Queering the Fourth of July
After queering the bicentennial during gay pride celebrations in June, LGBTQ+ people participated actively in the July Fourth Coalition’s counter-bicentennial protests on Independence Day. Founded just a few months earlier, the July Fourth Coalition (J4C) eventually included more than four hundred groups but initially was supported by the American Indian Movement, the Black Panther Party, the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, and other left-leaning organizations. Inspired by the Puerto Rican Socialist Party’s call for a “bicentennial without colonies,” which was endorsed at the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee’s Hard Times conference in Chicago, more than 200 activists representing more than 100 groups came together in March at the National Conference for a People’s July 4th in New York. They agreed to organize a major counter-bicentennial demonstration in Philadelphia on July Fourth; the main demands would be “jobs and a decent standard of living for all, full democracy and equality, and a Bicentennial without colonies.”[1]
One noteworthy aspect of J4C was its inclusion of LGBTQ+ activists and groups, an important milestone in the decade’s democratic transformation of the left. In June, for example, when J4C national coordinator Alfredo López, a Puerto Rican Socialist Party leader, celebrated the coalition’s success in bringing together a broad coalition, he declared, “At no time before have Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Blacks, gay people, women, rank-and-file workers and the left movement of this country come together and really worked to make a demonstration like this a success.”[2] When Philadelphia’s alternative newspaper Drummer similarly described J4C as “one of the most representative and diverse left coalitions since all of the various large fronts of the Vietnam War Era,” it included gay people in its list of participating constituencies.[3]
Multiple LGBTQ+ political groups, including Philadelphia’s Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), Bay Area Gay Liberation, three groups in New York, and five in Boston, endorsed J4C’s plans.[4] To rally support, Philadelphia’s Gay Activists Alliance circulated a flier that urged supporters to “march with the gay contingent against 200 years of gay oppression.” The flier featured an image based on the U.S. flag, except that instead of fifty stars there was a raised fist inside two conjoined male and two conjoined female symbols. A GAA Philadelphia leaflet titled “Bicentennial Without Gay Oppression” noted that while President Ford and Mayor Rizzo were planning to “celebrate their brand of freedom,” the Philadelphia police were continuing to raid gay bars and bathhouses, lesbians were being attacked and arrested in City Hall, “transvestites and homosexuals” were experiencing routine police harassment, lesbians were losing custody of their children, and sodomy remained illegal in most states. “Does it make sense to support the people who persecute us,” the leaflet asked, “rather than the people who are supporting our demand for democratic rights?”[5]
According to Gay Community News, J4C’s detailed list of demands included “equal rights for gay people.” Philadelphia Gay News reported that the gay rights plank was proposed by Philadelphia Quaker activist George Lakey. Lakey had helped found the Movement for a New Society in 1971 and came out as gay in 1973. His 2022 memoir recalls that at a J4C meeting, he argued that “there was a new and necessary plank for the liberation platform” and that gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, “who for years had worked invisibly in social movements, deserved to be claimed by the coalition.” To his surprise, the response was “completely positive.”[6]
A J4C flier provided a more detailed list of LGBTQ+ goals, which addressed antigay laws, cross-dressing laws, economic oppression, antigay sex education, denials of parental rights, immigration restrictions, incarceration and institutionalization, police harassment, and police entrapment.[7] John D’Emilio, a New York–based history graduate student and member of the Gay Academic Union’s Socialist Caucus, told Gay Community News that the demonstration was “one of the more important actions taken by radicals on the left since the sixties.” He explained, “We’re at a point now where things are beginning to happen again. Apart from the demonstration’s important symbolic value, the march should bring individuals involved in what have seemed isolated struggles together.” In that context, it was “very important that there be a strong gay presence to insure that the left take the gay struggle seriously as well as to express our solidarity with other people’s struggles.” According to Gay Community News, J4C’s gay-inclusive politics compared favorably to those of the Peoples Bicentennial Commission, a leftist group whose literature included “no mention of gay oppression,” and the Rich Off Our Backs Coalition, which was organizing another counter-bicentennial demonstration in Philadelphia and described homosexuality as “a form of capitalist decadence.”[8]
Some LGBTQ+ people were not convinced that they should support J4C. According to Philadelphia Gay News, critics of GAA Philadelphia’s endorsement expressed opposition “on the grounds that it does not represent the feelings of a majority of the gay community, that public disparagement of the symbols of American patriotism is bad tactics, and that nothing is fundamentally wrong with American society.” There also were concerns that if there was violence or terrorism on July Fourth, the GAA endorsement “would provide the FBI with another pretext for harassing the gay community, just as the Susan Saxe affair did.”[9]
Despite these concerns, many LGBTQ+ activists supported J4C’s plans. In Gotham, a New York gay newspaper, D’Emilio described J4C as having fifty regional branches that were working together to “make the mobilization effort the most successful of its kind since the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s.” He praised J4C for taking “a strong stand in support of gay rights,” pointing to its gay rights plank, its plans to have a gay speaker at its July Fourth rally, its formation of a gay caucus, and its criticism of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding Virginia’s sodomy law. He also quoted Steve Ault, a representative of the National Coalition of Gay Activists on the J4C Executive Board, who described the planning process as “a milestone in the history of the gay movement and the left.” Ault told D’Emilio that “the Coalition’s organizers are ‘honestly supportive’ of the gay liberation movement” and that “gay people have a lot to gain by joining forces with other movements.” According to D’Emilio, further evidence of that support could be found in an open letter to the gay community by J4C’s national coordinator, Alfredo López, who “expressed solidarity with the gay liberation movement.”[10]
In a J4C Gay Caucus letter, Ault and Fay Henderson acknowledged that many gay people had been “suspicious of the Left, and with good reason.” In this case, however, “we Gays who are working in the July 4th Coalition honestly feel that the other participants in the Coalition have been supportive of our cause” and it was “time for us to proclaim our mutual solidarity.”[11] Along similar lines, GAA Philadelphia spokesperson Harry Langhorne noted in Philadelphia Gay News that J4C would provide “a chance for groups working for social change to get to know each other and for us to raise the gay rights issue with the non-gay political left.”[12]
In the end, LGBTQ+ people were well-represented at the main J4C protests in Philadelphia, where 20,000-40,000 people marched through North Philadelphia and rallied in Fairmount Park. Estimates of the size of the LGBTQ+ contingent ranged from 250 to 1,000. The march was led by Native Americans carrying a Wounded Knee banner. Other banners declared, “Free Puerto Rico Right Now” and “Dykes Ignite.” Popular chants included “No more broken treaties, no more Wounded Knees” and “Ho, ho homosexual, the sodomy laws are ineffectual.”[13] WIN magazine, published by the War Resisters League, may have exaggerated when calling it “the most diverse demonstration ever” but not when describing the “large contingents of black people, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Asians, women, gay people, old and young, union representatives.” Radical lawyer William Kunstler served as master of ceremonies for the post-march rally, which featured thirty speakers, including American Indian Movement leader Clyde Bellecourt, Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown, National Organization for Women President Karen DeCrow, Puerto Rican Socialist Party Secretary General Juan Mari Brás, and peace activist David Dellinger. Brown spoke for many in declaring that “today we must mark the beginning of a New American Revolution.” Heavy rains forced a hasty conclusion and prevented several speakers from addressing the crowd, but organizers generally regarded the march as a great success.[14] The Guardian called it “the largest single protest action since the end of the Vietnam War.”[15]
After July Fourth, LGBTQ+ periodicals challenged mainstream press coverage of the J4C march and rally, which minimized their size and significance. Gay Community News, for instance, reported that “one might never have known it” from “the straight media,” but the J4C march was “large and quite successful.” GCN emphasized J4C’s anti-imperialist and antiracist politics but also highlighted the explicit recognition of gay liberation, the “many visible gay people,” and the references to political prisoner Susan Saxe. Robert Rosenberg observed in GCN that the organizing coalition was “extremely supportive of gay people’s struggles” and there were banners that declared, “Dykes Ignite” and “Gay Revolution.” He criticized the minimal presence of openly gay or lesbian rally speakers, as did several lesbian feminist groups, but noted that “the other speeches and cultural events which centered on issues of imperialism, capitalism, racism, and sexism are of primary interest for gays as well as straights.”[16]
This is not to say that all LGBTQ+ media reports were equally positive, especially when referencing the limited number of openly gay or lesbian speakers and the fact that Saxe supporter Jill Raymond and GAA–New York President Joanne Passaro did not get to speak because of the rain. In a letter to the editor, Passaro criticized GCN’s positive coverage, noting that the J4C national board had to be pressured to include her on the rally schedule and that several speakers were “sexist and homophobic.” Passaro, however, did not blame J4C, which “did a fine job,” and she praised the protest for building “solidarity.”[17]
In GCN, J4C board member Steve Ault acknowledged that some organizational leaders had been ignorant and some rally speakers had been sexist but called the protest “the most significant mobilization on the Left since the anti-war actions of the 60s and the ‘Days of Rage.’” Describing it as a “true” and “authentic” coalition, Ault praised the ways that multiple groups—Native Americans, African Americans, Puerto Ricans, women, and gays—came together to challenge the official bicentennial and ask “what do we have to celebrate” in the contexts of genocide, racism, sexism, capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. For Ault, the J4C march showed that “the radical movement did not die in the 70s; it diversified.” “The dramatic, single issue focus of the 60s,” he declared, “has given way to a multitude of struggles,” and “the response of most Gays has been favorable.”[18]
Dykes for an American Revolution
One of Philadelphia’s most significant lesbian groups, Dyketactics, staged a very different type of protest on July Fourth. (Dyketactics was the name of a 1974 lesbian-themed film by Barbara Hammer.) Calling themselves Dykes for an Amerikan Revolution (DAR), which riffed on the name of Daughters of the American Revolution (a patriotic women’s organization), Dyketactics and other lesbian feminists first circulated a manifesto titled the “Lesbian Feminist Declaration of 1976.” It began by announcing, “We, the Dykes for an Amerikan Revolution, in order to address the mainstream of Amerikan society and begin to articulate our own lesbian-feminist vision, seize this moment of history to create herstory.” The manifesto then declared, “The Amerikan nation has been founded on the genocide of Native American peoples, financed through the slavery of African and Third World peoples, and sustained through the oppression of all women. All of these atrocities have been sanctioned by men’s religion.” After this, the text continued to mimic the structure of the original Declaration, listing grievances against “the Man” and then announcing, “We, therefore, as representatives of the Dykes for an Amerikan Revolution, on this day, July 4, 1976, do, for our beloved Womanhood, and with our own authority, loudly declare: That the women and other oppressed peoples of this country will be free and independent. We claim full power to levy war against sexism, racism, classism and all other oppressions. We declare solidarity with all who struggle for liberation.”[19]
On July Fourth, twenty DAR supporters, including one wearing a Statue of Liberty costume, visited three suburban churches. First, the group cursed the Catholic Church at the Merion Station mansion of Archbishop John Krol. Next, they performed guerrilla theater outside the First Presbyterian Church in Ardmore, where the congregation was attending a bicentennial service. After this, they engaged in a slow-motion walk outside Haverford’s St. George’s Episcopal Church, where another bicentennial service was taking place. According to Hera, “DAR decided to confront the rich where the rich live and the church where it is. The suburbs must no longer be a haven for the rich to flee the poverty which they had created.” According to the Gayzette, DAR in no way “indicated non-support of the July 4th Coalition. “Although we chose to be elsewhere on July 4th,” DAR explained, “our love and strength were also with our sisters and brothers marching in Philadelphia.”[20]
Sharon Owens, an African American lawyer, librarian, and member of Dyketactics, recalled in a 1993 interview, “We actually went to the suburbs…. It was a Sunday, I'm pretty sure, so we went to a couple of churches. And we also had a manifesto from the DAR, Dykes for an American Revolution… It was dealing with oppression by church and state…. The point of going to the suburbs was that this was where people who were really running things lived. And we wanted to say that they couldn't hide…. We just walked in slow motion, which was very attention-getting…. We had signs. Somebody…was dressed as the Statue of Liberty in a white robe and torch.”[21]
Dyketactics continued to challenge bicentennial religious oppression in the weeks that followed. In August, more than one million people from more than one hundred countries attended the Roman Catholic Church’s 41st International Eucharistic Congress, which was held in Philadelphia in honor of the U.S. bicentennial. During the week-long event, Dyketactics and Dignity-Philadelphia, an organization for LGBTQ+ Catholics, staged a series of peaceful prayers and protests. On August 3, after leafleting for several hours, Sister Jeannine Gramick of Baltimore and Friar Paul Morrissey of Philadelphia joined sixty to two hundred people for an outdoor Dignity unity mass outside the Civic Center. On August 6, ten women from Dyketactics set up a booth outside the Civic Center to promote discussion about “the oppressive, misogynistic tendencies of the Church.” Their signs asked, “Who Cooked the Last Supper?,” and demanded, “The Church Must Stop Oppressing Lesbians.” On the same day, which was the anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Dyketactics members stood outside a service for Catholics in the military at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul with a sign that stated, “Church Holds Mass for Murderers.” On August 7, twenty-five Dignity members participated as a group in the Congress’s twenty-four-hour prayer vigil at the Philadelphia Spectrum, a large arena often used for sports and concerts. On August 8, Dyketactics protested outside the concluding JFK Stadium Mass. Their signs read, “Whatever Happened to the Separation of Church and State?” and “Pope’s Encyclical and Supreme Court Decision Conspire Against Homosexuals.” They also distributed the Lesbian Feminist Declaration of 1976.[22]
During the same month as the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia, the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches sponsored a six-day conference to affirm the rights of gay people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.[23] Approximately 800 people attended the gathering in Washington, D.C., which had as its theme “Proclaim Liberation in the Land,” a variation on the Liberty Bell inscription. Many attendees participated in a Capitol Hill lobby day; 2,000 joined a wreath-laying service at the Lincoln Memorial; 600 rallied in Lafayette Park.[24] Two months later, the Roman Catholic “Call to Action: Liberty and Justice for All” bicentennial conference in Detroit, attended by more than 100 bishops and 1,200 delegates, adopted several gay-affirmative statements. One called for the church to “actively seek to serve the pastoral needs of those persons with a homosexual orientation; to root out those structures and attitudes which discriminate against homosexuals as persons and to join the struggle by homosexual men and women for their basic constitutional rights.” A few weeks later, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops signaled its disapproval, declaring that people who, “through no fault of their own,” have a “homosexual orientation” have “a right to respect, friendship and justice” but reiterating the church’s longstanding position that same-sex sexual acts were “morally wrong.”[25]
Notes
[1] “20,000 Demand Independence,” Puerto Rico Libre!,” Nov. 1974, 1; Peter Kihss, “20,000 Rally Here for Puerto Rican Independence,” New York Times, 28 Oct. 1974, 30, 35; “Hard Times in Chicago,” On the Line, Mar. 1976, 16; Irving Silber, “Hard Times at Chicago Meeting,” Guardian, 11 Feb. 1976; “July 4th Coalition March Backs Gay Demands,” Gay Community News, 5 June 1976, 3.
[2] Alfredo López, letter to the editor, Guardian, 30 June 1976.
[3] Joe Sterling, “Coalition, Coalition, Who’s Got Coalition?,” Drummer, 29 June 1976, 4, 15.
[4] “GAA/Phila. Endorses July 4th Coalition,” Philadelphia Gay News, June 1976, A7; John D’Emilio, “Zap on 4th,” Gotham, 24 June 1976, 4; “Six Groups Back July 4th March,” Gay Community News, 26 June 1976, 7. Other endorsers were the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, the Lesbians Rising Collective, the Socialist Caucus of the Gay Academic Union, the Boston Gay Pride Planning Committee, the Fort Hill Faggots for Freedom, the Susan Saxe Defense Committee, the Gay Men’s Center of Boston Action Group, and the Gay Caucus of Youth Against War and Fascism.
[5] “Demonstrate July 4th 1976” and “Bicentennial Without Gay Oppression,” Bicentennial Without Gay Oppression Folder, Tommi Avicolli Mecca Collection, Wilcox Archives.
[6] “July 4th Coalition March Backs Gay Demands”; “GAA/Phila. Endorses July 4th Coalition”; George Lakey, Dancing with History: A Life for Peace and Justice (Seven Stories, 2022), 249. See also Carolyn Bell, “July 4th,” Philadelphia Weekly Gayzette, 18 June 1976, 1, 2.
[7] “What Do We Have to Celebrate?,” July 4th Coalition Folder, Wilcox Archives.
[8] “July 4th Coalition March Backs Gay Demands.”
[9] “GAA/Phila. Endorses July 4th Coalition.”
[10] D’Emilio, “Zap on 4th.”
[11] Fay Henderson and Steve Ault, J4C Gay Caucus letter, ca. June 1976, July 4th Coalition File, Wilcox Archives.
[12] D’Emilio, “Zap on 4th”; “GAA/Phila. Endorses July 4th Coalition.”
[13] Gunter David, “30 Talk at Rally in Park,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 5 July 1976, 27; Mike Zielenziger and Rod Nordland, “Radical Groups March Peacefully,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 5 July 1976, B1, B3; Ben Bedell, “July 4 Philly Rally United Thousands,” Guardian, 14 July 1976; Robert Rosenberg, “Gays Take Active Role in July 4th March,” Gay Community News, 17 July 1976, 3. See also “Native Americans Leading,” Philadelphia Tribune, 6 July 1976, 1; “The Last Hurrah,” Awkwasasne Notes, Late Autumn 1976, 20-21.
[14] Murray Rosenblith, “One Good Revolution Deserves Another!,” WIN, 15 July 1976, 4-5; Elaine Brown, “‘Today We Mark the Beginning of a New American Revolution,’” Black Panther, 10 July 1976, 38.
[15] “Bicentennial Realities,” Guardian, 14 July 1976.
[16] Robert Rosenberg, “Gays Take Active Role in July 4th March,” Gay Community News, 17 July 1976, 3. See also Rusel Silkey, “Gay Contingent Marches with July 4th Coalition,” Weekly Philadelphia Gayzette, 9 July 1976, 1, 3; Betti Watts, “Strong Gay Presence in July 4 Coalition March,” Philadelphia Gay News, Aug. 1976, A3, A18.
[17] Joanne Passaro, letter to the editor, Gay Community News, 7 Aug. 1976, 5. See also members of the Susan Saxe Defense Fund, “July 4th Coalition Leadership Called on Sexism & Elitism,” Lesbian Feminist, Sept. 1976.
[18] Steve Ault, “July 4th Coalition,” Gay Community News, 7 Aug. 1976, 7.
[19] “Lesbian Feminist Declaration of 1976,” Hera, Summer 1976, 17; “Lesbian Feminist Declaration ’76,” Lesbian Tide, Sept. 1976, 22-23, 35.
[20] “July 4—Revolt of the D.A.R.,” Hera, Summer 1976, 1; Tommi Avicolli, “Dykes for an American Revolution,” Weekly Philadelphia Gayzette, 9 July 1976, 1, 3. See also “In Philadelphia,” Lesbian Connection, Sept. 1976, 7; “Dyketactics’ Daughter Goes to Church,” Lesbian Tide, Sept. 1976, 22; “D.A.R. Visits Suburbia,” Hera, Winter 1976, 19.
[21] Marc Stein interview with Sharon Owens, 19 Jan. 1993, https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/philadelphia-lgbt-interviews/int/owens.
[22] Carolyn Bell, “DYKETACTICS Confronts Church with Gay and Women’s Issues,” Weekly Philadelphia Gayzette, 13 Aug. 1976, 3, 7; Harry Langhorne, “DYKETACTICS! Zaps Eucharistic Congress,” Philadelphia Gay News, Sept. 1976, A3. See also Carol Towarnicky, “60 Attend Mass for Gays,” Philadelphia Daily News, 4 Aug. 1976, 5; “Gays Demonstrate at Eucharistic Congress,” Weekly Philadelphia Gayzette, 13 Aug. 1976, 3, 7; “Dignity Presence Felt at Eucharistic Congress,” Philadelphia Gay News, Sept. 1976, B5
[23] R. Adam DeBaugh, “Join in Affirmation ’76!” Philadelphia Gay News, Aug. 1976, A21; Adam DeBaugh, “We the People,” Washington Blade, Aug. 1976, 4.
[24] Janis Johnson, “Gays Told to Seek Hill Help,” Washington Post, 13 Aug. 1976, C6; David Aiken, “MCC Reaffirms Social Action,” Advocate, 22 Sept. 1976, 17.
[25] “Catholic Conference Affirms Justice,” Advocate, 17 Nov. 1976, 23; “Catholics Say Give Gay People Justice,” Advocate, 15 Dec. 1976, 10.