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Harry Hay Quotes

Henry "Harry" Hay Jr. was an American gay rights activist, communist, and labor advocate. He was a co-founder of the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States, as well as the Radical Faeries, a loosely affiliated gay spiritual movement.

Born to an upper middle class family in England, Hay was raised in Chile and California. From an early age, he acknowledged his same-sex sexual attraction, and an interest in Marxism. Briefly studying at Stanford University, he subsequently became a professional actor in Los Angeles, where he joined the Communist Party USA, becoming a committed labor activist. As a result of societal pressure, he married Party activist Anita Platky in 1938, with whom he adopted two children. Recognizing that he remained homosexual, his marriage ended and in 1950 he founded the Mattachine Society. Although involved in campaigns for gay rights, he resigned from the Society in 1953.

Hay's developing understanding of the social and political marginalization of gay people led him to take a stand against the assimilationism advocated by the majority of gay rights campaigners. He subsequently became a co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of the Gay Liberation Front in 1969, although in 1970 he moved to New Mexico with his longtime partner John Burnside. Hay's ongoing interest in Native American religions led the couple to co-found the Radical Faeries in 1979 with Don Kilhefner and Mitchell L. Walker. Returning to Los Angeles, Hay remained involved in an array of activist causes throughout his life, and became a well-known, albeit controversial, elder statesman within the country's gay community. Hay has been described as "the Founder of the Modern Gay Movement" and "the father of gay liberation".Controversially, Hay was an active supporter of the North American Man/Boy Love Association , a pedophile advocacy organization. He protested the group being banned from Pride parades, wearing a sign protesting the banning during the 1986 Los Angeles Pride, and boycotting New York Pride in 1994 for their refusal to include NAMBLA. He spoke out in support of relationships between adult men and boys as young as thirteen, and spoke at several NAMBLA meetings, including panels in 1984 and 1986, and another in 1994 about helping the group strategize a name change to help with their public image. Wikipedia  

✵ 7. April 1912 – 24. October 2002
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Harry Hay: 11   quotes 0   likes

Famous Harry Hay Quotes

“Though ethics are arrived at by the group, they are meaningful only when applied by the individual himself. It is essential that Homosexuals begin to direct their thinking in this way. Ghetto walls ca be knocked down, but cooperation is essential. There are, however, difficulties to be overcome. Those in greatest need are sometimes the most reluctant to help each other or themselves, tending rather to think of personal experiences as things apart from mutual effort toward betterment.”

Harry Hay

Social Directions of the Homosexual (1951)

“We are coming more and more to realize that the morally healthy person is he who is capable of realizing his sexual nature to its fullest potential for growth. Contemporary modes of discourse quite agree that such realizations require persons to be able to relate to none another on a subject-to-subject basis.”

Harry Hay

The Homosexual's Responsibility to the Community (1967)

“…I knew that I was gay in every bone of my body. So I did the only thing I could do. I started the movement.”

Harry Hay

On living a closeted married life in “Meet Pioneer of Gay Rights, Harry Hay” https://progressive.org/magazine/meet-pioneer-gay-rights-harry-hay/ in The Progressive (2016 Aug 9)

“…I always say to people, If you share my dream, why don't we walk together?”

Harry Hay

And that's my only organizing tool.

On organizing people to come together in “Meet Pioneer of Gay Rights, Harry Hay” https://progressive.org/magazine/meet-pioneer-gay-rights-harry-hay/ in The Progressive (2016 Aug 9)

“…it was not in the dictionary. I've always said, If I had the sense I was born with and looked it up in the legal code, I would have found it.”

Harry Hay

And it was in the penal code, of course. It wouldn't be in any American dictionary until 1938. And in most American dictionaries not until the Second World War. We had no words for ourselves. That's the important point--we didn't have words...

On not having the word to define his sexual orientation in “Meet Pioneer of Gay Rights, Harry Hay” https://progressive.org/magazine/meet-pioneer-gay-rights-harry-hay/ in The Progressive (2016 Aug 9)

“Homosexuals do not understand themselves and thus it is not surprising that heterosexuals do not understand them ether.”

Harry Hay

Social Directions of the Homosexual (1951)

“We say that homosexuality is a perfectly natural state, a fact, a way of life, and that we enjoy our sexuality, without feelings of inferiority or guilt. We seek and find love, and approach love, as a feeling of loving mutuality.”

Harry Hay

Statement of Purpose: Gay Liberation Front (Dec. 1969)

“We, the Androgynes of the world, have formed this responsible corporate body to demonstrate by our efforts that our physiological and psychological handicaps need be no deterrent in integrating 10% of the world's population towards the constructive social progress of mankind.”

Harry Hay

"We, the Androgynes of the World" (July 7th, 1950)

Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the words of its Founder (1996)

Harry Hay Quotes about people

“Our goal is total liberation life is for the living. We are alive! We want all to be alive! Sex is a sure cure of boredom and an antidote to violence that is so American. Power to the People!”

Harry Hay

Statement of Purpose: Gay Liberation Front (Dec. 1969)

“The Mattachine Society holds it possible and desirable that a highly ethical homosexual culture emerge, as a consequence ofits work, paralleling the emerging cultures of our fellow-minorities - the Negro, Mexican, and Jewish Peoples. The Society believes homosexuals can lead well adjusted, wholesome, and socially productive lives once ignorance and prejudice against hem is successfully combated, and once homosexuals themselves feel they have a dignified and useful role to ply in society. The Society, to these ends, is in the process of developing a homosexual ethic- disciplined, moral, and socially responsible.”

Harry Hay

Mattachine Society Missions and Purposes (1956)

“The Society, founded upon the highest ethical and social principles, serves as an example for homosexuals to follow, and provides a dignified standard upon which the rest of society can base a more intelligent and accurate picture of the nature of homosexuality than currently obtains in the public mind. The Society provides the instrument necessary to work with civic minded and social valuable organizations, and supplies the means for the assistance of our people whoa re victimized daily as a result of our oppression. Only a Society providing an enlightened leadership can rouse the homosexuals - one of the largest minorities in America today - to take the actions necessary to elevate themselves from the social ostracism an unsympathetic culture has perpetrated upon them.”

Harry Hay

Mattachine Society Missions and Purposes"

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