Henry Jr Hay was born in Worthing, UK, into a prosperous family. His father was managing a gold mine on the Gold Coast of Africa. The family moved to Chile where his father managed a copper mine, when war broke out in 1914, so they settled in Los Angeles in 1916.
In 1930, aged 17, Hay began his first homosexual relationship with a man who told him about the Society for Human Rights (SHR), which advocated homosexual emancipation. In his first year at Stanford University in 1931, Hay openly declared his sexual orientation to his friends.
Shortly thereafter he dropped out of Stanford to pursue an acting career and returned to Los Angeles where his family lived. While working as an actor he met Will Geer (later: Grandpa Walton in The Waltons), who became his lover.
Work was hard to find in the Depression years, and through a friend he became involved in political theatre sponsored by the Communist Party, which he joined in 1933. The Communist Party condemned sexual deviance, and after being advised in 1937 by a psychiatrist to try girls, in 1938 Hay married Anita Platky, a party member with whom he worked.
He attempted to give up his homosexuality and isolated himself from gay social circles. Between 1947 and 1952 he taught music history at the Los Angeles People's Educational Center.
During this period Hay adopted two daughters. Hay found it increasingly difficult to suppress his homosexuality and finally in 1951 he was divorced.
In 1948 he had started the "Bachelors for Wallace", the first gay-lesbian society; he then organized the "Mattachine Society", so named for court jesters in medieval Italy who were permitted to speak the truth from behind a mask, (1950).
By 1950, Bob Hull, Dale Jennings, Chuck Rowland, and a man identified only as "R" (now known to be fashion designer Rudi Gernreich) used Communist secret cell organizing tactics to form Mattachine, which grew to 2,000 members and 100 discussion groups by 1953. They published the seminal gay magazine, One. He separated from the Communist Party over its anti-gay policies, his relationship with Rudi Genrich failed.
Hay resigned from Mattachine in 1953 during the McCarthy Era mindful that his past Communist ties would hurt the group. The move was said to have left him feeling suicidal. His marriage ended and he was saddled with alimony payments. He was in a difficult relationship with a Danish man named Jorn Kamgren. But he devoted himself to gay studies, especially in Native American cultures.
In the 1960s, he organized the first gay pride parade in Los Angeles and chaired the L.A. Committee to Fight the Exclusion of Homosexuals from the Armed Forces. In 1963 Hay began a brief sexual relationship with Jim Kepner, founder of the International gay and Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles.
Soon after Hay began an enduring relationship with John Burnside, an activist, and from 1963 to his death Hay lived with his partner John. Hay and Burnside took their work to New Mexico in 1970, and founded the "Radical Faeries" (1979), a gay men's spirituality network, and a back-to-nature group that celebrated gay male sexuality.
Indeed, Hay opposed the movement for same-sex marriage and was hostile to inclusion of bisexuals in the community. When the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was excluded from a California LGBT pride parade, Hay stood with them on the sidelines. His orneriness got him expelled from the Radical Faerie leadership. He was said to prefer being considered homophile ("an implication of spiritual love") rather than homosexual ("a legal term relating to people who commit specific sexual acts").
Hay died at the age of 90, of lung cancer in San Francisco.
The most complete biography of Harry Hay is - Stuart Simmonds, The Trouble With Harry Hay.
Excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, from WWII to Present Day, Routledge, London, 2001 - http://www.gaycitynews.com - et alii
