“Gay Teachers Fight Back!”: Rank-and-File Gay and Lesbian Teachers’ Activism Against the Briggs Initiative, 1977-1978
Abstract
This article examines gay and lesbian teachers’ organizing against the Briggs Initiative in 1977 and 1978. Through their activism, rank-and-file gay and lesbian teachers in California placed the teachers’ unions at the vanguard of emergent queer labor activism, marking a key early turning point in queer labor history. At a time when the Christian Right put gays and lesbians on the defensive, this successful activism generated hope that gays and lesbians could marshal the labor movement in defense of their rights in a deeply homophobic society. This article further maintains that teaching can be considered "queer work"; due to the association between queerness and teaching gay and lesbian teachers were poised to wage a campaign around sexual identity that integrated the labor movement as never before.
References
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Zieger, Robert H. The CIO: 1935-1955. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Balay, Anne. Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
Bérubé, Allan. “‘Queer Work’ and Labor History,” My Desire for History: Essays in Gay, Community, and Labor History, John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman, eds. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
Blount, Jackie M. Fit to Teach: Same-Sex Desire, Gender, and School Work in the Twentieth Century. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.
Braukman, Stacy Lorraine. Communists and Perverts Under the Palms: The Johns Committee in Florida, 1956-1965. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012.
Canaday, Margot. Pink Precariat: LGBT Workers in the Shadow of Civil Rights, 1945-2000. In Progress.
Clendinen, Dudley and Adam Nagourney. Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.
Diamond, Sara. Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right. New York: Guilford, 1998.
Faderman, Lillian. Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.
Faue, Elizabeth. Community of Suffering & Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Fejes, Fred. Gay Rights and Moral Panic: The Origins of America’s Debate on Homosexuality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Frank, Gillian. “‘The Civil Rights of Parents’: Race and Conservative Politics in Anita Bryant’s Campaign Against Gay Rights in 1970s Florida.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 22, no. 1 (2013): 126-160.
Frank, Miriam. Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014.
Freedman, Estelle. “‘Uncontrolled Desires’: The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920-1960, The Journal of American History 74, no. 1 (1987), 103-104.
Glass, Fred. A History of the California Federation of Teachers, 1919-1989. South San Francisco: The Federation, 1989.
Graves, Karen. And They Were Wonderful Teachers: Florida’s Purge of Gay and Lesbian Teachers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
Hanhardt, Christina B. Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.
Harbeck, Karen Marie. Gay and Lesbian Educators: Personal Freedoms, Public Constraints. Malden, MA: Amethyst, 1997.
Hobson, Emily. Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016.
Hollibaugh, Amber. My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.
Lynd, Staughton, ed., “We Are All Leaders”: The Alternative Unionism of the Early 1930s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the American Right. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Perlstein, Daniel H. Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism. New York: P. Lang, 2004.
Podair, Jerald E. The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Shilts, Randy. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982.
Tiemeyer, Phil. Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
Vendrillo, Carol A. Chapter 6, “Collective Bargaining in Califoria’s Public Sector.” Joyce M. Najita and James L. Stern, eds. Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector: The Experience of Eight States. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2001.
Zieger, Robert H. The CIO: 1935-1955. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
