Duplicity: The University of Missouri Confronts Gay Lib, 1971-78, Kevin Scharlau, 2016.
Abstract
Following the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969, a wave of gay rights expressionism swept the United States and, in particular, its college campuses. On the University of Missouri’s campus in 1971, that phenomenon manifested itself in the form a Gay Liberation club filing for official recognition from the school. What followed was a bitter, drawn-out legal effort by the college to block Gay Lib from ever meeting on campus or being given designated status. The case eventually wound its way to the United States Supreme Court and, in a groundbreaking decision, it let an appellate court verdict stand that placed gay people’s First Amendment rights to speech and assembly over a variety of fears surrounding anti-sodomy statutes and en loco parentis. By examining the damning internal documents of university officials and then comparing them to their more sanitized public pronouncements, a clear picture of the early resistance to homosexual community’s demand for equality is illuminated. While this story is very legalistic, the narrative looks past dry legal history and instead highlights how public officials designed a strategy to block Gay Lib at every turn while duplicitously claiming they had no stakes or motives in the legal process. The early 1970s were a foundational period for the LGBT Movement. Concurrently, conservative resistance to the new social movement was formulating. Understanding resistance to social movements sheds light on both sides and, in the case of Gay Lib v. the University of Missouri, it shows historians how a movement began to forge a legal framework for equality that is being used—and still being constructed—to this day.
Access restricted to UMKC faculty, students and staff.
Project creator: Kevin Scharlau.