Gay Revolt at Denver City Council, October 23, 1973, and How It Changed Our World (review)

"Gay Revolt at Denver City Council" focuses on an impressive instance of grassroots gay rights activism that culminated at a Denver City Council meeting on October 23, 1973. The film was written and is narrated by Gerald Gerash, a lawyer and founding member of the Gay Coalition of Denver and was featured, among several films, at the annual Oral History Association Meeting in October 2011, held in Denver, Colorado. The film recounts the founding and activist undertakings of the Gay Coalition of Denver, the city's first gay liberation group. The Gay Coalition's involvement at this particular meeting directly led to the repeal of several city ordinances that were being discriminatorily enforced against gays. The meeting was a historic moment for the gay community of Denver and for gay rights groups across the country because it proved that grassroots activism could be effective in repealing discriminatory statutes.

Along with cofounders Lynn Tamlin, Terry Mangan, Marge Johnson, and Cordell Boyce, Gerash's motivation for founding the Gay Coalition in 1972 was frustration over the lack of activism by and advocacy for Denver's gays and lesbians at a time when gay rights groups were well established in many other U.S. cities. Gerash delves into the early activities of the Gay Coalition as its membership and influence grew exponentially. The film provides a detailed chronology from the founding of the coalition through the months they spent planning and mobilizing in preparation for the city council meeting, through the events of the meeting itself, and into the weeks and years following the meeting.

In "Gay Revolt," Gerash paints a vivid and unsettling picture of what it was like to be a gay man in Denver in the early 1970s. He recounts the discrimination and entrapment that members of the gay community faced at the hands of the Denver Police Vice Squad. After Colorado repealed its sodomy law in 1972, Gerash and his coalition cofounders assumed that police harassment of gays would wane. However, police instead increased their efforts to arrest gays using the city's vaguely worded Offer of Lewd Acts Ordinance.

In the months before the city council meeting, Gerash and six other lawyers were pursuing a lawsuit alleging discriminatory enforcement of Denver's Offer of Lewd Acts Ordinance. Research on arrest records as part of this case revealed that from January through March of 1973, there were 380 arrests under the ordinance, and every single person arrested was a gay man. When presented at the city council meeting, these statistics, along with the testimony of over thirty activists, proved too powerful for council members to ignore.

Primarily, "Gay Revolt" relies on recordings of the speeches given at the meeting that October night. Speakers featured in the film include the five coalition co-founders, gay community members unaffiliated with the coalition, a feminist activist, a psychologist, and others. There are also significant dialogues from city council members, several of whom are spotlighted for their involvement in the meeting, either negative or positive. Exchanges between council members and activists, and among council members, are also woven into the film's narrative. The clips used capture the palpable tension that permeated the council meeting that night. The speeches and excerpts are stirring and powerful, highlighting the struggle for equality faced by the individual activists.

It can be argued that the content of "Gay Revolt" and the style in which it is presented do not fit the traditional definition of oral history. The narratives were not garnered from multiple interviews, but through recording speakers at a public meeting. Rather than seeing video images of the speakers, the audio is paired with still photographs taken of them that night. However, if this film were presented as an oral history of Gerald Gerash's life, there would be legitimacy. In "Gay Revolt," Gerash is not...