GLF-DC: Rabble with a Cause

After New York’s Stonewall riots in 1969, the first gay activists to burst out across the country called themselves “the Gay Liberation Front.” This document recounts the brief career of GLF-DC, the capital city’s manifestation of that movement.

GLF-DC was active between 1970 and 1972. Its participants sparked newsworthy protests against psychiatrists’ and churches’ homophobic stands on homosexuality, as well as gay bars’ exclusion of black, female and cross-dressing customers. And some of the activists went on to start longer-lasting gay community institutions in the city.

The activists’ objectives and tactics were inspired by the Black Power, antiwar and women’s rights movements. Its members were white and black, street and suburban, men and . . . Well, most of the gay women didn’t hang around for long; they figured most GLF men were not ready for feminism.

Like gay liberationists in other cities, GLF-DC members showed the straight world that gay men and women were here, as we are everywhere. They tried to help victims of the prevailing homophobia to heal their psychic wounds. And they urged those gay men and lesbians to come out proudly, to demand to
be acknowledged, and to shout what the dominant society had hushed for centuries.