March 14, 1980 Gusto cover story: Hidden Lives

Here’s one of the landmark pieces I mentioned a month ago in the farewell issue of the Gusto magazine in The News. As far as I know, nobody had written about this topic in Buffalo’s major newspapers up until then.

March 14, 1980, Gusto cover story

Hidden Lives

Homosexuality is a box office bonanza at the movies this season. “Cruising,” which brazenly exploits the sleaze and sensationalism of New York City’s gamiest gay gathering places, was the highest grossing film across America last week. “La Cage Aux Folles,” a French farce set in a homosexual household, is the most successful foreign flick ever to hit these shores. A sequel is in the works. A third film, “Windows,” drew picketing here last Sunday in protest of the way in which a lesbian central character is portrayed.

Ten years ago, making a big-budget commercial film on a homosexual theme was inconceivable. Conventional wisdom dictated that conventional society wouldn’t go for it. So far as the movies and the other mass media were concerned, homosexuality was a taboo topic, unless it was heaped with ridicule, shame or horror. Clearly, things have changed since 1970.

The urge for social justice in the late ‘60s gave birth to the processes and events which brought homosexuality out of the shadows. For lesbians, it was an offshoot of the women’s rights movement. For gay men, it began with the Stonewall Riot in New York City in 1969, when for the first time patrons of a gay bar fought back at police harassment.

The ‘70s saw homosexuals achieve an increasingly higher visibility nationwide. A succession of gay doctors, lawyers, public officials, policemen, priests, educators, entertainers, businessmen, farmers and sports figures – in short, people from every walk of life – came forward to reveal their orientation, not in disgrace, but with dignity. The decade saw the establishment of gay churches, gay neighborhoods, gay businesses, gay publications, gay political groups and gay artistic endeavors. It culminated in the gay march on Washington last October, which drew 250,000.

An important landmark was reached in 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” For many years, therapists had considered a client’s homosexuality the root of the problem, even though Freud wrote in 1935 that “it cannot be classed as an illness.” The standard cure was to reroute gays into heterosexual situations, which invariably led to further frustration and failure. In “Familiar Faces, Hidden Lives,” the late Dr. Howard Brown recounts how he spent thousands of dollars and years of agony in therapy. He writes:

“Cut off from women, striving to detach myself from men, doubting that I could even be close friends with anyone, I felt robbed of all sense of identity … My mind was preoccupied with guilt, with dreams, with forlorn hopes, and with a sense of inadequacy that my sessions with Dr. Snell drove home four times a week.”

Evidence of men loving men and women loving women goes back to the Bible. So does prejudice against it. The Biblical passages invoked by Anita Bryant and other opponents of gay sensibility come from Leviticus, where homosexuality is forbidden.

Though homosexuality was part of the ancient Greek and Roman cultures, evidence of it during the Dark Ages has vanished. The records pick it up again during the Renaissance. Michelangelo, for instance, was gay.

As for the U.S., Jonathan Katz’s 1976 “Gay American History” for the first time chronicles 400 years of homosexuality in this hemisphere. Among the incidents Katz cites is one involving the famed Horatio Alger, who was chased from his pulpit in Massachusetts in 1866 after being accused of homosexual activities.

Despite research, no one has yet been able to define once and for all what determines sexual orientation. It’s still a mystery. All that’s known is that sexual identity, like other aspects of the personality, is formed during the earliest years. Though there have been occasional claims to the contrary, there is no scientific documentation to prove that sexual orientation can be altered.

What shows up in modern studies on sexuality, beginning with Kinsey, is that 10 to 12 percent of each generation prefers sexual relations with persons of their own gender. Even higher is the percentage that has occasional homosexual activity. Some researchers have claimed 25 percent of the population is gay.

Extrapolating on that 10 percent figure, it would be fair to estimate that Western New York is home for 75,000 to 100,000 homosexuals, possibly more. This is a significant minority. Furthermore, it cuts across every social, religious, ethnic and economic division.

Even so, only a small fraction of the homosexual population in Buffalo and elsewhere makes its preferences public. Most hide their gayness under self-imposed repression or a façade of heterosexuality, as the couple attempted to do in “La Cage Aux Folles.” Gay households and long-term relationships are not uncommon. A number of couples here have been together for a dozen years or more. One reason gays are not more conspicuous is that many of the common stereotypes simply don’t apply. Many gay males are not effeminate. Many lesbian women are not macho.

“In terms of meeting people,” says one middle-aged lesbian, “it’s a very underground situation here. There must be thousands of gay women in this community, but until a couple years ago I only knew three.”

Fear is the reason many lead a double life. Like other minorities, gays encounter considerable bigotry. Homosexuals here have no legal recourse against discrimination.

Only three communities in New York State – Alfred, Ithaca and Troy – guarantee protection against bias in jobs, housing and all the rest. New York City failed to pass the appropriate legislation. In Buffalo, the Common Council has refused to consider it. At the State University of Buffalo, where the anti-discrimination policy includes sexual preferences, gay faculty and staff nevertheless fear that revelation of their true identities will jeopardize their positions, their projects and their chances for promotion.

Gay activism in Buffalo began in the late ‘60s, at a time when police routinely entrapped homosexuals with undercover agents and raided gay bars. Names of those arrested would be published – ruining reputations and careers – and the taverns would lose their licenses. It was not unusual for unscrupulous bar owners to take a losing operation, proclaim it gay and reap profits until they got closed down.

As a result, there was no safe place where gays could get together and socialize. In 1968-69, when Jim Garrow was denied licensing for a gay bar and restaurant, the Tiki, opposite the Buffalo Athletic Club downtown, he invited Mattachine Society president Frank Kameny to town to organize a local branch of that group. The first meeting drew 200.

Mattachine developed into a highly effective information, counseling and social clearinghouse for gay men and lesbians here in the early ‘70s. Members met with the Common Council and the head of the vice squad. The group rented an old pool hall at Main and Utica streets and within a couple years transformed it into the largest self-supporting gay center in the U.S. At one point, it worked with an annual budget of $64,000. The counseling staff had crisis intervention training. The weekend dances drew hundreds and were the city’s introduction to disco. “Today,” says one Mattachine leader, “it would have CETA funding.”

The late ‘70s, however, found Mattachine in decline. Organizational conflicts weakened the group. Women grew separatist. Key people moved to other cities. One former president, for instance, is now an editor of The Blade, a major gay periodical in Washington, D.C. The center was kicked out of its building. And the center was no longer the only place to go. The owner of the Hibachi Room on Delaware Avenue won a court case against the liquor licensing authorities. No longer could bars be shut down or denied licenses for having homosexual clientele.

Now there are more than half a dozen bars catering to gay men and lesbians in Buffalo, with a couple more in Niagara Falls. The largest of the Buffalo bars is plainly the most spirited disco in town.

“When I go to the bars,” says a gay activist from Buffalo State College, “I see a lot of friends. It’s not just a pickup situation. I also go to a lot of straight bars and I see the same games happening there too.”

There also are two gay Turkish baths – the tubs, they’re called. One is in the downtown area, the other in the suburbs. The baths are for men only and the suburban one, considered to be one of the better baths in the nation, restricts admission to members and guests.

Despite the apparent lure of the bars and the baths, a great majority of homosexuals avoid them. For professionals who conceal their orientation, there is always the risk of being recognized. For them, it’s safer to meet people in a more neutral setting. Furthermore, like other places where the mating game is played, there’s no guarantee of success.

And then there is the risk of venereal disease, which afflicts promiscuous gay males with greater frequency than the general male population. A recent issue of the Advocate, a leading gay newspaper, observed that there are no fewer than 20 diseases that can be contracted sexually. Conversely, lesbians have less venereal disease that women generally. Finally, as in “Cruising,” there is always the danger of violence and death. Within the past year, there have been three unsolved gay murders in this city. All of the victims were men.

An alternative to the bar scene are the various gay organizations, which provide counseling, emotional support and political, social and educational activities. The Mattachine Society, despite diminished membership and the recent fire that destroyed its offices at Franklin and Allen streets, still publishes a newspaper, the Fifth Freedom, and maintains a 24-hour telephone referral service.

Mattachine also maintains its own speakers bureau, which sends gays to address classes, clubs and civic organizations on homosexuality. One of Mattachine’s most successful speaking dates is its yearly seminar at the UB Medical School. A team of 12 gay males and 12 lesbians of all ages and ethnic backgrounds visit a class in sexuality, showing films and leading small discussion groups afterwards. The idea is to foster better understanding of future patients in these future doctors.

Other local organizations include Dignity, a branch of the national group for gay Catholics, which works for acceptance of homosexuality within the church, and GROW, an acronym for Gay Rights for Older Women, which offers counseling and meets weekly for rap sessions.

Lesbian groups also include the Lesbian Caucus of Women’s Studies College at UB and the Lesbian Caucus of the Buffalo Women’s Liberation Union. Women continue to carry on some degree of the political activism that gay men abandoned in the late ‘70s. Lesbians organized and comprised most of the 250-member Buffalo contingent for the gay march on Washington last year.

An indication of how gay activism has changed can be seen in the newest project by radical feminists Madeline Davis and Dr. Liz Kennedy. They are compiling a tape recorded history of Buffalo’s lesbian community from the 1920s through the 1970s. They’ve already completed a year of interviews. They expect to finish next year.

This is the third first for Davis in the gay movement. She taught the first course on lesbianism to be offered in the U.S. in 1971. The following year she was the first openly avowed homosexual delegate to the Democratic national convention, where she helped present the gay rights proposal. Now she’s involved in the first lesbian history project. Others are beginning in several major cities.

Both UB and Buff State have on-campus groups which offer gay men and women information, a meeting place and social activities. A radio program, “Stonewall Nation,” airs Wednesday nights on WBFO-FM. The Gay Federation Front at UB holds Friday night coffeehouses, but like everything else at UB, it suffers as a result of general student apathy. Most gay UB males simply go to the bars. Gay women usually seek out women’s organizations.

More successful is SAGE at Buff State, which disbanded two years ago, then regrouped after a gay student put up posters in an effort to meet other gays. SAGE now has an office, a phone, a full calendar of activities, grudging recognition from student government and one of the school’s most respected professors, Dr. James Haynes, as its adviser. Dr. Haynes also is active in Mattachine.

The most significant new homophile group locally is Gay Professionals, which began with about a dozen men a year and a half ago and now has a male and female membership of more than 200. A corresponding Gay Professional Women group has just been started.

In contrast to the politically-oriented groups of the ‘70s, GPs are deliberately low-key, non-structured and totally confidential. For the protection of anonymity, two membership lists are kept. Similar care is promised those who write in response to the group’s newspaper ads. They have receive dozens of inquiries.

The group attracts about 80 to its meetings every other week. There are doctors, lawyers, bankers, teachers, businessmen – a wide variety of professionals. Last week’s program was typical. There were a few short announcements, a brief discussion of gay travel, a film and a social hour.

“We carry the word professional lightly,” says one of the leaders. “We use it to describe a tendency toward white-collar orientation. A good solid 50 percent are true professionals. In Buffalo, 99 percent of the professionally-placed people need to be in the closet, so it’s very important to have a group that can provide an outlet for them.”

Also typical of last week’s meeting was the secrecy of the meeting place. “There’s really nothing to worry about,” scoffed one young man as he prepared to leave for two-for-one drink night at a popular gay bar. At the comment, the proprietor of the meeting place, a prominent local figure whose sexual orientation is well-concealed, bristled with anxiety. “That’s wrong,” he said. “There’s everything to worry about.”

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IN THE PHOTO: The cover of Gusto didn’t breathe a word about what the cover story was.

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FOOTNOTE: I remember really wanting to write about Buffalo’s gay community, but I forget how much editorial guidance went into this. Looking back at it 45 years later, I’m struck by the structure of the article: The lead-in proposing that now is a good time to talk about this. The historical context. Then the little bombshell about how at least 10% of the population is homosexual. Even though gay sensibilities were starting to break through, this was still a dark age.