Harry Hay, queer rights pioneer, is dead

San Francisco - Well-known gay rights activist Harry Hay has passed away at
the age of 90.

"Today our movement lost one of its treasures. The death of legendary gay
activist Harry Hay leaves a heavy sadness in our hearts and minds," said Lorri
L. Jean, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
"Harry was one of the pioneers of the gay rights movement. His courageous
and visionary leadership laid the groundwork for today's activists seeking full
equality for the GLBT community. We join Harry's countless friends and loved
ones in mourning his passing."

In 1950, Harry Hay and four others formed one of the nation's first gay rights
organizations, the Mattachine Society. The idea that homosexuals should
organize for civil rights was formed at an election-year party in Los Angeles
that was attended exclusively by gay men. The organization was named for
the Matachinos, court jesters of the Italian Renaissance who, behind their
masks, were free to speak the truth. The Mattachine Society was the first to
propose the idea of gay and lesbian people as an oppressed cultural minority.

In the 1960's Hay helped organize the first "gay pride" parade in Los Angeles,
was chair of the L.A. Committee to Fight the Exclusion of Homosexuals from
the Armed Forces and chair of the Southern California Gay Liberation Front. In
the late 70's and early 80's, Hay became increasingly concerned with spiritual
issues and formed the Radical Faeries, a movement devoted to ecology,
spiritual truth and "gay-centeredness."

NGLTF honored Hay at the October 1999 Creating Change(TM) conference. In
his award acceptance speech, Hay said, "I want you to realize, of course, that
by honoring me you are all honoring yourselves. In 1948, when I first rifled
through Alfred Kinsey's best-selling book The Sexual Behavior of the Human
Male, I sensed then that this book should require that all Americans
forevermore recast their thinking about homosexuals. His chapter five was
implying to me that we were a class of people with the social and political
dimensions of a cultural minority. Indeed, a viciously oppressed minority, who,
were we to organize, might someday even liberate ourselves under principles
protected by the American Constitution."

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