New York City and LGBT people everywhere have lost one of their giants in the fight for fairness and equality. Bob Kohler, Stonewall veteran and co-founder of seminal 60’s gay activism group, the Gay Liberation Front, died of cancer on Wednesday at age 81.
For more than 40 years, Kohler relentlessly advocated for gays, transsexuals, blacks, PWAs, immigrants, sex workers, queer youth, and many other just causes. In 1999, he was arrested protesting the police killing of Amadou Diallo (just one of the 32 times he was arrested for his activism.) In 2001, it was Kohler that forced NYC to comply with laws requiring emergency housing for PWAs. More recently, he supported FIERCE!, the LGBT group that advocates for queer youth in the West Village.
On the second night of the Stonewall riots in 1969, Bob and other West Village community members called the first meeting of the Gay Liberation Front, which Bob (and historians) credit with “establishing radicalism in the New York gay community.” He went on to work with direct action and advocacy groups including ACT UP, Sex Panic!, The Neutral Zone, Fed Up Queers, the NYC AIDS Housing Network, Irish Queers, animal rights groups, and others. Throughout his work, Bob was a father figure to activists and street kids, including Sylvia Rivera, who herself grew up to be a parent and mentor to queer youth.
Kohler was a WWII veteran who lost a kidney in combat in the South Pacific. After the war, he worked in television, starting a talent agency to represent black performers who could not find work. As manager of the Club Baths in NYC, he advocated against the closing of bathhouses when the AIDS crisis began, arguing that educating gay men about safer sex in the actual place where they would be having sex, was more effective than unnoticed pamphlets stacked in bars. He was unsuccessful. Kohler later opened The Loft, a popular store on Christopher Street and on Fire Island.
There will be a “political funeral” for Bob Kohler this Sunday at the NYC LGBT Community Center at 4pm, followed by a march down Christopher Street to the West Village piers. Please consider attending to honor a man who helped you live the life you have today.
More on the remarkable life of Bob Kohler:
-Gay City News, Bob Kohler Dead At 81
-Village Voice, Bob Kohler, Gay Rights Pioneer, 1926-2007
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