How Gays Paid to Play Politics in the Reagan Era

In 1977, with singer Anita Bryant leading a crusade against gay rights across the country, a small group of gay men met in Los Angeles to form the first political action committee advancing the cause of gays and lesbians in the United States. MECLA, the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles, had modest goals: its members simply wanted to live their lives free of discrimination. At first, they had to beg candidates to take their money.

After helping turn the tide against the Briggs Initiative, a 1978 measure that would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching in California’s public schools, the organization saw its fortunes turn. Seemingly overnight, candidates for local, state and national office clamored for MECLA’s blessing — and its money.

In this retrospective, journalist David Hunt — who covered MECLA for Pacifica Radio in the 1980s — revisits the people and issues that put MECLA at the forefront of America’s culture wars. Listen to his archival recordings of some of MECLA’s breakfast and dinner meetings, featuring political heavyweights of the time such as presidential candidate Gary Hart, vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, California Gov. Jerry Brown and former Representative Bella Abzug. 

Discover how MECLA’s push to close gay bathhouses caused a rift in the gay community, and how its reliance on “checkbook activism” met with mixed results. Explore the heartbreaking reasons for its demise in 1992 in the dark days of a global pandemic.

In its 15-year existence, MECLA did what no other LGBTQ organization had done before: it earned the respect of America’s political establishment as a “special” special interest group with political clout and generous financial resources. Its rise — and fall— is a queer story of power politics in the Reagan era.

A note on language: The initialism used today to identify sexual and gender nonconforming people and communities, such as LGBTQ, was not common until well into the 1990s. "Gay" was a common shorthand word for the movement before then. MECLA generally identified itself as a "gay" or "lesbian and gay" organization. I follow that practice in this program. 

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.