Formal organizations for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) students in the United States began to emerge on college campuses in the United States beginning in the mid to late 1960s, bridging the transition from the homophile movement of the 1950s and 1960s to the origins of gay liberation.Footnote ¹ The first, a Student Homophile League (SHL) organized at Columbia University in 1967, prompted other student groups at Cornell, New York University, Penn State, and Stanford.Footnote ² While some students cultivated connections with local homophile activists and organizations,Footnote ³ such connections were generally limited.Footnote ⁴ Despite support and occasional visits to college campuses to speak on behalf of homophile interests, homophile movement organizations did not typically provide space for youth to participate, fearing the potential repercussions of having members under the age of twenty-one.Footnote ⁵ Moreover, when students encountered homosexuality as an issue for discussion on campus, it was often treated as sin, sickness, or crime. As such, early homophile student organizations provided gay, lesbian, and bisexual students, as one observer at the time suggested, positive reinforcement and a sense of formal peer support on campus where little other than friendships had existed before.Footnote ⁶ By the late 1960s, gay, lesbian, and bisexual college students were inspired by civil rights, Black Power, the antiwar movement, and a nascent Women's Liberation movement, with many embracing a more militant approach than “mainline homophile organizations,” as scholar Brett Beemyn urges.Footnote ⁷ Like many college students coming of age in the late 1960s, gay, lesbian, and bisexual student activists were part of a larger generational split, what Paul Berman describes as a pulling away of youth from their elders.Footnote ⁸

Given these conditions, it is perhaps not surprising that after the Stonewall rebellion of 1969, gay and lesbian student organizations on college campuses in the United States “grew like weeds in a vacant lot,” as legal scholar William Eskridge Jr. has asserted.Footnote ⁹ Taking a cue from many other political organizations springing up across the country, gay and lesbian students formed their own on campus to explore gay “liberation” for themselves, whether through gay student organizations, many of which were dominated by male students, or in the case of lesbian and bisexual women students, in women's studies programs, campus-based women's centers, or in specific lesbian student organizations.Footnote ¹⁰ By the early 1970s, William Sievert could claim at the time that although gay liberation, as a social movement, did not begin on college campuses, “it has gained much of its momentum there.”Footnote ¹¹

Yet, gay, lesbian, and bisexual students attempting to organize on campus faced numerous challenges, including fear of coming out publicly and outright resistance from members of the campus community, alumni, or community members.Footnote ¹² Here I take a closer look at one form these challenges took—the refusal of college and university administrators to grant formal recognition to gay and lesbian student organizations. In the face of such refusal, some gay, lesbian, and bisexual students, often with the support of student allies on campus, filed lawsuits to gain formal recognition. A closer look at such lawsuits would provide a critical window on the struggles gay, lesbian, and bisexual students faced, the tactics they employed, and the impact of the experience as they attempted to gain their first public footing on college campuses.

Legal history studies of “struggle-for-recognition” cases have focused primarily on the analysis used by judges and the impact of that analysis in a line of subsequent court opinions. Although very useful, such studies do not necessarily capture the wider impact of this litigation. “It is easy to forget the context of social change that engulfed U.S. college campuses in the early 1970s,” scholar Patrick Dilley reminds us, “just as it's simpler to outline the facts of these court cases than to examine how the action of stating one's sexuality publicly—as a source of identity and discrimination by a university … affected the lives of the students involved.”Footnote ¹³ And, while some scholars have examined the struggle-for-recognition cases involving gay, lesbian, and bisexual students in terms of shifts in gender and sexuality or the relationship to gay liberation, they have done so without a full appreciation of the legal dimensions of such struggles.Footnote ¹⁴ I hope to bridge these scholarly approaches by examining one such struggle-for-recognition case in more detail, tracing how it came about, assessing the wider impact it had on students and the campus community, and outlining its broader impact in the legal arena.

In 1970, a group of students and faculty at Sacramento State College formed what would become the Society for Homosexual Freedom (SHF). Although not the first such organization in California, its struggle for recognition would become very significant for other student organizations seeking recognition elsewhere. A lawsuit filed by the students when denied formal recognition directly addressed the legal question of whether a public university could refuse to grant recognition to such a student group in California.Footnote ¹⁵ Judge William Gallagher's (a Republican) decision in favor of the SHF was also the first to use free speech and association grounds to extend legal protection to gay and lesbian student organizations, and while unreported, created precedent for gay and lesbian student organizations elsewhere. That precedent, and the constitutional arguments used, enabled other gay and lesbian student organizations to rebut efforts at preventing their organizing on campus with authority a court decision could provide.Footnote ¹⁶

Beyond the legal analysis, however, a closer look at the SHF case also situates struggle- for-recognition cases in a wider struggle for student power, especially in terms of changing norms of gender and sexuality. Specifically, the SHF case suggests that when students (gay, lesbian, bisexual and straight allies) and faculty challenged a university decision not to recognize their organization, they were also challenging the idea of in loco parentis, a doctrine students had been chipping away at directly since at least the early 1960s. For gay, lesbian, and bisexual students, however, such challenges revealed in particular how in loco parentis reinforced what might be called heteronormative paternalism, a way to maintain heterosexuality as the only acceptable form of sexual orientation. As such, the very existence of a publicly identified gay student organizations like the Society for Homosexual Freedom directly challenged the maintenance of a heteronormative campus climate. Struggle-for-recognition cases like this illustrate a wider pattern of controlling gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer students, which scholar Patrick Dilley has suggested was so prevalent throughout the twentieth century.Footnote ¹⁷

Finally, for students and faculty involved in creating the SHF, organizing around the lawsuit helped transform what had been a mostly underground off-campus “closed society” into a visible and self-conscious gay-liberation community—enhancing the campus climate for all gay, lesbian, and bisexual students, staff, and faculty.Footnote ¹⁸ By participating in creating the SHF, struggling for its existence on campus, and celebrating victory, gay, lesbian, and bisexual students and faculty began to see themselves as part of a wider gay-liberation movement, planting the seeds for a flowering of gay, lesbian, and bisexual student activism on campus in the years following the resolution of the case.Footnote ¹⁹

Setting the Stage: Struggles for Recognition in Context

The struggle for recognition of the SHF at Sacramento State is, in many ways, rooted in the wider struggle for student power that erupted on college campuses across the United States, and the world, in the 1960s. While this wave of activism was not the first time a college student movement had emerged in the United States, the 1960s saw the first real shift in student activism in a generation.Footnote ²⁰ Beginning with African American (and later white) students organizing for civil rights, a wave of activism began to coalesce throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s, including student participation in the emergence of the New Left, the antiwar movement, women's liberation, and identity-based politics. Organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) as well as struggles to create ethnic studies on campuses led by African American, Latino/a, and other underrepresented students are typical examples of this wave of college student organizing.Footnote ²¹ The struggle for student power also focused on gaining greater freedom and self-determination for students. In addition to their desire to advocate for political issues on campus, students also sought to eliminate archaic rules of behavior and decorum associated with the idea that college officials served in loco parentis. Although the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley is the most famous example (which blended challenges to student rules of behavior with interest in political “off-campus” issues), students on other campuses engaged in similar kinds of struggles. For example, historian Gregg L. Michel has described how students involved in the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), in addition to cultivating white student involvement in civil rights, promoted what they called “university reform,” challenging in loco parentis policies on southern campuses, or as one former student recalled, creating conditions by which students could reorient away from “teen age trivia” toward real social problems.Footnote ²² Struggles against in loco parentis were especially important for women students. As Reneé N. Lansley has argued, these struggles were a “harbinger” to their involvement in the women's movement, especially as these struggles highlighted administrator and parental concerns about “morality and sexuality on campus,” raising questions about the inherent paternalism of in loco parentis policies. For African American women students, civil rights and the Black Power inspired them to challenge in loco parentis policies.Footnote ²³ Students also challenged in loco parentis policies invoking constitutional protections of due process.Footnote ²⁴

For gay and lesbian students, in loco parentis arguably also became a justification to enforce heterosexuality as a social norm, an agenda that had been reinforced in many different kinds of ways. This heteronormative paternalism included inquiries and investigations into homosexuality on campus (scholar Patrick Dilley calls these “sweeps” of campus for homosexuals), expulsion for conduct violations, dismissals for being arrested in a gay bar, or chastisement from college counselors or school psychiatrists.Footnote ²⁵ As Beth Bailey has demonstrated, after World War II, students brought before university officials on conduct violations for homosexuality were referred to psychiatric treatment, a shift from the moralistic approach of a generation before.Footnote ²⁶ During the cold war, as some scholars have suggested, university officials even clamped down on homosexuality because of its perceived threat to national security. The effect, as Gerard Koskovich suggests, was personal isolation for many gay and lesbian students who feared coming out.Footnote ²⁷ Thus, denial of recognition for gay student organizations was in many ways a continuation of a long-standing policy to control the expression of homosexuality on campus, a history John D'Emilio characterizes as “a moral order aggressively antagonistic toward homosexual expression.”Footnote ²⁸

By the early 1970s, many observers described the denial of recognition as the critical problem encountered by gay, lesbian, and bisexual students attempting to organize on campus. How frequently these struggles occurred, however, was subject to some dispute. For example, although one commentator at the time suggested it was the “most commonly externally generated problem” faced by gay and lesbian student organizations,Footnote ²⁹ others claimed actual denial of recognition was rare.Footnote ³⁰ Yet, for activists involved in an emerging national gay student movement, struggles for recognition had wider implications for increasing the visibility of gay and lesbian students. In 1973, for example, Warren Blumenfeld, former San Jose State College student, early member of its Gay Liberation Front, and the founder of a National Gay Student Center argued that struggles for recognition were critical ways for students to gain support and increase membership in campus gay and lesbian student organizations.Footnote ³¹

Whatever the frequency of such denials of recognition, it is clear that many gay and lesbian student organizations (or student governments acting on their behalf) filed lawsuits to secure campus recognition or hold public events on campus—in Kansas,Footnote ³² Missouri,Footnote ³³ New Hampshire,Footnote ³⁴ Georgia,Footnote ³⁵ and Texas.Footnote ³⁶ And, as several legal scholars have noted, gay and lesbian student organizations typically prevailed.Footnote ³⁷ Assessing the impact of this litigation, legal scholar William Eskridge Jr. has suggested there was “little that college administrations could do to keep students from forming their own clubs and organizations, except to deny college or university recognition and funding for the groups,” noting that “student groups found homophile and ACLU attorneys eager to litigate their cases under the First Amendment's right of association.”Footnote ³⁸ Moreover, gay and lesbian students who struggled against university denial of recognition were in good company. Since the 1960s, students around the nation—especially students organizing controversial groups—began taking universities to court, asserting First Amendment freedom of speech and association claims.Footnote ³⁹ The SHF case at Sacramento State College can be situated within these wider student challenges and assertion of student power.

Yet, for gay and lesbian students, struggle for recognition cases were more than simply about asserting student power; rather, they were also about creating social spaces in which they could begin to create new and public gay and lesbian identities. Beyond gaining “permission” to exist, the struggle surrounding such lawsuits forged a new political consciousness among gay and lesbian students and faculty alike, connecting them to a wider gay-liberation movement. How students engaged in that struggle requires a much closer look.

The Campus Context

Sacramento State College, located in the California state capital, opened its doors to students in 1947, at first on a temporary basis in partnership with Sacramento Junior College.Footnote ⁴⁰ Originally designed to offer students upper-division coursework so they could work toward a bachelor's degree locally, it earned permanent status in 1948. By the 1960s, the college had transformed into what historian George Craft Jr. describes as a “regional college specializing in undergraduate liberal education and a broad variety of professional programs.” Enrollments steadily increased throughout the 1960s—7,318 students enrolled in fall of 1962, but by 1972 the total had increased to 14,670 full-time students. During this period, most students, almost two- thirds, continued to hail from Sacramento County. By 1973, 45 percent of the student body was twenty-five years or older, with women accounting for 44 percent of the students. The campus was still mostly white, despite an EEOP program initiated in 1967–1968 that was somewhat successful in addressing racial and ethnic disparities. Students of color still made up only about one-seventh of the entire student population, with African Americans only 3 percent of the total by the mid-1970s.Footnote ⁴¹

In 1965, an early scholar of the campus's history, Dwain E. Moore, suggested that the student protests that started to rumble in California in the early 1960s had little impact on the Sacramento campus. For example, Moore suggests that although some Sacramento State College students expressed interest in the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley (1964), the “issues never reached a high level of campus concern” on the Sacramento campus “because Sacramento State Students had always enjoyed freedom of speech and activity along with appropriate responsibilities for their speech and actions.”Footnote ⁴² A more recent assessment of the campus history determined that although Sacramento State was not a “vanguard of student protest” like Berkeley or San Francisco State, by the mid 1960s, enrollment growth and budget cuts had begun to take their toll, prompting students and faculty to seek more input into what historian George Craft describes as a “centralized and paternalistic governance system.”Footnote ⁴³ Thus, by the late 1960s, there was a notable increase in student activism on campus, especially involving civil rights and the war in Vietnam. When the National Guard opened fire and killed students at Kent State in 1970, for example, students organized teach-ins and marches in response.Footnote ⁴⁴ Nevertheless, as Craft argues, demonstrations and protests were “infrequent and pretty mild.”Footnote ⁴⁵ Although a 1968 self- study of the campus bears out some of Craft's observations, concluding that “with few exceptions, our students are also a timid and conformist group, willing to follow, willing to do what is expected of them, rather than to lead or to be creative,” the study also noted that students and faculty were beginning to question top-down control by university administrators.Footnote ⁴⁶ Even a cursory examination of the student-run campus newspaper in the late 1960s and early 1970s reveals protests and political organizing, from the war in Vietnam to Chicano student's support of the United Farm Workers. Into this milieu came the first attempts to organize gays and lesbians on campus.Footnote ⁴⁷

Organizing Begins

Influenced by the formation of gay student organizations at San Jose StateFootnote ⁴⁸ and the nearby University of California, Davis,Footnote ⁴⁹ Sacramento State students and faculty joined together to try their hand at a similar group. The idea originated with Sacramento State psychology professor Martin Rogers, who first broached it after having been asked to help out a University of California, Davis gay student organization on that campus. Invited by a UC Davis graduate student who knew him from the Sacramento gay bars, Rogers' opportunity to observe this group in the fall of 1969 was a transformative experience. As he recalled, “gay men and women, meeting for a purpose that was other than purely social, and other than purely sexual,” exploring what it meant to them to be gay or lesbian, was a novel idea. Rogers became convinced that such an organization, meeting in the daylight, in the open, and on campus, would be a good idea for Sacramento State.Footnote ⁵⁰

The first meeting of interested Sacramento State students and faculty—twelve men in all—was a dinner party at Rogers's apartment where he floated his idea. All the professors in attendance were young—in their late twenties or early thirties—and the students were in their early twenties.Footnote ⁵¹ Rogers recalled that those who attended that first meeting did so reluctantly, and that “we seemed to be scared, timid and hesitant.” When a neighbor knocked on the door, Rogers “went into a panic,” fearful that she would discover what was going on.Footnote ⁵²

This gathering was the genesis of what would become the Society for Homosexual Freedom, an organization formed by students and a few core faculty members. Its origins can in part be explained by the social context in which gay and lesbian students and faculty found themselves in late 1969 and early 1970. The SHF emerged out of an already established social network of gay students and faculty, rooted in relationships formed in what former Sacramento State student George Raya recalled as a somewhat “closed society,”Footnote ⁵³ one that took shape in local bars and private house parties.Footnote ⁵⁴ Moreover, like other early gay student organizations, faculty support, especially from faculty members Charles Moore and Martin Rogers, was crucial, reflecting their own shifting consciousness as gays and lesbians.Footnote ⁵⁵ “They were definitely not there for show, or distant supporters—Charles and Marty were in the thick of things,” as former Sacramento State student Edgar Carpenter recalled. They “were essential for the success of the group.”Footnote ⁵⁶ When faculty members Rogers, Moore, and Clark Taylor provided early support to a new gay student organization at Sacramento State, it helped transform the campus climate for gay, lesbian, and bisexual faculty as much as for students. The formation of the SHF was an initial step toward a new visibility for all.Footnote ⁵⁷

Early participants in the effort to start a gay student organization at Sacramento State College had limited initial connection to the gay-liberation movement emerging around the United States after 1969. As Martin Rogers recalled in 1975, “Gay consciousness or identity with the liberation movement had no meaning for me at the time.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Yet, these connections with gay liberation would emerge as the struggle for the future of the organization continued. After a few meetings, discussions about naming the fledgling organization nearly “terminated the life of the group,” as Martin Rogers noted. Like the University of California, Davis group, they finally settled on the Society for Homosexual Freedom; though as George Raya recalled, the choice of having homosexual in the name led to a loss of half the membership.Footnote ⁵⁹ Importantly, while costing some members, those early discussions clarified the purposes of forming the group. Martin Rogers recalls that choosing Society for Homosexual Freedom was deliberate, having a “political connotation without being confrontational.”Footnote ⁶⁰

At the time, Martin Rogers described sexuality and oppression as the twin linkages bringing these members together.Footnote ⁶¹ Yet, racial and gender diversity were not hallmarks of this early campus group. Like many early gay and lesbian student organizations, most SHF members were white men. Still, there were a few exceptions. George Raya, a Latino student also active in campus organizations like Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), was an early member of the SHF.Footnote ⁶² A few women attended early meetings of the SHF, upon discovering that the group was male dominated, but they did not return, perhaps finding their way to a budding women's liberation organization, which supported the SHF, also emerging at Sacramento State. The SHF drew also drew early support from other campus activists. In addition to Women's Liberation, as Martin Rogers recalled, students from the Students for Democratic Society (SDS). Hispanic student activists, and members of Associated Students attended some of the early meetings, offering ideas and inspiration for organizing on campus.Footnote ⁶³

Encouraged by these other student groups, and with several successful meetings drawing fifty or more people, the SHF began to talk about formally applying for recognition as a student organization. Vocal support from students on campus—from Women's Liberation to Associated Students—made a big difference.Footnote ⁶⁴ Students active in campus politics, most of whom were not gay or lesbian, were especially supportive and even involved as early members. For example, president of the student body, Stephen Whitmore, an “avowed heterosexual” and noted campus activist closely involved in the antiwar movement on campus, volunteered to be an officer.Footnote ⁶⁵ Early in the semester in 1970, the SHF drafted a two-page founding constitution claiming a purpose to “further the self-understanding among its members, to promote in the community better understanding of the homosexuality, and to facilitate the strengthening of social ties between [sic] homosexuals and between homosexuals and heterosexuals.”Footnote ⁶⁶ An important provision, which campus administrators would later mention as a problematic one, included a section welcoming “associate members” from the community.Footnote ⁶⁷ Both active members (available to students, staff, and faculty members) and associate members had equal voting rights, though associate members were ineligible to hold office.Footnote ⁶⁸ The SHF developed initial plans to open a coffee house, start a community newspaper, sponsor a symposium, and develop a speaker's bureau. As Martin Rogers wrote in his early history of the group, the mood was “generally euphoric.”Footnote ⁶⁹

Formal Recognition Denied

At the Associated Students of Sacramento State College (ASSSC) meeting on March 2, 1970, George Raya, an early participant in the formation of the SHF, a member of the student Senate and chair of the Organizational Affairs Committee, introduced a request for the SHF to be recognized as an official campus group. In the request, he noted that all the proper paperwork had been filed and the group had met all expectations of recognized student organizations. Despite such compliance, there was “extensive discussion” of the application. Dean of Students Donald Bailey, who attended the ASSSC meeting, protested that the organization “would reflect on the College” and he and the president “would get all the calls from the outraged public.” Moreover, he suggested, the group was only “being organized to obtain a platform,” though for what ulterior motive is not clear. Clark Taylor, a faculty member and also an initial organizer of the SHF, objected to this characterization, noting that they “just wanted a place to meet, and to better understand the problems of homosexuals.”Footnote ⁷⁰ Taylor defended the SHF, suggesting to Dean Bailey that he “should attend a group meeting before objecting.”Footnote ⁷¹ Raya, who chaired the Organizational Affairs Committee, through which all applications for new student organizations had to pass, recalled he was able to “grease the wheels” of the process.Footnote ⁷² ASSSC approved the petition by seven to four vote, with one abstention.Footnote ⁷³

The final decision, however, belonged to the campus president, who at that time had legal authority to recognize or deny student organizations. Despite the ASSSC recommendation, in mid-March 1970, acting Sacramento State College president Otto Butz refused to grant formal recognition to the SHF.Footnote ⁷⁴ Formal recognition would have provided support from the Student Activities office under the dean of students, the use of university facilities, connection with faculty advisors, “publication of existence” in formal university materials, the use of student banking facilities, and the use of the college name.Footnote ⁷⁵ Recognition itself was codified in administrative regulations as “granting by a state college of any benefit, resource, or privilege whatsoever, or allowing use of college facilities, to any such student organization.”Footnote ⁷⁶

What explains Butz's decision? Perhaps an uncertain campus climate contributed, including recent conflict over controversial speakers on campus. Or, perhaps Butz was concerned about an escalation of protest by students.Footnote ⁷⁷ Perhaps he was influenced by Dean of Students Donald Bailey, who would later suggest that although the SHF had “support of a politically minded strong minority,” the question of formal recognition elicited emotional responses from both sides.Footnote ⁷⁸ Yet, students organizing similar gay and lesbian organizations at nearby University of California, Davis, and at San Diego State encountered little initial resistance from campus administrators. Given such contrary examples, what led Butz to deny recognition?Footnote ⁷⁹

Just a few weeks before his decision, the Office of General Counsel for the California State College system issued an opinion about the question of whether a California State College campus was required to grant recognition to a homosexual student club—determining that it was not legally required to do so.Footnote ⁸⁰ That memo had been prompted by the founding of a gay liberation front at San Jose State College in the fall of 1969, a situation that had resulted in an angry response from some members of the system's Board of Trustees. In a letter to California State College Chancellor Glenn Dumke, trustee Dudley Swim asked, “do you for one minute propose to permit student clubs to be organized and officially recognized on our campuses for the purpose of practicing homosexuality? … My assumption is naturally that you find this just as objectionable as many of the rest of us do.”Footnote ⁸¹ Chancellor Dumke concurred. This was a “serious matter” that warranted “immediate action,” he wrote back to Swim.Footnote ⁸²

In a six-page analysis of the legal issues, the general counsel's office suggested that because student groups were part of the educational program of the state colleges, administrators had “considerable discretion” in recognizing student organizations. They recommended that college presidents could not discriminate based on race, religion, or national origin and that recognition of a student organization could not be “without any rational basis whatsoever.” College presidents were not beyond their discretion when homosexuality was the issue, especially given that homosexual acts (specifically sodomy) were still criminalized in California and that there were students under the age of twenty-one on campus.Footnote ⁸³ “In the instant case,” as the memo concluded, “the college president is certainly entitled to decide that a homosexual club, while perhaps a pioneering idea on the college scene, is not an endeavor in which he should invest the college resources. He is entitled to conclude, for example, that the risk of making the college a magnet for homosexuals by encouraging this novel proposal is not worth taking.” This is a great example of what legal scholar William N. Eskridge calls “no promo homo” arguments, which he contends must be “understood as rhetoric justifying the traditionally degraded social and legal status of GLBT people. The interplay between a politics of recognition and a politics of preservation involves the relative social status of both TFV [traditional family values] and GLBT people more than the ideological conflict between family values (which most gay people aspire to) and sexual liberty (which a great many traditionalists secretly enjoy or about which they lustfully obsess).”Footnote ⁸⁴

This analysis by lawyers for the California State College system clearly had an impact on how President Otto Butz (and Bernard Hyink, who would succeed him later that year) responded to the SHF on the Sacramento campus. Sounding themes that would resonate until the resolution of the case, Butz urged in his denial letter that granting recognition would “conceivably be seen to endorse, or to promote, homosexual behavior, to attract homosexuals to the campus, and to expose minors to homosexual advocacy and practices,” concluding that “this organization is not an endeavor to which Sacramento State College should extend recognition or in which it can properly invest its resources and services.” Fear of endorsing homosexuality, “protecting” younger students, and committing resources loomed large. Another explanation is the potential professional fall-out. Before he made the final decision, Butz learned he had not been selected as the permanent President of the campus, a role he had been serving on an interim appointment. Martin Rogers remembers attending a meeting with Butz shortly before he announced his decision about the SHF, asking Rogers “not to push this” and promising that if selected as the new President he would wait a few months and approve the request. Rogers suggests that Butz may have denied recognition because, once denied the Sacramento State presidency, he was going to seek a similar position elsewhere, thinking that granting recognition would result in professional harm.Footnote ⁸⁵

Regardless of his personal and professional motives, Butz may have also anticipated unfavorable response from members of the local community to an openly homosexual student organization on campus. Letters to Butz after his decision reveal community support for denying recognition. Routed to what was labeled on some documents as the “Homosexual File,” these letters are critical for understanding the context in which President Butz deliberated what to do.Footnote ⁸⁶ “I am writing to congratulate you on your refusal to uphold such a society,” a Mrs. Williams from Torrance, California, wrote. “It is encouraging to know there are still men who dare take a stand against the corruption that is trying to crush our morals. More power to you.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Eugenicist and defender of heterosexual marriage Paul Popenoe of the American Institute of Family Relations expressed his “great personal appreciation” for the decision barring the Society for Homosexual Freedom from campus. “As one who is devoted to the strengthening of family life,” Popenoe continued, “I have long felt that the homosexual propaganda has overstepped all possible bounds and is flooding the country with misrepresentations and falsehoods.” Popenoe went on to describe the homosexual as “not a whole human being, he is not even half of a human being, but at best is only one-third, lacking (a) interest in women and (b) interest in children, the two thirds necessary to perpetuate the race.” Butz thanked Popenoe for his kind letter and his “very sound analysis of the situation in regard to the homosexual issue.”Footnote ⁸⁸ Congratulations came in from Ralph Powell, executive vice president of the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, and other members of the community, including those who objected to homosexuality for religious reasons.Footnote ⁸⁹ One anonymous writer praised Butz because “having been a ‘homosexual’ myself, I know the horrors of this amoral and immoral state. Those who submit and encourage this kind of behavior contribute to the general declining of morals and self-respect in our land… . Stick to your guns. It will be no help to those sick with this perversion if all sense of their ‘wrongdoing’ is removed.”Footnote ⁹⁰

Butz's equally vocal critics did not sway him. The local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers passed a resolution “strongly condemning” Butz's denial of recognition for the Society for Homosexual Freedom, suggesting that the decision was in fact arbitrary and not principled. As the AFT local pointed out in a letter to Butz, campuses in the University of California system had already recognized similar organizations, and that there already were many other groups on campus “which have neither your endorsement nor that of the general communities.”Footnote ⁹¹ “Mrs. N,” characterizing his decision as “cruel and inhumane,” asked Butz if he realized “how many men, many with above average intellect, are doomed to failure because of opinions such as yours? … Just ask any mother of one of the cursed souls who has heard that piteous cry, ‘Mother, what is the matter with me. I am not like other boys?’”Footnote ⁹² Jerry McDaniel, a professor in the Government Department, speculated, “I don't know what kind of pressure you are under on this matter, but your excuses for denying the Homosexual Group's organization were terribly lame and largely irrelevant. It was one of the less distinguished of your decisions.”Footnote ⁹³ Dean Dorn, a professor of sociology described the decision as “an infringement of human rights.” As he concluded a letter to Butz, “I find repeatedly these days more and more of the community's ignorance and prejudices prevailing on the campus,” finding campus support for such prejudices especially galling. “What is a campus,” he asked, “a public relations firm?”Footnote ⁹⁴

Conflict Escalates: “A Great Miscarriage of Justice”

On March 13, 1970, the campus newspaper printed a letter from SHF member and ASSSC senator George Raya and several other ASSSC senators protesting that there had been “a great miscarriage of justice” in denying recognition to the SHF.Footnote ⁹⁵ This was one of several letters the State Hornet received about the president's decision. “I hope Mr. Butz also realizes,” wrote another student, “that these people look no different than he does—they have eyes, and ears and feelings—they also need food, and sleep, and sex… . I am sorry that you cannot relate to these people on a simple, human level and in a fair way give them their constitutional right of assembly.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Several other students challenged the rationale that recognizing the SHF would sanction illegal sexual acts. “The interest was not to promote illegal sexual activity (whatever that means),” they wrote, “but to promote knowledge about homosexuality … The real perverts are those who feel so insecure in their identity that homophiles is [sic] a threat to the little security they have.”Footnote ⁹⁷

ASSSC responded quickly. At their March 16 meeting, a divided student Senate agreed to file a lawsuit against the university on behalf of the SHF.Footnote ⁹⁸ Hinting at the broader importance of this case for students, ASSSC president Stephen Whitmore claimed it was bigger than the SHF, involving “the right to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and self determination.”Footnote ⁹⁹ Moreover, as reported in the campus newspaper, students were well aware that this lawsuit was needed to “define the powers of a college president with regard to recognizing student organizations.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ For gays and lesbians on campus, however, this case was more than just about student power. Anthropology professor Clark Taylor, who came out publicly as a gay man in an article published in the campus newspaper, did so in part to “add to human understanding and the alleviation of oppression,” now made even more visible by the lawsuit.Footnote ¹⁰¹ As Martin Rogers noted around the time of the lawsuit, support of other campus liberation groups, the campus newspaper, and student government was critical, since the lawsuit highlighted “realities of the larger world.” “Being denied recognition,” he asserted, nevertheless “produced a strong feeling of comraderie [sic] among group members.”Footnote ¹⁰² Former Sacramento State student George Raya recalled later that he became convinced of the larger importance of the case. “We got to stand up,” he remembered, “If we don't, who and if not now, when? So we said okay.”Footnote ¹⁰³

ASSSC hired local attorney John M. Poswall, an alumnus of Sacramento State College, former president of ASSSC, and a 1969 graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Poswall was a fortunate choice to represent the students.

Not only had he recently volunteered to serve as attorney for ASSSC for the nominal rate of $1.00 per year but he had also formed strong convictions about the importance of free speech during his days as a student.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ As early as 1965, Poswall declared in a speech delivered on the Sacramento State campus that “tolerance of another man's opinions sincerely expressed although they may be repugnant to one's own is essential in order that the opinions upon which we place high value may be preserved.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ As he later recalled, even in his time as a student at Sacramento, struggles between students and administrators were really about who had control over student groups, asking, “is it the students who run their organizations or is it the campus?” In his estimation, the struggle for recognition of the SHF was a continuation of those same tensions he had witnessed as a student just a few years earlier.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

In April 1970, Poswall filed a Petition for Writ of Mandate and a memorandum of law outlining why Sacramento State College should recognize the SHF.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The case was randomly assigned to Judge William Gallagher, a Republican appointee and well-respected member of Sacramento's legal establishment.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The Sacramento Bee even covered the filing of the lawsuit.Footnote ¹¹⁰ In his petition, Poswall outlined a few main arguments. First, he emphasized that the college had denied students their constitutionally protected rights of speech and assembly. ASSSC, the official student government of the campus, had filed the lawsuit not only for the benefit of the SHF, but for all Sacramento State students, as “the whole student body was denied its first amendment rights as an audience to hear the views of such an organization.”Footnote ¹¹¹ This tactic was quite conscious. As Poswall recalled, they were to argue the case as a straightforward free speech and association case—that this was a “gay group, their morals, or what they were going to do, was irrelevant, because we're talking the right of Associated Students to listen to all people.”Footnote ¹¹² Such a civil liberties approach had been a tactic employed by the ACLU with some success since at least the late 1950s in cases involving civil rights for homosexuals. Their efforts extended to challenges of police harassment, denial of due process, to restrictions on free speech and association.Footnote ¹¹³ Poswall's choice of approach built on such earlier civil liberties claims on behalf of gays and lesbians.

Additionally, the petition asserted that the college failed to apply the correct constitutional standard for speech and assembly required by the U.S. Supreme Court, citing the recently decided case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). Poswall argued that absent “clear and present danger” of an imminent lawless action, the university's action would result in prior restraint of constitutionally protected speech, citing several cases in which universities could not prohibit a speaker who “might” advocate illegal actions.Footnote ¹¹⁴ To deny the right of homosexual students to organize afforded all students the right to “hear, debate, challenge understand and ponder the problems of homosexuals.”Footnote ¹¹⁵

For the question of freedom of assembly, the petition relied on key cases protecting the rights of homosexuals to assemble, despite the illegality of homosexual acts. One of those cases, Stoumen v. Reilly, 37 Cal. 2d 723 (1951), was an important California Supreme Court case protecting the right of homosexuals to assemble in bars. As historian Nan Alamilla Boyd reminds us, Stoumen affirmed that “homosexuals were, indeed human beings, and the public assembly of homosexuals was not in itself illegal.” To forbid homosexuals to assemble, absent some other evidence of illegal wrongdoing, was beyond the state's authority; Stoumen was, in Boyd's estimation, “an important victory … in that it legalized the public assembly of homosexuals in California.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ Poswall was drawing on this line of cases in emphasizing how, in the case of students, the college had “conjured up sexual fantasies based on stereotypes” not on real evidence of illegal activity, to deny students from engaging in clearly constitutionally protected activity—speech and assembly.Footnote ¹¹⁷

In addition to speech and association claims, the petition argued that to deny the recognition of the SHF was a challenge to academic freedom: “Further, while today a liberal college administration denies the most hated of minorities, the same authority under which such discretion was exercised may tomorrow be used to deny recognition to other views that a majority might find unpopular or obnoxious. In an academic community such authority cannot go unchecked.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ For a university to allow some groups of students to use campus facilities but not others was improper, especially for ideas that were “unorthodox, unpopular or even abhorrent to the majority.”Footnote ¹¹⁹ If unpopular ideas were not welcome to be discussed on campus,” the petition urged, “they cannot be discussed anywhere … for the colleges have traditionally been the places where unpopular ideas were safe.”Footnote ¹²⁰

Finally, ASSSC argued that public college presidents did not have “unfettered discretion,” since a president was in effect a public official. Unlimited presidential discretion, the petition asserted, was akin to the licensing of speech, a practice that was contrary to the First and Fourteenth Amendments.Footnote ¹²¹ While California law did grant college presidents the “discretion” to recognize student organizations, such discretion needed to be constitutionally sufficient.Footnote ¹²² The petition asserted that using a student organization member's “status” as a homosexual was insufficient grounds for denying recognition of the SHF. Moreover, the policy not to recognize homosexual student organizations, as outlined by the California State University general counsel's memo, was vague and overbroad. The petition posited a situation where members of a fraternity or the water polo team might happen to be homosexual. Would the university be able to deny recognition to those organizations too?Footnote ¹²³

The ACLU of Northern California filed an amicus brief in support, emphasizing also that the heart of the matter lay with free speech and association. Arguing that the university could not simply deny recognition of the SHF because of a “desire to avoid appearing to support homosexuality,” the ACLU emphasized that in a society with a “plurality of moralities,” the government “may not select between them.” Moreover, the ACLU went further than Poswall in emphasizing an equal protection argument. “It is clear,” they argued, “that in no event may the president classify its potential users on the basis that some ideas are more controversial than others. Indeed, it is controversy which the First Amendment favors.”Footnote ¹²⁴

The College responded that the president in fact did have discretion in refusing to grant official recognition to the SHF. Moreover, they claimed such denial did not prohibit students from meeting on campus, since there already was a “free speech area,” thus not implicating the students' constitutional right of association. As they urged, “members of this society who are students will remain students. Nothing in the President's decision will prevent them from congregating peacefully on campus or even from holding meetings on campus.” What it only meant, as they admitted, was that students in the SHF could not use the college name, use college facilities, or use college banking facilities.Footnote ¹²⁵ At the heart of the college's argument was a claim that this was not a free speech case at all, but rather a decision that would prevent illegal activity on campus.Footnote ¹²⁶ Had homosexual behavior not been illegal, as President Butz urged on several occasions, he would have granted the SHF recognition.Footnote ¹²⁷

Additionally, attorneys for the college argued that courts should be reluctant to interfere with the academic community, citing the recently decided California case of Goldberg v. Regents of the University of California, 248 Cal. App. 867 (1967), involving a challenge to disciplinary proceedings brought by university officials against students on the Berkeley campus for their participation in rallies. The Goldberg court had refused to let the complaint go forward, suggesting that the students' due process rights had not been violated. Attorneys for Sacramento State suggested that the decision highlighted the “traditional reluctance” of courts to interfere with “administrative and academic affairs of colleges and universities.”Footnote ¹²⁸

In support of the university, several campus officials provided written declarations, most of which sounded a common set of themes.Footnote ¹²⁹ Administrators feared that recognizing the SHF would make Sacramento State a welcoming space for homosexuals from off campus, exposing “younger students to homosexual advocacy and practices.”Footnote ¹³⁰ “I based my decision,” Acting President Otto Butz declared, “on the likelihood that the publicity given recognition would act as a magnet, drawing homosexuals from the community to the campus,” a sentiment shared by Butz's successor to the Sacramento State College presidency, Bernard Hyink, who was added as a defendant in the summer of 1970.Footnote ¹³¹ Hyink was particularly concerned that recognizing the SHF would create “substantial risk” of underage students engaging in illegal homosexual activity.Footnote ¹³² Butz and Hyink shared a particular concern that SHF constitution allowed for “associate members” from the community. As Butz claimed in his declaration, if “even one Sacramento, State College student would be approached to engage in an illegal homosexual act,” it was enough to justify the “inconvenience” to the SHF of not being recognized. Administrators also argued that recognition did not further the educational effectiveness of the college. Butz, in particular, stated that homosexuality was “dealt with” in courses at the college, where professionals, not the members of a student club, could educate students.Footnote ¹³³ There was also a veiled concern of faculty influence over students. “While Dr. Butz would permit homosexual speakers on campus, books on homosexuality in the library and bookstores, homosexual students and teachers on campus,” the attorneys for the college maintained, “he believes a club creates too substantial a risk that students, because of participation in this club, would engage in homosexual behavior… . His experience shows that clubs tend to promote some point of view or objective and that teachers in the club are authority figures to students and thus would have great influence over students, particularly in the club environment. Thus he believes the risk of the undesirable result is substantial enough that it requires nonrecognition.”Footnote ¹³⁴

A Trial and a Decision

Behind the scenes, the parties prepared for a fall trial. ASSSC attorney John Poswall, employed at the time by a rather conservative Sacramento law firm, encountered some resistance from colleagues, many of whom were concerned about the image of the firm representing homosexual students. As Poswall later recalled, the firm's partners only consented to his working on the case if it was clear that he was representing Associated Students (ASSSC), that any lawsuit would focus on the constitutional rights of all Sacramento State students, and that he was not to represent the gay student organization. As it turned out, many community members were shocked that the firm was involved in the case, prompting phone calls to the firm asking if they were going to replace female secretaries with men. Poswall surmised that the fine distinction the firm had made—about representing Associated Students and not the SHF—had been “lost” on members of the community. Regardless, they had become the “queer lawyers.” Struggles over the implications of representing gay students manifested itself within the legal team as well. Poswall described a meeting with the Sacramento students in the offices of the ACLU. One ACLU lawyer entered the room and “in the presence of all of my clients and witnesses says ‘So, how's the cocksucker case going?’” Poswall looked over to the students in embarrassment, only to find the president of the SHF smiling. Poswall noted this as an example of how difficult it was for the lawyers to find ways to even talk about this case, despite its constitutional focus.Footnote ¹³⁵

Meanwhile, university officials investigated what was happening on other California college campuses. In researching the formation of the Gay Liberation Front at San Diego State, Dean of Students Donald Bailey informed President Hyink that the organization differed from the SHF in that there were no provisions for associate members from the community, an issue of great concern to Sacramento administrators.Footnote ¹³⁶ In another private memo, college officials did admit the advantages of official recognition. In a memo from Dean of Students Donald Bailey to attorney Craig McIntosh, representing the college, Bailey noted there were “some fairly marked advantages,” including the ability to raise funds, have a campus mailbox, use college banking services, and have officially sponsored events. With so many student organizations seeking space and equipment, it was sometimes difficult to meet those needs. Without recognition, an organization would be unable to even compete.Footnote ¹³⁷ Recognition would clearly affect the ability of the SHF to function on campus, regardless of what the lawyers argued about established “free speech areas” on campus.

The nonjury trial, held on October 8, 1970, was “standing room only,” though no official record of the testimony that day remains.Footnote ¹³⁸ The campus newspaper urged “a show of support for either side,” given the “enormity of the situation.”Footnote ¹³⁹ George Raya, who testified on behalf of ASSSC, agreed. “The important thing was going forward with the case,” he recalled, “saying, we can't hide and they are wrong.” As part of a wider effort to build a “gay society,” a campus organization could be a “foundation.” “We needed to have something first,” Raya recalled.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ After opening statements by attorneys for both sides, several witnesses testified, who apart from Raya also included SHF president Edgar Carpenter and former Sacramento State College president Otto Butz. Witnesses for the university sounded the same themes evident in the pleadings and declarations. Newly installed Sacramento State College president Bernard Hyink testified that recognition of the SHF would imply college sanction of illegal homosexual practices. Dean of Students Donald Bailey expressed concern that Sacramento State would become a “haven for homosexuals.”Footnote ¹⁴¹ On cross-examination, Bailey was “quite nervous” when ASSSC attorney Poswall countered the college's claim that younger students were at risk, citing statistics that the average age of students on campus was twenty-two for men and twenty-three for women and that 44 percent of the student body was already married.Footnote ¹⁴² The parties submitted the matter for the court's consideration the next day based on the testimony and points and authorities submitted.

Judge William Gallagher took a few months to consider the case. As Poswall learned years later, Gallagher's law clerk, Raul Ramirez, actually wrote the opinion and had convinced Gallagher that “basically, this is the law.” For a conservative judge like Gallagher to decide the case in the SHF's favor this way perhaps indicates just how important the constitutional claim turned out to be.Footnote ¹⁴³ Whatever the case, Gallagher issued a decision on February 9, 1971, on the petition for writ of mandate, ordering the college to “reconsider” the application for recognition in light of the findings laid out in the opinion. He gave the college until April 15 of that year to demonstrate compliance.Footnote ¹⁴⁴

In his decision, Gallagher outlined the question presented as whether “a college president may deny a student organization official recognition merely because the president believes that recognition would endorse or promote illegal sexual activity on the part of the student members.” Building on the arguments raised by the parties, Gallagher determined it was his job to decide whether that denial was “an arbitrary abuse of discretion” that would violate the students' constitutional rights.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ In his findings, Gallagher agreed with the ASSSC position that the university could only “suppress free expression” if there was a clear and present danger. An important piece of evidence was testimony from Sacramento State College presidents Otto Butz and Bernard Hyink that the purposes of the student organization, as outlined in their constitution, were not, in and of themselves, illegal. As Gallagher stated, President Hyink had rejected the application “in part on his personal belief and speculation that the proposed society created too great a risk for students [,] a risk which might lead students to engage in illegal homosexual behavior.”Footnote ¹⁴⁶

In outlining his findings, Gallagher determined that the denial of recognition was more due to “mere suspicion, disgust, unpopularity, and fear of what might occur.” Describing evidence from the college as “woefully weak” for the concern about students engaging in illegal homosexual activity as a result of recognition, the court used the same authorities offered by Poswall for ASSSC, including the Stoumen and Brooks cases. In conclusion, Gallagher found that absent some clear and present danger “that such recognition would bring about substantial evils,” the college's actions in denying recognition were arbitrary and unconstitutional. Importantly, Gallagher cautioned that any violations of the law could be prosecuted and become “grounds for reconsideration of recognition.” Moreover, recognition of such a student organization did in no way imply “an endorsement by the college.”Footnote ¹⁴⁷

Associated Students attorney Poswall praised the judge's action as a “lower court precedent setting decision.”Footnote ¹⁴⁸ In the Sacramento State student newspaper, President Hyink expressed appreciation to the court for “clarifying a position which up to this moment had not been ruled on.” Unless the chancellor's office was to appeal, Hyink stated, the college would comply with the court's ruling.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Norman Epstein, head of the chancellor's office legal department, determined the Sacramento case was not “appropriate” for an appeal.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ The student newspaper praised the administration for not appealing the case, suggesting that perhaps the “college is slowly becoming aware of its responsibilities in this age of new relevance.” The decision, proclaimed the editors, “should be seen as a triumph for justice in the area of human relations and not a political victory for the students.”Footnote ¹⁵¹ Student Edgar Carpenter, a member of SHF, declared the court decision “good publicity for the group and it's a step toward equalization, toward getting us the rights of any other group.”Footnote ¹⁵² With the conclusion of the lawsuit, ASSSC approved the constitution for the SHF, which the college formally recognized on February 19, 1971.Footnote ¹⁵³

“Opening Up”: The Impact of Recognition

The decision to recognize an official gay and lesbian student organization had immediate and very public impact at Sacramento State College. Renaming themselves the Gay Liberation Front of Sacramento State College, the organization was now able to sponsor official campus events, use campus facilities, and openly recruit new members.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Even before the settlement of the lawsuit, things began to really “open up,” in the words of faculty member Martin Rogers, for gays and lesbians on campus. As Rogers recalled, the lawsuit even prompted the SHF to begin holding open meetings.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ Publicity and visibility resulting from the struggle for recognition had given gay and lesbian faculty and students the very platform that Dean of Students Donald Bailey had initially feared.Footnote ¹⁵⁶

The most visible and immediate manifestation of this new platform was a “Gay Scene” symposium, held in April of 1971 on the heels of official recognition but in the works for several months. The first event of its kind on campus, the event included nationally recognized speakers including Allen Ginsburg, Metropolitan Community Church founder and gay liberation activist Reverend Troy Perry, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, key founders of the Daughters of Bilitis, and author John Rechy.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ The events were well attended, sparking a series of articles in the student newspaper and the Sacramento Bee.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ The public platform eventually broadened. Beginning in the fall of 1971, the student newspaper had its first openly gay editor, not surprisingly resulting in steady coverage of gay and lesbian issues and gay and lesbian student organized events.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ Within the year, the campus radio station hosted a “Gay Liberation News Program” in a prime evening slot.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ Students and faculty also proposed a Gay Studies Program, suggesting its mode of organization was to be “largely left up to the Gay students and faculty” in order to provide “this minority with a sense of cultural community which it has so long been dinied [sic].”Footnote ¹⁶¹ Following the lead of Women's Studies, the organizers first presented a proposal to the student Senate, rather than the Academic Senate, hoping to build a broader base of support first. ASSSC gave its stamp of approval (and $1,000 to jump start the program) in the spring of 1972.Footnote ¹⁶² Initial courses included offerings from anthropology, psychology, and literature. Facing faculty resistance, and never gaining official recognition, it offered students informal opportunities to experience a gay studies curriculum on their own. Importantly, these courses became a conduit through which more gay and lesbian undergraduate students became involved in the campus gay liberation organization.Footnote ¹⁶³ The campus also saw the creation of a “gay women's rap group,” and an increasing amount of gay and lesbian programming.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ It was through changes like this that gays and lesbians on campus began to challenge heteronormative assumptions.

Figure 1.

George Raya, c. 1971. Photo courtesy of George Raya.

Figure 2.

John Poswall, 1970. Photo courtesy of John Poswall.

Figure 3.

Headline in the Sacramento State College Campus newspaper The State Hornet, Sp. Coll. Sac. State. Reprinted with permission.

Importantly, campus recognition of the SHF had very personal impact.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ “Obviously the whole Gay movement—nationally and statewide—has changed us,” faculty member Charles Moore recalled. “But more especially, we have changed ourselves at Sac State; we have developed a sense of pride in our accomplishments as Gay people—Gay men and women working together—over the past four years. All our politically important actions have paved the way for cooperation from the campus.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ Similarly, faculty member Marty Rogers suggested that although denial of recognition “reactivated in most group members other similar and painful incidents in their lives,” having the support of student government and favorable coverage in the student newspaper marked a real difference, evidence of “mutual support.”Footnote ¹⁶⁷ Students expressed similar exhilaration at their victories. In a 1974 letter to a friend, George Raya recalled how recognition ushered in what he described as a “golden age.” “In this small backwater college,” he noted, “we created a utopia for gay people. The nucleus of it all was a half-dozen faculty members who, tenured and untenured, were very upfront about their sexuality. Together with us students we organized the Society for Homosexual Freedom. We were doing un-heard of things—creating a full department of Gay Studies, putting on week long symposium dealing with homosexuality, keynote by Allen Ginsberg … people were coming out left and right, straights and gays were mixing and great dialogues were developed.”Footnote ¹⁶⁸ Students reached beyond campus as well. The Gay Liberation Front started a speaker's bureau and visited other San Francisco Bay Area gay student groups to “see what they were doing.”Footnote ¹⁶⁹ Students became involved in an emerging community-based gay-liberation front, planning dances, sponsoring a coffee house, and helping to create a newspaper. Student Edgar Carpenter recalled that “everybody in Gay Liberation is also in SHF.”Footnote ¹⁷⁰ These transformations in how students and faculty saw their own sexuality illustrate what scholar Patrick Dilley describes as a shift from that sexuality as a purely a private matter toward awareness of its social dimensions.Footnote ¹⁷¹

Perhaps the most important way that the SHF decision had an impact beyond Sacramento State was in the legal arena. The resolution of the Sacramento lawsuit was an important watershed for gay and lesbian students, especially in the state's public colleges. This case was the first successful application of First Amendment free speech and association principles in support of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students seeking to create organizations. The decision resonated on other campuses in California and elsewhere. When students attempting to organize a Gay Life Students Union at California State College, Fullerton were denied recognition, two ACLU of Southern California attorneys, Robert Green and Laurence Buckley, helped resolve the case near the end of 1971, in part arguing from the precedent of the Sacramento case.Footnote ¹⁷² In assisting gay student organizations gain recognition of similar organizations throughout the 1970s, Orange County ACLU chapter member Jay Murley always brought a physical copy of the Sacramento State ACLU brief when meeting with student government or campus officials. As he recalled, he would “bang it up and down on the table” for emphasis.Footnote ¹⁷³ For gay and lesbian students at private institutions, the Sacramento case provided a limited, though somewhat helpful, precedent. If nothing else, the decision inspired attempts to organize and secure recognition. The University of Southern California (USC), a private school, had denied recognition of a gay student organization on that campus. The ACLU was interested in a potential lawsuit there to create a “precedent comparable to that set for state institutions by the Sacramento decision.”Footnote ¹⁷⁴

Moreover, the Sacramento State case became a benchmark of sorts for gay and lesbian students organizing in the wake of the decision. The Gay Students Council of Southern California, a coalition of several gay and lesbian student organizations founded the spring of 1972, claimed that successful recognition struggles were critical, suggesting that when a “GSU is denied recognition, fights for it, and gets it, or if a GSU lobbys [sic] for specific legislation, and it passes, then individual gay people see and feel results.”Footnote ¹⁷⁵ The Gay Students Council invoked the SHF case specifically in reporting about a struggle for recognition of the Gay Student Union (GSU) at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly), suggesting the university was “hoping to set back the favorable ruling at Sacramento State in these conservative central California courts.”Footnote ¹⁷⁶ At Cal Poly, the GSU had originally limited membership to homosexuals. Dean of Students Everett Chandler struck down the approval by the Associated Students in June of 1972, claiming that “there are no other groups, of which we are aware, recognized on any college campus which have a membership policy and purpose such as the one proposed here.”Footnote ¹⁷⁷ Bob Christensen, the GSU president, complained that there were no gay bars in the area, and “lots of gay people don't have a place to go,” justifying these membership limitations.Footnote ¹⁷⁸ After a legal battle in the courts, which upheld the administration's decision to reject the GSU bylaws and an unfavorable appeal, which upheld the decision of the lower court, the GSU rewrote the bylaws, removing the membership limitation requirements in question. The case would not ultimately be settled until 1975. Importantly, the success of the Cal Poly GSU must, in part, be credited to the success of the SHF case, which became the benchmark.Footnote ¹⁷⁹ As one account of the Cal Poly GSU case noted, Cal Poly president Robert E. Kennedy “did not disclose the contents of the opinion but he did say he no longer had any legally sustainable basis for non-recognition.” The Cal Poly case, the newly formed California Association of Gay Student Organization newsletter claimed, “probably removes obstacles from the path of any gay student organization at any publically [sic] funded educational organization in California.”Footnote ¹⁸⁰

The SHF case also influenced the decision of judges in other states. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, for example, cited the case to support its First Amendment analysis in favor of gay and lesbian students, noting that “it is not the prerogative of college officials to impose their own preconceived notions and ideals on the campus by choosing among proposed organizations, providing access to some and denying a forum to those with which they do not agree” (Wood v. Davison, 351 F. Supp. 543, 550 [N. D. Ga. 1972], involving denial of a “Committee on Gay Education” to hold a dance on the University of Georgia campus). Although the court primarily relied on the landmark U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972), (involving recognition of the Students for Democratic Society (SDS) on a college campus on First Amendment grounds) the Sacramento decision was just as important in the court's first amendment analysis in application to gay student organization. While Wood is the first reported such case, the Sacramento decision deserves recognition a key precedent for using free speech and association grounds to challenge denial of recognition of gay and lesbian student organizations.Footnote ¹⁸¹