The Deviant's War by Eric Cervini

Author:Eric Cervini [Cervini, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

DURING THE CITY of Philadelphia’s official Independence Day 1969 celebrations, astronaut Walter Cunningham, a veteran of the previous year’s Apollo 7 mission, spoke before a crowd of twenty thousand at Independence Hall. “The student problem bothers me most right now,” he said, criticizing America’s youth for its protests, its violent methods, and its disrespect for the military. Six times, the audience applauded the American hero’s denunciations.

After the astronaut finished, the homosexuals arrived.

Kameny, when he learned of the riots, had chuckled. Following the natural progression of movements, his fellow homosexuals were finally rioting. It had been a matter of time. But this picket, his picket, would remain orderly and dignified.

Despite his cries of “Gay Power” a week earlier, twenty-eight-year-old Craig Rodwell tolerated Kameny’s dress code. He had publicized the protest as a “vigil-type demonstration” and asked demonstrators “to observe the dignity and seriousness of the day and to dress and behave accordingly.”

Threatening phone calls had followed Rodwell’s picket advertisements in The Village Voice. Unidentified male voices threatened to follow HYMN’s bus from New York, capsize it, and assault the homosexuals.

The police, for their part, worried about the newly riotous homosexuals. That afternoon, approximately twenty uniformed officers and twenty more plainclothesmen materialized across from Independence Hall.

When the bus arrived unscathed to Philadelphia with its forty occupants, longtime picketer Lilli Vincenz immediately noticed a difference in its occupants. She saw the conservatively dressed—even Rodwell wore his prescribed jacket—but, for the first time, she saw a large contingent of New Yorkers in bell bottoms, short skirts, sandals, and beards. One interracial lesbian couple brought their child. They all seemed to be discussing the riots.

Shortly after 2:00 p.m., the fifty demonstrators—wearing Kameny’s lavender GAY IS GOOD buttons—began marching, as usual, in a silent, single-file line. After thirty minutes, two women began holding hands. Kameny ran up to them. None of that, he said. Kameny broke apart their hands. His authority exerted, Kameny—he wore his SPOKESMAN badge—left with Barbara Gittings to speak to a reporter from The Distant Drummer, an underground newspaper based in Philadelphia.

Suddenly, the Drummer would later report, “one breathless young man” ran up to Kameny, Gittings, and the reporter. Craig Rodwell began “ranting and raving” about Kameny’s action. “Our message is that homosexual love is good. Holding hands is not inappropriate,” he exclaimed.

Rodwell turned to Kameny and Gittings. “If you don’t change, you’re going to be left behind.” Then, to the reporter. “There’s a generation gap among homosexuals, too.” Rodwell ran back to the picket line, where he joined hands with his twenty-one-year-old lover, Fred Sargeant.

“Come on,” he yelled to the picketers, “be proud homosexuals—not ‘Auntie Toms.’” Two more female couples joined their hands.

One marcher, annoyed by the verbose messages on their signs—GAY IS GOOD or GAY POWER appeared nowhere—scrawled END SEXUAL FASCISM on his own sign.

Aware of the reporter’s presence, and wary of risking further humiliation, Kameny could do nothing but watch a new generation flaunt its power. Gittings attempted to perform damage control. “What we’re striving for is a recognition of our rights and dignity as homosexuals,” she explained to the reporter, changing the topic.

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