1. Founding

2. Naming

3. Affiliations

4. Goals

5. Decline

6. In popular culture

7. See also

8. References

9. External links

The Mattachine Society ({{IPAc-en|lang|ˈ|m|æ|t|ə|ʃ|iː|n}}), founded in 1950, was one of the earliest LGBT (gay rights) organizations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection of male friends in Los Angeles to protect and improve the rights of gay men. Branches formed in other cities and by 1961 the Society had splintered into regional groups.

At the beginning of gay rights protest, news on Cuban prison work camps for homosexuals inspired Mattachine Society to organize protests at the United Nations and the White House, in 1965.^[1][2]

In 2002, Mattachine Midwest was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.^[3] A new Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. was formed in 2011 and is dedicated to original archival research of LGBT political history.^[4]

Founding

As Hay became more involved in his Mattachine work, he correspondingly became more concerned that his orientation would negatively affect the Communist Party, which like most other organizations at the time was anti-homosexual and did not allow gay people to be members. Hay himself approached Party leaders and recommended his own expulsion. The Party decided to expel him as a "security risk", but declared him a "Lifelong Friend of the People" in recognition of his previous work for the party.^[17]

Mattachine was originally organized in similar structure to the Communist Party, with cells, oaths of secrecy and five different levels of membership, each of which required greater levels of involvement and commitment. As the organization grew, the levels were expected to subdivide into new cells, creating both the potential for horizontal and vertical growth.^[18] The founding members constituted the so-called "Fifth Order" and from the outset remained anonymous. Mattachine's membership grew slowly at first but received a major boost in February 1952 when founder Jennings was arrested in a Los Angeles park and charged with lewd behavior. Often, men in Jennings' situation would simply plead guilty to the charge and hope to quietly rebuild their lives. Jennings and the rest of the Fifth Order saw the charges as a means to address the issue of police entrapment of homosexual men. The group began publicizing the case (under the name "Citizens Committee to Outlaw Entrapment") and the publicity it generated brought in financial support and volunteers. Jennings admitted during his trial to being a homosexual but insisted he was not guilty of the specific charge. The jury deadlocked and Mattachine declared victory.^[19]

Naming

The Mattachine Society was named by Harry Hay at the suggestion of James Gruber, inspired by a French medieval and renaissance masque group he had studied while preparing a course on the history of popular music for a workers' education project. In a 1976 interview with Jonathan Ned Katz, Hay was asked the origin of the name Mattachine. He mentioned the medieval-Renaissance French Sociétés Joyeuses:

This French group was named in turn after Mattaccino (or the Anglicized Mattachino), a character in Italian theater. Mattaccino was a kind of court jester, who would speak the truth to the king when nobody else would. The "mattachin" (from Arabic mutawajjihin—"mask-wearers") were originally Moorish (Hispano-Arab) sword-dancers who wore elaborate, colorful costumes and masks.^[21]

The Mattachine Society used so-called harlequin diamonds as their emblem. The design consisted of four diamonds arranged in a pattern to form a larger diamond.

Affiliations

Most of the Mattachine founders were communists. As the Red Scare progressed, the association with communism concerned some members as well as supporters and Hay, a dedicated member of the CPUSA for 15 years, stepped down as the Society's leader. Others were similarly ousted, and the leadership structure became influenced less by communism, replaced by a moderate ideology similar to that espoused by the liberal reformist civil rights organizations that existed for African Americans. Although Hay claimed "never to have even heard" of the earlier gay liberation struggle in Germany—by the people around Adolf Brand, Magnus Hirschfeld and the Austrian-Hungarian Leontine Sagan—he is known to have talked about it with German émigrés in America, including the Austrian-born Rudi Gernreich.{{citation needed|date=February 2015}}

The Mattachine Society existed as a single national organization headquartered first in Los Angeles and then, beginning around 1956, in San Francisco. Outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco, chapters were established in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and other locales. Due to internal disagreements, the national organization disbanded in 1961. The San Francisco national chapter retained the name "Mattachine Society", while the New York chapter became "Mattachine Society of New York, Inc" and was commonly known by its acronym MSNY. Other independent groups using the name Mattachine were formed in Washington, D.C. (Mattachine Society of Washington, 1961),^[22] in Chicago (Mattachine Midwest, 1965),^[23] and in Buffalo (Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, 1970).^[24] In 1963 Congressman John Dowdy introduced a bill which resulted in congressional hearings to revoke the license for solicitation of funds of the Mattachine Society of Washington; the license was not revoked.^[25]

A largely amicable split within the national Society in 1952 resulted in a new organization called ONE, Inc. ONE admitted women and, together with Mattachine, provided vital help to the Daughters of Bilitis in the launching of that group's magazine, The Ladder, in 1956. The Daughters of Bilitis were the counterpart lesbian organization to the Mattachine Society, and the two organizations worked together on some campaigns, although their approaches to visibility in the mass media differed considerably. Under a different leadership, however, the Daughters of Bilitis came under attack in the early 1970s for "siding" with Mattachine groups rather than with the new separatist feminist organizations. Also in the 1960s, the Mattachine Society of New York was associated with other groups (including the Mattachine Society of Washington) in ECHO (East Coast Homophile Organizations) and, from 1966 (along with Mattachine Midwest), in NACHO (North American Conference of Homophile Organizations).{{citation needed|date=February 2015}}

Goals

The primary goals of the society were to

1. "Unify homosexuals isolated from their own kind";
2. "Educate homosexuals and heterosexuals toward an ethical homosexual culture paralleling the cultures of the Negro, Mexican and Jewish peoples";
3. "Lead the more socially conscious homosexual to provide leadership to the whole mass of social variants"; and
4. "Assist gays who are victimized daily as a result of oppression".^&91;20&93;

Decline

Following the Jennings trial, the group expanded rapidly, with founders estimating membership in California by May 1953 at over 2,000 with as many as 100 people joining a typical discussion group. Membership diversified, with more women and people from a broader political spectrum becoming involved. With that growth came concern about the radical left slant of the organization. In particular, Hal Call and others out of San Francisco along with Ken Burns from Los Angeles wanted Mattachine to amend its constitution to clarify its opposition to so-called "subversive elements" and to affirm that members were loyal to the United States and its laws (which declared homosexuality illegal). In an effort to preserve their vision of the organization, the Fifth Order members revealed their identities and resigned their leadership positions at Mattachine's May 1953 convention. With the founders gone, Call, Burns and other like-minded individuals stepped into the leadership void,^[26] and Mattachine officially adopted non-confrontation as an organizational policy. Some historians argue that these changes reduced the effectiveness of this newly organized Mattachine and led to a precipitous drop in membership and participation.^[27] Other historians contend that the Mattachine Society between 1953 and 1966 was enormously effective as it published a magazine, developed relationships with allies in the fight for homosexual equality, and influenced public opinion on the topic too.^[28]

During the 1960s, the various unaffiliated Mattachine Societies, especially the Mattachine Society in San Francisco and MSNY, were among the foremost gay rights groups in the United States, but beginning in the middle 1960s and, especially, following the Stonewall riots of 1969, they began increasingly to be seen as too traditional, and not willing enough to be confrontational. Like the divide that occurred within the Civil Rights Movement, the late 1960s and the 1970s brought a new generation of activists, many of whom felt that the gay rights movement needed to endorse a larger and more radical agenda to address other forms of oppression, the Vietnam War, and the sexual revolution. Several unaffiliated entities that went under the name Mattachine eventually lost support or fell prey to internal division.

In popular culture

In the Quantum Leap comic book titled, Up Against a Stonewall (1992), the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis are mentioned as two groups campaigning for LGBT rights prior to the Stonewall Inn riots.

The 1995 film Stonewall included members of MSNY among its characters. Mattachine members are seen leafleting, attending meetings and participating in the Annual Reminder picket in Philadelphia.

In 2009 the Mattachine Society and its founders became the subjects of the play The Temperamentals by Jon Marans. After workshop performances in 2009, the play opened Off-Broadway at New World Stages in early 2010.^[29] The Temperamentals received a Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble Cast. Michael Urie, who originated the role of Rudi Gernreich, received a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor.^[30]

The Playboy Club, a 2011 television series on NBC, includes a lesbian Playboy Bunny in a lavender marriage with a gay man. The two are members of the Chicago Mattachine chapter.

In 2015, Bar Mattachine opened in Downtown Los Angeles.^[31]

See also

• LGBT rights in the United States
• List of LGBT rights organizations
• Radical Faeries
• Timeline of LGBT history
• Dick Leitsch

References

• D'Emilio, John (1983). Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. {{ISBN|0-226-14265-5}}. {{oclc|300567643}}.
• Hay, Harry, with Will Roscoe (ed.) (1996). Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of its Founder. Boston: Beacon Press. {{ISBN|0-8070-7080-7}}. {{oclc|33333896}}.
• Hogan, Steve and Lee Hudson (1998). Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia. New York: Henry Holt and Company. {{ISBN|0-8050-3629-6}}. {{oclc|34731659}}.
• Johansson, Warren and William A. Percy (1994). Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. New York: Haworth Press. {{ISBN|1-56024-419-4}}. {{oclc|28026413}}.
• Loughery, John (1998). The Other Side of Silence: Men's Lives and Gay Identities: A Twentieth-Century History. New York, Henry Holt and Company. {{ISBN|0-8050-3896-5}}. {{oclc|38096858}}.
• Meeker, Martin (2006). Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Communications and Community, 1940s–1970s. University of Chicago Press.
• Miller, Neil (1995). Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. New York: Vintage Books. {{ISBN|0-09-957691-0}}. {{oclc|33009776}}.

• Boyd, Nan Alamilla. Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. University of California Press, 2003.
• Bullough, Vern L. [https://web.archive.org/web/20060221073022/http://williamapercy.com/pub-Stonewall.htm Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context]. Harrington Park Press, 2002.
• Carter, David. Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. St. Martin's Press, 2004.
• Dynes, Wayne R. (ed.). [https://web.archive.org/web/20060222150409/http://williamapercy.com/pub-EncyHom.htm Encyclopedia of Homosexuality]. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1990.
• Johnson, David. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. University of Chicago Press, 2004.
• Mattachine Society Today, Mattachine Society, 1965.
• Meeker, Martin. Contacts Desired: Gay and Lesbian Communications and Community, 1940s-1970s. University of Chicago Press, 2006.
• Poling, John D. Mattachine Midwest: The History of a Chicago Gay Rights Organization, 1965 to 1986 (thesis, M.S., Illinois State University, 2002).
• Sears, James T. Behind the Mask of the Mattachine. Harrington Park Press, 2006.
• White, C. Todd. [https://books.google.com/books?id=FnrlybSVp0sC Pre-Gay L.A]. University of Illinois Press, 2009.

External links

• Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C.
• Mattachine Society, Encyclopedia of Homosexuality
• Mattachine Society, Shreveport, Louisiana
• FBI file on the Mattachine Society
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110718122702/http://www.rainbowhistory.org/msw.htm Documents from the Mattachine Society's archives]
• Mattachine-related correspondence of Franklin Kameny

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