Harry Hay
Actor, pioneering gay activist
Born Henry Hay Jr. in Worthing, England, to a manager of gold and diamond mines in South Africa, he moved with his family to California several years later and attended Stanford U. briefly, but dropped out to pursue acting in L.A. There he met thesp and political activist Will Geer (later known as Grandpa Walton on TV), who introduced Hay to the Communist Party around 1934.
Hay, aware of his own sexuality and that the party was homophobic, and hoping to change his sexual orientation, married party activist Anita Platky, stayed together 13 years and adopted two daughters before divorcing.
In the late 1940s-early '50s, he met fledgling fashion designer Rudi Gernreich (later the inventor of the topless bathing suit for women), who encouraged Hay to start the Mattachine Society -- a name Hay chose from a secret all-male society of 15th century Europe -- which became the first sustained U.S. support network for homosexuals.
Hay was among the first to publicly assert that gays were an oppressed minority as a class.
But both the Mattachine Society and the Communist Party eventually rejected him, the former for his being too visible and radical, the latter for his gayness.
In 1955, Hay was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and although he was not charged with any crime, he dropped out of sight for quite a while after that, working odd jobs.
Very much into life as a theatrical event, he went on to help launch the Radical Faeries, a gay spirituality movement that started in 1979, and in the 1980s he helped found the gay caucus of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.
In 1963, he met John Burnside, inventor of the teleidoscope (a variation on the kaleidoscope), who became his life partner. They moved to New Mexico in 1970 and managed a trading post on a Pueblo Indian reservation north of Santa Fe. Much of the time, though, they lived in L.A., and moved to San Francisco three years ago.
He is survived by his partner and two adopted daughters.
Donations in his name may be made to the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, 6120 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90004.
