Harry Hay

Henry "Harry" Hay Jr. (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002) was an American gay rights activist, communist, and labor advocate. He cofounded the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States, as well as the Radical Faeries, a loosely affiliated gay spiritual movement. Hay has been described as "the Founder of the Modern Gay Movement" and "the father of gay liberation".

Acknowledging both his same-sex sexual attraction and an interest in Marxism from an early age, Hay eventually worked as a professional actor in Los Angeles, where he joined the Communist Party USA, becoming a committed labor activist. He ended his 1938 marriage to a Party activist after recognizing he remained homosexual, establishing the Mattachine Society in 1950.

Hay increasingly stood against the assimilationism advocated by the majority of gay rights campaigners. Organizing to subvert the social and political marginalization of gay people, he cofounded the Los Angeles chapter of the Gay Liberation Front in 1969. After moving to New Mexico in 1970 with his longtime partner John Burnside, Native American religions influenced the couple to cofound the Radical Faeries in 1979 with Don Kilhefner and Mitchell L. Walker.

After returning to Los Angeles, Hay remained involved in an array of activist causes throughout his life, and became a well-known, albeit controversial, elder statesman within the country's gay community. In his later years, Hay was an active supporter of the pedophile advocacy organization North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), speaking on panels and sessions at several of the group's annual meetings. Hay protested the group being expelled from Pride parades, including his boycott of the 1994 New York Pride March. Provided by Wikipedia