Homosexuals in Revolt

Gay Activists Alliance dance, New York City, 1971


A show of hands, please:  is there anyone else here who remembers hot pants?

Hmm. 

And is there anyone besides your graybearded Head Trucker who will admit to having owned a pair?

Uh-huh.

And actually wearing them in broad daylight, out in public?

Oh.  I see.

Goddamn, I had to have been born this way; didn't know another gay soul, it was just sheer instinct.  Years and years before I even thought about coming out, there I was bopping down the sidewalk one summer day in 1971, wearing my new tank top and hot pants (all color-coordinated, of course, in maroon and white), thinking I was just being mildly fashionable.

Until later my (straight) best friend carefully mentioned he'd seen me.  And asked what I was wearing out there.  "Oh, hot pants . . . is that what that was?" he asked, with a pained expression on his face.

Chagrined, I got the point and promptly consigned them to the lower depths of my closet.  As far as I know, they're still in there.

Meanwhile, I was only very, very vaguely aware that my gay brothers up north and out west (those awful, sinful homos I yearned for and feared at the same time) were hanging out of in hot pants and dancing their butts off, happy and fearless and free. 

My God - 40 years ago.  Already.  Where does the time go?  WTF?!

Take a little spin in the time machine with this Life article from 1971 on the militant homos who were finding their voices and gaining ground, inch by inch compared to today.  But it was a start.

Excerpt:

It was the most shocking, and to many Americans, the most surprising liberation movement yet.  Under the slogan, "Out of the closets and into the streets," thousands of homosexuals, male and female, were proudly confessing what they had long hidden.  They were, moreover, moving into direct confrontation with conventional society.  Their battle was far from won.  But in 1971, militant homosexuals showed that they were prepared to fight it . . . .  

Gay pride march, Christopher Street, 1971

BTW, the following, unrelated article, "Looking for Ourselves in the News of '71," gives a very accurate feel for the deflated, uncertain, lackluster mood of the time when the brilliant parade of the Sixties had passed and the stale twilight of the Nixon years had set in. Another good read by a thoughtful writer.