In her memoir, Just Lucky I Guess: From Closet Lesbian to Radical Dyke, Elaine Mikels (1921-2004) writes about attending her first Quaker meeting as a student at University of Southern California, meeting Bayard Rustin, and working for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in the late 1940s.[1] In an interview with a newspaper reporter decades later, she reported that a U.S. State Department background check identified her “lesbian leanings” and she was subsequently forced to resign from her job with the AFSC.[2] In the 1950s, Mikels joined the San Francisco chapter of the Mattachine Society. As membership of the Mattachine Society grew, the organizers needed a large space for their meetings, and Mikels arranged for them to meet at a local Quaker meetinghouse. At these meetings, Mikels was given copies of ONE magazine, an important and influential publication for gay men and lesbians.

The first Quaker to become a leader of a gay rights organization was James B. Osgood (1932-2003), a member of Chicago’s 57th Street Meeting who also used the pseudonym Jim Bradford. In the summer of 1965, Bradford was elected to serve as vice president of Mattachine Midwest; within a few months he became its president. Bradford was central to the development of Mattachine Midwest, which grew to more than 130 members at its second meeting. He supported the creation of a newsletter, forged an alliance with homophile groups in other major cities, and advanced a concern among the membership of Mattachine Midwest about the criminalization of homosexuality and the targeted surveillance of gay and lesbian communities by police.

In 1971, Bradford wrote a letter to the editor in Friends Journal, the most widely read Quaker magazine, titled “Towards a Quaker View of Homosexuality.”[3] With this letter, Bradford became the first American Quaker to publicly identify as gay. He told Friends that he was associated with Mattachine Midwest and that “much loving Quaker concern has been poured” into his activism. He also reminded Friends of their historical experience of defending the human dignity and rights of oppressed minorities. He encouraged Quaker communities to openly express their acceptance of homosexual members and demonstrate their support by participating in gay liberation protests. He also pleaded for Friends to condemn President Nixon, an evangelical Quaker, for refusing to engage with the report on homosexuality that his administration had commissioned.[4] Bradford’s letter received numerous reactions in subsequent letters to the editor in Friends Journal. Two more Friends came out as gay in Friends Journal shortly afterwards, one using his real name and another with the cleverly coined pseudonym A. Bradford II.[5]

Quaker involvement in the gay liberation movement accelerated after the Stonewall riots of 1969. Decades later, the bar man at Stonewall, Fred E. Tree, told reporters that Quakers had given medical treatment to injured rioters in nearby Washington Square Park. “That’s why the Quakers still march at Pride every year and get a huge cheer,” he declared.[6] One reason that Quakers participated in the first Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade in 1970, the first large-scale “pride” march in the United States, is that Quakers were invited by its organizers to be involved. Three hours before the march began, two Friends from the Quaker Project on Community Conflict offered a nonviolent resistance training to over one hundred “marshals,” who had been tasked with protecting the marchers. The Quakers told the marshals not to wear jewelry, watches, or anything valuable that might be confiscated by the police. They should continually remember their responsibility to the welfare of all the marchers, even when they themselves were in danger. And they facilitated role-playing exercises for the marshals to learn how to deescalate aggressive and violent behavior from police or bystanders.[7]

Notes