Reclaiming Her Time

A new documentary chronicles the life and work of lesbian activist Sally Gearhart

Few people have done as much for gay rights and women’s rights as Sally Gearhart (1931-2021). She was a feminist, academic, often called a “firebrand,” and she was in the thick of gay rights activism during the 1970s and 1980s in San Francisco. After a life more or less in the closet—a requirement in academia at the time—Sally moved to San Francisco specifically so she could live as an out lesbian.

She was soon caught up in the spirit of the times, and among her many accomplishments, she was instrumental in helping to defeat Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative in 1978, which would have banned any LGBTQ+ people from working in the schools. She worked with Harvey Milk in that effort and went on to score a series of firsts in her career.

She was the first out lesbian to be granted tenure at a university, achieving that at San Francisco State. She helped co-found a women’s community, wrote fantasy novels, and established one of the first women’s studies department at the college level.

And yet, in LGBTQ+ history, Sally has often been forgotten, despite appearing in the classic, 1977 documentary Word is Out, which had a profound effect on the gay rights movement, but also, to the extent possible, normalized the reality of LGBTQ+ people in the culture.

Happily, Sally’s extraordinary life and career is being preserved and celebrated in the new documentary, Sally! Director Deborah Craig didn’t set out to make this film. Rather, as part of the public health department at San Francisco State where she teaches, she had begun to study lesbians and aging. One of her interview subjects pointed her to Sally, and the film took off from there.

Craig says that one of the unique characteristics of Sally was that she was complicated. “She was a radical lesbian feminist, but she always had men in her life. She even wrote a little blurb about herself in one of her later books that said, ‘Sally Gearhart lives in Northern California on a mountain of contractions. So she knew she was complicated.”

Craig says that Sally loved the limelight and speaking, and the film includes plenty of her inspirational and motivating appearances, but she also adds that the film is “not just about Sally but about that whole movement and how we need to work together.

“Her legacy is really fighting so hard for gay rights and women’s rights at the time. We forget how hard it was. We forget about how brave it was to come out when you were a teacher because you could lose your job. You could even be assassinated.” [As Harvey Milk was.]

Sally didn’t believe in hatred, Craig says. “That’s the third part of the film. She was a sort of separatist for years…who wasn’t really a separatist, again contradictions. She was a radical and she was willing to ‘throw bombs,’ but she managed to do it with charm and humor and even love.” Whatever the issue, Craig says, Sally was able to reach across the aisle, largely because she came from the other side of the aisle. Raised in conservative Virginia in the bosom of the church, she had a deep connection with that world, and though she ultimately rebelled against the established church, she was able to understand where her opponents came from and engage them with curiosity rather than antagonism. In the vein of ‘throwing bombs,’ though Craig says that when Sally was asked to preach at the MCC in San Francisco, according to one of the pastors Sally said, “feminism has done more for women in 20 years than Jesus Christ did in 2,000 years.”

Craig says it’s important to get this film out now. Like many, she is concerned about the loss of LGBTQ+ history if it’s not chronicled. She also feels that in a time marked by acrimony and conflict, it’s important to channel the energy of someone like Sally who, as Craig says, “didn’t vilify anybody. She wanted to understand people who thought differently than she did. We’ve lost that, and our country’s in trouble because of that. So we need Sally’s fighting spirit, but we also need Sally’s loving spirit.”

Sally! is currently being screened at festivals around the country, and a Connecticut showing is planned. For more information, visit the film’s website at sallygearhartfilm.com