Fifty years ago this month, a group of gay men in Los Angeles put the finishing touches on a plan for a new organization called the Mattachine Society.
The prime mover was Harry Hay, a longtime member of the Communist Party; the other founders all had a history of engagement in progressive causes. They set as their goal "the heroic objective of liberating one of our largest minorities" from persecution.
Operating mostly in secret to protect the identities of members, the Mattachine Society ran a series of consciousness-raising groups in Southern California where gay men met to discuss their situation.
The organization launched a magazine, ONE, which militantly questioned the treatment of homosexuals. It also defended gay men against entrapment, a common police practice in the 1950s. Though the organization grew more conservative under the pressure of McCarthy-era politics, its creation set in motion an unbroken history of activism by gay men and lesbians in the United States.
At the time the Mattachine Society was founded, every state had a sodomy law prohibiting most sex acts between men and between women. Urban police forces routinely raided gay and lesbian bars. They arrested patrons for dancing, holding hands or simply being there. Newspapers often published the names of those arrested. Jobs were lost, and lives ruined.
In Washington, D.C., the Senate held an investigation into the employment of "sexual perverts" by the federal government. Soon thereafter in 1953, a presidential executive order prohibited the employment of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals in all federal jobs. The FBI investigated any government employee suspected of homosexual inclinations and had informants in the gay world. The U.S. Postal Service put tracers on the mail of men suspected of receiving gay-related materials.
In the eyes of the medical profession, homosexuality was a form of mental illness. Young women and men found themselves institutionalized against their will and subjected to electroshock. Even for consensual gay sex, men and women sometimes received indeterminate sentences in state institutions for the criminally insane.
The media kept same-sex life and love deep in the shadows. It was a topic not deemed appropriate for "family newspapers." Hollywood's production code locked homosexuality securely in the closet. If you checked the card catalog of a local library back then for some good gay books, you would come up empty.
Fast forward 50 years, and fortunately much has changed. Fewer than a quarter of the states still have sodomy laws. Many large cities and a dozen states have added sexual orientation to their civil-rights codes to protect gay men and lesbians from job discrimination. Corporations like Chevron, Microsoft and Disney extend benefit packages to the domestic partners of their lesbian and gay employees. A generation ago, no one knew what a domestic partner was.
On television, gay characters parade across our screens night after night. Lesbians run for elective office and win. Science changed its mind and decided that being gay isn't sick. In high schools across the country, students are forming gay-straight alliances. Universities hire professors to teach queer studies, while gay alumni endow scholarships and annual lectures.
Most of all, the texture of gay and lesbian life has been revolutionized. Half a century ago, men cruised city streets and parks at night looking for sexual partners. Women constructed small friendship circles. Seedy mafia-owned bars offered the only public space for socializing. Fear and secrecy enveloped daily life.
Now, lesbians and gay men across the country have created a dense web of organizations and institutions that sustain a rich social, cultural and civic life.
There are gay Democratic and Republican clubs, and gay political action committees (PACs) to elect candidates.
For recreation, there are bowling and softball leagues, running and swimming clubs and outdoor adventure groups.
Many large cities support major gay film festivals each year, and there are theater companies, bookstores and choral groups.
Mention an occupation, and one is likely to find a lesbian and gay caucus: doctors, teachers, computer programmers, nurses, lawyers, firefighters and journalists all have one.
More and more synagogues and churches sustain a spiritual life for gays and lesbians.
Many of today's younger lesbians and gay men think, mercifully, that closets are for clothes.
I wish I could claim that, five decades after the Mattachine Society was born, the need for such organizations had vanished. But I can't.
Sodomy laws still exist.
Ugly homophobic violence is still too common.
Religious conservatives rail against the wages of sin.
An aggressive antigay politics has found a home in the Republican Party.
And many youth suffer through a period of intense loneliness and emotional struggle as they come to terms with their emerging sexual identity.
Still, all in all, the amount of change that has occurred in 50 years, roughly my lifetime, is pretty impressive. And most of this change has occurred in the last 30 years, in a political environment that has grown ever more conservative.
It gives me hope that we can make the impossible happen.
John D'Emilio teaches in the Gender and Women's Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is the author or editor of several books on the history of sexuality. This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by the Tribune News Service.