Shoulders to Stand On

Empty Closet 40th Anniversary Celebration Is February 27

By Evelyn Bailey

The Empty Closet 40^th Anniversary Celebration is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 27, in the Tea Room, fourth floor, Auditorium Center, 875 E. Main St.

This year the Empty Closet turns 40 – a milestone in anyone’s life, but an exceptional one especially today for any newspaper, let alone a gay newspaper!

Bob Osborne, Brian (Monday) Tangen, Debbie Lestz, Larry Fine, RJ Alcala, and Patricia Evers were the first six writers for The Empty Closet. Each put pen to paper and what they wrote was pretty radical even by today’s standards, and I quote,  “Gay Liberation is more than a group of oppressed people joined together to seek freedom and justice.  Gay Liberation is a call to power.” (Debbie Lestz, Empty Closet, January, 1971)

Gay Liberation Front

By Evelyn Bailey

Bob Osborne, Larry Fine, R.J. Alcala, Patti Evans, Karen Hagberg, Marshall Goldman. Who would you say these people are?

These men and women were the Shoulders on which the University of Rochester’s Gay Liberation Front was founded.

This October marks the 40^th Anniversary of the Gay Liberation Front. On the U of R campus the group has gone through many name changes, and is currently the Pride Network. The University of Rochester’s Meliora Weekend, Oct. 14–16, provides two opportunities to celebrate this extraordinary event where past meets the present: Pride Network 40th Anniversary After Hours, Friday, Oct. 15, 9 p.m.-12 midnight at Wilson Commons, Bridge Lounge; College Diversity Roundtable: Conversations about Diversity at the College, Saturday, October 16, 4:30 p.m.-6 p.m., Gleason Hall, Room 318/418. All are welcome!

Bob Osborne

by Evelyn Bailey

In last month’s Shoulders To Stand On article we looked at HOW and WHAT the Gay Liberation Front was.  This month we will look at who the people involved in the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) were.  We need to remember the times in which the GLF was established. 

The year was 1970.  A Richard Nixon was President.  U.S. troops invade Cambodia (May 1). Four students at Kent State University in Ohio slain by National Guardsmen at demonstration protesting incursion into Cambodia (May 4).   This was the year the Beatles broke up, the year Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin died of a drug overdose at the age of 27, the year of Midnight Cowboy, Love Story, Airport, the year IBM introduces the floppy disk, the year Maya Angelou wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and the year of the 5th Dimension’s Grammy award winning song Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.

Onto this stage steps Bob Osborne, the original founder of the Gay Liberation movement in Rochester.  Bob had a flair for revolutionary rhetoric.  His early writings in the first three Empty Closets carried with them the spirit of the turbulent 1960s.

Gay Liberation Front

by Evelyn Bailey

Over the next three months, Shoulders To Stand On will honor the Rochester Gay Liberation Front (hereafter referred to as the RGLF), forerunner to the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley.

Who or what - you might ask – was the Gay Liberation Front? To answer this question we need to take a trip back in our LGBT history.

The event that most authors seem to identify as having the most influence on the beginning of the gay liberation movement was the Stonewall riots of 1969. It would be a mistake to consider this event as the origin of the concept of gay liberation or the origin of a sense of community and gay pride.

The Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley's Coming Out Journey

by Evelyn Bailey

Imagine a fall October day.  The sun is shining, the trees glisten with color.  You are standing outside of Todd Union on the University of Rochester campus in the quadrangle.  You are listening to Bob Osborne and Larry Fine, both students at the U of R, discuss the meeting to be held that night to hear the invited speakers from Ithaca and Buffalo.   The conversation went something like this:

“Hopefully we will have a few people who will come to listen.  I really don’t expect more that a dozen or so” said Bob. 

“I know.  I have invited everyone I know. But people are afraid to be open and associated with any public activity involving homosexuality.  I just hope that we won’t be embarrassed by the poor turnout.” said Larry. 

“We did pass out flyers to the bars and coffee houses in the city – maybe some people from the city will come”  said Bob.  “I hope so – I’ve got to get to class – see you tonight” said Larry.

1971: News from the Empty Closet

The following news items were taken from the February and March 1971 editions of the Empty Closet.

Gay People vs State Assembly
Reported by Bob Osborne

Three members of the Rochester gay community (Bob Osborne, R.J. Alcala, and Marshall Goldman) addressed the Special Committee on Discrimination Against Homosexuals, of the New York State Assembly in its first (ever) public hearings January 7 in New York City.

Assembly men present for the hearings were Stephen Solarz (Brooklyn) and Tonly Olivieri and Franz Leichter (both Manhattan).