The Trouble with Ray

When Ray Hill – in his high school days a pretty decent quarterback – told his mother that he was gay, she laconically replied, “Well that’s a relief. Your father and I were afraid you were fixing to become a Republican.” In the same way his parents naturally supported him, Ray Hill is a natural support to the LGBT community in the United States. He has spent almost 43,000 hours in prison or police cells, mostly for civil disobedience. During the 1960s and 1970s, he organized demonstrations, including a memorable one in Houston that spelled the end for gay-hater Anita Bryant. Hill talks with palpable pleasure about his rabble-rousing, but also his more reconciliatory activities: apparently, he got along great with police chiefs. The interview is interspersed with clips from moralizing TV films from the 1960s and other archive footage from a time when women could be arrested simply for wearing pants with a zipper at the front. It’s clear that a lot has been achieved over the past few decades, but also that full emancipation of the LGBT community isn’t a reality yet.