Aside from all we have gained as LGBT folk from 55 years of activism, we have also helped make the world a better place for everyone. From the beginning, for example, we have been allied with the women’s movement to combat toxic masculinity, so that violence and bullying and male privilege don’t go unchallenged.

Our movement is, at heart, about encouraging authenticity and openness for all people.

What helps inspire me to remain engaged is the success of the queer movement. We started with daunting odds and changed the world. As one measure, 38 countries now enjoy same-sex marriage, something that was beyond our wildest dreams.

Of course, we’ve always had to deal with backlash, such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, and book bans, and skyrocketing violence and scapegoating, especially against trans folk all over the country.

We have to be vigilant and resist in every generation. One critical tool we have is to know and share our history. We talk a lot about Stonewall, the 1969 riots that launched the modern queer liberation movement. I want to say a few words about another remarkable success story that happened in California, nine years later.

The 1978 Briggs Initiative, Prop. 6, was a statewide ballot measure that would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in California public schools. It was the first time we won a statewide election on a gay issue.

In September, the polls had the measure passing by 2 to 1. After our successful campaign, we defeated the measure with nearly 60 percent of the vote.

Here’s how we did it.

LGBTs, allies and people of good will all over the state campaigned to defeat this mean proposition in many different ways. That’s when Harvey Milk and San Francisco State Prof. Sally Gearhart became our brilliant statewide spokespeople. Tragically, Harvey was murdered a few weeks after election day—the price for daring to speak the truth.

At the time, I was in my twenties. I co-owned and operated a VW-repair shop, The Buggery, and that allowed me to take several months off from work to campaign against Prop. 6.

A bunch of us started The Lost Tribe, a Coalition of Lesbian and Gay Jews, to fight the Briggs Initiative. We spoke to many Jewish groups, urging them to Vote NO. We talked about the fact that one of the first professions the nazis had banned Jews from was teaching. They understood that when kids are allowed to interact with Jews or LGBTs or any other targeted minority, they just might like them and that wouldn’t be good for hate campaigns.

The Jewish community overwhelmingly opposed Prop. 6.

Another group of us went to shopping centers in the suburbs to campaign. We sang a little ditty I wrote called Someone You Love is Gay. We attracted a crowd, distributed fliers with the same title and message, and got an enthusiastic response.

The heart of our campaign was persuading the public that they didn’t have the true picture of who gay people were. If they voted for this proposition thinking they were doing something good for their communities, they were likely making life harder for someone they cared for.

And now, in these shockingly disturbing times with democracy in peril, and eerily reminiscent of early 1930s Germany, I’m reminded that the best time to weigh in is early on, before doing so could become frighteningly dangerous. It’s easy to despair and tune out, but if we do so, we hand it to them on a silver platter.  The more of us who get involved sooner than later in whatever way works for them, the greater our chance of rescuing the American experiment from those who would see it fail.

Here’s our song from the Prop. 6 campaign:

Someone you love is gay

Someone you see day to day

Someone you laugh and cry with

Someone you have some apple pie with.

Someone you care for is gay

You may not know it today

Someone whose friendship you treasure

Someone whose company brings you pleasure.

 

Someone you’re close to is gay

You have the power to ease their way

So please remember when November comes your way

Someone you love is gay.

 

Someone you’re proud of is gay

Bear that in mind election day

And please remember, Nix on Six is what we say

Someone you love is gay—we don’t mean just happy

Someone you love is gay.

[This is an adaptation of a talk given at this summer’s 12th annual LGBT Pride Swim in San Francisco. Eighty-five members of my Dolphin Club and the South End club swam the mile and a quarter from the Marina to Fisherman’s Wharf, then celebrated.]

 

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Naphtali Offen has been a gay activist his entire adult life. He lobbied for the world’s first law prohibiting discrimination against LGBTs, in New York City, getting arrested at a sit-in on the Brooklyn Bridge after the city council defeated the bill for the third time.  In San Francisco, he co-founded the Coalition of Lavender-Americans on Smoking or Health (CLASH,) to address the high rates of smoking in the queer community and the tobacco industry’s targeting of lesbians and gays.

He has written extensively on LGBT issues and held leadership roles in many LGBT groups.  He is a retired UCSF researcher, having focused on tobacco industry bad behavior.  He lives with his long-time partner in San Francisco, swims regularly in the bay and has completed more than 20 Escape from Alcatraz triathlons.