ABSTRACT
In twelve days Lige Clarke would have been thirty-three, but he was murdered at a mysterious roadblock, his body riddled with automatic fire. He’d lived in whirlwinds of excitement during his short life, however, becoming the co-editor of GAY, America’s first gay weekly newspaper and sounding on July 8, 1969, what historians note was the homophile movement’s first “Call to Arms” following the Stonewall uprising:
The revolution in Sheridan Square must step beyond its present boundaries. The homosexual revolution is only part of a larger revolution sweeping through all segments of society. We hope that “Gay Power” will not become a call for separation, but for sexual integration, and that the young activists will read, study, and make themselves acquainted with all of the facts that will help them carry the sexual revolt triumphantly into the councils of the U.S. government, into the anti-homosexual churches, into the offices of anti-homosexual psychiatrists, into the city government, and into the state legislatures which make our manner of love-making a crime. It is time to push the homosexual revolution to its logical conclusion. We must crush tyranny wherever it exists and join forces with those who would assist in the utter destruction of the puritanical, repressive, anti-sexual Establishment.
