Morgan Pinney and Gay-Labor Alliances
The queer reverberations of the SF State strikes of 1968 and 1969 continued after the strikes ended. In March 1969, SF State fired accounting instructor Morgan Pinney (1941-1987), allegedly for missing one day of teaching immediately after the faculty strike was settled. This violated a verbal agreement between the administration and the union about when faculty had to return to work. Pinney and others believed that he was fired because of his outspoken support for both strikes. According to reports in two SF State student newspapers—the Daily Gater and the Phoenix--Pinney was the only faculty member in the business school who had participated in the AFT strike and the only faculty member fired in its immediate aftermath, though others were fired later. In response, AFT Local 1352 organized campus pickets to protest Pinney’s firing; in one instance, 150 professors participated. While unsuccessfully contesting his termination over the next several months, Pinney was hired to work for faculty unions, which he continued to do for the next few years.[1]
Pinney also drafted a groundbreaking gay rights resolution for consideration by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT). His proposal and the CFT’s discussions about it received coverage in the national LGBTQ press and the San Francisco Chronicle. Adopted by the CFT in December 1969, the resolution criticized antigay police practices and government policies, called for the abolition of all laws and policies addressing victimless sexual acts, and demanded that schools at all levels establish “vigorous” sex education programs.[2]
Pinney was not the only person affiliated with SF State to link labor politics with gay liberation. In 1970, the Berkeley Tribe, another regional alternative newspaper, reported that members of the Fire Fighters Union were appalled when AFT Local 1928, the associates, aides, and assistants union at SF State, picketed local radio/television station KGO-ABC for firing gay journalist Leo Laurence. At an AFL-CIO Central Labor Council (CLC) meeting, the firemen complained about seeing a “group of young hippie men” who “had arms around each other” and “were KISSING one another” on the picket line. The San Francisco Free Press added that the firemen also complained that “several of the hippies,” including a CLC member, had “carried signs saying ‘AFT Local 1128 supports Homos.” While the CLC Secretary apologized for “this small unschooled and new labor union,” Local 1928 President Leah Schuman responded by referencing the recent CFT resolution and declaring, “The trade union movement has always been in the forefront in demanding non-discrimination in the field of employment. Several members of our local are outspokenly homosexuals and we perceive any loss of job on the basis of homosexuality...as not only representing the over-all oppressive aspects of our society, but also as a threat to our local.” Schuman continued, “The trade union movement was built on the blood and the guts of people who are not afraid to say and to act in accordance with their innermost feelings. We have the greatest respect and admiration for young men and women who are unafraid to tell the world who and what they are. The members of our union who are involved in the struggle for homosexual freedom are our brothers.” Schuman’s words suggest that she was a strong ally of LGBTQ people.[3]
In other illustrations of emergent gay-labor alliances, when Local 1928’s newsletter reimagined SF State with a politically creative map in May 1969, it listed “Homo Dorm,” “Hetero Dorm,” “Pads for Lovers,” and “Sexual Drive,” alongside Crazy Horse Gate, Eldridge Cleaver Sanctuary, Mao Mall, Zapata Gate, and halls named for Brecht, Camus, Che, Fanon, Malcolm X, and Uncle Ho.[4] In March 1971, Morgan Pinney spoke at a Cal State Hayward rally, attended by 300 students, in defense of fired sociology professor Michael Silverstein, who claimed that he had been fired because he was gay.[5] Later in 1971, Local 1352 of the United Professors of California at SF State proposed a resolution at the national AFT convention that would have put the union on record as opposing employment discrimination against gay and other teachers based on private sexual conduct.[6] The resolution did not pass, but in 1972 SF State alum and gay novelist Richard Love helped convince the CFT to pass a resolution supporting the decriminalization of private sexual acts by consenting adults and rejecting employment discrimination against teachers accused of engaging in such acts.[7] Led initially by Morgan Pinney, SF State faculty, staff, and alums played important roles in building gay-labor solidarity, on and off campus, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[8]
Notes
[1] “AFT Pickets for Pinney,” Daily Gater, 27 Mar. 1969, 4; “Fired AFTers Are Still Out,” Daily Gater, 23 Apr. 1969, 1; John Davidson, “Pinney Fights for His Job,” Phoenix, 8 May 1969, 1, 10; Zede Avi, “What’s in Store for State,” Berkeley Barb, 15 Aug. 1969, 6; Dale Sprouse, “Lone Fired Prof Still Wants Job,” Phoenix, 9 Oct. 1969, 1, 8; “Not a Quiet Affair,” Berkeley Barb, 30 Jan. 1970, 9; “Purged Profs,” Golden Gater (Alt), 28 Feb. 1972, 3; “Hayakawa’s Shit List: Are You On It?” Golden Gater (Alt), 28 Feb. 1972, 4. For a short period of time, there were two competing versions of the Daily Gater, one of which is cited here as Daily Gater (Alt).
[2] “California Teachers Union Adopts Homosexual Resolution,” Gay Power (1.9), c. Jan. 1970, 16, 22; “Homophile News Fronts,” Vector, Feb. 1970, 6; C. F. [Carole Friedman], “California Teachers Union Adopts Homosexual Resolution,” Homophile Action League Newsletter, Mar. 1970, 4–5; “Teachers Favor Freedom for Gays,” The Advocate, Mar. 1970, 10; Arthur Kaput, “The Closet in the Classroom,” GAY, 13 Apr. 1970, 7, 20; “California Teachers’ Union Adopts Homosexual Resolution,” The Ladder, Apr. 1970, 31–32; “Teachers Back Homosexual Freedom,” ONE Letter, Apr. 1970, 8. “Resolution on Homosexuals by Teachers,” San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Dec. 1970, 4; “Teachers OK Aid to Gays,” The Advocate, 17 Feb. 1971, 6.
[3] Gale Whittington, “Gay Labor Pain,” Berkeley Tribe, 30 Jan. 1970, 11; “Firemen,” San Francisco Free Press, Feb. 1970, 2. See also Gale Whittington, “Union Back Gaylib,” Berkeley Barb, 30 Jan. 1970, 5; “Firemen vs. Gays,” Gay Power (1.12), c. Mar. 1970, 21.
[4] AFT Local 1928 Newsletter, 31 May 1969, 17, LARC. See also “The Movement Grows,” Committee for Homosexual Freedom Newsletter, 8 July 1969, 2.
[5] Sandy Witch, “Students Rally Round Gay Hayward Prof,” Berkeley Barb, 5 Mar. 1971, 6.
[6] Douglas Dean, “San Francisco Rap-Up: Sex Has Nothing to Do With It,” The Advocate, 29 Sept. 1971, 26; Douglas Dean, “Sex Has Nothing to Do With It,” The Advocate, reprinted in Arena Three, Aug. 1972, 13.
[7] “Calif. Teachers Endorse AB-470,” Vector, Nov. 1972, 33.
[8] For more on gay/labor activism in this period, see Marc Stein, Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement, 2d edition (New York: Routledge, 2023), 56-57, 146-147, 163-164, 169.