Chapter 12: Invisibility in the Gay Mainstream

A red matchbook, tiny and vulgar, displayed at the ONE Archives, is integral in the Gay Liberation Movement, but few people alive know why. In 1970, a misspelled sign identical to the one printed on the matchbook hung outside of Barney’s Beanery restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood (a gay neighborhood) and it read, “Fagots Stay Out.” For ten queer friends, reading the sign sparked the kindling that fueled their outrage. The group planned a protest, but like none Angeleno had witnessed before in Tinseltown. On June 28, 1970, the friends led a crowd from McCadden Place to Hollywood Boulevard. Among them, a six-year-old boy held up a handwritten sign that said “Gay Power,” a man in an asymmetric leotard marched with his pet snake coiled around his arms, and dozens of LGBTQA people waved red, white, and blue flags. Behind them, in a colorful float created by the Advocate magazine, swimsuit-clad muscle men gyrated. Close behind the float, the Duchess de San Francisco, blond, jeweled, gloved, and gowned, blew kisses out of her convertible sitting in the backseat like a movie star. When the Advocate published the news story on the protest later, the headline read, “In Hollywood: Pride, Joy, a Touch of Mardi Gras” and it looked like Mardi Gras. The protest turned into the first annual Los Angeles Pride Festival. In the photographs that were published, no identifiable Black people could be located. The gay community’s three-picture identification rule was like the red matchbook, but even more dangerous because it was invisible to the naked eye and attempted to erase people of color from the queer culture in West Hollywood.