Jose Julio Sarria was the first openly gay candidate to run for public office in the United States in 1961, more than a decade before Harvey Milk.
When San Francisco city officials vowed to shut down all the gay bars in 1961, the 38 year-old cabaret singer ran for a seat on the Board of Supervisors. Although Sarria lost the election, he garnered nearly 6,000 votes, proving for the first time in American politics that there was a gay voting bloc. Jose went on to form the first LGBT nonprofit in California and was founder of the Imperial Court System (ICS), which is the second largest LGBT organization in the country. Sarria passed away in Los Ranchos, New Mexico August 19, 2013, at the age of 90.
After Sarria’s passing, former Speaker of the California State Assembly John A. Pérez said that “Jose’s trailblazing run for public office as an openly gay man laid the
groundwork for LGBT Californians to run for public office proudly and openly. But Jose’s refusal to be silenced or shamed back into the closet–in an era where LGBT
People were routinely discriminated against–was the greatest contribution to our movement.”
Award winning Los Angeles filmmakers Dante Alencastre and Daniel Carrera are in pre-production on Sarria’s documentary “Nelly Queen,” slated to be released in 2015. “A film on the life of Jose will offer more than an inspiring story,” said Carrera. “True to Jose’s outspoken legacy, cinema has the capacity to cultivate understanding, contribute to political dialogue and galvanize urgent social change.”
To view the Lots, click Bentley’s.
In 1965, Sarria founded the ICS in San Francisco when a group of gay bar owners formed a Tavern Guild as a means to stand in solidarity with one another under the pressure of police harassment. The Guild put on the first large public drag ball in San Francisco’s history. The following year, Sarria declared himself Absolute Empress I, Jose of the newly formed nonprofit.
ICS was intended mainly for “camp” fun as its members derived royal titles and elected Empresses and Emperors at annual Coronations. However, under Jose’s guidance, the organization grew to 70 chapters, and since its inception has raised millions of dollars for AIDs organizations and other charities.
Sarria was born in San Francisco in 1923, to parents of Colombian and Nicaraguan descent. He served in combat during World War II and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant in 1949. When the decorated veteran returned home from Europe, he found that the war on gays in San Francisco was just heating up as vice squads routinely arrested patrons at clandestine gay bars. Sarria’s dream of becoming a teacher was shattered after his own arrest on trumped up “lewd and lascivious” charges.
Knowing he was ineligible to teach with a “sex deviant” record, Sarria dropped out of San Jose State University and began waiting on tables at the Black Cat Café in the city’s beatnik section of North Beach.
“They labeled me a fairy, so I was going to be the fiercest fairy they’d ever seen,” Sarria often recalled. As a drag performer, Sarria made good on his promise of being the “fiercest fairy” by turning the Cat into a rallying place for closeted gays seeking refuge from an oppressive society. He sang torch songs in his tenor voice accompanied by a honky-tonk piano.
On Sunday afternoons the diva performed one man opera parodies, replacing the straight love story for a gay one. For nearly a decade, until the Cat’s closing in 1963, Sarria played Carmen, Aida, or Madam Butterfly to sell out crowds of 300 people.
When the vice squad entered the café to entrap patrons, Sarria exposed them by having his audience stand up and sing “God, Save Us Nelly Queens,” a takeoff on Britain’s national anthem. Sarria preached hope to his patrons with such slogans as “Gay is good, the crime is getting caught!” and United we stand, divided they’ll catch us one by one!”
Sarria’s heir apparent to the ICS, Queen Mother of the Americas, Nicole the Great summed it up best, “Jose is the Rosa Parks of the gay movement. The auction proceeds will support the documentary which in turn will help cement our founder’s sovereign place in history.”
To support Sarria’s documentary, tax deductible donations can be made out to From The Heart Productions, 1455 Mandalay Beach Road, Oxnard, California 93035-2845. Be sure to specify for The Jose Sarria Project on check memo.
