Rochester’s Early Days

On Oct. 3, 1970, two gay men waited anxiously in the University of Rochester’s Todd Union for people to arrive for a talk by several guest speakers. They had no idea if anyone would show up, but that was not the only source of their anxiety. This was not going to be the usual kind of university event. The two men were U.R. students Bob Osborn and Larry Fine. The guest speakers were from Cornell University, Ithaca’s chapter of the national Gay Liberation Front, and the Buffalo chapter of the national Mattachine Society. Yet, in spite of the fear surrounding press coverage and exposure in a totally homophobic society, around 100 people turned out for the first meeting of what was to become in 1973 the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley.

After 45 years, the small activist group of U.R. students has turned into a thriving community institution, now know as the Rochester Rainbow Union. Someday LGBTQ+ Americans may no longer need a civil and human rights movement or an agency that meets their specific (and usually neglected) needs, because hatred, bigotry and discrimination will no longer exist in our society.

Until that day, the our community will continue its work.

The new Gay Alliance marched on City Hall four times, among other actions including the famous Dance Action, where gay men and lesbians went to a heterosexual dance club and started dancing in opposite-sex couples, switching to same-sex couples at a signal.
Bob Crystal feels that the late Bob Osborn’s leadership was crucial. “Bob Osborn was a self-sacrificing, devoted, peaceful revolutionary. He had feet of clay, so did we all, but he led by example.”
One important area where the Gay Alliance worked effectively in the early years was improving relations with the Police Department. When the GAGV was formed, homosexual acts were illegal in New York and most other states. In New York State, consensual sodomy was a class B misdemeanor, punishable by three months in jail, a $3,000 fine, or both. This law was hard to enforce, but “soliciting” was easy, and 10 to 12 people were arrested each year in Rochester.
“Suspicious behavior” was enough to warrant the listing of men’s names in the Democrat & Chronicle. If two men were “found kissing,” they would either be arrested or given a warning and “checked out” by investigators. If their names were not on the list of local homosexuals, they would be added. Gay bars were routinely raided in all U.S. cities and often survived by paying bribes. Few were gay-owned before the ‘70s, and some, like the Stonewall Inn itself, were owned by organized crime.
In 1974, then Chief of Police Gordon Urlacher met with the GAGV in what proved to be the first step toward a liaison. The GAGV’s “kiss-in” at Durand Eastman Park in 1987 marked the beginning of a new age of tolerance and visibility, in which the RPD still maintains an official liaison with the gay community.
The “kiss-in of ‘87” was not the first major demonstration staged by the GAGV. That was a rally held in 1978 to protest Anita Bryant’s campaign of bigotry against gays. When the singer came to Rochester, approximately 1,000 people supported gay rights at Genesee Crossroads Park. Speakers included feminist author Kate Millett and the late Leonard Matlovitch, a gay man who had been discharged from the Army, who said in his address, “If Anita Bryant is a born-again Christian, she should try, try, try and try again until she gets it right.”
In 1977, the GAGV gained local visibility when CETA funds to allow the Alliance to hire staff people were permitted to go through after an intense public debate. City Councilman Charlie Schiano and his fellow conservatives raised an uproar, during which gay people were compared to Charlie Manson cult members. Gay men and lesbians spoke before City Council, and Vicki Russo, who worked at the Bachelor Forum, and whom the Vicki Award was named after, said that she was going to give a Thanksgiving dinner for 50 gays “who have no place to go because their families have turned them out. Now, who’s really destroying the family?”
The funds were approved on Nov. 22 with a vote of 7-1 (Schiano being the only opposing vote).
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