In April, 1969, the Committee for Homosexual Freedom protested The San Francisco Steamship Lines Company at 320 California Street, for firing Gale Whittington for appearing in a gay article in Berkeley Barb. However, the protest also had an anti-Vietnam war message, as the Steamship Lines Company delivered supplies to U.S. troops in South East Asia. GAY STRIKE TURNS GRIM Homosexuals in San Francisco are planning more militant action against States Steamship Company as the gay strike by the Committee for Homosexual Freedom extends to Los Angeles. “States Lines still refuses to even discuss our grievances,” says Leo Laurence, CHF co-chair-man; “so feeling on the line is that more militant action is necessary.” "Talk this week is for a sit-in,” Laurence said, “and legal preparations and scheduling are already underway.” “If the Blacks and the Anti-War forces help us, we will stop States Line’s ships from going to Vietnam from both San Francisco and Los Angeles,” he said. “Militant homosexuals in Southern California are being organized by Rev. Troy Perry of Huntington Park who has already fought boldly against the LA Vice Cops,” Laurence reported this week to BARB. CHF pickets are appearing every weekday noon hour at the 320 Calif. St. head offices of States Lines bringing public opinion down hard on the company for the alleged discriminatory firing of Gale Whittington, 21, after his picture appeared in the BARB being embraced by another homosexual. “Blacks should add their power to our cause, too,” says Whittington, CHF co-chairman. “Homosexuals are not the only victims of States Lines discrimination.” "Anti-War groups should get involved,” he said. “Perhaps they (Resistance, etc.) aren’t aware that States Lines ships carry war supplies to Vietnam,” Whittington added. "When our revolution succeeds, homosexuals may decrease in number,” the young gay revolutionary continued. “One of the attractions of gay life as it is now is the excitement of the underground element. The ritual of hiding is so well learned that homosexuals often become professional actors,” Whittington explained. “Hollywood is full of us,” Gale said, “Gay people laugh when young girls swoon over the teenage idols. Almost always that Oh-so-perfect man prefers other Oh-so-perfect men.” CHF pickets include gays previously active in other battles: ie. Stanford Sit-In, SFSC strike, Anti-Draft groups, and veterans of the Yippy fight in Chicago last August. “It’s a matter of survival and pride in my people,” said Charles Thorpe, a young homosexual explaining why he’s on the picket line. “Homosexuals are stepping out of their ghetto-bars and double lives and into the power struggle. We must be freed from the chains of fear and death that have now repressed all but our sexual organs,” Thorpe said. “We will take our freedom,” Thorpe said to BARB. “We will burn our faces with tears and cover our hands with blood, but we will get our freedom as homosexuals.” “We will fight until our bodies no longer give blood, ’til we no longer exist, or until we can freely grow to our capacities without intervention by this murderous society. WE WILL FIGHT TIL WE ARE FREE ” said Thorpe. “It’s a question now of a fight for survival, not just a fight for our rights,” Carl Wittman, a veteran of anti-draft activities, explained. “The CHF is a mutual protection society. If Gale comes to us and says he’s pissed because he was fired, and wants us to make them rehire him, I’m all for it; not because I (politically) believe in Fair Employment on Montgomery St., but because Gale is a fellow homosexual who has been put down.” Michael Cooke, 29, who got kicked out of U of Texas for a soapbox speech about homosexuality 8 years ago said: “Fear and intimidation have ruled the gay world for 2000 years. The only legacy this has brought me is the feeling I have precious little to lose. The time is ripe for some militancy.” “Spirits on the picket line are really high, adds Laurence. “People are singing freedom songs, more office workers are marching with us, and blacks driving by in cars are raising their arms in salute.” During Wednesday’s lively picketing, a college student, Barry Capron, marched on the line by holding hands with Laurence as were several other gay couples. When picketing stopped at one pm Laurence embraced Capton, and gave him a long, warm kiss to the delight of photographers in from of the States Lines offices. A grandmotherly woman was accompanying, meanwhile, two men in business suits who helped monsters hand out leaflets to passerbys. Nearly five thousand have been distributed so far, according to Pat Brown, Picket Captain. A “Phone - In” organized by Steve Matthews “hopefully will show strength from people unable to picket.” “Dial 982-6221 daily from 9am to 10am asking for different departments to show our numbers are even greater than those on the picket line,” Matthews said. CHF meets Friday 4/25 at 8:30 pm at the Cabaret, 260 Valencia St. SF, a non-profit place for movement people. Contributions desperately needed for Newsletter printing costs, more picket signs, ect. should be sent to CHF, 15 Beaver St. SF. “Very little money came in this week,” Laurence said, as he thanked six contributors from last week.

 “States Lines still refuses to even discuss our grievances,” says Leo Laurence, CHF co-chair-man; “so feeling on the line is that more militant action is necessary.” “Talk this week is for a sit-in,” Laurence said, “and legal preparations and scheduling are already underway.” “If the Blacks and the Anti-War forces help us, we will stop States Line’s ships from going to Vietnam from both San Francisco and Los Angeles,” he said. (1) 

Murder charges will be filed against two Berkeley pigs involved in the death of Frank Bartley, a 33-year-old “registered sex offender” of Berkeley. Bartley was shot in the head Thursday evening, April 17, in Aquatic Park by officer Weiker Kline. He died Tuesday afternoon from wounds inflicted by Klines .38 service revolver. Kline and his partner, Officer Frank Reynolds, of the Berkeley “park sex detail” were still on duty in the park late Wednesday, according to a caller to BARB. The caller, who prefers to remain anonymous, said that Kline and Reynolds who, of course, operate out of uniform, were well known to homosexuals who frequented Aquatic Park. The caller spoke of a sex officer on duty there who would "spread his legs in an obscene manner and otherwise try and entice persons into committing sex offenses.’ “Seeing them there on Wednesday after shooting that guy last week made me so mad that I sat down and wrote a letter to the police chief telling them of Kline and Reynold’s behavior, ” he added. The murder charges against the two pigs will be pressed by Berkeley Attorney Mary Montgomery, who has been retained by Bartleys family. “I have used Frank Bartley as a baby sitter, and I would use him again,’ said Attorney Montgomery. "Our police state is really progressing. We have moved from the murder of alleged cop killers (who remarkably try to escape every time) to the murder of difficult-to-the-establishment blacks and now, apparently, to the murder of gentle, harmless homosexuals,” she said. “Frank was a friend of mine. He even lived in my house and if his family were not going to press murder charges, I would have done it myself,'*she told BARB. Bartley was shot accidentally in a struggle following his arrest for an alleged sex offense in Aquatic Park, according to the local gazette's version of the police report. The straight press report tells how Officers Kline and Reynolds were staked out near Bartley’s car in the southeast corner of the park on a road surrounding the lake. According to the report, Bartley asked Reynolds into his car where he made demands and sexual advances. The climax of the scene, in Reynold’s version, came when Bartley harshly grabbed his groin and told him that he, Bartley, was going to drive Reynolds to a San Pablo Avenue apartment. Reynolds escaped from the car on the pretext of looking for a dropped cigarette pack and called to Kline, ‘Lets arrest him now.” Kline was reported to have said that Bartley’s car lurched forward and struck both his legs with the right front fender. Kline grabbed the car door with his right hand and drew his revolver with his left, it is reported. ‘We’re police. You’re under arrest.” Then, according to Kline, Bartley grabbed his gun hand and (as the cliche goes) ‘’in the ensuing struggle, the gun went off.” A .38 slug struck Bartley in the head. This “official version" leaves many questions unanswered in the mind of Mary Montgomery. For example, “how could Frank drive his car and fight with Kline on the other side of it at the same time?” “If Kline was hit by the car, why doesn’t he have any bruises on his legs?” Attorney Montgomery asked. (According to her sources of information, Kline had no such bruises, she said.) And, if Frank Bartley had lived, there is the question of entrapment to be answered. An eyewitness to incidents surrounding the shooting told BARB that he has definite evidence pointing to entrapment by Kline and Reynolds. Frank Bartleys family donated his body for organ transplants shortly after his death Tuesday afternoon, according to Attorney DEATH from p. 7 Montgomery. “The doctor had even found a recipient for his kidneys in San Francisco,"she added. However, the Alameda County Coroners* office refused permission for the organ transplants for reasons clear only to their bureaucratic minds. Attorney Montgomery requested any witnesses to the shooting of Frank Bartley at 7:20 p.m. on Thursday, April 17, in the southeast corner of Aquatic Park, to please contact her office.

At the same time as the San Francisco Steamship Lines Company protests continued on, a gay man was murdered by the police in Berkeley. Frank Bartley was shot by Berkeley police officers Weiker Kline and Frank Reynolds on April 17, 1969 and died of complications several days later. Kline and Reynolds were vice cops who patrolled Aquatic Park, a gay cruising site on the waterfront in West Berkeley. Allegedly, Bartley was soliciting the officers for gay sex, when during a struggle to arrest Bartley, he accidentally shot himself with Kline’s gun. However, radical gays didn’t believe this story and began organizing against the police officers’ systematic violence against gay people. 

PROTEST KILLING Homosexual organizations in San 'Francisco will protest the killing of Frank Bartley by Berkeley Vice Cops with a news conference today, Friday, April 25, at Glide Methodist Church and a mock funeral ceremony. After spokesmen from the Society for Individual Rights, the Committee for Homosexual Freedom, Council for Religion and the Homosexual, and possibly other gay groups, meet the press in the morning, they will carry a coffin, ring the noon hour in a funeral motorcade from Glide Church to the Berkeley Police station. Homosexual pickets from the Committee for Homosexual Freedom, however, will not be withdrawn from the States Steamship] Company, 320 Calif. St. in SF according to CHF Co-Chairman Laurence. “Our battle in the Financial district is against the tyranny and oppression that allows [such ‘official’ murders to occur,”] he said.

Memorial at Glide Church for Frank Bartley

‘The uptight middle class gay establishment will talk about Frank Bartleys murder in their bars,but they won’t get off their dead asses and DO something about it,’ said Laurence. ‘Now it’s a matter of survival. “If the gays don’t stop being too scared to act, they are going to get shot and killed. ” (2)

CALLS GAY DEATH "OFFICIAL MURDER‘ 'Berkeley gays had better wake up before it's too late,'Leo Laurence, Co-Chairman of the Committee for Homosexual Freedom told BARB in an exclusive interview, Wednesday. ‘The uptight middle class gay establishment will talk about Frank Bartleys murder in their bars, but they won’t get off their dead asses and DO something about it,' said Laurence. ‘Now it’s a matter of survival. "If the gays don’t stop being too scared to act, they are going to get shot and killed. "And Berkeley proved it this week,’ Laurence added. 'I call the shooting of Frank Bartley an official murder. "Gays must respond with the same militancy that the black community showed when it fought back against the killings of Bobby Hutton, George Baskett and Joey Linthcome. "To be realistic about it, our revolution is now at the point where Martin Luther King was when he stopped the Birmingham buses. “All gays have got to join the revolution and take a stronger stand,” said Laurence. 'Berkeley gays should picket Berkeley police headquarters, and San Francisco gays should get down to the C-H-F picket line at States Lines,” he added.

These two events, the ongoing picket at the San Francisco Steamship Lines Company and the murder of Frank Bartley galvinized the radical gay community and drew people towards the Committee for Homosexual Freedom.

(1) “Gay Strike Turns Grim,” Berkeley Barb, April 25-May 1, 1969, 7. 
(2) “Calls Gay Death “Offical Murder”,” Berkeley Barb, April 25-May 1, 1969, 7.