Gay Liberation Front

The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was a short-lived gay rights movement organization initially founded in New York City in July 1969 that spread to other cities with sizable gay and lesbian populations, especially on the West Coast, until its demise in the early 1970s. The GLF represented a new wave of gay activism following in the wake of the Stonewall Riots. What distinguished the GLF from earlier movement organizations within the gay and lesbian communities, especially the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis, was its rejection of integrationist approaches that sought civil rights for gay people within straight society and its call for active resistance to the entire heterosexist social order. Like the broader youth counterculture of the period, active resistance for GLF gays and lesbians meant, in part, being as expressive and shocking as they wished to be in their attitudes and outward appearance. Earlier homophile groups argued that gays and lesbians were just like heterosexuals, except in their same-sex orientation. GLF members openly challenged the sexual binaries of homosexual and heterosexual as one of the many forms of oppression constraining everyone in American society. Complete sexual liberation for all was a key feature of revolutionary transformation. Consequently, though GLF groups espoused a New Left orientation that advocated the overthrow of capitalism and all other oppressive institutions, GLF members were willing to fight along with other non–gay movement activists to achieve these ends only as long as these activists embraced gay liberation in return.

Membership in the GLF was based on gay pride and revolutionary commitment and in principle was open to all, regardless of gender, race, or any other social category. Yet, GLF activists tended to be predominantly young, white, male, and educated. As with other New Left organizations from this period, meetings were unstructured and democratic, with action by consensus rather than votes. Leaders were selected by lot, and group discussions were designed to ensure everyone had a chance to speak once before anyone could speak a second time.

The GLF from its beginning was plagued by internal dissension, as well as by pressure from the larger gay movement. From within, the GLF faced tension between gay men and lesbians, so much so that women began organizing their own lesbian liberation groups. Conflicts also emerged between GLF members who wanted to organize all gays and lesbians into their own unique counterculture and those who wanted to join with other revolutionary movements of the time. Still other controversies surfaced over the use of violence, even in self-defense, and the use of the political system as the legitimate means for winning gay rights. The revolutionary sentiment itself split GLF activists from the rest of the gay movement that still aimed at assimilation into straight society. These internal and external conflicts forced a split in the GLF resulting in the birth of a new organization, called the Gay Activists Alliance, that rejected the use of violence, advocated using the existing political structure to make pro-gay changes in society, and focused entirely on gay-rights causes rather than building coalitions with other movements. By 1972, most GLF groups had fragmented and members drifted into other gay and lesbian movement organizations.

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