Smash the Church, Smash the State!: The Early Years of Gay Liberation
This anthology by former members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) captures the history and spirit of the revolutionary time just after Stonewall, when thousands came out of the closet to claim their sexuality, and when queer resistance coalesced into a turbulent, joyous liberation movement—one whose lasting influence would ultimately inform and profoundly shape the LGBT community of today.\ Personal essays explore the philosophy and culture of the stridently anti-assimilationist GLF: the...
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Forty years after Stonewall, a look at the origins and influences of the Gay Liberation movement. Paul Hogarth - BeyondChron Everyone in the San Francisco activist scene today knows Tommi Avicolli-Mecca - or as many call him, 'Tommi the Commie.' At Beyond Chron, we are privileged to have him as a columnist (we jokingly call him our "religion editor") - as he balances op-ed writing with a full-time job counselling tenants at the Housing Rights Committee. Tommi is an eloquent voice against gentrification in the Castro, and in 2006 many progressives urged him to run against Supervisor Bevan Dufty. But as Tommi told me at the time, he is more of a 'smash the church, smash the state' kind of guy - making the book title appropriate. . . There are many who now say the American era of conservatism is over - and we are now seeing a progressive transformation. As the queer community elaborates where it is going, Smash the Church, Smash the State should not be viewed as a mere historical anthology - but as a critical examination of where to go from here.
Introduction Tommi Avicolli Mecca ixOut of the Bars and Into the StreetsMilitant Foreshadowings Susan Stryker 3Eighth Grade Epiphany Kenneth Laverne Bunch 11Kiyoshi Kuromiya: Intergrating the Issues Liz Highleyman 17A Consciousness Raised Hal Tarr 22Coming Out and into the GLF: Banned No More in Boston John Kyper 31My Adventures as a Gay Teacher Tom Ammiano 40Pre-Now James C. Roberts 43My Memories as a Gay Militant in NYC Nestor Latronico 48From the Closets of New Haven to the Collectives of New York GLF Jason Serinus 55Even Iowa Homos Got the Blues Dennis Brumm 62There's a Certain Kind of Woman Mara Math 68A Poem Fran Winant 74Tuning InNo Girl in My Soup Thom Nickels 79Coming Out as a Reluctant Activist in a Gay Maoist Cell who Mostly Just Wanted to Get Laid Mark Freeman 85Our Passion Shook the World Martha Shelley 93Sylvester: A Singer Without a Closet 97Living Lesbian Nation Victoria Brownworth 99Radical Spirit and Vision John Lauritsen 108Radicalqueens Manifesto #1 113Radicalqueens Manifesto #2 114The Radicalqueens Trans-Formation Cei Bell 116A Woman of Vision Pat Parker 125Sisters and Brothers: A Writer Hungering for Family Finds GLF Perry Brass 127Dyketactics!: Electrifying the Imaginations of the Gay and Women's Communities Barbara Ruth 137A Life of Seeing Connections Simeon White 147Fopping It Up: Former Cockette Rumi's Story Interview with Rumi Missabu 150Gay Raiders Mark Segal 156Revolution Around Every CornerBetween Bohemia and Revolution Flavia Rando 163Gay Liberation Front: Report from London Richard Bolingbroke 168Sylvia Rivera: A Woman BeforeHer Time Liz Highleyman 172Two Songs Blackberri 177Honey, We Unshrunk the Shrinks! Pam Mitchell 182The Radicalesbian Story: An Evolution of Consciousness Ellen Shumsky 190The Woman Identified Woman Manifesto 197Berkeley & the Fight for an Effeminist, Socially Transformative Gay Identity Nick Benton 203Two Poems Dajenya 210The Effeminist Moment Steven F. Dansky 213Dyketactics!: Notes Toward an Un-Silencing Paola Bacchetta 218Two Poems Barbara Ruth 232The Baltic Street Collective N. A. Diaman 234Gay Pagans and Atheists Manifesto 24240 Years After StonewallLooking Back from the Mexico-U.S. Border Roberto Camp 249A Letter from Huey Newton to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters about the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements 252Making History Sidney Brinkley 255New York City Legend Marsha P. Johnson 261Lessons from the ENDA Mess Doug Ireland 263Happy to Be Childless Allen Young 269The Gay Community in Crisis Don Kilhefner 273Stonewall Was a Riot---Now We Need a Revolution Merle Woo 282Gay Liberation Media 295Glossary of Terms 299
\ Bay Area ReporterTommi Avicolli Mecca's new anthology, Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, offers a fascinating look at the rise of gay liberation and its place in the era's radical panoply. . . Avicolli Mecca's collection is unique in bringing together first-person accounts from people who lived the life and some of the key manifestos that inspired them.\ —Liz Highleyman\ \ \ \ \ BeyondChronEveryone in the San Francisco activist scene today knows Tommi Avicolli-Mecca - or as many call him, 'Tommi the Commie.' At Beyond Chron, we are privileged to have him as a columnist (we jokingly call him our "religion editor") - as he balances op-ed writing with a full-time job counselling tenants at the Housing Rights Committee. Tommi is an eloquent voice against gentrification in the Castro, and in 2006 many progressives urged him to run against Supervisor Bevan Dufty. But as Tommi told me at the time, he is more of a 'smash the church, smash the state' kind of guy - making the book title appropriate. . . There are many who now say the American era of conservatism is over - and we are now seeing a progressive transformation. As the queer community elaborates where it is going, Smash the Church, Smash the State should not be viewed as a mere historical anthology - but as a critical examination of where to go from here.\ —Paul Hogarth\ \ \ Book NewsTo many Americans, the gay liberation movement began sometime in the 1960s as a seemingly sudden phenomenon of all manner of queer men and women doing silly things, militant things, and serious things to express their dissatisfaction with what they viewed as a repressive social order. According to Mecca, editor of this engaging anthology and a dedicated participant in gay liberation, the movement actually began decades earlier, possibly as early as 1949. This anthology is a collection of stories shared by many individuals from the perspective of their lives inside the movement.\ \ \ \ \ BookforumEdited by San Francisco journalist Tommi Avicolli Mecca, Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation (City Lights, June) documents early gay culture as it emerged after the 1969 Stonewall riots. The anthology includes the essays, photographs, manifestos, and artwork of the movement, the aims of which were gleefully radical, the methods often intentionally outrageous.\ \ \ \ \ Gay City NewsSmash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, is the new anthology edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca, himself a veteran of the earliest gay liberation struggles, and today an activist, gender-bending performance artist, and writer well-known to San Francisco queers. . . The personal testimonies collected for Smash the Church, Smash the State!, augmented by manifestos and documents of that early period and biographical sketches of important movement figures, help recreate those heady, joyously rambunctious days of "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll" as queers, influenced by the hippies, Yippies, and Zippies, built their own radical wing of the prevailing youth counterculture, and created their own influential publications.\ —Doug Ireland\ \ \ \ \ Q SyndicateThe personal is riotously political and the history is tangibly personal in this anthology of diverse, down-to-earth reflections on the early days of Gay Liberation, from both queers who were there, and from others looking back 40 years later . . . Avicolli Mecca, himself a longtime activist who marched the streets of Philadelphia not long after the 1969 bar riot in Greenwich Village, has compiled a vivid, colorful history, blending original essays, poems and songs with reprints of historical manifestos and brief biographical vignettes of activists no longer alive to craft a co-gendered collection that is by turns emotional, joyous, poignant, occasionally contradictory - and enthusiastically defiant.\ —Richard Labonte\ \ \ \ \ The Freedom SocialistThe book makes crystal clear that it was the organizing that followed the dust-up that made Stonewall the start of the modern gay liberation movement. . . . kudos to Tommi Avicolli Mecca for being the driving force behind assembling and publishing this important history of the early, radical LGBT movement.\ —Bob Schwartz\ \
