Word: schatz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...political is not being afraid to make a public stand. On other campuses I have visited, the students refuse to have their names in the paper, they are unwilling to do anything that will involve publicity." The opening scene for the movement then, Flaherty believes, was the day Ben Schatz "was willing to say out loud, 'I am gay.' That has made all the difference...
...Schatz remembers his step out of the closet with less enthusiasm. "The thing that got me started was that I came out and started to lose friends. And it made me very angry." What saved him, Schatz believes, was a "stubborn" attitude. "If other people thought I was peculiar, then I thought there was something wrong with them. Most people, unfortunately, do not feel that...
Despite the internal self-assurance, Schatz and students like him who were "coming out," still felt the need to band together. Schatz moved to Adams House ("None of my straight classmates wanted to go there that year, because of its gay reputation," he remembers with a grim smile.) That year, Schatz says, the first "gay clique" formed in Adams House. When he first moved in, the students who were a year older--the first group of open gays at Harvard--kept up their spirits and challenged the prejudices of fellow students by "being outrageous," Schatz remembers. "It was an attack...
...first of many excursions out of the protected world of GSA's Saturday night dances at Phillips Brooks House (PBH), Schatz and a few other Adams House friends would try going to House parties, attempting to integrate Harvard social life with tactics reminiscent of 1960s Freedom Riders. "So many times, I remember, we would go to a Mather House party, start dancing and the party would stop all of a sudden and we would be told to leave. It was pretty ridiculous; there were four of us out of 40 people at a party and people would get upset...
That summer Schatz started out as a Bloomingdale stockboy, got fed up, quit and then went to Washington to canvas for the equal rights amendment with the National Women's Political Caucus. His introduction to activism by way of feminist politicking, coupled with the news of the impending National March for Gays and Lesbians, catalyzed Schatz' political college career. "I decided I would come back to Harvard and organize for the march," he says...