“In People's Faces for Lesbian and Gay Rights”: Stories of Activism ...

Special IssueListening to and Learning from LGBTQ Lives

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THE ORAL HISTORY REVIEWJournal of the Oral History Association

CONTENTS Winter/Spring 2016 • Volume 43, Issue 1

Editor’s IntroductionKathryn L. NasstromGuest Editor’s IntroductionStephanie Gilmore

ARTICLESWhat Makes Queer Oral History DifferentKevin P. Murphy, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Jason Ruiz Embodied Knowledge and Accessible Community: An Oral History of “Four Rehearsals and a Performance”Liam Lair and Ashley Mog No Cinderella Story: Friends Remember Ben Scott “Benderella” RaeLaura S. Hodgman Surprised by Activism: The Effects of One Oral History on Its Queer Steel-Working NarratorsAnne Balay “In People’s Faces for Lesbian and Gay Rights”: Stories of Activism in Madison, Wisconsin, 1970 to 1990Scott C. Seyforth and Nichole Barnes Behind the Scenes at the Gayzette: The Gay Student Union and Queer World Making at UCLA in the 1970sDavid A. Reichard The Carolina Gay Association, Oral History, and Coming Out at the University of North CarolinaT. Evan Faulkenbury and Aaron Hayworth “Bring Your Whole Self to the Work”: Identity and Intersectional Politics in the Louisville LGBTQ MovementCatherine Fosl and Lara Kelland “That’s What Music Is About—It Strikes a Chord”: Proposing a Queer Method of Listening to the Lives and Music of LGBTQsMarion Wasserbauer Reclaiming the Lesbian ArchivesElise Chenier

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VOLUME 43 ISSUE 1Winter/Spring 2016

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CONTENTSSpecial Issue: Listening to and Learning from LGBTQ Lives

Editor’s IntroductionKathryn L. NasstromGuest Editor’s IntroductionStephanie Gilmore

ARTICLES

What Makes Queer Oral History DifferentKevin P. Murphy, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Jason Ruiz 1

Embodied Knowledge and Accessible Community: An OralHistory of “Four Rehearsals and a Performance”Liam Lair and Ashley Mog 25

No Cinderella Story: Friends Remember Ben Scott“Benderella” RaeLaura S. Hodgman 52

Surprised by Activism: The Effects of One Oral History on ItsQueer Steel-Working NarratorsAnne Balay 69

“In People’s Faces for Lesbian and Gay Rights”: Stories ofActivism in Madison, Wisconsin, 1970 to 1990Scott C. Seyforth and Nichole Barnes 81

Behind the Scenes at the Gayzette: The Gay Student Unionand Queer World Making at UCLA in the 1970sDavid A. Reichard 98

The Carolina Gay Association, Oral History, and Coming Outat the University of North CarolinaT. Evan Faulkenbury and Aaron Hayworth 115

“Bring Your Whole Self to the Work”: Identity andIntersectional Politics in the Louisville LGBTQ MovementCatherine Fosl and Lara Kelland 138

“That’s What Music Is About—It Strikes a Chord”: Proposinga Queer Method of Listening to the Lives and Music ofLGBTQsMarion Wasserbauer 153

Reclaiming the Lesbian ArchivesElise Chenier 170

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“In People’s Faces for Lesbian andGay Rights”: Stories of Activism inMadison, Wisconsin, 1970 to 1990Scott C. Seyforth and Nichole Barnes

Abstract: During the 1970s and 1980s, activists pushed Madison, Wisconsin, tothe forefront of the national movement for gay rights. While midwestern participa-tion in gay liberation has not been well documented or explored, the following articletraces the role of local Madison organizers in this wider struggle for equality throughthe use of oral history. Using interviews from a collection of oral histories from thelocal LGBT community, this article chronicles the activism and political organizingthat led to the early election of out officials, the nation’s first statewide gay rightslaw, and campus protests over the ban on homosexuals serving in the military

Keywords: activism, gay civil rights, gay liberation, LGBT history, politics,student protest.

Historians and social critics have yet to assess fully the national mass efforts ofthe LGBT liberation movement. Much of the written history of this movementhas been limited to documenting efforts in large coastal cities, leaving the im-pression—through omission—that gay liberation was not happening throughoutthe country. The Madison’s LGBTQ Community, 1960s to Present Oral HistoryProject provides enriching evidence that there was a thriving and progressivegay-liberation movement in Madison, Wisconsin, during the gay-liberation period.Interviews document that in the 1970s and 1980s Madison was a frontrunner inelecting out gay officials, in helping pass the first statewide gay civil rights law inthe nation, and in protesting the ban on military service of homosexuals. In theseways, the project shows that efforts in Madison, Wisconsin, were at the forefrontof a political mass movement at the national level.

For their generous assistance with this article, the authors would like to thank Troy Reeves, Michele Besant, JoeElder, the staff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, the editorial staff and peer reviewers of the OralHistory Review, and the many narrators of the Madison LGBTQ oral history project who shared their experiences.

doi:10.1093/ohr/ohv076. Advance Access publication 17 March 2016The Oral History Review 2016, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 81–97VC The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oral History Association.All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected]

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The Madison’s LGBTQ Community Oral History Project was developed bythe head of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Oral History Program, TroyReeves. When Reeves arrived at the university in 2007, he inherited the oral his-tory collection, which encompassed roughly 2,800 hours of recordings withinover 850 interviews. The collection included almost no LGBT content. Reevespreviously worked as an oral historian for the Idaho State Historical Society.There he created a collection of oral histories documenting both sides of the1994 statewide referendum, Proposition 1, which sought to restrict the civil lib-erties and minority status of gays, before it failed in the November election.

Seeing a need for LGBT inclusion in the archives’ oral history collection,Reeves approached several University of Wisconsin-Madison LGBT faculty andstaff about creating a local LGBT oral history collection in 2008. A group wasformed that worked training interviewers, publicizing the project, and providingoutreach to create interest in collecting interviews. Because of the deep connec-tions between the city of Madison and the University of Wisconsin (UW), it wasdecided not to limit the collection to just university-related histories, but tofocus more broadly on the larger LGBT community. Oral history was compellingmethodology for this project because it could capture a history that had notbeen well recorded or preserved and allow LGBT community members to telltheir stories in their own words.1

At the time of this writing, the Madison’s LGBTQ Community Oral HistoryProject is the only ongoing institutional program in the state of Wisconsin ad-dressing this historiographical void. The Wisconsin State Historical Society doesnot maintain an active oral history program and lacks the funding to engage inthe kind of outreach and collection development that the project requires.Similarly, current Madison LGBT community organizations (LGBT community cen-ter, LGBT political organizations) lack the mission, infrastructure, and/or archivalexperience to implement or sustain such a program.

Comprising over one hundred interviews and nearly two hundred hours, theLGBT collection covers a wide range of topics, including activism, personal histor-ies detailing family and educational backgrounds, careers, coming-out stories,the construction of identity, and the role of community. The narratives capturedin these interviews span the second half of the twentieth century, beginningaround 1950 and continuing to the present day. The collection allows re-searchers to gain a more nuanced understanding of the individuals who played arole in shaping the Madison LGBT community in years past and those who con-tinue to contribute to its vibrancy today. Interviews were planned according tostandards and principles established by the Oral History Association and con-ducted by UW-Archives staff with input from community volunteers and

1 Nan Alamilla Boyd and Horacio N. Roque Ramırez, eds., Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer OralHistory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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university students. With several years of successful development and growthcomplete, the project aims to build on this momentum in order to augment thecollection and promote access through digitization and outreach.

This article will detail a small section of the collection pertaining to the pol-itical work of local LGBT advocates involved in early efforts to elect out gay offi-cials, pass the first statewide gay civil rights law in the US, and start a nationaldiscussion about the military’s ban of homosexuals.

Beginnings of a Local Movement

The organized, public gay-liberation movement in Madison began in the fall of1969, just months after the Stonewall Rebellion in New York. Several men andwomen gathered at St. Francis House, the liberal-leaning Episcopal student cen-ter near campus, to form the Madison Alliance for Homosexual Equality(MAHE), the first public gay and lesbian organization in the state of Wisconsin.“The first time I went there, I had to circle around the building three times be-fore I could get up the nerve to go in,” said early member Jim Yeadon.2 Thegroup started primarily as a social group, meeting weekly in the basement of theEpiscopal student center, holding consciousness-raising workshops and occa-sionally organizing larger functions in the upstairs sanctuary. MAHE memberJudy Greenspan recalled these times, saying, “Those of us who came out thencame out with a lot of baggage, a lot of homophobia, and a lot of self-hatred.Every time I would speak, I felt like I peeled away one layer of self-hatred.”3 Byspring of the following year, MAHE had grown into a more politically active or-ganization, holding teach-ins, dances, media appearances, and its first publicprotest. In the fall of 1970, modeled after the Gay Liberation Front in NewYork, the Madison group changed its name to the Gay Liberation Front (GLF)and announced its mission to “promote interaction and solidarity within the gaycommunity and to raise the consciousness of the straight world to the problemsof sexist oppression.”4 As GLF participant Michael Bemis remembered, the or-ganization created a sense of belonging and a feeling “that we had a place inthe world and that we weren’t so afraid of being exposed as gay men andwomen.”5

2 James Yeadon, recorded campus talk, 2009, OH #945, digital audio file (hereafter DAF), Campus VoicesOral History Program: Madison’s LGBTQ Community, 1960s to Present (hereafter CVOH Madison), UniversityArchives and Records Management (hereafter UARM).

3 Judy Greenspan, interviewed by Scott Seyforth, 2009, OH #1420, DAF, CVOH Madison, UARM.4 “Organization Instituted for Benefit of Homosexuals,” Daily Cardinal, January 7, 1970; Jess Anderson,

interviewed by Eric Trekell, 2010, OH #1095, CVOH Madison, UARM; Gay Renaissance of Madison, Inc.Brochure, Kathleen Nichols and Barbara Constans papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, MSS72; 1971; StudentActivities Folders, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives; Yeadon, recorded campus talk.

5 Michael Bemis, interviewed by Bennet Goldstein, Scott Seyforth, and Sam Fauble, 2012, OH #1256, DAF,CVOH Madison, UARM.

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In Madison, Politics Is the Business of the City

Like the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in New York, the local GLF group used“zaps” or public demonstrations to call attention to issues of injustice towardgays. An example occurred in spring and summer of 1971 when only one bar inMadison allowed gays to congregate and no bar in Madison allowed gays todance publicly. The GLF and the newly formed lesbian women’s group, GaySisters, staged a series of demonstrations to “liberate” straight bars in Madisonto allow dancing by gay couples.

Judy Greenspan, a founder of Gay Sisters, recalled, “We used to go to barsand claim them, make them gay and take some space on the dance floor, par-ticularly bars where we’d hear that a couple of men went and were asked toleave the dance floor.” For Greenspan, these activities reflected how “we wereyoung and we liked to dance, and we liked to be in people’s faces.”6 Gay Sistersand GLF members would go in groups to straight bars where gay male coupleshad been asked to leave the dance floor and dance in same-sex pairs. As a re-sult, bar owners often turned off the music, arguments broke out with straightpatrons, and occasionally fistfights were instigated by straight bar patrons.7

Fig. 1. Members of the Madison Gay Sisters, ca. 1971. (Image courtesy of JudyGreenspan.)

6 Judy Greenspan, interviewed by Susan Goldwoman, 1991; Greenspan, interview, 2009.7 See Greenspan, interviews, 1991 and 2009; Ron McCrea, “Gay Lib Effort Climaxed by Scuffles on State

St.,” Capital Times, April 10, 1971.


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Perhaps the most noteworthy zap-like form of direct action developed as achallenge to the 1972 Madison School Board ruling that allowed principals toban the Gay Liberation Front from speaking to sociology classes in public highschools.8 Activists decided to use the electoral arena to bring attention to theban by running an openly gay candidate for school board since the policy wasnot only against education, “it was against free speech. It was against studentslearning maybe about themselves.”9

To hear Ron McCrea further discuss the 1972 Madison School Board ruling,Judy Greenspan’s run for the board, the 2001 Madison School Board apol-ogy, and the current state of LGBTQ issues in Madison schools, go to:Audio excerpt 1. http://ohr.oxfordjournals.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1093/ohr/ohv076/-/DC1/43-1_Seyforth_Barnes_In_Peoples_Faces_audio_1

Greenspan volunteered to run for school board on a platform that advocatedthe passage of a high-school student bill of rights, an end to discriminatorypractices against women in education, and the right of gay people to live andspeak openly in the high schools.10 Official school board debates were held inthe schools. And as a candidate, Greenspan could circumvent the policy againsthomosexuals, noting, “They had banned lesbian and gays from speaking in theschools, but they couldn’t ban me as a candidate from speaking in theschools.”11 During the campaign, there were numerous interviews in local mediaoutlets including television, city and high-school newspapers, and an appearancein front of the school board itself.12

Although Greenspan did not win in the primary, her presence on the ballothelped local gay activists spread their message. “For two and a half months,I was in people’s faces for lesbian and gay rights,” Greenspan explained. She ela-borated, “It was using the electoral arena to put something out there . . . Wewere a challenge to the straight establishment, and we were a challenge to thecloseted lesbian and gay establishment.”13 Because of the amount of mediacoverage Greenspan’s run received, others also recalled the importance of her

8 Rosemary Kendrick. “Principals to Decide on Gay Speaker” Capital Times, June 7, 1972.9 Ron McCrea, interviewed by Troy Reeves, 2008, OH #903, DAF, CVOH Madison, UARM.

10 Greenspan, interview, 1991; “School Board Candidate Runs on Gay Platform,” Capital Times, February 5,1973.

11 Greenspan, interview, 2009; Keren Levenstein, “Greenspan Stresses Restructuring,” Daily Cardinal, March2, 1973.

12 See Greenspan, interview, 1991; “Community Control is Central to Greenspan’s Philosophy,” Capital Times,March 1, 1973; “Greenspan Rips Schools’ Gay Ban,” Capital Times, February 28, 1973; “Greenspan Raps BoardMembers,” Wisconsin State Journal, February 20, 1973.

13 Greenspan, interview, 1991; Greenspan, interview, 2009.


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Fig. 2. One of Judy Greenspan’s posters from her campaign listed her main platforms,one of which was to support gay rights. (Image courtesy of the UW-Madison Archives.)


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run. For Ron McCrea, Greenspan’s efforts helped “to raise that issue and get itout there in the public discussion” in a way that was unusual for the time.14

The March 1973 Madison School Board candidacy of Greenspan appears tobe one of the early attempts by any openly gay person to run for public officein the United States. Jeff Graubert, a founder of the University of Illinois atChampaign-Urbana Gay Liberation Front, filed as a candidate for Urbana mayorin January 1973 and Greenspan announced her school board bid two weekslater.15 These attempts followed Jose Sarria’s 1961 run for San Francisco Boardof Supervisors and Frank Kameny’s campaign for District of Columbia nonvotingcongressional delegate in 1971.16 By November of 1973, two other more well-known openly gay candidates made it onto ballots in similar elections for publicoffice: Jim Owles, former Gay Activists Alliance president, ran for New York CityCouncil and Harvey Milk campaigned for San Francisco Board of Supervisors.17

While Greenspan laid the groundwork for openly gay political candidates inMadison, Jim Yeadon, an openly gay law student, was the first to gain a politicalplace at the table for the LGBT community in Wisconsin. In October 1976,Yeadon was elected by the Madison City Council to complete the term of a re-signed councilman from the student district.

Yeadon came out in the papers the day after being appointed.18 Thetwenty-six-year-old subsequently ran as an out candidate for the vacant officesix months later. Yeadon built support for his candidacy among the students inhis university district by speaking in dorms, fraternity houses, and student co-ops, where he found he was often the first openly gay person students had evermet. “I had some wonderful straight people who worked on my campaign wholived in the dorms who had never met a gay person; they had no idea there wassuch a thing,” explained Yeadon.19

Once elected, Yeadon found that as one of the few out elected officials inthe country he received mail from both from closeted gay people in search ofadvice and support as well as from those vehemently opposed to out public offi-cials. “Some really lonely, lonely people thinking they were the only gay personin Iowa or wherever, would write me letters; I’d get these really heartbreaking

14 McCrea, interview.15 “Graubart Files for Urbana Mayor,” Daily Illini, January 20, 1973; “School Board Candidate Runs on Gay

Platform,” Capital Times, February 5, 197316 Doug Erickson, “Board Officially Rules Past Harm to Gays. It Approves a Resolution of ‘Regret’ for a 1972

Ban on the Gay Liberation Front into Sociology Classes,” Wisconsin State Journal, September 11, 2001;“Madison Gay Sisters: Judy Greenspan Recalls the Beginnings and Early Growth of the Madison LesbianMovement,” Our Lives, September/October 2010, 10–12.

17 “Jim Owles” in Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures, 2d edition, ed. George Haggerty (New York:Routledge, 2013), 658; Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (New York:Macmillan, 1982).

18 Jone Satran, “Yeadon Aware of Close Scrutiny,” Daily Cardinal, October 18, 1976.19 Yeadon, recorded campus talk.


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kind of things,” Yeadon recalled. In Madison, this sense of isolation was reiter-ated, with one interviewee remembering “so clearly, during the sixties especially,but even during the seventies, very often thinking I’m the only one in the world.That’s ridiculous, but that’s how you felt. And that’s how many gays and lesbiansfelt that they were the only ones.”20 Yeadon also received death threatsthroughout his term for being an out gay elected official; “I kept a file at thecity council office, ‘Threats on Life,’ and when one came in I would stick it inthere in case anything ever happened to me,” he recalled.21

Yeadon was elected to a full term on the Madison City Council in April1977, becoming the fourth openly gay politician elected to office in the nation(the fifth, Harvey Milk, who is often cited as being the first, was elected to theSan Francisco Board of Supervisors in November of that same year).22 The his-tory of this movement often excludes midwestern candidates, yet three of thefirst four openly gay elected officials were from the Midwest: Kathy Kozachenko(Ann Arbor, Michigan, City Council, 1972), Allan Spear (Minnesota Senate,1976), and Jim Yeadon (Madison City Council, April 1977). All of the first fouropenly gay elected officials in the US (including Elaine Noble, MassachusettsHouse of Representatives, 1974) were elected from districts that included large

Fig. 3. Alderman Jim Yeadon in the Council Chambers in 1977. Photo by Perry Greene.(Image courtesy of the UW-Madison Archives, S#00928.)

20 Bemis, interview.21 Yeadon, recorded campus talk.22 “Milestones in LGBT Politics in America,” accessed January 7, 2015. https://www.victoryfund.org/mile

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student populations close to area colleges and universities. The contributions ofstudent activism and educational environments were important contributing fac-tors in the early gay liberation story and were certainly important parts of thepolitical climate in Madison, Wisconsin. Madison was, and remains, a unique cityin Wisconsin as it is the seat of the state government and the home of thestate’s major research university. The presence of an educational institution thatfostered learning, debating, and participating in political discourse contributedto the creation of Madison’s engaged LGBT population.23

Throughout the 1980s Madison was home to the largest number of outelected officials internationally. In 1989 Madison was home to 50 percent of allopenly LGBT elected and appointed officials in the country.24 By 1993, Madisonaccounted for just 3 percent. This decrease resulted not from a loss of offices inMadison but from an increase in the number of out elected officials across thecountry, rising from fourteen to a hundred and thirty.25 Longtime out DaneCounty Board member Dick Wagner described access for gays to the Madison pol-itical system as “incredibly open compared to many other places. That’s why lateron we had more gay and lesbian elected officials here than anywhere else, be-cause the power access was so open compared to New York where you had towork in ward politics and Democratic clubs for years and years, or Chicago whereyou had to have a mega war chest as an alderman to run.”26 Others reiteratedthe importance of political engagement, noting how activists “used all of the toolsand handles of reform that were available to us. And this meant . . . we woulduse the political process.”27 Since the mid-1980s, approximately 10 percent ofthe Madison City Council and County Board have been out elected officials.

23 See R. Schlittler (2008) “Out and Elected in the USA: 1974–2004.” For more on these early out electedofficials, see Nan Alamilla Boyd, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (University ofCalifornia Press, 2003); David Jernigan, “Why Gay Leaders Don’t Last,” OUTLOOK (1988): 33–49; Bruce E.Drushel, “First But (Nearly) Forgotten: Why You Know Milk But Not Kozachenko,” in Queer Media Images: LGBTPerspectives, ed. Theresa Carilli and Jane Campbell (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013); Chris Bull, Witness toRevolution: The Advocate Reports on Gay and Lesbian Politics, 1967–1999 (Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 1999);Ken Yeager, Trailblazers: Profiles of America’s Gay and Lesbian Elected Officials (New York: Routledge, 1999);“This Time Gay Candidate Wins as a Gay,” Advocate (1974): 9; Paul D. Cain, Leading the Parade: Conversationswith America’s Most Influential Lesbians and Gay Men (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2002).

24 Madison out elected officials in 1989 included: Richard Wagner, then Dane County Board chair; MadisonAlder Jim McFarland, (District 8); Dane County Supervisor Earl Bricker (District 9); Madison Alder RicardoGonzalez (District 4); Dane County Supervisor Kathleen Nichols (District 2); Dane County Supervisor TammyBaldwin (District 8). Wagner was elected to the Dane County Board in 1980 (District 6) and Nichols was electedto the County Board (District 2) in 1982. They both came out in 1983. Baldwin served as Dane CountySupervisor (District 8) from 1986-1994. Madison elected Jim McFarland, an out Republican, for District 8 Alderin 1987. Gonzalez was the first out elected Hispanic official in the country. Bricker was a Dane CountySupervisor in District 9 beginning in 1988, and had earlier served openly on the staff of Wisconsin GovernorTony Earl.

25 John Cain, “Wisconsin Has Strong Presence at Officials Confab,” In Step 10 no. 24 (1993): 9.26 R. Richard “Dick” Wagner, interviewed by Troy Reeves and Vicki Tobias, 2008, OH #904, DAF, CVOH

Madison, UARM.27 McCrea, interview.


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First Statewide Gay-Rights Bill

Over a decade of gay-liberation organizing in Madison and Milwaukee culmi-nated in the early 1980s with an initiative to pass the first statewide bill thatwould ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing,and public accommodation. The success of the bill was due, in part, to the ef-forts of two people: Leon Rouse and David Clarenbach. Rouse worked from out-side the political system, including organizing clergy and gays around the state,and Clarenbach galvanized support for the bill from both political parties withinthe legislature.

Rouse, an openly gay political science major at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, worked for over two years to help pass the version of the bill thathe first helped draft in May 1979. The bill came at a time of national antigaybacklash led by Anita Bryant, and Rouse realized that it would need supportfrom religious leaders if it were to be passed at a statewide level. Rouse involvedArchbishop Weakland, of the Milwaukee Archdiocese, who helped get the pro-posal discussed at the October 1979 meeting of the Greater MilwaukeeConference on Religion and Urban Affairs. The Committee for FundamentalJudeo-Christian Human Rights emerged at this conference. Led by Rouse, thiscommittee helped organize Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal,Methodist, and Jewish religious leaders to garner support for the legislation andto write letters of support for the bill to their representatives.28

Within the legislature, one of the main sponsors of the bill in the assemblywas Clarenbach, a Democrat and a progressive legislator who was first elected tothe Wisconsin State Assembly in 1974. Clarenbach and others worked to organ-ize support for the bill from both political parties.29 According to Clarenbach, it“took the efforts of many individuals and organizations to get the gay rights billpassed, including people from different political partisan viewpoints, from thereligious community, people from the gay and lesbian movement who may havewanted to take a more confrontational approach.”30

An interesting topic that emerges from oral histories of the LGBT commu-nity is the idea of the role of outness and straight privilege in the political arena.According to Rouse, “Some of us were speaking for us, but not perceived tobe us.”31 These efforts allowed some closeted gays in positions of power whowere perceived as straight to lead straight people to become more welcoming ofgay people. An example was Clarenbach, who was out within parts of the

28 See Wisconsin’s Escape 5, no. 6 (March 26, 1982): 20, 22–24; for more on the role of religious leaders inthe gay-rights movement, see Barbara Lightener, interviewed by Andrea Rottman, 2010, OH #997, DAF, CVOHMadison, UARM.

29 See Dan Curd, interviewed by Andrea Rottman, 2010, OH #1101, DAF, CVOH Madison, UARM.30 David Clarenbach, interviewed by Andrea Rottman, 2010, OH #1102, DAF, CVOH Madison, UARM.31 WYOU’s Nothing to Hide (July 4, 1987).


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Madison community at this time but not out publicly.32 Archbishop Weaklandwas a closeted gay man at this time, coming out after his retirement in his auto-biography.33 Clarenbach described the support provided by leaders perceived tobe straight but who privately identified otherwise in the following way:

Some people had to be quite sub-rosa and played a very quiet and behind-the-scenes role, even a subterranean-like in generating public support. AndI mean by that there were some people who were not out openly as gayand lesbian, yet were supporting the bill and contributing to the cause.Those efforts I still attribute to that of the gay and lesbian community.Because people are gay and lesbian, whether they are out or not. And ifsomeone had to use the mantle of a police officer, or a school teacher, or aminister, or, god forbid, a priest, or a nun, or a rabbi, who for whatever rea-sons could not be out –those efforts still counted, and were still essential.They were necessary prerequisites to getting the bill passed.34

These efforts culminated on February 25, 1982, when Republican Governor LeeDreyfus signed the nation’s first civil-rights law based on sexual orientation.

The governor centered his passage of the law around privacy, saying, “It isa fundamental tenet of the Republican Party that government ought not intrudein the private lives of individuals where no state purpose is served, and there isnothing more private or intimate than who you live with and who you love."35

For Clarenbach, the passage of the gay-rights bill demonstrated the educationalprocess involved in creating laws, and how “laws unto themselves do not changepublic view[s] towards our community, but they are a vehicle from which socialchange can take place.” 36

To hear David Clarenbach discuss laws as a vehicle to assist in social changeand utilizing public pressure to get the votes needed to pass Wisconsin’s gayrights law in 1982, go to:Audio excerpt 2. http://ohr.oxfordjournals.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1093/ohr/ohv076/-/DC1/43-1_Seyforth_Barnes_In_Peoples_Faces_audio_2

The benefits of the work by Clarenbach and others was felt almost immediatelyand allowed gays and lesbians more access to the political process. In their joint

32 Clarenbach, interview.33 Rembert Weakland, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop (Grand Rapids: William

B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 107–110, 239.34 Clarenbach, interview.35 Thomas W. Still, “Dreyfus Signs Homosexual Bias Measure,” Wisconsin State Journal, February 26, 1982;

“Wisconsin First State to Pass Gay Rights Law,” Advocate, 339 (1982): 9.36 Clarenbach, interview.


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interview, Sue Behnke and Linda Rahieri described the positive effects of thenondiscrimination legislation that “really opened up a lot, in my eyes, for us,”noting that they were less fearful that their sexuality would be used againstthem in their work settings and in their court battle for child custody.37

Within this political narrative, the oral histories of the collection also revealhow individuals at the grassroots level were organizing. These local activistssometimes viewed political figures and their role within the movement in differ-ent, sometimes critical ways. Oral histories are particularly useful in showing theopinions and activist approaches to gay rights in Madison throughout the latterhalf of the twentieth century.38

Campus Activism Ignites a National Movement

The nationwide mass movement against the Department of Defense policy thatbarred homosexuals from military service began in Wisconsin, based on the new

Fig. 4. Leon Rouse, left, and David Clarenbach, right, with Governor Dreyfus as hesigns the 1982 gay-rights bill. (Photo by the Wisconsin Democratic Caucus staff andcourtesy of Dick Wagner.)

37 Sue Behnke and Linda Ranieri, interviewed by Pat Calchina, 2011, OH #1177, DAF, CVOH Madison,UARM.

38 See Barbara Lightner, interviewed by Scott Seyforth, 2009, OH #997, DAF, and Barbara Lightner, inter-viewed by Andrea Rottman, 2010, OH #997, DAF, CVOH Madison, UARM. See also Curd, interview.


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protections afforded through the 1982 state gay-rights bill. During the 1980s,the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in the United States offered militarytraining to college students at over five hundred campuses in exchange for tu-ition scholarships and the promise to serve as an officer in the armed forcesupon graduation. US military policy at the time stated that lesbians and gaymen were ineligible to join the training program. This generated a contradictionbetween ROTC policy and Wisconsin’s new state gay-rights bill and UW campuspolicies passed in the 1970s protecting students against discrimination based onsexual orientation. Challenges to the ROTC policy surfaced almost immediately.In 1983, Wisconsin State Attorney General Bronson La Follette announced thatdiscrimination against homosexuals by ROTC at UW campuses did not violatestate law. La Follette said that state laws “directing maximum utilization of fed-eral resources for state and local governmental units” prevailed. Additionally, theattorney general argued that forcing ROTC compliance with the antidiscrimina-tion protections would result in the loss of state and federal contracts and thusseveral million dollars. “It is unlikely that the Legislature intended such severeeconomic disruptions,” said La Follette.39 This policy sparked a decade of activ-ism at UW-Milwaukee and UW-Madison.

During the 1982–83 academic year, Leon Rouse and another student atthe University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Eric Jernberg, began to pressure theinstitution to suspend participation in ROTC in order to meet the terms of thenew state statute. UW-Milwaukee had been looking at ways to revise its con-tract with the army since adding sexual orientation to the university’s nondis-crimination clause in 1978. A Faculty Senate subcommittee, which includedJernberg as a student representative, was organized to study the problem.The committee presented the senate with the proposal of removing the ROTCprogram from campus. The Faculty Senate voted in May 1985 to oust theROTC program from campus if the armed forces did not change their policy by1988.

UW-Milwaukee was the first campus in the country to challenge the ROTCprogram. Disgruntled faculty mounted a petition for a recall vote at another fullfaculty meeting the following September. At this meeting, the faculty over-turned its previous decision and voted to keep the ROTC program despite itsconflict with university policy and state law.40

39 “Law allows ROTC bias against homosexuals,” Wisconsin State Journal, April 6, 198340 Doug Hissom, “Faculty Overrides ROTC Decision,” UWM Post, September 24, 1985; Doug Hissom,

“Faculty Senate Votes to Oust ROTC,” UWM Post, April 23, 1985; Doug Hissom, “Referendum Sought on Statusof ROTC,” UWM Post, April 23, 1985; Claire Bremer and Doug Hissom, “Unanimous SA Vote ContradictsFaculty,” UWM Post, April 30, 1985.


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To hear James Steakley discuss organizing faculty to force ROTC compliancewith antidiscrimination protections, petitioning faculty for a special meetingof the faculty, and a description of the 1989 faculty vote, go to:Audio excerpt 3. http://ohr.oxfordjournals.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1093/ohr/ohv076/-/DC1/43-1_Seyforth_Barnes_In_Peoples_Faces_audio_3

Similar efforts had been underway at Madison during this same time. In 1984,the Madison Faculty Senate narrowly defeated a move to force the MilitaryScience Department to comply with state and university laws prohibiting discrim-ination against homosexuals.41 By the 1985–86 academic year, a student at theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison who was inspired by the Milwaukee efforts,Richard Villasenor, started organizing others to force ROTC to abide by the statelaw and university policy or leave campus.42 Villasenor’s efforts interested facultymembers, including professors Joe Elder, Michael Olneck, Claudia Card, JamesSteakley, and others, who formed a group called Faculty against Discriminationin University Programs.43

Fig. 5. Professor Joe Elder voting against ROTC at the Faculty Senate meeting in 1985.(Image courtesy of the UW-Madison Archives, S#06512.)

41 “Move on Gay Bias Defeated,” Wisconsin State Journal, March 6, 1984.42 See Joseph Elder, interviewed by Robert Lange, 2005, OH #730, DAF, CVOH Madison, UARM; David

Stoeffler, “Regents to Examine Charge of Bias in ROTC,” Wisconsin State Journal, June 9, 1986.43 See James “Jim” Steakley, interviewed by Troy Reeves, 2010, OH #1088, DAF, CVOH Madison, UARM;

See also “Campus Life: Wisconsin; In Rare Vote, Faculty to Decide on R.O.T.C.,” New York Times December 3,


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The Faculty against Discrimination group soon gathered enough signaturesto require Chancellor Donna Shalala to call for a special full meeting of the gen-eral faculty. Other engaged faculty members felt that current university policiesshould adhere to precedents that found discrimination to be “unacceptable andthat we would not ever host an organization on our campus that would discrim-inate.”44 The faculty convened on December 4, 1989—by which time Villasenorhad graduated—specifically to “vote on whether the faculty would request theBoard of Regents to terminate the contracts, because these ROTC units were inviolation of the state, city, and campus statements.”45 The result of the meetingwas a vote of 386 to 248 in favor of asking the University Board of Regents tosever the relationship with ROTC by May1993 unless the program reversed itslongstanding policy of barring homosexuals.46

The University of Wisconsin faculty vote for the rights of lesbians and gaymen and against the military policy was thus the country’s first such universitymeasure; there was a flurry of media coverage, which inspired activism on cam-puses around the country throughout the spring of 1990.47 In the year follow-ing the UW-Madison vote, more than sixty schools across the country engagedin the movement, making these grassroots efforts an ongoing national newsstory.48 In 1991, over 125 campus student organizations participated in theApril National Day of Coordinated Action against Discriminatory Policies inROTC.49 At the same time, the 148 universities and colleges represented by theNational Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges voted at theirannual meeting in favor of the Department of Defense changing its policy bar-ring homosexuals from service.50 The swell of public support also encouragedmany closeted gay and lesbian military members to challenge the ban.51

Competing bills were introduced in Congress—one introducing legislation to

1989; Rogers Worthington, “Madison Faculty Targets ROTC over Pentagon’s Barring of Gays,” Chicago Tribune,December 3, 1989.

44 Martha Gaines, interviewed by Troy Reeves, 2013, OH #1304, DAF, CVOH Madison, UARM.45 Elder, interview; See also Joseph “Jay” Hatheway, interviewed by Troy Reeves, 2012, OH #1292, DAF,

CVOH Madison, UARM.46 Phil McDade, “ROTC Loses UW Vote, Regents Will Have Final Say,” Wisconsin State Journal, December 5,

1989.47 “Faculty at Wisconsin Choose to Ban ROTC,” December 6, 1989, Harvard Crimson; “Campus Life:

Madison; Administrators Overrule Faculty and Back R.O.T.C.,” New York Times, February 4, 1990.48 David M. Halperin, “ROTC under Fire: The Campus Movement to End Anti-Gay Discrimination in the US

Armed Forces,” Blueboy, June 1991; “Students Give ROTC the Boot over Anti-Gay Policy,” Advocate, October 9,1990; “Students Lead Attack on ROTC Gay Ban,” Chicago Tribune, March 26, 1990; Courtney Leatherman,“Provost Urges Defense Secretary to Drop ROTC Ban on Gays,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 1990.

49 “Military’s Ban on Gays Protested Nationwide,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 17, 1991.50 Kittson O’Neill, “National Association of Colleges Supports Change in ROTC Policy,” Daily Cardinal,

November 13, 1991.51 Francis Wilkinson, “The Gay Cadet,” The Village Voice, March 13, 1990, 24–31; Tamar Lewin, “Gay Cadet

Is Asked to Repay R.O.T.C. Scholarship,” New York Times, March 2, 1990; “Judge Orders Gay Sailor TemporarilyReinstated,” New York Times, November 8, 1992.


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deny federal funds to any college or university that did not allow ROTC on cam-pus, while the other offered legislation to prohibit discrimination by the armedforces on the basis of sexual orientation.52 Controversy surrounding the ROTCpolicy continued to grow, and by 1992, the issue became part of a national pol-itical discussion on gay rights during the presidential election.53 Democratic can-didate Bill Clinton campaigned promising to remove the ban. Once in office in1992, Clinton conceded to the military, creating a federal policy that enforcedkeeping service members in the closet in “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’tPursue.”54 After over two decades of sustained activism, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”was officially repealed in 2011 under President Barack Obama.55

Conclusion

The interviews that comprise the University of Wisconsin Archives’ LGBTQ collec-tion reveal the stories of the individuals who pushed for new ways of thinking,learning, engaging, and being with members of the campus and wider Madisoncommunity about LGBT rights. The oral accounts retold in these interviews alsodemonstrate how these efforts motivated diverse groups across the campus, thestate, and the country to reevaluate ideas of equality, the political process, andpower on a large scale. Through the oral histories held in the UW Archives, amore nuanced depiction of the gay-rights movement in Madison becomes ap-parent as the individual stories reveal the dynamics of the political movementboth on the ground and within existing political structures.

The University of Wisconsin Archives holds a multitude of stories about thosewho helped instigate change, in addition to the stories described here. These in-clude accounts of the organization of the lesbian/feminist communities; the AIDScrisis and responses to it; efforts for marriage equality, parenting rights, and equalprotections for gay families; the evolution of the campus climate in Madison; and

52 “Gays under Fire: What America Thinks,” Newsweek, September 14, 1992, 34–40.53 Bill Turque and Carolyn Friday, “Gays under Fire,’’ Newsweek, September 14, 1992, 34; “Lifting Gay

Military Ban Hits Emotional Chord,” Los Angeles Times, November 19, 1992; J. Jennings Moss, “Clinton Vows toAllow Gays in Military,” Washington Times, November 12, 1992; Tom Morganthau, “Gays and the Military,”Newsweek, February 1, 1993, 52.

54 Eric Schmitt, “In Promising to End Ban on Homosexuals, Clinton Is Confronting a Wall of Tradition,” NewYork Times, November 12, 1992; Jeffrey Schmalz, “Gay Areas Are Jubilant Over Clinton,” New York Times,November 5, 1992;Eric Schmitt, “Clinton Set to End Ban on Gay Troops,” New York Times, January 21, 1993;Gwen Ifill, “The Gay Troop Issue; Clinton Accepts Delay in Lifting Ban,” New York Times, January 30, 1993;Thomas Friedman, “Gay Rights in the Military: Chiefs Back Clinton on Gay-Troop Plan; President Admits RevisedPolicy Isn’t Perfect,” New York Times, July 20, 1993.

55 Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Obama Pledges Again to End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” New York Times, October 11,2009; Elisabeth Bumiller, “Obama Ends ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy,” New York Times, July 22, 2011; SherylGay Stolberg, “Obama Signs Away ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” New York Times, December 22, 2010.


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challenges to prejudices within the wider educational system within the city.56

While the larger story of Madison’s history of the queer-rights movement remainsto be written, the LGBT collection waits for future scholars to engage with its richstories of the individual and the political. The LGBT project at Madison has theability to share “knowing what’s happened before us, what’s happened in thepast, and how hard some of those battles were to fight, and what efforts weremade to gain what we have, that we don’t lose it again and have to start overevery decade or every two or three decades. And so we protect what we haveand we move forward with that.”57 This article is an attempt to offer an exampleof how a local oral history collection can be used to examine efforts in a massmovement and to shed light on the vibrant history of Madison’s early contribu-tions to the LGBT civil-rights movement.

Scott C. Seyforth holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he is an assist-ant director of residence life. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at theUniversity of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He is one of the founders of the Madison’s LGBTQ Com-munity, 1960s to Present Oral History Project and the newly created Madison LGBTQ Archive. E-mail: [email protected]

Nichole Barnes is a master’s student focusing on archives at the School of Library and Informa-tion Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also holds a master’s in history from theUniversity of Houston. E-mail: [email protected].

56 Within the UW collection, for more on lesbian/feminist organizing, see Mariamne Whately, interviewed byKellea Miller, 2009, OH #948, DAF; DJ Wipperfurth, interviewed by Pat Calchina, 2009, OH #942, DAF; LindaLenzke, interviewed by Leanne Gray, 2009, OH#1000, DAF; Sue Goldwomon, interviewed by Abbie Hill, 2010,OH #1105, DAF; for more on the AIDS crisis, see Margaret “Marge” Sutinen, interviewed by Bennet Goldsteinand Sam Fauble, 2012, OH #1286, DAF; and Bemis, interview. In terms of marriage, parenting, and families, seeAlix Olson and Martha Popp, interviewed by Pat Calchina, 2011, OH #1124, DAF; Crystal Hyslop, interviewed byLinda Lenzke, 2009, OH #1001. On the evolution of the campus climate, see Alnisa Allgood, interviewed byJason Orne, 2009, OH #009, DAF; Lori Berquam, interviewed by Paras Bansal, 2012, OH #1257, DAF; Mary K.Rouse, interviewed by Christine Haas, 2012, OH #1284, DAF; Sam Hsieh, interviewed by Sam Fauble, 2012, OH#1272, DAF; pertaining to the education system, see Sue Behnke and Linda Ranieri, interviewed by PatCalchina, 2011, OH #1177; Bonnie Augusta, interviewed by Christine Haas, 2012, OH #1254, DAF.

57 Linda Lenzke interviewed by Leanne Gray, 2009, OH #1000, DAF, CVOH Madison, UARM.


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“In People's Faces for Lesbian and Gay Rights”: Stories of Activism ...

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