June 29: Gay Liberation Front

Following the Stonewall riot in Greenwich Village, which ended on this date in 1969, Martha Shelley (Altman), a poet and gay activist, helped to form the Gay Liberation Front, which would, over its three years of existence, expand the focus of the gay and lesbian movement beyond a decriminalization and civil rights focus to encompass anti-war, anti-racism, and anti-capitalist activism. The GLF immediately took to the streets to extend the energies of Stonewall. In 1970 Shelley and other lesbians, including several Jews (Ellen Shumsky, Karla Jay, and others) organized Lavender Menace in response to Betty Friedan’s public statement about the threat she felt lesbianism posed to the effectiveness of the National Organization of Women, which Friedan headed. Lavender Menace led a “zap” at NOW’s Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City on May 1, 1970, in protest of the exclusion of lesbians from the speakers platform. The protest helped to mark the beginning of the “second wave” radicalization of the feminist movement.

“We felt . . . that the zap was only the first of many actions to come and that lesbian liberation was suddenly and unstoppably on the rise.” —Karla Jay