Abstract
By the mid-1970s the politics of the gay community had evolved from revolution and radical liberation to accommodation and liberal reform. Many activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s saw their struggle as part of the larger struggle of the oppressed in America to overthrow an unjust system—regarding politics not simply as a matter of votes and government actions but of a cultural and political revolution. However, by the mid-1970s the radical impulse was fast fading. Instead of revolution, activists were now demanding laws protecting lesbians and gay men from discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations. It was a kind of political goal many in the larger national lesbian and gay community—not just the radical activists on the coasts— understood. Moreover, in the political culture of the early 1970s, calls for the rights of this new sexual minority were gaining a hearing. Statements in support of gay rights were proposed for inclusion in the 1972 national convention platforms of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Delegates at the Democratic convention heard for the first time openly gay and lesbian speakers address the full convention in support of gay rights. Two years later a gay civil rights bill was introduced in Congress. Although the proposed party plank was defeated and there was no action on the federal law, such actions helped make gay rights a legitimate issue for lawmakers.1
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Notes
John D. Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 314–17.
Wendell W. Cultice, Youth’s Battle for the Ballot: A History of Voting Age in America (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992).
“New Seattle Law Protects Gay Jobs,” Advocate, October 10, 1973, 1; “Seattle Rights Law: Seldom Has So Little Produced So Much,” Advocate, October 24, 1973, 1; Gary Atkins, Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 194–217; “D.C. Rights Bill Signed Into Law, Advocate, December 19, 1973, 1; “Rights Bill Passed in Minneapolis,” Advocate, April 4, 1974, 16;
Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 230–37; “Gay Rights Up to Voter in Detroit,” Advocate, October 25, 1972,2; “Detroit’s No 1 on Gay Rights,” Advocate, July 17, 1974, 15; “Newsline,” Advocate, June 2, 1976, 11.
Arva Moore Parks, Miami: The Magic City (Miami: Centennial Press, 1991).
Fred Fejes, “Murder, Perversion, and Moral Panic: The 1954 Media Campaign against Miami’s Homosexuals and the Discourse of Civic Betterment,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 9, no. 3 (July 2000): 305–47.
Marvin Dunn, Black Miami in the Twentieth Century (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1997).
Alejandro Portes and Alex Stepick, City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 123–50.
Nixon Smiley, Knights of the Fourth Estate: The Story of the Miami Herald (Miami: E. A. Seaman Publishing, 1974).
Dunn, Black Miami in the Twentieth Century, 221; Metropolitan Dade County (FL) Metropolitan Dade County (FL) Planning Department, Growth and Change in the Dade Economy 1970–1990 (Miami, 1994);
Bruce Porter and Marvin Dunn, The Miami Riot of 1980: Crossing the Bounds (Lexington, KY: Lexington Books, 1984), 189, 194–96.
Siobahn B. Somerville, “The Queer Career of Jim Crow: Racial and Sexual Transformation in Early Cinema,” in Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 39–76;
Witold Rybczynski and Laurie Olin, Vizcaya: An American Villa and Its Makers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 15, 219–27.
Fejes, “Murder, Perversion, and Moral Panic.” 305–47; Fred Fejes, “Florida,” Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History in America, compl. Marc Stein (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005).
Stacy Braukman, “Anticommunism and the Politics of Sex and Race in Florida 1954–1965” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1999).
James Sears, Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 226–45; Robert Basker, telephone interview by author, May 18, 25, 1997; Carl Hiassen, “Out of the Closet, and Then Some,” Tropics Magazine (Miami Herald Sunday Magazine), June 5, 1977; “Bob Basker: A Portrait of a Pioneer,” GL, June 25, 1982,13–15; “Ahead of His Time: An Interview With Bob Basker,” Gay Community News, July 30 1983; “Application Essay for Graduate Program in Psychology,” Robert Basker Papers, 1999, Box 2, File 5, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Historical Society, San Francisco.
John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 192–95;
Melissa M. Wilcox, “Of Markets and Missions: The Early History of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches,” Religion and American Culture 11, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 83–108;
Thomas Fur-man Hewitt, “The American Church’s Reaction to the Homophile Movement, 1948–1978” (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1983).
Ibid.; Nancy Tatom Ammerman, Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptists Convention (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 99–110.
John J. McNeil, The Church and the Homosexual (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988), 1–28, 217–41;
John J. McNeil, Both Feet Planted in Midair: My Spiritual Journey (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 89–91.
Douglas W. Johnson, Paul R. Picard, and, Bernard Quinn, Churches and Church Membership in the United States: An Enumeration by Region, State and County (Atlanta: Glenmary Research Center, 1982);
Michael J. McNally, Catholicism in South Florida:1868–1968 (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1982), 42–45; Dunn, Black Miami, 106–17.
Anita Bryant, The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation’s Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1977), 13–19. Ironically, it was questionable how much of the concern of allowing open homosexuals to teach in schools, including religious schools was justified.
In Florida, county ordinances had no effect on the employment practices of the school district. Moreover, religious institutions, including schools affiliated with churches, could discriminate for religious reasons, an exception recognized in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Bruce N. Bagni, “Discrimination in the Name of the Lord: A Critical Examination of Discrimination by Religious Organizations,” Columbia Law Review 79, no. 8 (December 1979): 1514–1549.
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© 2008 Fred Fejes
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Fejes, F. (2008). Gay Rights Come to Miami. In: Gay Rights and Moral Panic. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230614680_3
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