The 1960s are known as a decade of street politics. From the attacks by Alabama police dogs on civil rights marchers to the urban riots in Watts, Newark, and Detroit; from the antiwar marches in front of the White House and the Pentagon to the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; from the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley to the shooting of students on the campuses of Kent State and Jackson State universities—one social conflict after another was taken outside. To gain the attention of the public, it seemed, one needed to do it in the streets, while the whole world was watching. But, of course, sometimes the media weren’t interested.
Among the many landmarks of that turbulent decade few have achieved the fame and symbolic resonance of events that began as a fairly routine example of police harassment on a hot June night in 1969. Police raids on gay bars were neither new nor unusual, though they had become less frequent by the late 1960s. When the police raided the Stonewall bar in Greenwich Village on June 28, they did not expect to set off a riot—and they certainly did not expect to ignite the explosion of a militant gay rights movement. But when many of the bar’s patrons fought back, soon joined by allies on the streets, the incident sparked several nights of rioting—and the Stonewall riots initiated a flurry of organizing that soon turned into a firestorm of activism across the country.1
The night of the Stonewall riots the media were unaware of the historic significance of the events in the Village. Even though the editor on night duty at the New York Times realized that “these guys are fighting the cops for the first time” and dispatched a reporter to the scene, he also knew that the topic of homosexuality was not popular with the top brass. The Times’s brief account of the historic event was buried on page 33 and told from the police’s perspective. As the riots continued the Times ran a second story the next day, also on page 33, that again focused on the official point of view: “Police Again Rout ‘Village’ Youths.”
Other New York media were less subtle than the Times, even if no more sympathetic to the Stonewall rioters. The New York Daily News waited until July 6 to cover the story, but its reporter was at least aware that something significant had occurred. This did not prevent him from treating the riots as an occasion for heavy-handed humor. The story was headlined “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad,” and it continued in that vein:
She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a humming-bird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn’t bothered to shave. A day-old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street. Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra strap to bra strap against the invasion of helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of the their gay clubs. … Queen power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot.
The Village Voice, Greenwich Village’s local countercultural paper, was no more delicate in the choice of language to describe the momentous events happening in its own backyard. Voice reporter Lucian Truscott, who came upon the riot as he walked through the Village that night, wrote an account that referred to “the sudden specter of ‘Gay Power’ [that] erected its brazen head and spat out a fairy tale the like of which the area has never seen,” when “the forces of faggotry” rallied in protest against the raid. Truscott’s article did capture some of the significance of the riots, however, in the words of gay poet Allen Ginsberg with which he ended his article: “You know, the guys out there were so beautiful—they’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago.”
The Village Voice was soon to learn that the “forces of faggotry” were willing to fight the media as well as the police. In the wake of the Stonewall riots a group of gay activists quickly organized a rally that led to the formation of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the birth of a new, radical, gay liberation movement modeled on such sixties groups as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party. Writing in their column in the underground newspaper Screw, Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke wrote, “The revolution in Sheridan Square must step beyond its present boundaries. The homosexual revolution is only a part of a larger revolution sweeping through all segments of society.”2
The GLF quickly grew and began to organize on several fronts. One of its first projects was to organize dances for young people as an alternative to the Mafia-controlled bars. But when they tried to advertise their dances in the Village Voice, they were told that the word “gay” was obscene and could not be used in the ad. To make matters worse the Voice, willing to use words like “faggots,” “dykes,” and “queers” in its news articles on the Stonewall riots, also ran ads for apartments that specified “no gays.”3
GLF members showed up outside the Voice, not far from the Stonewall bar, on September 12, 1969, carrying picket signs denouncing their policies. After several hours some of the demonstrators were invited to meet with the publisher. The meeting was heated but the GLF was victorious. The Voice agreed to allow “gay” and “homosexual” to appear in ads without alterations. While not a total victory—the publisher reserved the right of his reporters to use derogatory language—this was a milestone of lesbian and gay media activism: it was a sign of the new militancy of a gay movement that was taking its demands directly to the media, making them targets of protest along with politicians, psychiatrists, and preachers.
On the first anniversary of Stonewall, the first Gay Pride march was held in New York City—it is now an annual event in cities across the country and even beyond—and the New York Times took notice. The “quote of the day” was a statement by one of the organizers that summarized the core belief of gay liberation: “We’re probably the most harassed, persecuted minority group in history, but we’ll never have the freedom and civil rights we deserve as human beings unless we stop hiding in closets and in the shelter of anonymity.”
Among the early efforts of the newly militant gay liberation movement of the 1970s was a focus on the images presented in the media: Hollywood films and television programs, as well as the stories reported—or ignored—by the news media. But one of their first targets was more upscale than either newspapers or television.
In September 1970, Harper’s magazine, a long-established periodical with a reputation for intellectual and cultural analysis, published a cover essay by Joseph Epstein: “Homo/hetero: The Struggle for Sexual Identity.” Epstein’s essay was later described by conservative writer Midge Decter as “an elegant and thoughtful” account of “the tangle of his feelings and attitudes towards homosexuality and towards the then new question of homosexual rights.” Gay readers saw the essay rather differently: it was an unabashed proclamation of homophobia masquerading as analysis. Epstein assured his readers that he had not “accepted” homosexuality; in fact, he continued, “If I had the power to do so, I would wish homosexuality off the face of the earth.” The essay ended with an even more chilling declaration: “There is much that my four sons can do in their lives that might cause me anguish, that might outrage me, that might make me ashamed of them and of myself as their father. But nothing they could ever do would make me sadder than if any of them were to become homosexual.” The Gay Activists Alliance sent a delegation to the offices of Harper’s where they conducted a very gentle sit-in, greeting staff members by saying, “Good morning, I’m a homosexual. We’re here to protest the Epstein article. Would you like some coffee and donuts?”4 They occupied the offices for the day, trying to explain to the editors why the Epstein essay was so offensive and dangerous. Midge Decter, then Harper’s executive editor, insisted that the article was “serious and honest and misread,” to which GAA leader Arthur Evans replied, “You knew that his article would contribute to the suffering of homosexuals. You knew that. And if you didn’t know that you’re inexcusably naïve. You’re a bigot and you are to be held responsible for that moral and political act.” Years later, in a monumentally homophobic article in Commentary, Decter complained about the lack of style exhibited by the demonstrators; she expected more “dash and high taste” from the amusing fairies she preferred to these humorless activists who were “turning their condition into politics.”
Another reaction to Epstein’s article was set off when Merle Miller, a respected television writer, was lunching with two New York Times editors shortly after the Harper’s article appeared.5 After the editors expressed approval of the Epstein piece Miller exploded, “Damn it, I’m a homosexual!” The result was that the editors challenged Miller to write his own piece, which he did, and it was published in the New York Times Magazine in January 1971 under the title, “What It Means to Be a Homosexual.” Miller’s article talked about growing up as a “sissy” in Iowa and taking on the protective coloring of a tough journalist, joining in the laughter at “queer jokes.” The article, which was probably the first time someone prominent had come out so publicly, generated a flood of mail—nearly five thousand letters, the vast majority from gay people expressing their gratitude to Miller for speaking out. Miller expanded the article into a book, On Being Different, in which he wrote, “It took me almost fifty years to come out of the closet, to stop pretending to be something I was not, most of the time fooling nobody.”
The impact of the Harper’s sit-in was also felt by the producers of the Dick Cavett show broadcast by ABC to a national audience. GAA activists had been demanding an opportunity to respond to antigay remarks comedian Mort Sahl made in the spring of 1970, but they had been rebuffed by the Cavett staff. When GAA members prepared to infiltrate and disrupt the show the evening of the Harper’s sit-in, Cavett (who had seen coverage of the Harper’s demonstration on the news) agreed to invite two GAA representatives on for a future show. In November 1970, GAA leaders Arthur Evans and Marty Robinson appeared on the Dick Cavett Show to express GAA’s demands for cultural and political change. Asked what they were seeking, Robinson said, “Heterosexuals live in this society without any scorn—they live openly, their affection is idealized in movies, theater. Homosexuals want the same thing: to be open in this society, to live a life without fear of reprisal from anybody for being homosexual—to live a life of respect.” Speaking of GAA’s strategy, Evans added, “We feel that we have to come out politically, as a community which is aware that it is oppressed and which is a political power bloc feared by the government. Until the government is afraid of us—afraid of our power—we will never have our rights.”
As political scientist Toby Marotta noted, the Harper’s sit-in and the Cavett show marked a new stage: the approach of challenging culture-shaping institutions with demonstrations that combined consciousness-raising tactics with politicizing and pressuring tactics. In the long run, however, the decisive battles would not be waged over magazines like Harper’s, where even articles as offensive as Epstein’s reached an audience of thousands at most. But television programs were viewed by millions every week. Lesbian and gay activists began to pay close attention to the central role that television entertainment was playing in shaping the American cultural and social agenda. The success of the 1972 TV movie That Certain Summer drew the attention of activists because of the potential it demonstrated for television to reach national audiences. It was important to persuade the television networks to present more frequent and more truthful lesbian and gay images in prime time.
Operating first under the banner of the GAA and subsequently of the National Gay Task Force, founded in New York in 1973 (now the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, in Washington), activists began to put pressure on the television networks, whose headquarters are also in Manhattan. One of the first tactics used by the GAA was the “zap,” in which a small group of activists would infiltrate an event and provoke a scene by loudly protesting antigay oppression. The first zap was staged at the season opening of the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1970, when Mayor John Lindsay was confronted by members of GAA who had infiltrated the event dressed in tuxedos, in order to dramatize their anger over the mayor’s refusal to end police harassment of gays. As the mayor and his wife entered, the packed lobby was rocked by cries of “End Police Harassment!” and “Gay Power!”
Zaps were intended to garner publicity by staging actions where reporters and cameras were likely to be. One zap carried this tactic to its extreme in December 1973 when activist Mark Segal infiltrated the CBS News studio and, carrying a sign proclaiming GAYS PROTEST CBS BIGOTRY, suddenly leapt in front of the camera as news anchor Walter Cronkite read the evening news.6 The interruption was quickly ended and few viewers were likely to have understood what happened, but the story of the zap was itself news, and Cronkite apparently was goaded into thinking more seriously about the issue. On the CBS Evening News broadcast of May 6, 1974, Cronkite included a major segment on gay rights, beginning by saying, “Part of the new morality of the ’60s and ’70s is a new attitude towards homosexuality. The homosexual men and women have organized to fight for acceptance and respectability. They’ve succeeded in winning equal rights under the law in many communities.”
The zap was intended to reach gay people as much as those who were its targets. GAA leader Arthur Evans summarized the philosophy of the zap, which he termed political theater for educating the gay masses:
Gays who have as yet no sense of gay pride see a zap on television or read about it in the press. First they are vaguely disturbed at the demonstrators for “rocking the boat”; eventually, when they see how the straight establishment responds, they feel anger. This anger gradually focuses on the heterosexual oppressors, and the gays develop a sense of class-consciousness. And the no-longer-closeted gays realize that assimilation into the heterosexual mainstream is no answer: gays must unite among themselves, organize their common resources for collective action, and resist.
Or, as one activist put it, “one good zap is worth ten years of analysis.”7
Besides the occasional zap, however, media activists had few truly helpful resources to call upon. They lacked the support of governmental authorities such as the Federal Communications Commission or congressional committees that would stand up for the rights of racial minorities in their dealings with the media. They knew that they could not count on mainstream institutions such as churches and civic groups to defend their interests. For these groups, as for the media, homosexuality was a controversial topic that they generally preferred to avoid. But the activists did have one effective secret weapon—their own social invisibility: many lesbian and gay people who worked inside the media industries, but could not work openly for the gay cause, could nevertheless provide valuable information. These “agents in place” as they were sometimes called, often smuggled advance copies of television scripts to activists who then confronted network executives (they also assisted activists infiltrate television studios for zaps).
A leaked script for an episode of ABC’s popular “doctor show” Marcus Welby, M.D., in which Dr. Welby counsels a married gay man to suppress his homosexuality, served as the impetus for the Gay Activist Alliance’s efforts. Working with an office plan provided by another insider, GAA members led by Variety reporter-turned-activist Ron Gold infiltrated ABC headquarters in New York on February 16, 1973, and challenged surprised executives. The sit-in led to arrests rather than negotiations, and the program aired two days later with only minimal changes, but the network executives did learn something from the episode. They began to invite gay activists to comment on scripts dealing with homosexuality—an understandable tactic, once they realized the activists would get their hands on the scripts in any case. But if the network learned something from this experience, the lesson apparently did not reach the producers of Marcus Welby, M.D.
The following year they came up with a script for an episode called “The Outrage” which revolved around a male teacher who molests a teen-age boy. Ron Gold had recently joined the newly formed National Gay Task Force (NGTF) and was positioning it to be the primary gay organization in consulting and negotiating with national media. Gold and his fellow activists responded with their own outrage when the network proposed only minor modifications in a script that was fundamentally unacceptable. The entire premise of the program held up precisely the sort of stereotype that NGTF was trying to eradicate: the familiar but false linkage of gay men with child molestation. The network refused to make the major changes that would have been required to satisfy the activists, and talks broke down. Led by Boston media activist Loretta Lotman, who moved to New York to spearhead the campaign, NGTF, along with GAA president Morty Manford and longtime L.A. activist Morris Kight, began to organize a nationwide protest against the outrageous Welby episode. The activists aroused lesbian and gay groups around the country to pressure their local ABC affiliates (and provided instructions on what to say to station general managers and on how to jam the station’s phone lines), while simultaneously addressing companies planning to buy ad time on the program.8 Capitalizing on its recent victory in persuading the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from their list of mental illnesses, NGTF now obtained a statement from the APA condemning the Welby program for promoting a false image. The National Organization for Women and the National Educational Association were also enlisted to condemn the program.
The protest efforts failed to stop the episode, but it was softened in some ways and the term “homosexual” was replaced by “pedophile” as a description of the sex offender. Several major sponsors withdrew their ads, and at least five affiliates refused to air the program. While some of these stations would likely have been equally unwilling to air an episode with positive gay images, others were clearly responding to the NGTF’s campaign. The general managers of the ABC affiliates in Boston and Philadelphia both rejected the show because they were persuaded by the protesters that it would reinforce the false notion that gays are child molesters.
The campaign demonstrated to the networks that the gay movement was able to mobilize on a national basis.9 There were also lessons here for the movement. The topic of homosexuality was controversial even when handled in a fashion that was acceptable to lesbian and gay activists. If the activists were to succeed, they had to encourage positive images and not simply fight against negative stereotypes. After all, they were confronting an industry—the term actually used to describe Hollywood’s production operations—and one in which “artistic” considerations were routinely bent to the real or perceived demands of the marketplace. In other words, activists aiming to influence the shape of the product had to become an inescapable part of the producers’ landscape.
Further, because most production was located in Los Angeles the New York activists too often found themselves in the position of reacting to programs after they were already completed and even after they had been broadcast. A new front in the media struggle was opened when a Los Angeles–based psychologist and former screen writer, Newton Deiter, created the Gay Media Task Force in L.A. as a one-person West Coast complement to the NGTF. By the late 1970s the networks were regularly consulting with Deiter on scripts involving gay characters. Having a presence on both coasts permitted activists to circumvent the networks’ strategy of responding to protests by telling New York activists that a decision was being made by the producers in L.A. and telling L.A. groups that the same decision was a corporate matter, handled in New York.
Whatever lessons ABC learned from the “Outrage” campaign had to be repeated for NBC after that network ran an episode of Police Woman called “Flowers of Evil.” In this program, unfortunately typical of many queer appearances on the cop and doctor shows of the early 1970s, three lesbians murder patients in their old-age home until they are stopped by policewoman Angie Dickinson, who informs them, “I know what a love like yours can do to someone.” This outrage provoked a zap at network headquarters by a group of lesbians; one even brought her children, who wandered into the executive washroom.
In February 1975 Loretta Lotman, who had succeeded Ron Gold as NGTF’s media director, became the first openly gay person invited to speak at the National Association of TV Program Executives. She confronted the top programming executives in the industry: “When you show only the stereotype of gays, you’re telling lies. No other minority is as abused, exploited, misrepresented, or demeaned as gay people are.” Lotman’s appearance was crowned by her success in eliciting a public commitment from the three network presidents to adopt nondiscrimination statements in their employment policies.
Communications researcher Kathryn Montgomery observed the efforts of the organized gay movement in the 1970s to improve the ways network programmers handled gay characters and themes. Between 1973 and 1978 there were seven major protests, and all three television networks were targets of campaigns against negative and damaging images of homosexuals. In all these instances the activists demanded changes in program content, deletions of material, or even the canceling of particular episodes. While these demands were not fully met, and no episodes were canceled in their entirety, in most cases the activists did succeed in modifying the more negative aspects of a lesbian or gay character’s portrayal, and in three of the cases the objectionable episode was not rerun. However, protests from antigay organizations have sometimes resulted in episodes with positive gay images not being included in rerun schedules—thus the networks can accurately be described as more anxious to avoid controversy than to overcome prejudice.
Montgomery concluded that “the decisions affecting the portrayal of gay life were influenced by the constraints which commercial television as a mass medium imposes upon the creation of its content. … These requirements served as a filter through which the issue of homosexuality was processed, resulting in a televised picture of gay life designed to be acceptable to the gay community and still palatable to a mass audience.”
Acceptability to the gay community meant that a portrayal did not attack or deny their basic humanity; but these portrayals would never reflect their values or perspectives. But of course television producers are not looking to please gay and lesbian people; they are merely trying to avoid arguing with them afterwards. In Vito Russo’s words, “Mainstream films about homosexuals are not for homosexuals. They address themselves exclusively to the majority.”
Media activism was not limited to entertainment programming or to the national media. Grassroots efforts focused on media sprang up around the country in the early days of lesbian and gay liberation. In Philadelphia, community protests against an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Sunday magazine spurred the creation of a Gay Media Project that functioned for several years in the mid-seventies. In Boston, Loretta Lotman and others organized a local media advocacy group, Gay Media Action, that negotiated with local news executives but had disappeared by the late 1970s. The Lesbian and Gay Media Advocates (LAGMA) was formed after the October 1979 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, an event attended by over 100,000 people but which went largely unreported in the media.
The New York Times carried a brief account (on page 14), but the television networks barely mentioned the march, and Time and Newsweek ignored the largest lesbian and gay demonstration ever held to that point. Boston activists returning from the March were outraged at the minimal coverage and demanded meetings with newspaper editors and TV station managers. LAGMA set up a system of local media monitoring and meetings with reporters and editors, accompanied by style guidelines and story suggestions (one immediate result was the agreement by the Boston Globe to allow “gay” to be used as a noun), and in 1982 published a short book, Talk Back! The Gay Person’s Guide to Media Action.
On April 26, 1980, CBS Reports, which had presented the first network documentary on gay men in 1967, returned to the topic with “Gay Power, Gay Politics,” a program about San Francisco. The presentation proved to be biased and manipulative. Gay men were interviewed, but the framing and editing turned their words and meanings to the producers’ purposes. Reporter George Crile put words in people’s mouths and asked blatantly leading questions. People appeared to speak for themselves, but in fact were being used in the service of Crile’s “angle”: that gay men have become a powerful force in San Francisco and are using that power to destroy traditional values in their demand for “absolute sexual freedom.”
It seems likely that at some point in making the documentary the producers found the dramatic theme they would use as the news frame for their story, and everything was then shaped to fit that frame. The program opened and closed with footage of the 1979 March on Washington in which longtime CBS correspondent Harry Reasoner played bookend anchor. Reasoner introduced the program by telling viewers that the homosexuals gathered in Washington “publicly proclaimed themselves to be the newest legitimate minority. … In this program we’ll see how the gays of San Francisco are using the political process to further their own special interest, just like every other minority group before them. … What we’ll see is the birth of a political movement and the troubling questions it raises for the eighties, not only for San Francisco but for other cities throughout the country.” In fact, what CBS was presenting was the dread specter of the Lavender Menace.
Despite the opening promise, CBS did not show “how the gays of San Francisco are using the political process” because it focused on only one political issue—the 1979 mayoral election—and presented it in a distorted and misleading fashion. Crile, as narrator on the scene, began with the false implication that gay political engagement was a recent phenomenon, claiming with obvious absurdity that, until the candlelight march on the night of Harvey Milk’s assassination, in 1978, “few people had realized the size and strength of the gay community,” as if Milk’s election the year before hadn’t conveyed that message.10 Starting to build his case that gay political power was used almost exclusively for the procurement of “absolute sexual freedom,” Crile states that, “By the end of 1978, the homosexual community here had not only achieved full civil rights and economic power, but it was moving provocatively into the political arena.” Crile avoided the question of how “full civil rights” were earned without being engaged in the political arena, because, presumably, he wanted to inject the loaded term “provocatively” to describe gay political engagement.
In order to make the story credible it was necessary to ignore or deny many facts, beginning by limiting the program’s view of the gay community to men. Lesbians remained invisible, although several women prominent in the city’s political life had been interviewed by the producers. The spectrum of San Francisco’s large lesbian and gay community was narrowed to two categories of (mostly white) men: the smoothly dangerous elite backstage power brokers, and the menacing, leather-clad, sex-obsessed street gays who frightened children with unrestrained animal lust.
Throughout the program, facts were misrepresented or distorted to tell the story of a dangerous political grab by sexually outrageous gay men and the capitulation of mainstream politicians. The culmination of this tale featured the supposed surrender of Mayor Diane Feinstein to the demands of the gay politicos, in which, “She’d offered them a gay police commissioner and political appointments in proportion to their numbers in the city. In short, she had given them all they had asked for.” This summary was amplified in the “FYI CBS NEWS” press release issued by the network shortly before the program aired on April 26, 1980: “Not only did Feinstein publicly apologize [for hostile remarks made in a magazine interview], she promised to appoint a gay police chief and give homosexuals other political appointments in proportion to their numbers.” There are at least two problems with this summary. First, what viewers unfamiliar with San Francisco would conclude—and what the CBS press release states—is that Feinstein agreed to appoint a gay police chief. However, the head of the San Francisco police is not called the “police commissioner,” as is common in many cities, but the Chief of Police. What Feinstein actually promised was to appoint an openly gay member to the San Francisco Police Commission, an advisory body that is supposed to represent segments of the community. Appointing a gay member to this commission was far from the capitulation Crile claimed and, after the election, Feinstein did appoint a lesbian activist to this body. Second, granting political appointments to a group in proportion to their numbers seems fairly democratic.
The program concludes with a speech by Cleve Jones—a gay activist and former Milk aide who had been interviewed (and used) by Crile throughout the program—given at a candlelight memorial service a year after the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk. Crile introduces the speech: “There had been growing concern here about the homosexual community, but until the election the city’s establishment hadn’t taken this new political movement seriously, hadn’t tried to challenge or control it. And now, the gays were warning the city that gay power had come of age and that this was only the beginning.” What followed was the concluding portion of Jones’s speech, carefully edited to narrow its political focus and eliminate the real context and scope of the issues raised by San Francisco’s lesbian and gay community (only the italicized portions below were included in the broadcast):
Yes, we know that Harvey Milk was not our first martyr. Harvey had a lover named Jack, and one day in ’78, Harvey came home to find Jack’s body hanging from the ceiling, a suicide. I wonder, how many of you here tonight have lost a friend or a loved one to suicide? Raise your hands. How many? How many of you know a woman who has experienced the terror of rape? Raise your candles. How many of you have been attacked? How many of you have been beaten? Raise your candles?
How many of you have heard from behind, “Hey, faggot! Hey, dyke!”? That is why we are here tonight. That is why we marched on Washington. That is why we will keep on marching.
That is why we will not rest until Harvey’s dream is fulfilled: when lesbians and gay men of every age, race, and background come out to join in the struggle with all those who seek lives of dignity and freedom and joy.
It will be a long struggle, a very long struggle, and we will have leaders and slogans and martyrs aplenty. But let no one misunderstand.
Our movement is powered by the determination of a people too long denied, too long abused, a people seeking the freedom to live, to work, and to love. Let no one misunderstand, we are deadly serious. We are growing in power with every day that passes and we will not be stopped!
The program then returned to Harry Reasoner, standing in front of the Washington Monument to drive the point home once more:
Gay political organizations are acting all across the country. The right of homosexuals to organize like any other minority seeking to further its own interests is no longer in question. The question is, what will those interests be? Will they include a demand for absolute sexual freedom, as they did in San Francisco? And if so, will this challenge to traditional values provoke far more hostility and controversy when it is put to the test elsewhere? It is no longer a matter of whether homosexuals will achieve political power, but what they will attempt to do with it.
The program was probably the most vicious piece of propaganda ever made by a television network and it was greeted with outrage around the country, but especially in San Francisco. The mayor and City Council objected to the distortions of the program, and the local CBS affiliate followed it with a program in which the producers were confronted by local activists. But, of course, local San Francisco audiences were the least likely to be fooled by the program’s lies and omissions. The real danger of the program was in its effect on people unable to compare it with their firsthand knowledge of San Francisco, and it was widely cited and used in antigay political campaigns around the country. A Moral Majority billboard in San Jose, California, south of San Francisco, used an image from the program along with the slogan: “Don’t Let It Spread!” as part of a successful campaign leading to the defeat of a gay rights ordinance.
One gay activist fought back vigorously. Journalist Randy Alfred carefully documented the program’s many errors and distortions in a lengthy complaint to the National News Council, a media self-policing body (since abolished). Alfred’s complaint covered forty-four separate charges that, he said, “contribute to the cumulative effect of patterned distortion.” After hearing the case, the council found that CBS had been unfair in numerous respects, a rare rebuke to a national network. The council concluded that, “By concentrating on certain flamboyant examples of homosexual behavior, the program tended to reinforce stereotypes. The program also exaggerated political concessions to gays and made those appear as threats to public morals and decency.” CBS reluctantly made a minimal public acknowledgment on the air.11
One side effect of “Gay Power, Gay Politics” was to stimulate another local media activist group. The Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force (PLGTF) took up the role formerly played by the Gay Media Project and demanded a meeting with the general manager of the local CBS affiliate, one of the six stations around the country owned and operated by the network. Although the general manager, like his network bosses, would not admit there had been anything wrong with the program, the meeting initiated discussions and negotiations that were soon extended to the other Philadelphia television stations and then to radio and newspapers. One immediate result of the meetings was the agreement of local TV station managers to run (and, occasionally, to produce) public service announcements (PSAs) for PLGTF that focused on issues of discrimination and violence. In the two decades since the CBS documentary started them off, PLGTF leaders met repeatedly with local media executives in order to raise their awareness of the concerns of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered communities.