questions posed by Harry to founding members of Mattachine
“Who are we?
Where do we come from?
”
What are we for?
compiled by Will Roscoe for Radically Gay: The Life & Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay, September 27-30, 2012
1926
advice from his first lover, a sailor named Matt
“
Someday you will have wandered to a strange and faraway
place. You’ll not know who any of the people are there. And
then suddenly, in that frightening and alien place, you’ll look
across the square and you’ll see a pair of eyes open and glow at
you. You’ll look back at him, and, at that moment, in the lock of
”
two pairs of eyes, you are home and you are safe!
The Trouble with Harry Hay
“
In that long-ago fantasy, he whom I would reach out in love to
was indeed projected as being another me. . . . He’d be standing
just before dawn on a golden velvet hillside . . . he’d hold out his
hand for me to catch hold of, and then we would run away to the
top of the hill to see the sunrise, and we would never have to
come back again because we would now have each other.
”
“A Separate People Whose Time Has Come”
“
The golden boy has to be one who sees as I see; he
has to be somebody who is not afraid of the strike
line; he has to be somebody where we can walk
shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand and he’s not
afraid to be beaten up. And if I’m beaten, he won’t be
worried about me; he’ll carry on.
”
Bohemian Los Angeles
1920s
“
If my father could be wrong, then the teacher
could be wrong. And if the teacher could be
wrong, then the priest could be wrong. And if the
priest could be wrong, then maybe even God
could be wrong.
”
The Trouble with Harry Hay
response to scholars, politicians, religious leaders, and indigenous spokespeople who deny the presence of queers
“
…and if they got that
wrong…what else did they get
wrong?
”
1934
recalling the San Francisco General Strike
“
The commitment was not an intellectual one to
start with. It was purely emotional, a gut thing.
You couldn’t have been a part of that and not have
your life completely changed.
”
Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities
“
Organizing the Mattachine was a call
to me deeper than the innermost
reaches of spirit, a vision-quest more
important than life.
”
Gay American History
“
It was obvious McCarthy was setting up the
pattern for a new scapegoat, and it was going
to be us —Gays. We had to organize, we had to
move, we had to get started.
”
Gay American History
1950
on meeting Rudy Gernreich
“
Almost from the very first
moment of our meeting, we were in
love with each other and with each
other’s ideas.
”
Radically Gay
1950
“
To earn for ourselves any place in the sun, we must
with perseverance and self-discipline work collectively
for the full first-class citizenship participation of
Minorities everywhere, including ourselves.
”
“Preliminary Concepts” (prospectus for Mattachine)
on the use of the term “homophile”
“
We figured that, if we insisted on calling
ourselves by a term they didn’t understand, the
media would have to ask us what it meant; and
we—then—would be able to define and
characterize ourselves, for a change.
”
Gay American History
1956
“
The Mattachine Foundation’s inventory was
strictly for the birds! Atomically powered by a
dream about to be born, its reserves were . . . total
allegiance to high purposes, tenacity of vision,
irrevocable resolve, a compassion as enfolding as
faith, and above all else . . . audacity.
”
“Epilogue: In Memory of the Mattachine Foundation,” in Homosexuals Today
1979
“
Throw off the ugly green frog-skin
of Hetero-imitation!
”
Opening comments, Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies, 1979
1970/1987
“
Why do the shoes of middle-class respectability
and conformity never seem to fit?
”
“
After all, we aren’t heteros. And when we do imitate
them, we usually do it badly—we either overdo or we
underdo. Mostly, to be perfectly candid, we overdo.
”
Western Homophile Conference Keynote Address; “A Separate People Whose Time has Come”
1980
“
Did you ever ask the girls back then if they thought you
threw a ball like them? They’d have straightened you out
in nothing flat! They’d have told you that you didn’t throw
”
a ball like a girl, but like something other.
“Toward the New Frontiers of Fairy Vision…subject-SUBJECT Consciousness”
1994
“
Sexual Orientation isn’t the only difference
between Us and the Heteros. As a result of the way
we had been malignantly demeaned and diminished
over the centuries, it is the only difference LEFT
”
between US and the Heteros.
“Remarks on Third Gender”
1986
“
Rather than being merely a sexual variation of
them, in all other senses exactly the same as they, we
are a Separate People with, in several measurable
respects, a rather different window on the world, a
different consciousness, which may be triggered into
being by our lovely sexuality.
”
“Radical Faerie Proposals to the ‘March on Washington’ Organizing Meeting”
1980
“
We are maximizing the differences between us and
them as an act of love, a love for ourselves and a love
for the society in which we belong. Because I am not
suggesting at any time that we separate out and forget
it entirely. We need them, they need us.
”
“A Call for Fairy Sanctuaries,” Vortex 1
1991
“
We Queers, having won our autonomy with no help from
anybody, shall continue to maintain that autonomy. We
shall be happy to walk with any group so long as we and
they remain in a loving-sharing consensus. But the
moment the consensus breaks—we Faeries vanish!
”
“What Gay Consciousness Brings, and Has Brought, to the Hetero Left!”
1981
“
The whole point about gay rights is an illusion, because
when you come right down to it, we can buy a legislator, but
they can buy him back twice as fast—and they do. There are
ways and means by which we can relate to the political
process, and we can do them beautifully: We can give them—
”
the parent society—some of our courage.
“A Call for Fairy Sanctuaries,” Vortex 1
1994
“
When the parent society begins to appreciate
what it is we contribute—and recognize that their
law is in our way against further contributions—
they will change that law to their advantage.
”
“A Call for Fairy Sanctuaries, Vortex 1
1994
“
Insofar as child molestation is concerned, the
most common, yet unrecognized, form is the
sexual coercion of Gay and Lesbian youth into
”
heterosexual identities and behaviors.
“Our Beloved Gay/Lesbian Movement at a Crossroads”
1959
“
When we stumble upon recorded or
secondary evidences of permissiveness towards
Homophilia in a given archaic culture we must
simultaneously search for the institution that
”
permitted it because it used it.
Radically Gay
ca. 1946
“
Ritual and magic are usable only on a group
level, and serve to promote unity, to maintain
identity, and even to offer the collective security
needed to continue the struggle for survival.
”
Radically Gay
1956
“
The Fool . . . as protestant (with a small ‘p’) . . . as
communal teacher . . . as Master of ceremonies as festive
rituals . . . as leader of the dance . . . as mime and glee-man
. . . as wizard or deputy to the wise woman with the
second sight . . . was a beloved and cherished
”
phenomena.
“Epilogue: In Memory of the Mattachine Foundation,” in Homosexuals Today
1953
“
In the Berdache we see arise the great social
division of labor which becomes the
groundwork of industry as we know it today—
the artisan and the cultural craftsman.
”
“The Homosexual and History . . . An Invitation to Further Study,” Radically Gay
1955
“
To all of history and to two-thirds of the world today,
music is a language, an encyclopedia of patterns, a
science—of organization. A method of communicating,
organizing, educating, mobilizing in ways beyond the
scope of language or static illustration.
”
“Music—Barometer of Class Struggle”
1980
“
Karl Marx had a marvelous concept of a self-
maintaining political process in socialism, but
what he didn’t know was that the shining
promise of socialism could not be fulfilled
through subject-object consciousness.
”
Gay Soul
1976
“
Science has had to move from the Aristotelian-
Cartesian logics of Binary-analytical-classifying objective
thought to “analog” thought, from formula-type thinking
in categories to modular thinking, from two-dimensional
inter-processes of Dialectical thinking to three-
”
dimensional or triangulational thinking.
“Gay Liberation: Chapter Two”
1976
“
Whereas the BINARY, or digital, computer studying a given problem
functions in terms of opposites—in terms of Go/No-Go, true or false, yes
or no, add or subtract, A or B, man or woman, with nothing in between
according to the Aristotelian ‘Law of the excluded Middle’—the ANALOG
computer, in studying a given problem, essays to become the problem, by
”
becoming a three dimensional map or model of the problem.
“Gay Liberation: Chapter Two”
1976
“
Humanity must expand its experience to thinking
of another, that other, not as object—to be used, to be
manipulated, to be mastered, to be consumed—but as
subject, as another like him/her self, another self to
be respected, to be appreciated, to be cherished.
”
“Gay Liberation: Chapter Two”
1980
“
As adults, some of us may be a combination of both hetero
masculine and hetero feminine, but mostly we a combination of
neither. It is from this spiritual neitherness, evident in our
capacity to fly free from historical conformities and prejudices,
evident in our capacity to invent in the very teeth of nullifying
rules and regulations, that our contributions come.
”
“Toward the New Frontiers of Fairy Vision . . . subject-SUBJECT Consciousness”
1987
“
When I was looking for a word to represent
neither masculine or feminine, I used the word the hetero bully
boys had used to describe me as they saw me all those years
ago. ‘Fairy,’ they called me, ‘not-masculine/not-feminine—fairy.’
Only now that I’m gown up and have become a proper queer, I
”
gussy up the spelling to make it f-a-e-r-i-e.
“A Separate People Whose Time Has Come”
1987
“
How might we apply subject-subject
consciousness to gay sexual sharing?
For starters, we might try enjoying each
other’s enjoyment.
”
“A Separate People Whose Time Has Come”
ca. 1952
comment after storming out of a Mattachine meeting
“
Yeah, I just went out and ran down an
old lady and I feel much better.
”
The Trouble with Harry Hay
“
”
I had a rush of brains to the head…
“
A circle has no head or foot …
“
”
Honey, queens don’t follow, they lead…
”
“
. . . straight men never were my type. I
always thought they had a certain smell . . .
”
1994
“
This is our job now: We must begin to define
ourselves to them as we wish to be defined, we must
begin to show ourselves as we wish to be seen, and
we must begin to speak as we wish to be heard.
”
Gay Soul
1994
“
What happens to a dreamer is that
his dream never comes to an end—it
just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
”
Gay Soul