Binghamton University and the surrounding community have a rich history of LGBTQ+ organizing dating back to the early 1970s, from the Binghamton chapter of ACT UP to the grassroots Binghamton group Save Your Own Life — now the Binghamton Pride Coalition — to the Harpur Gay Liberation Front. Today, students and professors are working to shine a light on that history.
The Gay Men’s Health Crisis oral histories project led by Sean Massey, an associate professor in women, gender and sexuality studies, and Thomas Holland, the Q Center’s outreach graduate assistant’s “From Stonewall to oSTEM,” honor the long-ignored lives and generational stories of LGBTQ+ people in Binghamton.
“I know at least in the early ’90s, there was a chapter of ACT UP, which is the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, in Binghamton,” said Casey Adrian ‘22, MSW ‘24, a social science researcher at Cornell University who worked on Massey’s oral history project. “They were active, both in the community and also on the Binghamton campus. I know a lot of Binghamton students were involved in that. And if you know anything about ACT UP, they were a very radical militant organization that was very unhappy with the government’s lack of response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.”
The Harpur Gay Liberation Front was founded in October of 1970 following an ad in The Colonial News, now Pipe Dream, gauging interest in forming a gay activist group on campus. The group was modeled after a national namesake, the Gay Liberation Front, a radical anti-assimilationist group dedicated to queer liberation.
Around the same time, there were queer and leftist student publications, like The Other Voice and Looking Left, and a newsletter, The Amethyst, published by Save Your Own Life. There was also a lesbian group, Herizon, on campus.
Both a political and social organization, the Harpur Gay Liberation Front led political actions, hosted teach-ins and were connected to chapters at other universities. They also held dances and donut socials.
“Especially for queer people, I think that that social aspect is inherently political,” Holland, a graduate student studying adolescent education in social studies, said: “Having those dances is inherently political. Reclaiming these events, like proms, is inherently, [if] not political, it’s a stance that you’re taking.”
The organization’s founders both died of AIDS-related complications in the 1990s, Holland said, but some first-generation members are still alive today, including Sarah Cruz, who he interviewed for his project. She told him that up to the 1990s, the group was more focused on political organizing — they drew pink triangles around campus, sent members to work on the AIDS memorial quilt and would stage campus protests.
“They would do things like break into the bowling alley and steal bowling balls and stuff like that, which is crazy because she gave me one of the bowling balls that they stole,” Holland said. “So in my apartment, I have a bowling ball from like 1994 that says SUNY Binghamton.”
Although the group’s relationship with the University administration was rocky, it was never outright hostile. They fought for a designated space on campus, which they eventually obtained, and were included in student handbooks starting in 1975. Still, a lot of LGBTQ+ students felt ostracized by the administration because of queer erasure in history and human sexuality classes.
“They had to fight to get what they had, but they were given space to fight for it,” Holland said.
In the late 1990s, though, he described a growing tension between the activist “old guard” and newer members more interested in the social side of things. Around that time, the organization was renamed the Rainbow Pride Union, and it started to gain a reputation as a hookup spot for gay students more than a liberation group.
Thirty-five years later, RPU is trying to reclaim its political roots. This semester, they are organizing on-campus protests, planning to attend Binghamton Town Hall meetings, and last year, they signed onto the Divest from Death statement, calling on the Student Association to pressure the University to implement principles of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
In the ’70s and ’80s, queer life in Binghamton was inextricably tied to queer life on campus. Students frequented the gay bars downtown, and locals took advantage of the resources LGBTQ+ student organizations provided, like the Harpur Gay Liberation Front’s “gay hotline.”
“It wasn’t just Binghamton students that were using it, in The Colonial News or Pipe Dream, there’s a little note from a local Binghamton high schooler that was like, ‘I’ve used this gay hotline, it’s really helped me,’” Holland said.
In fact, Cruz and some of her friends actually started attending Harpur Gay Liberation Front meetings when they were going to high school in Binghamton, Holland said.
Nowadays, with fewer gay bars in Binghamton and around the country, both Adrian and Holland highlighted queer-owned businesses downtown, like Parlor City Vegan and the Lost Dog Cafe, as unofficial gathering spots.
Anyone interested in learning more about the history of gay organizing in Binghamton can explore Massey’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis oral histories, Holland’s “From Stonewall to oSTEM” — which has a timeline up outside the Q Center — and “Boy with a Bullhorn,” a personal history of New York’s ACT UP chapter written by Ron Goldberg ‘80, a self-described “nice gay Jewish theater queen turned AIDS activist.”
There is so much more to Binghamton’s LGBTQ+ history that can never be discovered, partially because of how many lives were lost during the AIDS crisis. Still, projects like Holland’s provide a valuable window into the rich, fraught, joyful, scary gay life in cities across America.
“Everywhere, in every city, but I know from personal experience in Binghamton, there are older queer people in the community who, similarly are just really excited to talk about their lives and what they lived through,” said Adrian. “I would very much urge college students to not discount older community members and their stories and what they can offer for guidance.”