And Then I Danced Read online

  Out on the West Coast, an investment banker named David Goodstein had purchased the only national LGBT publication, the Advocate, which was read by nearly all LGBT activists. It was how we learned what others were doing. We couldn’t expect any reports from the mainstream media, and there was no Internet. But Goodstein agreed with Voeller’s view on a more formal, professional, and organized gay rights struggle. He created a list of people who should be low priority in their news coverage. Along with longtime activists such as Morris Knight, I was on the list. It felt like censorship. Goldstein’s strangest contribution to the movement was when he introduced “The Advocate Experience,” where people paid to attend a Zen-like weekend getaway, with the emphasis on enlightenment and self-acceptance rather than public opinion and equal rights. At this point, the Advocate, a respected publication known for good journalism, slipped into the dark side of history.

  Voeller eventually left what resulted in a decimated Task Force. A host of directors followed his departure, each of whom crashed and burned due to various scandals or were ousted for a lack of organizational and communication skills. Eventually the Task Force did find decent leadership and direction. Among those leaders were Virginia Apuzzo, Urvashi Vaid, and Matt Foreman. Under their stewardship, the Task Force became the respectable organization that it is today. And as the group was getting its act together, another organization came along, the Human Rights Campaign Fund. It later dropped the word Fund and become known as just HRC, but due to their early lavish fundraising events, it was coined by one activist “Human Rights Champagne Fund.” As it stands, HRC is now the leading LGBT civil rights organization in the nation and their fundraising brings in over ten million dollars each year for LGBT causes.

  * * *

  In the mid-’70s, while the New York LGBT community was busy with their in-fighting, the Gay Raiders were beginning to blossom into new areas. What we had been doing with media, we now did with government. Seeing the need for concrete data that documented the treatment of LGBT people, we conducted surveys. Individuals donated stamps and stationery, and one of my new friends on the city council, Thomas Foglietta, who would become a congressman and then ambassador to Italy under President Clinton, allowed us to use his office and equipment to create the surveys.

  One of the leading complaints from our community was police harassment and entrapment. We obtained a list of police chiefs in every major city and sent them letters asking how their department treated the gay community. We didn’t expect much of a response and were surprised when over twenty responded. The answers were sterile, but at least we had opened their eyes to the issue. At the same time, we forwarded the responses to the local organizations should they want to follow up and create a relationship with their local police force.

  We also did the first-ever survey of corporate America. We didn’t have the funds to send surveys to the complete Fortune 500 list, but the top hundred would still have an impact. We asked each of them if they had a nondiscrimination policy in their human resources departments. It was again an eye-opening survey, for us and for them. Many wrote back that they had never even thought about it. A few said they’d look into it. In 1976, that was the state of corporate America on nondiscrimination.

  And then my old friend from New York, Congresswoman Bella Abzug, along with then-congressman Ed Koch, asked me to help with something they had just introduced with little fanfare. The Equality Act (a precursor to the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act) was first introduced by Abzug in May 1974. She and Koch (whom I always thought had a crush on me but never acted on it) felt that my luster at that time might help it along.

  After countless meetings, it seemed to me that something was missing from the legislation: there were no African American Congress members as cosponsors. As the Advocate reported in August of that year, I worked to have Congressman Robert Nix, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, become a cosponsor. He insisted that he reintroduce the legislation and later that year it became H.R. 166, with five sponsors.

  Congrsswoman Abzug made one other request of me during that time: come up with a PR stunt to promote the legislation. That stunt became the lamest Gay Raiders zap of all time, a White House zap. Translation: we decided to have a public LGBT tour of the White House. In those days all you had to do was line up outside the White House in the morning. We publicized this, but since most of the LGBT community in DC was still deeply closeted, the tour consisted of me, a few members of the Gay Raiders, and a very large group of Secret Service agents. The only coverage it got was in the Advocate.

  It is so impressive how much Human Rights Campaign has improved upon the effort to pass ENDA and how they’ve made their surveys so important—many Fortune 500 companies work diligently each year to obtain a 100 percent rating for their support of their LGBT employees. While our simple surveys consisted of one question, each year’s Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index has a booklet of questions that each company’s human resources department must fill out. It touches on the full range of LGBT issues that individuals and corporations face. Many of the Fortune 500 corporations now covet a top ranking in the index and advertise and promote the fact.

  * * *

  In the middle of all of this, I wrote a letter requesting a meeting with the governor of Pennsylvania. It seemed simple, but at that time, in 1974, no governor in the nation had ever met publicly with anyone from the gay and lesbian community. So when Governor Milton Shapp agreed, it caught me by surprise. His office called to arrange for a meeting the next day. In all honesty, it never occurred to me that he’d actually agree to such a meeting. Preparation was virtually nonexistent and as was often the case for me, the meeting was off the cuff. We met in Norristown, Pennsylvania, while he was on a statewide tour. When Harry Langhorne and I walked into the room, the governor stood up, walked over to us with a big smile on his face, and gave me a hearty handshake. His smile grew as he said, “I’ve seen you on TV.” When I didn’t get it, he added, “Cronkite seemed to be surprised to meet you, but I’m not.” It was the first time that I’d ever felt comfortable with an elected official so quickly.

  Rather than ask what he could do for us, he asked what he could do to help our cause. This caught us completely off guard. And, as always, I went for the brass ring: “Governor, gay men and lesbians are discriminated against in almost every part of state government.”

  This was all I got out before he said, “How can we change that?”

  I replied with the brass ring again: “Create a commission to explore these problems and find solutions.” At that point there had never been an official governmental body to look into LGBT issues. He knew it, I knew it, and we just looked at each other for a while, knowing that what was requested was, in fact, unprecedented.

  Governor Shapp finally said, “Let me consider the options and get back to you.” He then did something else unheard of: he asked his press secretary to allow the media in to our meeting, which we had believed was to be off the record. This was another surprise to Harry and me.

  The press was out in force. When the door to the room opened, they rushed in. Questions were yelled at the governor, too many to answer, but he gave the usual political statement, “We had a good meeting,” then added, “It’s a start.” To further assure us, he actually posed for pictures with us. At that time most elected officials were running from gay activists; some wouldn’t even touch a gay person—but not Governor Milton Shapp. The next day, pictures of the two of us shaking hands were splashed across the state’s newspapers. He relished the idea of helping; after all, he was the man who came up with the idea of the Peace Corps (not Sargent Shriver, as most people believe).

  Our friendship grew, and it was not unusual for him to call the house in the evening to talk about the LGBT community. He wanted to know all the ways in which we were discriminated against. We started to discuss the organization of the commission. During one of these calls, he said, “It’s going to take all the departments of the s
tate.” If Milton Shapp was from a different state, such as New York or California, he would be hailed as a national hero of our community rather than a footnote. Shapp, the first Jewish governor of Pennsylvania, also became the first governor in the nation to issue a statewide executive order forbidding discrimination against gay people in all agencies and departments, and the first governmental chief executive in the world to create a commission to look into the concerns of the gay and lesbian community. When he was up for reelection, his Republican opponent, Drew Lewis, was forced to write Philadelphia Gay News a letter stating that he opposed discrimination in housing employment and public accommodation, and my favorite part of that letter was where he added, I do not feel that your preference should result in criminal liability. If elected, Lewis would continue to support civil rights for gays and lesbians. This marked the first gubernatorial election in America where both Republican and Democrat candidates supported LGBT rights. The credit is due to Shapp, and it also underscored the power we as a community had garnered by 1975.

  In April of that year, Shapp established the Pennsylvania Council for Sexual Minorities. He ordered each department to appoint a top official to be a member or liaison. This was real. Yet there was also one disappointment for me, and one that I’d have to become comfortable with if I wanted to continue to plow new ground. I might have provided the seed, but I was not allowed to grow my own child. As the governor told me, “Mark, you’re too much of a firebrand, and if I allowed you to chair the commission it would get nowhere, and we both want it to make change, you understand.”

  I was given two subcommittees: prisons and insurance. Tony Silvestre would lead the commission. The governor appointed Barry Kohn to be his liaison. It seemed to me that both Silvestre and Kohn believed, as had the Task Force, that I projected the wrong image. That old feeling of isolation that I experienced in grammar school returned. Gee, if only I’d worn a suit.

  * * *

  Shapp continued to engage me in new ways. While the commission was toiling, he put me to work with the state police and the legislature. One day he called and asked me to meet him in the governor’s residence later that afternoon. “Governor, I’m in Philadelphia, is it so important that I come to Harrisburg?” He insisted, and after a two-hour drive, I was pulling up to the gate and the guard said, “Mr. Segal, the governor is waiting for you.”

  Entering the governor’s ornate residence, I found him standing there, smiling with his arms crossed against his chest. He said, “There seems to be one thing that is lacking in your lobbying efforts, and it’s about time someone tells you.” With that we went into the state dining room where there was a coatrack with about ten jackets on it. “If you’re going to lobby state senators and representatives, you need to look the part. You don’t have to wear a complete suit, but a blue jacket will do the trick. Here, try these on.” The rack contained blue blazers in various sizes. “Find the one that fits you, and I’ll see you in Philadelphia next week.” He had me drive all the way to Harrisburg just to give me a jacket!

  In quick succession, Shapp issued an executive order banning discrimination in state hiring and services, created the Council for Sexual Minorities (whose title, according to the governor, had to contain the word minority since that was something the public would respond to), and, in June of 1975, became first governor in the nation to have his state officially proclaim Gay Pride Month.

  Shortly after the governor issued his executive order, I was lying down in my bedroom on Fayette Street one morning when the phone rang at six a.m. I ignored it and just turned over in bed. Then, a knock on the door. Mom said: “Mark, there’s a guy on the phone who say’s he’s Lieutenant Governor Ernie Kline and he wants to talk to you.”

  Picking up the extension in my room, I greeted, “Governor, what can I do for you?”

  He explained that Governor Shapp had had a knock-down screaming match with the head of the Pennsylvania state troopers over his executive order banning discrimination against sexual minorities in state hiring. It seems that when Colonel James Barger heard that the executive order included his department, he marched directly to the governor’s office and told Shapp that there was no way would he have “those people” on his force.

  My reaction was, “So what can I do to help?”

  “The governor wants you to go to the state police barracks at Belmont today at nine a.m. and sign up to be a state trooper.” As my mind was trying to grasp this idea, he went on, “Just show up, fill out the paperwork, and we’ll do the rest.”

  All I could get out before he hung up was, “Ernie . . .”

  So on May 14, 1975, I jumped out of bed and began hatching a plan of action, one taking place in an unfamiliar landscape. I knew the police, that was for sure, but from a completely different type of experience. I wondered what one wears to sign up to be a state trooper. Then it dawned on me: How far was this going to go? Would the governor actually make me go to some sort of state trooper boot camp? By this time, in the two years after I had been summoned home to help care for my mom, my parents had adjusted to almost anything. So as I left the house, I called out, “Well, at least today you won’t have to worry about me being arrested by the police, seems I’m signing up to become one of them.” Mom gave me a strange look and I added, “You know, Mom, I’m marching off to war.” She smiled; it was our private joke about that day in grammar school and “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

  As I drove into the Belmont police barracks parking lot, a swarm of media surrounded my car. Clearly, the governor’s office had put out a press release. There was a new reporter for KYW-TV named Jessica Savitch, who in just two years would become an anchor on the NBC Nightly News and in short order lose control of her life, then actually lose her life in an automobile accident. But in 1975, she was still a cub reporter. When I got out of the car, she shoved a mic in front of me and said, “Mr. Segal, you’re a homosexual.”

  Like that was something I didn’t know. Before she could say anything else I replied, “Isn’t that obvious?” After all, I was wearing a button that read, How dare you presume I’m straight. Then I added, “I see you got the press release.”

  She continued, asking why I was applying to become a state trooper. The rest of the media gathered around and I said the first thing that came to mind: “I like men in uniform.” Everyone laughed, and then I got down to the serious business at hand. “This is about employment discrimination. If I’m able to do the job, then I should be given the same opportunity as anyone else.” Sounded perfectly logical to me, and to the press; they got their three-minute story for the evening news. But no one mentioned that the guy signing up for the state troopers was five-seven, dressed in torn blue jeans, a T-shirt with a peace sign on it, and hair down to his shoulders. This was political theater, and the only way to make it work was with a little humor.

  One reporter who saw through the theatrics and went right to the facts when covering one of my political actions was Andrea Mitchell, then with KYW-TV and one whose battles with Mayor Frank Rizzo are now legendary. Our relationship was cordial, but once the camera was on she was as professional and well-researched as any reporter I’ve ever known.

  The activity with the state troopers was written about and broadcast throughout the state. Here’s an example of how the media of the day handled this:

  Philadelphia AP—Mark Segal, an admitted homosexual, applied Wednesday to join the Pennsylvania State Police, but admitted later his application was a test of state police policy. Segal said, and state police confirmed, that he applied at the state police barracks in the Belmont section of Philadelphia.

  But my favorite headline came from the Times Leader: “Shapp Aide Tells Berger to Reconsider Homos Ban.”

  After one long day of fighting, I asked Shapp why he was taking this on, and he told me, “Mark, I’m in the closet as well.” When I looked at him strangely, he laughed and followed up with, “My real name is Shapiro, I had to change it to Shapp to enter politics. So I understand di
scrimination.”

  Almost thirty years later I received a call from a young girl who explained, “My father suggested that I contact you regarding a report on gay rights I’m doing for a school term paper.” My questions were the usual: What school? What aspects of LGBT history are you interested in? She replied, “I’m not calling you about your activism, I’m calling you since I understand that my grandfather was involved with the gay rights movement and my father told me you worked with him.” Her father was Richard Shapp, and she was Milton Shapp’s granddaughter. She had no idea about her grandfather’s important work in this area, and unfortunately most Americans still don’t. And believe me, he’s one of the most important figures in the early gay rights movement. He was a pioneer in his own way.

  Those official Pennsylvania gay pride proclamations started by Shapp kept coming through various administrations, including Republican governor Richard Thornburgh, who was later appointed US attorney general by President Ronald Reagan. When elected governor, Thornburgh wanted to show inclusion in his administration. He chose an African American Republican doctor who had been elected to the Philadelphia city council to be his secretary of the commonwealth. Her name was Dr. Ethel Allen, and she was diversity-inclusion all rolled up into one neat package. She was also a personal friend, and a closeted lesbian.

  Closeted public officials often look for ways to be a part of the fight for equality. Ethel had been in numerous struggles; as a woman, as an African American seeking a medical degree, and as a black Republican in a Democratic town. She was a fighter.

  Soon after Thornburgh chose Ethel, she gave me a call and asked if I’d write the governor’s gay pride proclamation. Something felt odd. I asked her, “Does the governor know you’re asking me this?”

  She responded, “Not to worry,” and got off the phone.

  A month later she called to ask how it was going. My reply was simple: “It’s not going, since if the governor isn’t going to issue it, why should I waste the time?” She guaranteed me he would, and then she set up a lunch date for us to write it.