WINNING OR LOSING, WE'RE NOT RETREATING




As we enter 2005, let's look back four decades to San Francisco queerdom in 1965, when these events happened:

--1965 January 1 (New Year's Day): At a costume ball, sponsored by six queer groups to benefit the
Council on Religion and the Homosexual, SF police harass attendees and arrest three persons.
Next day, seven Protestant ministers publicly denounce the cops.

--1965 January: After six months of recruiting, SIR's membership, at roughly 300, surpasses
all other SF queer organizations. This new Society for Individual Rights will try to secure civil rights
for "the Community"; and will "fight for the elimination of sexual puritanism."

--Tavern Guild of SF helps the black civil rights movement of Alabama. [For more SF queerstory, please read
WIDE OPEN TOWN.]

-- In August, anarcho-hippies stage "nude wade-in" (as political demo) in Aquatic Park.
Later, somebody snaps a photo of Neal Cassady shaving in bicoastal/polysexual Allen Ginsberg's bathroom;
where a wade-in flyer adorns the mirror, proclaiming
"Clothed or NUDE: we are NOT OBSCENE." [For more, please read QUEER BEATS.]

Queers had very few legal rights back then, yet we were struggling to win human rights for everyone, not just for us.

So here's a New Year's resolution for 2005:
"Winning or losing, we are NOT RETREATING!"


Tortuga Bi LIBERTY,
for Senior Unlimited Nudes,
San Francisco

Wednesday, 29 December 2004
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/12/1711937.php
[published in SFBT, 6 January 2005, as "A Look Back" ]
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+ comment by an SF queer activist:


Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004
Subject: Re: LTE for Jan. 6 SFBT
To: seniornude


Tortuga
Excellent letter.
tommi

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- posted by SUN @ 9:01 AM