Exploring the frontiers of gay consciousness with Don Kilhefner The Radical Faeries at 30

I must admit I was a little shaken up several years ago when author Mark Thompson called me to report that a Radical Faerie gathering was taking place in Bangkok... Thailand!

Since its 1979 birth on La Cresta Ct. in Hollywood, the Radical Faeries have developed into an international gay spirituality and consciousness movement, representing the antithesis of the middle-class conformity of gay assimilation. Three Faerie Sanctuaries exist in the United States: Wolf Creek, Ore. (nomenus.org), Zuni Mt., N.M. (zms.org) and Short Mountain, Tenn. (615/563-4397). This year represents the 30th anniversary of the Radical Faeries’ founding. Because I was central to its beginnings, I want to devote a few columns talking about the genesis of this movement and its impact on gay culture—truly exploring the frontiers of gay consciousness.

As the founding executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Center in the early 1970s, I was engaged almost around the clock creating a visible and vital gay community in Los Angeles where none had existed previously. In 1974, a few clinic workers from the Center, Morris Kight and I drove to the first National Free Clinic Council Conference in Estes Park, Colo. (Where gay people took control of the conference and successfully demanded that gay and lesbian health care be placed on the agenda!) En route, we spent a night at the residence of Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles in 1951. This pivotal player in gay history was then living with his companion, John Burnside, in a compound adjacent to the San Juan Pueblo on the Rio Grande. Harry and John moved there in 1969 to work with American Indians on water claims while conducting gay liberation organizing. Upon our arrival, Harry and I began dialoguing on topics of gay history and gay consciousness all throughout the night, with me heading out sleepless at sunrise into a late winter blizzard. Harry and I stayed in contact subsequently by telephone and letters.

In the spring of 1978, I spent three weeks meditating and fasting with the (then closeted) spiritual teacher Ram Dass at Lama, a Sufi community in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico. After leaving Lama, I visited Harry and John. During this visit, Harry and I sat by the Rio Grande for hours, talking about what was and was not working with the 10-year-old gay liberation movement. We both saw the slow encroachment of bourgeois gay assimilation, with its absence of imagination and lack of audacity, as having a suffocating effect on the movement. We also saw gay liberation political consciousness and energy being vampirized by conventional Democratic Party politics and party hacks. After more brainstorming, Harry and I decided to call a gathering of like-minded gay men to discuss these political and social situations as well as chart a new course for gay liberation which also addressed the emergence of gay spirituality and gay consciousness. We didn’t want the gathering to be in the usual places like a conference center or university, but in nature where gay men could have the maximum opportunity to be themselves without the usual urban, heterosexual restraints. Harry called it “ripping off the ugly green frogskin of hetero-imitative behavior to reveal the beautiful Fairy Prince underneath.” For me, it was also an opportunity for gay men to deepen and broaden their understanding of what it truly means to be gay—seeding a revolution in gay consciousness. The summer of 1979 was tentatively set for the gathering.

I also pushed for Harry and John’s relocation back to Los Angeles at this time. In part, this was based on the pre-Internet efficacy of us organizing from one location, but more importantly, for me, was seeing how the quality of Harry and John’s lives had deteriorated since my last visit. They were living in genteel poverty, inhabiting a small kitchen next to a small servant’s bedroom where they slept while the rest of their home was closed down due to the expense of heating it. Thick plastic was tacked over each of the windows. They counted their coins carefully when we went shopping for food. I was outraged that someone of Harry’s stature in gay history would be reduced to such a state of penury and invisibility while back in Los Angeles—the cradle of American gay history—the disco beat of the party shallowly thumped on. So, I must admit, I schemed and manipulated until they agreed to leave San Juan Pueblo. In June of 1979, I returned to New Mexico, after the persons who agreed to assist with the move disappeared, and helped drive a big U-Haul back to Los Angeles with their belongings. This return marked the beginning of a much-deserved renaissance in Harry’s life—our Radical Faerie work, a biography being written about him and his becoming the subject of several documentary films, which were made about his important contribution to gay history. It was one of the most deeply moving, humbling and soul-satisfying labors of my life.

The two major challenges we faced in regards to hosting the first gathering in the summer of 1979 were firstly where it would be held. We wanted a space in nature with a few minimum creature comforts—like a kitchen, toilets and showers—with no one there except gay men. Secondly, in the age before the Internet, how were we going to reach gay men who were ready to take the next step in gay liberation?

To Be Continued.

Don Kilhefner, Ph.D., played a pioneering role in the creation of the Gay Liberation movement. He is also a co-founder of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, Van Ness Recovery House and (with Harry Hay) the international Radical Faerie movement. He and Mark Thompson will speak on “The Radical Faeries at 30” at the National Gay & Lesbian Archives (909 W. Adams Blvd., onearchives.org) on Sun., Feb. 15 at 2 p.m. with a never before seen slide presentation showing scenes from the first Radical Faeries gatherings. Admission is free with ample free parking behind the Archives building (at Scraff).