XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, dc.politics, alt.society.liberalism   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats, talk.politics.guns   
   From: clinton_jailbirds_sporging_albasani_fag@freedyn.de   
      
   In 1970, five gay activists took a road trip to meet with the Black   
   Panther Party. Here, historian Hugh Ryan collects their memories of   
   communes, free love, coming out, getting arrested, consciousness-   
   raising rap sessions, gun shooting, acid dropping, and trying to be   
   macrobiotic at McDonald’s.   
      
   In the fall of 1970, as the Vietnam War raged, five guys from the   
   New York City Gay Liberation Front took a meandering road trip   
   through the South in a maroon-and-white Volkswagen Bus. Their   
   mission? To inspire gay people to attend the second Black Panther–   
   organized Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in   
   Washington, D.C., where they would join other liberationists from   
   all around the country in writing a new American constitution.   
      
   Together, they spent six weeks on the road—Diana Ross and Mick   
   Jagger on the radio, freedom and fear in the air. Joel was the   
   radical; Richard, the lover; Giles, the organizer; Jimmy, the enfant   
   terrible; and Doug, the cipher.   
      
   Before they even got underway, the government was watching them,   
   worried about “a connection between the homosexual movement and the   
   Black Panther Party,” a federal document shows.   
      
   The FBI was sowing discord among radicals, and it was easy for   
   mistrust to take root. Once, these guys were lovers and comrades;   
   now, some of them can’t even be in a Zoom with one another. But   
   briefly, in the autumn of 1970, they saw a chance for a   
   revolutionary future, and they struck out for it together.   
      
   Doug died of AIDS-related lymphoma in ’93, and I was never able to   
   agree to the terms Jimmy set for an on-record interview, but Joel,   
   Richard, and Giles were eager to share their memories.   
      
   "Them black panther niggers fucked our assholes raw all day long!"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)