Mattachine Society - Affiliations

Affiliations

Most of the Mattachine founders were affiliated with Communism. As the Red Scare progressed, the association with communism concerned some members as well as supporters and Hay, a dedicated member of the Communist Party for 15 years, stepped down as the society's leader. Others were similarly ousted, and the leadership structure became influenced less by Communism, more by a moderate ideology similar to that espoused by the liberal reformist civil rights organizations that existed for African Americans. Although Hay claimed "never to have even heard" of the earlier gay liberation struggle in Germany—by the people around Adolf Brand, Magnus Hirschfeld and Leontine Sagan—he is known to have talked about it with German émigrés in America, including Rudi Gernreich.

The Mattachine Society existed as a single national organization headquartered first in Los Angeles and then, beginning around 1956, in San Francisco. Outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco, chapters were established in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and other locales. Due to internal disagreements, the national organization disbanded in 1961. The San Francisco national chapter retained the name "Mattachine Society", while the New York chapter became "Mattachine Society of New York, Inc." Other independent groups using the name Mattachine were formed in Washington, D.C. (Mattachine Society of Washington, 1961), and in Chicago (Mattachine Midwest, 1965). In 1963 Congressman John Dowdy introduced a bill which resulted in congressional hearings to revoke the license for solicitation of funds of the Mattachine Society of Washington; the license was not revoked.

A largely amicable split within the Society in 1952 resulted in a new organization called ONE, Inc. ONE admitted women and, together with Mattachine, provided vital help to the Daughters of Bilitis in the launching of that group's magazine, The Ladder, in 1956. The Daughters of Bilitis was the counterpart lesbian organization to the Mattachine Society, and the two organizations worked together on some campaigns, although their approaches to visibility in the mass media differed considerably. Under a different leadership, however, the Daughters of Bilitis came under attack in the early 1970s for "siding" with Mattachine groups rather than with the new separatist feminist organizations. Also in the 1960s, the Mattachine Society of New York was associated with other groups (including the Mattachine Society of Washington) in ECHO (East Coast Homophile Organizations) and, from 1966 (along with Mattachine Midwest), in NACHO (North American Conference of Homophile Organizations).