British-American father of the American gay rights movement. As a former member of the Communist Party and founder of two gay organizations, the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, Hay’s extraordinary life and personal courage continually placed him on the forefront of changes in the interminable battle for gay rights.
In 1912, Hay’s father was transferred to the Gold Coast of Africa. Unavailability of medical care forced his mother back to England where Hay was born. He and his mother stayed in England for several years before rejoining his father in South America. Soon thereafter Hay was seriously injured, forcing a move to Southern California where he grew up. In 1929 after high school graduation, he found a job in a law office; during that same period, he began having frequent sex with men he met on the streets of Los Angeles. Continuing his education at Stanford University, studying drama, he soon found himself a member of San Francisco’s community of gay actors, artists and writers.
Returning to Los Angeles in 1933, he joined a left-wing gait-prop theatre group performing at strikes and demonstrations. His growing political awareness drove him to join the Communist Party, and in 1938 he revealed his homosexuality to fellow Party members who advised him to repress “the degenerate side of his personality.”
Hay and five other men met secretly in November 1950 to discuss the formation of a homosexual rights organization, the Mattachine Society, and by May 1953 they had over 2000 members. Hay then left the Communist Party. The rising anti-communist sentiment of 1953 made him fearful of damaging the Society so he stepped down as an officer, leaving him nearly suicidal. Shortly thereafter he undertook an intensive study of homosexuality.
In the ’60s, Hay helped organize the first Gay Pride parade in Los Angeles, and joined the fight to stop the Armed Forces from excluding homosexuals. He served as the first elected chair of the Southern California Gay Liberation Front in 1969, but by the late ’70s-early ’80s his focus had turned toward more spiritual issues, and he founded the Radical Faeries, a movement devoted to ecology, spiritual truth and gay-centeredness.
In 1938, he married fellow Communist Party member Anita Platky who knew of his homosexuality. They later adopted children. Throughout his marriage, which broke up in the early 1950s, Hay continued to have homosexual affairs.
Died in San Francisco on 24 October 2002.
Link to Wikipedia biography