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FOUNDING MEMBER
R EMEMBR A N C E
Arnie Kantrowitz, Gay Pioneer, Author,
Professor, and Lover, Dies at 81
Arnie Kantrowitz and Lawrence Mass at New York City Pride in 2019.
BY ANDY HUMM
Arnie Kantrowitz, who died
at age 81 on January 21,
was a leader of the generation
of activists in the
immediate aftermath of the Stonewall
Rebellion who put their lives and
livelihoods on the line to advance the
cause of gay liberation. He died from
complications of COVID, according to
his life partner, Dr. Lawrence Mass.
A leader of the Gay Activists Alliance
(GAA) in its fi rst year in 1970,
Kantrowitz was seen at a City Hall
gay demonstration in 1971 as he was
about to be trampled by a police offi
cer on horseback. As a professor of
English at the College of Staten Island
from 1965 to 2006, his high-profi le
gay activism was not entirely accepted.
Andy Podell, who also taught
there, said Kantrowitz “had a collection
of rocks that he displayed on
his desk at the College that had been
thrown at his offi ce window.” But that
did not deter Arnie from being himself
and working to make coming out
easier for generations to come.
One of Kantrowitz’s most famous
early quotes was thus: “When I see
young men and old women coming
out of the closet and being called ‘faggots’
and ‘dykes’ and ‘pariahs’ and
‘betrayers of the family dream,’ then
I am honored to be gay because I belong
to a people who are proud.”
Kantrowitz, GAA’s vice president
under Jim Owles, was one of the
group’s most articulate spokespersons
and carried the message of gay
liberation into the hostile territory of
FRED ORLANSKY
talk shows of the early 1970s, where
activists were often pitted against
anti-gay bigots — including the hosts
themselves. On “Jack Paar Tonite” in
1973 with a panel of GAA members,
Paar objected to gays who “proselytize”
and Kantrowitz patiently explained
why the word “fairy” was offensive.
Paar also referred to Genet as
a “pederast” and that he “had a right
to be offended” by Genet’s proclivity
for “goats.” Kantrowitz said, “I think
the goat might have a right to be offended.”
Kantrowitz also made an eloquent
plea for gay people being open.
Allen Roskoff, a GAA comrade and
now the president of the Jim Owles
Liberal Democratic Club, remembered
Kantrowitz as “an intellectual
leader and a dedicated activist” who
had “colorful clothes like the Beatles
wore” and created “a commune on
Spring St. with early activists.”
Kantrowitz, Mass wrote, started
“a pioneering Gay Studies course at
the College of Staten Island, where he
served as chairperson of the Department
of English.”
James M. Saslow, who taught art
history at CUNY and authored four
books on LGBTQ+ art history, said,
“For us in the post-Stonewall generation,
Arnie was present at the creation,
and he was a major role model
to me, as to so many others, especially
students…. It’s hard to overestimate
the dramatic effect Arnie had on his
students at plain-vanilla Staten Island
with his effulgent mustache and
outspoken queer politics long before
the word ‘gay’ had reached there.”
Saslow was inspired to write for
The Advocate after reading Kantrowitz’s
cultural commentary there. He
said, “We shared something else as
well: our fabled, decrepit New Jersey
home town, about which he wrote astutely
in his autobiography, “Under
the Rainbow.” He vividly evoked the
eternal gay dilemma: Newark was
both a home he loved and a prison he
couldn’t wait to get away from.”
Kantrowitz’s 1977 memoir, “Under
the Rainbow: Growing Up Gay” — a
classic of the genre — dealt with his
struggles coming to terms with his
homosexuality pre-Stonewall and
how he passionately threw himself
into gay liberation soon thereafter.
Kantrowitz “spoke his mind like a
prophet,” Saslow said. “Activists are,
by nature, optimists, or they wouldn’t
bother being activists; Arnie’s wry
pessimism was the witty shell around
a heart of schmaltz.”
In 1985 Kantrowitz, with his closest
friend, activist, and gay fi lm historian
Vito Russo and others, co-founded
the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Defamation
League (later GLAAD) to counter
the lack of coverage — and defamatory
coverage — of the LGBTQ community
in the media, especially by
tabloids such as the New York Post.
It was a grassroots activist group in
those days — some of the darkest of
the burgeoning AIDS pandemic.
Kantrowitz and Mass, a co-founder
of GMHC and the fi rst to write about
what became AIDS, were not just life
partners since 1982, but the original
gay power couple. Mass said after an
argument about writing about closeted
public fi gures, “As I saw it, truth
was more important than any other
consideration. That’s when Arnie told
me the story of one of his students who
asked his candid opinion about the
dress she was wearing. Arnie decided
to tell her the truth — it was ugly, it
was all wrong. At that point she confessed,
crestfallen, that she’d made it
herself. That, Arnie, said, was when
he realized that there was something
more important than truth — kindness.
Arnie was truly a golden soul.”
Kantrowitz, born in Newark, NJ
on Nov. 26, 1940, died in New York
on Jan. 21, 2022. He is survived by
Dr. Mass and his brother, Barry Kantrowitz.
Arnie’s papers (1951-2008)
are in the NY Public Library archive.
JANUARY 27 - FEBRUARY 9,10 2022 | GayCityNews.com
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