From Mutual Aid to Business Directory: The Gay Switchboard of New York and the Politics of Respectability

On January 13^th, 1972, the Gay Switchboard of New York took its first call, making it the oldest continually operating LGBTQ hotline in the country. In the years that followed, the Gay Switchboard grew rapidly as callers throughout the United States and the world took to the phonelines to find support and resources. By 1979, the Gay Switchboard received over 60,000 calls per year. In less than a decade, the Gay Switchboard built a robust infrastructure for sustaining the gay community through the provision of peer-counseling and the dissemination of information about gay-friendly businesses, healthcare providers, and legal professionals. More than simply facilitating the flow of information, the hotline created a new forum for frank discussions about sexuality and queer identity and for the expression of intimacies ranging from friendship to romance to lustful desire.

However, from the time of its creation, members of the Gay Switchboard fiercely debated the organization’s role as either a community service or as a social outlet. These tensions erupted when the Gay Switchboard incorporated as a non-profit in 1977 and adopted policies banning masturbation, dating, and romantic connections over the phone. Staffed by an all-volunteer workforce made up of predominantly white middle-class men, the Switchboard encountered these debates at a time when the broader gay rights movement battled over what constituted “gay culture.” Tracing the evolution of the Gay Switchboard of New York from its founding by former radical gay activists through its official incorporation as a non-profit, this paper explores how battles over sexual expression at the Gay Switchboard promoted an image of gay subjectivity as politically respectable and economically participatory.