Radical Faeries Celebrate 30 Years of Gay Consciousness

by Karen Ocamb

It may be difficult for some young LGBT activists to imagine a time full of hate worse than today. Just sucker-punched by the voter-approved discrimination written into the California Constitution through Prop. 8, many young LGBT activists assumed equality through the love of their families and straight friends and acceptance at work and church.

Thirty years ago, such an assumption was a dream. But two gay men with a history of activism—Harry Hay, who founded the Mattachine Society in 1950, and Don Kilhefner, who co-founded (with Morris Kight) the Gay Liberation Front in Los Angeles in 1970—were less interested in fitting into or winning
acceptance from heterosexual society than delving into the depths of gay consciousness. And in 1979, they organized a new group they brazenly called the Radical Faeries at La Cresta Court in Hollywood, which became known thereafter as the Faerie Sanctuary.

The words “radical” and “faerie” were intentionally chosen—”radical” meaning “root,” says Kilhefner, and “faerie” to “take back” the anti-gay epithet (like the activists in the 1990s reclaimed the word “queer”). There was also a nod to cultures where faeries are “magical, healing delightful
creatures.”

It was, says therapist and author Mark Thompson, who both chronicled and participated in the Radical Faeries, an intentional “positive act of self-empowerment to reclaim what some might think of as a negative definition and recast it as a prideful definition of our own making!”

Hay and Kilhefner held the first Radical Faerie gathering on Labor Day weekend in 1979 on an ashram in the Sonora, Ariz., desert, issuing “A Call to Gay Brothers” through fliers and Thompson’s stories in the Advocate.

The idea was to “venture into the unsullied frontiers of the American outback to become clear-headed enough to open their hearts to the possibilities of new ways, myths and understandings,” says Thompson.

“Improbable, ephemeral and vivid as iridescent rain, the cultural phenomena known as the Radical Faeries was a wing-stroke felt around the world,” Thompson says. That first meeting of 200 gay men inspired others around the country, as well as in Canada, Europe, Australia and, most recently,
Thailand.

“The Radical Faeries are gay-centered,” says Kilhefner. The philosophy focuses on “‘us’ not ‘them’” and yet transcends those polarities. “It says gay reality is important, substantial and meaningful,” underscoring that “being gay constitutes a significant evolutionary and social purpose much greater than the sexual identity to which our oppressors have chained us.”

Pointing to the poetry of Walt Whitman, Kilhefner says that “‘gay consciousness’ is different (not better or worse) from ‘nongay consciousness,’ and it is the responsibility of the next wave of Gay Liberation to explore and identify those differences for the benefit of both gay and nongay people. It is the opposite of ‘gay assimilation,’ which since 1985-ish has been the dominant ideology of our community and to which the Radical Faeries are the antidote.”

But the Radical Faeries are not simply navel-gazers. They work to “develop a larger political and social consciousness in the gay community, supporting liberation movements of women and men, people of color, working people and common and ordinary people like us, and supporting electoral politics where
there is integrity, ethics and honesty,” says Kilhefner.

They are, in essence, community activists. “We value the gifts of each person and weave those gifts into the fabric of community life,” says Kilhefner. “We recognize and assume our responsibilities not only to the gay community but to the larger community of beings … Inherent in ‘gay assimilation’ theory and practice is the disappearance of the gay community and the diminution of gay identity, to which the Radical Faeries are the antidote.”

“The faeries are as important today as ever, especially in an ever-expanding gay world that is lost for spiritual meaning. Gay folk need community and connection in private sacred-shared spaces as never before,” says Thompson. “Men drawn to the Faerie movement wanted to heal old wounds, for sure, but
were also seeking to reinvent themselves as authentically queer men in a straight-jacketed society that would rather not see them exist at all. Liberation and love—unfettered and beyond shame—was the name of the game.”

Today, the Faeries continue to exist “as one tribe among a loose-knit but rapidly growing international community of spiritually focused gay men in conversation with one another,” says Thompson. “Through websites, conferences and groups such as Atlanta’s Gay Spirit Visions and Los Angeles’ Gay Men’s Medicine Circle (founded by Kilhefner), as well as such publications as White Crane Journal, the courageous step taken by a few on hidden reddish sands has now evolved into a self-empowering pathway traveled by many.”

On Feb. 15, at 2 p.m., Don Kilhefner and Mark Thompson will talk about the
Radical Faeries at the ONE Gay & Lesbian Archives, 909 West Adams Blvd.,
L.A. For more information on the free event, visit onearchives.org.