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The ‘60s and ‘70s were an era when students in several previously
disenfranchised groups — ethnic minority, women, physically disabled,
and what were then termed “sexual minorities” — were all going through
similar processes of organizing themselves, creating a community
identity and, ultimately, seeking political power in organizations like
the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC). Holding
office in the ASUC was important because it was the officially
recognized student government and thus the ASUC’s elected leaders had
access to University officials to bring issues to the table and advance
their causes.
Once gay and lesbian students began to come out at Cal and form
organizations such as the Gay Student Union (GSU), it was only a matter
of time before they began to seek direct political power in other
forums.
One of the first — perhaps the first — openly gay individual to
be elected to a position in the ASUC was Steve Wilford, a graduate
student who won a seat in the ASUC Senate in Fall, 1970. Two articles
from the Daily Californian (below) profile him before and after the
election.
As the articles show, the issues of gay and lesbian students at the time
were direct and basic: obtaining workspace for their organizations in
Eshleman Hall (the ASUC’s office building); dealing with the student
health service (Cowell Hospital), where counselors and psychiatrists
still tended to treat homosexuality as a mental illness; addressing
occasional police harassment of gay students; and getting the campus
career center to adopt an anti-discrimination policy.
Wilford was followed in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s by a number of other
successful gay and lesbian ASUC candidates who often showed considerable
strength at the polls. Student political parties learned to respect the
clout that gay and lesbian student voters — whether “out” or closeted —
could and did wield in the privacy of the voting booth.
Gay Runs for Senate
A gay student leader is running for ASUC Senate on the Coalition for
Student Action ticket.
According to Steve Wilford, a leader of the Gay Student Union, many
political parties asked him to run on their ticket, but Wilford refused
saying, “These parties might like our voice, but they are not interested
in giving us a fair shake.” The CSA, Wilford said, “will include our
interests.” Commenting on his candidacy, the homosexual said, “Gay
students have certain specific problems and needs that must be
addressed… I am running as a representative of gay students and gays in
general.”
Present gay needs, he said, consist of an office in Eshleman Hall, and a
gay student center near campus. Wilford and other members of the Gay
Student Union feel getting into student government can help them achieve
their goals. If Wilford is not elected, the gays will continue to lobby
for their goals, Wilford said, “Eventually, we’ll have to come out on
our own.”
The Senate candidate said the gay population of Berkeley is “very large
and hard to determine,” because many of the homosexuals remain unknown.
On the plan for homosexuals to move into Alpine County with the
intention of taking political control, Wilford commented, “The GSU (Gay
Student Union) is not considering it, it’s an individual thing.”
Wilford concluded, “I am tired of people saying my way of life is wrong;
this has simply got to stop.”
From the Daily Californian, December 2, 1970
Senator Discusses Gay Lib
Gays Face Problem of Oppression
By Laura Wallace
Staff Writer
Steve Wilford, a gay ASUC Senator, claims, “The problems of gay people
are the problems of people relating to a society that has been quite
vicious in oppressing them, in denying them their humanity, their right
to exist as who they are, their sanity, and their rights.”
In an interview with the Daily Californian, the attractive,
rugged-looking, bearded student spoke in a self-assured manner as he
delineated his views on the problems facing the gay community, his work
as an ASUC Senator, women’s liberation, and his personal life.
Attempting to live the gay liberation line he preaches, he openly lives
with a fellow gay to whom he is strongly emotionally attached, and with
whom there is not the stereotypic role playing. They live with other
gay males, but their apartment guests and friends also include male and
female straights. Wilford plays the guitar, sings, writes songs and
poetry, enjoys baking and backpacking in the mountains, and until
recently, practiced yoga.
On a quarter leave of absence as a Chinese history graduate student, he
is an ASUC representative on the Student Health Services Advisory
Committee. Wilford has kept his gay liberation activities “completely
tangential to the Cowell hospital affair,” referring to the recent
controversy at Cowell’s Psychiatric Clinic. According to Wilford, the
Gay Student Union (GSU) plans to start preliminary talks with the clinic
in a few weeks. “The counselors who deal with gays should have an
understanding of where gays heads are at, and not go off on weird trips
on prevention, cure, and illnesses,” he said, scorning their guilty
until proven innocent approach. “Mental health professionals are
expected to be able to counsel people on all problems of sexuality, but
from my experience, they’re not competent to do so by virtue of this
training alone,” he continued. “They haven’t come to grips with their
own sexuality — most of America hasn’t — they’ve kept the American woman
bound up for years in the chains of the vaginal orgasm,” he added.
Munching on a soy and wheat flour pancake, Wilford reflected that being
a gay senator has helped when the GSU talked with certain administrators
on specific issues. It helped when they spoke to Campus Police Chief
William Beall because “the GSU had an in with ASUC as opposed to an
everyday run-of-the-mill faggot,” he explained.
Even though no arrests have been made on campus for public homosexual
acts, there have been three incidents of hasseling [sic] since last fall
by the police according to Wilford. Knitting his brows, he said he is
not interested in justifying or defending public sex, but the fact that
the police would spend time bothering with people’s morals, and the
manner in which they do it, is part of what he calls a “priggish and
piggish attitude.” He accused them of attempting to intimidate,
humiliate and frighten people they catch because “they have no basic
understanding of where they (the gays) are at, and they are not
concerned about relating to them as human beings.”
Explaining why he works predominately as a gay person rather than as an
ASUC Senator, Wilford said that ASUC cannot do much for the gay people
on this campus. The GSU has many internal problems now, but he said he
sees “A willingness on the part of some to begin learning about
themselves and the world, to deal with their oppression,” as a hopeful
sign. He explained that they began a study group “to help us all build
the self confidence necessary to face the world, and for intellectual
gains with which to take the fight to the other side.”
Wilford said the two main problems facing the gay community are the
straight community’s attitudes, discrimination, oppression and power,
and the problems within the gays themselves. “If you’re told you’re
sick and perverted for your whole life, you’re going to believe it,” he
explained. Like women’s liberation, he said, they have to fight on both
fronts, because they have “subconsciously internalized” the values of
society. “I’m constantly fighting it myself,” he emphasized. “We have
to deal with people who don’t like themselves, or are not happy with
what’s going on, or suffer the bad effects of having to lead double
lives,” he continued.
“We’re into a true social and emotional revolution,” he said, adding
that certain political groups view them and women’s liberation in terms
of a “class trying to free itself from its oppression without looking at
what the movements are really saying — what sexism is for everybody.”
"We’re redefining the roles of masculinity and femininity, rejecting the
macho image on one hand, and the dumb blond image on the other, the
objectification of people as a means of relating in a sexual way — it’s
a new definition of humanity,” he said, thoughtfully stroking his beard.
Wilford and other gay friends have been speaking to high school,
college, and graduate students, and youth groups for several months. He
is involved with negotiations with the Berkeley Herrick Community Health
Program, and the Oakland Census Bureau, and coordinates the speakers
bureau for the Homosexual Action Bureau which he will temporarily head
this summer. He is also on a San Francisco Mental Health Association
task force that wrote a policy statement and background report. The
coordinating and review committee rejected it which, Wilford said,
“astounded just about everybody.”
He said the GSU is trying to get the placement center here to adopt a
basic policy statement that forbids hiring discrimination on the basis
of “sexual preference,” and they now provide informal draft resistance
counseling. Wilford said that many radical gays have rejected
capitalism and embraced Marxist-Leninist lines because “capitalism feeds
on competition and hierarchies which results in putting down others.”
From the Daily Californian, April 4, 1971
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