1. Throughout this article, I use the terms gay, lesbian, bisexual, and homosexual to capture the historical identities claimed by students involved in campus organizations at the time. The historical record in this case is devoid of references to transgender identified students. For a good discussion of the various social identities at play for “nonheterosexual men,” see Dilley, Patrick, Queer Man on Campus: A History of Non-Heterosexual College Men, 1945–2000 (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2002)Google Scholar, one of the few studies examining the historical experience of gay students. Little has been written about the history of GLBT student organizations. For a general overview, see Johansson, Warren, “Students, Gay,” in Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, ed. Dynes, Wayne R. (New York: Garland, 1990), 1254–57Google Scholar; Dilley, Patrick, “20th Century Postsecondary Practices and Policies to Control Gay Students,” Review of Higher Education 25 (4) (2002): 409–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jost, Kenneth, “Gays on Campus,” CQ Researcher 14 (34) (October 1, 2004)Google Scholar. Brett Genney Beemyn, GLBTQ, s.v. “Student Organizations,” http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/student_organizations.html (accessed July 17, 2007). For histories of specific campus groups, see note 2.

2. Eisenbach, David, Gay Power: An American Revolution (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006), 51–79Google Scholar (Columbia); Beemyn, Brett, “The Silence Is Broken: A History of the First Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual College Student Groups,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12 (2) (2003): 205–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Columbia and Cornell); D'Emilio, John, “The Issue of Sexual Preference on Campus,” in D'Emilio, John, Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics and the University (New York: Routledge, 1992), 128–37Google Scholar; Rhoads, Robert A., “‘We're Here. We're Queer. Get Used to It: Gay Liberation at Penn State,” in Rhoads, Robert A., Freedom's Web: Student Activism in an Age of Cultural Diversity, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 159–88Google Scholar; Koskovich, Gerard, “Private Lives, Public Struggles,” Stanford Magazine, June 1993, 33–49Google Scholar.

3. On the history of the homophile movement, see D'Emilio, John, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Stein, Marc, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945–1972 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Meeker, Martin, “Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (1) (2001): 78–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gallo, Marcia, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006)Google Scholar.

4. For example, historian David Eisenbach suggests that organizers of Columbia University's SHL emerged from their connection with New York's Mattachine society (Eisenbach, Gay Power, 53–54).

5. Justin David Suran has argued that needs of gay youth “had never been part of the homophile consensus” represented by organizations like the Daughters of Bilitis, the Mattachine Society, and the Society for Individual Rights (SIR), organizations that limited their memberships to people twenty-one and older in part because of fears of harassment for “contributing to the delinquency of minors” (Suran, Justin David, “Coming Out Against the War: Antimilitarism and the Politicization of Homosexuality in the Era of Vietnam,” American Quarterly 53 (3) (2001): 452–88, 464CrossRefGoogle Scholar); nevertheless, students sometimes did participate. For example, a 1957 DOB questionnaire revealed high percentages of professional and college-educated women, some members listed their occupation as students (Gallo, Different Daughters, 50).

6. Werner, Steve, “The Gay Student Group,” in Gays on Campus, ed. Lehman, J. Lee (Washington, D.C.: United States National Student Association, 1975), 29Google Scholar; in an article about the “upsurge of organized homosexual activity on U.S. college campuses,” Frank Kameny was quoted as suggesting that the problems for homosexual students included “abysmally poor” counseling and a lack of courses on homosexuality. Student organizations were needed to “serve as a power base” to help educate others about homosexuality, and correct “deficiencies” of how students were treated (“Homosexuals ‘Oppressed’: Universities Called Biased and Ignorant,” Kentucky Kernel, March 31, 1970, copy in Bois Burk Collection, Box 2, Folder “Gay Clippings, 1970,” GLBT Historical Society [hereinafter GLBTHS]).

7. Beemyn, “Silence is Broken,” 206; scholars have begun reconsidering the supposed conservative nature of homophile activism (see Gallo, Different Daughters).

8. Berman, Paul, A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968 (New York : W. W. Norton, 1996), 25Google Scholar; Duberman, Martin B., Stonewall (New York: Dutton, 1993)Google Scholar.

9. Eskridge, William N. Jr., “Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet: Establishing Conditions for Lesbian and Gay Intimacy, Nomos, and Citizenship, 1961–1981,” Hofstra Law Review 25 (Spring 1997): 880Google Scholar; One example of a post-Stonewall student organization is at Rutgers, which began as a Student Homophile League (Nichols, David and Kafka-Hozschlag, Morris J., “The Rutgers University Lesbian/Gay Alliance 1969–1989: The First Twenty Years,” Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries 51 (2) (December 1989): 55–95Google Scholar).

10. On the appeal of radical politics and liberation rhetoric to a new generation of gay and lesbian activists, see Suran, “Coming Out Against the War”; Ian Keith Lekus, “Queer and Present Dangers: Homosexuality and American Anti-War Activism During the Vietnam War” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2003); and Kissack, Terence, “Freaking Fag Revolutionaries: New York's Gay Liberation Front, 1969–1971,” Radical History Review 62 (1995): 104–34Google Scholar; on lesbian student organizing, see Beemyn, “Silence Is Broken” and “Student Organizations.”

11. Sievert, William A., “Drive to Gain Rights for Homosexuals Wins Adherents on Many Campuses,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 8, 1972Google Scholar.

12. See Eisenbach, Gay Power, 64–68. Koskovich notes how one Stanford student tried to recruit members for the Student Homophile League by placing an ad in the Berkeley Barb. No one answered it (Gerard Koskovich, “Private Lives, Public Struggles: The History of Homosexual Students at Stanford University, 1891–1975,” 27, presented at Bisexual, Lesbian and Gay Awareness Days, Stanford University, April 30, 1996 [Copy in possession of author and cited with permission]); on the challenges of student fear of associating with a public gay student organization, see Beemyn, “Silence is Broken,” 209; Eisenbach, Gay Power, 56; Koskovich, “Private Lives,” 38.

13. Queer Man on Campus, 171. A good example is Note, “Gay Students Organization v. Bonner: Expressive Conduct and First Amendment Protection,” Maine Law Review (26) (1974): 397, which includes scant information about the context for the lawsuit. See below for a more detailed discussion of this scholarship.

14. Perhaps the most detailed social history of a struggle for recognition case is by Beth Bailey, who thoughtfully examines the origins of the Gay Liberation Front at the University of Kansas. In a larger book focusing on what she calls “changes in the nation's sexual landscape” in the Midwest after World War II, she charts the history of the GLF in some detail, yet she does not fully address the important legal questions raised by the struggle for recognition case (Bailey, Beth, Sex in the Heartland [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999], 175–90Google Scholar).

15. Associated Students of Sacramento State College v. Butz, Civil Case No. 200975, Superior Court, Sacramento, California, February 15, 1971, 3 C. L. Bull. 63 (1971); the case file for the lawsuit primarily contains legal pleadings and memoranda of law filed by the parties in the case and is available at the Superior Court for the State of California, Sacramento County, Sacramento County Courthouse (hereinafter Case File).

16. The first reported case, Wood v. Davison, 351 F. Supp. 543 (N. D. Ga. 1972), would cite the SHF case in support of very similar constitutional claims made by lawyers for the Sacramento students.

17. Dilley, “20th Century Postsecondary Practices”; a 1971 struggle at Columbia over a “gay lounge” where gay students could meet illustrates how this heteronormative situation played out, even on campuses where gay students had successfully created officially sanctioned organizations; see Robert Liebert, “The Gay Student: A Psychopolitical View,” Change 3 (6) (October 1971): 38–44.

18. David Eisenbach suggests that the Student Homophile League at Columbia underwent a similar transformation, paralleling the “transition in the gay rights movement from homophile to gay liberation” (Gay Power, 59). Unlike Sacramento, the SHL at Columbia won recognition without resort to a lawsuit; the university's legal counsel believed recognition could not be prevented (ibid., 68).

19. Brett Beemyn suggests that gay and lesbian student activism played a key role in the growing radicalization of the wider gay liberation movement during the early 1970s (Beemyn, “Silence Is Broken,” 205).

20. Cohen, Robert, When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America's First Mass Student Movement, 1929–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

21. For a general history of student activism from a global perspective, see Boren, Mark Edelman, Student Resistance: A History of the Unruly Subject (New York: Routledge, 2001)Google Scholar; Berman, Tale of Two Utopias; see also Breines, Wini, “‘Of This Generation’: The New Left and the Student Movement,” in Long Time Gone: Sixties America Then and Now, ed. Bloom, Alexander (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 24–45Google Scholar; for a recent history of SNCC, see Hogan, Wesley C., Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

22. Michel, Gregg L., Struggle for a Better South: The Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1964–1969 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 96–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the decline of the in loco parentis ideal on campus in the 1960s, see Jackson, Brian, “NOTE: The Lingering Legacy of In Loco Parentis: An Historical Survey and Proposal for Reform,” Vanderbilt Law Review (44) (1991)Google Scholar. For a general history of the concept, see Hogan, John C. and Schwartz, Mortimer D., “In Loco Parentis in the United States, 1765–1985,” Journal of Legal History 8 (3) (1987): 260–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; On the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, see Cohen, Robert and Zelnick, Reginald, The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

23. Reneé N. Lansley, “College Women or College Girls?: Gender, Sexuality and In Loco Parentis on Campus,” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2004).

24. Bowden, Randall, “Evolution of Responsibility: From In Loco Parentis to ad Meliora Vertamur,” Education 127 (4) (2008): 480–89Google Scholar; Beth Bailey suggests that by the 1960s, many campus administrators began to see in loco parentis as a liability for universities, so by the time students began to challenge such rules using a more politically charged analysis “the system of sexual controls had already been weakened.” That was not the case for gay and lesbian students (Bailey, Sex in the Heartland, 7–8).

25. Dilley, Queer Man on Campus, 59, 68.

26. Bailey, Sex in the Heartland, 50–54.

27. Koskovich, “Private Lives, Public Struggles,” 36.

28. For a detailed discussion of such efforts, see Dilley, “20th Century Postsecondary Practices.”; D'Emilio, John, “The Campus Environment for Gay and Lesbian Life,” Academe 76 (1) (Jan–Feb 1990): 16–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. Werner, “Gay Student Group,” 31.

30. Homophile activist Frank Kameny claimed that only a handful of the hundreds of gay student organizations emerging after Stonewall were actually denied recognition (Kameny, Franklin, “Action on the Gay Legal Front,” Vector, November 1972, 7–9Google Scholar, Periodical Collection, GLBTHS).

31. Blumenfeld, Warren, “Are You Recognized?” Interchange 1 (2) (1973): 16Google Scholar (courtesy of Warren Blumenfeld).

32. Noted radical lawyer William Kunstler represented the Gay Liberation Front of Kansas State University, eventually prevailing in an appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (Laurence, Leo, “College: It's Not So Lonely Now,” The Advocate, February 2, 1972Google Scholar). See Barney, David D., Gay and Lesbian History at the University of Kansas: Lawrence Gay Liberation Front, 1971–1975: Gay Services of Kansas, 1976–1980 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Student Assistance Center, 1992)Google Scholar; Patrick Dilley succinctly describes the details of the Kansas case as well as subsequent transformations of the organization after formal recognition in 1972 (Dilley, Queer Man on Campus, 175–81).

33. Gay Lib v. University of Missouri, 558 F.2d 848 (8th Cir. 1977), reh'g denied, 558 F.2d 859 (8th Cir. 1977), cert. denied sub nom, Ratchford v. Gay Lib, 434 U.S. 1080 (1978).

34. Gay Student Organization of University of New Hampshire v. Bonner, 509 F.2d. 652 (1st Cir. 1974), affg, 367 F. Supp. 1088 (D. NH 1974) (a university's ban on a dance by the recognized Gay Student Organization at the University of New Hampshire violated students' freedom of assembly as a recognized organization).

35. Wood v. Davison, 351 F. Supp. 543 (N. D. Ga. 1972).

36. A dance in support of a legal defense fund for gay and lesbian students whose organization was denied recognition at the University of Texas was even canceled by the dean of students since the chancellor had ruled the group an unrecognized one (Laurence, “College: It's Not So Lonely Now,” 1).

37. For a legal history of such cases, see Eskridge, William N. Jr., Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Eskridge, “Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet”; Hunter, Nan D., “Expressive Identity: Recuperating Dissent for Equality,” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 35 (1) (Winter 2000): 29–32Google Scholar; Cain, Patricia A., “Litigating for Lesbian and Gay Rights: A Legal History,” Virginia Law Review 79 (October 1993): 1609–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rivera, Rhonda R., “Our Straight-Laced Judges: The Legal Position of Homosexual Persons in the United States,” Hastings Law Journal 30 (1979)Google Scholar reprinted in Hastings Law Journal 50 (1999): 1015.

38. Eskridge, “Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet,” 883. One 1983 article suggested that lawyers for gay student groups seeking recognition and lawyers for public universities seeking to deny recognition should realize the “fruitlessness of certain legal arguments against allowing the registration of gay student organizations” (Stanley, William R., “The Rights of Gay Student Organizations,” Journal of College and University Law 10 (3) (1983): 397–418Google Scholar); on the use of associational rights strategy for gay groups generally, including student organizations, see Wilson, Lawrence A. and Shannon, Rafael, “Homosexual Organizations and the Right of Association,” Hastings Law Journal 30 (1979): 1029Google Scholar; in 1964, the ACLU had taken up the issue of gay teachers who had been fired from their teaching positions because of school boards' fears about homosexuality. After the Stonewall rebellion in 1969, the ACLU took on other cases, as Jackie Blount has argued, to “establish the larger precedent that homosexuals as a class were entitled to civil rights” (Blount, Jackie M., Fit to Teach: Same Sex Desire, Gender and School Work in the Twentieth Century [Albany: SUNY Press, 2004], 112–13Google Scholar).

39. So frequent were these cases becoming that a law review could publish a comment summarizing them: “Freedom of Political Association on the Campus: The Right to Official Recognition,” New York University Law Review 46 (1971): 1149.

40. The campus became California State University Sacramento in 1972; see Craft, George S. Jr., California State University, Sacramento: The First Forty Years, 1947–1987 (Sacramento, Calif: Hornet Foundation, 1987), 108Google Scholar.

41. Craft, California State University, Sacramento, 111–22.

42. Dwain E. Moore, “Sacramento State College: The First Eighteen Years,” (1965), 131, Sacramento State University Special Collections (hereinafter Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

43. Craft, California State University, Sacramento, 110–12; As Craft notes, faculty began to assert their influence through a new Academic Senate, constituted in 1967 and made up almost exclusively of faculty. Although the president retained much of the final authority on campus, the creation of the Academic Senate was a step toward greater faculty role in governance of the college as a whole.

44. Craft, California State University, Sacramento, 139, 143–44.

45. Ibid., 149.

46. Self Study Report, Part I, Submitted to the Academic Senate by the Self-Study Steering Committee, June 1968, 37, 40. Record of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 230, Folder 12, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

47. Editorial, “Take Part in Your Own Way in the Moratorium,” State Hornet, October 15, 1969, 2; Letter to the Editor, “Huelga Day Planned,” State Hornet, November 18, 1969, 7; Photo, “SSC Students Sympathetic With the Grape Boycott Participated in a Campus Demonstration on Wednesday [November 19, 1969],” State Hornet, November 21, 1969, 8; Kronenberg, Paul, Hall, Jerry and Austin, Jim, “ON STRIKE, Shut it Down!: Campus Protests of Killings [at Kent State] and Cambodia Reach SSC,” State Hornet, May 6, 1970Google Scholar, 1. Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

48. Giles, Ray, “Campus Gay Liberation Front Begins Organizing at SJS,” Daily Spartan, November 25, 1969Google Scholar; Giles, Ray, “Gay Liberation Issue Continues Unsettled,” Daily Spartan, November 28, 1969Google Scholar; because the organization of a gay liberation front was on the San Jose State College campus, Max Rafferty, superintendent of instruction, described the university as a “cesspool.” The gay-oriented San Francisco Free Press suggested in January 1970 that perhaps Rafferty would “have his cesspool right in Sacramento” and that he would not have to go far to wallow in it (“San Jose,” San Francisco Free Press, January 1970, 3. Periodicals Collection, GLBTHS).

49. According to an information sheet about the group, the Society for Homosexual Freedom was organized “to help form in the eyes of people, homosexual and heterosexual, a more intelligent and enlightened attitude toward homosexuality than given them by society” (Information Sheet for Student Organizations, University of California, Davis, December 2, 1969 and “Homosexual Freedom Group Seeks Sanction at UC Davis,” undated clipping in “Gay Lib—Various CA State Colleges” folder, “Student Organizations—Gay Lib—History Student Union” Box, Special Collections, San Francisco State University Library).

50. Martin Rogers, interview by author, San Francisco, January 10, 2010. Former student George Raya also recalled being inspired by the creation of a Gay Liberation Front at San Diego State College, which received approval by Associated Students in March of 1970 (George Raya, interview by author, Sacramento, June 4, 2006); Associated Students Council Minutes, March 18, 1970, Associated Students Collection, Box 8, Folder AS Council Minutes, 1969–1971, San Diego State University Special Collections; Munchus, Cheryl, “Gay Liberation Front: Group to Aid Homosexuals,” Daily Aztec, April 28, 1970, 4Google Scholar.

51. Rogers, Martin, “Critical Incidents in the Evolution of a Gay Liberation Group,” in Gays on Campus, ed. Lehman, J. Lee (Washington, D.C.: United States National Student Association, 1975)Google Scholar; Martin Rogers, interview by author, San Francisco, January 10, 2010. There is a question as to whether any undergraduate students attended that first meeting. Rogers does not recall that they did, emphasizing it was “too risky” to do so. George Raya, a Sacramento State undergraduate involved in the early organizing of the Society for Homosexual Freedom, recalls attending at least one organizing meeting at Roger's apartment. George Raya, interview by author, Sacramento, June 4, 2006.

52. That feeling of fear was perhaps typical of such early groups. George Raya recalled that the UC Davis students referred to their organization as the C-7, the room in which they met on campus, as a way to avoid any unwanted publicity (George Raya, interview by author, Sacramento, June 4, 2006).

53. Ibid.

54. Martin Rogers also recalled the importance of bars and house parties. Rogers, interview by author, San Francisco January 10, 2010. Eisenbach notes how gay students at Columbia formed a small informal clique they called “the family” before the formation of the Student Homophile League (Gay Power, 54).

55. Eisenbach, Gay Power, 55; Nichols and Kafka-Hozschlag, “Rutgers University Lesbian/Gay Alliance,” 56; Beemyn notes that at Cornell, early organizers of the Student Homophile League were unable to find gay or lesbian faculty members to become advisors, so Daniel Berrigan of the Cornell United Religious Works agreed to serve (Beemyn, “Silence Is Broken,” 209). Similarly, the “Women's Caucus,” a feminist political organization at Sacramento State, emerged from a collaboration of students, staff, and faculty (“Women's Studies, Then and Now,” [c. 1979], CSUS Women's Studies Program Records, Sally Wagner Papers, Box 4, Folder 20, Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

56. Edgar Carpenter, e-mail message to author, August 20, 2008.

57. Prior to the late 1960s, public visibility for gays and lesbians on college campuses in the United States had been dangerous. William N. Eskridge Jr. chronicles how homosexual students were targeted as part of cold war era witch hunts. The “Johns Committee” in Florida, for example, engaged in a six-year campaign to “purge state schools of homosexuals” (Gaylaw, 73); On earlier purges at Harvard in the 1920s, see Shand-Tucci, Douglass, The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality and the Shaping of American Culture (New York: St. Martin's, 2003)Google Scholar; Pellegrini, Ann, “A Gay Purge at Harvard, 1920,” Gay and Lesbian Review (March/April 2003): 10–12Google Scholar. See also Dilley, Queer Man on Campus, for a discussion of college life for “nonheterosexual men” before the 1960s. Toni McNaron suggests that even while gay and lesbian faculty were involved in many of the social protest movements of the 1960s, “most of us remained quiet and passive in the face of discrimination against us” for fear of loss of employment and career advancement. The 1970s represented a real change for many gay and lesbian faculty members who began to come out on campus with the tide of women's liberation and the gay liberation movements (McNaron, Toni, “Poisoned Ivy: Lesbian and Gay Academics from the 1960s through the 1990s,” in Feminist Waves, Feminist Generations: Life Stories from the Academy, ed. Aikau, Hokulani K., Erickson, Karla A., and Pierce, Jennifer L. [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007], 73–74Google Scholar).

58. Rogers, “Critical Incidents,” 25.

59. George Raya, interview by author, Sacramento, June 4, 2006. It is interesting to note that a closely named Committee for Homosexual Freedom (CHF) had been organized in San Francisco just a few months earlier in the spring of 1969. As Suran notes, the CHF “adopted a militant political style characteristic of other late 1960s liberation groups” (Suran, “Coming Out Against the War,” 466).

60. Martin Rogers, interview by author, January 10, 2010. Similar dissension emerged in the Student Homophile League at Cornell, where some closeted members sought to retain a focus on civil liberties for homosexuals, while others “wanted it to become an explicitly gay organization that would focus less on garnering mainstream acceptance than on building a gay culture” (Beemyn, “Silence Is Broken,” 213).

61. Rogers, “Critical Incidents,” 26.

62. George Raya, interview by author, Sacramento, June 4, 2006.

63. A grassroots women's liberation movement at Sacramento State College first emerged on campus in fall 1969 (Pat Wiese, “The Attack of the Liberated Woman,” State Hornet, January 16, 1970, 6); “Women's Studies—Then and Now,” (n.d. but c. 1979), Sally Wagner Papers, Box 4, Folder 20, Sp. Coll. Sac. State. It was not until “lesbian feminists, feminist lesbians and radical lesbians started attending meetings,” as Martin Rogers opined in 1975, that “gay men not only became more sophisticated politically, but they began to be forced to confront their own sexist attitudes toward women” (Rogers, “Critical Incidents,” 26, 28). Martin Rogers, interview by author, San Francisco, January 10, 2010.

64. An alliance with Students for Democratic Society (SDS) at Cornell was important for the SHL, especially in radicalizing the group. The resulting conflict within the SHF over this kind of alliance eventually led to its shift toward a gay liberationist stance (Beemyn, “Silence Is Broken,” 217–18).

65. Martin Rogers, interview by author, April 10, 2010. Petition for Writ of Mandate, April 7, 1970, Case File; Historian George Craft notes that Whitmore had been an air traffic controller in Vietnam prior to his enrollment at the university (Craft, California State University, Sacramento, 122); the student newspaper reveals a controversial tenure as student body president. Whitmore was not afraid to make political waves (“Senate Condemns Whitmore, Votes No Confidence in Burns,” State Hornet, April 29, 1970, 1; Letters to the Editor, “Whitmore, Lord of La Mancha,” State Hornet, April 29, 1970, 3).

66. Society for Homosexual Freedom Constitution, copy in Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

67. Society for Homosexual Freedom Constitution, Article III, Section 2.

68. Ibid., Section 3.

69. Rogers, “Critical Incidents,” 26.

70. The minutes were edited the next meeting to reflect that “one of the purposes of the Society for Homosexual Freedom was to educate the public” (Student Senate Meeting #17, March 9, 1970, ASSSC Minutes, 1969–1970, Series 7, Carton 35, Folder 8, Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

71. Organizational Affairs Committee Report, Student Senate Meeting #16, March 2, 1970, ASSSC Minutes, 1969–1970, Series 7, Carton 35, Folder 8. Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

72. George Raya, interview by author, Sacramento, June 4, 2006.

73. Student Senate Meeting #16, March 2, 1970, ASSSC Minutes, 1969–1970, Series 7, Carton 35, Folder 8. Sp. Coll. Sac. State. Steve Whitmore, president of Associated Students, was listed as the executive president of the Society for Homosexual Freedom (Petition for Writ of Mandate, April 7, 1970, Case File). Martin Rogers recalled that when the idea was presented to the Academic Senate for faculty support, the small number who spoke out against the organization were mostly closeted gay men who were fearful of being exposed on campus. Martin Rogers, interview by author, January 10, 2010.

74. Otto Butz to Steve Whitmore, March 3, 1970, Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9, “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State. For an analysis of denial of recognition cases involving associational rights published around the time of the SFH case, see “Freedom of Political Association on the Campus,” which notes that since Tinker v. Des Moines School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), “students had been afforded the bulk of constitutional protections” (1156).

75. Memorandum regarding student clubs, Office of General Counsel, January 13, 1970, copy in Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9, “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

76. California Administrative Code, Title 5, section 41501; Section 41500 of Article 3 prohibited state colleges from recognizing student organizations that restricted membership based on “race, religion or national origin.” Section 42400 of the Code also described “auxiliary organizations” on campus—which included student organizations, fraternities, and sororities that were included on a list of organizations maintained by the chancellor as well as one using the official name of the college. Section 42402 gave campus presidents the authority to prevent “any program or appropriation planned by the auxiliary organization” that was not “consistent with the policy of the Board of Trustees and the college. Any program determined to not meet those standards could be terminated by the president.

77. There had been some controversy when Butz decided not to allow Tom Hayden to appear on campus, which Librarian Clifford Wood complained was “censorship … a sorrowful moment in our school's history” (Clifford Wood to Faculty, Student Body and Administrative Staff of Sacramento State College (n.d.), Collection AR 54, Cultural Programs Committee, Folder 4, Sp. Coll. Sac. State). The Cultural Programs files reveal, however, that the campus had many other potentially controversial speakers, including Angela Davis, Cesar Chavez, and members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

78. Donald Bailey to Jan Stevens and Karen Dorey, April 22, 1970 (Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9, “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

79. In a later internal memo, Donald Bailey suggested that students at UC Davis had taken only two weeks to gain approval for their organization. Despite a few letters of protest, there had been “few problems, if any, and not much notice.” Similarly, reaction “had not been traumatic at San Diego State,” and both campus and community papers had downplayed its formation (Donald Bailey to Bernard Hyink, June 25, 1970. Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9, “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

80. Memorandum regarding student clubs, Office of General Counsel, January 13, 1970, copy in Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9, “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

81. The president of San Jose State College also denied formal recognition of the San Jose Gay Liberation Front (Brackett, Bob, “Administration Axes Gay Liberation Front,” Daily Spartan, February 19, 1970, 1Google Scholar. Dudley Swim to Glenn Dumke, November 29, 1969, RG 99-01, Glenn Dumke Papers, Box 5, Folder 12, California State University Archives, California State University Dominguez Hills).

82. Glenn Dumke to Dudley Swim, December 2, 1969, RG 99-01, Glenn Dumke Papers, Box 5, Folder 12, California State University Archives, California State University Dominguez Hills.

83. California repealed its consensual sodomy law in 1975 (Eskridge, “Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet,” 849). Interestingly, Columbia president Grayson Kirk had consulted the university's lawyers asking similar questions, specifically whether New York's antisodomy laws would preclude recognition of the Student Homophile League. The university's lawyers concluded they could not, given there was little proof the students were breaking the law (Eisenbach, Gay Power, 68).

84. Eskridge, William N. Jr., “No Promo Homo: The Sedimentation of Anti-Gay Discourse and the Channeling Effect of Judicial Review,” New York University Law Review 75 (2000): 1338Google Scholar.

85. Otto Butz, Acting President, to Stephen Whitmore, President, Associated Students, March 3, 1970. Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State. Martin Rogers, interview by author, January 10, 2010.

86. Handwritten notations on documents ending up in this file included “Homo,” “homosexual society issue,” “homosexual issue,” and the ironic “homo file,” not a nod to the homophile movement, I suspect (Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

87. Mrs. Williams to Otto Butz [n.d.], Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

88. Paul Popenoe to Otto Butz, March 7, 1970. Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State; Molly Ladd-Taylor suggests that Popenoe held heterosexual marriage in particularly high regard in his Eugenicist vision, denouncing the women's and gay liberation movements of the 1970s as contributing to smaller [heterosexual] families, leading to the “extermination of the race” and a threatened “civilised” society (“Eugenics, Sterilisation and Modern Marriage in the USA: The Strange Career of Paul Popenoe,” Gender and History 13 (2) (2001): 298–327, 321).

89. News clipping and note from Ralph Powell to Otto Butz, March 10, 1970. Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

90. Anonymous to Otto Butz, April 9, 1970. Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State; David Eisenbach suggests Columbia president Grayson Kirk faced similar community response regarding the Student Homophile League, especially from alumni (Gay Power, 66–67); on fear of legislative repercussion for the University of Kansas preventing recognition of a gay liberation front, see Bailey, Sex in the Heartland, 179–80.

91. J. Andre to Otto Butz, March 10, 1970, Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

92. Mrs. N to Otto Butz, March 10, 1970, Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

93. Jerry McDaniel to Otto Butz, March 5, 1970, Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

94. Dean S. Dorn to Otto Butz, March 6, 1970, Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

95. “Grave Injustice,” George Raya et al. to the Editor, State Hornet, March 13, 1970. 4, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

96. “Is this Fairness or Justice,” Linda Adams to the Editor, State Hornet, March 20, 1970, 8, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

97. Saed, Tina et al. , “Butz Chided for Wrong Decision,” Letter to the Editor, State Hornet, March 17, 1970, 2–3Google Scholar, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

98. The vote was recorded as 4–3 with one abstention (Executive Report, Student Senate Meeting #18, March 16, 1970. ASSSC Minutes 1969-1970, Series 7, Carton 35, Folder 8, Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

99. “Sacramento State Students Sue to Get Okay for Gay Group,” The Advocate, May 27–June 9 1970, 1.

100. Kronenberg, Paul, “Senate Asks Definition of Butz' Power to Deny Gay Club Recognition,” State Hornet, March 18, 1970, 1Google Scholar, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

101. Taylor, Clark, “A Homosexual Speaks Out,” State Hornet, March 20, 1970Google Scholar, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

102. Rogers, “Critical Incidents,” 27. I suspect the misspelling of the term “camaraderie” was deliberate.

103. George Raya, interview by author, Sacramento, June 4, 2006.

104. “Sacramento State Students Sue to Get Okay for Gay Group,” The Advocate, May 27–June 9 1970, 1; “Butz, Trustees Named Respondents in Suit,” State Hornet, April 10, 1970, 1, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

105. Student Senate Meeting #16, March 2, 1970, ASSSC Minutes 1969–1970, Series 7, Carton 35, Folder 8, Sp. Coll. Sac. State; John Poswall, interview by author, Sacramento, July 11, 2006; “ASSSC Attorney Calls it Quits,” State Hornet, February 16, 1972, 11. Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

106. “Poswall Pleas for Free Speech,” State Hornet, December 14, 1965, 2, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

107. John Poswall, interview by author, Sacramento, July 11, 2006.

108. All exhibits, depositions, and records of testimony were destroyed in 1979 (Order for Destruction of Exhibits and Depositions, December 24, 1979, Case File); Murray, Kathy, “ASSSC Files Suit to Contest Refusal to Recognize Homosexual Freedom Society,” State Hornet, April 7, 1970, 1Google Scholar, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

109. John Poswall, interview by author, Sacramento, July 11, 2006.

110. “Students File Suit Over SSC Rejection of Homosexual Freedom Group,” Sacramento Bee, April 8, 1970, A17.

111. Petition for Writ of Mandate, April 6, 1970; Plaintiff Points and Authorities, April 7, 1970, 2, Case File. “First Amendment litigation was relatively successful,” as legal scholar William Eskridge has noted. “By 1981, gay literature, including erotica, was available nationwide. Most locales were forced to tolerate lesbian and gay newspapers, radio programs, bars, churches, student clubs, and other institutions of homophile association and community” (Eskridge, “Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet,” 865).

112. John Poswall, interview by author, Sacramento, July 11, 2006. For a similar strategy by students to “protect their right to hear controversial speakers and to control their student press” at Mississippi State, also with the advice of the ACLU, see Griffin, Gregory J., “Speakers' Rights, Censorship, and the Death of God: The Struggle for Free Speech and Mississippi State University,” Journal of Mississippi History 67 (3) (2005): 187–215Google Scholar.

113. As historian Nan Alamilla Boyd notes, the ACLU was involved as early as the late 1950s in challenging antivagrancy laws used to harass homosexual communities in San Francisco (Boyd, Nan Alamilla, Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003], 217–18Google Scholar); John D'Emilio notes how the ACLU challenged the denial of due process to homosexuals as early as 1957 when it issued a statement on “Homosexuality and Civil Liberties,” which was reprinted in homophile publications like the Daughters of Bilitis magazine The Ladder (D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 112). See also Donohue, William A., The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1985), 282–83Google Scholar; historian David K. Johnson notes that ACLU support did not extend to denial of security clearances to homosexuals, which did not happen until 1964 (Johnson, David K., The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004], 190–91Google Scholar); for ACLU support of homophile organizations in the 1960s, see Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves, 184, 209–10; scholar John DeCecco suggests that efforts by Vern Bullough, ONE, Inc., activists Dorr Legg and Don Slater, and the Daughters of Bilitis led to an important ACLU statement of support for homosexual civil rights in 1966 (DeCecco, John P., “Vern L. Bullough (1928– ): Making the Pen Mightier than the Sword,” in Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context, ed. Bullough, Vern L. [New York: Harrington Park, 2002], 363Google Scholar). Bullough chronicles this shift at the ACLU in Bullough, Vern, “Lesbianism, Homosexuality and the American Civil Liberties Union,” Journal of Homosexuality 13 (1) (Fall 1986): 23–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

114. In support, Poswall cited the recently decided Brooks v. Auburn University, 412 F.2d 1171 (5th Cir. 1969), Points and Authorities, 5.

115. Plaintiff Points and Authorities, 9. While not cited by Poswall, this claim recalls one made by ONE, Inc., in its landmark obscenity case involving a challenge to the seizure and refusal to mail its publication as “obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy” by Los Angeles postal officials. As historian John D'Emilio suggests, after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of ONE, Inc., without an opinion, most activists “inferred that the ruling sanctioned the discussion of homosexuality,” which had a lasting impact on the ability of homophile organizations to circulate its publications (D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 115). For the case, see ONE, Incorporated v. Olesen, 355 U.S. 371 (1958), rev'g 241 F.2d 772 (9th Cir. 1957). The court simply cited Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957), in support.

116. Plaintiff Points and Authorities, 5; Boyd, Wide Open Town, 122.

117. Poswall also cited Vallerga v. Department of Alcohol Beverage and Control, 53 Cal. 2d 313 (1959). Plaintiff Points and Authorities, 5; on early freedom of association cases involving gays and lesbians, see Eskridge, William N. Jr., “Privacy Jurisprudence and the Apartheid of the Closet, 1946–1961,” Florida State University Law Review 24 (1997): 703Google Scholar

118. Plaintiff Points and Authorities, 2.

119. Ibid., 6.

120. Citing Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967); Plaintiff Points and Authorities, 10.

121. Citing Brooks v. Auburn University, 412 F.2d 1171 (5th Cir. 1969); Plaintiff Points and Authorities, 8.

122. See note 77 above.

123. Plaintiff Points and Authorities, 9.

124. Brief of Amicus Curiae, American Civil Liberties of Northern California, May 4, 1970, Case File; at the time, the ACLU of Northern California saw this as a “test case” (Laurence, “College: It's Not So Lonely Now,” 1. This brief became an important tool for struggles over other gay student organizations in California, as will be discussed later in this article.

125. Respondent's Return by Way of Answer to Petition for Writ of Mandate, Case File, 7.

126. Respondents Supplemental Points and Authorities in Opposition to Petition for Writ of Mandate (n.d.), Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State. Attorneys for the college cited Sellers v. Regents of the University of California, 432 F.2d 493 (9th Cir 1970), cert. denied, 401 U.S. 981 (1971).

127. In a letter responding to gay liberation activist Jim Rankin about the denial of recognition, he said his decision had been based on the illegality of homosexual behavior: “If homosexual behavior were not illegal, I would have recognized the society” (Otto Butz to Jim Rankin, April 17, 1970. Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State); Sacramento Bee quoted Butz as willing to recognize the organization if homosexuality were legal, noting he would not fire any “avowed homosexuals” on the faculty either (“Homosexuals Reassert Plea to SSC,” Sacramento Bee, October 9, 1970, B2).

128. Respondents Supplemental Points and Authorities in Opposition to the Petition for Writ of Mandate and Declarations in Support Thereof, May 26, 1970, Case File.

129. Note that all original depositions and exhibits were apparently destroyed in the case in 1979. Order for Destruction of Exhibits and Depositions, Associated Students v. Butz, Case No. 200975, Superior Court for the State of California, Sacramento County, December 24, 1979.

130. Declaration of Donald W. Bailey, May 14, 1970, 2, Case File.

131. Stipulation, October 8, 1970, Case File. Describing himself as a “moderate-liberal Republican,” Hyink had been appointed in February of 1970, though he did not take office until the summer of 1970 (Wrightson, James, “New SSC President Calls Self ‘Moderate-Liberal’ Republican,” Sacramento Bee, February 26, 1970Google Scholar, Copy in Bernard Hyink, University Biographical Files, Sp. Coll. Sac. State). Hyink lasted in the position until 1972, when he resigned for personal reasons, returning to the faculty at California State College, Fullerton, where he had been before arriving at Sacramento (Speich, Don, “Bernard Hyink Resigns as SSC President, Will Teach in Fullerton,” Sacramento Bee, March 24, 1972Google Scholar, Copy in Bernard Hyink, University Biographical Files, Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

132. Respondents Supplemental Points and Authorities in Opposition to Petition for Writ of Mandate (n.d.), Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

133. Declaration of Otto Butz, May 14, 1970, 1, Case File; critics found suggestions of relying on established curriculum as venues to discuss homosexuality problematic. Warren Blumenfeld of the National Gay Student Center gave an example of a typical psychology course in “sexual deviation,” lumping homosexuality with bestiality and prostitution (“The National Gay Student Center,” The National Task Force on Student Personnel Services and Homosexuality, 1972, copy in author's possession and courtesy of Warren Blumenfeld).

134. Attorneys for the college had prepared a set of supplemental points and authorities. Although the official case file does not contain this document, it suggests additional lines of argument the college was making (Respondents Supplemental Points and Authorities in Opposition to Petition for Writ of Mandate (n.d.), Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

135. John Poswall, interview by author, Sacramento, July 11, 2006.

136. Donald Bailey to Bernard Hyink, June 25, 1970, Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

137. Donald Bailey to Craig McIntosh, August 26, 1970, Records of the Office of the President, RG 88, Box 34, Folder 9 “Society for Homosexual Freedom, 1970,” Sp. Coll. Sac. State. Craig McIntosh does not recall representing the university in this case. As he suggested, the attorney general's office handled a lot of cases, and sometimes supervisors would sign documents on behalf of junior associates (Craig McIntosh, conversation with author, July 10, 2007).

138. “State College Homosexuals Take Their Case to Court,” Sacramento Union, October 9, 1970; Order for Destruction of Exhibits and Depositions, Associated Students v. Butz, Case No. 200975, Superior Court for the State of California, Sacramento County, December 24, 1979, Sacramento County Courthouse.

139. Murray, Kathy and Burns, Maryellen, “Homosexual Freedom Society Will Have Its Day in Court,” State Hornet, October 7, 1970, 1Google Scholar, Sp. Coll. Sac. State. The trial also garnered local press coverage: “Homosexuals Reassert Plea to SSC,” Sacramento Bee, October 9, 1970, B2.

140. George Raya, interview by author, Sacramento, June 4, 2006. Martin Rogers remembered that at the time, he believed this to be as much a moral issue as a legal one, resulting in a “leap in self-identity.” Martin Rogers, interview by author, January 10, 2010.

141. Court reporter's notes, October 9, 1970, Case File.

142. Burns, Scott M., “Decision on Society for Homosexual Freedom Awaits Judge's Ruling,” State Hornet, October 13, 1970, 1Google Scholar, 9, Sp. Coll. Sac. State; John Poswall recalled feeling sorry for Bailey in examining him at the trial, having known him when Poswall was a student at Sacramento State (John Poswall, interview by author, Sacramento, July 11, 2006); Poswall's claim about the number of married students should be qualified. According to historian George Craft Jr. in his history of Sacramento State University, about 30 percent of undergraduates and 75 percent of graduate students were married in 1973, a few years after the SHF case went to trial (California State University, Sacramento, 117).

143. John Poswall, interview by author, Sacramento, July 11, 2006; Raul Ramirez, conversation with author, August 30, 2007.

144. The Advocate reported that the decision would set a precedent for the entire state college system (“Judge Orders College to Recognize Gay Club,” The Advocate, March 17–30, 1971, 1).

145. Notice of Intended Decision, Associated Students v. Butz, February 9, 1971, Case File.

146. Ibid.

147. Ibid.; compare the 1972 decision by a trial judge in the later struggle for recognition case of the Lawrence Gay Liberation Front at the University of Kansas, which ruled in favor of the university to maintain discipline and prevent “bizarre sexual activities” on campus (Bailey, Sex in the Heartland, 182). It was not until 1977 that the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a circuit court decision in favor of a gay student organization on free speech and association grounds (Gay Lib v. University of Missouri, 558 F.2d 848, 858 (8th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, sub nom Ratchford v. Gay Lib, 434 U.S. 1080 [1978]).

148. Kronenberg, Paul, “Judge Renders Verdict: Trustees Lose Court Fight Over Homosexual Issue,” State Hornet, February 16, 1971, 1Google Scholar. State Hornet also reproduced Gallagher's opinion (“Gallagher's Decision Sets Precedent,” State Hornet, February 17, 1971, 4–5, Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

149. Kronenberg, Paul, “Judge Renders Verdict: Trustees Lose Court Fight Over Homosexual Issue,” State Hornet, February 16, 1971, 1Google Scholar, Sp. Coll. Sac. State. The Sacramento Union described this case as one example of the role Hyink played in “defusing several potential campus powder kegs,” which included controversies over student athletics and the Educational Opportunity Program on campus (Michael Fallon, “Hyink Leaving SSC After Stormy Term,” Sacramento Union, March 24, 1972, 1, copy in Bernard Hyink, University Biographical Files, Sp. Coll. Sac. State).

150. Harr, Candy, “No Threat of Appeal for SHF,” State Hornet, February 19, 1971, 1Google Scholar, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

151. Editorial, “Administration Shows Increased Awareness,” State Hornet, April 16, 1971, 15, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

152. “Judge Orders College to Recognize Gay Club,” The Advocate, March 13–30, 1971, 1; Bob Roth from the Gay Activist Alliance in New York reached a similar conclusion, noting a “direct correlation” between the amount of publicity a gay and lesbian student organization received and “the number of members that the group attracts” (“Publicity, or Reaching the Student Body,” Interchange 1 (1) (March–April 1972): 8, Periodicals Collection, GLBTHS).

153. Student Senate Meeting #23, February 25, 1971, ASSSC Minutes and Agendas 1970/71, Series 7, Carton 34, Folder 7, Sp. Coll. Sac. State; Return to Peremptory Writ of Mandate by Way of Compliance, Associated Students v. Butz, April 5, 1971, Case File.

154. In May 1971, Martin Rogers claimed that the “SSC Gay Liberation Front” now had about fifty members, “both male and female homosexuals” (McMichael, Lynn, “Dr. Martin Rogers: Evolving Gay Community,” State Hornet, May 19, 1971, 1Google Scholar, Sp. Coll. Sac. State); Cornell's Student Homophile League also renamed itself a Gay Liberation Front in the fall of 1970 (Beemyn, “Silence Is Broken,” 218).

155. “Judge Orders College to Recognize Gay Club,” The Advocate, March 13–30, 1971, 1. That opening up had particular impact on Rogers. “After the lawsuit,” he recalled with a bit of hyperbole in a 1995 article, “I was literally the only public person in Sacramento who was gay

156. See note 70 above; similarly, historian David Eisenbach notes how once recognized, the Student Homophile League at Columbia “began to assert themselves as homosexuals in campus life,” including “Dance-Ins,” peer counseling, consciousness raising groups, and public lectures and advertisements in student publications (Gay Power, 73–74).

157. “Top Names Lined Up For Gay-organized Sacramento Seminar,” The Advocate, March 13–30, 1971, 9; “The Gay Scene,” Schedule of Events, April 19–23, 1971, Cultural Programs Committee Records, 1970–71, Box 54, Folder 4, California Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

158. Hicks, Mary, “Gay Women Rap on Femininity,” State Hornet, April 21, 1971, 1Google Scholar; McMichael, Lynne, “Not a Freak Show,” State Hornet, April 21, 1971, 3Google Scholar; Jones, Nancy and Saks, Vicki, “Rev. Troy Perry: Church and the Homosexual,” State Hornet, April 23, 1971, 1Google Scholar; Warren, Bob, “Ginsberg To Do Whatever,” State Hornet, April 23, 1971, 1Google Scholar, Sp. Coll. Sac. State; Glackin, William C., “Art and Homosexuality,” Sacramento Bee, April 20, 1971, B6Google Scholar; Skelton, Nancy, “Ginsberg Performs for SSC ‘Straights’” Sacramento Bee, April 24, 1971, A3Google Scholar. The symposium illustrates scholar Patrick Dilley's claim that campus recognition of gay and lesbian student organizations allowed for more in-depth discussions about the meaning of the GLBT experience on campus, important since on many campuses, gay and lesbian students were often seen as “all about sex, and little else” (Dilley, “20th Century Postsecondary Practices and Policies,” 425).

159. As the student paper reported, “gay, debonair man-about campus Scott Burns” had taken over as editor with unanimous support from the Student Senate (“What You See is What You Get,” State Hornet, October 22, 1971, 1). Some examples include “Sex, Homosexuality Are Within God's Plan, Says Theologian,” State Hornet February, 1972, 1, and Freida Smith, “Gay Stereotyping: Breaking Down the Barriers,” State Hornet, March 1, 1972, 5, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

160. Program schedule, KERS (n.d. but c. 1972), KERS Records, Record Group AR 40, KERS Box, Folder 1972/73; Campus Radio KERS' Spring Schedule, State Hornet, March 16, 1973, 4, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

161. “A Proposal For the Establishment of a Gay Studies Program at SSC,” Addendum to Minutes, Student Senate Meeting # 20, April 27, 1972, ASSSC Minutes, 1971–1972, Series 7, Carton 34, Folder 8, Sp. Coll. Sac. State.

162. Hunter, Cindi, “Gay Studies Gets Run Around,” State Hornet, November 21, 1972, 3Google Scholar. Minutes, Student Senate Meeting #20, April 27, 1972, ASSSC Minutes, 1971–1972, Series 7, Carton 34, Folder 8, Sp. Coll. Sac. State; Charles Moore, “Gay Studies Program,” Gay Sunshine, no. 16 (Jan/Feb 1973), 15, GLBTHS Periodicals Collection.

163. “Gay Studies Course Offerings,” State Hornet, December 12, 1972, 3; Moore, “Gay Studies Program.” Martin Rogers, who taught one of those early gay students classes in the psychology department suggests that it was these courses that made student involvement possible because “it was safer to take a class than it was to come to a meeting.” From that class experience, students gained the confidence to move into the campus group. Martin Rogers, interview by author, April 10, 2010.

164. Notice for a Gay Women's Rap Group, State Hornet, March 1, 1972, 5; “The Homosexual and the Law,” State Hornet, March 15, 1972, 11; “Homo Brontasaurus, Well Balanced Presentation on Lesbians,” State Hornet, December 8, 1972, 3; “Poets Bring out Emotions of the Audience,” State Hornet, May 4, 1973, 7.

165. My research in progress focuses on the changing relationship of lesbian students and faculty to a greater public presence of gay men on campus and the role of women's liberation in shaping those relationships.

166. Moore, “Gay Studies Program.”

167. Quoted in Blumenfeld, “Are You Recognized,” 16.

168. George Raya to Stephen, Draft letter, August 26, 1977, Box 1, Folder 3, George Raya Papers, GLBTHS.

169. Rogers, “Critical Incidents in the Evolution of a Gay Liberation Group,” 27.

170. “Judge Orders College to Recognize Gay Club,” The Advocate, March 13–30, 1971, 1.

171. Dilley suggests that “gay students sought roles and activities on campus equitable of those of heterosexual students” (Queer Man on Campus, 119).

172. Moore, Scott, “Cal State Turns Down Homosexual Group,” Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1971, B1Google Scholar; “ACLU Names Attorneys to Defend Fullerton Group,” The Advocate 65, August 4–17, 1971; “Students Recognized,” The Advocate, December 22, 1971, 12; at the time, there was speculation that President L. Donald Shields had been influenced by assembly member John Briggs, who at the time already had a reputation as an outspoken critic of radical student politics in the California State College system. As The Advocate speculated, Shields's decision might have more to do with appeasing Briggs and other conservatives than legal grounds for denying such recognition (“Cal State Prexy Nixes Fullerton Gay Group,” The Advocate, July 12–August 3, 1971, 27).

173. Murley has personally assisted students on behalf of the ACLU in thirty-three such cases since 1970 (Jay Murley, interview by author, San Diego, September 12, 2008); Murley went on to chair the first “Rights of Homosexuals” committee for the ACLU of Southern California, the first such committee at the affiliate level in the United States (Press Release, ACLU-SC, March 1973, ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Chapter, Box 4, Folder 12, Manuscript Collection 2007-013, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives).

174. “Student Group to Fight for Recognition at USC,” The Advocate, May 12–25, 1971, 2. Even George Raya, a Sacramento State student, recognized the precedent created by the SHF case. In the draft of a letter to a friend, he noted the victory established “a precedent for the rights of gay students to have campus organizations,” even prompting him to conclude that perhaps the law “wouldn't be a bad profession to take up.” Raya, in fact, attended law school, first Boalt Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, then later graduating from Western State University School of Law (George Raya to Stephen, Draft of a letter, August 26, 1977, Box 1, Folder 3, George Raya Papers, GLBTHS).

175. “The Growing Idea,” GSC Newsmagazine 1 (4) (April 1973): 6, Gay Students Council of Southern California Subject File, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

176. Larry Bernard to Sisters and Brothers of the Gay Students Council of Southern California, September 30, 1972, Gay Students Council of Southern California Subject File, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

177. Quoted in Ruegnitz, Steve, “GSU Bylaws Rejected,” Mustang Daily, June 2, 1972Google Scholar, copy in Gay Students Union—California—Cal Poly San Luis Subject Folder, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

178. “Recognition Fight Looms at Cal Poly Institute,” The Advocate, April 26, 1972, 18.

179. Vulin, Fred, “GSU Victor in Bylaw Battle,” Mustang Daily, April 3, 1975Google Scholar, copy in Gay Students Union—California—Cal Poly San Luis Subject Folder, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

180. “Newsflash,” Patchwork 1 (1) (January 15, 1976): 2, Periodicals Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

181. Cain, Patricia A., “Litigating for Lesbian and Gay Rights: A Legal History,” Virginia Law Review 79 (October 1993): 1551CrossRefGoogle Scholar, describes the Wood case as the “first reported case recognizing the First Amendment associational rights of a gay and lesbian student group.” Rhonda R. Rivera was the first to cite the decision in the Sacramento SHF case as one that “presaged the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the landmark student organization case of Healy v. James” (“Our Straight-Laced Judges: The Legal Position of Homosexual Persons in the United States,” Hastings Law Journal 30 (1979): 799, reprinted in 50 Hastings Law Journal 50 (April 1999): 1144).

182. Suran, “Coming Out Against the War,” 455.

183. Pizak, Howie, “Cal State Gay People's Union Celebrates 10th Year at CSUS,” Mom … Guess What?, 25, November 1980, 12Google Scholar, Periodicals Collection, GLBTHS. In a 1975 assessment of contemporary gay student organizations, Steve Werner argued that building alliances with other organizations that shared common interests was a critical strategy gay and lesbian students could use to build support for their struggles (Werner, “Gay Student Group,” 30).

184. Patricia A. Cain, “Litigating for Lesbian and Gay Rights,” 1610; Jane Schacter has reminded us that although the U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled directly on such a case, when the Missouri case reached the Court for review, though denied certiorari, a dissenting opinion by Justice William Rehnquist analogized homosexuality to the measles (Schacter, Jane, “Sexual Orientation, Change and the Courts,” Drake Law Review 54 (Summer 2006): 861n55Google Scholar).

185. Gibbs, Annette and McFarland, Arthur C., “Recognition of Gay Liberation on the State Supported Campus,” Journal of College Student Personnel 15 (1) (January 1974): 5Google Scholar; see also Gibbs, Annette, “The First Amendment and College Student Organizations,” Peabody Journal of Education 55 (2) (January 1978): 131–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0161-956X%28197801%2955%3A2%3C131%3ATFAACS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23/ (July 16, 2007).

186. Stanley, William R., “The Rights of Gay Student Organizations,” Journal of College and University Law 10 (3) (1983): 398Google Scholar.

187. John Poswall, interview by author, Sacramento, July 11, 2006.

188. Jane Schacter, “Sexual Orientation, Change and the Courts,” 874.