Activists strategize for Philly gay-rights bill
Adapted from reporting by PGN staff
The Committee for a Gay Rights Bill, although it had been dormant since 1975, met again in August 1976 to discuss the reintroduction of a gay-rights bill in Philadelphia City Council.
Nine people attended the meeting held in Dignity House at 12th and Manning streets, soon after Councilman Lucien Blackwell announced he would reintroduce Bill 1275.
The discussion mainly concerned the necessary lobbying effort for the new bill. Attendees were putting together an educational packet for volunteer lobbyists and wanted to ensure that they were well-informed on the needs to be served by the proposed bill and likely grounds of opposition to it. The committee planned to meet again mid-September 1976.
State Senate committee to hold public hearings on prison rape
Adapted from reporting by Harry Langhorne
A Democratic state senator from Philadelphia announced in the summer of 1976 that a special Senate Prison Inquiry Committee would hold public hearings on the “problem of homosexuality” within the state’s correctional system, by which he primarily meant prison rape.
The hearings were scheduled for Sept. 15 and 16.
State Sen. Freeman Hankins revealed the plans after he and several other senators made an unannounced visit to the state correctional institution at Camp Hill.
“The complaints brought to our attention by the press and inmates are too revolting to ignore,” Hankins told the Philadelphia Tribune at the time.
Bernard Bryman, the attorney for the special committee, told PGN the committee members did not yet know what reforms they wished to implement.
He added the committee would welcome testimony from anyone with first-hand knowledge of the problem, including prison counselors from the Metropolitan Community Church, former prisoners or letters from gay inmates that were written within the last three years.
Bryman said he was sensitive to the concern that the hearings would merely scapegoat gay people as those responsible for prison rape. He said he would like to keep the talk focused on generating “meaningful reform proposals.”
— compiled by Paige Cooperstein