First Gay Person To Address A Political Convention Dies

Act UP! Fight Back! Fight AIDS! (0.00 / 0)

In 1992, I was a college student who was as politically unaware as any low-info voter now could ever be. I had heard about AIDS at that time. But, like any non-politically involved American matriculating in a university, the only aids I 'snickeringly' thought about at that time was "financial aid". I had an affinity for Reagan (the great communicator) because my father liked him. I even voted for George H. W. Bush (over Clinton), when I was in Tonawanda, NY in 1992. Could you imagine?

I have come a long way.

Now, that I am very politically aware, I would like to do as much as I can possibly can to wake people up and make them high-info voters--so hopefully, they realize that tolerance and compassion are better virtues than selfishness and hate, even in the sordid world of politics.

The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

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by: connecticutyankee @ Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 05:41:44 AM UTC

Sorry...correction (0.00 / 0)

I was in medical school in 1992 (SUNY, Buffalo). Graduated from college in 1990.

The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

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by: connecticutyankee @ Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 05:46:57 AM UTC

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We all have a past (0.00 / 0)

Dont' tell anyone but I also voted Republican in the first election when I was eighteen. But then again I was in the South and it was many years ago so I had an excuse? :)

How about those bold words, blockquotes and video above? Teach a man to fish and he will feed a village or something like that.........

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by: Missy's Brother @ Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 11:37:59 AM UTC

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Other gays made it there first (0.00 / 0)

Hattoy was the first openly gay person (and the first with HIV) to address a political convention

He was not actually the first openly gay person to address a national political convention.  In 1972, Jim Foster and Madeline Davis had ten minutes at the Democratic convention to make the case for a gay rights plank in the party platform.

From Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America:

Never before had an openly homosexual delegate, much less two, spoken to a national political convention.  Never before had a major political party debated a gay rights plank.  Jim Foster had even been interviewed on the NBC evening news .... His speech to the convention was introduced on CBS by Walter Cronkite.

The Democrats.org site now says this (may have been updated):

...the first openly gay person with HIV to speak to a national audience when he gave a primetime address to the 1992 Democratic National Convention..

It may well be correct to say that Hattoy was the first with HIV.  The appearance of Foster & Davis was also not primetime.

Also, amazingly, in 1980, 10% of the party delegates nominated a black gay man, Mel Boozer, for Vice President, so that he could make a speech on gay rights.  It was not televised or in prime time.

Would you ask me how I'd dare to compare the civil rights struggle with the struggle for lesbian and gay rights? I can compare, and I do compare them. I know what it means to be called a nigger. I know what it means to be called a faggot. And I can sum up the difference in one word: none.

Bigotry is bigotry. I have been booed before. Discrimination is discrimination. It hurts just as much. It dishonors our way of life just as much, and it betrays a common lack of understanding, fairness and compassion....

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by: mikect @ Mon Mar 12, 2007 at 03:49:39 AM UTC

Thanks for the updates (0.00 / 0)

and I had not heard of Mel Boozer. The site says that he passed away twenty years ago.

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by: Missy's Brother @ Mon Mar 12, 2007 at 21:53:18 PM UTC

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