[4] Acknowledging both his same-sex sexual attraction and an interest in Marxism from an early age, Hay eventually worked as a professional actor in Los Angeles, where he joined the Communist Party USA, becoming a committed labor activist.

After moving to New Mexico in 1970 with his longtime partner John Burnside, Native American religions influenced the couple to cofound the Radical Faeries in 1979 with Don Kilhefner and Mitchell L. Walker.

In his later years, Hay was an active supporter of the pedophile advocacy organization North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA),[5][6][7] speaking on panels and sessions at several of the group's annual meetings.

[12] Raised in an upper middle class American family, he was named after his father, Harry Hay, Sr. (1869-1938), a mining engineer who had been working for Cecil Rhodes first in Witwatersrand, South Africa, and then in Tarkwa, Ghana.

[31] Aged ten he was enrolled at Virgil Junior High School, and soon after joined a boys' club known as the Western Rangers, through which he developed an interest in Native American Cultures, specifically the Hopi and the Sioux.

[54] He had a number of sexual and romantic trysts with various men; one biographer asserts that these included a one-night stand with Prince George, Duke of Kent, and a brief affair with James Broughton.

[60] Becoming a professional voice actor, he obtained a minor role in a radio adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities performed by George K. Arthur's International Group Players for the Hollywood Playhouse.

[67][68][69] Geer introduced Hay to Los Angeles' leftist community, and together they took part in activism, joining demonstrations for laborers' rights and the unemployed, and on one occasion handcuffed themselves to lamposts outside UCLA to hand out leaflets for the American League Against War and Fascism.

[75] From the time he joined the Party until leaving it in the early 1950s, Hay taught courses in subjects ranging from Marxist theory to folk music at the "People's Educational Center" in Hollywood and later throughout the Los Angeles area.

[80] The couple moved to Manhattan, New York City, where Hay went through a series of unsteady and low-paid jobs, including as a scriptwriter, a service manager in Macy's toy department, and a marketing strategy planner.

[89] In 1942, the couple returned to Los Angeles, renting a house near to Silver Lake and Echo Park; the area was colloquially known as "the Red Hills" due to its large left-wing community.

[92] He spent much time teaching lessons in Marxism across the Los Angeles Bay Area, for which he read widely in anthropology and sociology, but faced problems due to the increased anti-communist repression being exerted by the government through the Smith Act and the subsequent creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

[104][105][106] Over the next two years, Hay refined his idea, finally conceiving of an "international ... fraternal order" to serve as "a service and welfare organization devoted to the protection and improvement of Society's Androgynous Minority",[107] the latter being a term that he later rejected.

Mattachine's membership grew slowly at first but received a major boost in February 1952 when founder Jennings was arrested in a Los Angeles park and charged with lewd behavior.

[132] Kamgren permitted Hay to spend three nights a week in study, which the latter spent reading anthropological and historical texts to learn more about the role of gay people in society, becoming particularly interested in the berdache of Native American communities.

[155][153] Hay's fame had begun to grow across the U.S., and at this time he was contacted by the historians Jonathan Ned Katz and John D'Emilio over the course of their independent research projects into the nation's LGBT history.

[158] This event convinced Hay and his partner John Burnside that they should leave their home in New Mexico and move to Los Angeles, where they settled into a 1920s house on the eastern edge of Hollywood.

Kilhefner identified an ideal location from an advert in The Advocate; the Sri Ram Ashram was a gay-friendly spiritual retreat in the desert near Benson, Arizona, owned by an American named Swami Bill.

[166] Hay gave a welcoming speech in which he outlined his ideas regarding Subject-SUBJECT consciousness, calling on those assembled to "throw off the ugly green frogskin of hetero-imitation to find the shining Faerie prince beneath".

[166] Rather than being referred to as "workshops", the events that took place were known as "Faerie circles",[166] and were on such varied subjects as massage, nutrition, local botany, healing energy, the politics of gay enspiritment, English country dancing, and auto-fellatio.

[167] Those assembled took part in spontaneous rituals, providing invocations to spirits and performing blessings and chants,[166] with most participants discarding the majority of their clothes, instead wearing feathers, beads, and bells, and decorating themselves in rainbow makeup.

As more joined the circle, they began meeting in West Hollywood's First Presbyterian Church and then the olive grove atop the hill at Barnsdall Park; however they found it difficult to gain the same change of consciousness that had been present at the rural gathering.

[172] The group began to discuss what the Faerie movement was developing into; Hay encouraged them to embark on political activism, using Marxism and his Subject-SUBJECT consciousness theory as a framework for bringing about societal change.

[173] Another issue of contention was over what constituted a "Faerie"; Hay had an idealized image of what someone with "gay consciousness" thought and acted like, and turned away some prospective members of the Circle because he disagreed with their views.

One prospective member, the gay theater director John Callaghan, joined the circle in February 1980, but was soon ejected by Hay after he voiced concern about hostility toward heterosexuals among the group.

"[179] At a winter 1980 gathering in southern Oregon designed to discuss acquiring land for a Faerie sanctuary, a newcomer to the group, coached by Walker, confronted Harry about the power dynamics within the core circle.

[180] The core circle made an attempt to reconcile, but at a meeting that came to be known as "Bloody Sunday", Kilhefner quit, accusing Hay and Burnside of "power tripping", while Walker resigned.

[184] During the 1980s, Hay involved himself in an array of activist causes, campaigning against South African apartheid, Nicaragua's Contras, and the death penalty, while also joining the nuclear disarmament and pro-choice movements, becoming a vocal critic of the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

[186] Although pleased with the popular protests in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was unhappy that those nations abandoned the socialist cause altogether and retained his faith in Marxism.

[11] Despite the efforts of the vast majority of the LGBT community to distance themselves from pedophiles and pedophilia,[7][6] Hay and a handful of others who were boycotting Stonewall 25, including NAMBLA, organized an alternative, competing event.