Queering the Counter-Bicentennial, 1976
“A Long Train of Abuses and Usurpations”
On New Year’s Day in 1976, Philadelphia celebrated the beginning of the bicentennial year by moving the Liberty Bell from its longtime home in Independence Hall to the newly-constructed Liberty Bell Pavilion across the street. According to Hera, which credited the Witch-Goddess News Service for its report, “nine women carrying a huge sign proclaiming ‘Feminist Lesbian Visibility’” were present when the bell was moved. Proving their point, the mainstream press “ignored the incident.”[1]
In and beyond Philadelphia, LGBTQ+ people wondered when and whether they would be permitted to pursue bicentennial happiness. In the first half of 1976, LGBTQ+ Philadelphians continued to feel the effects of the police repression that had escalated in the aftermath of Susan Saxe’s arrest and John Knight’s murder. In July 1976, Philadelphia Gay News reported on “the recent rash of police raids on the Steps, Allegro, and Roscoe’s,” popular gay bars in the city.[2] Around the same time, A Philadelphia Gay Activists Alliance flier mentioned recent raids on the Club Baths, the Post bar, and other gay businesses.[3] A Philadelphia Gay News column by Jack Elias reviewed several theories to explain the upsurge, one of which was “the ‘Bicentennial clean-up’ theory.” This was based on the idea that the “‘city of brotherly love’ must be kept clean for the tourists” and “police harassment . . . will aid in keeping the city spic and span.” As Elias noted, this ignored the existence of gay tourists.[4]
On July 3, the Gay Community Center on Kater Street hosted one of the city’s many bicentennial block parties, following that up with a square dance that evening and a disco dance on July 4.[5] Unlike other national birthday parties, this one was disrupted by unwelcome guests, a group of forty to fifty Christian fundamentalists, who called on gay people to “turn away from the sin of your sexual ways and give yourselves to Jesus.” When the fundamentalists refused to leave, there were “heated exchanges and at least one shoving match,” after which police and rain convinced the “Jesus freaks” to abandon their mission.[6] Philadelphia Gay News later explained that the “Bicentennial God Wagon” sign on the protesters’ van was a reference to the Wagon Train; the fundamentalists had come from Valley Forge, where they were participating in the Pennsylvania Bicentennial Commission’s Wagon Train pilgrimage.[7]
Philadelphia’s LGBTQ+ communities were not alone in experiencing bicentennial abuses and usurpations. In March, when the Washington Blade reported on police raids on gay clubs in the nation’s capital, it attributed these to “a city-wide cleanup for the Bicentennial.” Two months later, the Blade similarly referenced a “Bicentennial Cleanup” in the nation’s capital when reporting on recent raids of movie theaters and massage parlors.[8]
On July 24, thirty supporters of the Gay Activists Alliance of D.C., led by DC Human Rights Commissioner Frank Kameny, staged a “Freedom of Expression” demonstration targeting the ongoing “bicentennial clean-up campaign against the city’s pornographic movie houses and book stores.” According to the Blade, the mayor claimed that the campaign was directed at both gay and straight sex businesses, but GAA argued that “the smaller gay-oriented businesses will likely be forced to close because they don’t have the financial backing that the larger straight-oriented businesses have.”[9] After the protest, gay activists were buoyed by two anticensorship decisions by the Washington Superior Court, one of which focused on gay-oriented films shown at the Cinema Follies Club. One juror told the judge that he “lived in the vicinity of the Club, was aware that many gay men wanted to see the kind of films commonly shown there, and could not bring himself to say that these men should not be able to enjoy that right.”[10]
The U.S. Supreme Court responded negatively to gay hopes for bicentennial happiness in March 1976, when it upheld Virginia’s sodomy law in Doe v. Commonwealth. LGBTQ+ people responded with bicentennial-inflected anger. According to Lesbian Rising, published in New York, the bicentennial year was “a particularly appropriate time to focus that anger and our energies on the presentation of demands for Gay civil rights.” The Blade observed that “as we are inundated by the Bicentennial propaganda about our freedoms, there is an amusing irony in the fact that you are freer to express affection for a member of the same sex in Poland than you are in Poughkeepsie.”[11] In June, the Weekly Philadelphia Gayzette published Tommi Avicolli Mecca’s thirteen reasons for not supporting the “buy-centennial.” One was that it was “a sad joke at the expense of those of us who don’t enjoy ‘life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’” Another was that the commemoration “marks the 200th anniversary of a country that still declares it illegal, illegitimate and insane for me to LOVE another man.” Yet another was that “the buycentennial blindly praises a country that was founded by men who were slaveholders, homophobes, misogynists and effemophobes.”[12]
Critical comments continued in the second half of 1976. In July, Lesbian Tide, published in Los Angeles, featured a drawing of a sideways U.S. flag, with the stripes representing prison bars, a human figure escaping, and a caption declaring “freedom!” The July cover of A Different Beat, published in San Francisco, featured an upside down U.S. flag and the words: “Gay Rights, 1776-1976.” The front cover of the summer issue of Lesbian Voices, published in San Jose, depicted an image of a US flag with the words “Lesbian Nation” (the title of Jill Johnston’s 1973 book) on the stripes. The back cover featured the flag with intersecting female symbols replacing the stars. Inside the issue were the lyrics of “Glory, Lesbian Nation,” designed to be sung to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the day,” the song began, “When all Lesbians are united and we turn the whole world gay / And when we have converted them, converted they shall stay / Our truth is marching on!” The issue also featured a drawing of a finger pointing at the four presidents on Mount Rushmore and a sign that declared “Happy Birthday, America!” The caption explained that “homosexuals received a Bicentennial present from the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 6 to 3 that States may prosecute and imprison consenting adults for homosexual acts.”[13]
Glory, Lesbian Nation
(To the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic”)
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the day
When all Lesbians are united and we turn the whole world gay
And when we have converted them, converted they shall stay
Our truth is marching on!
[Chorus]
Glory, glory, Lesbian Nation,
Glory, glory, Lesbian Nation,
Glory, glory, Lesbian Nation,
Our truth is marching on!
We shall find them in the suburbs and the Catholic boarding schools
We shall find them in the cities and the office typing pools
We shall try to find them young before they’ve turned them into fools
Our truth is marching on!
[Chorus]
We shall lure them from their husbands and establishment careers
We shall open up their closet doors and overcome their fears
We shall demonstrate the pride of being unrepentant queers
Our truth is marching on!
[Chorus]
LGBTQ people also responded when Texas bigots tried to block a gay bicentennial conference in San Antonio. In February, the Forward Foundation, supported by a $5,000 grant from the federally-funded American Issues Forum Committee of San Antonio, agreed to sponsor a bicentennial conference titled “Gay in San Antonio: A Sense of Belonging?” Karen DeCrow, president of the National Organization of Women; Elaine Noble, Massachusetts state representative; and Del Martin, cofounder of the Daughters of Bilitis, were invited. According to Gay Community News, the conference was believed to be the first instance of “official gay participation in the Bicentennial.”[14] A short time later, the Dallas County Commission, based more than two hundred miles away and with no authority over San Antonio, passed a resolution opposing the “allocation of tax monies for such an irresponsible and socially unacceptable program,” which it described as “the height of decadence within the federal bureaucratic spending system.” The resolution also inflated the size of the grant by a factor of ten, inaccurately referring to $50,000. After a media firestorm erupted, the conference motel canceled. Still, on May 1, four hundred people participated in the conference at an alternative venue while twenty-five conservative activists picketed outside.[15]
Bicentennial Pride
Around the country, LGBTQ+ pride celebrations addressed the bicentennial in June and July 1976. In June, seventy-five people participated in Providence’s pride parade, carrying a banner that featured an image of the Liberty Bell with a lambda-shaped crack and the words, “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land.” When the Ann Arbor City Council voted to recognize Lesbian and Gay Pride Week, gay rights supporters encouraged them to do so by wearing T-shirts that referenced “200 years of gay oppression, 1776–1976.”[16] In Los Angeles, after the Christopher Street West Association announced plans for a “Bicentennial Gay Pride Week” in July, the more radical Committee to Build Stonewall ’76 announced an alternative march in June “to protest against 200 years of Gay oppression.” A lesbian supporter of the latter argued against “proudly waving a ‘Bicentennial’ flag that is stained with the blood of Black and Native American (as well as other) sisters and brothers, hoping the nation will buy our ‘normality,’ meaning our conformity.”[17] In San Francisco, when the Examiner reported that the Gay Freedom Week parade, with 75,000 participants, was larger than the Interfaith Bicentennial Parade, with 60,000, it featured a gay parade photograph of a person dressed as the Statue of Liberty.[18] According to the Blade, which declared “Happy 200th Birthday Gay America” above its masthead, several people at a Gay Pride Day celebration in Washington, D.C., “handed out leaflets calling for a voice in the upcoming July Fourth Bicentennial celebrations” and claiming that the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration “does not address itself to gay issues.”[19]
Philadelphians and other Pennsylvanians had special reasons for celebrating gay pride in 1976.[20] In advance of Philadelphia’s pride parade, Pennsylvania Governor Milton Shapp declared June 12–19 “gay pride week,” the first time any U.S. governor issued a gay pride proclamation. In explaining his actions, the first Jewish governor of the Keystone State cited his support for “equal rights for all minority groups” and “all those who seek social justice.”[21] This followed a series of strong actions taken by Shapp in support of LGBTQ+ rights. In 1974, at the Bicentennial Congress held to commemorate the anniversary of the first meeting of the Continental Congress, the governor had called for a constitutional amendment that would “guarantee forever that the people have the right to personal privacy and freedom from undue governmental interference in their personal lives.” In 1975, he had issued a groundbreaking 1975 executive order prohibiting sexual orientation employment discrimination by the state. In February 1976, he followed this up by establishing the Governor’s Council on Sexual Minorities. The latter was especially notable because Shapp did this while running for U.S. president. In a comment on Shapp’s actions in the context of the presidential race, the Philadelphia Inquirer noted that he was “gaining a reputation around the nation as a champion of gay rights.”[22]
Some LGBTQ+ people expressed their pride through merch(andise). In May 1976, Lesbian Tide published an advertisement by Tucson’s Antigone Books, which was selling “Bicentennial Shirts for the Revolution.” The design featured stars, two overlapping female symbols, and the words: “Stars and Dykes Forever.”[23] In July, the Advocate reported that “the sexual revolution now has its own flag motif: a red, white and blue graphic cock.” The design featured “a starry-blue pair of balls and a red-and-white striped barber pole shaft topped with an enormous red acorn.” Kerry X. LeBre of New York was “the irreverent designer” and the image was for sale on posters, T-shirts, buttons, cards, flags, and needlepoint kits.[24] In August, however, the Advocate reported that the image was not welcome in Provincetown, a popular gay travel destination in Massachusetts. Categorizing LeBre’s image as pornographic and unpatriotic, the police chief had ordered stores to stop selling it and people on the streets to take off their shirts if they featured the cock. The Advocate quipped that under-the-counter sales were now exploding.[25] Subsequent issues featured advertisements for merchandise using the image; one item was marketed as “the T-shirt of the decade” and “banned in Provincetown.”[26] The international LGBTQ press had fun with this new example of American puritanism; a headline in Montreal read, “Un Poster Antipatriotique,” and one in Australia declared, “Gay Patriotism Banned in Provincetown.” The Australian article reported that the design had “more wit and good humor than most Bicentennial items on the market,” describing its “American primitive style” as “charming rather than lewd.” The article also reported that the T-shirt was visible at gay pride events, the Montreal Olympics, and the Democratic Party national convention.[27]
Similar sensibilities were celebrated at the Bicentennial Erotic Art Show at Hot Flash in San Francisco, organized by gay film director Wakefield Poole. According to a review in the Advocate, only one of the 150 works by thirty artists brought together the bicentennial and erotic themes: “a starred and striped ceramic phallus by Phillip Borden.” Another work addressed the bicentennial but was not particularly erotic: Craig Southard’s “George Washington Carver,” a ceramic sculpture described as follows: “a grinning black chef raises knife and fork over a roast suckling George Washington pig, lying on a peanut-garnished platter.” A second Advocate review declared that “in light of the revolution that is deposing more and more taboos each year, what better way to mark the Bicentennial than with a celebration of America’s increasing sexual freedom?”[28]
Sierra Domino’s Soul Spirit ’76: The Bicentennial Book, a sexually and racially objectifying datebook featuring bicentennial-themed erotic drawings of hypermasculine African American men, was a more overtly commercial effort to eroticize buy-centennial pride. Published in San Francisco, the datebook’s drawings combined patriotic cliches, muscular bodies, racist caricatures, American symbols, and phallic art in potent representations of bicentennial homoerotic nationalism.[29] Like many other examples of bicentennial visual culture, it was simultaneously revolutionary and reactionary.
Notes
[1] “What’s Missing,” Hera, Candlemas 1976, 6.
[2] Jeffrey Speicher, “ID Crackdown at Bars,” Philadelphia Gay News, July 1976, A3.
[3] Gay Activists Alliance and July Fourth Coalition, “Bicentennial Without Gay Oppression,” Bicentennial Without Gay Oppression Folder, Tommi Avicolli Mecca Collection, John J. Wilcox Jr. Archives, PHiladelphia, PA.
[4] Jack Elias, “Why the Bar Raids?,” Philadelphia Gay News, July 1976, A20.
[5] See Programming 1972–1986 Folder, Tommi Avicolli Papers, Wilcox Archives.
[6] Bill Phillips, “Community Center Block Party Disrupted,” Weekly Philadelphia Gayzette, 9 July 1976, 1, 4.
[7] Dave Powell, “Country ‘Freaks’ vs. City Gays,” Philadelphia Gay News, Aug. 1976, A8.
[8] “D.C. Police Harass Private Gay Clubs,” Washington Blade, Mar. 1976, 1; “Southwest Cinema Closes under Police Pressure,” Washington Blade, May 1976, 1. See also Frank Akers, “Civil Liberties Challenged Again,” Washington Blade, May 1976, 2.
[9] “Protest Against Censorship,” Washington Blade, Aug. 1976, 11.
[10] Craig Howell, “Activists Shift Focus on ‘Clean-Up,’” Washington Blade, Sept. 1976, 2. See also “‘Bicentennial Clean-Up,’” Washington Blade, Nov. 1976, 4.
[11] “Spontaneous Combustion,” Lesbian Rising, May 1976, 11; C. Gallagher, “Supreme Court ‘Anti-Sodomy’ Ruling Draws Criticism,” Washington Blade, May 1976, 7.
[12] Tommi [Avicolli Mecca,] “Tommi,” Weekly Philadelphia Gayzette, 4 June 1976, 3.
[13] “Freedom!,” Lesbian Tide, July 1976, 37; “Gay Rights 1776–1976,” Different Beat, 22 July 1976, front cover; Lesbian Voices, Summer 1976, front and back covers; “Glory, Lesbian Nation,” Lesbian Voices, Summer 1976, 2; “Supreme Court Turns Deaf Ear to Gay Rights,” Lesbian Voices, Summer 1976, 25. See also Jill Johnston, Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution (Simon and Schuster, 1973); “Gay Rights 1776-1976,” Different Beat, 22 July 1976, 2.
[14] “Gay Bicenten,” Gay Community News, 7 Feb. 1976, 2; “Bicentennial Spirit,” Advocate, 11 Feb. 1976, 35.
[15] “Bicentennial Furor,” Advocate, 25 Feb. 1976, 14. See also “Bicenten Hassle,” Gay Community News, 6 Mar. 1976, 2; “Gay Bicentennial Conference,” Lesbian Connection, Mar. 1976, 25; “Texas Bicentennial Stirs Furor,” Advocate, 2 June 1976, 15; “Gay in San Antonio,” Houston LGBT History, https://www.houstonlgbthistory.org/misc-GISA.html.
[16] Marie Lipinski, “City Council Votes 6–3 to Recognize Gay Pride Week,” Michigan Daily, 24 June 1975.
[17] “Stonewall Riot,” Lesbian News, May 1976, 1, 7; M. F. L. Asch-Voegele, “Editorial Comment: Christopher Street,” Lesbian News, May 1976, 6. See also “Stonewall ’76: Protest 200 Years of Gay Oppression,” Lesbian Tide, July 1976, 19.
[18] Lon Daniels, “Birthdays and Gays,” San Francisco Examiner, 28 June 1976, 5. See also Chestnut, “S.F. Gay Boogie,” Plexus, Aug. 1976, 1; “Thousands Join in March for Homosexuals’ Rights,” New York Times, 28 June 1976, 31.
[19] “Gay Pride ’76 Brings Big Turnout,” Washington Blade, July 1976, 1.
[20] “Gay Pride Week Gets Underway with March and Rally Here Today,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 June 1976, 10; John T. Gillespie, “Parade Boosts Gay Pride,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 13 June 1976, 3; George Anastasia, “At Last, Bicen Really Begins,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 June 1976, B1, B8; “Gays March to Rittenhouse,” Weekly Philadelphia Gayzette, 18 June 1976, 1; “Phila. Gay Pride Day March, Rallies Planned for June 12,” Philadelphia Gay News, June 1976, A3; “Gay Pride Day 1976,” Philadelphia Gay News, July 1976, cover; Ed Barnard, “Gay Pride Day,” Philadelphia Gay News, July 1976, A3, A6.
[21] “Shapp Sets Gays’ Week,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 12 June 1976; “Shapp Proclaims Gay Pride Week,” Philadelphia Gay News, July 1976, A4.
[22] Edgar Williams, “Shapp ‘Reconvenes’ Delegates Here Today,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 5 Sept. 1974, D1, D3; “Shapp Orders Homosexual Equal Rights,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 Apr. 1975, 1; “Equal Rights for ‘Gays’ Ordered by Shapp,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 26 Apr. 1975; Mark Segal and Keith Clark, “Milton J. Shapp,” Philadelphia Gay News, 7 Feb. 1976; “The Scene,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 7 Feb. 1976, B2.
[23] Antigone Books advertisement, Lesbian Tide, May 1976, 35.
[24] “Pull-Out-Post,” Advocate Trader Dick, 14 July 1976, 20. See also “Celebration in Bicentennial Colors,” Advocate, 14 July 1976, 7.
[25] “Provincetown,” Advocate, 11 Aug. 1976, 12.
[26] “The T-Shirt of the Decade!,” Advocate Trader Dick, 22 Sept. 1976, 12. See also “Americana,” Advocate Trader Dick, 15 Dec. 1976, 19.
[27] “Un Poster Antipatriotique,” Gay Montreal, 24 Aug. 1976, 9; “Gay Patriotism Banned in Provincetown,” Campaign, Dec. 1976, 3.
[28] Robert McDonal, “Flights of Fancy,” Advocate, 25 Aug. 1976, 18-19; Bob Kliggins and Beverlee Blair, “On Penis Pillows,” Advocate, 25 Aug. 1976, 18-19.
[29] Mike Michaels, ed. (photographs by Calvin Anderson, art by Paul Butler), Sierra Domino’s Soul Spirit ’76: The Bicentennial Book (Sierra Domino, 1975).
