Celebrating the Activism of Bob Kohler: The "Political Funeral"

Tonight was the "political funeral" of activist Bob Kohler. He was sent off in grand style, with brass instruments and drums, like a New Orleans farewell. The really amazing thing was there were activists of all ages and eras. There were a few veterans of the Gay LIberation Front; there were members of Act Up; there were members of the Church Ladies for Choice; there were members of FIERCE, the youth group; neighbors from the old West Village who remembered him walking his dog Magoo back in the 70s along Christopher Street; and there were the new generation of transfolk who Bob always defended strongly.

I met Bob at GLF meetings at Alternate U. He was a mentor to me when I was chair of Gay Youth in 1971. And I knew him when he was manager of the Club Baths (yes, amazingly, that is indeed my old CB membership card). This was something I loved about Bob — he was not a dour leftist who was so angry that pleasure was out of the equation. For him, pleasure was a radical act. And in fact it still is. Bob fought to keep the bath houses open as HIV stalked the city — because he knew sex wasn't going away and that the best way to encourage safe sex was in a positive environment. The Club Baths, of all the bath houses I visited, was truly a positive place. That can't be said for many of its successors in the city today. But he was right, sex didn't go away.

Bob was grounded in a way many in GLF were not. After all, he was a veteran and a businessman. He understood the system, and he knew how to fight it, stand up to it, challenge it. This quote in his obituary in the Voice captures his spirit best, because he also was a member of CORE (the Congress on Racial Equality) a long ago civil rights group. He fought for everyone, and he never stopped...thus his statement on his presence that the protest of the shooting of Amadou Diallo:

"I do not equate my oppression with the oppression of blacks and Latinos. You can't. It is not the same struggle, but it is one struggle. And, if my being here as a longtime gay activist can influence other people in the gay community, it's worth getting arrested. I'm an old man now. I don't look forward to spending 24 hours in a cell. But these arrests are giving some kind of message. I don't know what else you can do."

He knew what to do. And we all learned from him. May his memory be a blessing — and a call to action.