Political activism of queer people in the United States started long before the Stonewall riots in 1969. One surprising place that queer people found a home for their activism was in the Communist Party. The Communist Party of the United States was established in 1919, and from the 1920s to the 1940s the Party was influential in American politics, at the forefront of labor organizing and opposition to racism. It was the first political party in the US to be racially integrated. Some queer folks embraced the radical politics of the Party and found it to be a place where they could agitate for radical sexual politics as well. 

One of the first national gay rights organizations in the United States, The Mattachine Society, was founded in 1950 by prominent Communist Harry Hay and a group of friends in Los Angeles. However, in the early 1950s as Joseph McCarthy and others publicly linked homosexuality and Communism as threats to the 'American way of life,' homosexuals began to distance themselves from the Left to gain acceptance, and the previous links between homosexuals and the Communist Party were lost or suppressed. In 1953 Harry Hay was ousted from the Mattachine Society in part because of his Communist affiliation, which by then was considered a liability.

In this episode, Kelly tells the history of homosexuality and the Communist Party in America in the early 20th Century and interviews Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston Aaron Lecklider, author of Love’s Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: Members of Marine Cooks and Stewards Union. Courtesy Black Heritage Society of Washington State. Public domain.

Sources:

• Love's Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture, by Aaron Lecklider, 2021
• "Despite Everything, Queer Leftists Survived," by Scott W. Stern, Jacobin Magazine, June 2021.
• "Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement," PBS
• "Communist Party USA History and Geography," Mapping American Social Movements Project, University of Washington
• "Homophiles': The LGBTQ rights movement began long before Stonewall," by Ben Kesslen, NBC News, June 10, 2019

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