Arthur Evans, Cofounder of Gay Activists Alliance, Dies at 68

Arthur Evans, who helped found the Gay Activists Alliance to show a more assertive face of advocacy in the years after the Stonewall rebellion, died Sunday at the age of 68.

The New York Timesreports that Evans died at home in San Francisco of a heart attack. He learned he had an aortic aneurysm last year.

Evans did not participate in the Stonewall riots in 1969, but the pivotal event inspired him to join the Gay Liberation Front, according to the Times. He believed the group weakened its focus by supporting other causes such as an end to the Vietnam War and racial discrimination, and in late 1969 he and some others split to found the Gay Activists Alliance.

"Based in New York, the alliance became a model for gay rights organizations nationwide, pushing in New York for legislation to ban discrimination against gay men and lesbians in employment, housing and other areas," reports the Times. "Mr. Evans wrote its statement of purpose and much of its constitution, which began, 'We as liberated homosexual activists demand the freedom for expression of our dignity and value as human beings.'

"To attract attention the alliance staged what its members called 'zaps,' confrontations with people or institutions that they believed discriminated against gay people. Among other incidents, they confronted Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York, went to television studios to protest shows perceived as anti-gay, demanded gay marriage rights at the city's marriage license bureau, and demonstrated at the taxi commission against a regulation, since abolished, requiring gay people to get a psychiatrist's approval before they could be allowed to drive a taxi."

Evans, a native of Pennsylvania, is survived by a brother.