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Mattachine founded 50 years ago

D.C. ‘homophile’ group remembered as first civil rights organization for gays

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Frank Kameny, one of Mattachine’s founders, died last month, just prior to the organization’s 50th anniversary. The city staged a farewell for Kameny last week a the Carnegie Library. (Washington Blade file photo by Doug Hinckle)

Records kept by the late gay rights pioneer Frank Kameny show that Kameny and fellow activist and native Washingtonian Jack Nichols co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., on Nov. 15, 1961 as the city’s — and nation’s — first homosexual civil rights organization.

Kameny, then 36, and Nichols, 23, were joined by at least three others on that day at the group’s first official meeting, held in the Harvard Street, N.W., apartment of Earl Aiken, one of the group’s first members, according to information obtained by D.C.’s Rainbow History Project.

LGBT activists and Kameny’s friends and colleagues in D.C. and across the nation are scheduled to gather in Washington at the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill next Tuesday, Nov. 15, for a memorial service celebrating Kameny’s life and legacy. The gay rights leader died at his home in Washington on Oct. 11. Organizers say the gathering will also commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kameny and his gay rights colleagues’ founding of the Mattachine Society of Washington.

The Rainbow History Project reports that an example of the hostile climate the fledgling group was to face in its first few years of existence in the early 1960s surfaced three months before its official launch, when Kameny organized a preliminary meeting to discuss the need for forming a homosexual rights group.

When Kameny and others sat down at the start of that meeting, held at the Hay Adams Hotel on Aug. 1, 1961, Kameny quickly discovered the gathering had been infiltrated by Louis Fouchette, the head of the Perversion Section of the D.C. Police Department’s Morals Division.

“Fouchette was identified, exposed, and left the meeting,” Rainbow History Project reports in one of its papers on the Mattachine Society of Washington.

Kameny told the Blade years later that he and others attending the August 1961 meeting viewed Fouchette’s visit, and the fact that he learned of plans to form a gay group before it even held its first meeting, as a chilling reminder of the work that lay ahead for the group.

In part because Mattachine’s organizers knew that discovery by authorities, including police, of someone’s status as a gay person would almost certainly lead to the loss of their job, the group adopted a bylaw making it mandatory that all members except Kameny use a pseudonym to identify themselves publicly. The pseudonyms would also be used on Mattachine’s membership list.

Among those complying with this requirement were Mattachine members Nichols, who later went on to become an accomplished author, journalist and out gay activist; Robert King, Lilli Vincenz, Paul Kuntzler, Eva Freund; Ron Balin; and Jon Swanson, according to Rainbow History’s reports on the group.

Each of them played a key role in Mattachine Society of Washington’s groundbreaking work, including the group’s first-ever homosexual rights protest demonstrations in the 1960s at the White House, Pentagon, Civil Service Commission and other government buildings.

Kuntzler later co-founded the D.C. Gay Activist Alliance, which later became the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, and the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, two of D.C.’s leading LGBT advocacy organizations that continue to operate today.

Back in 1961, Kameny chose to use his real name in connection with the Mattachine Society of Washington because he already suffered what he believed to be the irreversible consequences surrounding his firing in 1958 from his job as a civilian astronomer at the U.S. Army Map Service after authorities discovered he was gay.

“He knew he was essentially blacklisted for life in his profession as an astronomer, where, at the time, everybody knew each other in that profession,” said author and Kameny biographer David Carter. “So he had nothing to lose.”

Carter, who interviewed Kameny extensively during the past several years, said Kameny told him he chose to be one of the few “out” gays at the time following his unsuccessful but highly acclaimed appeal of his firing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kameny wrote his own brief to the high court as a document known as a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, which asked the court to take on his case. In 1961, the Supreme Court denied his petition and upheld a lower court decision that refused to back a Kameny lawsuit seeking to force the U.S. Civil Service Commission to overturn his firing.

The lawsuit and his petition to the Supreme Court marked the first known time a gay person had challenged the U.S. government policy of refusing to hire and automatically firing gay people from federal government employment in any capacity or position.

Kameny’s 61-page Supreme Court petition, which is now part of the Kameny Papers collection at the Library of Congress, is viewed today by historians as the first comprehensive gay rights manifesto in the United States.

Carter, who is writing Kameny’s biography, said the Supreme Court petition became the founding principles used by Mattachine Society of Washington to carry out its work calling for equality and non-discrimination for homosexuals in employment and a wide range of other areas.

Origin of ‘Mattachine’ name

Local activists commemorate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Mattachine Society on Nov. 15, 1986. (Blade archive photo by Doug Hinckle)

There were other Mattachine Society groups created by gays in other cities beginning in Los Angeles in 1950. But nearly all of them acted as clandestine groups seeking to promote a better understanding of homosexuals, with most agreeing with the then prevailing view by psychiatric professionals that homosexuality was a mental disorder.

The Mattachine name was first adopted in 1950 by pioneering gay rights activist Harry Hay, the lead founder that year in Los Angeles of the first such group. Hay said he took the name from a French medieval and renaissance group known as Société Mattachine, which operated within the royal court as court-jester type figures wearing masks to conceal their identity. In some cases the Mattachines were believed to have been given liberty to speak frankly to the ruling monarch on matters that others were forbidden to discuss.

Carter said Kameny favored using another name for the Washington group that boldly used the word homosexual in its title. He said Kameny told him he was outvoted by the other members, who thought “Mattachine” was a name widely recognized within the nation’s homophile movement.

While insisting on adopting Mattachine Society as its name, Carter and others familiar with the group said the members agreed to Kameny’s request that it remain independent of other Mattachine Society groups, with whose philosophy and tactics Kameny disagreed.

None of the other Mattachine Society groups, including those located in L.A., San Francisco, and New York, took on the role of a civil rights and civil liberties organization like the Mattachine Society of Washington did.

“They certainly were the first to take that position,” said Carter, in discussing Mattachine Society of Washington’s activist, civil rights stance. “And the second unique thing about them is their attitude or strategy. They took a militant approach toward achieving that goal, an unapologetic approach,” he said.

“It is time that a strong initiative be taken to obtain for the homosexual minority – a minority in no way different, as such, from other of our national minority groups – the same rights, provided in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, as are guaranteed to all other citizens,” the Mattachine Society of Washington said in an August 1962 statement.

“These include the rights to the pursuit of happiness and to equality of opportunity; the right, as human beings, to develop and achieve their full potential and dignity; and the right, as citizens, to be allowed to make their maximum contribution to the society in which they live – rights which Federal policy and practice now deny,” the statement says.

In what Carter and others following the LGBT rights movement say was a first of its kind development, the group launched a four-point campaign in 1962 calling for repeal of the U.S. Civil Service Commission’s policy barring gay employees, which it called unconstitutional; an end to the U.S. military ban on gay service members; an end to the federal government policy of denying security clearances for gays; and the repeal of state sodomy laws that made it illegal for consenting adults of the same sex to engage in private sexual relations.

Kuntzler said the group went one step further by taking what others in the homophile movement at the time considered a radical action. Following a heated debate among its members at an April 1965 meeting, Mattachine Society of Washington adopted a formal resolution declaring that homosexuality was not a mental disorder.

The resolution, introduced by Kameny, opened the way for the group to begin a national campaign to pressure the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its diagnostic manual as a disorder.

Kuntzler said he recalls members voted 27 to 5 to approve the resolution, with the group’s then president, Bob Belanger among those who voted against it.

“The Mattachine Society of Washington takes the position that in the absence of valid evidence to the contrary, homosexuality is not a sickness, disturbance or other pathology in any sense but is merely a preference, orientation, or propensity on par with and not different in kind from heterosexuality,” the resolution states.

Kuntzler also recalled that the group got an unexpected flurry of publicity in the summer of 1963 when then U.S. Rep. John Dowdy (D-Texas), who chaired the House committee overseeing D.C. affairs, called a public hearing on a bill he introduced to curtail the activities of the Mattachine Society of Washington.

The Washington Post reported in an Aug. 10, 1963 story that Dowdy became outraged when he learned that a D.C. government agency had granted Mattachine a license to solicit charitable contributions in the city as a fundraising tool. The Post story said Dowdy’s bill called for overturning the city’s approval of the group’s charitable solicitation license and called for barring the city from approving any future license to any organization whose existence threatened to harm “the health, welfare and morals” of the city.

Kameny drew widespread media coverage when he testified at the hearing in opposition to the bill and challenged Dowdy’s assumptions that homosexuality was a “perversion” harmful to society. A representative of the D.C. chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union also testified against the bill, saying it was unconstitutional because it would infringe on Mattachine’s First Amendment right of freedom of expression.

Kuntzler said that much to Dowdy’s horror, the testimony by Kameny and the ACLU official resonated with the public and media, prompting a Post editorial opposing the bill and calling Dowdy a “moralist.”

The bill eventually died in committee. The brouhaha surrounding its introduction and the hearing helped to boost the Mattachine Society’s message of equality and non-discrimination for gay people, Kameny and other members of the group concluded at the time.

The Mattachine Society of Washington became less active following the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969, which was considered a momentous development in the gay rights movement that led to the creation of a plethora of other gay groups, including D.C.’s short-lived Gay Liberation Front.

According to Kuntzler, nearly all of Mattachine’s small corps of remaining members devoted their time and energy in 1971 to Kameny’s historic run as the nation’s first known openly gay candidate for Congress. Kameny became one of five candidates competing for the newly created non-voting delegate seat in the House of Representatives to represent D.C. in Congress.

Mattachine members, among other things, organized a first-of-its-kind “gay” questionnaire for each of the candidates running in the race, asking them to state their views on gay-related issues, including whether they would support legislation to ban discrimination against homosexuals in employment.

All but Kameny ignored the questionnaire, Kuntzler said. But he said the questionnaire and the election-related work performed by Mattachine members laid the groundwork for the type of gay rights work assumed by the Gay Activists Alliance, which formed as the recognized successor to Mattachine Society of Washington immediately following Kameny’s run for Congress.

Kameny finished fourth in the election, receiving 1,888 votes or 11 percent of the total, Kuntzler recalls. In a development that surprised many and delighted LGBT activists, Kameny finished ahead of the Rev. Douglas Moore, the fifth place candidate who denounced homosexuality and gays as being “immoral” and a threat to the community.

“It was a very nice place to be,” said lesbian activist Lilli Vincenz, who said she joined Mattachine Society of Washington in 1962 after being discharged from the Women’s Army Corps, or WACs, on grounds of homosexuality. “I was glad to be a part of it.”

Vincenz was among many of the group’s early members who went on to successful professional careers in the D.C. area while they continued to participate in the LGBT rights movement. All of them switched to using their real names.

Eva Freund, who, like Vincenz and Mattachine member Nancy Tucker, became among the group’s first female members, continued to participate in LGBT-related causes. She currently serves as president of a D.C.-area information technology services company.

Vincenz received a doctorate degree in psychology and operated a therapist practice specializing in helping lesbian and gay clients. Kuntzler became an advertising executive for a non-profit association and his longtime domestic partner, Steven Miller, who also participated in Mattachine activities, became the owner of a successful court reporting business.

Tucker and Vincenz also became coordinators of a Mattachine newsletter project that led them to found an independent gay newspaper in the city in October of 1969 called the Gay Blade, which later evolved into the Washington Blade.

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District of Columbia

D.C. mayor honors 10th anniversary of Team Rayceen Productions

LGBTQ entertainment, advocacy organization praised for ‘vital work’

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Rayceen Pendarvis co-founded Team Rayceen Productions. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser today issued an official proclamation declaring Monday, March 18, 2024, as Team Rayceen Day in honor of the local LGBTQ entertainment and advocacy organization Team Rayceen Productions named after its co-founder Rayceen Pendarvis.

“Whereas Rayceen, along with Team Rayceen Productions co-founder, Zar, have spent 10 years advocating for the Black LGBTQI+ community using various forms including in-person events, social media, and YouTube,” the proclamation states.

The proclamation adds that through its YouTube Channel, Team Rayceen Productions created a platform for “Black LGBTQIA+ individuals to discuss various topics including spotlighting nonprofit organizations and small businesses, voter registration and participation, the state of LGBTQIA+ rights and resources in D.C, gender equality and equity, and the amplification of opportunities to bring the community together.”

It also praises Team Rayceen Productions for its partnership with the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs in helping to produce “exciting events like the District of Pride talent showcase held each June and the iconic 17th Street High Heel Race celebrated in October.”

“Whereas I thank Team Rayceen Productions for its vital and necessary work and am #DCProud to wish you all the best as you continue to support Black LGBTQIA+ residents across all 8 Wards,” the proclamation continues.

“Now, therefore, I, the Mayor of Washington, D.C., do hereby proclaim March 18, 2024, as TEAM RAYCEEN DAY in Washington, D.C. and do commit this observance to all Washingtonians,” it concludes.

“We thank Mayor Bowser for this special proclamation, which highlights where it all began, with the Black LGBTQIA+ community of Washington, D.C,” Team Rayceen Productions says in a statement. “Starting with The Ask Rayceen Show, Reel Affirmation, and events with D.C. Public Library to Art All Night, Silver Pride by Whitman-Walker, and events with the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, we are #dcproud of what we have accomplished in the Nation’s Capital,” the statement says. 

“For TEAM RAYCEEN DAY, we thank the diverse group of individuals who have made everything we have done possible by volunteering their time and talents over the past decade – as online co-hosts, event staff, performers, DJs, photographers, and more,” says the statement.

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D.C. jury finds AARP Services illegally fired gay man

Former employee awarded $2.1 million in damages

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Richard A. Deus, Jr.

A D.C. Superior Court jury on March 15 handed down a verdict finding that the D.C.-based AARP Services, Inc., an arm of the AARP that interacts with businesses supportive of the nation’s seniors, illegally fired a gay manager because of his sexual orientation.

The jury’s verdict, which it said was based on a “preponderance of evidence,” came six years after Richard A. ‘Rick’ Deus Jr., who worked for AARP and AARP Services for 11 years, filed a lawsuit against his former employer in May 2018. The lawsuit charges that AARP Services violated the D.C. Human Rights Act by firing him after falsely accusing him of accepting gifts for travel from businesses affiliated with AARP that violated AARP employee ethics policies.

His lawsuit says he was fired in February 2018. At that time, he held the title of director of program management at AARP Services.

The lawsuit says AARP Services cited the alleged travel violations as the reason for its decision to fire him. The lawsuit named AARP Services and its then chief executive officer, Lawrence Flanagan, as the two defendants responsible for Deus’s firing.

But the jury’s verdict only named AARP Services as being at fault in the firing. It did not find Flanagan at fault and did not hold him responsible for damages, even though Flanagan testified at the trial that he made the final decision to terminate Deus on grounds that Deus violated the travel policy.

The jury also chose not to hold AARP Services responsible for paying punitive damages to Deus, whose lawsuit called for $5 million in compensatory damages and an additional $5 million in punitive damages.

In its verdict, according to online court records, the jury awarded Deus $1,612,916.18 in compensatory damages and $578,351 in damages for emotional distress that AARP Services is required to pay Deus. The court records show the jury awarded Deus another $1,118.89 to be paid by AARP Services for its alleged breach of contract with him in its decision to fire him.

An attorney representing AARP Services immediately following the verdict filed a motion requesting that Superior Court Judge Shana Frost Matini, who presided over the trial, issue a “directed verdict” overturning the jury’s verdict. 

Such a motion is often filed by individuals or organizations on the losing side of a lawsuit, but such requests are rarely approved. Matini said she would schedule a hearing to consider the motion in May.

“I’m thrilled that the jury found that I was treated differently from my co-workers and discriminatorily fired,” Deus told the Washington Blade after the jury handed down its verdict. “That’s clearly what they found, and they awarded emotional pain and suffering,” he said. “But overall, I’m elated. It’s been six years of my life that I’ve been fighting and telling people that I was treated differently than anybody else and today I got my vindication.”

Laura Segal, AARP’s Senior Vice President for External Affairs, told the Blade in a statement, “AARP is pleased with the jury’s verdict that Lawrence Flanagan lawfully terminated Richard Deus’s employment.” She added, “AARP Services, Inc. (ASI) disagrees with the remainder of the verdict and is exploring all options for further legal review. We remain committed to an inclusive culture and warmth and belonging, where everyone is welcome.”

Attorneys representing AARP Services argued at the trial and presented witnesses denying Dues was fired because of his sexual orientation. They asserted that AARP Services had and still has gay and lesbian employees and managers and that the company has a longstanding policy of prohibiting  discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or marital status.

Deus’s lawsuit accused AARP Services of targeting Deus for discrimination based on his marriage to another man as well as for his sexual orientation. The jury did not find that AARP Services engaged in discrimination against Deus based on his marital status.

Flanagan was among the lead defense witnesses who testified at the nine-day-long trial. He testified that he has worked for many years with gay colleagues, has a gay relative who he admires, and would never have allowed his staff to engage in discrimination while he served as AARP Services CEO.

He noted in his testimony that his decision to fire Deus was based, in part, on the recommendation of AARP Services’ human resources or personnel director, Michael Loizzi, who is an openly gay man. Loizzi, who also testified at the trial, said that as a gay man he would never have called for Deus or anyone else to be fired because of their sexual orientation. He stated in his testimony that he recommended to Flanagan that Deus be fired because Deus violated AARP Services travel policy and lied to his supervisor about the details of the travel to get his supervisor’s approval under false pretenses.

Deus, during his own testimony, strongly disputed claims that he obtained permission for his travel by providing false information to his supervisor. His lawsuit states that both his supervisor and AARP Services’ legal counsel cleared him for the two trips that he has been accused of taking in violation of policy.

His lawsuit identifies heterosexual AARP and AARP Services employees who have taken business trips like the two taken by Deus that allegedly violated travel policy who were not fired or disciplined. A few faced disciplinary actions but were allowed to retain their jobs, the lawsuit says.

“This case is about the unequal treatment of a gay man when juxtaposed to the treatment of our heterosexual comparators,” Darrell Chambers, Deus’s lead attorney, told the Washington Blade after the verdict. “This is not a case about an organization or a group of people who hate gay people and decided that they were going to fire this man because they hate him,” Chambers said.

“Instead, it’s a case where the punishment that they consistently applied to gay employees, re Mr. Deus and Mr. Sanders, was harsher, far harsher than the punishment they applied to heterosexual employees who committed the same or similar acts.”

Chambers was referring to former AARP Services employee Jack Sanders, who is gay and who testified on video played at the trial that he was summarily fired on grounds that he allegedly sent pornographic photos or video images to another AARP Services employee, who complained about receiving the pornographic images.

Sanders has said the pornographic images in question were sent to the employee by his ex-boyfriend who wanted to portray Sanders in a negative light. Through telephone and wire transmission records Sanders was able to show that the images in question were sent from a device in Washington, D.C. at a time that Sanders was in Chicago, proving that Sanders could not have been the person who sent the images.

Deus’s attorneys brought out at the trial that AARP Services failed to give Sanders a chance to defend himself, prompting him to file his own lawsuit against AARP Services for which a settlement was reached. The terms of the settlement have not been publicly disclosed. But Deus’s attorneys cited Sanders’s case as yet another example of how AARP Services has treated gay employees differently from heterosexual employees.

AARP Services attorney Alison Davis argued during the trial that discrimination based on Deus’s sexual orientation had nothing at all to do with the decision to fire him. Davis told the jury that the two trips that Deus took that led to his firing, one to New York City and the other to New Orleans to attend the Sugar Bowl football game, were financed in part by companies that do business with AARP in violation of AARP and AARP Services policies for travel. Among other things, she said the Sugar Bowl is considered a championship game that has a value higher than smaller gifts that AARP employees are allowed to accept.

Deus testified that his reason for accepting an invitation to the Sugar Bowl game was to spend time with the new account director at the Allstate insurance company, which paid for the Sugar Bowl game ticket. “In 2019, we were going to be negotiating a new contract with Allstate and we wanted to establish a good relationship with her before the contract negotiations began,” he told the Blade. “That’s how you do business.”

Deus said he was referring to Allstate’s business relationship with AARP Services, which he said, similar to its interaction with other businesses, helps AARP provide support and services to the nation’s senior citizens.

In her cross examination of Deus on the witness stand, Davis also raised AARP Services’ claim in contesting the lawsuit that the emotional distress and depression that Deus says he suffered because of his firing could have been caused by issues unrelated to the firing. Davis asked Deus if his emotional distress was caused by stress that Deus has said he experienced years earlier when he came out as gay to his parents, who are ordained ministers, and in his interaction with his sister, who had been diagnosed as being bipolar. 

Deus said that while his coming out to his conservative parents nearly 30 years ago and his sister’s mental health issues were a concern years earlier, he and his parents had long since reconciled over his sexual orientation and his sister’s mental health issues played no role whatsoever in the emotional distress he experienced after being fired by AARP Services.

In her cross examination of Deus on the witness stand, Davis also asked him if his decision to be interviewed by the Washington Blade last year for a Blade story about his lawsuit could have contributed to the difficulty, he said he encountered in finding employment after he was fired by AARP Services. Deus, who testified that he was hired by at least one other company that later laid him off, said he did not believe a Blade story about his lawsuit would have an adverse impact on him.  

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Baltimore

Power Plant Live! opens Club 4, its first LGBTQ bar

Ryan Butler, known by his drag persona Brooklyn Heights, helped launch venue

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Ryan Butler, also known as drag performer Brooklyn Heights, stands in the space at Power Plant Live! that will house Club 4. (Photo by Kaitlin Newman for the Baltimore Banner)

BY JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV | Ryan Butler wanted a place where all members of the LGBTQ community could enjoy drag, drinks and fellowship in a safe space. He found it by the Inner Harbor.

Butler jumped at the opportunity to help open Club 4, the first LGBTQ-themed bar to occupy the popular Power Plant Live! venue.

The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.

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