So many events! GAAMC events, page 2; Bulletin Board, page 3; and Calendar, page 5!
CHALLENGE The Newsletter of the Gay Activist Alliance in Morris County – Serving New Jersey’s GLBTI Communities Since 1972
Volume 37, Issue 4, May 2011
Hold Hands
by Mickey Suiter Recently I was in New York with a friend who had never been to the city. While walking through Chelsea, he saw two men walking down the street holding hands and smiled. “You’d never see that in my hometown.” That got me thinking about what may just be the final frontier of the LGBT movement – public displays of affection. In the 1970’s, the Gay Activist Alliance of New Jersey (GAANJ) held a series of demonstrations they called Hold Hands. The two biggest consisted of forming a human chain across the George Washington Bridge and another around the Statue of Liberty. These events were political statements and displays of unity. But before either of them, the first Hold Hands demonstration was much smaller and more personal. About a dozen same-sex couples met at the Willowbrook Mall on a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks before Christmas in 1972. Each couple headed off separately, holding hands, wandering through the mall for over an hour. It was both terrifying and exhilarating. My fears subsided after a few minutes when I realized that while we were getting a lot of stares, many of them nasty glares, and a few rude comments (even a shriek or two), no one was going to physically attack us. In fact, the one reaction I remember most clearly was that of a couple of high school girls who wanted to write a paper on what we were doing and the public’s reactions. After observing us for a while and asking us tons of questions, they went off on their own, holding hands, so they could experience first-hand the reactions we were getting. While it was wonderful to be able to hold my boyfriend’s hand in public, it was not exactly a natural, spontaneous act. It was deliberate and self-conscious. But I still enjoyed it. I wasn’t able to do it again for many years, and then only on Commercial Street in P-Town.
For years whenever I mentioned feeling stifled by not being able to show affection in public, many LGBT people disagreed with me. Their response was often, ‘I don’t approve of any public displays of affection, gay or straight.’ While I’m sure there are some people who really believe that, I think most use that as a rationalization. It’s easier to not feel restrained if you convince yourself it wasn’t something you wanted to do anyway. Unlike in that first Hold Hands demonstration at the Willowbrook Mall, I’m not advocating public displays of affection as a political act. But wouldn’t it be nice to feel comfortable enough to be able to do it spontan e o u s l y, w i t h o u t thought?
Maybe the real sign of how far we’ve come isn’t the number of court decisions in our favor or the number of laws we get passed, but the number of samesex couples holding hands on the Green in Morristown.
Inside Challenge Challenge Information.... ................................ page 2 GAAMC Events.............................................. page 2 The Bulletin Board......................................... page 3 This Month's Contributors................................ page 3 Gleanings: Queer news from around the world ..... page 4 Calendar ..................................................... page 5 We've Improved Your Membership! .................... page 7 Poetry: Frame of Reference............................. page 7 Getting Personal............................................ page 7 Dancing to Architecture music reviews............... page 9 GAAMC Membership & Contact Information ......... page 10