Gay Caucus Marks 25th Anniversary

For Robert W. Mack ’71, seeing hundreds of fellow LGBT alumni at Harvard this weekend was “like a mirage or a dream.”

Alumni from all but two of Harvard’s living classes descended on Cambridge to celebrate the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus’s 25th anniversary, the country’s first-ever reunion specifically for gay alumni. Attendees and organizers said the conference is a sign of years’ worth of growth.

“It is a culminating moment. There has been such an extraordinary amount of progress on issues of interest to LGBT people since we started in 1983,” said philosophy professor Warren Goldfarb ’69, who was the first openly gay professor at Harvard.

The weekend was centered around a series of events and panels, including morning prayers with FAS and Kennedy School lecturer Timothy P. McCarthy ’93, a speech by University President Drew G. Faust, and a legal panel with gay rights advocates like law professors Laurence H. Tribe ’62 and William B. Rubenstein.

Evenings featured film screenings, a “Gaydalus” afterparty at Daedalus, and cocktail receptions.

These social gatherings brought together several generations of alumni, lending a range of perspectives on gay life at Harvard over the years.

“There are people here who had a terrible experience at Harvard, and this is their first time back,” said McCarthy, who is the current student and faculty liaison for the Gay and Lesbian Caucus.

Mack recalled his loneliness as an undergraduate from 1967 to 1971—the College’s first gay students group was founded in 1972.

“When I was in college, I knew no other gay people. I went through all of college...waiting for someone to show up, but everyone was in hiding,” he said. “Everybody was deeply in the closet.”

Mack said that meeting other gay classmates at this weekend’s conference and his 25th reunion had been “healing” experiences because he realized being in the closet had been “the common experience for most people in my situation.”

Now, Mack said, “It’s thrilling that we’ve planted our tent in the middle of Science Center Lawn.”

For Wharton Sinkler ’60, the conference offered a chance to “review those fours years” when he was deeply unsure of himself and his sexuality.

Sinkler didn’t come out of the closet until age 62, and this weekend was the first time he had returned to Harvard as an openly gay man.

“I just can’t imagine a world like this [conference] when I was 20. I just can’t. It’s been a very significant weekend for me, very, very significant,” he said. “It really is never too late. Here I am at 70 and my life is turning around and opening up.”

Even after gay students began coming out about their sexuality on campus, their experience was often difficult.

Kevin B. Jennings ’85 recalls the devastation of HIV in the gay community throughout the 1980s. His freshman-year roommate, first Harvard boyfriend, and a best friend have all died from AIDS.

“I can never step foot on this campus without thinking about my friends from the Class of 1985 who are gone,” he said.

The conference’s last panel offered statistics on Harvard’s current gay culture. In a poll conducted by Mack, 41 of 41 current undergraduates said they felt supported as LGBT students at Harvard.

Mack believes that Harvard is now “about as gay-friendly as any school in the country.” All of the Caucus’s goals from the past 25 years, most of which sought to secure basic rights, have been met.

Steven D. Cohen, a recent graduate of the Kennedy School, said he had a “phenomenal” experience at Harvard, but that there’s still work to be done across the University.

“I didn’t find a lot of support at the Kennedy School. There were no openly gay faculty or staff,” he said. “I think the graduate schools have a long way to go to catch up with the College.”

Two of Cohen’s classmates spent their time at the Kennedy School in the closet and waited until this weekend’s conference to come out as a couple.

Despite all the progress in gay rights over the years, Mack said the Caucus still serves a vital role. “There’s always a desire for community with people who have shared experiences and shared values, and, less high-mindedly, there’s a desire to socialize.”