Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s

The telling of United States gay history after the Second World War is often marked by two key events: the founding of the Mattachine Society in 1951 as the nation's "first" gay rights organization and the eruption of the Stonewall Riots in 1969 at the beginning of the period of gay liberation. 1 Both events are cited as major turning points in the centuries-long struggle for the creation of a stable gay community and in the development of a homosexual political movement. With frequent retellings these events have achieved the status of defining myths along the same line as creation stories: powerful in their symbolism, if contested in their facts and meanings. While the history of the Stonewall Riots has received a great deal of attention and constant reconsideration, the historiography of the Mattachine Society has not evolved significantly since historians began writing about it twenty-five years ago. 2 Still, the founding organization of the [End Page 78] gay civil rights movement has been the subject of many books and articles as well as documentary films and even a staged performance. 3 In the process, the organization has achieved the status of legend, and like most legends, this one has been increasingly mythologized with each subsequent telling. Fifty years after the birth of the Mattachine Society, a thorough reconsideration is now in order.