Summer always offers me the chance to see old friends. In the last weeks of summer, I visited some of them in Los Angeles and San Francisco — a courageous undertaking for the holder of a European Union passport these days. Entering the United States now feels more daunting than entering a country at war. Even though I once lived in the US, I felt like it was my first time, and the fear of the armed police seemed to hang in the air at the airport. In Los Angeles, I recalled that unease and visited once again the Mattachine Steps, named in honour of the famous secret society of the 1950s. There’s something to learn from them.
The first Mattachine Christmas party, December 1951. From left to right: Konrad Stevens (back of head), Dale Jennings (in profile), Harry Hay, Rudi Gernreich, Stan Witt, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, and Paul Bernhard. Credit: ©John Gruber.You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
We are grateful!
Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
You can simply scroll past — but please don’t overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
We are grateful!
Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
On an unremarkable Saturday—11 November 1950—in a modest Los Angeles living room, a handful of men met in secret to begin what would quietly become one of the first sustained gay rights organisations in the United States. They were not, by outward appearance, revolutionaries. Harry Hay, a teacher and sometime labour activist, was their instigator, joined by fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, writer Dale Jennings, and fellow activists Chuck Rowland, Bob Hull, and James Gruber. They were bound less by friendship than by a shared understanding: to be homosexual in mid-century America was to live under a form of permanent surveillance, legal and social.
At the time, the state could arrest a man for the crime of holding another’s hand. Police raids on bars were routine; jobs and homes could be lost without recourse; psychiatry classified homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance”. To speak openly about same-sex desire was, for most, unthinkable.
The men named their group after a medieval French tradition: the Société Mattachine, troupes of masked jesters who could speak truth to the powerful because their identities were hidden. The metaphor was deliberate. In its earliest incarnation, the Mattachine Society was structured like a covert political cell. Leaders belonged to an anonymous “Fifth Order” whose members knew one another only by first name or not at all. Lower “orders” met in discussion groups, sharing grievances, stories, and ideas for reform, but rarely the names of those at the top.
Hay had been shaped by his years in the Communist Party, and the Society adopted the Party’s organisational secrecy. Its founding goals were as ambitious as they were dangerous: to unify a scattered and fearful minority, to educate both homosexuals and the broader public, to cultivate leaders from within the community, and to aid those targeted by law enforcement.
The Mattachine’s first public test came in 1952, when Dale Jennings was arrested in a Los Angeles park in a police entrapment sting. Rather than quietly paying the fine—a common choice in those days—Jennings fought the charge. The Society formed the “Citizens Committee to Outlaw Entrapment” and raised funds for his defence. In court, Jennings did something extraordinary: he admitted his homosexuality but denied any criminal conduct. The jury deadlocked, and the judge dismissed the case. For the first time, a homosexual man had fought an entrapment charge in open court and won.
The Mattachine Steps is an outdoor staircase in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, in the U.S. state of California, dedicated to the Mattachine Society in 2012 in memory of Harry Hay, who cofounded the gay rights group.That victory brought a surge of publicity, and with it, new members. By 1953, the Mattachine Society was holding public forums, publishing literature, and inspiring satellite chapters across the country. But the visibility also brought scrutiny. The United States was in the grip of the McCarthy era; the House Un-American Activities Committee was rooting out Communists from government and public life. The press seized upon the founders’ leftist ties, portraying them as sexual and political subversives.
Under pressure, the Society’s leadership shifted. The original radicals were gradually replaced by more conservative members who sought to portray homosexuals as respectable, employable, and—above all—non-threatening. The cell structure was dismantled. The rhetoric of liberation gave way to the language of assimilation. Mattachine leaders counselled members to dress conventionally, seek psychological treatment, and avoid public confrontation.
And yet, even in this more cautious form, the Society endured. It offered something unprecedented: a space where gay men, and eventually lesbians, could meet each other in relative safety, share their experiences, and imagine a life not wholly defined by fear. The national organisation dissolved by the mid-1960s, but its model—local chapters, newsletters, legal advocacy—spread.
In Washington, D.C., Frank Kameny, an astronomer fired from his government job for being gay, founded the Mattachine Society of Washington in 1961. Unlike the deferential posture of the national body, Kameny’s Mattachine took to the streets, picketing the White House and the Pentagon in suits and ties, holding placards that read “First Class Citizenship for Homosexuals” and, later, “Gay Is Good.”
The Mattachine Society never achieved mass membership, and it was largely eclipsed in the public memory by the riots at New York’s Stonewall Inn in 1969, which heralded a louder, more confrontational era of activism. But its impact runs through the DNA of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. It was the first to knit together a national network, the first to publish a gay periodical, the first to challenge entrapment in open court.
The men who gathered in Harry Hay’s living room in 1950 believed they were alone. They were wrong. Seventy years later, we can prove it — and we honour their legacy.
Note: Two episodes of the wonderful British series The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco are dedicated to the Mattachine Society, and the entire limited series pays tribute to Alan Turing and the women who helped to win the war. It is available to stream on Netflix.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.
* * *
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know.
* * *
You can listen to our podcast Queer News & Journalism on your favourite platform or go to our YouTube Channel @GAY45mag.
* * *
Let us know what you think at [email protected].
* * *
Submit a letter to the editor at [email protected].
* * *
We appreciate it. Thanks for reading.
