This year’s Pride/Mardi Gras celebrates the 30th anniversary of the London Gay Liberation Front. Peter Tatchell looks back at the movement that created the gay community and changed society forever.
The formation of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in London in 1970 was the defining, watershed moment in queer history. For the first time ever, thousands of lesbians and gays stopped hiding in the closet and suffering in silence. We came out and marched in the streets, proclaiming that we were proud to be gay and demanding nothing less than total equality.
That had never happened before. Lots of gay people in 1970 were ashamed of their homosexuality and kept it hidden. They wished they were straight. Some went to quack doctors to get “cured”. Many accepted the bigot’s view that being “queer” was second rate.
Thirty years ago, the State branded gay sex as “unnatural, indecent and criminal”, the Church condemned homosexuality as “immoral and sinful” and the medical profession classified us as “sick” and in need of “treatment”.
Queers were routinely sacked from their jobs, arrested for kissing in the street, denied custody of their children, portrayed in films and plays as limp-wristed figures of ridicule, and only ever appeared in the news as murderers, traitors and child molesters.
Straights vilified, scapegoated and invisibilised us – with impunity. And very few gay people dared question heterosexual supremacy.
Indeed, prior to GLF, most gay rights campaigners masqueraded as straight, and pleaded for “tolerance” rather than acceptance. Some argued that we needed “help”, not criminalisation. They urged heterosexuals to show “compassion” for those “afflicted” by the “homosexual condition”.
This apologetic, defensive mentality was shot to pieces by GLF. It transformed attitudes towards homosexuality – among both gay and straight people.
Inspired by the Black Power slogan “Black is Beautiful”, GLF came up with a little slogan of its own, which also had a huge impact: “Gay Is Good!”. Back then, it was absolutely outrageous to suggest there was anything good about being gay.
Even liberal-minded heterosexuals mostly supported us out of “sympathy” and “pity”. Many reacted with revulsion and horror when GLF proclaimed: “2-4-6-8! Gay is just as good as straight!”. Those words – which were so empowering to queers everywhere – frightened the life out of smug, arrogant straight people, who had always assumed they were superior.
This challenge to heterosexual supremacism kick-started a still on-going revolution in cultural values. GLF overturned the conventional wisdom on matters of sex and human rights. It’s joyous celebration of gayness contradicted the straight morality that had ruled the world for centuries. The common sense, unquestioned assumption had always been that queers were bad, mad and sad.
All that prejudiced nonsense was turned upside down in 1970. While politicians, doctors, priests and journalists saw homosexuality as a social problem, GLF said the real problem was society’s homophobia. Instead of us having to justify our existence, we forced the gay-haters to justify their bigotry.
Like many others of my generation, GLF changed me for the better – and forever. When I heard about the formation of the Gay Liberation Front, I could not wait to get involved.
Within five days of my arrival in London from Australia, I was at my first GLF meeting. A month later I was helping organise many of its witty, irreverent, defiant protests. Being part of GLF was a profound personal liberation – arguably the most exciting, influential period of my life.
GLF’s unique style of “protest as performance” was not only incredibly effective, but also a lot of fun. We had a fabulous collection of zany props and costumes, including a whole wardrobe of police uniforms and bishop’s cassocks and mitres.
Imaginative, daring, humorous, stylish and provocative, our demonstrations were both educative and entertaining. We mocked and ridiculed homophobes with wicked satire, which made even the most hard-faced straight people realise the stupidity of bigotry.
A 12 foot papier-mache cucumber was delivered to the offices of Pan Books in protest at the publication of Dr David Reuben’s homophobic sex manual, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, which claimed that gay men were obsessed with shoving vegetables up their arses.
Christian morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse had her Festival of Light rally in Central Hall Westminster invaded by a posses of gay nuns, who proceeded to kiss each other when one of the speakers, Malcolm Muggeridge, disparaged homosexuals, saying “I just don’t like them” (the feeling was mutual).
On the night of the Miss World contest at the Royal Albert Hall, GLF’s legendary street theatre group staged an alternative pageant on the pavement outside, starring “Miss Used”, “Miss Conceived” and Miss Represented”, plus a starving “Miss Bangladesh” and a bloody bandaged “Miss Ulster”.
There were also more serious acts of civil disobedience to confront the perpetrators of discrimination. We organised freedom rides and sit-ins at pubs that refused to serve “poofs” and “dykes”. A lecture by the psychiatrist, Professor Hans Eysenck was disrupted after he advocated electric-shock aversion therapy to “cure” homosexuality.
As well as its feisty protests, GLF pioneered many of the gay community institutions that we now take for granted. It set up the first help-line run by and for gay people (which later became Gay Switchboard); the first pro-gay psychiatric counselling service (Icebreakers), and the first gay newspaper (Gay News). These and many other trail-blazing institutions helped shape the gay community as we know it today, making a huge positive difference to the lives of lesbians and gay men.
Thirty years on, we’ve come a long way baby! As we look back at the giant strides for freedom that lesbian and gay people have made since 1970, let us also remember with pride that GLF was where it all started.
QX Mardi Gras Day Guide, 1 July 2000