Harry Hay

Harry Hay was born to a well-to-do family in the U.K, in 1912, and moved with his family to Los Angeles in 1919. He learned early in his life to trust his internal instinct and understanding of truth rather than blindly accept truth from authority. He was a member of the Communist Party and union supporter and advocate in the 1930s. He was the first person to conceive of gay and lesbian people as a cultural minority. He founded the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles, California in 1951. It was the first organization to provide support to and advocate the rights of gay men in the United States and was the one of the forerunners to the gay and lesbian civil rights movement. In 1979 he founded the Radical Faeries, a "networking of gentle men devoted to the principles of ecology, spiritual truth, and, in New Age terms, 'gay-centeredness.'"