![]() ![]() 5 José Esteban Muñoz's writing about queer utopias provides a framework for understanding the transformational political potential of these shared sexual cultures, which, while patriarchal and often heterosexual, challenged many of the sexual norms that loomed large in the late 1960s. 4 This essay also builds on Robyn Spencer's and Ashley Farmer's recent work, which has expanded historians' understanding of both gender and power within the party and of Newton's statements on sexual matters. 3 This article draws on Tracye Matthews's groundbreaking analysis of gender and sexuality in the BPP to further contextualize the party's masculinism amid a broader sexual politics whose rejection of breadwinning masculine respectability was deeply patriarchal and held transformative possibilities. Newton's and Thorne's experimentation with nontraditional forms of Black masculinity can illuminate threads connecting the Black Power movement's gendered imaginary to those of the Bay Area's countercultural, sexual liberation, and gay liberation movements. Laurence and other CHF members advanced a new militant vision of gay identity to align gay people with the Bay Area's Black Power, sexual liberation, countercultural, and antiwar movements, eschewing the homophile movement's comparative isolation and moderation. Cofounded in San Francisco by Leo Laurence and Gale Whittington in April 1969, the CHF was one of the first homosexual organizations that embraced what became known as the politics of gay liberation. Newton and Thorne's early friendship influenced the BPP and the SFL, both of which fundamentally shaped early gay liberation's political culture, including that of the CHF. 2 The SFL became active in 1965, and with Thorne's significant contributions to its development in the first half of 1966, it grew into a leading organization in the Bay Area's sexual revolution, with chapters around the country by the end of the decade. The party's wide-ranging ten-point program demanded "land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace," and the organization rose to national prominence for its commitment to the armed self-defense of Black communities. By the late 1960s, it was one of the most well known and influential Black Power movement organizations in the United States, with local chapters in cities across the country. Newton cofounded the BPP with Bobby Seale in an Oakland War on Poverty center in October 1966. The BPP, the SFL, and the CHF exemplify the range of organizations and movements that were seeking alternative ways to experience belonging while refusing to conform to the white normative nuclear family ideal in the mid- to late 1960s. The personal and organizational links between these three leaders illuminate a shared sexual culture that bridged the Bay Area's gay liberation and Black Power movements. Newton and Thorne were Black activists with roots in Oakland's early Black Power movement, while Laurence was a white gay liberation activist with experience in Thorne's SFL. This essay deepens our understanding of the late 1960s Bay Area Left by examining how these experiments with unconventional forms of belonging connected Newton with two lesser-known figures: Richard Thorne, who led the East Bay Sexual Freedom League (SFL) chapter in 1966, and Leo Laurence, who cofounded the Committee for Homosexual Freedom (CHF) in 1969. 1 Amid the political ferment of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Area in the second half of the 1960s, activists from various movements experimented with utopian alternatives to the nuclear family norm. Newton argued in 1970 that in order to have a chance to be free, Black people would have to discard "all these romantic, fictional finlisms, such as they're married and they live happily ever after with a white picket fence," he expressed a sentiment that was shared across the movements of the day, including the sexual and gay liberation movements. W hen B lack P anther P arty (B P P) cofounder Huey P.
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