Harry Hay(1912-2002)
- Director
- Actor
Harry Hay was born to a well-to-do family in the U.K, in 1912, and
moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1919. He learned early in his
life to trust his internal instinct and understanding of truth rather
than blindly accept truth from authority. He was a member of the
Communist Party and union supporter and advocate in the 1930s. He was
the first person to conceive of gay and lesbian people as a cultural
minority. He founded the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles, California
in 1951. It was the first organization to provide support to and
advocate the rights of gay men in the United States and was the one of
the forerunners to the gay and lesbian civil rights movement. In 1979
he founded the Radical Faeries, a "networking of gentle men devoted to
the principles of ecology, spiritual truth, and, in New Age terms,
'gay-centeredness.'"