Harry Hay

Uncommon card · No. 117644

Henry Hay Jr. (April 7, 1912 – October 24, 2002) was an American gay rights activist, communist, and labor advocate. He cofounded the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States, as well as the Radical Faeries, a loosely affiliated gay spiritual movement. Hay has been described as "the Founder of the Modern Gay Movement" and "the father of gay liberation". Acknowledging both his same-sex sexual attraction and an interest in Marxism from an early age, Hay eventually worked as a professional actor in Los Angeles, where he joined the Communist Party USA, becoming a committed labor activist. He ended his 1938 marriage to a Party activist after recognizing he remained homosexual, establishing the Mattachine Society in 1950. Hay increasingly stood against the assimilationism and subversive infiltration tactics advocated by the majority of gay rights campaigners. Organizing to subvert the social and political marginalization of gay people, he cofounded the Los...

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