And Then I Danced Read online

  My reaction was one of shock, downright anger, and a pain that I still cannot explain. I’m not sure what I said in response. Perhaps it was a mere diplomatic brush-off, or more likely I just got up and walked out silently. In the hall, the press crowded around me wanting my reaction. Instead I just nodded and walked out of the building in disgust. Inside the chambers, Schwartz immediately ended the hearings, having what he thought was his pound of flesh.

  But a strange thing happened. My friends at the Philadelphia Daily News were outraged by Schwartz’s behavior, and in the following day’s edition they ran an editorial with the headline, “Shut Up, George.” They included a picture of Schwartz with that cigar pose that I had imitated. He had never been treated this way by the media before. And his downward political slide began.

  That hearing taught me a few lessons. First, being a victim of a bully in front of an entire city and handling it with grace wins a lot of friends; and second, it reinforced my belief that as long as non-LGBT society only thought of our community as a sexual one, we wouldn’t get very far in the fight for equality. My silence and unwillingness to talk about sexual practices taught me that sex had nothing to do with nondiscrimination. Most important was that I became a darling of the local press. While it was great for my ego, it was better for the LGBT community since up until then, most people still had no idea who a gay man really was. They’d continued to believe all the longstanding derogatory myths about gay people. Now, with all of this press coverage, they saw one live and could finally identify.

  The hope of bringing a new kind of activism back to Philly was at last realized. Not only did I bring a radical movement with me, but I was able to map the next step in LGBT liberation: speak up. To put it simply, Oscar Wilde had been correct that homosexuality was “the love that dare not speak its name,” but it was time to change that. And that was the most controversial decision I’d ever make. Since I was using myself as the guinea pig, it would unleash toward me a hatred not only from homophobes but from my own community, which often chews up and spits out its young, then stomps the spit wad into the ground.

  The Schwartz fiasco set in motion the path for the next act, the Gay Raiders. I had seen the light. I knew how to get there. Despite the backlash, other people’s fear and my ego were not going to stand in my way. Why should they? I had nothing to lose. After all, I had already been there, since my childhood and Wilson Park.

  As the vanguard of the new gay rights movement, New York was in turmoil. Gay Liberation Front had died after the birth of Gay Activist Alliance, which would soon make way for the first organization in America that could truly be called Gay Inc., the National Gay Task Force (NGTF), today known as the National LGBTQ Task Force. It was the first organization to have a well-paid executive director, Bruce Voeller, and a full-time staff. They set themselves apart from those of us who were activists. NGTF was also to become the first organization to attempt to market the LGBT community and raised what we thought at that time was big bucks. As far as they were concerned, the day of the sit-in, picket, and other activism was over. It was time for lobbying and legislation. To them we were the radicals, harbingers of shame who needed to be swept under the rug.

  In a sense the new guys were taking us back to the days of the Independence Hall demonstration where, to put a good look on “homosexuals,” the marchers were told that the men must wear suits and ties and the women must wear dresses. The divide in the community was vicious. People like me from Gay Liberation Front had made a movement for LGBT equality a reality; now the guys with the alligators and polo emblems on their shirts wanted us to leave the stage.

  The solution to the problem of invisibility as a people was clear. The general public had no idea who we were since what they were fed about us from the media, with only a few exceptions, was negative. Since, for the most part, we were all in the closet, who was there to refute it? Most non-gays didn’t know us. All the public knew were the sins religion gave us, the crimes the law pressed on us, and all the torture the medical and psychiatric profession tried on us to stop us from our “evil ways.” There was only one answer: to show people who we really were by using the very media that vilified us, and the time for that was immediately. What you wore was not at all the issue for acceptance. We could conform by wearing a suit and tie forever but still miss the mark on what equality required. People had to—they absolutely had to—get to know you as a person.

  So in 1972, Philadelphia became my own test lab. It started with a simple plan. The effort to pass nondiscrimination legislation taught me that using myself as a focal point had resulted in the public seeing and getting to know an actual gay man. It was not about the legislation, since passing legislation would not change minds; it was about using that legislation as a platform to communicate with the public. It had gotten me on a number of television and radio talk shows. At that point many called me a local celebrity. Harvey Milk wouldn’t receive that notoriety in San Francisco for several years. That “celebrity” status could help to accomplish our long-term goal, but it also needed to be nurtured and cultivated in the right way. Each piece of news had to be one step up from the last.

  A plan was drawn up to use what we called zaps. A zap is a disruption. Sort of. They were to be nonviolent protests that put us in a light that was not stereotypical. They were upbeat and of course had a point to communicate. We wanted the public to start talking about us. Talk can eventually lead to education. Education usually leads to less fear and more understanding of the unknown. The word zap, and using it as a noun for the action, is attributed to my old friend Marty Robinson. The basic rule in the equality struggle—from its inception back in 1895 with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, the German physician and sexologist who stomped for sexual minorities, through the 1960s liberation movement in the US, until this very day—is that progress is based on one word and one word only: education.

  Our organizational role, we felt as gay men and women, was exactly that: to educate society. Ask any gay person how easy it was to come out to their parents. Today it’s still hard. Those who have come out to their parents usually started with an education process. In some ways, just the act of coming out is a form of gay activism since it is the desire to no longer live a double life but live one’s truth. Parents, in turn, often educate their friends and so the process begins.

  There’s an old saying in the gay community: if every one of us was out of the closet, there’d be no need for a gay rights movement since others would learn that we are their brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, and even mothers and fathers. Back then we were everywhere, but at the same time, we were invisible. The Gay Raiders were about to change that.

  Our plan called for a zap or press opportunity every six weeks. A zap followed by the initial press, then the talk show circuit, and by the time that was dying down, another event or zap. The goal was to keep us right up there in the public’s face and to create conversation.

  When 99 percent of your community is in the closet, and you’re one of the few being out, proud, and front and center, you’re not a popular person. Up to this point, our gay meeting places like clubs, bars, private residences, and cafés were either secret or not publicized. These were safe places where we could be ourselves, and the feeling from that 99 percent was that I was putting a spotlight on those places and possibly on them. The line that activists like me heard most often was, “You’ll ruin it for all of us.”

  The press knew me from GAA, but I was now striking out on my own with few supporters; it had to be made clear that the Gay Raiders were different and separate and it had to be big enough to get everyone’s attention. So, we thought, why not zap the city’s icon of independence: the Liberty Bell. The plan was simple. Back then, the bell was on the first floor of Independence Hall and you could easily walk in and even touch it.

  We of course leaked what we were about to do to specific press people whom we could count on not giving the plan away. At the prescribed time we appeared. I already had handc
uffs on one arm, with the other end waiting to be attached to part of the bell. As I entered Independence Hall there was a cluster of flashes and it dawned on us that the plan had been more widely leaked. Like Keystone Cops, the incompetent fictional characters of silent movies, we were off, with the police trying to catch me before I did the deed and the press in hot pursuit. It truly felt like a Buster Keaton movie: me running from one room to the next, jumping over rope lines and crashing into walls, taking two steps at a time to the second floor and doing a circle around the room, then back down the stairs and another trip around those chairs once occupied by Ben Franklin and John Hancock. Finally, I climbed the stairs to the second floor again and quickly sat down and handcuffed myself to the rail directly above the bell. Then, on cue, as soon as the TV camera lights were on, I began yelling, “Independence for gay people! We want nondiscrimination!”

  This went on for about ten minutes until they cut me loose and gave me a ride to jail—a nickel ride. That’s when you’re cuffed with your hands behind your back, tossed into a police wagon, and the wagon takes off at high speed, hitting every pothole it can and making turns on a dime. The objective is to cause as much bruising as possible without the police laying a hand on you.

  Next up was the United Way. Why them? They didn’t fund any gay organizations. We found a large bike brace and one morning, when the staff of United Way turned up for work, they discovered it was impossible to enter since I was chained by my neck to their front doors. Any time anyone came near me someone would yell, “Don’t touch him, you could break his neck!” It worked better than a bomb, and guess what happened? The next year they funded their first LGBT organization.

  Then, according to plan, six weeks later it was time for another zap.

  This led to my first interaction with a president, Richard M. Nixon. On November 1, 1972, we disrupted a Republican fundraiser for Nixon’s committee to reelect the president, known to some of us as CREP. Clark MacGregor, chairman of the reelection committee, was speaking when I produced a roll of paper that when unraveled read, Gay Power. Again I was wrestled to the floor and took another nickel ride in the police wagon, but this one had a happy ending: the next morning, the White House condemned the disruption.

  By that point we had staged a few zaps that had been downright serious and, for me, dangerous. It was time to lighten things up a little. So why not throw a party? How ’bout free morning coffee and donuts to all City Hall workers? There was only one catch: the guest of honor didn’t know he was the guest of honor. Enter District Attorney Arlen Specter, later to become a US senator, and who will forever be linked to the fiasco involving Anita Hill and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Prior to that, he was a lawyer for the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He was the one who came up with the single-bullet theory.

  Back in those early days of the battle for gay rights, Arlen was district attorney of Philadelphia. He had not taken a stand on the gay rights bill that was before city council. Efforts to set up a meeting went unanswered. So we had to be a little creative. One crisp Monday morning, a caterer delivered two large coffeemakers and dozens of donuts to Arlen’s office. His staff thought that he had ordered the special treat, and Arlen thought his staff had arranged it. At the same time, in the City Hall courtyard and in the corridors of the building, members of the Gay Raiders were handing out flyers that read, District Attorney Arlen Specter invites you to a reception in honor of gay rights legislation in city council. Please join him at ten a.m. in his office, room 666. (That really was his office number.)

  At ten a.m., we, along with hundreds of city workers and a huge collection of newspeople, arrived at his office. We walked in and there was Arlen’s staff trying not to look too surprised at a reception held in their office that their boss was hosting, about legislation he had not endorsed. Arlen remained in his inner office. At first, the media took pictures of me handing out coffee and donuts to City Hall staffers, and we weren’t sure if Arlen would even come out of his private office. Finally, the door opened and there he was, all smiles. He walked over, shook my hand, helped me hand out coffee, and we then went back into his private office. His first comment to me was, “Mark Segal, who else would cater a disruption? Did you think I’d allow you to have all the media attention to yourself?” And then he flashed that big smile.

  The Philadelphia Inquirer the following day (October 10, 1973) had a large picture of the event and reported: District Attorney Arlen Specter shakes hands with Mark Segal, leader of the Gay Raiders, who parked outside the district attorney’s office until he emerged and granted them an interview. The Raiders handed out free donuts and coffee while waiting for Specter.

  Arlen eventually went to the National District Attorneys Association and asked them to get on board and support nondiscrimination legislation. Now, here’s what most people never knew: in Arlen’s Republican years in the US Senate, when it was hard to support LGBT rights, he was always behind the curtain ready to vote yes on gay rights if it was needed to assure passage. Only Human Rights Campaign and I were aware of that. I’ll never forget the 1996 vote on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, when he broke ranks with the GOP and the bill failed by only one vote. He later supported the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.

  A few years later, while I was waiting in a room with others to officially endorse Arlen, someone asked him about his single-bullet theory. Since I was standing next to him, he used me as the John F. Kennedy stand-in and showed where the bullets entered and exited Kennedy’s body. That was an eerie feeling.

  * * *

  The Gay Raiders’ zaps produced the desired effect: Philadelphians were talking about gay issues. We were everywhere, including the cover of the Sunday Inquirer magazine. This was not happening in other cities.

  The zaps were sometimes downright dangerous. For example, a zap of Dr. David Reuben, author of the book Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask, in which he belittled, embellished, and stereotyped LGBT people, became violent. When we staged a sit-in at one of his lectures in June 1974, the police moved in with their clubs. Although it was a nonviolent protest, Bernie Boyle got his head bashed with one of those clubs.

  I had little funds, since my activism kept me from helping Dad with the business, and my parents were supporting me. It took me years to realize the contribution my parents made to the struggle for gay rights. Never did they complain, they only offered words of encouragement.

  My partner at the time, Phillip, spent weekends at the house, most of which were filled with making plans for the next zap or demonstration or other issues to be dealt with. One Saturday afternoon we were watching TV and a teenage dance show came on the air. It was Ed Hurst’s show in Atlantic City, Summertime on the Pier. Watching the dancers made us wonder: What would happen if a gay couple joined in? That is how the campaign against the networks began, and once again events swept me up faster than I had planned.

  Sage Powell, a friend from Gay Activist Alliance, agreed to go to Atlantic City to be my dance partner on the show. The following Saturday, with very little organizing, a group of us set out. The show was little more than a gimmick to get people to buy tickets to Steel Pier. Teenage dance television shows were born in Philly; American Bandstand, the granddaddy of them all, was wildly popular.

  We bought our tickets and made our way to the ballroom. The show was already on the air—like Bandstand, it was a live show. We watched for a while to get our bearings and then, when a song we knew was being played, Sage and I made our way to the floor. We must have danced for three minutes before we heard Ed Hurst yelling from the stage, over the microphone, “Get them off! Get them off the floor!”

  Security was called in and we were royally thrown off the pier. We got in the car and laughed all the way home. Sage, who is African American, said we got kicked off the show because we were an interracial couple, not because we were both men
. I’m not sure if we even made it on camera, but it didn’t matter, we knew what the next step would be: a demonstration.

  Gay Activist Alliance protected our honor by picketing the TV station and demanding an apology. They refused to apologize. And thank God they wouldn’t. It led us to the next step: the Gay Raiders decided to disrupt the evening news. It was only logical, right? The ABC affiliate in Philadelphia was, and still is, the local news ratings king. Almost every household tuned in to Action News on ABC.

  Despite how quickly they seemed to happen, zaps were not usually pulled out of thin air. It was a major process. Once the target was settled on, we went to work on planning. Success depended on planning, execution, and security. A good zap couldn’t happen in a few hours. But this time, little planning would be needed since we already knew the station well. Being a “celebrity” means being invited onto the talk shows, and their studios were no exception. I’d been there before.

  We knew there was a security guard at the front desk and, once in the building, we knew where the studio was. We even had a hideout where we planned to wait until the show was on the air. All we needed was to create a diversion at the front door. Therefore, we had researched and practiced a trick learned from movie stuntmen. A guy on fire running around would surely do the job. So we employed this to our advantage. As the guard went one way, we went the other, into the building. We waited until the show was on and was reporting the top news story of the night. Their format was the same each evening, and we decided we’d treat the city to a newly written script. As the anchorman said, “But the top story tonight . . .” we became the big story as we burst onto the live set. There were the anchorman, Larry Kane, weatherman Jim O’Brien, and sportscaster Joe Pellegrino.