Thank You for My Life

The Life of Harry Hay: Pioneering Gay Activist

Jim Cartwright

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9798385276820
  9798385276837
• eBook ISBN:
  9798385276844
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Before the gay rights movement had a name, Harry Hay had a question: Who are we?

At a time when gay men were labeled criminals, sinners, and mentally ill, Hay dared to imagine something radically different. In 1948—decades before Stonewall—he proposed that gay people were not broken individuals but a cultural minority with unique gifts to offer the world. That vision would help ignite the modern gay rights movement.

This lyrical biography in verse traces Hay’s life from a bullied boy in the 1920s to a founder of the Mattachine Foundation, the first enduring gay rights organization in the United States, and later to the spiritual community of the Radical Faeries. Along the way, Hay wrestled with politics, love, and belonging—never abandoning his search for gay identity rooted in dignity and purpose.

More than a life story, this book invites readers to consider how identity is shaped, claimed, and transformed—and how one person’s daring vision can help change history.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Author’s Note
• Big Trouble
• To Thine Own Self Be True
• Sissy
• The Male Brotherhood
• The Forbidden Book
• The Dream of Him
• A Burning Cross
• Friendships Prohibited
• Tall for His Age
• The Blessing
• Socialist Ranch Hands
• The Sailor
• Homosexuals in Chicago and Berlin
• The Perfectly Darling Faerie
• The Duchess and the Actor
• Harry Throws a Brick at the Police
• The San Francisco General Strike
• The Rattlesnake Bite and the Strokes
• Friend in the Closet
• Communism in America
• A Mannish Woman
• The Specialness of the Moon
• A Handsome Stranger
• The People’s Song Movement
• Music: The Barometer of Class Struggle
• American Communists Don’t Know What Stalin Has Been Doing
• The Kinsey Report
• There Is No Such Thing as a Gay Person
• No One Nowhere
• The Mattachine Foundation
• The Uplift
• The Vow
• Who Are We?
• Harry the Dictator
• Women in the Mattachine
• The Therapist Was Wrong
• Harry’s Mother Gets an FBI File
• The Hat Maker
• The Entrapment
• One Magazine
• The Takeover
• Depression
• The House Un-American Activities Committee
• The Death of Another Relationship
• Two-Spirits
• Harry’s Final Coming Out
• The Circle of Loving Companions
• Snake Brother
• Passing on the Blessing
• Stonewall
• New Mexico
• Tragedy in the Desert
• Final Years in the Desert
• The Radical Faeries
• The Movement Grows
• Subject-Subject Consciousness
• Sex Magick
• Heart Circles
• Lesbian Feminists and Queer Theorists
• What Harry Stands For
• A Darkness Descends
• Thank You for My Life
• You Must Be Proud
• The Recessive Gene
• Radically Gay Uncle
• The Dance for All People
• The Grand Marshal
• The Caregiver Circle
• Washing Harry
• Coda Part 1: Death Under a Full Moon
• Coda Part 2: A Plaque on Castro Street
• Coda Part 3: The Call
• Coda Part 4: Who Are We? (song lyrics)
• Selected Bibliography