the University of

Florida in the late 1960s, Starkey had been deeply affected by the radical currents of the period. His level of involvement in movement organizations is unclear, but his writings show the strong connections he felt to the anti-war, Black Power, socialist, student power, feminist, sexual liberation, and counterculture movements.25 Starkey had not embraced a gay identity during his early undergraduate years, even going so far in 1967 as to extol LSD’s ability to “[orient] homosexuals toward heterosexuality,” but by spring

1969 (a few months before Stonewall and a year after his graduation from UF) he was writing to gay organizations around the country asking for information.26 His eagerness to incorporate an activist pose into his sexual identity, even before the widespread

24 Ibid., 87-89. 25 His many letters to the editor of the two UF student newspapers demonstrate his ideology. See, for example, Joel Starkey, “A Letter: Sexual Freedom,” The Crocodile, 18 May 1966, 1; Joel Starkey, “contends Negroes want ‘black power.’ students will rule our universities,” Florida Alligator, 24 Jun 1966, 5; Joel Starkey, “Killers?: Ban Dow Chemical Recruiting,” Florida Alligator, 11 Jan 1968, 7, all in Joel Starkey Collection, Stonewall National Museum and Archives, Ft. Lauderdale, FL (hereafter: JSC). 26 Joel Starkey, “’Flower Power’ Strikes Back”, UF Florida Alligator, 13 Jun 1967, 7; Foster Gunnison [Institute of Social Ethics] to Joel Starkey, May 1967; Joe Kelly [Kaleidoscope] to Joel Starkey, 25 Apr 1969, JSC.

14 politicization of the gay world, was almost certainly related in some way to his earlier involvement in radical politics.

In late 1971, Starkey had moved to Palm Beach County and made his first forays into gay liberation organizing. He placed ads in the Florida Atlantic student newspaper and other local media, trying to connect with others in the area who were interested in gay liberation. He received a large number of replies, and soon began trying to organize a group consciousness-raising session, to “help build a framework for perceiving our reality, [...] in terms of the needs of Gay people and not in terms of society as it now exists.”27 The idea of consciousness-raising came directly from the feminist movement, which used small group discussions among women to develop a political analysis of women’s position in society and cultivate a sense of solidarity or “sisterhood” among women.28 Starkey’s direct imitation of the feminist movement’s most distinctive organizing strategy shows not only his feelings of connection to feminism, but also his conviction that gay people constituted a unified “class” with common needs and outlooks. He believed that by coming together as a group, lesbians and gay men could

“yield an ideology based on the premise of our self-worth as Gay people.” 29

As Starkey tried to get those who responded to his ad “out of the closet and into a meeting,” as he once put it, he confronted the reluctance that many people still felt about coming out, at least to a group of strangers at an unknown meeting.30 Even Starkey was not immune to that fear, as he used a post office box for all of his correspondence and

27 Joel Starkey to “Brothers and Sisters,” 18 Jan 1972, JSC. 28 Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 83-90. 29 Joel Starkey to “Brothers and Sisters,” 18 Jan 1972, JSC. 30 Joel Starkey to John Laine, 23 Jul 1972, JSC.

15 was hesitant about making his activities too public. As he wrote, “This is still a rural area and until the movement becomes stronger I think it would be a tactical error to become too open about my personal gayness.”31 Eventually though, a small group of people began meeting in October 1972. This consciousness-raising group first met at the FAU

University Center, although later meetings moved to Starkey’s apartment to accommodate those who were afraid of being seen publicly at a gay meeting.32 Many of the attendees were FAU students, but the group also drew people from outside of the university and from neighboring communities. The participants were diverse in political experience and consciousness. Starkey corresponded with people who were deeply closeted as well as those who were eager to get involved in “gay lib.” Some of those who came to Starkey’s apartment had taken beginning steps toward organizing gay people in nearby areas, and responded eagerly when Starkey placed his newspaper ads.33

Early on, the group considered becoming an officially recognized university organization, indicating the strong role played by FAU students. As at most universities, student organizations were required to officially register with the administration and meet certain requirements to be eligible for the rights to use university facilities and resources.

However, the Florida Board of Regents, which oversaw the state universities, had summarily banned all gay organizations from Florida public school campuses. Their decision had been prompted by the formation of a Gay Liberation Front (GLF) at Florida

State University in 1970. The Student Senate approved the GLF, but the university administration appealed the issue to the Board of Regents. The Regents’ legal counsel

31 Joel Starkey to Robert Alsofrom, Crisis Line, 7 Jul 1972, JSC. 32 Joel Starkey to John Laine, 23 Jul 1972; “Come Out” poster, JSC. 33 “First meeting of Gay People in Boca Raton,” 11 Oct 1972; Joel Starkey to Joe Torchia, Dec 1972, JSC; Mark Silber, telephone interview with author, March 2, 2011, Philadelphia, PA.

16 advised that the GLF’s constitution expressed a desire to break the state’s proscription of

“crimes against nature” and argued that the university had the right to “[extend] or

[withhold] recognition on the basis, in some part, of the protection of ‘morals.’” Acting on that advice, the Board denied recognition to the Florida State GLF, a ruling that it subsequently expanded to cover all gay organizations at public universities throughout the state.34 Florida’s universities had a history of being targeted by virulent antigay fervor, with the Johns Committee of the state legislature actively rooting out and expelling homosexual faculty and students on the state’s campuses from 1958-1965.35

The Board of Regents’ 1970 decision not to recognize gay organizations may have been had its roots in the memory of the Johns Committee’s activities.

The Florida Regents’ refusal to recognize gay student organizations, however, was also in line with many other universities’ responses to lesbian and gay student activism. From the first student group at Columbia in 1966 into the 1970s, and beyond, universities resisted granting official recognition to gay and lesbian organizations.

Although the rationales and dynamics differed, both public and private universities banned or limited gay activity on their campuses. Many administrations argued, as the

Florida Regents did, that gay student groups would be “encouraging violation” of state laws banning sodomy.36 In other cases, universities ostensibly acted out of self-interest,

34 Stephen Marc Slepin (Counsel) to Hendrix Chandler (Corporate Secretary, BOR), “Memorandum: ‘Gay Liberation Front,’” 8 Sep 1970, Tallahassee, FL Collection, Lesbian Herstory Archive, New York, NY (hereafter: LHA). 35 James A. Schnur, “Closet Crusaders: The Johns Committee and Homophobia, 1956-1965,” in Carryin’ On in the Lesbian and Gay South, ed. John Howard (New York: NYU Press, 1997), 132-163; Karen L. Graves, And They Were Wonderful Teachers: Florida’s Purge of Gay and Lesbian Teachers (Urbana, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 36 For instance, see Larry Cress (Gay Student Union, University of Virginia) to Frank Kameny, 29 Nov 72, Box 104, Kameny Papers.

17 claiming that recognizing a gay organization could jeopardize a public university’s funding due to opposition to homosexuality on the part of state officials.37 In a few cases, administrators acted out of a sense of moral guardianship, mobilizing the (increasingly discredited) in loco parentis tradition. They argued that official recognition of a gay organization would be interpreted as approval of homosexuality, thus leading “certain people who might otherwise be inclined to exercise a measure of control over their latent homosexual proclivities,” as one university put it, to “ignore social opprobrium and indulge their homosexual impulses.”38

Denial of recognition did not stop many organizations, including the Florida State

GLF, but it did hamper their activities. Some organizations, such as the GLF (later Gay

People’s Alliance) at the University of Tennessee, continued to operate without recognition for years, periodically renewing their attempts at recognition.39 Others made compromises with university administrators, such as the Gay Alliance at the University of Miami, which agreed to be apolitical in exchange for recognition, possibly indicating a difference in tactics between private and public universities.40 The most militant groups took their universities to court to demand recognition. A 1974 survey of gay student organization found that 29% of them “had either failed to obtain recognition or had had problems obtaining it,” and that about 20% of the total respondents had taken their

37 United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, Gay Students Organization of the University of New Hampshire, et al vs. Thomas N. Bronner, individually and as President of the University of New Hampshire, et al, Civil Action No. 73-279, International Gay Information Center Collection, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York, NY (hereafter: IGIC). 38 Virginia Commonwealth University, quoted in J. Lee Lehman, “changes in Gay student rights: II. Judicial Issues,” National Gay Student Center, 1977, Colleges and Universities Subject File, LHA. On the decline and fall of in loco parentis, see Bailey, Sex in the Heartland, 78-104. 39 Kyle McDaniel, Jr. to Frank Kameny, Feb 1974, Kameny Collection, LOC. 40 Mark N. Silber, “Gay Groups on Campus,” Alive! Magazine, Feb 1978, 5-7.

18 university to court to demand recognition.41 Lesbian and gay students built on the legal recognition of college students’ rights to form campus organizations won by the student movements of the 1960s. Of particular importance was the case of Healy v. James

(1972), in which the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment required the recognition of a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Future legal decisions, such as Gay Students Organization of the University of New Hampshire v.

Bonner (1974) and Gay Alliance of Students, Virginia Commonwealth University v.

Matthews (1976), built on the Healy decision to declare that neither public or legislative disapproval of homosexuality nor unsubstantiated fears of illegal sex acts were grounds for denying recognition or funding to gay student organizations.42 By 1975, the accumulated weight of these legal decisions forced the Florida Board of Regents to rescind its ban on gay student organizations in the state.

When Joel Starkey was organizing at Florida Atlantic in 1972, however, that precedent was not yet established, and the Board of Regents continued to ban gay organizations from Florida campuses. Very soon after the group began meeting, the university communicated to Starkey, in what he called “an indirect manner,” that the group was not welcome on campus.43 In the 1968, long before he got involved in gay organizing, Starkey had criticized the Regents as un-democratic and “authoritarian.”44

The continued denial of students’ rights by the Board of Regents, now combined with his passion for gay liberation, must have offended him deeply. After considering and

41 Lehman, “changes in Gay student rights: II. Judicial Issues.” 42 Loren J. Rullman, “A Legal History: University Recognition of Homosexual Organizations,” Association of College Unions-International Bulletin 59 (Mar 1991): 4-9. 43 Joel Starkey to Frank Kameny, Nov 1972; Kameny to Starkey, 9 Nov 1972, JSC. 44 Joel Starkey, “Reactionary Regents,” Florida Alligator, 13 May, 1968, 6, JSC.

19 apparently abandoning a plan to protest a Board of Regents meeting in Boca Raton, the group started considering legal challenges to the Regents’ policy, using the experiences of other student activists, in Florida and elsewhere, as a guide.45 Like so many things about this group, it is unclear whether they ever actually tried fighting the university and the Regents for recognition, but they never became an official organization.

Starkey and other members originally had expansive plans for the group, hoping that it would produce a newsletter, educational programs, legal assistance, and outreach to women’s groups and gay prisoners.46 Those plans did not materialize into action, however, due in part to disagreements within the group about organizational and leadership styles, as well as the limitations caused by the lack of university recognition.47

Instead, the group focused on consciousness-raising and establishing some sense of lesbian and gay community for most of its life. As one of the group’s participants said at a meeting in January 1973, “It’s political just for gay people to get together in this area --- too [sic] get together and talk about their experiences.”48 Starkey also connected the members of the group to the larger gay movement by introducing them to gay periodicals from around the country, such as Boston’s Gay Community News. They did undertake some specific initiatives, most notably an informational hotline for the local gay

45 Joel Starkey to Judy Fee (FSU GLF), Nov 1972; Joel Starkey to Morty Manford (GAU), Dec 73, JSC. 46 Notes on “programs” and “areas of interest,” n.d. [ca 1972], JSC. Although no sustained outreach to gay prisoners seems to have occurred, Starkey and others in Boca Raton did correspond with gay inmates over the next several years. Many gay organizations around the US addressed issues related to gays in prison in the 1970s. See Regina Kunzel, Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 191-224. 47 On these debates, see the correspondence between Joel Starkey and Mark Silber from Dec 1972, JSC. 48 “Jeffrey Manning” [Joe Torchia], “First of Two Parts” [interview with gay participants], Jun 1973, JSC.

20 community, which they named “Gay Care.”49 Already, we can see a concern with bringing lesbian and gay people together into some form of literal and imagined community.

Joel Starkey also pursued gay liberation activism on campus through other channels. In the spring of 1973, he was elected to the Florida Atlantic student senate.

Starkey ran on a radical platform that he termed “a basically human liberation platform.”

In addition to free childcare, “free abortion on demand,” “preferential” hiring and enrollment of “women and minorities,” and a “women’s liberation and women’s studies center,” Starkey called for “the end of discrimination against gays,” including the end of the Regents’ ban on gay organizations and the termination of any employee who discriminated against homosexuals. Out of a field of twenty-one candidates, Starkey finished eighth, winning a seat on the student senate.50

During his year in student government, Starkey did not achieve all of his campaign goals, a fact which must have surprised no one, probably not even Starkey himself (especially given that one of his goals, free abortion on demand, may have been illegal in Florida).51 He did, however, have remarkable success in passing political bills through the student senate, demonstrating how political activists could use student government bodies. Throughout the year, Starkey introduced and passed several resolutions supporting various causes around the country, including resolutions of support for the United Farm Workers strike in California and for a U.S. Senate bill

49 Silber, interview; “Gay Care” flyer, n.d. [ca. 1973], JSC. 50 “Press Release: Gay Activist Elected to Student Senate in Palm Beach County,” 19 May 1973; Joel Starkey campaign poster, ca. May 1973, JSC. 51 “Florida Gay wins student post,” The Advocate, 20 Jun 1973, 15.

21 targeting rape.52 One of his most important successes was to pass a non-discrimination resolution, which stipulated that “no portion of the activity fee of F.A.U. students shall be extended to any campus organization at Florida Atlantic University which discriminates against students or other parties on the basis of race, religion, sex, or sexual preference.”53 Starkey was not successful in all of his attempts; his plans for tuition vouchers for students below the poverty level and pamphlets about venereal disease and birth control never came to fruition. However, his success in passing the non- discrimination resolution and resolutions in support of feminist and other causes demonstrate both his fellow senators’ level of support for his political perspective, and his savvy use of the senate to disseminate and support his political views. Student power activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s had worked hard to win more robust student governments, which were a strategic resource for student activists with other agendas, as well.54

It is not clear if the group that had been meeting at Starkey’s apartment was active during his term as a student senator. The group seems to have fluctuated between activity and inactivity, a cycle common to many student groups and exacerbated by their lack of official status. The trail of this group, however, disappears for good in early 1974.

Starkey continued his activism under the auspices of the Southern Gay Liberator, a gay newsletter he had been single-handedly producing since late 1971, and other members of the group likely found other organizations to work with, possibly in Ft. Lauderdale or

52 Student Government Association (SGA) minutes, 26 Sep 1973 and 31 Oct 1973, Florida Atlantic University Archives, Boca Raton, FL (hereafter: FAU Archives). 53 SGA minutes, 1 Aug 1973, FAU Archives. 54 On growing power of student senates, see Johnston, “United States Student Association,” 425- 430.

Miami. Florida Atlantic, though, remained without an active lesbian and gay organization.

Chapter 4 The FAU Gay Academic Union: Organization Building through Inclusivity

In early 1975, Mark Silber, another FAU student, took up the goal of a lesbian and gay student organization, this time with much greater success. At the time, Silber was a junior, and had been involved in South Florida gay organizations since he graduated from high school near Ft. Lauderdale in 1972. He had attended meetings at Joel Starkey’s apartment in 1972-1973, helped found the Gay Community Services Network of Broward

County, actively participated in the Ft. Lauderdale Metropolitan Community Church (a national gay and lesbian church), and started a small organization of his own, the

Stonewall Committee. During his first year in college, at Broward Community College, he attempted to start a gay organization, and although he did not succeed, his efforts introduced him to Joel Starkey and his Boca Raton consciousness-raising group. The following year, while at Miami-Dade Community College, Silber publicly complained about the lack of books on gay topics in the college library. Among his various political projects, Silber repeatedly sought to bring gay liberation to college campuses.55

When he began attending Florida Atlantic University in the fall of 1974, Silber was already connected to the campus gay community through Joel Starkey. Through him,

Silber met Mary Wickensheimer, a lesbian student at FAU, and the two shared an off- campus apartment. Eventually, Gary Tortora, another gay student and friend of Mark’s, joined them in the apartment when he found the dorms to be an unwelcoming place. By

January 1975, more universities in Florida, such as University of South Florida in Tampa,

55 “Jeffrey Manning” [Joe Torchia], “First of Two Parts” [interview with gay participants], Jun 1973; Gay Community Services Network of Broward County, “Press Release 1,” n.d. [ca 1972]; Mark Silber oral history, 17 Nov 1994, cassette tapes, JSC; Silber, interview.

23 24 had started gay student groups. When Silber complained to Tortora about the lack of a gay organization at Florida Atlantic, Tortora challenged him to start one, and the two set about doing exactly that.56

Their first step in creating a new campus organization was a front-page article in the Atlantic Sun by Mark Silber. In the article, entitled “On Being Gay,” Silber declared,

“I am a gay person. A ‘queer’, a ‘faggot’, a ‘pervert’. But I am not ashamed of what I am.” He exposed and challenged the “stereotypes” that he believed were oppressing gay men and lesbians: that they were sick, promiscuous child molesters. Challenging the liberal self-identification of his classmates, he questioned why, “when it is fashionable to support the struggles of women, Blacks, American Indians, and other minorities,” few heterosexuals stood up for gay rights. The piece claimed that there were “over

20,000,000” gay and lesbian people in the United States, but ended by questioning whether a person’s sexual orientation should really matter.57

Silber’s article led to an explosion of discussion about homosexuality on campus.

Initial campus reaction to the article was mixed, with several letters to the editor in the

Sun denouncing homosexuality and challenging Silber’s views as “one individual’s in- expert view of an entire group.”58 Fortunately, the Sun editors believed in the importance of “controversial opinion pieces” on “debatable” topics.59 They made the newspaper something of a forum on homosexuality over the next several months, publishing several more pieces by Mark Silber on “coming out” and homophobia and a column by a self-

56 Silber, interview; Gary Tortora, interview with the author, March 4, 2011, Hollywood, FL. 57 Mark N. Silber, “On Being Gay,” Atlantic Sun. 28 Jan 1975, 2. 58 Jean M. Emond, “But Does It Matter?” Atlantic Sun, 18 Feb 1975, 8; Stephen W. DeAlteris, “Comments on Last Issue,” Atlantic Sun. 4 Feb 1975, 5. 59 “Editorial Staff Note,” Atlantic Sun. 4 Feb 1975, 5.

25 identified lesbian, as well as several letters to the editor about the subject.60 Silber’s claim that “the Bible condemns both homo and hetero lust, and upholds both types of love,” in particular, provoked several letters to the editor, both condemnatory and supportive, as well as a “Guest Commentary” piece.61 With these newspaper stories, Silber had already begun raising the profile of lesbian and gay people on campus.

Increasing campus discussion, of course, was not enough. As Joel Starkey, now an alumnus of FAU, put it in a printed response to Silber’s article, “Hostility amongst heterosexuals towards homosexuals is the reality on and off the campus and this is the reason why homosexuals and lesbians must form civil rights organizations on the campus as well as off.”62 Silber and Tortora built on the initial article by posting index cards

“with the words ‘Come together to rap’ and the familiar interlocking male and female symbols” written on them, along with one of their phone numbers, on bulletin boards around campus. As a later account of the group’s origins put it, they wanted to “get other gay and bisexual students together in a discrete, non-threatening atmosphere” to combat their feelings of “isolation and oppression.”63 Between 15 and 20 people responded and attended an informal meeting. Many of those who came were familiar to each other from

Starkey’s consciousness-raising group, but others, including at least one faculty member and his partner, attended as well.

60 Mark N. Silber, “On Being Gay – Coming Out,” Atlantic Sun, 11 Feb 1975, 5; Silber, “Letting It All Out,” Atlantic Sun, 25 Feb 1975, 5; persephone, “Sex Labeling,” Atlantic Sun, 25 Feb 1975, 5. 61 William Novak, “Too Quiet, Too Long,” Atlantic Sun, 4 Mar 1975, 4; Martha Rowe, “Guest Commentary: Homosexuality: Clearly Sin,” 4 Mar 1975, 4; Melinda R. Bunker, “Commenting on Commentaries,” Atlantic Sun, 11 Mar 1975, 4. 62 Joel Starkey, “Gay Comments,” Atlantic Sun, 11 Feb 1975, 4. 63 GAU, Liberation!, vol. 1, no. 2, 1 May 1975, JSC.

The group continued to meet on a weekly basis and quickly decided to formalize itself as the Gay Academic Union (GAU).64 They met at Silber and Wickensheimer’s apartment for a time, but by April, their weekly meetings had moved to the Boca Raton

Unitarian Church.65 The FAU administration did not initially support the new group’s application for official recognition, but the law was no longer on their side. GAU members were aware of the court cases that increasingly upheld gay student organizations’ rights. Through a combination of persistence and militance, the young activists convinced the dean of student affairs they were prepared to pursue legal avenues, and the dean apparently recognized that his options were limited. Within a few months of its founding, the GAU became an official student organization.66

The Florida Atlantic GAU stated in its first press release that it was a chapter of the national Gay Academic Union and quoted directly from the national GAU’s founding mission statement.67 Joel Starkey had been aware of the Gay Academic Union since soon after its establishment in New York City in 1973, and he suggested that the new FAU group become associated with this national organization. The relationship seemed to make perfect sense for this new university-centered group, but over time clear differences emerged between the GAU at Florida Atlantic and at the national level. The national Gay

Academic Union was oriented much more towards the concerns of faculty, including research and academic employment. Although non-academics were invited to participate

64 Andy Mead, “Gay life is ‘rough’ in Boca,” Boca Raton News, 16 Feb 1975, 1A & 12A; GAU, “Press Release #1,” 6 Feb 1975, JSC. 65 GAU, Newsletter, vol. 1, no. 1, Apr 1975, JSC. 66 Silber, interview; Tortora, interview. 67 GAU, “Press Release #1,” 6 Feb 1975, JSC; Gay Academic Union [New York], “Statement of Purpose,” 1973, Box 101, Kameny Papers.

27 in the organization, it maintained an academic and professional focus.68 The Florida

Atlantic organization, although it had some faculty and staff participation, was very much a student group, reflected in both its leadership and activities. The GAU did have formally organized chapters around the country, but the Florida Atlantic organization was never an official GAU chapter.69 The national GAU and the FAU group had friendly relations and knew of each other’s work; in fact, Mark Silber attended a GAU national conference, with his university paying for the trip. However, the FAU group operated independently, maintaining only weak ties with the national Gay Academic Union.70

Because it was a recognized organization at a state university, the GAU was required to have an open membership policy, regardless of university affiliation, although its officers had to be Florida Atlantic students.71 The political beliefs of the group’s leaders, as well, probably encouraged the group to not limit themselves to FAU students, as their imagined gay community reached beyond the boundaries of the campus. Indeed, the GAU did draw participants from outside of the student body. Joel Starkey was an active participant in the GAU, although he had graduated from the university before its founding.72 Similarly, Mary Wickensheimer continued to be a part of the group, although she graduated from FAU a few months after its birth. Many of the non-student participants, however, seem to have become involved through personal relationships with

68 Its most important program was an annual conference that combined academic panels with activism workshops. “The Universities and the Gay Experience,” 1973, GAU Subject File, Stonewall National Museum and Archives; Martin Duberman, Cures: A Gay Man’s Odyssey (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 292-297. 69 Gary Steele [GAU] to Joel Starkey, nd, JSC. 70 Silber, interview. 71 Mark Silber to Joel Starkey, ca Jul 77, JSC. 72 In a later account of its history, the GAU acknowledged the “pioneering efforts” of Starkey earlier in the decade as “the true birth of the GAU.” GAU, Liberation!, vol. 2, no. 2, Oct 1976, JSC.

FAU students. Mark Behar, for example, one of the few non-FAU students I know to have been an active GAU member, had dated Starkey’s roommate years earlier and participated in the early consciousness-raising group.73 Interestingly, in the years between his participation in that group and his membership in the GAU, Behar appears to have attended Tulane University, where he was involved with the Tulane Gay Students

Union.74 Behar’s participation in the GAU at Florida Atlantic alerts us to the dominance of student activism as an organizing model among young gay activists in this period, as well as the important role that personal relationships could play in facilitating political networking and activism. The GAU was also one of the most active gay organizations operating in Palm Beach County, which certainly increased its appeal to older community members who otherwise might not have been involved with a university group. Despite this diversity in its membership, the GAU remained primarily a student organization, centering its work on the needs and interests of college students, as we will see.

The GAU also had some support from university faculty. Its faculty adviser was a professor in the theater department, who also got his partner involved in the organization.

A closeted lesbian in the office of United Campus Ministries, who was also a Methodist pastor, gave the GAU important support, letting them use the campus ministries’ conference room for meetings on occasion.75 United Campus Ministries had a history of involvement with liberal heterosexual sexual education, and this pastor in particular led the charge to create a campus Committee on Human Sexuality and distributed

73 Silber, interview. 74 Tulane Gay Students Union [Mark Behar and Jim Hyams] to National Gay Task Force, 19 Sep 1974, IGIC; pers. communication, Office of the Registrar, Tulane University, 9 Aug 2010. 75 Silber, interview; Tortora, interview.

29 information about birth control and abortions.76 In this era before the New Right’s linkage of Christianity and opposition to homosexuality became dominant, the campus religion office was a natural ally for the GAU, as was the local Unitarian church, where they met for some time.

Like most gay student organizations of the 1970s, the GAU aimed to include both men and women.77 Throughout the 1970s, however, gender issues were often a source of tension and strife in gay activist organizations, so it is worth asking further how well the

GAU integrated men and women.78 Women certainly played important roles in the group from the start, and a separate “lesbian rap group” also met occasionally.79 However, there was enough perception of the GAU, or perhaps the gay lib movement as a whole, as male-dominated for GAU leaders to occasionally seek to debunk the idea that the GAU was for “men only.”80 Starkey was a strong feminist and active member of the Florida

National Organization for Women, and Silber viewed the gay and women’s rights movements as parallel, and it is possible that other GAU men shared their feminist

76 Tom Vickers, “Human sexuality class seen for campus soon,” Atlantic Sun, 15 Feb 1973; Pat Faherty, “All Things To All People,” Atlantic Sun, 23 Jan 1974, both in United Campus Ministries scrapbook, 1972-1979, FAU Archives. 77 The National Gay Students Center’s 1974 survey found that 74% of the groups surveyed were “mixed groups,” although some of those groups noted a “preponderance of men.” J. Lee Lehman, Gays on Campus, National Gay Student Center, USSA, 1975, p23, Gay College Students Subject File, Stonewall National Museum and Archives. 78 For accounts of the often (but not always) conflicted relationship between women and men within gay liberation organizations, see Karla Jay, Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 82, 125-126, 177-178; Duberman, Cures, 275-278; Stein, City of Sisterly & Brotherly Loves, 356-370. On the rise of lesbian separatism, see Echols, Daring to Be Bad, 210-220, 238-241. 79 It is not clear how active or popular this lesbian group was, nor do we know if it signified gender discord or a shared feminist consciousness throughout the group. “Club Notice: GAU,” Atlantic Sun, 21 Jan 76, p11; GAU, Liberation!, vol. 2, no. 2, Oct 1976, JSC. 80 At the same time, they also denied that it was for “homosexuals only” and “FAU students only.” Carynne Miller, “GAU Active on Campus,” Atlantic Sun, 1 Oct 75, 14; Liberation!, vol. 2, no. 2, Oct 1976, JSC.

30 perspective.81 Of course, a commitment to feminism did not necessarily make a group dominated by gay men appealing to women, as historian Marc Stein has shown.82 The

GAU only undertook one project that was explicitly focused on gender issues, when in the summer of 1976 it protested discrimination against women at an area gay bar.

(Despite the management’s initial indifference to the protest, the GAU seems to have been successful.)83 By comparison, two of its biggest and most widely reported activities focused on venereal disease and police entrapment, two issues which lesbian activists elsewhere had criticized as primarily gay men’s problems.84 Florida Atlantic did have a women’s center by the mid-70s, but it does not seem to have engaged directly with lesbian issues, leaving politically-minded lesbians without an institutional home other than the GAU. Although separatist lesbian-feminism had become a significant presence in many feminist communities by the mid-1970s, FAU gay women remained committed to working with their male comrades. GAU men apparently shared that commitment, even if they may not have always lived up to it.

GAU members were a politically diverse group. Mark Silber, the first president and a force in the organization throughout its life, approached gay politics from a liberal standpoint. He stressed equal rights through governmental action, once saying “until women get their Equal Rights Amendment and we acquire legal rights, our movement

81 Southern Gay Liberator, “Lesbian/Feminism and Gay Liberation Comes Out at Florida Statewide N.O.W. Conference,” Sep 1973; Thomasine Lewis, “GAU President fights for gay rights,” BCC Polaris, 1 Nov 76, 6, JSC. 82 See especially Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 321-325. 83 Florida Gay Liberation News, vol. 7, Jun 1976; Florida Gay Liberation News, vol. 9, Aug 1976, JSC. 84 Jay, Lavender Menace, 178-179.

31 continues.”85 (Women, of course, never got their ERA, due in large part to Florida’s failure to ratify it.) By comparison, Joel Starkey, who continued to be a leading member, had a far more radical political perspective. Starkey, who was slightly older than Silber and had come of age politically in the late 1960s, advocated a synthesis of socialism and gay liberation.86 Another active member, persephone, identified herself as a libertarian, writing an article in defense of libertarianism in the GAU newsletter.87 These political differences surely caused occasional disagreements. The correspondence between Joel

Starkey and Mark Silber over the years, while indicating a very close relationship, sometimes shows moments of disagreement and frustration over their obvious political differences. All of these diverse individuals, however, did manage to work together without the divisive schisms that affected many lesbian and gay organizations.

Because the historical record privileges the voices of group leaders, we do not know the perspectives of many of the members of GAU, including those who may not have had an explicitly political framework for their participation. The confines of organizing at Florida Atlantic, a university in a small city, necessitated a more inclusive organization, since the pool of potential recruits was so much smaller than in larger cities.

We can only speculate on how the group balanced the needs and goals of different participants. This varied group, however, could all rally behind the goals of visibility and community, which linked social events to political action in a cohesive framework. The

85 Thomasine Lewis, “GAU President fights for gay rights,” BCC Polaris, 1 Nov 76, JSC. 86 See Starkey’s ads to distribute gay socialist literature through his Southern Gay Liberator organization in GAU, Liberation!, vol. 1, no. 5, Dec 1975, and Florida Gay Liberation News, Issue 4, Mar 1976, JSC. 87 persephone [sic], “libertarianism, anyone?” Liberation!, vol. 1, no. 4, 1 Sep 1975, JSC.

32 relatively inclusive nature of that framework underscores the appeal of the politics of coming out as activists sought to bring the gay movement to Palm Beach County.

Although their social events are less well documented in the historical record, it is clear that the GAU did provide multiple venues for lesbian and gay people to meet and interact. Meetings themselves probably took on a social character, with socializing before, after, and even during the conducting of business. The GAU also hosted several fundraising dances, which sometimes included drag performances, including one at a

West Palm Beach gay disco that drew over 400 revelers.88 In this, the GAU followed the lead of many earlier gay liberation groups, such as many student groups and the New

York Gay Activists Alliance, which held huge and well-known dances every week in an old firehouse.89 The GAU was one of the only places to meet gay people for friendship and romance in Boca Raton, especially for people who were not into the “bar scene,” and it is highly likely that its social aspects were one of the group’s biggest attractions.

Many contemporary observers, often with a hint of criticism, saw a growing emphasis on social events as a general trend in lesbian and gay student organizing in the mid-1970s. As one gay journalist put it, lesbian and gay students had “turned from politics to […] enjoying themselves,” part of what many viewed as a general mood of

“apathy” on college campuses in the 1970s.90 However, instead of seeing groups like the

88 Florida Gay Liberation News, issue 8, Jul 1776, JSC; Sally Blanchard, “Gay Academic Union Benefit: Le Cabaret Nightclub Is Host for Fundraiser,” Palm Beach Post, 7 Jul 1976, pB1 & B7, JSC. 89 Donn Teal, The Gay Militants (New York: Stein & Day, 1971), 57-60. Historian Alice Echols has argued that the New York GAA dances should not be seen as disconnected from politics, since “dancing itself constituted a form of protest and entailed its own alterations of identity and subjectivity.” Echols, Hot Stuff, 51. 90 Randy Shilts, “Gay Campus Movement: Trading Pickets for Proms,” The Advocate, 8 Sep 76, 6.

GAU as turning away from politics, they can better be understood as embracing a new type of politics: the politics of coming out. Under this framework, efforts toward strengthening gay life and culture were as much a part of social change as more traditional protest strategies. Despite this, GAU leaders frequently downplayed the group’s “political” nature, at least in their public rhetoric. Mark Silber insisted that the group’s main purpose was “providing fellowship and social activities in order to build a liberatory and supportive atmosphere for gay and nongay people to ‘grow’ in. […] We feel it is important for gays to build a positive self-image and this takes priority over political activism.”91 Similarly, Gary Tortora once claimed, “[A]ll we want is the right to lead our own lives.”92 Although statements like these could be read as limiting the

GAU’s activities to the realm of personal or even private affairs, Silber, Tortora, and other GAU leaders instead moved the opposite direction, incorporating the personal and the social into their definition of politics.

Time and again, GAU members articulated the purpose of the group as a fight against invisibility and isolation. An interview with Mark Silber in a student paper from a neighboring college is revealing. He claimed that the GAU’s function as a social outlet for lesbian and gay people at FAU was its most important role, since “Boca Raton has no gay bars or places where we can freely congregate.” At the same time, Silber also articulated the group’s purpose as fighting against “stereotypes” of gays, which gay activists in the 1970s would have understood to involve coming out.93 Based on their analysis of gay oppression, GAU leaders believed that they had to upend what they saw

91 GAU, Liberation!, vol. 2, no. 2, Oct 1976, JSC. 92 Andy Mead, “Gay life is ‘rough’ in Boca,” Boca Raton News, 16 Feb 1975, 1A & 12A. 93 Thomasine Lewis, “GAU president fights for gay rights,” BCC Polaris, 25 Oct 76, 6, JSC.

34 as the relegation of homosexuality to an unspeakable private realm. Overcoming their own silence and isolation, in part through the construction of a lesbian and gay social world, was directly linked to the fight against homophobia.

We should be careful not to assume a complete match between the repeated invocations of isolation and invisibility and the lived experiences of GAU members.

Most of those who participated in the GAU were not limited to the university or Boca

Raton in their search for lesbian and gay community. Given Florida Atlantic’s location and its status as a commuter university, many students lived within driving distance of the larger cities of Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. Indeed, Mark Silber and Gary Tortora frequented gay bars and gay religious services in Ft. Lauderdale, and it is likely that other

GAU members were similarly mobile.94 On a larger scale, Starkey and Silber (and presumably others) also participated in the emerging nation-wide lesbian and gay discourse, reading gay periodicals and engaging with them via letters to the editor.

Despite this connection to a larger lesbian and gay world, their written statements expressed a very real feeling of alienation.

This seeming contradiction points to the significant impact of the gay liberation movement’s emphasis on proud, visible communities. Compared with images of huge gay dances in New York City and expressions of group solidarity in gay pride celebrations across the country, a few bars and churches no longer sufficed as the extent

94 Silber, interview; Tortora, interview; Mark Silber, Diary-1977 and Diary-1978, Mark Silber Collection, Stonewall National Museum and Archives, Ft. Lauderdale, FL (hereafter: MSC). These students were carrying on a well-established habit of gay men in towns and small cities travelling outside of their immediate areas, often by car, to find gay social life. See Howard, 99- 115, and Tim Retzloff, “Cars and Bars: Assembling Gay Men in Postwar Flint, Michigan,” in Creating a Place for Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories, ed. Brett Beemyn (New York: Routledge, 1997): 227-252.

35 of lesbian and gay life for self-consciously activist men and women like these. Further, we can interpret the desire for lesbian and gay community at their university as a desire to integrate a student identity with a lesbian or gay identity. GAU members wanted the freedom to be lesbian and gay where they were, without needing to leave their home communities, including the university. Some of them learned quickly that their university was not always an accepting place for them to come out. Early on, members faced harassment and threats, which were severe enough to force Gary Tortora to move out of his dorm.95 But these students had internalized the exhortation to come out in all parts of their lives, and they would not accept segregating their sexuality from the rest of their identities. As a result, they were committed to fighting for the freedom to be out on campus.

95 GAU, “Press Release #2,” 11 Feb 1975, JSC.

Chapter 5 Campus Politics, Community Newsletters: The GAU in Local, Regional, and National Contexts

For the first several months of the GAU’s existence, its focus was on building up its organizational strength and establishing itself within the Florida Atlantic community.

In addition to its weekly meetings, the GAU held consciousness-raising groups twice a month and put on its first official event in April, a benefit show at the Unitarian Church.96

The GAU also began to establish its influence within the university’s student senate.

From its beginnings, the GAU had connections to the senate and an understanding of how the senate could be involved in fighting oppression on campus. Gary Tortora was a senator in early 1975 and the head of the university president’s “Special Project on

Discrimination and Sexism.”97 Very quickly, those links would prove useful. In February

1975, the FAU Black Student Union, with the encouragement of the Director of Minority

Student Affairs, refused to allow the newly-formed GAU to participate in a panel discussion on discrimination, arguing that gay people did not constitute a “legitimate” oppressed minority. The GAU, who had expected the BSU to support what GAU members viewed as a form of civil rights, felt “sabotaged” by the Office of Minority

Student Affairs. They gained the support of the Student Government President and Vice

President, no doubt thanks in part to Tortora’s senate connections, who pressured the

BSU into allowing the GAU to participate by wielding the student government’s antidiscrimination policy, passed by Starkey in 1973.98 GAU leaders further entrenched their

96 GAU, Liberation!, vol. 1, no. 1, Apr 1975; GAU, Liberation!, vol. 1, no. 2, 1 May 1975, JSC. 97 Gary Tortora, “Recognizing the Oppressed,” Atlantic Sun, 11 Feb 1975, 4, JSC. 98 GAU, “Press Release #1,” 6 Feb 1975; GAU, “Press Release #2,” 11 Feb 1975, JSC; Tortora, interview.

36 37 support within the senate during the elections that April. In addition to the candidacies of both Mark Silber and Gary Tortora, the GAU was the only student organization on campus to interview and endorse senate candidates.99 When their endorsed candidate won the senate’s presidency, he appointed Daniel Hensley, an openly gay GAU member, to be on his Cabinet.100

The GAU also proved savvy in its use of the senate for its own goals, following in

Joel Starkey’s footsteps. That May, Mark Silber used his position on the student senate to win funds for a venereal disease information pamphlet aimed at gay and bisexual people, to be distributed by the GAU.101 The VD pamphlet also provided the opportunity to establish the new organization’s relationship with the university administration. The pamphlet idea was similar to one that Joel Starkey had tried to implement in 1973, but without success at that time. In 1973, the university administration vetoed the student government’s bills to purchase pamphlets on birth control and venereal disease for all incoming students, stating they would “cause adverse reaction amongst community doctors.” Despite Starkey’s repeated attempts over the next months to get the student government to protest the administration’s decision, the pamphlets were never purchased because the student leaders did not want to alienate the administration.102 By contrast, in

May 1975, Silber’s resolution to the Student Senate passed easily, allocating $21 for

2,000 pamphlets aimed specifically at gay and bisexual students.103 When Silber and

Tortora met with a university official soon after, they were told that the administration

99 “Gay Union Receives Official Recognition,” Atlantic Sun, 27 May 75, 6. 100 GAU, Liberation!, vol. 1, no. 3, 1 Jun 1975, 2, JSC. 101 “Lame Duck Senate Meets: Bill For Gay VD Pamphlets,” Atlantic Sun, 7 May 75, 3. 102 SGA Minutes, 8 Aug 1973, 26 Sep 1973, 18 Jan 1974, FAU Archives. 103 “Lame Duck Senate Meets: Bill For Gay VD Pamphlets,” Atlantic Sun, 7 May 75, 3.

38 would not oppose the pamphlets. The official told them that the administration “could do nothing about the G.A.U. even if it wanted to.”104 The administration might not welcome the GAU’s activities on campus, but understood that its authority was limited in the face of the judicial recognition of gay and lesbian students’ right to organize, as well as the broader growth of students’ role in university governance.

In addition to establishing itself on campus, the GAU was committed to using printed material to reach out beyond the bounds of its membership. Within a few months of its founding, it started publishing a newsletter, Liberation!, which grew from a single sheet to a maximum length of eight pages. The GAU intended for Liberation! to reach a range of audiences, including gay and non-gay people, FAU administrators, students, and the Boca Raton community, but the newsletter always spoke primarily to lesbian and gay people. In the organization’s early months, when it still faced some resistance from the university administration, the GAU resorted to guerrilla distribution methods, such as slipping Liberation! into magazines in the campus library.105 Even after the FAU administration had accepted the GAU’s presence on campus, administrators still resisted allowing lesbian and gay students too much freedom to express themselves. When the

GAU put an image that included the word “cocksucker” on the cover of Liberation!, the president of FAU objected. Echoing a defense that had often been used to deny gay groups official recognition, he claimed to be worried about offending the conservative

Boca Raton community, who might stop donating to the university.106 It is unclear how the GAU responded to the president’s objections, but the incident indicates some of the

104 GAU, Liberation!, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1 Jun 1975, JSC. 105 Tortora, interview. 106 GAU, Liberation!, vol. 1, no. 5, Dec 1975, JSC. The cover in question was Liberation, vol. 1, no. 4, Sep 1975.

39 tensions involved in the GAU’s attempts to “educate” the very society that it was critiquing.

Liberation! was much more than just a summary of the organization’s news and events. It also contained a wide and changing variety of other items, many of which correspond with the features of lesbian and gay media in general. Rodger Streitmatter, in his history of the lesbian and gay press, has identified many of those elements as part of the project of uniting a lesbian and gay community and creating a shared culture.107 In addition to news about the GAU’s activities, Liberation! included news items taken from around Florida and the United States, implicitly arguing that lesbian and gay people around the country shared a common struggle. Book recommendations helped lesbians and gays find positive representations of themselves and build a shared culture, while listings of local lesbian and gay organizations encouraged the development of community institutions. Poetry written by GAU members and, in one instance, a photo of a smiling, shirtless GAU man continued the lesbian and gay press’s tradition of helping lesbians and gay men feel validated by seeing themselves represented in print. Liberation! was almost unfailingly celebratory of lesbian and gay culture. Other than one item about the debate over gay conservatives, there was very little inclusion of the frequent debates within the national lesbian and gay community.108 GAU members read the national gay press and were certainly aware of these issues, but Liberation! was not the place to air those disagreements. In the interest of presenting a unified lesbian and gay community, the

107 Rodger Streitmatter, Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995). 108 “The Advocate Under Fire,” Liberation!, vol. 2, no. 1, Apr 1976, JSC.

GAU chose to present a positive image of that community, avoiding controversial issues or perspectives that would have undermined the perception of unity.

The GAU also published another newsletter, Florida Gay Liberation News

(FGLN), which was a more directly political publication. First published in December

1975, FGLN was little more than a typed summary of news items relating to the activity of lesbian and gay organizations in Florida.109 Joel Starkey published the first several editions on his own, but the GAU gradually got involved, with Mark Silber and others starting to help write and distribute it over time. By fall 1976, the GAU was formally involved in publishing FGLN.110 The GAU provided funds for printing and mailing, as well as labor, so FGLN remained a cooperative project for several months, despite occasional quarrels over editorial policy and the division of labor.111 As the GAU began to falter in early 1977, FGLN returned to Starkey’s custodianship.112 Starkey found other sources of funding for the newsletter, through collaboration with other organizations and direct appeals for funds, and continued publishing FGLN through late 1977.113 Starkey’s and other GAU members’ work publishing FGLN, even as it moved into and out of the

GAU’s organizational purview, demonstrates that the GAU was only one of many outlets for their commitment to lesbian and gay liberation. The GAU was a good organizational base for them, in no small part because of its access to university resources, but these activists never allowed such concerns to fully dictate where they put their political

109 Over time, FGLN started to incorporate more news about the activities of anti-gay organizations, especially with the rise of Anita Bryant in 1977. 110 GAU, Liberation!, vol. 2, no. 2, Oct 1976; Florida Gay Liberation News, issue 12, n.d. [ca. Jan 1977], JSC. 111 Joel [Starkey] to Mark [Silber], n.d. [ca. Jun 1976], MSC. 112 Florida Gay Liberation News, issue 14, n.d. [ca. Mar 1977], JSC. 113 Joel Starkey to Mark Silber, n.d. [ca. Dec 1976], MSC; Florida Gay Liberation News, issue 16/17, n.d. [ca. May 1977], JSC.

41 energy. This fluid sense of organizational affiliation may have hurt the GAU in the long run, but it also helped these activists avoid the bitter inter-organizational feuds that plagued lesbian and gay organizations in other places.

FGLN was intended as a means of strengthening and unifying the gay liberation movement by keeping organizations abreast of the other work being done throughout the state. It was also sent to gay and lesbian press outlets around the country, and was reprinted “in its entirety” in the Atlanta Barb, a Georgia-based gay newspaper.114 FGLN was intended to knit together a regional lesbian and gay movement and demonstrate that gay liberation was thriving outside of urban centers. That goal, to a considerable extent, hoped to be self-fulfilling; FGLN sought to create the very movement and community it purported to be reporting on. The regional movement-focused, news-only format of

FGLN in some ways parallels the conferences that were ubiquitous across the gay liberation landscape in the 1970s, which students were actively involved in hosting.115

GAU members attended and helped plan statewide conferences, which were organized by student groups and held at universities in Florida.116 The Florida Atlantic students who went to these conferences and put together FGLN understood themselves as leaders and organizers of a larger lesbian and gay movement. They took advantage of their ties to the

114 Florida Gay Liberation News, issue 16/17, n.d. [ca. May 1977], JSC. 115 A 1974 survey found that 11% of the university gay organizations surveyed hosted conferences. J. Lee Lehman, Gays on Campus, National Gay Student Center, United States Student Association, 1975, 23, Gay College Students Subject Files, Stonewall National Museum and Archives. 116 Charles E. (Kip) Hamm to Mark Silber, 17 Apr 76, MSC; “Florida Gay Conference” poster, 1976, Florida box, JSC; “Gay Activists Gear Up for State Conference,” Florida Gay Liberation News, Issue 15, [1977], JSC; “G.A.U. Denied Student Funds,” Liberation!, vol. 1, no. 5, Dec 1975, JSC.

42 university by seeking funding to mail newsletters and host conferences, attempting to use university resources to build a lesbian and gay movement.

Both Liberation! and FGLN were, to an extent, efforts to strengthen gay politics in Florida and, just as importantly, to link Florida’s movement with the rest of the country. The activists in the GAU often felt as though they were toiling in the wilderness, far away from the centers of gay activism in other parts of the country. Although there could be a certain regional defensiveness in their insistence that gay liberation in Florida did not lag behind the rest of the country, activists in Boca Raton clearly sought to emulate and learn from organizations in the rest of the country.117 Starkey’s first outreach efforts involved ceaselessly urging other South Floridians to read gay periodicals from around the country, such as San Francisco’s Gay Sunshine, Detroit’s Gay Liberator, or

Washington, DC’s lesbian-feminist The Furies, in a clear effort to get them “caught up” on where the movement was heading.118 During the period of Starkey’s consciousness- raising group and the GAU, visiting gay liberation leaders from other cities came to participate and give their advice. Karla Jay, an early participant in the New York GLF and co-author of several important gay liberation books, was a personal friend of Mark

Silber, and often joined in GAU activities, no doubt lending the group her experience and knowledge. Allen Young, Jay’s co-author and another leading GLF member from New

York, also participated in a “rap session on gay politics/lifestyle” with the consciousness- raising group in 1973.119 Even without a strongly unified national gay movement, these student activists saw themselves as one part of a much larger whole. Their perspective

117 On regional defensiveness, see John Graves to Joel Starkey, Mar 1974, JSC. 118 Numerous examples of the letters that Starkey sent out of this nature are in “Requests for Info, 1972-1974” box, JSC. 119 Silber, interview; Tortora, interview; “Gay Liberation rap session” notice, n.d. [ca. 1973], JSC.

43 was both local and national, as they tried to connect to the national movement by strengthening their local community. Although in some ways the GAU can be seen as following the lead of urban centers, they saw themselves as equal partners in the gay liberation struggle.

Chapter 6 Protest and Pride: Visibility On and Off Campus

By fall 1975, the GAU felt strong enough to move its activism into the wider community. In a move that would earn the organization its greatest level of media visibility, the GAU made a formal complaint to the city of Boca Raton’s Community

Relations Board that police officers had been harassing and entrapping gay men on the beach. The issue was first brought to the group’s attention by a middle-aged man who came to a meeting and related his experience of being entrapped by an undercover police officer on a “semi-gay” area of the beach, who tricked him into making sexual advances toward him and then arrested him for indecent exposure. Shortly thereafter, Mark Silber and Gary Tortora went to the same beach and reported being questioned and harassed by a plainclothes police officer. The officer demanded to see their identification and wanted to know why they were at a beach that was “frequented by homosexuals,” as he put it.

They felt the officer was dressed “provocatively” and was attempting to entrap gay men, although he does not seem to have attempted to entrap them.120 Silber and Tortora were incensed, and after complaining of harassment directly to city officials and getting no reply, the GAU filed a formal harassment complaint in November. The Community

Relations Board, a citywide volunteer board whose purview included “[looking] into complaints of discrimination in the city,” agreed to investigate the GAU’s complaint, initiating a three-month long investigation.121

120 GAU, Liberation!, vol. 1, no. 3, 1 Jun 1975, 4, JSC; Silber, interview; Tortora, interview. 121 Sandra Wesley, “Harassing of Gays Claimed,” Palm Beach Post, 12 Nov 1975, JSC; Julia Fitzpatrick, “Board agrees to investigate charges of gay harassment,” Boca Raton News, 14 Nov 1975, 1A & 3A.

44 45

The GAU’s complaint, and the board’s decision to acknowledge it, received considerable attention in the local news media, spawning eight stories in four local papers during the month of November. The first stories dealt directly with the harassment complaint, introducing the area to the GAU and the relations between police and homosexuals. Significantly, though, the news coverage did not remain focused solely on the harassment allegations. The Palm Beach Times sent a reporter on patrol with a police officer to the very beach where Silber and Lee claimed harassment, “to find out what really goes on.”122 The Palm Beach Times also ran a story about rumors that Mark Silber had been attacked and badly injured by a group of “nude heterosexual men” on the beach, rumors that Silber adamantly denied. Silber insisted that he had “received nothing but support and congratulations” since speaking at a Community Relations Board meeting, but the fact that the paper cared enough to report on a rumored assault illustrates the local interest that the GAU harassment complaint had generated.123 The coverage also initiated an exchange of letters to the editor in the Boca Raton News between GAU members and local citizens, debating the morality of homosexuality.124 As Silber’s article in the

Atlantic Sun had done early in the year, the GAU’s complaint introduced gay issues into the public consciousness.

During the public discussion of the GAU’s complaint, Silber and Tortora’s experience was repeatedly cited. The GAU stated that it had received complaints from

122 Suzanne Smither. “Reporter’s Day With Police Patrol Proves Quiet,” Palm Beach Times, 17 Nov 1975, JSC. 123 “Gay Group Head Denies Injuries,” Palm Beach Times, 21 Nov 1975, JSC. 124 Stanley W. Wisnioski, Jr., “Three cheers for local police,” Boca Raton News, 21 Nov 1975; Mark Behar, “Homosexuals often misjudged,” Boca Raton News, 30 Nov 1975; Joel Starkey, “Homosexual is natural too,” Boca Raton News, 3 Dec 1975; Anthony B. Good, “Unnatural can’t become natural,” Boca Raton News, 7 Dec 1975, JSC.

46 others, but the man who had initially come to them about his arrest for indecent exposure refused to testify publicly. The police, not surprisingly, denied the allegations of harassment, claiming that their officers never dressed “provocatively” and that their presence on the beach was in response to citizen complaints of crime in the area. In one memorable line, a police lieutenant, defending the practice of officers patrolling the beach in swimsuits, quipped, “What do you expect us to do, patrol the beach in tuxedos?”125 Without the testimony of the man who had actually been entrapped and arrested, the GAU was unable to persuade the Community Relations Board that police activity was illegal or discriminatory. Three months after the GAU filed its complaint, the board ended its investigation of the police department. Although the complaint never made it out of the investigative committee, the publicity that the GAU received and the experience of taking concrete, official action brought the group a new level of cohesion and confidence. Additionally, the GAU was aware of the coverage the issue had received, and counted that as a victory in itself. As the organization wrote in Liberation!, “It has been noted that the extensive coverage of the GAU complaint turned the affair into a victory for gay people, who have never before voiced their complaints openly in this area.

The complaint demonstrated that local gays will stand up and be heard if their rights are abridged.”126 Whether the complaint had such a strong effect, the media attention clearly fit into the GAU’s larger political strategy.

As the GAU raised its public profile through the harassment complaint, new questions arose for them about what image, literally, they wanted to present to the world.

125 Julia Fitzpatrick, “Board agrees to investigate charges of gay harassment,” Boca Raton News, 14 Nov 1975, 1A & 3A, JSC. 126 GAU, Liberation!, vol. 2, no. 1, 1 Apr 1976, JSC; Tortora, interview.

Along with an article about the initial complaint, the Palm Beach Post printed a photograph of Mark Silber presenting testimony to the Community Relations Board.127 In it, he is wearing a loudly printed shirt and medallion necklace, and has his hair in a big, untamed style. As he put it years later, “I looked very wild and very flamboyant.” Silber and other GAU activists were aware of and discussed the political implications of the photo. Starkey, true to form, praised Silber for “not trying to look straight or butch,” but others, including Silber himself, wondered if he should not have adopted a more conservative appearance for the occasion.128 Increasing their visibility raised the stakes on their sartorial choices and forced them to face new questions: how important was a distinctively “gay” appearance? Did such a thing exist? What were the tactical values of standing out versus blending in, and on a larger scale, separatism versus assimilation?

These are questions that lesbian and gay organizations and activists faced and continue to face in a variety of situations, demonstrating some of the contradictions built into the politics of coming out, with its dual focus on visibility and gay identity.

Even while it was expanding its presence and activism in Boca Raton, the GAU continued to increase its visibility on campus. Throughout the 1975-76 school year, as they had done in the past, GAU members spoke to college classes and answered questions about their lives to dispel misinformation and stereotypes about homosexuals.

These “class raps” were a common tactic used by gay organizations, especially but not only student organizations. In fact, one survey ranked speaking to classes as the second most frequent activity of college lesbian and gay organizations (number one was

127 Sandra Wesley, “Board Agrees to Check Harassment Claims: Homosexual Group’s Protest Aimed at Boca Raton Police,” Palm Beach Post, 14 Nov 1975, JSC. 128 Silber, interview.

48 dances).129 During the period before the GAU, Joel Starkey, Mark Silber, and a handful of others had participated in class raps at FAU and Palm Beach Junior College.130 GAU members continued to speak to classes, mostly psychology, sociology, and counseling classes. Often, they were expressly invited into classes by professors, indicating the degree of support gay issues had among some faculty. Professors who wanted to teach their students about homosexuality still felt unable to talk openly about it themselves, reflecting the continuing stigma attached to teachers and homosexuality, so they asked

GAU members to educate their students instead. The experience of speaking in front of a class could be discomforting; as Gary Tortora remembered years later, “We were almost like subjects to be examined.”131 They recognized, however, the value of speaking to classes, which allowed them to merge their interest in “educating” straight society with the university’s own mission. These classroom discussions also helped them gain experience and comfort talking publicly about their own sexuality, enacting a politicized coming out.

Building on all of this activity, in May 1976, the GAU held the first recorded celebration of “Gay Pride” in Boca Raton. The GAU organized a week-long series of events on the FAU campus to celebrate Gay Pride, including an art show, a poetry reading, a display of literature by “gay authors” in the library, a panel on religion and homosexuality, and a “disco dance.”132 Many of these events built on earlier activities the

129 Randy Shilts, “Gay Campus Movement: Trading Pickets for Proms,” The Advocate, 8 Sep 76, 6-7. 130 Joel Starkey to Jim Boswell, ca. Jan 1974, JSC; Patricia Metts (PBJC) to Joel Starkey, Jun 1974, JSC; Stonewall Committee Newsletter, Nov 1974, JSC; Tortora, interview. 131 Tortora, interview. 132 “Club Notices: GAU,” Atlantic Sun, 28 Apr 76, 11; Florida Gay Liberation News, vol. 6, May 1976, JSC.

GAU had sponsored, but Gay Pride Week seems to be the first time they made such a concerted effort to reach out to the Florida Atlantic community at large. In the years after

Stonewall, lesbians and gays in New York City held parades and celebrations in June to commemorate the riots, and the celebrations quickly spread to other cities, becoming known as “gay pride” events. Participating in that tradition was clearly important to the members of GAU, as evidenced by the two essays published in Liberation! explaining and celebrating the yearly commemorations of the Stonewall Riots.133 In one of those essays, Mark Silber remembered his “first gay pride” in New York City in 1973, marching with “thousands of joyous but militant people,” with an air of excitement and almost reverence.134 The GAU’s pride week in May 1976 was an opportunity to feel part of the national lesbian and gay community, by participating in what was increasingly becoming that community’s defining event. Importantly, though, they celebrated gay pride in locations like the FAU library, to which their university affiliation allowed them access. The decision to hold their pride events on campus was most likely both a practical and strategic one; these were spaces to which the GAU had access, but they may also have been perceived by the GAU as safer or more inviting, as well. Even as the GAU asserted their membership in the gay community, they therefore simultaneously reinforced their links to the university.

That same month, the GAU participated in another type of communal celebration:

FAU’s homecoming parade.135 The GAU’s homecoming float was an affirmation of their

133 Mark N. Silber, “The Stonewall Rebellion and the Birth of Gay Pride,” Liberation!, vol. 1, no. 3, 1 Jun 1975; “Gays Are Coming Out: All Over the Land,” Liberation!, vol. 2, no. 2, Oct 1976, JSC. 134 Silber, “The Stonewall Rebellion.” 135 “Homecoming 1976,” Atlantic Sun, 19 May 1976, 6-7.

50 presence in the university community, as well as an expression of school spirit. Their choice to participate in the parade suggests that the GAU saw itself as a student organization, and demonstrates an eagerness to be seen as part of the Florida Atlantic community, even as they worked to build a parallel lesbian and gay community. Their on-campus activities, and the degree of enthusiasm the group continued to receive from its members, earned the GAU an award from the campus Inter-organizational Activities

Board at the end of the spring 1976 term.136 The organization was thriving and its successes were recognized by the university administration, marking a dramatic change from the Board of Regents’ refusal to recognize gay groups only 3 years before. An award to the GAU, however, did not mean that the university had become fully accepting of lesbian and gay students. In August 1976, the GAU sent a letter to the FAU University

Housing Office about harassment in the dorms and discrimination in housing.137 The

Housing Office’s response is unclear, but the GAU was still battling for full acceptance on campus.

136 Mark Silber to Karla Jay, 9 Jun 1976, MSC. 137 Florida Gay Liberation News, issue 9A, n.d. [ca. Aug/Sep 1976], JSC.

Chapter 7 Protesting The Boys in the Band: The New Gay Identity and the Politics of Representation

The GAU’s efforts to create a lesbian and gay community on campus were not always without tension. Some of the fractures in the GAU’s idealized vision of community became visible when the group successfully protested a campus showing of the film The Boys in the Band in the fall of 1976. The FAU Student Body Productions

(SBP) board had planned a free showing of the 1970 film as part of its regular on-campus movie series. The Boys in the Band, based on a 1968 play by Mart Crowley, occupied a complex position in relationship to gay politics. Although it was the first mainstream

American movie to focus on the lives of gay men, it presented its gay protagonists as stereotypical, chronically unhappy, and incapable of forming meaningful relationships. It was celebrated when it came out, especially by sympathetic straight audiences, but many newly radicalized lesbian and gay activists in the early 1970s harshly criticized it.138 Six years after the film’s release, the GAU followed in the footsteps of earlier gay critiques of the movie, alleging that it “caters to homophobia by portraying gays as sick, silly and anything but normal human beings with a slightly different sexual orientation.” Likening a screening of The Boys in the Band to “showing a film about Blacks which featured

Steppin Fetchit,” the GAU argued that the film was “inaccurate,” “offensive,” and

138 Fred Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic: The Origins of America’s Debate on Homosexuality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 36-37; Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: 1940-1996 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 185-192; Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies (New York: Harper & Rowe, 1981), 174-179.

51 52

“defamatory.” The SBP, who may already have been looking for a film to cut in order to trim their budget, yielded to the GAU’s objections and cancelled the showing.139

The GAU argued that the film was offensive to them as a group and as individuals. Further, they believed the film was “harmful to young gay people who are just ‘coming out’ and discovering their gay identity.”140 In protesting its showing on campus, they suggested that the university had a responsibility to respect its gay students by not showing the film. Many other students, however, decried the decision to cancel the showing, mobilizing a different set of beliefs about the university’s responsibilities.

Setting the stage for the debate to come, the one SBP member who voted to show the film stated, “As much as I oppose prejudice and exploitation, I oppose censorship even more.”141 The charge of censorship was repeated in many letters to the editor of the

Atlantic Sun over the next two weeks, as were claims that the GAU was, in the words of the Sun’s editorial board, “too sensitive.” Two strains of the censorship charge emerged: one which argued that the SBP should not have allowed “minority rule at the expense of the majority,” and the other arguing that censoring the film worked against the educational purpose of the university. Several letter-writers, who stated their support for gay rights, argued that the GAU could have been more effective had they offered educational opportunities about why the film was offensive, rather than shutting down the discussion with the “reactionary tactic” of “censorship.”142 The university’s role as a site

139 Doug Pugh, “Gays Cancel Film,” Atlantic Sun, 9 Nov 1976, 1; Mark N. Silber, “Gays ‘Protect Rights’ in Censorship Charges,” Atlantic Sun, 16 Nov 1976, 5; Joel Starkey, “Gay Rebuts Critics,” Atlantic Sun, 23 Nov 1976, 5; Silber, interview. 140 Silber, “Gays ‘Protect Rights.’” 141 Pugh, “Gays Cancel Film.” 142 Greg Cote, “GAU is ‘Too Sensitive,’” Atlantic Sun, 9 Nov 76, 4; Joseph Cocchiarella, “GAU’s Censorship at Who’s Expense?” Atlantic Sun, 16 Nov 1976, 5; Paul Bullwinkle, “SBP

53 of education in the broadest sense had proven useful to gay activists in other instances, but this was a point where they were at odds with the supposed intellectual freedom of the university.

Two of the letters to the Atlantic Sun opposing the GAU’s stance came from people who were strongly sympathetic to the GAU’s mission: one from an admittedly gay student, and another from a student who did not share her or his sexual orientation, but claimed to have been a founding member of the GAU. These writers opposed cancelling the film, in part, based on what they saw as being politically effective for the gay rights movement. They took the GAU’s emphasis on visibility even further, arguing that all visibility was good visibility since it provided an opportunity for the GAU to educate the campus.143 Both of these letter writers shielded their identities, one by requesting her or his name be withheld and one by signing only with initials. While this may reflect a fear of coming out or being openly associated with gay rights, there is also the possibility that the authors feared ridicule or reprisal from the activist gay community.

Mark Silber stated that the GAU was unanimous in its opposition to the film, so the

GAU, despite its political diversity, was clearly not representative of the entire FAU gay and gay-supportive community.

The Boys in the Band reflects the gay experience at a particular historical moment.

As Tony Kushner eloquently has written, the work is “a sharp description of a kind of

Was Wrong in Cancelling Film,” Atlantic Sun, 16 Nov 1976, 5; Gregory Belli, “’Band’ Decision Booed,” Atlantic Sun, 16 Nov 1976, 5; Anon., “’Boys In the Band’ Should Have Been Run,” Atlantic Sun, 23 Nov 1976, 5; D.S.S., “Film Cancellation Called a ‘Reactionary Tactic,’” Atlantic Sun, 23 Nov 1976, 5. 143 Anon., “’Boys In the Band’ Should Have Been Run;” D.S.S., “Film Cancellation Called a ‘Reactionary Tactic.’”

54 moment: right before the explosion, right before the spark that ignites the revolution.”144

When it was first produced in 1968, The Boys in the Band was a scathing critique of the effects of homophobia on gay male life. Historical developments, however, drastically altered the context within which that critique was made, making the show seem reactionary rather than progressive. The contours of gay life presented in The Boys in the

Band, exaggerated for dramatic effect, were irreconcilable with the post-Stonewall focus on coming out. The film’s characters did not want to proclaim their sexuality publicly – in fact, some of the film’s most wrenching moments occur when characters are forced to do exactly that – and their complicated, sometimes vicious relationships with each other are nowhere near the ideal gay community envisioned by liberationists.

Even more, the film relied on what gay film historian Vito Russo has called a

“compendium of easily accepted stereotypes.”145 GAU members, so deeply invested in combating stereotypes, resented the fact that these characters were the most widely available image of gay people. Although as Russo points out, not all of the characters in

The Boys in the Band easily fit gay stereotypes, many did, especially several effeminate characters whose camp wit provides much of the film’s humor. In their fight against stereotypes, GAU leaders were particularly opposed to associations of gay men with effeminacy. As Silber once said in an interview, “[I]f you saw me walking down the street, you wouldn’t be able to tell I’m gay. We don’t have a monopoly on all the sissies

144 Tony Kushner, introduction to The Boys in the Band: 40th-Anniversary Edition, by Mart Crowley (New York: Alyson Books, 2008), x. 145 Russo, Celluloid Closet, 175.

55 in the world.”146 Their dual goals of constructing a gay community and influencing straight perceptions in this case led the GAU to emphasize a gay identity that was gender- normative, and thus less threatening to the general public. The characters in The Boys in the Band challenged their attempts to do that, and so were derided as outdated. Historian

Brian Distelberg has argued that reviews of literature featuring gay men in the 1970s gay press highly valued “contemporariness,” since “they saw being gay—or, at least, being openly, proudly gay in the way they understood it—as a relative novelty, made possible by gay people’s collective actions within the decades’ gay political movement.” That emphasis on representations of contemporary forms of gay life and identity significantly contributed to the exclusion of “those who, for whatever reason, embraced other (or older) model and modes of queer identity” from the discourse of gay acceptability.147 The

GAU’s protest against The Boys in the Band is part of exactly that project. The organization’s goal of establishing a sense of lesbian and gay community, then, involved both affirmative and exclusionary aspects: building community institutions, while also policing the bounds of gay identity, through the medium of cultural representation.

Support for the film in the Atlantic Sun, however, reveals a persistent identification with and affirmation of Crowley’s presentation and critique of gay life. One gay-supportive FAU letter-writer defended the movie as portraying “characters whose humaness [sic] goes deeper than stereotypes.”148 The GAU, though, because of its embrace of coming out politics and the delineation of “correct” forms of gay identity that

146 Andy Mead, “Gay life is ‘rough’ in Boca,” Boca Raton News, 16 Feb 1975, 1A & 12A. See also Thomasine Lewis, “GAU President fights for gay rights,” BCC Polaris, 1 Nov 76, Broward College Archives. 147 Distelberg, “Mainstream Fiction and Gay Reviewers,” 406. 148 Anon., “’Boys In the Band’ Should Have Been Run.”

56 went along with that, could see the movie’s characters only as offensive relics from a less-enlightened age. As historian Justin David Suran has argued, the growth of new forms of gay activism, beginning with the birth of gay liberation in the late 1960s, produced profound divisions within the gay community, not only about political tactics, but also about the fundamental meaning of gay identity and the nature of “progress” for gay people.149 Although the terms had changed by the mid-1970s, those questions of goals and identity were by no means settled. Sociologist Patrick Dilley has argued that college organizations for lesbian and gay students have never been spaces where all queer students felt welcome, in part because those organizations could not accommodate different queer identities.150 Although the GAU was committed to building a sense of shared identity among lesbian and gay people, the limits of their imagined community could only stretch so far. Because their political program demanded outreach to the straight world, there would always be a tension between inclusivity and a politically palatable image. That tension has reappeared frequently throughout the history of gay organizing, and activists have responded differently depending on their historical moment and political orientation. The Boys in the Band controversy at FAU shows how the rapid but incomplete transformation of gay politics and identity during the 1970s made organizations like the GAU unable to accept the full variety of queer experiences with which they were confronted, contributing to their inability to build the inclusive movement they sought.151

149 Suran, “Coming Out Against the War,” 463-470. 150 Dilley, Queer Man on Campus, 202-203. 151 For insightful reflections on the limitations and boundaries inherent in the idea of a “gay identity,” see Altman, Homosexualization of America, 102-104.

Chapter 8 Anita Bryant, National Organizing, and the Decline of Gay Student Activism

Even as it was unable to construct an all-embracing gay community at Florida

Atlantic, the GAU frequently tried to extend its community-building efforts beyond Boca

Raton to include the larger gay student movement. We have seen how it focused on communication between organizations, through Liberation! and Florida Gay Liberation

News, both of which contained a higher than average number of stories about gay student groups. Both Mark Silber and Joel Starkey were also in personal communication with groups at other universities in Florida, including the University of Miami, University of

Florida, and University of South Florida.152 Like many gay student groups, the Florida groups worked together to organize annual conferences that members of the GAU actively participated in.153 Lest we think these connections were only political, the myriad conferences, dances, and other events could also lead to friendships and sexual relationships.154 Political involvement helped lesbian and gay activists construct wide social networks, a characteristic that was common in gay movements throughout the

1960s and 1970s. These relationships, social and sexual, could be a source of strength and motivation for activists, making the gay community concrete for them.

In addition to participating in this statewide network of gay student groups, the

GAU, and especially Mark Silber, actively worked to extend it to other places. In particular, Silber seems to have been instrumental in the formation of a Gay Academic

152 Jim Connolly [USF] to Joel Starkey, 19 Jan 1976, Florida box, JSC; “Liz” [UF] to Mark Silber, 12 Jan 1977, MSC; Charles E. (Kip) Hamm to Mark Silber, 24 May 1976, MSC. 153 Charles E. (Kip) Hamm to Mark Silber, 17 Apr 1976, MSC; “Florida Gay Conference” poster, 1976, JSC. 154 Mark Silber’s 1977 diary includes several entries that suggest the variety of intimate relationships fostered by organizing across campuses. Mark Silber, Diary-1977, MSC.

57 58

Union at nearby Broward Community College (BCC). Silber himself had attended BCC for his first year of college in 1972-1973, and at the time had tried to spur some gay political activity through the same type of posted signs he would later use more successfully at FAU.155 In November 1976, a three-part series on Silber and the FAU Gay

Academic Union appeared in one of BCC’s student newspapers.156 Silber became a frequent speaker in classes at BCC, and by October 1977, a Gay Academic Union was seeking recognition at BCC. Although the BCC GAU faced more resistance from the administration than its FAU predecessor, that fall Silber regularly attended its meetings and social events.157

At the same time that Mark Silber was helping get a GAU started at BCC, the

FAU organization had entered a period of decline. The group seems to have gone dormant beginning in early 1977. No news stories or notices of meetings appear in the

Atlantic Sun after January 1977. Mark Silber travelled to campus to take care of the

GAU’s finances, but does not seem to have attended GAU meetings or events.158 Student organizations, of course, are more susceptible than many to periods of quiescence; as

Silber wrote in a magazine article about gay student groups, “there is a tendancy [sic] for clubs to disband and then reorganize the next quarter or semester. Frequently the original officers and members graduate, leaving the organization in limbo.”159 In this case,

155 Silber, interview. 156 Thomasine Lewis, “GAU ends stereotypes,” BCC Polaris, 25 Oct 76, JSC; Thomasine Lewis, “GAU President fights for gay rights,” BCC Polaris, 1 Nov 76, JSC. 157 Ruth Segal, “Homosexuals battle for their rights, try to gain BCC acceptance,” BCC Polaris 23 Nov 77, p1, Broward College Archives; Vincent Verdi, “Gay Academic Union Seeks Recognition,” BCC Phoenix, 28 Oct 77, p1&3, Broward College Archives; Mark Silber, Diary- 1777, MSC. 158 Mark Silber, Diary-1977, MSC. 159 Mark N. Silber, “Gay Groups on Campus,” Alive! Magazine, vol 1, no 10, Feb 1978, 7.

59 though, it was not only the graduation of a few active students, but also a more thoroughgoing transformation of gay politics that spelled the end of the GAU.

The winter and spring of 1977 saw dramatic events elsewhere in South Florida that quickly overshadowed the GAU. The County Commission of Dade County, two counties south of Boca Raton, passed an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in January 1977. Popular singer Anita Bryant led a fateful effort to repeal the antidiscrimination ordinance, leading to one of the first major battles over gay rights in the country. The lesbian and gay movement throughout South Florida, and indeed the United States, spent the period from January to June 1977 working frantically to save the ordinance, a fight it ultimately lost.160 Mark Silber, for one, became involved in the Dade campaign, as he regularly attended and chaired meetings of the Broward

County Coalition for Human Rights (a group working against Bryant’s repeal effort) and protested media bias on a Miami-area radio program that spread inaccuracies about the non-discrimination ordinance.161 The imminent danger in Dade County, which lesbian and gay activists knew from the start had national implications, drew the energy and attention of Silber, and presumably other GAU activists, to the south, leaving them less time to focus on staying active at FAU.

The Dade County campaign, and the attempts to repeal gay rights laws around the country that Bryant’s efforts inspired over the next year, fundamentally changed the landscape of lesbian and gay organizing in south Florida, and indeed in the United States.

As historian Fred Fejes puts it, the Dade campaign and subsequent campaigns in other

160 For an excellent account of the Dade County referendum and the efforts by gay organizations to fight it, see Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic, especially chapters 3-5. 161 Mark Silber, Diary-1977, MSC; Florida Gay Liberation News, Issue 14, ca. Feb 1976, JSC.

60 cities inspired by Bryant’s efforts “marked the emergence of a national politically self- conscious lesbian and gay community.”162 Lesbian and gay people around the country eagerly followed events in Miami, and solidarity events and fundraisers were held in cities as far away as San Francisco and Boston.163 Because the Bryant-led effort was the first serious attempt to repeal a gay rights ordinance, national gay political leaders recognized its importance and got involved. The Dade campaign also helped build an increasingly powerful and self-conscious religious conservative movement, the emergence of which quickened the lesbian and gay movement’s expansion. National gay organizations achieved levels of exposure and support among lesbian and gay people that they had never before enjoyed. Organizations like the National Gay Task Force (NGTF), which had been founded in New York in 1973, grew tremendously in membership and stature. The movement-building effects of the anti-gay campaigns started by Bryant in

Miami would be most visible in the first national gay rights march and rally in

Washington, DC, in October 1979.164

The GAU had benefitted in its early years by being the only face of gay liberation in Palm Beach County, making it more able to attract members and media attention. As organizations like NGTF grew and a truly national gay rights movement coalesced, however, energy and attention were inevitably drawn away from small, local groups like the GAU. This process happened with particular force and speed in South Florida, the epicenter of the Anita Bryant crusade. Coverage in the Boca Raton News demonstrates this trend. In the days following the vote to repeal Dade County’s gay rights ordinance,

162 Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic, 214. 163 Ibid., 110-111. 164 Ibid., 213-227; Sears, Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones, 265-284.

61 the Boca Raton News printed three stories about the results, focusing largely on the national implications of the vote. The paper featured stories of protest marches by lesbians and gays in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, and protests against Anita

Bryant in Norfolk, VA. In their story on the repeal itself, the paper quoted Bryant, national bathhouse chain owner and gay campaign leader Jack Campbell, and New York- based NGTF leader Jean O’Leary. The face and voice of gay politics for the Boca Raton newspaper was no longer local FAU students, but national spokespeople for a national movement.165

In addition to changing the field of gay organizations, the Bryant campaign dramatically changed the amount and type of visibility that gay people and issues received. Again, although this happened on a national scale, it was especially noticeable in South Florida. The respective campaigns to repeal and protect the gay rights ordinance received intense, even daily, attention in the Miami press, which undoubtedly reached up to Boca Raton.166 Anita Bryant herself, a dramatic and well-known figure, was an all-too- easy target of derision and protest by gay rights supporters. Bryant’s roles as spokesperson for Florida orange juice and Singer sewing machines gave her national prominence, and also prompted boycott efforts by gay activists around the US, which without question contributed to the extensive press coverage of the repeal effort.167

Although Bryant’s stature was definitely a boon to the repeal campaign in the short term, it simultaneously brought the issue of gay rights to the attention of more people than ever

165 “Dade vote stirs ‘gay’ marches” Boca Raton News, 8 Jun 1977, p2A; “Dade county voters repeal gay rights,” Boca Raton News, 8 Jun 1977, p7A; “Miami gay vote just the beginning: Battle lines drawn,” Boca Raton News, 9 Jun 1977, p2A. 166 Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic, 101-114, 139-143, 146. 167 Ibid., 97-101, 214-215.

62 before. Without meaning to, Bryant and her supporters were advancing one of the gay movement’s biggest goals: visibility.

That boost to gay visibility can be glimpsed in the pages of the FAU Atlantic Sun.

Although the paper did not provide any coverage of the repeal campaign as it was ongoing (the Sun’s off-campus news coverage was generally sparse), in the year after the

June 1977 vote it referenced Bryant and the Dade campaign several times, directly or obliquely. In its first issue of the fall 1977 quarter, the Atlantic Sun contained a special supplement on sex and sexuality. Included among the features in that supplement were a story about a gay radio disc jockey from Miami who came out on air in response to

Bryant’s rhetoric, and one about a gay hotel in Ft. Lauderdale, which mentioned that the hotel was host to meetings of the Broward Coalition for Human Rights, “a sister coalition of the gay coalition in Miami.”168 Several months later, the Sun’s Entertainment Editor brought up Bryant’s anti-gay efforts several times in his satire column.169 These references to the debate over gay rights were not uniformly supportive. The Sun columnist, for example, expressed at best ambivalence about homosexuality. He claimed that he did not support Bryant, but added, “though I must admit I haven’t supped with any homos lately either.”170 What is striking, though, is that the debate on gay rights had become one with which he and his readers were readily familiar. Mentions of gay issues in the FAU newspaper were no longer restricted to the activities of the university’s own lesbian and gay organization. The debate about gay rights had become self-sustaining,

168 Maria Kaytes, “Love 94’s gay jock educated heterosexuals,” Atlantic Sun, 27 Sep 77, p21; Alan Cherry, “Marlin Beach: Gay hotel thrives in Fort Lauderdale,” Atlantic Sun, 27 Sep 77, p23. 169 Greg Cote, “You know I hate bringin up Anita again, but…” Atlantic Sun, 21 Feb 78, p6; Greg Cote, “This platform is build with rumored planks,” Atlantic Sun, 14 Mar 78, p8. 170 Cote, “You know I hate.”

63 thanks to the Bryant-led anti-gay campaign and the vocal response by lesbian and gay people locally and nationally. The GAU’s goal of visibility had been spectacularly achieved, but in a way that made the GAU itself, to a degree, superfluous.

Those effects weren’t immediately evident, however. In fact, the defeat of the

Dade gay ordinance in June provided an impetus for a limited resurgence of the GAU.

Over the summer, Mark Silber wrote to Joel Starkey that he planned to “reactivate and start the G.A.U. all over again” that fall. “Since our stunning defeat in Dade county,” he wrote, “we should realize that now is the time to be more militant and dedicated to our

‘cause’ than ever before.” (To this, Starkey characteristically replied, “Most of us are already quite Militant perhaps you are just catchin’ up.”)171 Silber organized an informational table during orientation in the fall and called a first meeting of the GAU, which proceeded to meet throughout the term. Its meetings, however, do not seem to have had the vibrancy they once did, and it put on only one event – a clambake social for its members.172 Beginning in January 1978, the GAU and organized gay activity disappeared from Florida Atlantic for the rest of the 1970s. Silber’s desire for renewed militancy was not to be fulfilled at FAU.173

171 Mark Silber to Joel Starkey, n.d. [ca. Jul 1977]; Joel Starkey to Mark Silber, n.d. [ca. Jul 1977], JSC. 172 Mark Silber, Diary-1977, MSC. 173 In a fitting coda, The Boys in the Band was shown on campus in early 1979. The Atlantic Sun ran an article recounting the GAU’s protest years before, but noted that the organization was “now-defunct.” Arienne Wallace, “No controversy over gay film,” Atlantic Sun, 20 Feb 1979, 6.

Chapter 9 Why Gay Student Activism?: The Legacy of the 1960s

During the two years of its life, the GAU achieved a great deal. Its activities were intimately related to the larger strategy I am calling the politics of coming out, even if its accomplishments do not fall under traditional definitions of “politics.” The close connection between the GAU and the larger lesbian and gay movement, however, leaves us with unanswered questions about the nature of the GAU’s activism. If these activists cared about and were working on similar issues as activists in other settings, why did they remain student-focused? Why did they choose to affiliate themselves with Florida

Atlantic University, even as they maintained an interest in off-campus work? After all, both Mark Silber and Joel Starkey had been involved in other lesbian and gay organizing projects that did not center on universities, but both were integral to the GAU and maintained a commitment to student activism after they graduated. Other organizing options were available, but the members of the GAU chose Florida Atlantic as the base for their activism. Obviously, the very fact that many of the leaders were full-time students explains a good deal of their interest in building a university-based organization.

That explanation, however, ignores their efforts to organize on campus in the face of administrative opposition and their other, equally available options. Instead, by examining the particular resources and opportunities that universities offered to gay activists, we can see how universities were particularly fruitful places from which to engage in the politics of coming out.

One of the most important reasons that university-based activism was attractive is also one of the most basic: resources. Official student organizations at Florida Atlantic

64 65 had the right to utilize campus facilities, use the university’s bulk mailing rate, advertise in the student newspaper, and apply for funding to the student senate. Many gay liberation projects, such as Joel Starkey’s Southern Gay Liberator, often found themselves in a precarious financial situation during this period, so the university funding system would have seemed like a potential goldmine for activists.174 The GAU’s expectations of funding did not always work out the way they must have hoped. Mark

Silber once described the organization as “virtually bankrupt” and “[living] day to day on meager donations of 25¢ and 50¢,” because they had “received absolutely no money from the university.”175 Whether the lack of funding was the result of discrimination or simply limited university funds, it must have been a sore disappointment to the GAU. Even if the organization itself did not receive the funds it hoped for, however, it was able to secure funding through other channels, such as the student government’s purchase of venereal disease pamphlets. We have also seen with FGLN how GAU members were able to use the available university resources for projects begun outside of the university. In fact, at around the same time that he was bemoaning the GAU’s lack of funds to one correspondent, Silber wrote to someone else that the Stonewall Committee and the

Southern Gay Liberator (his and Starkey’s personal projects) were dependent on the

GAU for “supplies, materials, and funds” and “would be forced to fold” without it.176

Whether he exaggerated either the GAU’s poverty or its generosity (or both), Silber was clearly acknowledging that the GAU, as a student organization, had at least potential access to resources that other groups did not have.

174 Joel Starkey to Homosexual Renaissance, ca. Dec 1973; Southern Gay Liberator, Feb 1972, JSC. 175 Mark Silber to John [Gibbs], 14 Feb 1976, MSC. 176 Mark Silber to Eldon Murray, 20 Mar 1976, MSC.

In addition to the tangible resources made available by student organizing, the university also provided a useful platform for political issues. In some senses, the FAU student body functioned as a captive audience. For a movement so concerned with visibility and educating the public, universities provided a small and centralized audience that was relatively easy to communicate with. Activists also must have recognized the value of working among students, many of whom were young people still working out their own political opinions and personal identities, and thus more open to persuasion.

The student newspaper, in particular, was a great resource for raising their profile and communicating with the campus. From Mark Silber’s front-page article onwards, the

Atlantic Sun was remarkably receptive to stories about the Gay Academic Union.

Although the GAU did get some coverage in the mainstream local press, especially but not only for their police harassment complaint, it is hard to imagine any mainstream newspaper dedicating as much copy as the Sun to a group like the GAU. Class raps were another excellent medium for the lesbian and gay movement’s politics of education, since they allowed gay activists to use universities’ own most basic purpose for their political goals. Class presentations could also be an effective organizing method, as suggested by

Silber’s talks at BCC classes in the months before a GAU organized there. By providing a small, centralized community with unique opportunities for communicating their message, universities were perfect for the politics of coming out.

The movements of the 1960s had also made universities more welcoming to political action. Fights over freedom of expression on campus, such as the Berkeley Free

Speech Movement, as well as legal defenses of students’ rights to form SDS and antiwar organizations, established students’ rights to political action on campus and provided

67 essential precedents for lesbian and gay students’ demands for university recognition.

Although many historians of student activism portray the 1970s solely as a period of student apathy, in fact student activists refocused their attention on issues that affected them as students in the wake of the breakup of the New Left and antiwar movements.177

Students increasingly made university curricula a target of critique, arguing for changes in scholarship, pedagogy, and disciplinary organization as they sought to make university education more “relevant” to social issues.178 Their demands for a role in university governance also led to considerable increases in the power of student governments on campus over the course of the 1970s.179 We have seen how the GAU was able to use the relative autonomy of the FAU student government and student newspaper to support their aims, giving them a source of institutional support separate from the university administration. Further, the emphasis on students’ rights spurred many non-gay student leaders to defend against administrative efforts to block lesbian and gay student organizing, wholly independent of their support or lack thereof for gay liberation, as happened at FSU in the early 1970s. By creating a more politically conscious and institutionally powerful body of students, the movements of the 1960s and 1970s created a campus atmosphere that was more inviting for lesbian and gay activism.

Most importantly, college students had come to be seen as a particularly important constituency for social change efforts, and one that would be particularly

177 J. Peter Segall and Robert M. Pickett, eds. Student Political Involvement in the 1970s (New York: National University Publications, 1979). For a recent example of the interpretation of the 1970s as void of student activism, see Mark Edelman Boren, Student Resistance: A History of the Unruly Subject (New York: Routledge, 2001). 178 Julie Rueben, “Reforming the University: Student Protests and the Demand for a ‘Relevant’ Curriculum,” in Student Protest: The Sixties and After, ed. Gerard J. DeGroot (London: Addison Wesley Longman Limited, 1998), 153-168. 179 Johnston, “United States Student Association,” 419-430.

68 sympathetic to the politics of coming out. The social movements of the 1960s, and even more the mass media representation of them, firmly established the idea of college students as radical activists within the public consciousness.180 In particular, among those who were committed to social change, students had acquired a veneer of revolutionary agency. The New Left had briefly toyed with theories that saw students as the most important group for changing the social order. Although those theories never gained permanence in theoretical circles, their validation of student activism lived on.181 By the mid-1970s, the radicalism of the late 1960s had waned considerably, but the memory of it retained a strong pull, perpetuating an image of college campuses as home to liberal politics in an increasingly conservative nation. To those who were preparing to come out, an act that could still result in serious repercussions in many places, the idea of universities as tolerant, liberal enclaves was extremely important. Again, those hopes were not always fulfilled, as GAU members still faced threats and harassment, but the idea remained powerful.

The movements of the 1960s did more than just validate student activism. They specifically encouraged a type of activism that combined personal liberation with political action, in much the same way as the politics of coming out. Many traditionally-

180 Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz makes this point, but to argue that political activism had become “banal” and uninteresting on campuses. Although that may have been true for many students, my argument is that the idea of student radicalism retained traction with those committed to social change efforts. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1987), 244. 181 Wini Breines provides a good explication of the “new working class theory,” which she calls a “theoretical validation of the student movement.” Although Breines focuses on the theory’s failure at the level of leadership, Doug Rossinow has argued persuasively that it continued to be influential among grassroots activists. Wini Breines, Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962-1968: The Great Refusal (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 97- 122; Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 193-196.

69 minded politicos derided the growing strength of identity-based activism in the late 1960s as “self-interested.” This continued into the 1970s, when some observers viewed the proliferation of identity-based groups on campus as a result of the self-involvement of the

“me generation.”182 Newer histories, though, have shown the close ties between the political New Left and the personal liberation values associated with the sixties counterculture, especially among college students.183 Identity politics, then, can be understood as a continuation of, rather than a departure from, 1960s activism. As historians increasingly recognize the close connections between the New Left and new forms of gay activism, this symbiosis of personal liberation and political action is coming to be understood as integral to the development of gay liberation ideology.184 Protest movements of the 1960s thus encouraged young lesbian and gay people, like Joel

Starkey, to politicize their sexuality. Although the New Left and the counterculture were never exclusively student or even youth movements, college students were one of their most important constituencies. When the lesbian and gay politics of coming out emerged, college students, both gay and non-gay, were ready to understand and respond to it.

182 Altbach and Cohen, “American Student Activism,” 460-2. 183 For three different analyses of these connections: Sara M. Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Knopf, 1979); Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity; Robbie Lieberman, Prairie Power: Voices of 1960s Midwestern Student Protest (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004). 184 On the close (but often conflicted) relationships between the New Left and gay liberationists, see Terrence Kissack, “Freaking Fag Revolutionaries: New York’s Gay Liberation Front, 1969- 1971,” Radical History Review 62 (1995): 104-134; Suran, “Coming Out Against the War;” Ian Lekus, “Queer Harvests: Homosexuality, the U.S. New Left, and the Venceremos Brigades to Cuba,” Radical History Review 89 (2004): 57-91; Simon Hall, “Protest Movements in the 1970s: The Long 1960s,” Journal of Contemporary History 43 (2008): 655-672.

Chapter 10 Conclusion

Although the story of the Gay Academic Union at FAU ends with the group disbanded, it should not be read as a tragedy. Former members of the GAU continued their activism in varied arenas. Mark Silber continued to be involved with the Broward

County Coalition for Human Rights and other projects, while Gary Tortora worked with a group of gay business professionals in the Ft. Lauderdale area, as well as becoming a leader in the local environmental movement. Joel Starkey continued publishing the

Southern Gay Liberator newspaper for several years, and he and Silber built collections of gay-related books and archival material that eventually became the Stonewall Library and Archives (now Stonewall National Museum and Archives) in Ft. Lauderdale. Starkey was also involved in a high-profile AIDS discrimination case against his employer before he passed away in 1992.185 Gay activism at FAU was not gone for good, either. Today, the university has an LGBT student organization, the Lambda United Gay Straight

Alliance, and in March 2011, opened an LGBTQA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and allies) Center within the Office of Multicultural Affairs, dedicated to

“[providing] a place for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students to share their experiences with one another.”186

The spirit of the GAU may have lived on, but the organization itself is long gone, along with the context within which it existed. The GAU was the product of a particular

185 Silber, interview; Tortora, interview; Mark Silber, “In Memoriam: South Florida Gay Activist Joel Starkey,” TWN, 22 Jan 1992. 186 FAU, “FAU Opens Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Students,” press release, 16 Mar 2011, http://wise.fau.edu/communications/mediarelations/Releases0311/ 031126.php.

70 71 period in the lesbian and gay movement, when small groups of activists around the country sought to replicate the gay liberation activism they saw in major cities. Under those conditions, lesbian and gay student groups were uniquely equipped to play a role in the lesbian and gay movement, which relied on independent organizations to build visible, politicized communities. Students could use the resources and strategies available to them on campus, many of which they owed to the protest movements of the 1960s, to engage in the politics of coming out. Over time, however, as the national gay movement consolidated, the crucial role that gay student organizations held during the early to mid-

1970s was lost. Lesbian and gay students did not cease organizing, but their activities necessarily changed focus. More comparative and longitudinal studies of lesbian and gay student activism are clearly needed to flesh out these changes. For instance, FAU students may have been affected earlier or more directly by the Dade County campaign of

1977, and student groups in other areas might have responded to those events differently.

What is clear, however, is that students have played an important role in the growth of the modern gay rights movement, and understanding that role can yield valuable insights into lesbian and gay history. The commitment of the lesbian and gay students at FAU instructs us in the historical nature of lesbian and gay politics, and inspires us to take their commitment forward into the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Archival Materials Boca Raton, FL Florida Atlantic University Archives

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