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For the early GSO members, this unfolding melodrama created two New Hampshires: the nasty larger world that seemed to want them gone, and the friendlier campus world, where life continued somewhat normally. "I felt like being at UNH was a haven away from the rest of the state," says Kruger, who was one of April's housemates that year. His mental picture of New Hampshire from that time resembles a New Yorker cover: a little green oasis called UNH, with the Union Leader looming menacingly all around it.

Boot Out the Pansies (New Hampshire Sunday News, May 20, 1973, and Union Leader, May 23)

"Yesterday's action by the UNH Board of Trustees in voting to recognize a campus chapter of 'gay liberationists,' that is to say homosexuals, is the most repugnant, asinine and spineless bit of stupidity yet displayed by that bunch," read an editorial by B.J. McQuaid that Loeb liked so well, he reprinted it on the front page three days later. "It is nothing less than a disgusting affront to common decency and the sensibilities of New Hampshire's citizens."

Although a Union Leader headline declaring "The citizenry is sickened" no doubt overstated the case, the paper did print dozens of letters to the editor urging that gay students be drummed out of Durham before they corrupted their innocent classmates. One letter writer noted that a farmer finding his bulls engaged in homosexual acts "would slaughter them all." Even people making more supportive statements tended to portray gay students as objects of pity. In a May 23 letter to "friends of the university," UNH President Thomas Bonner supported the GSO's right to exist and urged the public to pay attention to more important matters on campus, like the energy crisis and budget shortfall. Then he added, "I question the human compassion of those who force the glare of morbid attention and publicity on these unfortunate youngsters."

As the school year ended, April wasn't feeling unfortunate, just overwhelmed. By stepping forward as the GSO's spokesman, he'd become the contact for what felt like every Granite Stater unsure of his or her sexuality. The citizenry was not so much sickened as confused, and suddenly they all knew where to find him. "I received so many calls from people who were struggling with their sexual identity, including older people who had nobody to talk to," April says. "At one point I thought, 'I can't help another middle-aged man.' I was so exhausted by trying to be everything to everybody." The other GSO members were grateful to him then, and even moreso looking back. "Wayne was the voice and face of the organization," says Richard Maxfield '74, who worked with April at the library. "He was so articulate. He wasn't an in-your-face kind of activist; he was logical and reasonable and just a great person to have representing us."

Are the Gays Worse than Editor's Hatred? (Boston Globe, May 25, 1973)

If fighting for gay rights seemed exotic to New Hampshire, it seemed natural to the students; they had been paying close attention to the movement that grew from the 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York. And if attacks by the Union Leader seemed new to the students, they were all too familiar to the UNH administration; Loeb had been blasting the university in one form or another for decades. Even before Bonner arrived as the new UNH president in 1971, Loeb's newspapers had launched attacks on him so vicious that the national media took note. Among Bonner's perceived offenses was being a friend of, and former legislative aide to, Sen. George McGovern, the anti-war Democrat who was running for president when Bonner accepted the UNH job.

"Next UNH President Once Marched Amid Viet Cong Flags" read the headline on a 1971 Union Leader story reporting that in his previous job as provost at the University of Cincinnati, Bonner had walked alongside students in a silent protest march. "His 'Cadre' Brought Beer, Liquor, All-Night Sex to University of Cincinnati Campus," another headline proclaimed. Bonner fought back, issuing press releases and visiting media outlets to make sure they knew about positive happenings on campus.

Those efforts later paid off for the GSO, if not for Bonner. As the controversy wore on, most of the other papers in New Hampshire, plus occasionally the Boston Globe, ran editorials and columns supporting the students and blasting Loeb and Thomson, whose candidacy for governor Loeb had ceaselessly championed. The New Hampshire became increasingly articulate in its outrage, at one point describing Loeb and Thomson this way: "Like ancient oracles they sit in Manchester and Concord, inveighing against the wages of sin between hotline calls to the Almighty, with all the grace and presence of mind of so many chain-gang bosses." Editorial writers around the state opined that raising a ruckus over the GSO was merely an excuse to perpetuate a longstanding bias against money for education. As Foster's Daily Democrat in Dover editorialized, "The furor initiated by the Manchester press and echoed by its puppet in the governor's office is taking place in order to sabotage efforts to adequately fund the university."

Dance Stirs New GSO Debate (The New Hampshire, Nov. 13, 1973)

While the students were away for the summer, the controversy quieted somewhat, so in the fall the GSO members decided to hold a dance. "We were kids," says Ann Philbin '76. "We took school seriously and our causes seriously, but mostly we just wanted a normal college life." Roma Baran '74G , a music grad student who lived with Philbin and others in a big house on Silver Street in Dover, remembers the GSO as "this little group of ordinary, nice, pleasant, well-meaning people. We didn't picket or shout or sit in. Our level of activism was pretty benign." So was the campus response. In October The New Hampshire published the oh-so-'70s results of an unscientific survey done by the GSO: Of 485 students who filled out the questionnaire, "not only did over half the respondents smoke marijuana regularly and a whopping 70 percent engage in frequent sexual activity, but an overwhelming 90 percent had no objection to having a gay organization on campus."

Because the GSO would hold several dances in the next few years, members' memories of the events have converged. Baran remembers a retro daytime sock hop where they decorated with pink streamers and danced the jitterbug to 45 rpm records. April remembers a nighttime dance attended by more heterosexual students than gays. Philbin remembers more reporters and picketers than dancers. Various newspapers reported that 60 to 75 students attended. No one reported any trouble.

Nevertheless, the dance turned out to be the trigger for the next round of controversy, and this time it led to the courts. The day after the dance, a committee of the trustees said the university was looking into the legality of the GSO's holding social events, and until that question was settled, no more could be held. Then things began to happen fast. On Nov. 21 the university filed for a declaratory judgment in Strafford County Superior Court, asking whether it had the authority to revoke recognition of the GSO and to limit the group's activities to lectures and discussions. Eight days later, the American Civil Liberties Union sued in federal court, alleging that the ban on social functions violated group members' rights under the First and Fourteenth amendments.

The GSO had already scheduled a play called "Coming Out," to be performed by a Boston theater troupe on Dec. 7. The new rules meant the group could have the play but not the social event it had planned afterward. When the GSO offered Thomson free tickets to the play, the governor responded with a note saying that he wanted the play barred from campus and, as far as the GSO, "it is my belief that every member should be dismissed from the university."

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