Freedom Socialist • Vol. 29, No. 3 • June-July 2008

An interview with gay rights hell-raiser Tamara Turner
“Visa credit cards replaced the soul of Stonewall”

Tamara Turner and friend. Credit: Mary Ann Curtis / Red Letter Press

Turner, co-author of Gay Resistance: The Hidden History (Red Letter Press 1997) and a cast member of the 1992 play, “Hidden History: True Stories from Seattle’s Gay and Lesbian Elders,” comments on decades of activism and shares her acerbic observations with FS writer Doug Barnes.

Barnes: What was it like growing up gay in the 1950s and ’60s?

Turner: There was a constant terror of being found out. People said homosexuals were mentally ill, criminal, and immoral, so although I knew I was gay at 14, I kept quiet. A lesbian writer once said it was like being a spy on a lifetime assignment in another country. No matter how careful you were to act like the people around you, exposure could come at any moment.

During the McCarthy anti-communist witch-hunt in the early ’50s, more people lost jobs from being accused of homosexuality than from being communists. And the police had free rein. They’d raid gay bars, rape lesbians, beat gay men, and there was no recourse. Bars were the only place we could meet, and alcoholism was widespread. By the way, when I say “gay,” I mean lesbians too.

After we heard about New York City’s Stonewall riots in 1969, I wanted some way to fight back. Philadelphia’s lesbians and gays picketed for civil rights on July 4, 1965, which was very brave. But Stonewall was out-and-out street fighting against the cops, with drag queens of color leading the charge. They didn’t want tolerance or acceptance — they wanted equality. They really jump-started the whole gay liberation movement.

Barnes: How did you get involved in the gay movement?

Turner: I volunteered at the Seattle Counseling Service for Sexual Minorities in the early ‘70s, and went to a Gay Liberation meeting there — once. The men made speeches and the women made coffee. No thanks. Then there was the National Organization for Women (NOW), which excluded openly gay women.

In 1972 I was invited to a Radical Women (RW) meeting, and was amazed to find that they called for equal rights for lesbians. At first I wondered how straight women dared to say what lesbians needed. But someone said you don’t have to be gay to be a gay liberationist or have to be Black to be a Black liberand that made sense to me.

Barnes: Why did you decide to become a socialist feminist?

Turner: It was a process that started when I saw how unfairly my mother was treated. My parents divorced in 1948, and she struggled to raise three children on a salary of about $45 a week. I realized very quickly that we were on the bottom, and those on top robbed everyone else. The McCarthyites described the principles of the Left with derision, but the effect on me was the opposite of what they intended. Socialism spoke to the needs of the many, not just a privileged few.

Performing in the play “Hidden History,” I said that in Radical Women, I could finally be all parts of myself at once: a woman, a worker, a lesbian, and a socialist. RW understood the necessity of ending women’s oppression and building women’s leadership. They didn’t reject men, but worked with them — as equals.

Barnes: What did you learn from battles of the 1970s?

Turner: I learned the dead-end nature of single-issue politics, which sell out the needs of those on the bottom.

In 1973, RW and the Freedom Socialist Party worked to add sexual orientation and political ideology to the non-discrimination clause in Seattle’s Fair Employment Practices Ordinance. A local Democrat asked me to drop our concerns over political ideology. She said, “Get sexual orientation protection first, then go back for more.” But we refused to back down and won the battle!

In the fight for abortion rights, RW organized with Black women in the anti-poverty movement for free abortion on demand. At one rally in Olympia, the white liberals lectured us in the “Abortion Rights NOW” contingent not to “offend” the legislators! We said to hell with sitting quietly as a “moral presence” while those mainly white, male, conservative politicians dickered around. Although they legalized abortion in 1970, the need for free abortion for poor women and women of color was ignored.

Millions marched nationwide to end the Vietnam War. But movement honchos blocked demands around issues of racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, housing, jobs, you name it — all the problems that the war’s financial costs worsened. If those millions had demanded everything that was needed, it would’ve been revolutionary.

In the ’70s, I watched lesbian separatism run its course. It was another dead-end, because the way to fight sexism is to confront it, not retreat into some make-believe women’s nation.

Barnes: How far do you think we’ve come as queer folks?

Turner: We’ve won visibility in the mainsociety and many anti-homosexual laws are gone. But real change has been superficial, more tolerance than equality. We represent a new market — vacations, fitness clubs, sports — that’s probably why there seems to be progress. Visa cards replaced the soul of Stonewall.

Look at Gay Pride marches: the emphasis on fighting for equality has been swapped for commercial ends. While helping to plan one of Seattle’s marches, I remember confronting gay business types who actually wanted to let beer company banners lead the march so they could get more sponsorship money. Politics? Just Democratic party hacks waving to the crowds with no intention of actually representing us.

It bothers me that so many people think our battles are won except for gay marriage. They forget about the needs of the young, the aged, the transgender, transsexual, intersexed people and bisexuals. Or issues like AIDS that disproportionately hits women and people of color. And I feel no allegiance toward the self-appointed lesbian and gay leaders in Washington, D.C. who raise money to lobby instead of building a mass movement to demand equality.

I love today’s contingent of progressive, if not radical, gays helping to organize in all the movements such as immigrant rights, labor, antiwar, abortion rights, and healthcare. They’re outspoken about gay issues, but they do it in solidarity with others — a multi-hued and multi-faceted approach to the problems we all face.

Barnes: So what lessons do we need to apply today?

Turner: History tells us that if we don’t hang together we’ll all hang separately. I think we need to build a broad, radical leadership that can expose this system and offer a vision of its replacement. A world where people are judged by their qualities as a person, as a human being rather than by skin color, what’s between their legs, their sexual orientation, or gender.

Barnes: Why do you keep on organizing?

Turner: There isn’t any alternative, there really isn’t. Besides, it gives life a sense of meaning and direction. And I’m ornery.

A national leader in the Freedom Socialist Party, Doug Barnes helped organize the defeat of Seattle’s anti-gay Initiative 13. He can be reached at barnesdk@juno.com.