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!

What did the Gay Liberation Front do?

by Evelyn Bailey

In previous issues we looked at WHAT the Gay Liberation Front at the University of Rochester was.  We looked at WHO the driving force behind the organization was.  In this issue we want to look at WHAT  DID  THE  GLF  DO?

The accomplishments of the Gay Liberation Front at the University of Rochester can be summarized in one word – VISIBILITY.  The members of the GLF were naturally catapulted into the public arena.  Their commitment to educating the public and speaking out resulted in being OUT and VISIBLE themselves. 

Karen Hagberg, a student at the Eastman School of Music, came out publicly when she and two other students, R J Alcala and Jim Fishman, did a TV spot on WXXI channel 21, on July 14, 1971 on a talk show “Call 21.”  The show aired live so no copies were made at the station. 

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.

Women Play a Critical Role in Rochester's Gay History, 1971 - 1972

by Evelyn Bailey

During 1971 – 1972 there were several Rochester women who made history by speaking openly about their sexual orientation. This was during a time when the American Psychiatric Association identified homosexuality as a diagnosable mental disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II). 

In order to understand the extraordinary actions that Patti Evans, Karen Hagberg, “Mike”, and Rosanne took, you need to understand the times in which these women lived.   The mere fact that of these four women only two used both there real first and last names is an indication of the fear of reprisal that existed within the community.  This was true for men as well.

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).

Dance Anyone?

Printed in the first edition of the Empty Closet, January 1971:

Dance Anyone? by Larry Fine and R. J. Alcala

On December 5, UR Gay Liberation and UR Women’s Liberation co-sponsored a Liberation Dance in the Lounge of the Frederick Douglass Building at the U of R.  The band was the Albatross.  They were going through their warm up while some of us went about putting candles in the windows, setting up the colored flashing lights, the incense, the beer counter, and trying to figure out where the change boxes were.

In Todd, Perry Brass, editor of “Come Out”, and two others from New York City Gay Liberation were speaking at the UR Gay Liberation Front meeting, while the preliminary blizzard of the evening raged outdoors.  Meanwhile, back at the FDB lounge, people started buying tickets.  The candle on the ticket table kept going out.  As the dance floor began to sprout writhing bodies of all kinds (MMMMMM!), we started to stop worrying about how much money we could conceivably lose.  The Albatross kept the sound flowing.