Yet Paddie, who still writes plays in Austin today, said GLF's signal accomplishment was hosting the First Annual National Gay Conference on March 28-30, 1971. The resulting court challenge delayed any gay groups from forming on campus for more than three years, until UT decided in March 1974 to settle out of court with the fizzling GLF and recognize the group. For a brief 24 hours in December 1970, UT's Appeals Committee granted GLF official status, before it was rescinded by the school's interim President Bryce Jordan. Paddie, who told the Chronicle he was responsible for organizing this initial meeting, credited himself, Jim Denny, and "several women" who "banded together for liberation." Though the meeting was held at the University YMCA at 2330 Guadalupe, Paddie said Gay Liberation truly began on the site of today's Convention Center, in a little stone house located at 105 Neches that he, Denny, and other activists called home.īy its second meeting, the GLF registered to become an official UT student organization, which was denied by Assistant Dean of Students Edward Price a long appeals process followed. From it came Austin's Gay Liberation Front, one of several GLFs forming across the country and Texas' first radical gay organization. It was the first locally published piece written by self-identified gays – though it would not be the last.Ī few months later, roughly 25 people attended a "meeting of homosexuals" – as it was advertised in The Daily Texan – on April 24, 1970, which is believed to be the first public meeting for lesbians and gays in Austin history. In February of 1970, The Rag, a political underground newspaper, ran an article titled "Pink Power!" which called for the "liberation of homosexuals" from a society of oppression. GLF co-founder Dennis Paddie recalled the call to action: “Come to Austin for a convention, all you gay people.”Īccording to activist, poet, and playwright Dennis Paddie, Austin's gay rights movement blossomed out of its anti-war movement. (At least one operating gay bar has existed in Austin ever since.) Ganther concludes that by the late Sixties, Austin had an "underground network of socially active homosexuals" who met at bars and private homes.Īustin’s Gay Liberation Front hosted the First Annual National Gay Conference in 1971.
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The city's first documented gay bar – the Manhattan Club, located on Congress between Ninth and 10th streets – opened in 1958. Though Ganther's work focuses on the years following Stonewall, he notes that prior to 1970, Austin's lesbian and gay community "was not politically conscious of itself," but it was active. The work was researched largely through interviews with folks who started and pushed Austin's movement forward – many of whom have since died. In 1990, Eric Jason Ganther completed his UT-Austin master's thesis, "From Closet to Crusade: The Struggle for Lesbian-Gay Civil Rights in Austin, Texas, 1970-1982" (which lives in its entirety at the Austin History Center). But even before Stonewall, Austin, Texas, had a thriving – albeit underground – gay and lesbian scene.
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When we talk about the LGBTQ rights movement, so often the focus falls on the coastal hot spots – New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles: home to rebellions, sit-ins, kiss-ins, and protests long before the police raid and ensuing riot at the Mafia-run Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in the early hours of June 28, 1969. He looked at my application and said, 'Austin Lesbian and Gay Pride Commission? I didn't know there was such a thing.' To which I replied with a smile: 'There is now.' He smiled, stamped my permit, and wished me success with the event."
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"I walked up to the front desk and addressed a handsome young police officer with my request. Kip Dollar, one of the founding members of the commission, recalled how rare it was for organizations to use "gay and lesbian" in official names at the time – as when he went to the Austin Police Department for a street closure permit. In the end, money raised from advance ticket sales at $2 a pop covered the cost of insurance – clearing the first of several hurdles for the city's original Pride. With only $100 to its name, the newly formed Austin Lesbian and Gay Pride Commission had just enough to open a bank account and had already spent $5 on printing checks.
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When the city of Austin required liability insurance to host a gay event in a public park for 2,000 people, the hefty price tag almost crippled Pride before it began. Dedicated to Beth Westbrook, Ceci Gratias, Tesía Samara, Lauryn Paige Fuller, Steve Thomas, Lisa Davis, and all those we've lost along the way.