Here Because We're Queer

A year after the Stonewall riots in New York, the Gay Liberation Front of Washington, D.C., held its first meeting on June 30, 1970.

GLF-DC's activities included protests, publications and communal living experiments.

Although the group faded quickly, in part because of disorganization and divisiveness about goals, activities and actions, its attendees established openly gay community organizations, including some long-lasting institutions in Washington-Capital Pride, Whitman-Walker Health, the Metropolitan Community Church and Lambda Rising bookstore.

The book is based on interviews with more than 50 participants.

The first chapter describes Washington in the Mattachine Society era, before GLF.

A chapter is devoted to GLF meetings: the heated discussions, especially the division between radical and liberal members, with radicals opposed to war, sexism, racism and homophobia as part of liberationist beliefs, while more liberal members wanted achievable goals such as public education efforts and achieving civil rights; developing a legal case against D.C.'s sodomy law; protests against gay bars that discriminated against women, blacks and others; why women disappeared from meetings; and concerns over the group's failure to attract many blacks.

What life was like inside the GLF commune, a mixed-race household that quickly became a meeting place and social hub for GLF: where skag drag was explored, a Christian chapel was established, and consciousness raising groups were encouraged.

A chapter describes public GLF actions: distribution of gay literature; a zap on a conference on homosexuality and religion at Catholic University of America; participation in the Black Panther-sponsored Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention; helping Frank Kameny in his campaign for nonvoting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives; May Day antiwar activities; and a zap on the convention of the American Psychiatric Association.

In a second gay group house, the Skyline Faggots collective: how six men tried a mutually supportive experiment in living according to radical gay principles; their would-be alignment with the separatist women's collective the Furies; their production of an issue of Motive magazine; their conflict with the Venceremos Brigade; and personal attacks from an even more radical collective, the Effeminists.

The gay community grows as GLF fades: with organizations and social activities, a demonstration against police entrapment at the Iwo Jima Memorial, visits to local high schools; the first Gay Pride Week; the origins of a standalone gay bookstore, the origins of Whitman-Walker Health in a gay men's VD clinic, the start of the D.C. congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church, and the development of the Gay Men's Counseling Community.