Author: Abigail Seaver Caraveo

A review of “Insist That They Love You, Craig Rodwell and the Fight for Gay PRIDE” by John Van Hoesen

by: Charles Francis

All history, the saying goes, is contemporary history. 

     It is difficult to read the new biography of Craig Rodwell, a founding activist of the LGBTQ movement for civil equality, without a thrill and a shudder.  How far we have traveled since he opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in Greenwich Village—“A Bookshop of the Homophile Movement”—in 1967.  Thrill to stand with Rodwell across the street from the Stonewall yelling “Gay Power” then sprint to a pay phone with him to alert the media.  Geek-out on America’s first queer “bookshop” that became Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant’s base to organize the first PRIDE parade and the spirit of Gay Liberation itself.  Then shudder to realize how we are heading back to where all of this began facing the same scale political assault. It is never over. Rodwell’s earliest, primal battles fighting invisibility, defending free speech and books, and ending discrimination replay today with a new ferocity.  “Insist That They Love You, Craig Rodwell and the Fight for Gay PRIDE” (University of Toronto Press, 2025)  by John Van Hoesen is not a trip to a tinted queer past. It is a passage through the DNA helix of our community’s success and survival.

     Rodwell got his start in New York in 1959 working for the Mattachine Society’s flagship publication ‘The Mattachine Review”. He ran the literature table at meetings, worked on the monthly newsletter, and founded the Mattachine Young Adults group to expand the organization beyond the circle of wan white guys in their fifties.  It all came together at the infamous “sip-in” at Julius’ Bar captured by the New York Times with Rodwell at the bar demanding to be served.  Thank goodness “sip-ins” could never be enough.  Committed at age six by his very troubled mother into eight years in a Christian Science boarding school, Rodwell remembered the concept of the Christian Science reading room, “a place where lives can be changed”.  In the American way, he processed this rough upbringing into a big idea:  a sunny, storefront bookshop named after Oscar Wilde with a big window display of pamphlets, books and a sign that said, “Gay is Good!”

     Van Hoesen’s research delivers tick-tock reality. Rodwell’s partner Fred Sargeant decades later would become Van Hoesen’s life partner.  So, there is an almost en famille familiarity with the subject matter, and it shows.  For example, on a Saturday morning at the bookshop, two hours before the Christopher Street Liberation Day parade was to commence, there were thousands of people gathering at the staging site on Waverly Place in the Village.  Rodwell had still not received the parade permit for a Central Park “Gay-In” that he and Fred had applied for from the New York Police Department.  At last, a cop knocked on their door with the permit.  “We would have marched anyway,” Rodwell insisted.

    This first PRIDE parade from the Village to Central Park was all Rodwell:  his idea, his organizing, his team’s full execution operating out of the bookshop.  The biography brings the moving pieces into dramatic focus beginning with Rodwell’s impatience with gay pioneer Frank Kameny, the founder of the original Mattachine Society of Washington, DC.  At the annual Reminder’s Day 1969 picketing demonstration in Philadelphia, Kameny spotted two lesbians in the line holding hands. “None of that!”, Kameny barked separating them with a “karate chop-style movement”.   Rodwell, having played a key role just days before in the Stonewall riot, was in no mood for Kameny’s old-school rules of dress and comportment while picketing.  Thus was born the Christopher Street Liberation Day parade to mark the first anniversary of Stonewall.  Van Hoesen’s biography takes the story to a next level of reporting through the prism of Rodwell’s growth and development as a young man building the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop into “the nerve center of the movement.”  

     Rodwell and his team trained the parade’s marshals on crowd control strategies. Gay Quakers were invited by Rodwell’s march leaders to become involved.   According to a new history of the Quaker Religious Society of Friends by historian Brian Blackmore,¹ the Quakers were invited to address over one hundred parade marshals with instructions on what to do if violence occurred.  The Quakers trained the marshalls in techniques they had successfully learned from Bayard Rustin in the civil rights movement.   “One parade marshal volunteered to perform the part of the violent bystander.  “Cocksucker!”, the Quaker Friend yelled at another member.  The Quaker trainers explained what typically comes next in the role playing, teaching the value and “how-to” of non-violence during acts of protest and civil resistance.”   You can see the hand of Rodwell in this kind of innovative outreach beyond the old picket line-up.

     Mattachine Society of Washington member Lilli Vincenz produced and directed the twelve-minute documentary entitled “Gay & Proud” (1970) of the Christopher Street Liberation Day march.² Decades later, Vincenz asked us (the new Mattachine Society of Washington, DC) to help her donate the 16mm film footage and materials stored in her attic to the Library of Congress. “Gay & Proud” may now be viewed online on the Library’s website with the Rodwell-inspired chants “Gay Power” and “Out of the closets and into the streets!”  Mike Mashon, Director the the Library’s film division at the time, wrote that “Lilli’s films are “revelatory…recording a seismic shift of such proportions that we’re still feeling the reverberations today.”  Those reverberations began with Craig Rodwell’s leadership as we now know thanks to Van Hoesen’s biography.

     It will always be inspiring that there was an intellectual locus for the movement at Rodwell’s bookshop even though there were weird touches there like his display of a Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) multi-volume biography on Christian Science.  Despite Rodwell’s effort to win over Eddy’s “Mother church”, Christian Scientists remain dedicated to the proposition of homosexuality as an illness in need of Christian Science “healing”.

      A happier anecdote about the bookshop, Van Hoesen tells the story of gay historian and author Jonathan Ned Katz’ first visit to the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in 1970 when he was still closeted. Six years later, Katz was signing copies of “Gay American History” at the shop’s new location on Christopher Street.  Katz’ inscription was his longtime motto: “Love and Struggle”.   That struggle rages on fighting organized challenges to books in libraries across America.  This year the American Library Association reports 2,452 unique titles were challenged by mostly Christian extremists, Christian Nationalist and far-right groups, or simply banned, almost double the number reported in 2022.³ No surprise that most of the top ten attacked titles are queer: “Gender Queer” is number one; followed by “All Boys Aren’t Blue”; “This Book is Gay”; “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”; and “Flamer”.  We know every single one of these titles would be in the big window of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, Craig Rodwell out front with his trademark pamphlets, handouts, leaflets and flyers.  This is who he was. This is where Gay Liberation began in the Village and must begin again in that spirit. 

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1. Brian T. Blackmore, “Quaker Approaches to Queer: Gay and Lesbian Inclusion in the Liberal Tradition of the Religious Society of Friends”, 2023  ↩︎
2. https://lesbianpioneer.org ↩︎
3. https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/2024-book-bans/ ↩︎

It is inspiring to see the Smithsonian magazine describe gay civil rights pioneer Frank Kameny’s pair of handwritten notebooks held in the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History as a “National Treasure”.   In these times, a feature on Kameny’s notebooks is a wonderful sign of integrity and commitment by the Smithsonian to continue telling true stories of American history.  The Smithsonian headline nails it: “Frank Kameny Helped Chart a Path to Liberation for Millions of Gay Americans”.   Written by Brandon Tensley (September/October, 2025), the piece captures Dr. Kameny’s astronomer-like observations starting with his humiliating firing in 1957 by the US Army Map Service, to his detailed notebook entries identifying hotels, restaurants and bars across America (as if they were celestial objects) that were safe places, or not, for gay travelers living their lives as outsiders and sodomy outlaws.

The Smithsonian article includes a spectacular four-minute video that taps into the Library of Congress’ Frank Kameny Papers collection and the historic documentaries of lesbian pioneer Lilli Vincenz (1937-2023) held in the library’s moving image collections; documents from the National Archives, and the New York Public Library LGBTQ collections. Entitled National Treasures:  How Frank Kameny Became the Father of the Gay Rights Movement, the video was produced by the magazine and written and directed by Frank Carroll, who is also a producer in the department of Digital Media at WETA TV in Washington.  We and others were honored to have helped Frank Kameny and Lilli Vincenz organize and donate their materials to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Library of Congress—for exactly this purpose in such a time.

Once known, even branded, for its dynamism and progress, Texas has entered into a spiral of animus and legislative contempt toward LGBTQ+ Texans reminiscent of Mississippi in the Sixties, in its final throes of opposition to integration and civil rights

Mississippi helped clear the way for its “massive resistance” to integration by harnessing the fear of what legislators called “racial perverts” and outside agitator “deviants.” U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves wrote in his 2014 opinion striking down Mississippi’s ban on same-sex marriage, “…segregationists called their opponents ‘racial perverts’; Klan propaganda tied together Communists, homosexuals, Jews, fornicators and angry blacks—infidels all.’” 

Today, this seems to be the new Texas blueprint – from posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms (for the “infidels”) to enacting book bans, drag bans, a new ban on LGBTQ+ clubs in schools, school speech bans (“Don’t say gay”), and an obsessive number of anti-transgender proposals and laws.

Read more from Charles Francis on LGBTQNation.com.

I am honored for “Archive Activism” to be named by “LGBTQ+Nation” as #2 among “20 powerful LGBTQ+ memoirs…that will open your eyes and mind” (August 1, 2025).  In this time of erasure and rewriting of our history, it is vital to know the shoulders we stand upon—from Stonewall to this very moment of political assault on LGBTQ Americans.  Here’s a photo of an old 16 mm film can that held the documentary “Gay & Proud” (black & white, 1970) produced and directed by lesbian pioneer Lilly Vincenz.  Her film documents the first PRIDE parade/celebration in the U.S.— the Christopher Street Liberation Day parade. We discovered this film can in Lill’s attic and donated the film along with Lill’s entire activist collection to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

We were thrilled to be with veteran “Washington Blade” reporter Lou Chibbaro, Jr. and DC drag star Ella Fitzgerald (Donnell Robinson) at the premiere of Mattachine’s documentary film “Lou’s Legacy: a Reporter’s Life at the Washington Blade” (June 22, Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in Washington, DC).  “Lou’s Legacy” is now streaming on PBS.org. Over seven years, Mattachine helped Lou preserve and donate his archive to George Washington University’s Gelman Library.  In this time of erasure and rewriting of LGBTQ history, our history is everything!

93-year-old conservative rode with us when no one else would

This piece by Charles Francis was originally published in the Washington Blade.

March 18, 2025 — The senator from Wyoming was authenticity itself — a Western force coming at you like a bobcat with a crooked smile. Indeed, the name of his ranch outside of Cody is the “Bobcat.” It was at the Bobcat near Yellowstone Park, where my friend Sen. Alan K. Simpson (1931-2025) did some of his best thinking about history, politics, and how people live and fight.  

When he came to Washington, Al Simpson was steeped in this uniquely Western Bobcat Ranch heritage — from his grandfather, who represented W.F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody and prosecuted Butch Cassidy to his mother, a founder of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center that today displays paintings by Thomas Moran and Annie Oakley’s rifles. He was an old-school live-and-let-live conservative Republican, but one with a Western twist — one part sneer, one part laugh-out-loud funny. It was that twist, I believe, that made him unique.

Sen. Simpson stood with his friend Congressman Barney Frank in 1998 on the Capitol steps at the candlelight vigil after the murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie. Shaken by the barbarity of what happened, Simpson denounced Shepard’s killing as an “ugly, ugly butchering.  The people of my state and the University of Wyoming want you to know this is not who we are.” Then came a wave of boos and the heckling of Al as a Republican from Wyoming. He told me he never forgot that booing and resolved to continue fighting with us for our equality in the years to come. On this, he was good to his word.

A Houston gay community effort challenged and appealed the sodomy charge of John Lawrence and Tyron Garner in Texas. We believed our organization, a gay-straight alliance, the Republican Unity Coalition (RUC) had a role to play. Alan Simpson stepped forward to serve as our chairman, signing our amicus brief in support of Lawrence and Garner to strike down the Texas sodomy law. He then reached out to his friend “Jerry Ford” (former President Gerald Ford) to join our effort. Ford did so becoming the first and only president to join an LGBTQ advocacy group. In 2003, on the day the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Lawrence case, Al wrote in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, “Homosexuality should be a non-issue for the GOP… sodomy laws are contrary to American values protecting personal liberty and opposing discrimination.” Al was thrilled when the Court voted 6-3 in favor of Lawrence ending the criminalization of homosexuality. 

When Al came out in support of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, the Rev. Fred Phelps (“God Hates Fags”) denounced Al as a “senile old fag lover.” Al responded with grace and hilarity in the style of one of his heroes, cowboy humorist Will Rogers. “Dear Rev. Phelps, I just want to alert you to the fact that some dizzy son of a bitch is sending out mailings and emails using your name! I know you are a god fearing, Christian person filled to the brim with forbearance, tolerance and love…and this other goofy homophobe nut must be something opposite.” Al did not pull back from his support for same-sex marriage. He opposed President George W. Bush on his proposal to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Al wrote in the Washington Post, “Several Senate members want to create more anguish by pushing a proposal to amend the Constitution … but a federal marriage amendment would do nothing to strengthen families, just the opposite.”

For the rest of his long life, Al remained supportive of the LGBTQ community and our families. We disbanded the old Republican Unity Coalition, a delusion we once shared to make “homosexuality a non-issue for the Republican Party.” There are no more Alan Simpson Republicans. They are from another country. I happily left the party and married my “pard” as they call partners in Cody. We were married with a reception in Washington, made all the brighter with Al’s attendance and his wife Ann’s blessings. Later, they gave our son his first stuffie. 

Alan Simpson’s many obituaries and tributes briefly mention his support of “gay rights” without elaboration. We should all pause to reflect on just how far this 93-year-old Republican rode with us when no one else would.

Charles Francis, president of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., served for 10 years as a Trustee of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo.

I loved visiting “Gay’s the Word” bookshop, the UK’s oldest LGBTQ bookshop in Bloomsbury, just blocks from the British Library.  One of the founders Jim MacSweeney kindly listened to my “archive activist” spiel, an honor for me to share some of our original research with him. He told me his inspiration to open an all gay (in the most expansive meaning of the word) bookshop in London was the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop that opened in 1967 in Greenwich Village.  It was a thrill to be in an all gay/queer bookstore again—so few, if any, are left.

The drive toward an authoritarian theocracy

“Ladies and Gentlemen, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.” I clearly remember this call from a pulpit decades ago because it seemed so odd to hear such a thing in church. Rev. D. James Kennedy, a ballroom dancing instructor in the 1950s who became senior pastor of Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., grandly announced: “The Pledge of Allegiance to the Bible!”  

Down from the rafters, hanging on wires above the pulpit descended a huge Bible seemingly ablaze. Accompanied by old time miracle-riffs on an organ, Kennedy’s congregants stood with hand over heart to recite a chilling pledge of allegiance to The Word: “I pledge allegiance to the Bible….”.  I went to Coral Ridge to see for myself how Kennedy preached about “the infamous men of Sodom who have moved into our churches.” I was one of those men.  In the 1980s, when visiting my hometown Dallas, I attended what is still considered the largest LGBTQ church in the world, the Cathedral of Hope. I had helped this church raise money for a chapel to be designed by gay architect Philip Johnson (1906-2005). I had not experienced Christian Nationalists warning about the “men of Sodom moving into our churches” until I saw that giant hanging Bible in Fort Lauderdale.

A pledge of allegiance to a flying Bible seems quaint compared to today’s Christian Nationalist movement, now a pillar of the new Trump presidency, which evangelical leaders liken to a “Red Sea moment in America.” One leader recently compared Donald Trump to Moses parting the Red Sea allowing his people safe passage into a new Promised Land. Amanda Tyler, the lead organizer of  the Christians Against Christian Nationalism Campaign of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C., warns in her new book the U.S. is now at “a high tide of Christian Nationalism.”  

Read the rest of this article on the Washington Blade.

UPDATE JANUARY 23, 2025: Elon Musk has endorsed the far-right Alternative for German (AfD) candidate for Chancellor in the coming German election.

We must not normalize or ignore what occurred

By Charles Francis and Jeff Trammell

Imagine marching with the diverse thousands in Washington, D.C.’s Pride parade, then suddenly you are confronted by hundreds of men, mostly blonde, wearing black, shouting in your face to disrupt the march. Separating you from them are helmeted riot police with German Shepherds. You blink your eyes in disbelief. You hear the anti-gay epithets shouted in German. You recoil at obscene placards depicting stick figures locked in sex with a red prohibition slash. The black, white and red colors of the Reich flash; there is another flag with an Iron Cross. “Proud-German-National,” one sign says. 

1933? Welcome to Christopher Street Day, 2024 in Leipzig, Germany. Named in homage to the site of the Stonewall Riots, Christopher Street Day (CSD) is the oldest Pride event in what was East Germany, formed in 1992, three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This year, CSD Leipzig has never held such significance, not just in Germany but for us all.

Read the rest on the Washington Blade website.

Archive Activism is featured in an exciting exhibition of books and queer Dallas/Fort Worth memorabilia entitled “PRIDE in Print” at the Dallas Public Library.   As the Republican Texas legislature continues its assault on Texas libraries, especially in small towns, librarians are truly on the front lines.  I love the Dallas Public Library for doing this and including me. The exhibition is set to run throughout the summer.