announcer: Funding for this program provided by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, California Institute of Contemporary Arts, Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the City of West Hollywood, Los Angeles LGBT Center, California Community Foundation, and by these additional funders.

Craig Loftin: "One" magazine was the first openly gay magazine and just being on display at a newsstand was a very important signifier of gay culture's greater emergence into the public space.

Craig: Now before "One" magazine came along, there were these magazines that did cater to a gay readership, physique magazines.

These were magazines that were mostly pictures of men wearing almost nothing except little pouches under the pretense that these are exercise magazines.

Dennis Bell: In 1951 Bob started up "Physique Pictorial" magazine, and the people who knew what it was, you know, really knew what it was and who it was for.

Alexei Romanoff: People traded them.

They just gave them to each other.

You know, somebody bought 'em at one point and they passed them around.

Jim James Tyler: "Physique Pictorial" and "One," I sort of would pick--get both of them.

Dennis: That magazine continued up until the early '90s.

Jim: The color came in and was--that was a big deal.

Craig: And as long as it pretended that it was just an exercise magazine, it could get away with it.

But what made "One" different was just the fact that they admitted they were a gay magazine right at the time that it's being persecuted the most.

It was very, very important for the people who read it.

A lot of the people who read it were in small towns or suburbs where they didn't have access to any kind of gay culture.

And it's important to know that gay people had a lot of trouble just finding information about themselves.

What does it mean to be gay?

How do I deal with this?

How do I categorize it?

How do I think about my sexuality?

And so, it was a lifeline for so many people.

People wrote letters to the magazine, expressing themselves, talking about their problems, asking for help.

"One" published some of those letters.

They responded to all of those letters.

They really created this intimate sense of conversation but at a very large national level.

speaker: 23 August, 1960. speaker: November 16, 1964. speaker: March 19, 1953. speaker: January 24, 1956, a suburb of Los Angeles.

speaker: 1963, Columbus, Ohio.

speaker: May 1958. speaker: 26 June, 1960, Sacramento.

speaker: Small town in Central Pennsylvania.

speaker: Dear Sir.

speaker: Dear "One."

speaker: Dear "One."

speaker: Dear "One."

speaker: Dear "One."

I learned of your magazine from "Corey's Homosexuality."

Lori: It's gonna be hard for me to put my problem into writing, but I'll try to get all the facts across.

You see, outwardly, I'm a woman, but inside I have male emotions.

In fact, at times, I become two different people.

For a while I'm a woman and even act like one, then all of a sudden I'm a man.

Sometimes, I get so lonely and depressed, I can't bear to go on any longer.

I guess this is a Lonely Hearts letter to you, but you're my last hope.

Appreciate you reading this and, because I'm hoping so strongly that you can help me, I'm thanking you in advance.

Sincerely yours, Lori.

Craig: Obviously, "One's" very visible presence on newsstands was noticed by a lot of the same oppressive forces that were ordering gay bar raids and, at one point, J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI leader who was almost certainly gay himself, was brought a copy of "One" magazine and he ordered an investigation into it, and the L.A. postmaster in 1954 took the October issue of "One" and seized it, didn't allow it to be mailed out to all of the subscribers.

Lillian Faderman: This particular copy which would be extremely tame by probably anyone's standards, but nevertheless, the Post Office said it was obscene.

Craig: Now, there was nothing really remotely obscene in the magazine.

They were just trying to, I think, stop it because it was an openly gay magazine itself.

This was a big blow to "One," but at the same time, "One's" attitude is, "Okay, why are we making this magazine?

We're making this magazine to improve things.

We're making this magazine to change the world, and we're making this magazine to try to fight this exact sort of repression and denial of our own sense of voice.

And so, we're gonna fight this."

Lillian: "One" hired a lawyer by the name of Eric Julber, and Eric Julber took it all the way to the Supreme Court.

Now, the case was not heard orally before the Supreme Court but the justices read Eric Julber's petition and, incredibly, the Supreme Court agreed that "One" was not obscene, that homosexuals had the right to read, that the Post Office had to permit the mailing of "One" magazine.

That was the very first time that the Supreme Court took a case that dealt with homosexuality and came down on our side.

Craig: This was a huge victory for gay rights because it permitted discussion, you know, just discussion.

Chris Freeman: Occasionally, the law was our friend in the history of the movement and, in particular, in the history of the movement in Los Angeles.

Craig: The Supreme Court had basically said that it is legal to have a gay magazine.

It is legal for gay people to talk about themselves in print.

And so lots of other gay publications started following in the wake of that.

The entire gay press, basically, is premised upon that case to an extent.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Harry Hay: The Mattachine Society Republicans who have inundated us, threw all of us radicals out because of the fact that we were calling ourselves a cultural minority and they wouldn't go along with that.

They simply said we're exactly the same as everybody else and homosexuals have nothing in common but their sexuality.

Have nothing else that they share together.

So, consequently, people like me were considered anathema.

We were thrown out.

Craig: So in a notorious and rather tragic moment in the early gay rights movement, Harry Hay got kicked out of the organization that he had founded.

And earlier, he'd been kicked out of the Communist Party for being gay, so Harry Hay couldn't really get a break.

Dale Jennings: It's interesting that unless he had been so obnoxiously persistent, there wouldn't have been a Mattachine, probably there wouldn't have been a meeting--a movement for ages to come because the substance of what Harry Hay had to say was, "Let's do it here and now."

And for that, I adore his memory.

If I were asked who was the most intellectual person in the homosexual movement, I'd say Harry.

Craig: I think he was advocating a vision of gay culture that was a bit too much ahead of its time.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker: Let's face it, homosexuality is a problem and these people are really advocating that we don't solve the problem.

They're advocating that we tolerate the problem, and I think these people are a fit subject for a mental health program.

These people need help.

Chris: You can see the kind of cultural anxiety around sexuality and around obscenity, and so all of this atmospheric sexual liberation was really beginning to be set up at this time.

John Rechy published his "City of Night" in 1963, his really radical, highly queer novel, most of which is set in Los Angeles.

So, you know, you had this kind of burgeoning liberationist anarchic kind of movement happening, and it's happening in literature, journalism, it's happening in film and theater.

The 1950s had become this very interesting transitional time where, on the one hand, you have something like Allen Ginsberg and "Howl," and you know, you have "The Beats" and "On the Road," and this kind of thing.

On the other hand, you have "Leave it to Beaver" and "I Love Lucy."

So you have two Americas competing for what's gonna happen.

And that fight happens in the 1960s.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Lillian: When Harry Hay started the Mattachine Society, he said, "Our theory is that we are an oppressed cultural minority and, as such, we have to fight for our rights just as other oppressed cultural minorities have been doing."

And he was thinking particularly of the very nascent at that time, very new, negro, as it was called, civil rights movement.

This was even before Martin Luther King.

Craig: It's a very interesting parallel between the black civil rights movement and the very beginning of the gay rights movement in the sense that World War II really emboldened both groups.

You know, black people came back from the war and segregation just seemed a lot less tolerable.

And I think a lot of gay people had that same sense that, "Hey, I risked my life for what?

For this?

That's not America.

That's not the America I was fighting for."

And that fueled a sense of outrage that I think was kind of really the beginning.

Mia Yamamoto: Gay and lesbian people, we learned about marching and demonstrating in the streets from black people.

The civil rights movement had opened up the minds of the entire nation that there were possibilities in all these minority communities where they had traditionally been excluded.

They were on the front lines, they were the ones that did the major sacrifices.

They got beaten, hosed, bitten, demonstrating for the rights of other Americans, and I felt that we've never done enough to help them.

We've never done enough to reciprocate for all the liberation that they brought upon other communities.

Those other communities have really not stepped up and got down in the streets with them, like we should, I felt.

And that's when things like Pride became real.

People wanted to get up and start walking.

We're not gonna sit back and take it.

We're gonna fight back.

And that, I think, was the message that the black community gave to the rest of us.

Troy Perry: I see these signs standing around that says we're not afraid anymore.

And I want to tell you we're not afraid anymore.

I'm not.

Troy: I was so out and open.

All my members couldn't be and I knew that early on.

But if I'm going out to demonstrate, you're going out with me, and they did.

And I will be eternally grateful because I had no idea how quickly we would have to demonstrate.

Andrea Segal: Reverend Perry was just a magnificent person, and taught us that the Lord loves us anyway, no matter who we are.

Lorri Jean: But he decided that he was going to create a church that was especially for people like us, and be a place where people could still have a relationship with God and still feel worthy and whole.

Troy: I had found myself all at once, knowing that God loved me.

Just before that, I'd had a suicide attempt where I cut both my wrists and ended up in the hospital and I tell people to this day God spoke to me in that still small voice in the mind's ear and said to me, "Troy, I love you.

You're my son.

I don't have stepsons and daughters."

And with that, I knew I was a Christian, I knew my salvation was real, and I knew I didn't have to offer apologies to anybody again.

Once you come out, you don't know how good it feels.

Troy: We announced that we were going to have a peaceful assembly and rally to protest laws prohibiting homosexual acts by consenting adults in private and to request the California Supreme Court to grant a hearing on the constitutionality of the California laws which make it a felony to engage in sex acts in private.

I'm going to see some laws passed in this state.

I have prayed to my God, asked my God, and I have the assurance some things are going to happen.

I'm afraid my private parts are my own and what I wanna do with 'em's my business and not the law's.

Troy: Three of those people that showed up that day: Jim Kepner--and Jim became really the historian of L.A. And Jim Kepner brought two people with him, two people I had no idea: Harry Hay, who is the father of the modern gay rights movement, and his partner, John Burnside.

And they came and they picketed with me that day.

And I had no idea the important role they had already played in the history of our movement.

We picketed for three days there, and that was my first, and once I did that I knew I could do it after that.

Pat Rocco: Hi, this is Pat Rocco, and we're here for Bizarre Productions News Service in front of one of the oldest establishments here in Hollywood.

It's a restaurant and it's called, "Barney's Beanery."

Troy: I read an article in "Life" magazine.

Anthony Barney who is the original owner of Barney's Beanery, he had his bar and chili shop in West Hollywood.

He wanted to make sure that none of the faggots in that neighborhood came to his bar.

So he put up a sign, you know, "Fagots, keep out."

Misspelt "faggot," of course, but there it was.

And I immediately started calling people.

There is no way in the world in West Hollywood, California, we're gonna have a "Fagots, keep out" sign.

Not in this neighborhood.

[chanting] Hey, hey, hey, hey.

We are proud and we are gay.

Hey, hey.

Troy: We went down and we started our demonstrations.

[chanting] Hey, hey, hey, hey.

We are proud and we are gay.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

We are proud and we are gay.

Hey, hey, hey.

Troy: And of course, this bar is where everybody who is anybody, Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, hung out.

They went in there for beers, everything.

He even threw them out one night.

This was how crazy this man was.

Pat: Reverend Troy Perry who's the pastor that we talked about earlier.

Reverend Perry, could I stop you for just a moment to talk about what's going on this evening?

I see you're carrying a magazine.

Troy: I took the magazine with me.

I held it up.

I made sure that people saw what this man said.

He wanted us dead.

Troy: June 26, 1964, there's an article about a restaurant in Los Angeles where the signage says, "Fagots, keep out."

The gentleman who put this sign up in this restaurant said he thinks homosexuals should be shot.

These are his own words in "Life" magazine.

We're told, of course, the sign today is a joke.

We don't consider it a joke.

Pat: When did the sign go up?

speaker: 1959.

Pat: And what was the purpose of putting the sign up?

speaker: To discourage the faggots from coming in.

Morris Kight: You know the issue here is that this restaurant here, Barney's Beanery, has been here a long time.

Pat: Yes, it has.

Morris: And they have a sign saying, "Fagots, stay out."

Now it doesn't offend me awfully but it offends everybody else.

I think it's sort of funny in a way and I don't need to come here, but a great many people would like to, and they think that this sign comes out of an antique American idea which should have gone out of style along with "[audio gap] stay out," "No Mexicans or dogs allowed."

And these kinds of things have to go.

Now what we really would like, Mr. Rocco, is to have the sign retained, but changed.

Pat: How would you change it?

Morris: X out the "Stay out" and say "Faggots welcome."

That, we would consider a victory.

Pat: You can see an awful lot of people protesting something.

What do you think about it?

speaker: Man, I think it's disgraceful with the sign being up there, such as it is.

speaker: I think that damn sign should be taken down.

speaker: I think anyone has the right to do whatever they want providing it's not on the Hollywood Freeway at rush hour.

Troy: Many people when they think of the beginning of the modern gay movement, immediately think of the Stonewall Rebellion at the end of June of 1969 in Greenwich Village.

Stonewall, there's no question, was an incredibly important kind of watershed moment in that history.

But it was two years earlier than that that the Black Cat riot happened in Los Angeles at Sunset Junction on New Year's from 1966 to '67.

Lillian: There was a group that had been established the year before the raid at The Black Cat.

The group called itself "Personal Rights In Defense and Education."

It was the first use of the term "Pride" related to LGBT people that I'm familiar with.

And they decided that they would not put up with this sort of thing anymore, this raid on The Black Cat and this abuse of the gay customers.

And so they decided to stage a protest.

Lillian: Look at all of those faces, not one smile.

Because they were scared.

The police were there and we were afraid.

We didn't break any laws, we didn't throw a thing.

If a leaflet that we were passing out was tossed on the ground, we ran over and picked it up right away so that they couldn't get us for littering.

Craig: The Black Cat was covered in the "The Advocate," it was covered in the gay press, but the mainstream press picked up the story of Stonewall.

Lillian: The reason it didn't get the kind of notice that the Stonewall Riots got is that it was Los Angeles and nobody walks in Los Angeles.

And so because there were people who would stay to protest which would then become a riot as the Stonewall became a riot, the story of this wonderful protest in 1967 in Los Angeles was virtually lost to history.

speaker: I think it's real interesting that Stonewall gets all of the credit for being the spark that led the gay rights movement when, in fact, it was Los Angeles where we see some of the, really, the first militant resistance to gay oppression.

Lillian: In 1959, the police came into a donut shop in downtown Los Angeles.

It was a favorite hangout of queens and gay hustlers, and the police were doing their usual thing.

They just thought they would harass a few people, and the queens weren't going to put up with it, so they started throwing sticks and hot coffee and it was a full-fledged mini riot.

This was a militant protest against police harassment.

And I don't think such a militant protest had yet happened anywhere in the United States.

speaker: Every time you think you've found an origin, there's something right before it that enabled it.

William Mann: I remember Harry Hay once saying to me when I interviewed him, he said, "Stonewall was fine, but to me, it wasn't groundbreaking.

It was just the East Coast finally catching up with the West Coast."

Morris: There is a little bar in the Greenwich Village called Stonewall, just a dive.

Mafia-owned, unlicensed, you know, nothing.

But it was frequented by our brothers and sisters.

It was a busy, busy place.

The police came in to harass the bar and they started the sort of thing that they do.

"You, you, you, you, and you and you."

Plus some minor brutality, psychological brutality and some physical brutality, and at some moment, every became--one became so angry they simply fought back.

They locked the police up in the bar from which they were just driven, and they knocked out the windows and threw in Molotov cocktails and then commenced three days of vigorous rioting and it took the police that long to control these homosexuals.

Jeanne Cordova: Morris Kight kind of ran the political gay movement.

And I remember going to his house on McAdam Place was kind of the home of the gay movement.

Alexei: Someone wrote him a letter from New York City to see what we could do the next year to celebrate the Stonewall Riot.

Troy: When he got this letter, they came over there and they said, "They want us to do something here.

We can have a demonstration."

And I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no.

I want us to have a parade.

This is Hollywood."

Well, then we've got to do down and we've got to go to City Hall, but once we arrived there, ha, ha, here again, Chief Edward M. Davis, I, you know, this is a hateful man at that time.

Well, Morris and Bob had said, "Don't mention the gay thing unless you have to."

As we started talking to them, they got very nasty.

"Who do you represent?"

And I said, "I represent the gay and lesbian community of Los Angeles."

Well, with that, you'd have thought I'd shot the whole police commission in front of the chief of police.

He went off.

Then they started laughing.

Finally, they voted on it and said we had to put up two bonds: one in the amount of a million dollars to pay for the parade and for cops.

Then we had to pay half a million dollars in cash, a cash bond, to pay for all the windows that were gonna be broke on Hollywood Boulevard when people started throwing rocks at us.

So we came back the next week, and when we came back the next week we had--the ACLU, thank God, had given us an attorney, Herb Selwin.

And went to the city on Monday morning, filed into court, and said we want an injunction against the City by this weekend.

We're gonna have a parade in Hollywood.

Well, we went into court and we were very nervous, and the judge listened to the city attorney, listened to our attorney.

He had read the papers from the police commission.

Banged his gavel and said, "I don't care if you have to call out the National Guard.

These people are taxpayers like everybody else and they have a right to hold this parade here today."

Oh my God, we got on the phone and start calling people.

Oh my God, we've won.

We didn't think we would win.

Oh my God.

Start building floats, tell people they can come.

We'll have a pet section.

Do anything.

Let people know.

We need people to march.

And, God, that day, all of us went down very nervous and we didn't know what was gonna happen.

And people were frightened, even on the sides.

It was hysterical, I'd never seen more hats and dark shades in my life.

When I pulled out in my little sports car with the MCC float and the choir marching and singing, and--but it was incredible.

♪♪♪ Andrea: We were yelling and hollering how proud we were to be gay and we were singing the song, "Small World," "It's a small world after all."

And we were singing, "It's a gay world after all."

speaker: "Two, four, six, eight, gay is just as good as straight."

Andrea: And everybody on the sidewalks were, like, throwing fruit at us and whatever they had.

Anyway, we just kept on going.

Nancy Valverde: I went and I participated in the dyke march.

I thought, "At last, justice has arrived."

Troy: It was amazing for us.

In that parade, we had the pet section.

We had a guy walking his big Alaskan husky with a sign on each side, said, "We don't all walk poodles."

We had only three guys in leather that year.

They, all three, were dripping in leather on their motorcycles but in pink high heels.

Everybody just screamed.

speaker: Estimated number of spectators between 25,000 and 30,000. speaker: I don't go for it at all.

speaker: Why?

speaker: I think it's sickening.

speaker: I think it's fine.

I think that society has to recognize them and they wanna do their thing and they're doing it, and I'm very proud of them for doing it.

speaker: It's sort of enjoyable to watch, but I'm glad they don't do it too often.

speaker: I think it's just a bunch of bull.

speaker: I'm here as a spectator.

Alexei: The word "pride" actually came from L.A., you know?

It was our creation.

Troy: This is Christopher Street West Celebration Day.

Last year, a group of homosexuals rioted in the city of New York against the oppression that they felt there.

We decided to make it an annual day for homosexuals all across the nation in cities other than Los Angeles and New York where it actually happened at, San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago.

With celebrations, homosexuals hope to impress upon society that we have our problems too.

speaker: For me, it was probably the most important day of my life, to step off the curb into the street and march.

♪♪♪ speaker: I never went back in the closet after that.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Troy: We had proved our point and there was no stopping us again as far as a political force once we had organized that parade here in the state of California.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker: Organizing around oppression, the plight of the gay is passé because the plight is lifting and it's just a fact.

There are 650,000 gays in the neighborhood and they've all been moved by liberation.

♪♪♪ speaker: I think it's good because I almost am getting a high off of the people, the vibes, here, so we're good.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker: All of this pride, all of this self-realization, this kind of self-pride then has led to the establishment of the Gay Community Services Center in Los Angeles: a combine of directors and staff and a supportive staff all bring a total range of services to the gay community.

Lorri: From the very beginning, they were providing counseling, a gay man's VD clinic, a lesbian gynecological clinic, help for transgender people, help for people who were in the military so they could get dishonorable discharges, help for people who were parents.

Jon Platania: First organization of its kind in the world.

That was a political statement.

Lorrie: The Los Angeles Center was the very first homosexual organization that had the courage to work with youth.

People were afraid to do that.

They feared they'd be accused of recruitment, of child abuse, but not these Center founders.

They were doing it from the very beginning.

Joey Terrill: Both the Metropolitan and Community Church as well as the Gay Community Center provided a space for me as a queer Latino youth to be able to start to learn about myself and feel good about myself.

Back then in the early '70s, you really had to seek out those spaces and those people.

Lorri: I think that people like Morris and Don and June Hurley and Jon Platania and others, many, many others, are true heroes and sheroes in our movement.

And what all of those people had in common is they wanted more than just a safe place for LGBT people to be able to meet each other and gather.

They wanted a place where they could build their power as individuals and their political power.

Lorri: Morris and my relationship was complicated.

He told me a lot about the history of the Center and his role.

He talked about Don Kilhefner's role, and I never ever heard from them that there were any women involved.

Jeanne: We were trying to build a gay and lesbian movement and a lot of the men were having trouble with the word "lesbian."

I don't know if you--men today can imagine two generations back because you guys today are so different than the kind of man I grew up with.

And these were all guys in their, at the time, 30s and 40s, and now most of them are dead, but these guys really didn't understand women and didn't think that we should change our name to the Gay and Lesbian Movement.

They thought it should remain the Gay Movement, and that all women were gay and we should and could be proud of that.

Marie Cartier: Lesbian separatism has been so--we never hated men.

We just weren't giving our attention to men.

It was seen as hatred because it was so unusual for women to care about women and not care about men.

Robin Tyler: I don't think that gay men and lesbians had a lot in common until we started to fight for our rights together and when you're in the trenches together you have a lot in common.

Jeanne: One of the issues the "Lesbian Tide" covered was do we belong as lesbians in the male movement, the gay men's movement, or do we belong in the feminist movement?

And there were various things that guys would do which would be very misogynistic and so we would, you know, a year would pass and we would say, "Okay, we're having nothing to do with you.

None of the lesbian groups are gonna have anything to do with you."

And then a year later, something would come up and the guys would say, "Oh, we really need the women and everybody.

This is a real big battle," you know, "won't you come and help us?"

And we were agitating for feminist reform at the Gay Community Services Center.

Jon: The day that the Center opened, there were lots of people there.

Troy Perry was there and some city councilmen was there.

Of course, Morris and Donald and June Hurley and Lee and a wonderful woman by the name of Betty Berzon who did a lot to move us toward legitimacy, she was there.

The idea that one person, two people, three people, me, Don, Morris, somebody, founded the Gay Community Services Center, frankly, is kind of ridiculous.

June Hurley, Dell Juan, Jeanne Cordova was around by then.

There are a lot of founders.

Don Kilhefner, June Hurley, me, Lisa Soar and a number of other people were living communally because it's too expensive and we don't have a lot of money to live alone so we get these big houses in Silver Lake and so on and we live together like a family.

That whole concept of family is integral to absolutely everything that we did, that we're doing, and that we will do.

So there are a lot of founders, and they continue to be founders.

The person who walks in the door, the kid who walks in, "I don't have any place to stay.

I told my parents, you know, that I'm gay.

They threw me out.

They don't wanna have anything to do with me.

I don't have any money, I don't have anything to eat.

Can you help me?"

That kid stepping forward, committing himself to, receiving help and services from the Gay Community Services Center, he does that this morning, he is a founder.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker: This is the face of Santa Monica Boulevard that is familiar to most outsiders.

But the street also has a private side, perceived by outsiders only if it dawns on them that almost all of the people they see here are men.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ John Duran: Studio One was, like, the place to be in terms of being gay--a gay man, anyway.

The bars back then would be secret places where we would congregate.

It wasn't open like the Abbey today, or like Mickey's with outdoor patios.

Roland Palencia: That place had a reputation of being very racist.

Jim: You could count on one hand the people of color, whether it was from Latino to black.

John: I mean, a lot of their policies back then were very exclusionary, didn't allow women in, didn't allow people of color in.

And it was a very exclusionary all-boys club.

Roland: If you're black, they will ask you for two, three pieces of I.D.

and if you were not, you only get in with one I.D.

or no I.D.

John: There was not subtle racism in the gay community, there was overt racism.

Roland: And I remember I met this Latino guy and he says, "Look, you know, you should really check out this other club in Hollywood and it's called Circus and is all Latino."

I went in and it was like I had just walked into heaven.

Joey: [clearing throat] Did I go to Circus?

Duh!

Circus Disco was a place where, from the start, you knew that Latinos were welcome.

Tuesday night was boys' night so it was all men.

Friday was the mixed night where straight and gays would intermingle, and then sometimes, you know, after a month or two you'd see these guys with their girlfriends on that Friday or Saturday night, the mixed night, and then, oh, guess what?

The guys would show up on Tuesday night, all boys night.

It was the center of gay Latino socializing in Los Angeles.

Jewel Thais-Williams: It became the in place for African American gays, primarily.

When they found out that we had a club, then they came.

The children, that's what we called each other, the children would come.

I had had a fleeting thought at that time that one of these days I would come and everybody would be able to come.

speaker: This area of west Hollywood has become a gay ghetto, a sociological phenomenon of these times, and the main street of the homosexual community here is Santa Monica Boulevard.

speaker: West Hollywood was always unincorporated county and what that meant was that the LAPD could not come into West Hollywood, only Los Angeles county sheriffs could come into West Hollywood and they were scattered all throughout the county.

And so, the gay community knew when they were in the city of West Hollywood, they didn't have to worry about the LAPD raiding the bars.

speaker: Gay liberation is here and there's no problem at all.

speaker: But mostly what this area of Santa Monica Boulevard has become is a place where men go to become beautiful.

John Heilman: Concerns about land use and rent control and desire to advance LGBT rights, all of those really coalesced into this perfect storm which resulted in us becoming a city.

We were the first city with a majority of council members who were openly gay.

Diane Abbitt: It was so exciting and it felt like everything was changing so quickly.

And then--and then people started to get sick.

♪♪♪ Mark Thompson: There was a lot of excess, you know, there was rampant sex everywhere and no condom use.

J.T.

Anderson: We were overdoing it.

There was sex, there was lots of booze, there were drugs.

Mark: Finally, one night, just said, "Something not good is gonna come from this."

I wasn't being moralistic or judgmental, I just said, "How could--how could anything good come from this much unbridled excess?"

I began to observe that people that I had known for quite a while there, just, I was missing their faces.

Pat: First person that I knew personally and a lot of people knew also, his name was Ken Schnorr.

Jeanne: Ken Schnorr, and he was a short little guy.

Pat: He was, at the time, the president of the Stonewall Democratic Club and nobody knew what was wrong with him.

And we were all struck by the fact that he was very ill and everything was changing about him physically.

Jeanne: And then I heard he was dead.

This was all in the space of one summer.

Mark: This is how it began, these kind of little anecdotal stories.

J.T.

: And then you began to read about things in the paper and there became this almost like an urban legend that something is going on, and that somebody or something is killing gay men.

Jewel: My bartenders, my waiters, friends were getting sick, and folks were scared.

Mark: It was terrifying and we were all scared and it seemed like soon there was a memorial service a week, every week, and then it seemed like there was one every day.

And the local gay paper there started to run the obituaries of the people and at first it was just a column, then it was a page, and then every issue it was three or four pages.

It was the first thing you would read and you'd go, "Oh my God, I didn't know.

I just spoke to that person four weeks ago."

Joey: And then I would get home and there would be my phone machine and I was afraid to answer the messages because the messages would be, "Oh," you know, "Lewis is back in the hospital."

"The funeral memorial service for Danny is gonna be next Saturday."

You know, it was--I was frightened of hearing who next, what next?

Troy: We lost about 5000 of our members and it was funeral after funeral after funeral.

I remember one day, one of our clergy called and said, "Reverend Perry," he said, "you know I'm dying?"

I said, "Yes."

I mean, we were very honest with each other when we talked, and I said, "But the Lord hasn't called you home yet."

He said, "No, but I need to call you about something."

He said, "I'm very near death," and he said, "I just have one thing I need help with."

And I said, "What's that?"

And he said, "Can the denomination bury me?

I don't want my family who I'm not--they don't understand.

I don't want them to have to pay to bury me.

Would you all do it?"

I just told him, "Yes," and we would take up the money, whatever we needed to bury whoever we needed to bury.

And we buried him.

speaker: My friend just died.

Let's call Troy.

We want a proper service, let's call Troy.

It has wrenched him, it has just taken everything out of him.

Mark: There were no gay shelters.

Where were people to run and hide?

Many families didn't--if they knew you were gay, don't ever come home.

If they knew you were sick with AIDS, get lost forever.

Joey: I had friends that were having difficulties with their landlords because they could--they were visibly looking sick and the landlords and their neighbors were not comfortable with them, you know, living there.

Mark: I remember people losing their jobs and then their apartments and being kicked out with all of their possessions onto the sidewalks.

Their personal objects, their photos, their clothes being thrown into dumpsters in alleys, and literally dying on the streets.

I am not exaggerating.

Marie: There is nobody of my generation who lived through that period as a queer person who is not affected by that.

Joey: The joy, the exhilaration, that came out of the disco era which paralleled, you know, gay liberation, that was gone.

speaker: President have any reaction to the announcement of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta that A-I-D-S is now an epidemic in 600--over 600 cases?

Ronald Reagan: As I've interpreted the gay rights movement, it is not asking so much for civil rights as it is asking for recognition and acceptance of them as having an alternative lifestyle, and I'm sorry but I can't agree with that.

speaker: It's known as "gay plague."

[laughing] speaker: I mean, it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this has died.

And I wondered if the President is aware of it?

Larry: I don't have it.

Do you?

Do you?

speaker: You don't have it?

Well, I'm relieved to hear that, Larry.

Larry: Do you?

You didn't answer my question.

How do you know?

speaker: Does the President--in other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke.

Jen Deitrick: If the President had been more open, the nation would have changed, the people would have changed, faster.

That's why, I think, that a lot of people are dead because of that man.

And I agree that it's murder.

J.T.

: Yes, we called him a murderer.

We considered him a murderer.

I consider him a murderer to this day.

He did not say a word about HIV or AIDS for seven years into his presidency, when this was affecting not just a hundred people or a few hundred, but thousands of people in this country.

speaker: We have a Congress that is not addressing the issue.

They are playing politics, and they're not doing-- they're not serving the country when we're here in the middle of a national emergency.

They're not waking up to the crisis that we are living and dying with every day, and we need some action from Congress, and especially the President.

Marie: The reason the government didn't care about the disease is because the government didn't care about us anyway.

It wasn't like the government stopped caring when we got AIDS.

The government never cared about us.

They didn't care that women's children were taken away, they didn't care that people got locked up in mental institutions.

They didn't care that people lost their jobs, and they sure as hell didn't care that we got a disease.

Robin: We're upset that 3000 people got killed on 9/ 11, and it's horrible, it is horrible.

Well, how about a president that let almost a million people die?

How upsetting is that, you know?

That's the worst attack that we've ever had in the United States is the AIDS crisis that wasn't dealt with.

speaker: There is no AIDS awareness until ACT UP.

AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power begins because there was no awareness about what's happening in HIV.

J.T.

: Some people in that meeting were extremely angry, extremely frustrated.

We were in the streets, we were in the media, we were always out there.

We had bumper stickers, we had T-shirts, we had banners, we had wheat-pasting all over the city.

We were highly visible.

speaker: The good thing about the AIDS crisis is it made us visible.

People got onto the streets and said, "You're killing us.

Stop now.

Silence equals death."

It made people that had been underground all of their lives, forced to come out, forced to come out, and that's important.

speaker: I'd say in the '60s the black movement didn't win any friends by burning down cities but they sure gained their civil rights.

And that's why we're out here.

speaker: We're ten years into an epidemic.

We're with our second president who doesn't give a damn.

We just wanna raise the issues.

We are dying.

Jen: Everything changed when Clinton was elected.

J.T.

: He was, in some people's eyes, the savior and our problems were solved because now we have a Democratic president, a young man who is really going to do something for us.

In actuality, he did many things.

He was one of the worst presidents for AIDS and one of the worst presidents for gay and lesbian civil liberties.

Robin: Bill Clinton put through the two most anti-gay initiatives in the history of our movement: "Don't ask, don't tell," and the Defense of Marriage Act."

Jen: People actually felt that that jerk was gonna change things, that we didn't have to do anything anymore because now the problem was solved.

A meeting that had 100 people now had 37.

J.T.

: And that's when we actually needed a stronger ACT UP Los Angeles.

Anthony Fauci: And as I'm sure you're all well aware, there was an extraordinary amount of difficulty in that regard, particularly with the intensification of the already existing, unfortunate discrimination against these individuals.

speaker: The Church will be teaching that homosexual activity is sinful until the end of time.

So that's not going to change.

speaker: If you were following what they preached and not having homosexual or taking drugs, nobody would be in this situation.

speaker: Quarantine will be applied where necessary in order to prevent the spread of the disease.

Joey: In 1986, Lyndon LaRouche was able to get Proposition 64 on the ballot which would have, essentially, called for quarantining all people with HIV.

Robin: It was a campaign that, at the beginning, we were concerned we would not win.

Ivy Bottini: I believe in grassroots and I got a call from some of the people with money and connections, and said, "So what about the grassroots?

You know, we're ready.

We'll either work with you or we'll work on our own, but we're gonna do something."

Robin: The grassroots didn't like what they called "the suits," and the suits were very snobby about the grassroots, even though they were very educated people in the grassroots movement.

Ivy: I'm not sure we were totally welcome because grassroots people work so differently than people with money.

Diane: No on 64 was the best coordinated effort between the streets and the suits that I have ever seen.

The suits raised the money and the street people, they did an incredible amount of activism.

And together, we won and defeated 64.

Roland: That's when you started to see this community become very, very active.

It's Project Los Angeles, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Minority AIDS Project, Bienestar, you name it.

Richard Zaldivar: We think that one approach to conversation and programs and community engagement, one way applies for all.

It's not so.

There are really different needs that people of color have.

It's a place where people come to, to remember their loved ones who passed away from AIDS.

We continue our work in HIV AIDS prevention, particularly in the Latino community.

Jewel: Giving funds and raising consciousness around the plight that was happening in the people of color communities.

Roland: We're not gonna let this epidemic and this crisis turn into a fact, but instead this was gonna be a springboard where we can not only sustain our rights, whatever little we had at that time, but also that we would catapult and take the movement to the next level.

speaker: Someday there will be people alive on this earth, gay people and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave their lives so that other people might live.

speaker: Chett Border, Bob Kelliuno, Slaten, Alan Schnick.

speaker: Jason Swaney, William Bill Gross, Barry Edward Fox, Tim Belven.

speaker: Bill Fitzpatrick, Melissa Hill.

Robin: We needed to demand that they care about us.

What did they do for us all of these years?

What did they submit us to?

Science called us sick, and religion called us sinful.

We were sent to mental institutions and penal institutions and behavior modifications and lobotomies.

Look at what our community was subjected to, and we took it.

We took it.

Because they dehumanized us.

That's how they could annihilate a whole group of people.

It's not just about sexual orientation.

We're full human beings.

It's about the right to love.

And so the transition went from gay liberation to an LGBT civil rights movement.

And we surfaced and we said, "No more lobotomies.

We're not mentally ill. You're not doing this to us."

And the AIDS crisis finally made us surface after decades.

Joey: The younger generation has to learn that this path was not as easy as it looks today.

Troy: I've seen the very worst of people, and I've seen the very best.

Alexei: The universe has always taken care of me, but it's my job to pay back to it.

speaker: We are coming out of the closet.

When are you gonna come out of yours?

Harry: The fact that I have had an effect on gay liberation, in fact, I don't think about it at all.

I'm not concerned with that because, after all, we've got so much to do.

speaker: In this year alone, our nation has seen nine transgender women murdered.

Diane: If someone had told me in 1973 that I could be married today, I would have said, "Never gonna happen."

Alexei: Didn't think it would ever happen in my lifetime.

Andrea: This is something that I've been dreaming about all my life.

Alexei: I'm wearing the ring.

Jeanne: Right from the beginning I decided to be a professional lesbian, that I wanted to work in our community.

Pat: Fifty years ago, a great thing happened in Los Angeles.

You've brought back memories that have made me feel good and it made me cheer up a little bit.

Ivy: We have to create our own way of living.

speaker: We're contributors, we're meant to contribute unique, exciting, innovative ideas, notions, inventions, ways of living, ways of being, ways of thinking to humanity at large.

Robin: The next generation is not going to go through being called "queer" or "sissy" or "faggot" or "dyke" like we were.

We're gonna save our children.

But the good thing is this movement emerged and all of a sudden we understood that nobody was going to ever kill us again.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Together, we will go our way.

♪ ♪ Together, we will leave some day.

♪ ♪ Together, we will start life new.

♪ ♪ Together, this is what we'll do.

♪ ♪ Go West, life is peaceful there.

♪ ♪ Go West, in the open air.

♪ ♪ Go West, baby, you and me, ♪ ♪ Go West, this is our destiny.

♪ ♪ Go West, sun in wintertime.

♪ ♪ Go West, we will do just fine.

♪♪ announcer: Funding for this program provided by AIDS Healthcare Foundation, California Institute of Contemporary Arts, Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the City of West Hollywood, Los Angeles LGBT Center, California Community Foundation, and by these additional funders.