Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

I recently had the occasion to host a literary evening featuring eight authors who have been nominated for Lambda Literary Awards. These awards are an annual event for GLTB books, presented dur- ing the Book Expo America convention.

Among the readers was James T. Sears. Sears is a prolific and groundbreaking scholar. He has written over a dozen books. Perhaps you will recall two earlier titles: Growing Up Gay in the South: Race, Gender, and Journeys of the Spirit and Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South. His latest title is Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Hal Call Chronicles and the Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation (Harrington Park Press, 586 pages, $34.95).

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Sexuality has been central to the gay male movement," writes Sears. He begins his narrative with 19th- and early 20th-century gay associations and attempts at legal change. Perhaps it is hard to recall what life was like for gay men before the Stonewall Revolution. "Police raids, t-room entrapments, lengthy prison sentences, and asylum commitments fueled strategic assaults on antigay policies and sex-negative laws before Stonewall." To "come out" then meant risking your job, your family relationships, and even legal jeopardy. Sears notes that "across the three generations before Stonewall, struggle within the gay movement was not only divided politically (between culturalists and assimilationists) but sexually: between those who embraced sexuality, connecting it to social change ('liberationists'), and those who cloaked desire, pursuing sexual reform devoid of erotic celebration ('traditionalists')."

This takes Sears to his central subject, Hall Call. Harold Leland Call (1917-2000) was part of the group in the original Mattachine Society. He grew up in rural Missouri during the 1920s. Mother was a Bible-thumper. He went to a one-room schoolhouse. His life was transformed by WWII, as happened to so many. He was a battalion commander in the Pacific theater; he earned a Purple Heart. He was the publisher of the Mattachine Review.

The individuals who came together to organize the Mattachine were united in their response to oppression and injustice. Other than that, there were different agendas, as happened with every revolutionary movement. That the Mattachine lasted as long as it did is a testament to dedication. The name of Harry Hay is often associated with this group. As is Jim Kepner's. Many more made the group successful. Over the years, other groups named Mattachine formed in other cities. The original one was a West Coast phenomenon, where the gay movement really started. Sears has done a great job interviewing those who remain, including Call.

Various personality differences and arguments over how to develop the organization and its strategies-- plus the normal factor of burn-out-- led to the peeling off of the original founders. They moved on. It was Call who managed to take over the group from Harry Hay.

Slice me a piece

Within the spectrum of the politics of the Mattachine, Hay and Call were opposites. Hay was a radical; Call a conservative (within the terms of the group). But Call was also a libertine. He hosted orgies in his apartment. There was a split in world-views. There were some notable legal victories over the years. But as Jim Kepner told Sears: "Even as the Society drew in hundreds of enthusiastic new participants [Mattachine leaders] became aware how resistant most of the new people were to these ideals. Ready to fight for their own rights, they had no desire to change the world, and no philosophy other than their conformist, bourgeois, Christian notions. Hardly rebels, they merely wanted an equal share of apple pie for gays. Above all, they wanted the right to privacy. There was increasing disjunction between Mattachine as the founders variously conceived it and what it was actually coming to be."

Call went on to be an entrepreneur, involved with an adult bookstore and a movie house. He was a tireless campaigner against censorship-- since Comstock, and before, the bane of gay expression-- and he was a public speaker on all these issues in schools and for community groups.

Behind the Mask of the Mattachine is really a monumental work. The breadth of the interviews, the depth of the analysis and the informative notes make this an essential document for those who wish to know whence we came. What Sears documents is a cohort that came together and did something.

I look at myself and my cohort and look back on what we have done to make better the lives of the same-sexers and it has been impressive, though, to be honest, I wish we could have done more. We got it all, the all there was to get, the benefactors of the Mattachine generation and what they did. Thanks, guys.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com