Season 6: Episode 5: Damien Martin

Damien Martin grew up in foster care and on the streets of Philadelphia, so he knew all too well about the needs of vulnerable youth. In 1979, when he and his partner, Dr. Emery Hetrick, heard about a 15-year-old gay kid thrown out of a shelter after being gang-raped, they decided to take action. Episode Notes: Learn more about Damien Martin in his 1991 New York Times obituary here. Damien’s oral history can be found in Eric Marcus’s book Making Gay History. Read the 1987 obituary of Dr. Emery Hetrick, Damien’s partner in life and work, here. Damien and Emery are buried together in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery; their gravestone reads, “Death ends a life, not a relationship.” Their relationship was also featured in Making Gay History’s “Love is Love” bonus episode.  Eric first encountered Damien and Emery in the 1984 New York Times article “Homosexual Couples Find a Quiet Pride.” Read it here. You can watch two interviews with Damien on the Gay Cable Network online. The first, which aired April 14, 1991, is part of a segment on LGBTQ youth and begins at about the 5:00 mark here. The second aired August 15, 1991, the same day Damien passed away from AIDS-related complications. It begins at the 48:11 mark here.  In the episode, Damien talks about his involvement with the New York chapter of Dignity, a Catholic LGBTQ organization. Dignity was founded in 1969; learn about its history here. The records of the organization’s New York chapter are kept at the LGBT Center Archives in New York City. In 1979, Damien and Emery founded the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth (IPLGY), later renamed the Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI). Read more about the organization’s history here, and about the services they provide here.  IPLGY’s name offered a rebuttal to the so-called Save Our Children campaign of the late 1970s, which was led by Florida Citrus Commission spokesperson and one-time pop singer and beauty queen Anita Bryant. Learn more about Bryant and her hateful anti-LGBTQ campaign here and here. Boycotts and protests were organized by outraged LGBTQ groups across the country. IPLGY opened its first office in 1983. In 1984, it established the Harvey Milk High School in partnership with the New York City Department of Education to provide LGBTQ youth with access to a public education in a safe environment.  Damien and Emery’s organizational efforts and research on LGBTQ youth provided a common language and citable resources to help professionals advocate for LGBTQ youth in schools. For some of Damien’s academic publications, see “The Perennial Canaanites: The Sin of Homosexuality”; “The Minority Question”; and a short excerpt of “Learning to Hide: The Socialization of the Gay Adolescent.”  Joyce Hunter (whom Damien mentions in the episode when he talks about the Latinx kid who was surprised to learn that there were old gay people) was one of IPLGY’s first employees and a co-founder of the Harvey Milk High School. Joyce was featured in her own Making Gay History episode here. In 1986, Damien and Joyce testified to Congress on behalf of LGBTQ youth; you can read their statement here. HMI publishes material geared toward LGBTQ teens, including the comic book Tales of the Closet by Ivan Velez, Jr. The first issue was dedicated to Damien and Emery; you can read it here. The second issue included a message from Damien to LGBTQ youth. The organization that Damien and Emery founded continues to grow. Learn about HMI New Jersey here. Damien and Emery’s cat, Radclyffe Hall, was named after the author of the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness. Hall’s papers are currently being digitized by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.