Howard Wallace: 'We have to remain constantly visible'

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16 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1986 I recently spoke to Howard Wallace, cochairperson of the Lesbian/Gay Labor Alliance in San Francisco and director of the AFL-CIO Northern California Coors Boycott. Wallace has been active in the gay movement since 1974 and in the labor, peace, and civil rights movements for more than 30 years.

I asked Wallace to describe the history of gay rights activities in which he participated. Wallace began by describing his own political development, which began in the late 1950s during the McCarthy period. "To be gay at that time was to be damned," Wallace told me.

"It was not just anti-gay sentiment. It was an awareness that the culture was glorifying conformity in every possible way-first and foremost in sex roles. That was a difficult time to be gay."

"It was a sub-rosa [underground] existence," Wallace continued. "The taboos against departing from those roles were overwhelming. Those few lesbians and gays who openly acknowledged their sexuality were ostracized by gays and straights alike."

The gay movement was tiny and largely closeted at that time. "Most of us led double lives," Wallace said. "Seeking each other out became a difficult, time-consuming, and often dangerous proposition."

The emergence of the beat generation in the 1950s loosened things up a bit. "I took refuge in coffee houses which honored nonconformity," Wallace said. "They featured the proudly gay writer Allen Ginsberg among their heroes."

"The hippie movement," Wallace pointed out, "introduced a sub-culture where men were less at war with their own bodies. 'Make love, not war' carried an anti-macho message. These developments opened up some cultural doors for gays. They emboldened some gays and just made it easier to survive in general."

"In the early 1960s," Wallace continued, "the Black movement changed the social climate even more by challenging every institution of society. Of course, the massive anti-war movement and the modern feminist movement—in which many gays and lesbians played critical roles-eroded the social norms of bourgeois institutions even more."

"The first battles of gays were around gay bars," Wallace pointed out. "Because the gay culture was an underground culture for most of our history, our main meeting place was in bars. So the gay bar became as important in its way as the Black church in the Black community.

"Gay bars were always harassed by the cops in San Francisco and every other city. In fact, the gathering together of gay ghettos in the United States has come about through successive waves of witch hunts and harassment."

Stonewall became rallying cry The spark that set off the major battles was the Stonewall confrontation in New York in 1969. Gay patrons of the Stonewall bar in Greenwich Village fought a pitched battle with the cops and won. question. Only in this way can society overcome the unreasoning homosexual taboo that is so deeply engrained in the collective psyche."

In 1975, Wallace joined a few socialists and activists in founding a group called Bay Area Gay Liberation (BAGL). "It was predicated on several key conceptions," he stressed. "That we needed mass action on a regular basis to gain our rights-and at the same time we could use the legal system. That we could not be picky or choosy over who we worked with. That we had to unite the whole community as much as possible, and make room for anybody who felt comfortable.

"We needed also to build alliances with other progressive movements. BAGL did not endorse candidates and was consciously independent of the Democratic and Republican parties.

"From the first, we had about 200 to 350 attend each meeting. This continued for about a year. Hardly a week went by that (continued on page 13, in “Toronto protest planned on S. Africa, C. America”)