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Thomson Says Battle Not Over (Union Leader, Jan. 3, 1975)

When classes resumed that fall, the GSO seemed an established part of the campus scene. Then, on Dec. 30, 1974, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston made it official: It upheld the January decision by Bownes, establishing once and for all that the GSO had a constitutional right to exist and hold social functions, just like every other student group on campus. The Union Leader ran more editorials, with headlines like "The Feds OK Sodomy," and Thomson made noise about appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. But he never formally made that request to the trustees; it was clear they'd had enough. "I don't think anybody is making any fuss about this thing except the governor and William Loeb," trustee Charles Spanos '57 told the Associated Press in January. Board chair Philip Dunlap added, "I really don't think it is an issue any longer."

It was 10 more months, October 1975, before the state Supreme Court issued its decision in the separate state case, and that last legal pronouncement proved an anticlimax. The court had a simple message for the university: If you wanted to say that homosexuality was a mental disorder, you should have said it in the federal case. Too late now. Case closed.

By then, most of the early GSO members had graduated, taking memories that were more personal than political. Twenty years apart, Arguedas and Baran went to law school, where each encountered a shock: They learned that the federal case about the GSO was considered an important precedent. Baran remembers staring at the name of the case—Gay Students Organization of the University of New Hampshire v. Bonner—on a course syllabus and shouting to herself, "That's us!" The case has been cited in at least 50 subsequent cases and mentioned in hundreds of books and articles, and Lambda Legal's website lists it as one of the 40 most important cases affecting the rights of GLBT people. "Deep in everyone's heart, we understood this to be a civil rights issue; no one had any animosity for the students," says Bonnie Newman, the former dean of students. "They were good, good people, and they made a difference. You never know when you'll be part of history."

The efforts of the GSO pioneers live on not just in the annual UNH pancake breakfast but in the vastly changed climate for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in the state and on campus. Even before new students arrive in Durham (and these days, many have already come out in high school, something unheard of in the '70s), they hear about all the types of support and acknowledgment available on campus— the President's Commission on the Status of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues; the student organizations UNH Alliance and Stonewall Grads; the full-time LGBTQ coordinator; the resources offered by the residential life office, counseling center, Office of Multicultural Student Affairs and Affirmative Action Office; the Safe Zones program; film series and other events dealing with gender identity; and the new Pathways career mentoring program.

It's a different world, and the GSO alumni are happy to be living in it. All have thriving careers and stable lives with long-term partners. Though they don't dwell on what happened in the '70s, it remains a memory and source of pride. "It was a very liberating time, literally and emotionally and culturally," says Richard Maxfield, who recently wrapped up a career in information sciences and now coordinates volunteers for the New Hampshire SPCA. "I think we educated a lot of people, took away their comfort level. I feel lucky to have been there."

Wayne April, a social worker in California, donates to the university whose name stands opposite his in the lawbooks: The state case is called University of New Hampshire v. Wayne April and Gay Students Organization. His memories of those years focus on specific moments, like the day a professor stopped him on campus. "He was married and had kids, and he said that if he could do things over again, it would have been different. And that's why I'm glad that I did what I did, because I could have been one of those people who live a kind of false life their whole lives, who never live genuinely. We opened up something that was waiting to be opened up for a long time, and people jumped at the opportunity to express themselves."

In the years since UNH, most of the GSO pioneers have been active in the fight against AIDS (April ran a residence for people with AIDS in San Francisco), and all have embraced other causes. Kruger, a programmer for a subsidiary of Xerox, helped start an independent Catholic Church in Virginia that welcomes every kind of diversity. Baran, a musician and music producer, focuses her New York law practice on defending poor people charged with crimes. Arguedas, whose name appears on many lists of top lawyers in the country and whose high-profile clients have included OJ Simpson and Barry Bonds, also works with the Innocence Project and defends activists who've been arrested.

Ann Philbin's job as director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (last year she was number 28 on Art Review's international list of the 100 most powerful people in art) lets her pursue a new form of activism: bringing people together to hear important speakers, watch films and in other ways unsettle their thinking. "My experience at UNH was completely formative and basically turned me into an activist, which is a spirit and a mandate I've had for the rest of my life," she says. Among the early GSO members, she stayed angry at the university the longest, even while acknowledging it was place where she met her best friends. She and Baran and Arguedas still talk regularly and take vacations together, and over time Philbin has mellowed. Last spring she agreed to host a UNH fundraising event at the museum. She'd said no several times before, but this time she agreed to do it, on one condition: She wanted to stand up at the gathering and tell the story of her group of friends at UNH and all the crazy and important things that happened, way back in the early days of the GSO. ~

Jane Harrigan was a journalism professor in Durham for 23 years and is now a book editor. She thanks her husband, Dave, for help with the legal research for this story.

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