The History of Pride, Part I: Leo Laurence and the Committee for Homosexual Freedom

For Pride month this year I’m breaking down the history and the astrology of Stonewall. If you’ve been following me for awhile you know that I’ve covered Stonewall before and recently in an episode with Chris Brennan on The Astrology Podcast, I made an argument for Stonewall’s connection to the cycle of Venus Retrograde in Aries. However, since that episode is six hours long and full of tons of information, I wanted to make sure that this important history doesn't get lost. Each week, I’ll release a new blog post on the months leading up to the Stonewall Uprising and the story that unfolded - so be sure to follow along! As the government continues to make life more dangerous for queer and trans people, including by trying to erase our histories from the internet, I hope this series will add to the chorus of voices who are demanding safety and autonomy for all queer and trans people and ensure that this critical history is not lost.

Pre Stonewall

Stonewall is often named as the beginning of the modern gay/queer liberation movement - certainly in the United States. But queer historians have long shown that there actually were many instances of uprisings and rebellions that pre-date Stonewall. For example, in 1966, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots took place in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. If you want to learn more about Compton’s, check out the two part episode series I did back in 2023. Also be sure to follow and support Comptons x Coalition as they work to remove GEO Group (a private prison corporation) from the historic site of Compton’s Cafeteria and turn it into a trans-centered, community-stewarded space.

For this series, we’re going to focus in on the year 1969 and talk about the lesser known protests in San Francisco that may have directly influenced Stonewall and the astrology that connects these events!

Leo Laurence

Our story begins with a photo of and an editorial by a man named Leo Laurence. Laurence was a journalist for the Berkley Barb, the Bay Area’s underground newspaper, and editor of Vector, the monthly magazine of the homophile organization, Society for Individual Rights (SIR). As the editor of Vector, he published a column in the April 1969 edition of the magazine, calling on SIR and other more conservative homophile groups to join in the gay revolution. These organizations were caught up in “middle class bigotry and racism” and Laurence proclaimed that they were “afraid to become militant, afraid to put personal conviction behind their hypocritical mouthings that Gay-Is-Good.”^[1] In conjunction with this editorial, a photo of Laurence hugging a shirtless man was published in the Berkley Barb on March 28, 1969, under an article titled “HOMO REVOLT - 'DON’T HIDE IT'”.^[2]

The editorial in Vector cost Laurence his position as editor and although the young man, Gale Whittington, wasn’t actually named in either article, the photo published in the Barb caught the attention of his coworkers at the States Steamship Company who recognized him. Whittington was fired from his job at States Steamship within a week of the photo's publication.

Astrologically, one of the big stories playing out in the spring on 1969 was a Venus retrograde in Aries. Venus stationed retrograde at 26° Aries, in a close conjunction with Saturn, very shortly after a Solar Eclipse in Pisces on March 18, 1969. Venus stationing retrograde, in Aries, its sign of detriment and in a close conjunction with a fallen Saturn was an indication of the challenge that these articles brought.

Laurence embodied Venus, the planet of love and relationships in Aries by claiming that gays needed to come out, not hide their sexualities. In his Vector article, he claimed that young gay kids were the only one with “courage” to publicly say “I’m gay and I’m proud!” Aries associations with bravery, youth, and also militancy ring through the Vector article. But with Saturn there as well, the planet that says no, that denies, in Aries, the sign opposite the scales of justice, this fiery attitude resulted in both Laurence and Whittington unfairly losing their jobs. Perhaps also we might see the influence of the eclipse here - bringing something to light that prior to had not been visible.

The Committee For Homosexual Freedom

In response, Laurence, Whittington and a group of about 10 others formed the Committee for Homosexual Freedom (CHF). Laurence recalled telling Whittington “We have to do something big…big in a sense that the Gay community never knew before.”^[3] They decided to hold daily pickets during the lunch hour outside of the States Steamship Company, protesting the loss of Whittington’s job. Their first picket was held on April 9, 1969 starting at noon. From noon to 2 pm, Monday to Friday, they picketed with signs that read “Let Gays Live” and “Freedom for Homos Now.” The Berkley Barb reported on the pickets as early as April 11 in an article titled “Homo Revolt Blasting Off On Two Fronts.” The article pronounced “The homosexual revolution of 1969 started this week.”^[4]

The day before the pickets began, on April 8, 1969 at 7:10 AM PST, Venus was engulfed in the heart of the Sun. The Venus cazimi, which marks the mid point of the Venus retrograde, is a moment we associate with the beginning of a new cycle for Venus. Something Venusian begins here which, although it cannot yet be fully seen, will emerge throughout the course of the cycle. Although these pickets were visible in San Francisco at the time, their role in the story of early gay liberation has largely been lost.

That spring the Committee for Homosexual Freedom grew to a core group of about 25 organizers with more people they could call on to show up to pickets and demonstrations. Pat Brown was in charge of the pickets because of his experience leading demonstrations with the anti-Vietnam War movement. They held further pickets at Tower Records in San Francisco to protest the firing of another gay employee, and at Safeway grocery stores in solidarity with Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers union. They collaborated and learned from the Black Panthers. A group in Los Angeles created a solidarity picket against the States Steamship offices there. Although neither Whittington nor Laurence got their jobs back, they were able to get Frank Denaro - the Tower Records employee - his job back by that June.

Committee Controversy?

Now it’s interesting and important to note that while the Committee for Homosexual Freedom seemed like a pretty radical militant queer group at the time, the politics of its members were, well, not good - at least later in life. In an interview in 2012, Laurence said “Stonewall was a clash between Puerto Rican drag queens and the police…What was happening in San Francisco was a carefully planned civil-rights action.” This framing of who/what is respectable is clearly based in racist and transphobic ideas. Laurence would also go on to become a Deputy Sheriff in San Diego - yikes! It is not clear to me if Laurence grew more conservative as he aged or if he believed that CHF was not that radical at the time but this might be an important clue as to why CHF's history is not often shared in the context of Stonewall.

But as we’ll see over the following weeks, the history of the Committee for Homosexual Freedom and the protests they held in San Fransisco played an important role in the Stonewall Uprisings that would take place in the summer of 1969 and the astrology shows just how much they were intertwined.^[5]

Footnotes:

1. outhistory.org/exibits/show/kali/leol
2. Berkeley Barb, March 28, 1969.
3. http://zengersmag.blogspot.com/2012/01/it-didnt-all-start-at-stonewall_20.html
4. Berkeley Barb, April 11, 1969.
5. The history and the connections made here would not be possible without the work of Eric Noble and the exhibit he created on OutHistory.