The County of Sonoma has arranged to provide COVID-19 vaccinations to adults 16 years and older who are homebound for a variety of medical reasons and have difficulty getting to a clinic. The County is working with Fox Home Health, which has established a mobile vaccine clinic for those who are homebound.
The County Department of Health Services is working to prioritize homebound individuals in collaboration with service providers, including in-home supportive services, hospice, North Bay Regional Center, Council on Aging and the Adult & Aging Division of Human Services.
The community can participate by reaching out to people they know who may be homebound to share information about the mobile clinic.
“We want to connect with those individuals who are homebound for medical reasons and let them know we will come to their home to vaccinate them against COVID-19,” said Dr. Urmila Shende, head of the County’s COVID-19 vaccination team, in a statement. “This is part of the County’s campaign to take care of our medically vulnerable residents and make sure they don’t slip between the cracks of the vaccine rollout.”
Medicare considers a person homebound if:
• He or she needs the help of another person or medical equipment such as crutches, a walker or a wheelchair to leave home, or their doctor believes that health or illness could get worse if they leave home.https://newsletter.pressdemocrat.com/framed/single?pid=41&hideImage=1&fid=6053
• And, it is difficult for the person to leave their home and they typically cannot do so.
Fox Home Health will screen homebound individuals for eligibility before providing vaccinations.
Homebound individuals who fit the criteria should call 565-4667 or email stompcovid@foxandassociates.org for more information.
It was December 9, 2010. Joe Manchin, the former Democratic Governor of West Virginia, cast his first vote as a newly-sworn-in U.S. Senator. He voted against repealing the discriminatory, anti-LGBTQ “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
“As a Senator of just three weeks, I have not had the opportunity to visit and hear the full range of viewpoints from the citizens of West Virginia.”
That’s the same Joe Manchin who in 1982 had begun his political career as a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates.
After nearly three decades of serving as a lawmaker, Secretary of State, and a governor, Senator Manchin felt he wasn’t sufficiently well-enough informed to do the right thing and vote to protect America’s LGBTQ service men and women.
Fast forward to today, when Joe Manchin has now been in public service for almost 40 years.
On the campaign trail Joe Biden indicated his top priority was passing the LGBTQ Equality Act, legislation that has been introduced into Congress in various forms since the 1970’s, even longer than the 73-year old Senator from West Virginia has been in politics. Biden said he wanted to sign the Equality Act into law in his first 100 days.
There are three things getting in the way of legislation that seven out of 10 Americans not only support, but think is already federal law: the filibuster, Republicans, and Joe Manchin. Ironically, Manchin, like Republicans, opposes killing the filibuster and opposes passing the Equality Act.
“A little more than two months into Biden’s term,” The Daily Beast reports, “Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has taken on the role of perpetual fly in the ointment of progressive legislation. The Equality Act is no exception.”
Make no mistake, Manchin is anti-LGBTQ. He opposes same-sex marriage (although agrees it is settled law) and echoing the massive conservative campaign against transgender people, opposes the Equality Act (in part) because, he claims, it does not provide “sufficient guidance to the local officials who will be responsible for implementing it, particularly with respect to students transitioning between genders in public schools.”
That is not the function of legislation, that is the function of the Dept. of Education, something Manchin certainly must know.
“In private, according to those familiar, Manchin has been equally skeptical this time around, citing a massive call-in campaign organized by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation intended to sink the bill. Manchin told one co-sponsor of the Equality Act that the calls to his office were opposed to the legislation ‘a thousand to one.'”
The Beast calls getting 60 votes to pass the Equality Act without one of them being Manchin’s “functionally impossible, given the Senate’s current makeup.”
Lucas Wilson said he received conversion therapy from a student club called Band of Brothers at Liberty University from 2008 to 2012, when he was an undergraduate student.
Wilson, now 30, said when he visited campus prior to enrolling, he saw an ad for “struggling with same-sex attraction.”
“The biggest factor in why I chose Liberty was ultimately the conversion therapy program because I, in fact, believed that one could become straight,” Wilson said.
He is now one of 33 LGBTQ students who are suing the Department of Education in a class-action lawsuit filed Monday. The students allege that they faced discrimination at 25 federally funded Christian colleges and universities in 18 states.
Wilson said Liberty University is a “thoroughly homophobic institution” and that, in addition to offering conversion therapy in the form of a student club, he also had several classes that taught “the evils of the homosexual lifestyle.”
Lucas Wilson, 30, alleged Liberty University is a “thoroughly homophobic institution.” He said he received conversion therapy through a student club now known as Armor Bearers.Cole Burston
He said the conversion therapy group, and the culture at Liberty, “amplified and compounded feelings of self-hatred, feelings of shame and guilt and anxiety that ultimately took years to deconstruct.”
The Religious Exemption Accountability Project, or REAP, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ students at taxpayer-funded religious colleges and universities, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Oregon on behalf of former and current students.
Liberty University has not responded to NBC News’ requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Department of Education said the Biden administration is “fully committed to equal education access for all students.”
The spokesperson added that President Joe Biden stated in an executive order earlier this month, “It is the policy of my Administration that all students should be guaranteed an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex, including discrimination in the form of sexual harassment, which encompasses sexual violence, and including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Many Christian colleges and universities receive federal funding and are still allowed to enforce policies that, for example, prohibit same-sex relationships on campus. That’s because Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination, contains an exemption for religious entities.
The students’ lawsuit argues that the religious exemption is unconstitutional and that it allows the Department of Education “to breach its duty” to LGBTQ students at religious colleges and universities “where discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is codified in campus policies and openly practiced.”
The ultimate goal of the lawsuit is to strike down Title IX’s religious exemption.
Paul Southwick, the director of REAP, said the main premise of his argument is that the federal government is “not allowed to pass laws or take actions that target a politically unpopular group.”
“Here, what the religious exemption to Title IX is doing is, it really targets people based on sex, which includes sexual orientation and gender identity, for inferior treatment,” Southwick said.
His argument claims that the religious exemption is unconstitutional because it violates the due process and equal protection rights afforded to LGBTQ people and it violates the establishment clause because it “favors certain fundamentalist religious organizations and gives them preferential treatment above all other educational institutions, including religious educational institutions that have affirming beliefs about LGBTQ people.”
Regarding the religious exemption, the Department of Education spokesperson said the text of Title IX states it does not apply to “an educational institution which is controlled by a religious organization” where its application “would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization.”
Southwick’s constitutional argument is based on a number of cases, but he said one of the most important is Bob Jones University v. United States, which found in 1983 that Bob Jones University did not get to maintain its tax-exempt status due to an interracial dating ban — a policy the university claimed was based in its sincerely held religious beliefs.
The Supreme Court held in an 8-1 decision that limitations on religious liberty can be justified by an “overriding governmental interest” such as prohibiting racial discrimination. As a result, it found that “not all burdens on religion are unconstitutional.”
Southwick said mainstream LGBTQ organizations haven’t done enough to fight for LGBTQ students at religious colleges, and that’s because “when you talk about queer kids at Christian colleges, their responses are ‘What the hell are they doing there?’”
LGBTQ students often attend religious colleges for a host of reasons, but mainly because they’re born into fundamentalist Christian families, Southwick said.
“The natural consequence of that is that — gay or straight — a lot of them will end up at Christian colleges, and when they’re there, they’re treated inhumanely and subjected to these dangerous and abusive policies and practices,” he said.
Some of the plaintiffs claim they were denied admission to or expelled from religious colleges due to being LGBTQ. Others say their colleges have strict policies surrounding sexuality and purity.
“The general language that you’ll find in a lot of the policies is as follows: The schools prohibit homosexual conduct, homosexual relationships, transgender conduct, which they struggle with how to describe,” Southwick said. “And they prohibit same-sex marriages. So what that means is kids are getting engaged and hiding it because they’ll be expelled. Kids who are found out are being expelled. What it means is when a nonbinary or a trans student is dressing and grooming and using names and pronouns consistent with their gender identity, they’re punished.”
The student club that offers conversion therapy at Liberty University still exists, though now it’s called Armor Bearers, according to the school’s 2020 “Pathways Handbook,” which provides students with a “menu” of “educational opportunities” to choose from if they violate school policy.
Wilson said the lawsuit will help shed light on the policies at Liberty and other religious schools.
“We’re putting pressure on these schools to change how they treat their LGBTQ students, so for me, this is very important work,” he said. “It’s work that is long overdue.”
FFT Elects Two New Board Members Food For Thought is pleased to announce the addition of John Andrew Wesley, M.D., and Estelle H. Rogers to its Board of Directors. “Our board plays an important role in helping the agency provide food and nutrition services to people living with HIV, COVID-19 and other serious illnesses,” said Ron Karp, executive director of Food For Thought. “John Andrew and Estelle, who have both served as volunteers, have long been advocates for underserved communities in Sonoma County. Estelle, an accomplished attorney, has a keen mind and outstanding interpersonal skills and John Andrew has a medical background and extensive experience working with people living with HIV through his work with both Face to Face and Santa Rosa Community Health. We look forward to incorporating their insights into our client programs and are excited to have their help in raising Food For Thought’s visibility in the community.”
Click here to learn more about John Andrew and Estelle and FFT’s other board members.
John Andrew WesleyEstelle H Rogers
FFT’s Wellness Month Events in Coming in April!Join FFT’s Fundraising Team Today! FFT invites you to get moving while helping us provide nutritious food for our neighbors living with serious illnesses! This fun and engaging virtual fundraiser challenges you to get up go and do something active that you enjoy! Walking, running, hiking, cycling, skating or even swimming – you choose! Then ask your friends and family to donate to FFT in support of your fundraising effort. Simply click here to become a fundraiser.Healthy Greens Online Cooking Class Join FFT’s Registered Dietitian Nina Redman and Chef Ruth Lefkowitz for an online cooking demonstration on Wednesday, April 7th at 2 p.m. Our culinary team will be preparing a spring herb soup and a chicken, avocado and grapefruit salad. These recipes feature a variety of spring greens that you can mix and match. To sign up, please email KathleenH@FFTfoodbank.org. A Zoom link and the recipes will be sent to you prior to the class. A suggested donation of $25 is requested. To donate, please click here.
Yoga at DeLoach Winery Join local yoga teacher Kelliann Reginato for a 75-minute class at picturesque DeLoach Vineyards on April 11th to benefit Food For Thought! Class will be multi-level and COVID-19 safety protocols will be in enforced. Standard ticket price is $30, with option to donate more if desired.
DeLoach will be offering two-for-one tastings to all participants, with proceeds for wine purchases donated to Food For Thought as well! Click here to register.
FFT’s Plant Start Sale Get ready to plant your 2021 garden at Food For Thought’s Wellness Month Plant Sale! Buy starts of diverse organic heirloom vegetable varieties, flowers and native plants. The sale runs during the weekend of April 24-25 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., in the Food For Thought parking lot at 6550 Railroad Ave. in Forestville. Support a great cause and take home some special plants! All proceeds benefit Food For Thought, serving thousands of Sonoma County residents living with serious illnesses with healthy food.
Spicy Chard Soup Enjoy a delicious bowl of Spicy Chard Soup this St. Patrick’s Day! This savory soup is a great way to get some nutritious leafy greens into your diet. It includes crushed caraway and cumin seeds and is accented by harissa or the hot sauce of your choice. Click here for the recipe.
Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, announced early 2022 endorsements of four Congressional incumbents in key 2022 battleground districts on Wednesday: Rep. John Garamendi (CA-03), Rep. Josh Harder (CA-10), Rep. Katie Porter (CA-45) and Rep. Mike Levin (CA-49). Protecting the four incumbents and winning back Congressional seats lost to anti-LGBTQ+ candidates in 2020 will be a top priority for the organization ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
“Protecting our champions in Congress and expanding our pro-equality House majority are critical priorities for the LGBTQ+ community,” said Equality California Executive Director Rick Chavez Zbur. “Voters gave the Biden-Harris Administration a mandate in 2020: pass the Equality Act, reform our broken immigration system, advance racial justice and equity and expand access to quality, affirming healthcare. The Biden-Harris agenda is achievable, but only if we ensure they have pro-equality partners in Congress — and all four of these leaders have demonstrated their unwavering commitment to creating a world that is healthy, just and fully equal for all LGBTQ+ people.”
Candidate Reactions:
“I’m honored to be endorsed by Equality California—an organization that understands that we must have equal opportunity for all, do what we can to end discrimination, and remove barriers to opportunity,” said Rep. John Garamendi. “Throughout our country’s proud history, every generation has faced a national debate on civil rights issues. While these struggles have often been slow and arduous, as we have witnessed for more than two centuries, the trajectory of our society is toward more equality under the law. That’s why I support legislation like the Equality Act, which would update the Civil Rights Act to include LGBT Americans, specifically making it illegal to discriminate against them in the workplace, housing, and public accommodations. Thank you to Equality California for their endorsement. Together, we will work to end discrimination in our nation and create a more just and fair society.”
“No matter who you are or who you love, you deserve equal treatment under the law,” said Rep. Josh Harder. “I’m proud to stand with our LGBTQ neighbors and loved ones, and will keep fighting to make sure they are finally treated with the respect and equality they deserve.”
“Equality California has been a leader and a key partner as I advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, and I am thrilled to receive their early endorsement,” said Rep. Katie Porter. “Until every American, regardless of who they are or who they love, can live free from hate, discrimination, and violence, I’ll keep up the fight. I look forward to continuing to work with Equality California to build an equal and just future for all.”
“Equality California is one of the nation’s most effective organizations advancing the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and social justice,” said Rep. Mike Levin. “In the past two decades they have led the fight to pass over 150 bills and resolutions advancing human rights in the California legislature. I am deeply honored that they have recognized me as an ally and that they have endorsed my campaign for re-election to Congress.”
For a complete list of Equality California’s current endorsements, visit eqca.org/elections.
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Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. We bring the voices of LGBTQ people and allies to institutions of power in California and across the United States, striving to create a world that is healthy, just, and fully equal for all LGBTQ people. We advance civil rights and social justice by inspiring, advocating and mobilizing through an inclusive movement that works tirelessly on behalf of those we serve. www.eqca.org
The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, the LGBTQ Caucus of the League of California Cities and Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, announced their opposition to the misguided and dangerous effort to recall Governor Gavin Newsom during a virtual press conference on Friday (Facebook, Download). Equality California Executive Director Rick Chavez Zbur, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, Legislative LGBTQ Caucus Chair Assemblymember Evan Low (D-Campbell), former Chair Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), Senator John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego), Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia, League of California Cities LGBTQ Caucus Board Member Palm Springs Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Middleton and BART Board Director Janice Li praised Governor Newsom’s long record of support for LGBTQ+ civil rights and his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, national economic downturn and devastating wildfires. The leaders also spoke to the risk that the partisan recall effort, led and funded by anti-LGBTQ+ and pro-Trump extremists, poses to LGBTQ+ Californians and the diverse communities to which LGBTQ+ people belong.
After the press conference, 60* LGBTQ+ elected officials throughout California (listed below) released the following joint statement opposing the recall effort:
“As LGBTQ+ Californians and elected leaders in our communities, we strongly oppose the misguided effort to recall Governor Gavin Newsom. This attempt to remove the Governor — led and funded by anti-LGBTQ+ and pro-Trump extremists — is the product of a coordinated disinformation campaign that will cost the state of California $100 million. Instead, this money should be used to support Californians as our state recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. The recall poses an especially grave threat to our LGBTQ+ community and the progress that California continues to make toward full, lived equality for all people.
“Throughout his career, Governor Newsom has been a dedicated ally of the LGBTQ+ community and an unyielding champion in our fight for civil rights and social justice. He stood with us at times when it was not politically popular, regardless of personal and professional risks, because he knew it was the right thing to do. He has taken bold, principled actions to advance marriage equality, expand access to life-saving HIV prevention medication, protect transgender Californians from discrimination, and ensure that California’s government reflects the diversity of our communities.
“Governor Newsom’s leadership has earned the trust of LGBTQ+ Californians, and our community stands ready to defeat a recall.”
The following officials signed the statement above:
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara
U.S. Representative Mark Takano
California Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman
California Senator John Laird
California Senator Scott Wiener
California Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes
California Assemblymember Evan Low
California Assemblymember Chris Ward
San Leandro Unified School District Board Trustee James Aguilar
San Leandro Vice Mayor Victor Aguilar
Berkeley Unified School District Board President Judy Appel
Signal Hill City Treasurer Larry Blunden
Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin
Anaheim City Councilmember Jordan Brandman
Former San Mateo County Harbor District Commissioner Sabrina Rose Brennan
El Monte Union High School District Board President Florencio Briones
Belvedere Mayor James Campbell
Pleasant Hill City Councilmember Ken Carlson
Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board Commissioner James Chang
San Francisco Treasurer José Cisneros
Redlands City Councilmember Denise Davis
Hacienda La Puente Unified School District Board Member Anthony A. Duarte
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board Director Bevan Dufty
Oceanside Unified School District Trustee Eleanor Evans
Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority Director Shay Franco-Clausen
Los Angeles City Controller Ron S. Galperin
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria
Former San Diego City Council President Georgette Gómez
Cathedral City Mayor Gregory Raymond
Sacramento Municipal Utility District Board Member Rosanna Herber
Pajaro Valley Unified School District Trustee Jennifer Holm
Palm Springs Mayor Christy Holstege
West Basin Municipal Water District Director Scott Houston
Palm Springs City Councilmember Geoff Kors
Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila J. Kuehl
Dublin City Councilmember Shawn Kumagai
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board Director Janice Li
Monterey Park Mayor Pro Tem Henry Lo
Former Stockton Unified School District Board President Lange Luntao
San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman
Palm Springs Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Middleton
Encinitas City Councilmember Joe Mosca
College of Marin Board Trustee Stephanie O’Brien
San Leandro Unified School District Board Member Peter Oshinski
Oak Grove School District Board of Trustees Vice President Jorge Pacheco, Jr.
Chula Vista City Councilmember and California Coastal Commission Chair Steve C. Padilla
San Carlos Mayor Laura Parmer-Lohan
Los Angeles County Assessor Jeff Prang
San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District Director Miles Prince
El Cerrito Mayor Pro Tem Gabriel Quinto
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board Vice President Rebecca Saltzman
San Francisco Unified School District Commissioner Mark Sanchez
Cabrillo Community College District Trustee Adam Spickler
City College of San Francisco Trustee Tom Temprano
Marin Community College District Board of Trustees President Wanden Treanor
Los Angeles Community College District Trustee David Vela**
Palm Springs City Councilmember Dennis Woods
San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District Board President Thomas Wong
Fullerton City Councilmember Ahmad Zahra
Desert Healthcare District Director Dr. Les Zendle
*Number updated to reflect new total **Added March 18, 2021
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Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. We bring the voices of LGBTQ people and allies to institutions of power in California and across the United States, striving to create a world that is healthy, just, and fully equal for all LGBTQ people. We advance civil rights and social justice by inspiring, advocating and mobilizing through an inclusive movement that works tirelessly on behalf of those we serve. www.eqca.org
Sonoma County Pride is Back!,Beyond The Rainbow – Thriving, Reviving, and Surviving
After a challenging year of cancellations and lockdowns, this year’s Sonoma County Pride celebration returns with hope and positivity! This annual event will include a month-long series of COVID-19 aware micro-events in varied venues throughout Sonoma County. The events will offer activities for all ages and abilities. This year’s theme, “Beyond the Rainbow: Surviving, Reviving, and Thriving”, takes inspiration from THE WIZARD OF OZ to offer renewal and support to the LGBTQ community. Sonoma County Pride’s Secretary Cheryl Kabanuck puts the beloved film’s lessons into perspective. “There’s no place like home being back together with our community. Courage leads us here, knowledge is how we survive and heart is what keeps us together.”Since the worldwide pandemic forced the cancellation of 2020 Pride events everywhere, it was important to find a unifying theme to recognize we’re not all in the same space mentally and emotionally. The past year has been incredibly challenging for everyone, and each of us faced different struggles. The focus for Sonoma County Pride 2021 is on the mental, physical and emotional health and wellness of community members. Vice President @Grace Villafuer emphasizes, “While some of us are reviving and thriving, some of us are still focused on surviving. Wherever we are on our journey, we hope Sonoma County Pride 2021 will offer each of us a feeling of community, pride, and peace. We strive to not only reach our unique rainbows – our dreams and inner strengths, but we look to go Beyond the Rainbow!”According to Director of Logistics Brian Rogers, “Those of us who survived this surreal year gained new respect and meaning for the prime lesson Dorothy learned in Oz: ‘There’s no place like home.’ Now that we have nearly SURVIVED the pandemic, let’s embrace that hopeful spirit as we REVIVE together and support one another so we can once again THRIVE.”Christopher Kren-Mora, President of Sonoma Pride, promises a different but exciting series of events to bring the community back together in a spirit of celebration. “It won’t be a single weekend this year, but a month of fun, hope, and renewal that we’ve all been hoping for.” The calendar of upcoming Sonoma County Pride events will be published as dates and venues are confirmed.
Julius’, a beloved New York City bar, has occupied the corner of Waverly Place and West 10th Street in the West Village for nearly 160 years. With little identifying it beyond its name in simple green cursive, the watering hole’s unassuming exterior belies its importance in gay rights history.
Like the Stonewall Inn just a few hundred feet away, Julius’ has been a lifeline to New York’s queer community for decades.
Now its owner is determined to make sure that legacy — and the bar itself— isn’t a casualty of the pandemic, which has devastated New York City nightlife.
Opened as a dry goods store in 1840, the building at 159 West 10th Street was already serving as a saloon by the 1860s. During Prohibition, Julius’ was a speakeasy, allegedly taking its name from the proprietor. Numerous unmarked doors and basement tunnels used for coal delivery allowed for quick escapes if the bar was raided, according to long-time bartenders Tracy O’Neill and Daniel Onzo.
Much of Julius’ remains unchanged from that era, including the long wooden bar with a century’s worth of “scratchitti” carved into it. Jacob Ruppert Brewery beer barrels serve as tables and stools.
Chandeliers dangling overhead are made from wagon wheels of horse-drawn carriages that once delivered ice.
Julius’ had started attracting a gay following at least by the 1950s and, according to local lore, was a popular hangout for midcentury queer luminaries like Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Rudolf Nureyev.
But New York State Liquor Authority regulations at that time prohibited serving drinks to “known or suspected homosexuals,” whose very presence was considered disorderly behavior.
“This law was used to prevent the existence of gay bars, so the ones that did exist were under the control of the criminal underworld,” Randy Wicker, a member of the New York chapter of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights groups, said. Either the mob ran the establishment or bar owners would pay for protection to avoid being raided.
“It forced gay people into that underworld,” Wicker, 83, said. “It led to exploitation, blackmail, people being brutalized.”
Wicker said The Mattachine Society wanted to challenge the liquor laws. “We felt it was very similar to how Black people were being denied the right to sit at a lunch counter,” he said.
The idea for a protest, or a “sip-in” as it was eventually called, was inspired by the sit-ins of the civil rights movement: On April 21, 1966, four members of the New York Mattachine chapter walked into a bar, declared they were homosexuals and demanded to be served. Assuming they would be refused, the group planned to file a complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights.
Julius’ was actually the fourth place the group hit that day, with Wicker joining Mattachine president Dick Leitsch, vice president Craig Rodwell and member John Timmons. The first bar they visited, the Ukrainian-American Village Restaurant, had been tipped off and closed early.
At Howard Johnson’s, the group declared, “We’re homosexuals and we want to be served.”
“The waitress laughed and said, ‘No problem,’ and took the order,” Wicker said.
It was getting late and they were in danger of losing the reporters who had tagged along. Julius’, it turned out, was the perfect spot for their test case: It had a sizable homosexual following, Wicker said, but the management was determined not to let it become a “gay bar.”
“There had been an entrapment case recently — someone went home with an undercover policeman,” he said. “So they patrolled the bar very strictly. If there were too many men together inside, they’d stop letting men in unless you came with a woman.”
The group walked in and ordered, then Leitsch announced, “We are homosexuals. We are orderly, we intend to remain orderly, and we are asking for service.”
A New York Times photographer captured the moment the bartender put his hand over a glass and stopped making their drinks.
“I think it’s against the law,” he said, according to Wicker.
It was exactly the reaction Mattachine members had hoped for: Publicity from the “sip-in” led to the New York State Supreme Court ruling a year later that simply being gay — or even cruising or kissing — was not indecent behavior.
It didn’t just change liquor regulations, Wicker said. “It helped moved the gay community out of the grasp of the criminal world.”
Within a few years, there were legitimate, independent gay bars. They remained the nexus of gay life for decades, said LGBTQ historian Ken Lustbader, cofounder of the New York City LGBT Historic Sites Project.
“Because of LGBTQ discrimination by authorities, in policy and practice, there were really no other meeting places, no community centers,” he said. “Julius’ has been that space for so many people for so many years.”
And while New York’s gay bar scene has become a shadow of its former size — a victim of assimilation, gentrification and dating apps — Julius’ remained packed most weekends.
“I think there’s a pilgrimage aspect of it, especially for younger people,” Brian Sloan, a filmmaker who lived in the West Village for 20 years, said. “It has historical significance but it’s also a throwback to what gay bars used to be — lively, friendly, unpretentious. That’s harder to find now.”
Julius’ is still popular with celebrities — Lady Gaga, Sarah Jessica Parker, Zachary Quinto and Neil Patrick Harris have all stopped in, according to staff and regulars — and it has appeared in numerous films, including the Oscar-nominated Melissa McCarthy movie “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and “The Boys in the Band,” both William Friedkin’s 1970 movie and the 2020 Netflix adaptation by Ryan Murphy.
Director John Cameron Mitchell, who first ventured into Julius’ in 1985, calls it his “local bar.”
“It’s dripping with queer history,” he said. “The photos on the wall, the Mattachine sip-in. It really led to the legalization of gay bars in New York.”
In 2008, Mitchell launched a monthly dance party at Julius’ called, appropriately enough, Mattachine.
“[We] wanted to preserve the feeling of our favorite alt-queer bars where you could hear rock, new wave, soul, funk and even slow jams,” he said. “Every month we honored a queer icon, and if they were still alive they would show up.”
Director John Cameron Mitchell celebrates his birthday at Julius’.Courtesy Julius’
Honorees have included the neurologist Oliver Sacks, the punk rock impresario Danny Fields, the Village People’s Randy Jones and Leitsch himself. “We even cursed queer villains like Roy Cohn in absentia,” Mitchell said of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel. Cohn targeted government officials as communists and homosexuals, despite being gay himself.
There’s no denying Julius’ place in history but, by drawing hundreds of revelers late into the night, the Mattachine parties have helped keep the bar from turning into a museum piece.
In 2016, the 50th anniversary of the sip-in, Julius’ was placed on the National Register of Historic Places for its role in “an important early event in the modern gay rights movement.”
Lustbader, who helped get the designation, said it’s mostly honorific and doesn’t protect the business itself, which has been hobbled by coronavirus lockdowns.
On April 25, 1965, three teenagers refused to leave Dewey’s Restaurant in Philadelphia after employees repeatedly denied service to “homosexuals and persons wearing nonconformist clothing,” according to Drum magazine, which was created by the Janus Society, an early gay rights group.
The teens were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, and Janus Society members protested outside of the restaurant for the next five days, according to Marc Stein, a history professor at San Francisco State University.
“Every single element of what we know of as Pride and gay rights and, especially, the pre-Stonewall homophile movement, was borrowed from the Black Freedom Movement.”
ERIC CERVINI, LGBTQ HISTORIAN
“Unlike so many other episodes, it kind of combined issues of homosexuality and trans issues,” Stein, author of “Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement,” told NBC News.
On May 2, three more people staged a second sit-in at Dewey’s. Though the restaurant called the police, the protesters weren’t arrested, and after a few hours they left voluntarily, according to a Janus Society newsletter. The Society wrote that the protests and sit-ins were successful in preventing future denials of service and arrests.
The sit-in at Dewey’s is among a long list of examples that show a “direct line” to the Black civil rights movement, according to Stein. Specifically, sit-ins organized by gay activists in the ‘60s appear to be directly inspired by protests held in 1960 by Black college students at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, against racial segregation.
Black students wait in vain for food service at this F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina, on April 20, 1960.Greensboro News & Record, AP file
Early LGBTQ activists (though they didn’t use that acronym at the time) adopted many of the civil rights movement’s strategies, Stein said, and they relied on much of the foundation laid by Black civil rights activists.
But the two movements weren’t necessarily separate — they often overlapped — and so influence happened in a few ways, Stein said.
“Influence can be the influence of ideas, and specifically, ideologies, influence of strategies,” he said. “Influence can also come in the form of people who move between movements, or who are engaged in multiple movements, and we do have examples of that in the early LGBT movement.”
The influence — or ‘plagiarism’ — of ideas
Queer activists were building a movement long before the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City, which is widely referred to as a turning point in the LGBTQ rights movement. Though Stonewall was a pivotal moment, activists like Frank Kameny were organizing for gay rights well before.
Kameny co-founded the Mattachine Society in Washington, D.C., one of the first homophile groups (“homophile” being the adjective of choice at the time), and he drew strategies directly from the Black civil rights movement, according to Eric Cervini, a historian and author of “The Deviant’s War,” which focuses on Kameny and the early gay rights movement.
“Every single element of what we know of as Pride and gay rights and, especially, the pre-Stonewall homophile movement, was borrowed from the Black Freedom Movement,” Cervini said. “Frank Kameny’s primary role, what made him so brilliant but also complex of a historical figure, was that he served primarily as a Xerox machine copying different elements of the Black Freedom Movement and applying that to a previously nonmilitant, nonprotesting movement.”
For example, Cervini said Kameny and a delegation of eight Mattachine Society of Washington members attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. The march was organized by Bayard Rustin, who had been arrested in 1953 for having sex with another man. In 1963, Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., a segregationist, called Rustin a “sexual pervert” on the Senate floor in an effort to discredit the march, according to Out History.
Kameny and the delegates saw that, even though Rustin had been exposed, 200,000 Americans still attended the march, and it became a historic moment, according to Cervini.
“So these white gay activists, who previously had been refusing to take to the streets, looked around and said, ‘Maybe it’s time, maybe not right now, but maybe in the near future,’” Cervini said. (In fact, in 1979, activists would organize a National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights, which drew an estimated 200,000 protesters, according to the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce).
People hold signs as they participate in the National March on Washington for Lesbian & Gay Rights in Washington, DC, on Oct. 14, 1979.Bettmann Archive/Getty Images file
Within a year of the 1963 march, gay rights activist Randy Wicker began picketing the U.S. Army Induction Center in New York City, and a few months after that, Kameny began picketing the White House and Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Cervini also noted that Kameny modeled his phrase “Gay Is Good,” which was used on protest signs and buttons, on the Black Power movement’s “Black Is Beautiful.”
A few years later, in 1966, Wicker and three activists with the Mattachine Society’s New York City chapter organized a “sip-in” at Julius’ Bar to challenge a New York State Liquor Authority rule that said bars couldn’t serve “disorderly” customers. In practice, bars would refuse to serve LGBTQ people out of fear that they’d lose their liquor license. The sip-in, like the sit-in at Dewey’s, used the same tactics as the college students at Woolworth’s lunch counter, according to Stein.
After pouring their drinks, a bartender in Julius’ Bar in New York City refuses to serve Mattachine Society members John Timmins, Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell and Randy Wicker on April 21, 1966.Fred W. McDarrah / Getty Images file
Stein said Black civil rights movement strategies also affected how early LGBTQ activists conducted peaceful demonstrations. A coalition of gay and lesbian organizations held a yearly peaceful protest at Independence Hall called the Annual Reminder from 1965 to 1969, which Stein said were influenced by the early civil rights demonstrations in which demonstrators were instructed to dress respectably, with women in dresses and men in suits.
Cervini said civil rights demonstrators dressed up as a “reclamation of morality that was so effective when you look at the images of Montgomery or Birmingham or Greensboro.” He said Time magazine even drew attention to the fact that young civil rights activists looked like they were going to church, and, as a result, “How can you possibly claim that those Southern whites are the ones protecting morality?” he said. “So the early gay activists tried to emulate that same tactic, by using respectability as a political tool.”
Barbara Gittings and other gay rights activists picket outside the White house in 1965.Kay Tobin Lahusen / NYPL
On the other hand, gay and trans activists were also affected by the Black Power movement and urban uprisings, according to Stein. He said LGBTQ rebellions like the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot in San Francisco and the Stonewall uprising a few years later were likely influenced by events like the 1965 Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles, where six days of riots erupted between police and the predominantly Black community.
“I would argue that the Black Power movement was just as influential as the civil rights movement,” Stein said. “Black Power ideologies and strategies came to influence the movement very much so in the second half of the ‘60s and then into the ‘70s, so there were both of those influences — peaceful, respectable demonstrations on the one hand, and a more aggressive militant action sometimes including riots on the other.”
Crowd attempts to impede police arrests outside the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1969.New York Daily News via Getty Images
Cervini said FBI reports explicitly connect the Black Freedom Movement and the early homophile movement.
“We can connect those two movements — Bayard Rustin, Frank Kameny and Randy Wicker — through FBI surveillance, and from informants within these organizations,” Cervini said. “They were the ones informing the FBI that the gays, the homosexuals were learning from and discussing copying the Black Freedom Movement.”
“This idea of a coalition between these two organizations — that the Black Freedom Movement might be inspiring this other group of American citizens who are also marginalized, and the fact that they may both be taking to the streets, perhaps in coordination — that is what scared them the most,” Cervini said of the FBI and Southern racist segregationists.
Frank Kameny and Mattachine Society of Washington members marching in New York, June 1970.Kay Tobin Lahusen / NYPL
However, the homophile movement, at least in New York and Washington, never made that coalition a reality, Cervini added.
He said he uses the word “plagiarism” to describe how Kameny used civil rights tactics without working with or crediting the activists whose tactics he used.
“You are using and borrowing tactics from another movement, but not giving proper credit and not making space for people at the intersection of those two movements,” Cervini said. “I think it raises the question of the moral acceptability of that.”
Influence by intersection
In some cities, there was more of a coalition and less borrowing. The idea of one movement having an “influence” over the other could give the false notion that the fight for Black civil rights was comprised entirely of Black activists and the fight for LGBTQ rights was solely made up of whites, cautioned Steven Fullwood, co-founder of the Nomadic Archivists Project, which documents and preserves Black history.
“There’s Black people in parts of both of those movements,” Fullwood said, noting that there were Black people involved in both the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian rights group.
Marsha P. Johnson.Netflix
Fullwood also mentioned Marsha P. Johnson, who is credited as being a central figure in the Stonewall uprising, and Cervini cited Ernestine Eckstein (also known as Ernestine Eppenger), who was active in the Black Freedom Movement and the Daughters of Bilitis in the ‘60s.
Stein also gave the example of Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a Japanese-American, anti-war activist who participated in the Annual Reminders at Independence Hall and had previously gone South and participated in civil rights marches. Kuromiya co-founded the Gay Liberation Front’s Philadelphia chapter and became a spokesperson for a homosexual workshop at the Black Panther’s Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in September 1970, according to Stein.
He gave a presentation “to the huge audience of the convention to applause,” Stein said of Kuromiya, citing this as one of many examples showing that the movements weren’t fragmented or divided at the time in some cities.
“They were uniting against police violence, state repression, capitalist exploitation and, after all, the Stonewall rebellion was at least in part about a business exploiting its gay, trans customers,” Stein said. “So it kind of illustrates the way those issues came together at those particular episodes.”
“Any movement that does not take into account the intersectional approach is never going to achieve true liberation.”
STEVEN FULLWOOD, NOMADIC ARCHIVISTS PROJECT
Some of the major LGBTQ demonstrations, including the 1965 sit-in at Dewey’s Restaurant, took place in racially diverse communities, according to Susan Stryker, a scholar of queer and trans history.
She said the sit-in is an example of tactics developed in the Black civil rights struggle “becoming useful in situations that are not organized specifically around race, but are organized around questions of sexuality and gender expression and gender presentation.”
“So, is that a borrowing of civil rights tactics?” Stryker asked. “Or is it people who are perhaps familiar with this in different contexts of their own lives saying … ‘We need to do the same thing on this issue’?”
Stryker said there was also a huge overlap between people who were organizing for racial and economic justice and queer and trans rights in the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot, which she described as “one of the first instances that we know about of militant trans resistance to police-based oppression.”
The legal blueprint
Many major legal gains for LGBTQ people are also in part due to arguments developed by civil rights lawyers.
“The legal strategy challenging racial segregation, which was pioneered by the NAACP in the 1940s, was really the wellspring from which the LGBTQ equality movement grew,” said Alphonso David, a civil rights lawyer and the first Black president of the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights group.
Thurgood Marshall, attorney for the NAACP, arrives at the Supreme Court in Washington, August 22, 1958. The Associated Press
In the 1940s and ‘50s, Thurgood Marshall, who led the NAACP, spent a decade challenging segregation on public transportation, in restaurants and in public schools, David said. Marshall argued a number of cases related to segregation, and then in the mid-’50s he argued Brown v. Board of Education in front of the Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws segregating schools were unconstitutional.
“It took more than a decade of litigation and argument testing combined with really a lot of sweat equity and strategic partnerships with grassroots organizers to successfully challenge racial segregation in the U.S. Supreme Court,” David said.
Marshall’s legal strategy, which involved using the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, served as a model that the LGBTQ movement used to challenge the criminalization of homosexuality and the denial of marriage rights.
“We are indebted to the civil rights leaders of the past, because they were really instrumental in outlining the essential objective, which was the guarantee of equal protection and how that should apply to all of us,” David said.
Plaintiff Jim Obergefell, bottom center, speaks to the media outside the Supreme Court after the Obergefell vs. Hodges gay marriage ruling on Friday, June 26, 2015. Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Gay rights lawyers also built on major Black civil rights decisions to achieve same-sex marriage, according to David. In 1967, the Supreme Court held in Loving v. Virginia that laws banning interracial marriage violate the due process and equal protection clauses. “In that case, the Supreme Court held that, yes, there is a fundamental right to marry,” he said.
This same argument was successfully used nearly half a century later in Obergefell v. Hodges, David said, where it was argued that “denying same-sex couples the right to marry violates both the due process and the equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution — and we won.”
“So that is one perfect example where you see the arguments that were advanced during the civil rights struggle to at least recognize equality for racial minorities being used and applied in the context of LGBTQ people,” he added.
‘The same goal’
There has been significant overlap between the civil rights and LGBTQ equality movements, Fullwood said, and that’s a key takeaway.
“What we have to appreciate is that the arguments that were used in the civil rights movement in the 1960s involved LGBTQ people,” Fullwood added, citing a speech given by Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton in 1970.
Outlining the group’s position on the two emerging movements, Newton wrote: “Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion.”
The sister of Layleen Polanco, a trans woman who died in Rikers Island Jail in 2019, speaks to a crowd gathered outside the Brooklyn Museum for a rally and march for Black transgender lives on June 14, 2020.Sekiya Dorsett
Today’s activists, Fullwood said, have to think about the LGBTQ equality movement as involving Black people and the racial justice movement as involving LGBTQ people.
“Any movement that does not take into account the intersectional approach is never going to achieve true liberation,” he said. “The Black and the LGBTQ movements have the same goal.”
Fullwood said he’s pleased with the kinds of activists who are engaging multi-issue platforms that “call for different, insightful ways to resist oppression,” but that he’s occasionally run into the phrase, “This isn’t your grandmother’s movement.”
“If that’s the sentiment, I say this: You better hope it’s your grandmother’s movement, because she and thousands like her made it possible for you to have the language, perspective and insights that you enjoy today,” he said. “This is not new. Read. Research. Build. You exist in a river of resistance. Know and embrace that history. It’s waiting.”