There is not a week that goes by where I do not get requests for interviews or speaking engagements or to be a part of a new and exciting project or organization. Writing that line brings a smile to my face since, when I began my activism, you simply didn’t speak about being LGBT.
The media really didn’t want to cover it, and here’s something I want many of you to hear — or in this case read, and read well: Many times when we came to our very own community to ask them to join us or help us, they not only turned their backs, they ran. In the late-1960s and early 1970s, LGBT people were overwhelmingly in the closet.
And those in the closet actually resented those of us on the front lines of the battle for LGBT equality. For me, the single moment when I realized that was the day we introduced the first gay-rights (nondiscrimination) legislation into Philadelphia City Council. It had taken years of talking to councilmembers just to find two who would finally introduce it, and we had no expectation of what would happen to it once it was introduced. We were overjoyed as we left City Hall after its presentation. Walking down the stairs of one of the building’s towers, I came across an old friend from school. He asked me why I was in City Hall. After telling him, he actually slapped me and said in an angered voice, “You’ve ruined it for us. Now they’ll be shining a light on us.”
He was scared, very scared — as were most who were in the closet — and they had good reason to be. In those days, if you were LGBT and out, your chance of a good job was nil. And, if you were employed and your employers discovered your LGBT identity, you had a good chance of losing that job. It might sound strange, but LGBT people losing their jobs was a common occurrence in those days.
And if your family found out, your house of religion? This column could go on and continue to list the horrible existence of LGBT people in those times but here’s the ugly truth: While those times are gone in most urban places, they are still around in many parts of the United States. What are we in those great urban cities of the nation doing to help those in areas who still feel as though they are back in the 1960s?
Mark Segal, PGN publisher, is the nation’s most-award-winning commentator in LGBT media. He can be reached at [email protected].