Harry Hay - Radical Faeries

Radical Faeries

In 1970, Hay and Burnside moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they became involved in activism over water rights to the Rio Grande. They also became involved with a local LGBT rights group, Lambdas de New Mexico. There Hay continued his studies into Native American culture. Hay, along with Los Angeles activist Don Kilhefner and Jungian therapist Mitch Walker, co-hosted a workshop on the subject at UCLA in 1978. Building on that workshop, the three collaborated for months to develop a "Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies". This conference, held over the Labor Day weekend in Benson, Arizona, attracted over two hundred participants, and led the three, along with Burnside, to form the Radical Faeries.

However, less than a year after the Faeries formed, internal pressures threatened to fracture the group. Walker secretly formed the "Faerie Fascist Police" to combat "Faerie fascism" and "power-tripping" within the Faeries. He specifically targeted Hay: "I recruited people to spy on Harry and see when he was manipulating people, so we could undo his undermining of the scene." At a gathering in Oregon designed to discuss acquiring land for a Faerie sanctuary, a newcomer to the group, coached by Walker, confronted Harry about the power dynamics within the core circle. In the ensuing conflict, the core circle splintered. Plans for the land sanctuary stalled and a separate circle formed. The core circle made an attempt to reconcile, but at a meeting that came to be known as "Bloody Sunday", Kilhefner quit, accusing Hay and Burnside of "power tripping". Then Walker resigned, in the process allegedly calling Hay a "cancer on the gay movement" (a remark Walker later denied making). Walker and Kilhefner formed a new gay spiritual group called Treeroots.