Harry Hay's legacy - People

He was a founder of the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries. He organized the first gay pride parade in Los Angeles and possibly the nation as well as the first group in support of gays in the military.

Perhaps more than any other person, Harry Hay was the founding figure of the modern gay rights movement. "He has always been there," said Stuart Timmons, who chronicled Hay's life in the biography The Trouble With Harry Hay. Hay died October 24 at age 90.

Raised in California, Hay tried to find work in Hollywood in the 1930s. He became lovers with Will Geer, better known to younger generations as Grandpa on The Waltons, who introduced him to the Communist Party.

Then, on November 11, 1950, a group of gay men gathered at Hay's home. From this first meeting, the Mattachine Society grew in just a few years into a groundbreaking gay rights group with 2,000 members. Hay later said that creating a gay political movement was "a vision quest more important than life." However, the anti-Communist climate of the 1950s took its toll: Hay's Communist ties led to his departure from the Mattachine Society in 1953.

He then studied homosexuality, developing a political philosophy in the process. "We differ from most heterosexuals in how we perceive the world," he said. "That ability to offer insights and solutions is our contribution to humanity."

Hay made every effort to maximize those difference himself. "He was wearing big long earings with his lumberjack shirt back in the early '60s," Timmons said.

But Hay's combative personality and controversial views cast shadows on his accomplishments. He was chastised for carrying a NAMBLA sign during a parade, and he was eventually ousted from the Radical Faeries. Scholars also rejected his studies of homosexuality.

Hay was chosen as grand marshal for the San Francisco parade three years ago, an honor never accorded him in Los Angeles. But the trip proved too much for him and his partner, John Burnside. (Burnside, who met Hay in 1963, survives him.) "He was in too bad shape to come back to L.A.," Timmons said. Gay activists in San Francisco quickly became Hay's and Burnside's caretakers.

As he aged, Hay became an icon to younger generations, and he finally won credit for his pioneering efforts, with two books about him and a documentary that aired on PBS. That work also won him a place of honor in gay history. "He was a wonderfully mythic figure," Timmons said. "Harry is our own gay Mount Rushmore."

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