Donn Teal
Stein and Day
1971
355 pages
I purchased The Gay Militants for two dollars from the man who sells books on the street at the corner of Bloor St. West and Brunswick Ave. in the Annex neighborhood of Toronto. The small number of street-bound booksellers who set up within a one kilometer radius of the University of Toronto St. George campus have some good books. In addition to The Gay Militants, I have also found books by Herbert Marcuse and Henri Lefebvre from either the man in the Annex or the man who sells books just outside of St. George subway station. Don’t ignore these guys!
The Gay Militants is a comprehensive (300+ pages) history of a then new radical homosexual activism, starting in June 1969 with the Stonewall Riots, and ending with discussions of the event of Christopher Street Liberation Day (essentially the first NYC pride parade), on July 27, 1970. Barely over a year of action is chronicled, in great depth, by Teal - and this book can be read almost as a survey of the underground (and overground) press coverage of the burgeoning gay liberation movement, as each chapter contains dozens of article excerpts.
Teal, who died in 2009, was an insider to the gay liberation movement, and he wrote his text in the voice of someone who was present at many of the events he described. He was a founding member of the Gay Activist Alliance, an organization that is also one of the primary subjects of his text, and therefore was at the heart of these matters as an active participant, and not just their historian. The book is an incredibly dense look at all of the events from that first year, from battles with police, to the management of dances, to the establishment of an underground press (as well as commentary on items in both the activist and popular press that showed difficulty in accepting that there was any such need for gay liberation). The Gay Militants also, towards its end, quotes statements of support for from members of The Black Panther Party as well as critique of other (macho-man) radicals who ignored their cause or didn’t see it as valid.
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