But there was a limitation tothe concept of a single "group identity." The population that isbroadly represented under the umbrella of LGBT is not made up of people whoshare the same degrees of social and economic oppression.

The theoreticalapproach that gay people share a common culture also obscured the realities ofnational oppression. And it left little room to address the additional burdenthat lesbians face as women in a patriarchal society, or the ferocity ofviolence that transgender and transsexual people cannot escape because of theirvisibility.

Although the founders of Mattachine did lean towards thistheoretical concept of gays as one distinct cultural group in society, they wereanti-racist activists in their day-to-day organizing. And they'd hadopposed imperialist war, anti-Semitism and fascism. They did so when the goingwas tough. The revolutionary Mattachine founders led the movement against theheadwinds of Cold War gay-bashing and anti-communism.

The left-wingleadership of the early Mattachine movement reached out to the grassroots withtheir campaign against anti-gay firings and red-listing, police raids andjail-cell rapes, electro-shock and castration for the "crime" ofsame-sex love.

While they struggled against the daily outrages of thecapitalist system—like police entrapment—they tried to imbue thatmovement with an understanding that oppression is part of the machinery ofclass-divided society. They understood that a gay liberation movement had to bepart of the struggle to overturn capitalism and replace it with an economicsystem that requires planning and cooperation, not cut-throat competition and"let's-you-and-him-fight" ideology.

However, the labormovement was under siege at the time. Its most militant, revolutionary leaderswere being driven out and even underground. This further isolated the burgeoningyoung gay movement from being able to reach out to the overall workingclass—the economic class that benefits most from defeatingdivide-and-conquer rule.

And as the Mattachine movement broadened anddeepened its reach, it brought many from the more privileged classes in societyinto its ranks—and they wanted to shape the movement in their own classinterests.

The concept of shared gay culture hampered the revolutionaryleadership in its fight against the antagonistic political positions thatmiddle- and upper-class gays were taking within the movement.

Today, progressivehistorians characterize the opposition as "assimilationist." Butthat's not the main problem with those who challenged and eventuallydefeated the communist leadership of Mattachine. Their political crime was thatthey were conciliatory to the boss class, which was carrying out an offensiveagainst the working class as well using police entrapment against lesbians andgays.

The opposition tried to appease and curry favor with the Cold Warcapitalist rulers by opportunistically carrying out an internal red-baitingwitch hunt within the Mattachine movement.

The opposition figures tried tomask their reactionary class conciliation with the dishonest claim that theywere just trying to "democratize" Mattachine to help theorganization build a broader movement.

Opposition leader Hal Callexplained in a later interview, "We wanted to see Mattachine grow andspread, but we didn't think that this could be done as long as Mattachinewas a secret organization. But we knew that if we became a public organization,the FBI and other government agencies would find out about us. That was okaywith us, but before we went public, we wanted to make sure that we didn'thave a person in our midst who could be revealed as a Communist and disgrace usall. We wanted to be able to stand up and say who we were and what we were aboutand not be accused of these other things.

"Despite the secrecy, weknew that some of the founders of the Mattachine Society, the inner circle, hadbeen rumored to have some Communist leanings and maybe connections elsewhere.They had to go.

Once the opposition hadousted the left-wing leadership, they dropped the mantle of concern for"democratic" forms of organization and their real political agendabecame crystal clear.

Hal Call continued, "I didn't justdisagree with how the original Mattachine was run. I also disagreed with thephilosophy of the Mattachine founders. I felt that they were sort of pie in thesky, erudite and artistically included. Take Harry Hay, the kingpin of theoriginal founders. You could never talk to him very long without him going wayback in history to some ancient Egyptian cult or something of that sort. He wasalways making Mattachine and the homosexual of today a parallel to some of thosethings he found out about in his historical research.

"You see, Iwas a journalist and a public relations man and I felt that education andgetting the word out was the best thing we could do, so the whole society couldultimately say, ‘Homosexuals are human beings in our midst. They'reonly different in certain ways from the rest of us. Leave themalone.'"

Hall explained, "We wanted to seethose goals achieved by evolutionary methods, not revolutionary methods. …So public protests were not part of our program. Not at all. We wanted to seechanges come about by holding conferences and discussions and becoming subjectsfor research and telling our story. We wanted to assist people in the academicand behavioral-science world in getting the truth out to people who had aninfluence on law and law enforcement, the courts, justice and soon."

In order to plead with the rulers of society for socialacceptance, the opposition had to pry up every plank of the demands theMattachine organization was built on.

D'Emilio concluded that the new leaders"urged homosexuals to adjust to a ‘pattern of behavior that isacceptable to society in general and compatible with [the] recognizedinstitutions … of home, church and state.'"

Suchpolitical surrender did not beef up the ranks of Mattachine. Instead, thenetwork of discussion groups fell apart and overall membership quickly dwindled.Within weeks after the May 1953 conference in which founding Mattachine leaderswere forced to step down, the San Diego groups imploded. By the fall, the threeEast Bay Mattachine discussion groups that had each drawn up to 60 participantswere reduced to two groups that attracted a total of eightmembers.

Mattachinefounders Chuck Rowland and Konrad Stevens continued to provide leadership in theLos Angeles chapter, leading a vote to form a group to be known as the"Legal Chapter" to continue the struggle against police entrapmentby finding cases "of significance to the whole minority" andfighting the charges "aggressively."

The new leadership did not want to challengethe anti-gay laws. The Coordinating Committee made this quite clear in apamphlet it published in August 1953. "Any organized pressure on lawmakersby members of the Mattachine Society as a group would only serve to prejudicethe position of the Society. … It would provide an abundant source ofhysterical propaganda with which to foment an ignorant, fear-inspired,anti-homosexual campaign."

Such a campaign was underway. It was theCold War. It would take an organized political struggle to oppose the frenzy of"Lavender Scare" propaganda that was being used to step upenforcement of anti-gay penal codes.

Thereactionary ideology and political opportunism of the new leadership led them tocarry out the state's Cold War agenda within the Mattachinemovement.

Under the direction of the Coordinating Committee, the SanFrancisco and Los Angeles Area Councils issued pamphlets in the months after theMay convention declaring that Mattachine was "unalterably opposed toCommunists and Communist activity."

The new leadership was at the helm of theorganization-wide convention in Los Angeles in November 1953. Kenneth Burns wasby then the official leader of Mattachine.

He won the vote on a resolutionrejecting "any direct, aggressive action." The resolution called forlimiting Mattachine's activities to "working with and through… persons, institutions, and organizations which command the highestpossible public respect."

When Mattachine founder Chuck Rowland roseto speak out against changing the preamble on which the organization had beenformed, David Finn ruled him "out of order." Finn then declared, tothe outrage of convention participants, that he would turn over to the FBI thenames of everyone there if they did not vote down the "communistic"values of the old leadership.

Finn's threat provoked such outragethat it scuttled the Coordinating Committee's agenda of getting threeloyalty-oath resolutions passed at the convention.

The second would mandate that each member sign a statementthat included, "I believe it is my duty to my country to love it; tosupport its constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag; and to defendit against all enemies."

The obvious and bitter irony of askingmembers, all of whom were there because they were breaking the law based ontheir sexuality, to obey all laws was apparently lost on those who penned theresolution.

The third resolution called for the formation of a"Committee for Investigating Communist Infiltration" that would actas a little HUAC body within the group, questioning members about"subversive" activities and booting out anyone who didn'tprovide the right answers.

All three resolutions did come to a vote at theconvention. But in the atmosphere of turmoil and rage over the threat to"out" the membership to the FBI, all three rotten resolutions werevoted down.

Despite the claims of the anti-communist leaders that theywere trying to build a movement that was more mainstream, membership continuedto drop dramatically.

The group was still called Mattachine, but the shifttowards accommodation to political reaction derailed the early militantgrassroots character of the movement for years to come.

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