Bookmark om Gay Pri Para Commtee, Gay Spir San Diego, 1976 | SDSUnbound

Contents:

• 2ND ANNUAL SAN DIEGO GAY PRI DAY PARA, 1976
• BOOKMARK OM GAY PRI PARA COMMTEE, GAY SPIR SAN DIEGO, 1976
• GAY PRI CALENDAR

2ND ANNUAL SAN DIEGO GAY PRI DAY PARA, 1976

While the rt of the untry was celebratg the bicentennial and preparg for the 200th anniversary of the foundg of our untry on Inpennce Day, San Diego’s gay muny was planng s Pri events.

Yet spe dranian laws that threatened to sweep up anyone hapls enough to be ught a homosexual act, same-sex love flourished San Diego, even the cy’s hight social circl. Protected by their soc-enomic stat om dishonor and prosecutn, upper class upl such as Lee and Teats or Shepard and Tonner did not suffer om stigma or the punishg laws wh which ls fortunate homosexuals of their day had to ntend. Gay historian Allan Bébé has famoly suggted that Ameri’s war effort also served to brg together many gays and lbians who had hherto been isolated small towns and ci all across Ameri, and a signifint subculture was th on s way to beg formed.

BOOKMARK OM GAY PRI PARA COMMTEE, GAY SPIR SAN DIEGO, 1976

For stance, gay bars such as Bradley’s and Blue Jacket the Gaslamp District proliferated durg the war years; locker clubs such as the Seven Seas Locker Club and Jack’s Steam and Locker Club beme not only facili where ary men uld change to civvi before a night on the town but also cisg grounds where those who were gay found sexual opportuni. Many gays and lbians who had been troduced to port ci such as San Diego durg the war chose to settle them after the war bee they had learned they uld feel eer there than they had back home. By 1952, there were so many venu downtown San Diego terg to gay men that the cy was featured USA Confintial, a sensatnalistic book about Ameri’s “s spots.

” Lee and Mortimer tend their fulmatns to shock and tillate, but surely a llateral effect was to rm even more gay people of San Diego’s thrivg gay life and to draw them to the cy. The San Diego Police Department (SDPD) was rmed too—and bee homosexuals were prumptive crimals unr state and lol laws, the SDPD went to great lengths to hunt gay men down, even stakg out the streets where gays were known to cise.

GAY PRI CALENDAR

But the potential victims of the cross-drsg law were trans people (men and women: some straight; some gay) who wore the cloth which they were most fortable.

The SDPD felt jtified crimalizg them bee an era when no distctn was ma between sexual orientatn and genr inty, was assumed that all trans people, ipso facto, mted illegal homosexual sex acts. Ed Hansen, a closeted mister at San Diego’s Chollas View Methodist Church, who had recently pleted an ternship at San Francis’s ultra-liberal Gli Memorial Methodist Church, started San Diego’s first anized gay group, “Dghters and Sons of Society. ” The group offered much-need emotnal support to the muny, but as s ntral name suggts, members sentially kept who they were a secret, which meant that they uld have ltle impact fightg discrimatory laws and homophobic prejudice.

Early the last year of that tumultuo , Bill Gtier, who intified as Glenda the “drag queen, ” found Gays Uned for Liberty and Freedom his 30th Street apartment. But at the start of that summer, an event at a gay bar New York triggered a transformatn the way gay people everywhere would view themselv and their right to eedom and equaly.

But stead of gog quietly to the paddy wagon as gay people had almost always done when arrted police raids, the patrons, fluenced by the many dramatic protts of that , fought back and sparked four nights of rts.