Stephen Donaldson (activist)

Donny the Punk, July 1995

Stephen Donaldson (July 27, 1946 – July 18, 1996), born Robert Anthony Martin, Jr and also known by the pseudonym Donny the Punk, was an American political activist. He is best known for his pioneering activism in gay liberation and prison reform and his participation in the punk subculture. He died from AIDS in 1996.

Childhood and adolescence

The son of a career naval officer, Donaldson's early childhood was spent in different seaport cities in the eastern United States and in Germany. Donaldson later described his father Robert, the son of Italian and German immigrants, as a man who "frowned on display of emotion" and his mother Lois as "an English, Scottish Texan, artistic, free-spirited, emotional, impulsive." After his parents' divorce in 1953 when he was seven years old, his mother was diagnosed with the mental disorder porphyria and abandoned her two sons, not contacting them again until 1964.

At age twelve, he was expelled from the Boy Scouts for consensual sexual behavior with other boys (who, as recipients, were not punished). "The disgrace triggered a family crisis, resolved by sending the boy to live in Germany, where he could be watched over by his stepmother's relatives." He continued homosexual activity, now understanding that it needed to be hidden from adults.

"In April 1962, at the age of fifteen, Donny return to the United States to live with his grandparents in West Long Branch, New Jersey. In high school he was news editor of the school paper, an actor, and a student government officer. He also became active in politics as a libertarian conservative, supporting Barry Goldwater for president" and "considered joining the Young Americans for Freedom but was so uptight that he first checked with J. Edgar Hoover by letter to inquire whether the YAF was 'a communist organization, communist subverted, or in danger of becoming either'". Hoover sent back a reply "praising his concern about communism and then opened an FBI file on the boy". (Years later, Donaldson received a copy of his FBI file through the Freedom of Information Act.)

Donaldson later wrote about his developing sexual identity:

At 18, however, I fell in love with a baseball teammate, and my casual sexual play with boys was transformed into a very serious matter which could dominate my whole life. I talked with a few trusted adults about it, and learned that if I loved another boy I had to be a "homosexual"....I could only find two books on the subject, which confirmed this label, and mentioned the Mattachine Society in New York as an organization of "homosexuals." So on a school expedition to the "wicked city," I slipped away, visited their office, and became a member (swearing I was 21, since Mattachine was deathly afraid of dealing with minors), thus giving my new identity official status.

In the summer of 1965, he moved to Florida to live with his mother. "When Lois discovered young Robert was having an affair with a Cuban man, she decided to punish her son by outing him in letters to her ex-husband and to Columbia University, which Martin had planned to attend in the fall." Donaldson ran away to New York, where, he later wrote, "[t]he gays of New York welcomed me enthusiastically, offered hospitality, and 'brought me out' as a 'butch' homosexual (in contrast to the "queens"). Among the Mattachine Society members he met were Julian Hodges, Frank Kameny, and Dick Leitsch.

College years (1965-1970)

Founding of Student Homophile League

In August of 1965, Donaldson "had a social worker call the dean's office to ask whether Columbia would register a known homosexual." After a delay of two weeks, the administration responded that he "would be allowed to register, on condition that he undergo psychotherapy and not attempt to seduce other students."

He entered Columbia University that fall and began using the pseudonym Stephen Donaldson so he could be open about his sexuality without embarrassing his father, who shared the name Robert Martin and now taught mathematics at Rider College in New Jersey. The surname was based on the first name, "Donald", of the baseball teammate who was his first love. His first year of college was difficult: he met no other gay faculty or students and had to move from a shared suite to a single room when his suitemates "told the colleague dean David Truman that they felt uncomfortable living with a homosexual". Apparently ambivalent, they offered Donaldson "great apologies and said they realized they shouldn't feel" unwilling to live with him.

In the summer of 1966, he began a relationship with gay activist Frank Kameny, who had a great influence on him. Donaldson later wrote:

Frank gave me a complete education both in homosexuality and in the homophile movement, instructing me also in how to respond to attacks from psychiatry, religion, the law, etc., etc. He largely shaped my gay ideology and continued to influence me even after I split with him ideologically in '68-'69.

In August, Kameny took Donaldson to Cherry Grove on Fire Island, where he "was thrilled to meet another gay Columbia student [James Millham] and to learn that Millham lived with his lover, a New York University student, in one of Columbia's dormitories.

That fall, Donaldson suggested to Millham "that they form a Mattachine-like organization on campus, what he envisioned as 'the first chapter of a spreading confederation of student homophile groups.'" At first, Donaldson was unable to gain official recognition for the Student Homophile League (SHL), as Columbia required a membership list, and Donaldson and Millham were the only gay students willing to provide their names. This prevented the group from receiving university funding or holding public events on campus until Donaldson realized that by "recruiting the most prominent student leaders to become pro forma members, he could satisfy the administration without compromising the anonymity of gay students, and Columbia officially chartered the country’s first student gay rights group on April 19, 1967."

On April 27, an article about the organization appeared in the student paper, the Columbia Spectator, which students "seemed to think ... was some sort of April Fool hoax." It soon became clear that it was not. The Spectator ran an editorial praising the chartering of the group and printed letters from students attacking and defending the decision. At this point, there was no apparent opposition from Columbia faculty or staff. The fledgling group was advised by the university chaplain, the Rev. John D. Cannon, who gave permission for them to hold meetings in his office and later let Donaldson hold office hours there.

Despite having "assured the administration that publicity would be kept to a minimum," Donaldson "launched an aggressive public information campaign about SHL and homosexuality", making sure it was covered on Columbia radio station WKCR, where he was a staff member, and sending out "at least three press releases to several large newspapers, wire services, and magazines with national and international distribution", although it received little coverage until gay rights supporter Murray Shumach saw the Spectator piece and wrote an article, headlined "Columbia Charters Homosexual Group", which appeared on the front page of the New York Times on May 3, 1967:

The chairman, who used the pseudonym Stephen Donaldson, said in a telephone interview last night that the organization had been formed because "we wanted to get the academic community to support equal rights for homosexuals"....

In its declaration of principles, the leagues list 13 points, including ... that "the homosexual is being unjustly, inhumanely and savagely discriminated against by large segments of American society".

The article also quoted Dr. Harold E. Love, the chairman of Columbia's Committee on Student Organizations, who said there was no reason to deny the request once they had determined it was a "bona fide student organization." The article noted that "[f]unds were said to have been supplied for the organization by some Columbia alumni who were reported to have learned about it from advertisements in magazines for homosexuals" and that Donaldson said that the group "maintains liaison" with, but is not controlled by, outside homosexual groups. The alumnus supporter was "Foster Gunnison, the driving force behind the creation of the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations," with whom Donaldson had strategized about getting the organization approved. Gunnison "sent the administration a letter of support and made a cash contribution".

Historian David Eisenbach argued in Gay Power: An American Revolution that "much of the SHL's influence grew out of the media attention it attracted....Within a week [of the New York Times story], media outlets across the country had honed in, with coverage ranging from favorable to neutral to the Gainesville Sun's 'Student Group Seeks Rights for Deviants.'".

As a result of the publicity, there were "[s]harp [verbal] clashes" between Columbia officials and the SHL. Brett Beemyn wrote about the backlash:

The university was inundated with outraged letters, and the pages of the student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, were filled with criticism of the decision. The dean of the college called the SHL "quite unnecessary," and the director of the counseling service expressed a concern that the group would promote "deviant behavior" among students. The strong support of the league’s advisor, the university chaplain, apparently prevented Columbia officials from revoking the group’s charter, but "it was forbidden to serve a social function for fear that this would lead to violations of New York State’s sodomy laws."

The publicity also led students at other universities to contact Donaldson about starting chapters, and Donaldson certified the Cornell Student Homophile League in 1968 and later the New York University chapter, headed by Rita Mae Brown. Donaldson was "heavily involved throughout the rest of the 1960s not only as national leader of the Student Homophile League but also as an elected officer of the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) and of its Eastern Regional subsidiary".

A surprising source of opposition to Donaldson and the SHL was the Mattachine Society of New York (MSNY), whose president Dick Leitsch "resented the media attention that SHL had generated". With the unanimous support of the board, Leitsch contacted "Frank Hogan, the Manhattan District Attorney and a Member of the Columbia Board of Trustees to advise him on how to undermine SHL." In a letter to Hogan, Leitsch wrote:

The man using the pseudonym Stephen Donaldson is known to me and to the Mattachine Society as an irresponsible, publicity-seeking member of an extremist political group. We have grave doubts as to his sincerity in his stated aim as helping homosexuals, and feel that he may be, instead, a bigoted extremist, interested upon wrecking the homophile movement.

Martin was defended by homophile leaders Barbara Gittings, Frank Kameny, and Forest Gunnison, although "Gunnison acknowledged that Martin possessed 'tendencies toward arbitrariness and manipulation.'"

Professional experience

Donaldson began his writing career in college by working summers "as a reporter for the Associated Press and Virginian Pilot" and writing "a regular column for the New York newsmagazine Gay Power and occasional reports for the Los Angeles Advocate".

He also worked summers "as a legislative intern in the offices of U.S. Representatives Howard H. Callaway (Republican, Georgia) and Donald E. Lukens (Republican, Ohio)." Frank Kameny arranged his first internship, which was in the summer of 1966.

In New York, Donaldson funded "his education by working as a hustler, first at the infamous intersection of Fifty-third Street and Third Avenue, then as a call boy through a house. He claimed to have serviced several famous clients, including Rock Hudson and Roy Cohn."

Discomfort with gay liberation movement

In 1966, Donaldson fell in love with a woman, Judith "JD Rabbit" Jones (whom he later considered his "lifetime companion") and began to identify as a bisexual. He later wrote that he "took a lot of flak from the leaders of other homophile organizations for being bi", including creating a scandal by "having an affair with Martha Shelley, leader of the New York Daughters of Bilitis and later the Gay Liberation Front". His "growing feeling of discomfort with biphobia in the homophile/gay liberation movement was a major factor" in his deciding to quit the movement and enlist in the Navy after graduating from Columbia in 1970.

Military experience (1970-1972)

Donaldson had a longstanding desire to join the Navy, even buying a sailor's uniform during college, in which he cruised the city and pretended to be a serviceman on a visit to a naval base in Pensacola, Florida, and maintained a "lifelong identification with sailors and seafaring." After graduating from Columbia in 1970, he enlisted and served as a radioman at a NATO base in Italy with an unblemished record until "he wrote to a former shipmate, Terry Fountain, about his latest sexual adventures [with both women and men] at his current home port of Naples, Italy". After Fountain left the letter unattended on his desk, someone turned it over to the Naval Investigative Service, which allegedly coerced Fountain into signing a statement that he had sex with Martin, which Fountain later recanted. In 1971, "the Navy announced its intention to release [Donaldson] by General Discharge on grounds of suspected homosexual involvement." As Randy Shilts wrote in Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military:

In the tens of thousands of hearings since World War II where comparable actions had been taken on the basis of comparable evidence, the matter ended there, with the sailor skulking away in disgrace. Petty Officer Martin, however, went public with what had happened to him and swore to fight for an honorable discharge. What was more, he enlisted some powerful support.

These supporters included six congressional representatives, including New York's Bella Abzug (who called his case a "witch-hunt") and Edward Koch; senators Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania and Sam Ervin of North Carolina; the president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), Judd Marmor (who had been "influential in having homosexuality removed from the APA's official list of clinical disorders"); Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.; and the ACLU, which provided a staff attorney to represent him.

Even the dean of Columbia College, Carl Hovde, sent the Navy a letter praising Martin as "a man for whom I have great respect" and making the questionable claim that the young man "never sought controversy."

Despite the support, he received a general discharge in 1972. Donaldson continued to fight, and, in 1977, his discharge was upgraded to "honorable" as part of "President Carter's sweeping amnesty program for Vietnam-era draft evaders, deserters, and service members", at which time:

Martin told Gay Week "what an honorable discharge means to me is that it is the nation's way of saying that it is proud of gay veterans and by extension that it is proud of millions of gay veterans and current service people. We've come a long way."

According to Eisenbach:

Martin's groundbreaking public battle against the Navy kicked off a series of well-publicized challenges to military discharges that harnessed and directed the energy of the gay rights movement in the 1970s.

Bisexual activism

Donaldson later summarized his military experience and the subsequent transition in his life:

After nearly two years as a sailor, I got kicked out for "homosexual involvement," a charge I received shortly after becoming a Buddhist Quaker and thus a pacifist. Bitter at this second homophobic expulsion, which deprived me of the identity I loved more than any other—that of a sailor—and as a bisexual no longer feeling comfortable with the gay liberation movement, I found myself in June, 1972, attending the annual Friends (Quaker) General Conference (FGC) in Ithaca, New York; its theme for the year was "Where Should Friends Be Pioneering Now?"

Contemplating that question, I organized an impromptu workshop on bisexuality and was astonished to find 130 Quakers, one of every ten General Conference attendees, overflowing into five meeting rooms and an auditorium for two days of lively discussion based more on experience than on abstract theories. Finally I was surrounded by bisexually-identified F/friends, formally considering the topic of bisexuality. Thus identity led me to activism.

This group adopted by consensus the "Ithaca Statement on Bisexuality".

The Statement, which may have been "the first public declaration of the bisexual movement" and "was certainly the first statement on bisexuality issued by an American religious assembly" appeared in the Quaker Friends Journal and the Advocate in 1972. After a series of meetings, the Committee of Friends on Bisexuality was formed, with Donaldson (using the name Bob Martin) as its chair until he left the Quakers in 1977.

Donaldson was involved in the New York bisexual movement in the mid-1970s, for example appearing in 1974 on a New York Gay Activists Alliance panel with Kate Millet. Donaldson propounded the belief that

ultimately bisexuality would be perceived as much more threatening to the prevailing sexual order than homosexuality, because it potentially subverted everyone's identity (the idea that everyone is potentially bisexual was widespread) and could not, unlike exclusive homosexuality, be confined to a segregated, stigmatized and therefore manageable ghetto.

Jail experiences

After being discharged from the Navy, Donaldson moved to Washington D.C., where he "worked as Pentagon correspondent for the Overseas Weekly, a privately owned newspaper distributed to American servicemen stationed in Europe," and got involved in anti-war activism. In a 1973 Quaker rally protesting the bombing of Cambodia at the White House, several demonstrators were arrested by police. Most of those arrested were released on $10 bail, but Donaldson refused to pay out of principle.

After seven days of refusing to pay bail, guard captain Clinton Cobb had Donaldson transferred to the most dangerous cellbock. That night, Donaldson was lured in a cell by a prisoner who claimed that he and his friends wanted to discuss pacifism with him. He was then anally and orally raped dozens of times by an estimated 45 African American male inmates. He suffered additional abuse a second night before reaching a guard's post where he was removed to safety by guards who allegedly told him he'd been deliberately set up by Captain Cobb. The following morning, a Quaker friend posted his bond. The injuries to his rectum were so severe that they required surgery, and he had to spend a week in the Washington D.C. Veteran's Hospital. In a 1994 interview, Donaldson said: "The government sewed up the tears in my rectum which the government occasioned." After his recovery, Donaldson became the first male prison rape survivor to call a press conference, recounting the gang rape to reporters. He was acquitted of all charges.

Donaldson went on to have severe emotional problems, landing back in jail several times. During his subsequent incarcerations, he would "hook up" with powerful male inmates to keep from being attacked again, which led to the word punk in his nickname. The term jailhouse punk refers to an inmate who trades sex for physical protection. As Donaldson explained in a pair of letters to Bo Lozoff:

Jail punks are more oppressed than any other group within the walls, living lives of abject slavery, sold and traded among the powerful, forced into prostitution, tossed about as footballs and prizes in racial and other power structures, tormented by conflicts over their sexual identity and role, isolated, humiliated, ashamed, and often suicidal....

Perhaps one reason why I work to help other punks in transcending their punk identity, is that the destructive results of assuming that identity are all too manifest in my own life -- where the identity has become so firmly attached as to be part of my own name, "Donny the Punk".

Activism and writing

Donaldson was president of Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc., an organization that helps prisoners deal with the psychological and physical trauma of rape, and works to prevent it from happening. He was perhaps the first activist against male rape with any amount of media attention in the United States. As Donny the Punk, he was a respected writer and personality in the punk and anti-racist skinhead subcultures, and was published in punk zines such as Maximum RocknRoll, Flipside and J.D.s. In the mid-1980s, Donny was the chief organizer of The Alternative Press & Radio Council (APRC), which brought together members of the punk community (such as fanzine editors and college radio DJs) of New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut. This co-operative group met on Sundays before the weekly CBGB Sunday hardcore matinees and organized several benefit concerts. The group published a newsletter, and released a compilation LP on Mystic Records in 1986, which was entitled Mutiny On The Bowery. The compilation featured live recordings from the group's benefit concerts. Among other active members of the APRC were WFMU-FM DJ Pat Duncan, MaximumRockNRoll columnist Mykel Board and Jersey Beat editor Jim Testa. Donny was assistant editor of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (Garland Publishing, 1990), and was editor-in-chief of a concise edition of the encyclopedia, which remains unpublished as of 2007.

External links

• Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc.
• Writings by and about Stephen Donaldson at SPR website
• Stephen Donaldson papers at the New York Public Library (pdf)
• Goad, Jim (1994). "The Punk Who Wouldn't Shut Up" (PDF). Answer Me!: 26–30. (pdf)