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Proud Origins
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Proud Origins
The Beginnings of Gay and Lesbian Pride in Vermont
by Peggy Luhrs
We were excited. We were nervous. Would we get a good turnout? Would we be harassed? But we were determined and proud as we set the stage and arranged the balloons for Burlington and Vermont’s very first Lesbian/Gay Pride March.
June 25, 1983 was the date. This year’s LGBTQA March will mark 20 years of gay pride in Vermont. A little background on the origin of Pride or Gay Liberation marches, as they were first called, seems appropriate; here are two accounts:
A Very Brief Outline of the Stonewall Rebellion
During the last weekend of June of 1969, police and Alcoholic Beverage Control Board agents entered a gay bar – The Stonewall Inn, on Christopher Street, in New York City. Allegedly there to look for violations of the alcohol control laws, they made the usual homophobic comments and then, after checking identification, threw the patrons out of the bar, one by one. Instead of quietly slipping away into the night, as we had done for years, hustlers, drag queens, students and other patrons held their ground and fought back. Someone uprooted a parking meter and used it to barricade the door. The agents and police were trapped inside. They wrecked the place and called in reinforcements. Their vehicles raced to the scene with lights glaring and sirens blaring. The crowd grew. Someone set a fire. More people came. For three days, people protested. And for the first time, after innumerable years of oppression, the chant, Gay Power, rang out.
This event has taken on mythic significance. Many organizations proudly use Stonewall or Christopher Street in their names.
During the summer and autumn of 1969, five Gay Liberation Fronts sprang up-in New York, Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose. By the end of 1970, three hundred Gay Liberation Fronts had been created.
The first demonstration in commemoration of the Stonewall Rebellion was held in New York in August of 1969. Marches were held in 1970 in New York and Los Angeles on the anniversary of the Uprising – and thus, a tradition was born. Since then, annual marches have been held in many cities in the U.S. and in other countries. For many of us, our first march was a turning point in our lives. We came out, we drew strength from those around us, we felt pride in our community. [by Alan Batie: batie@agora.rain.com]
The First Pride March
In June 1970, 2000 gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) activists gathered in New York City for the first-ever pride march to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, three days of violent confrontations with police that launched the "gay liberation" movement. Since then, GLBT pride marches have spread across the globe; by 1998 they were held in 116 locations in 47 U.S. states and territories, as well as 87 locations in 32 other countries worldwide, including throughout the New York City Metro area. (Excerpted from Body Positive, June 2001, Volume XIV, Number 6)
In Burlington
In 1983 lesbians were still 10 years away from being temporarily and partially chic. The ERA was defeated that year nationally – and in Vermont it had been defeated by the forces of the Right using blatant dyke-baiting tactics. But, a few movies began to explore gay life ever so gingerly. AIDS was just beginning to be known and hadn’t really made a mark on Vermont. It wasn’t even called AIDS yet.
Remembering back 20 years, I recall thinking about my own coming out in 1973 and that it was time for Burlington to have its own Pride celebration. I’d been to Pride in New York, even lucky enough to be there the year Bette Midler came to Central Park because she’d been hearing there was dissension at the parade and she wanted to come over and lend support. I’d been to Pride in San Francisco the year after they killed Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone. It was a huge parade of over 200,000 that year. And Prides were always fun, always a charge to see our strength, numbers and diversity. San Francisco Pride parades always lead off with Dykes on Bikes at least 100 strong.
But now it was time for Pride in Burlington. I volunteered on the Commonwoman collective. Commonwoman was a feminist paper that published from 1978 to 1984. The name came from some early Judy Grahn poems – and if you don’t know those poems, find them: they are as moving today as when they were first published. We called it an irregular periodical but it basically came out every six weeks and had up to 30 pages of articles, poetry and art work. The Commonwoman (CW) collective decided to get Lesbian/Gay pride to happen. Linda Wittenberg and Laurie Larsun and I all worked on it with the whole collective. I wrote a successful grant to Haymarket to organize Pride and put out a special issue of CW devoted to Lesbian and Gay life in Vermont.
We got City Hall Park for the rally. Laurie remembers getting the permit: “The police seemed baffled,” she recalls. “‘What kind of pride?’ they asked. ‘Lesbian and Gay pride.’ They weren’t thrilled but we got the permit.” Bernie Sanders was mayor, and we got the City Council to declare it Lesbian/ Gay pride day and waited to see who would show up.
300 people attended Burlington’s first pride day. We had balloons, speakers and some homegrown entertainment. There were a few costumes in the parade of mostly dykes. I don’t remember anyone in serious drag. The rally started at two and the parade at three. It was followed by a potluck picnic at Oakledge and a Women’s Dance at McHats. I can’t remember where McHats was most likely in a venue like the current Metronome or on the second floor on Main Street.
I do remember seeing members of the community, friends of Dorothy etc. on the sidelines in sunglasses. A few years later many of them would be comfortable enough to join the march. Certainly marching in Burlington held a lot more risk than marching in New York or Boston. Burlington may be Vermont’s largest city, but it is essentially still a small town with all the gossip and interference in one’s life that can mean.
One of the men who worked tangentially with the organizing committee was an IBM employee. He marched proudly that day but was not counting on his picture being on the front page of the Free Press. The next time he went to work, his coworkers had the paper spread out on their desks. He handled it with the grace born of years of negotiating such moments. But it speaks to the courage of those who did participate in these early pride marches that they risked harassment and loss of jobs to do so.
I believe it was after the second Gay Pride that a man was beat up. He wasn’t even a gay man, just looked like one to the jerks who attacked him because he wore an earring.
In 1983 I was well entrenched in the Burlington Lesbian community which was quite separatist at that time. But separatism in a small town is different too.
Earlier Burlington Action
There were men who worked on Pride, many of whom I’d known since the early to mid-70s when there had been only a lesbian rap group and a gay men’s groups to constitute a “movement.” The lesbians folded their energies into a lot of feminist organizing and activity and were in large part responsible for the start up of the anti-violence-against-women movement in Burlington. We formed Women Against Rape (WAR, now the Women’s Rape Crisis Center) along with a few straight women. Later WAR put out a call for women who were battered to contact the Rape hot line. Immediately overwhelmed by the magnitude of the response, the group began to call for – and organize – a shelter for battered women. The lines between the feminist and lesbian movement were not rigid, since lesbians felt oppressed both as lesbians and as women.
I worked with Bill Lippert and Howdy Russell, Bill and we did a fair amount of speaking in the high schools and at UVM; we were flying under the radar of the Right which only began to go after our community as we became more visible. That was the double-edged sword of successfully meeting our goals to increase our visibility.
In the 70s all there was, that I know of in Burlington, was a Gay Men’s Group and a Lesbian Rap Group. I belonged to a group of women who ran the Women’s Switchboard on the second floor above what is now Urban Stylz which was then Kelly’s Pharmacy. There was really no gay bar although the Hi Hat, now Nectars, passed for one at the time. It was pretty closety. The only time I went there, I found a handful of men at a table in the back. We started having Gay Dances at the Switchboard space for men and women, and that was the beginning of any social life for gay folks in Burlington. By the 80s there were certain nights we were welcome at the B. Bad Lounge at Charlie B. Good’s (which is now the Daily Planet). Those were the Donna Summer days and I remember a lot of fun there. I think Pearls opened later in 1983 as a bar and restaurant; a truly beautiful place in its heyday.
I think of the decade of the 80s as kind of a middle period in the gay liberation movement. We were more visible than in the 70s. There was a smattering of gay and lesbian films in the culture. Women’s music was going strong and gays ruled the disco world. The early liberation struggles had sorted themselves out to some degree and yet we were struggling for the first laws to protect our rights. The City of Burlington was an early leader in protecting against discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing after the election of Bernie Sanders as Mayor in 1981.
Memories of Pride Day, 1983
We began the day at 2 pm with a rally. I remember that Michiyo Cornell (who later took the last name Fukaya, and was a bi-racial lesbian single mom and poet) and Howdy Russell spoke. I remember that one man told a story at open mike of coming out in his 60s and how happy he was for the community he’d found here.
The poster for the event read “Water Won’t Run Straight and Neither Will I.” Linda Wittenberg did the graphics, and the words came from a poem by Laurie Larsun. The poster for the second Pride, designed by Douglas Bassett, continued the nature theme with the slogan, “Out In the Mountains.” That obviously struck a chord as we now have Mountain Pride Media and this publication.
I was asked recently by some young chroniclers of our movement about difficulties and problems we encountered setting up Pride celebrations. I really don’t remember anything too problematic. I remember the day as sunny and exhilarating. I had a lot of fun with friends at the rally and march and later at “Dyke Rock” at Oakledge Park where we felt free enough, at that time, to swim au naturel.
Afterward the organizers held yet another pot luck supper to assess the day and reward ourselves. From 300 people in 1983 Vermont’s Gay Pride has grown to 3000 in recent years. We passed an anti-discrimination bill in Vermont Legislature and most recently became the first state to grant Civil Unions. It’s a lot to be proud of – not that it has all been easy. We’ve had more than our share of harassment, gay bashing, and more subtle forms of discrimination. But as Alix Dobkin says, “We ain’t got it easy but we got it.”
My wishes for the future would include continuing to keep our movement inclusive and diverse, continuing to understand we still have to struggle to insure our freedoms and still need to make this a better place especially for both the old and young in the rainbow spectrum. I’d like to see a name for the day that is better than Vermont Pride, a too-generic title that doesn’t really get to the point, which is celebrating our queerness.
Reflecting on 20 years of personal lesbian pride in Vermont, I’d most like to thank everyone who worked to make our community the dynamic and progressive place that it is. And I say let’s celebrate twenty years of not running straight or running scared and of being out in the mountains!
Peggy Luhrs is a long-time lesbian activist who lives in Burlington.