When California schools start teaching about LGBT history, they would do well to include a lesson on gay activist Arthur Evans, who died of a heart attack on Sunday at age 68.
Sparked by the militant energy that grabbed New York’s gay community in the weeks following the Stonewall Riots, Evans joined the Gay Liberation Front in the summer of 1969.
In December of that same year, he broke with the GLF to found the Gay Activist Alliance—and the group became legendary for its “zaps,” nonviolent confrontations with public figures who were actively anti-gay. (What, you thought glitter-bombing was a new thing?)
Among the GAA’s targets were Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Mayor John Lindsay, Harper’s Magazine and The New York Taxi & Limousine Commission, which once require gay people to get a psychiatrist’s approval before they would be allowed to drive a cab.
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Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Below, check out this 1971 “zapping” at New York City’s marriage-license bureau, which the Alliance took over and threw an engagement party at for two male couples.
Said friend Hal Offen, “There may be others who were as instrumental as Arthur in launching the modern gay liberation movement, but very few more so. He was a brilliant strategist, forcing the establishment to yield to our demands for justice by making it easier for them to give in than to refuse.”
Evans’ notoriety eve
n got him on the Dick Cavett Show in 1970, one of the first gay activists to appear as a guest on a national talk show.
But by 1972 he tired of the spotlight and moved with boyfriend Arthur Bell to the West Coast, first to Washington State to live off the land, and later to San Francisco to open “The Buggery,” a Volkswagen repair shop. Staying in the City by the Bay until his death, Evans remained a part of the local activist scene and continued to write and advocate for public-safety laws.
Well aware of his frail health—he was diagnosed with a large aortic aneurysm in October 2010 and was only given months to live— Evans even penned his own obituary. Of the Gay Activist Alliance, he wrote:
In effect, GAA created a new model of gay activism, highly theatrical while also eminently practical and focused. It forced the media and the political establishment to take gay concerns seriously as a struggle for justice. Previously the media treated gay life as a peripheral freak show. The new gay activism inspired gay people to act unapologetically from a position of gay pride. This new model inspired other gay groups across the county, eventually triggering revolutionary improvements in gay life that continue to this day.
We’ll miss you Mr. Evans. We’d say we hope you’re zapping the homophobes in heaven but with any luck they’re in the other place.
Ernst
Awesome piece on what was clearly an awesome dude. Sole caveat: why wish homophobes end up in hell? Kind of a bitter note to end the thing on.
milhouse
70’s guys were so cool. The whippersnappers of today could learn alot from their experiences.
Greybat
We’ll miss you, Arthur! Evoe, Dionysos!
jason
What an incredibly courageous and outspoken man Evans was! Today’s gay men are more interested in attending dance parties.
Matt
very sad to lose an awesome advocate, he has inspired generations of advocates and will be missed. @jason & millhouse cause gay men in the 70’s never attended dance parties(studio 54) had sex, did drugs, or took their shirt off at a pride parade? The activists of today, and there are a lot of them, are young, old, straight, gay, trans, and all colors of the rainbow. Sometimes teenagers standing up to their high school so they don’t get bullied or to get the chance to take who they want to prom become activists. Or teachers that start a facebook page to have rally against Prop 8 become famous across the nation for bringing people together to stand up against fear and bigotry. Or they work to make sure the health care industry still covers medications for those living with HIV/AIDS. Or they become the first person to come out as not only gay but living and then dying with AIDS on MTV. Or they come out in their work place and to their families because activists of the past made it easier for them to do so. The media doesn’t cover us as much anymore thanks to people like Arthur. Thanks to him and people like him we just aren’t that interesting anymore.
Mr. Enemabag Jones
It seems that activists had bigger balls back then, than we do today. They were fighting for equality when it would get you arrested, or locked up in a sanitarium. What has happened to us?
jason
Mr. Enemabag Jones,
I think that what has happened is that gay men have become hedonistic to the point of it being a distraction. Sexual indulgence breeds carelessness and laziness in terms of the broader issues that affect our existence. Put simply, many gay men simply don’t care about gay rights. So long as they can shimmy on a Saturday night, all’s well with the world.
Keep in mind that, while we gays are partying, our enemies are plotting our destruction. They are ahead of us on the curve and will ultimately succeed unless we change our ways.
edfu
Dan Avery, why do you persist in constantly making so many errors in your Queerty posts? If you had bothered to read Evans’s obituary, to which you linked, you would know that Arthur Bell did NOT move to the West Coast with Evans in 1972. Bell and Evans split up in 1971, and Bell, who stayed in NYC, went on to become “The Village Voice” gossip columnist, whom Michael Musto succeeded after Bell’s death from diabetic complications. Arthur Evans moved to the West Coast–Washington and San Francisco–with a new lover, Jacob Schraeter.