Allen Ginsberg

1926-1997

Poet, Revolutionary

While censors were forcing Lucy and Ricky to sleep in separate beds on I Love Lucy, Allen Ginsberg was coming out -- and speaking out for gay rights.

Ginsberg, once a heavy drug user, turned from traditions and rules wherever he could. He was a Buddhist and one of the original hippies. Along with Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassidy, Ginsberg helped found the movement of skepticism in moral and political rules that led to the hippie generation.

In 1956, Ginsberg wrote "Howl," a long, now-famous and then-controversial poem, that deals with his homosexuality and his communist background. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, staring hysterical naked," the poem begins.

"The title notwithstanding, the poem itself is an act of sympathy, not rejection," Ginsberg wrote about the poem. "In it I am leaping out of a preconceived notion of social "values," following my own hearts instincts--allowing myself to follow my own heart's instincts, overturning any notion of propriety."

But "Howl" wasn't his only occasion to leap out in controversy.

In 1960, Ginsberg went on TV calling for the legalization of marijuana. In 1967, he was arrested for protesting the Vietnam war. He was tear-gassed while protesting the 1968 Democratic convention, and in 1996 Ginsberg joined others in a Supreme Court case attempting to end federal regulations on the hours during which "indecent programming" can air on radio and TV. He continued to read his works at New York clubs and fight for his causes until shortly before his death from complications of liver cancer at age 70.

The lesbian and gay community is as diverse as the larger community of which we are a part. While there are some who would like the leaders of our community to be squeaky-clean saints who will impress the onlooking world with their overt moral values, Ginsberg's contribution helps illustrate the wide variety of people who are lesbian or gay. That is something it is equally important to show the world.