The motif of masks and unmasking was prevalent in the homophile era, prefiguring the political strategy of coming out and giving the Mattachine Society its name.

Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations, said that Hoover and Tolson sat in boxes owned by and used exclusively by gay men at the Del Mar racetrack in California.

Los Angeles area homosexuals created the Mattachine Society in 1950, in the home of communist activist Harry Hay.

They belied the carefully crafted image portrayed by the Mattachine Society and DOB that asserted homosexuals were respectable, normal people.

The Mattachine Society succeeded in getting newly elected Mayor John Lindsay to end the campaign of police entrapment in New York.

The Mattachine Society newsletter a month later offered its explanation of why the riots occurred: " It catered largely to a group of people who are not welcome in, or cannot afford, other places of homosexual social gathering ....

To many older gays and many members of the Mattachine Society that had worked throughout the 1960s to promote homosexuals as no different from heterosexuals, the display of violence and effeminate behavior was embarrassing.

On July 4, 1969, the Mattachine Society performed its annual picketing in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, called the Annual Reminder.

Although the Mattachine Society had existed since the 1950s, many of their methods now seemed too mild for people who had witnessed or been inspired by the riots.

Previous organizations such as the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Bilitis, and various homophile groups had masked their purpose by deliberately choosing obscure names.

Not only had the Mattachine Society been active in major cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago, but similarly marginalized people started the riot at Compton's Cafeteria in 1966, and another riot responded to a raid on Los Angeles ' Black Cat Tavern in 1967.

The Mattachine Society used so-called harlequin diamonds as their emblem.

The Mattachine Society existed as a single national organization headquartered first in Los Angeles and then, beginning around 1956, in San Francisco.

The San Francisco national chapter retained the name " Mattachine Society ", while the New York chapter became " Mattachine Society of New York, Inc ." Other independent groups using the name Mattachine were formed in Washington, D. C. ( Mattachine Society of Washington, 1961 ), and in Chicago ( Mattachine Midwest, 1965 ).

In 1966 the New York Mattachine held a " sip-in " at a Greenwich Village bar named Julius, which was frequented by gay men, to illustrate the discrimination homosexuals faced.

Mattachine was originally organized in similar structure to the Communist Party, with cells, oaths of secrecy and five different levels of membership, each of which required greater levels of involvement and commitment.

In a 1976 interview with Jonathan Ned Katz, Hay was asked the origin of the name Mattachine.

In 1963 Congressman John Dowdy introduced a bill which resulted in congressional hearings to revoke the license for solicitation of funds of the Mattachine Society of Washington ; the license was not revoked.

The Daughters of Bilitis was the counterpart lesbian organization to the Mattachine Society, and the two organizations worked together on some campaigns, although their approaches to visibility in the mass media differed considerably.

Also in the 1960s, the Mattachine Society of New York was associated with other groups ( including the Mattachine Society of Washington ) in ECHO ( East Coast Homophile Organizations ) and, from 1966 ( along with Mattachine Midwest ), in NACHO ( North American Conference of Homophile Organizations ).

Other historians contend that the Mattachine Society between 1953 and 1966 was enormously effective as it published a magazine, developed relationships with allies in the fight for homosexual equality, and influenced public opinion on the topic too.

By the early 1960s, openly gay political organizations such as the Mattachine Society were formally protesting abusive treatment toward gay people, challenging the entrenched idea that homosexuality was an aberrant condition, and calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality.

The early gay rights movement, then called the Homophile Movement, was developed by the Mattachine Society, formed in 1950.

The Homophile Movement was influenced by the successful activism of the Civil Rights Movement ( in 1960 the DOB's national president was Cleo Bonner, an African-American ), and higher profile members of the DOB such as Barbara Gittings, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon began to picket the White House, the State Department, and other federal buildings in 1965 and 1966 with members of the Mattachine Society.

The same year in the United States, the Mattachine Society was formed, and other organizations such as ONE, Inc. ( 1952 ) and the Daughters of Bilitis ( 1955 ) soon followed.

One American Law Institute recommendation was to decriminalize sexual conduct such as adultery and homosexuality, for which reason the July – August 1955 issue of the Mattachine Society Review, the magazine of the country's first nation-wide homosexual organization, published a salute to Judge Hand featuring his photograph on the cover.

One of America's most prominent sexual radicals, Harry Hay, developed his political views as an active member of the CPUSA, but his founding in the early 1950s of the Mattachine Society, America's second gay rights group, was not seen as something Communists should associate with organizationally.

In the U. S., Gernreich was a co-founder of the Mattachine Society, the country's first sustained homophile organization.

Life's photographer was referred to The Tool Box by Hal Call, leader of the San Francisco chapter of the Mattachine Society, who had long worked to dispel the myth that all homosexual men were effeminate.

The Daughters of Bilitis was the counterpart lesbian organization to the Mattachine Society, and the organizations worked together on some campaigns and ran lecture-series.

A legal study, commissioned by Mattachine New York on the city ’ s alcohol beverage law concluded that there was no law that prohibited homosexuals gathering in bars but that there was a law that prohibited disorderly behaviour in bars, which the SLA had been interpreting as homosexual behaviour.

They talk all night until Matty leaves to attend a meeting of the Mattachine Society, where he meets Burt ( Peter Ratray ) and Ethan ( Corbalis ), who he'd bumped into the night before while Ethan was distributing leaflets.

In 2009 The Mattachine Society and its founders became the subjects of the play The Temperamentals by Jon Maran.

With Dick Leitsch's replacement as president of Mattachine NY by " Michael Kotis " in April, 1970, opposition to the march by Mattachine ended.

These pioneers were followed later in the United States by the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis.

The decidedly clandestine Mattachine Society, founded by Harry Hay and other veterans of the Wallace for President campaign in Los Angeles in 1950, moved into the public eye after Hal Call took over the group in San Francisco in 1953, with many gays emerging from the closet.

The group changed its name to " Mattachine Society " in April 1951, a name chosen by Hay at the suggestion of fellow Mattachine member James Gruber, based on Medieval French secret societies of masked men who, through their anonymity, were empowered to criticize ruling monarchs with impunity.

They're the female counterparts of the Mattachine Society — and one of the convention highlights will be an address by Atty.

* The Mattachine Society ( 1950 – 1987 ) and the Mattachine Review ( 1955 – 1966 ); Homosexual Citizen, ( published by the Washington chapter, 1966 –?

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In New York City, the modern gay bar dates to Julius Bar, founded by local socialite Matthew Nicol, where the Mattachine Society staged a " Sip-In " on 21 April 1966 challenging a New York State Liquor Authority rule prohibited serving alcohol to gays on the basis that they were considered disorderly.