The numbers game is a political fact of life here. “I can safely say that, unless you can guarantee a minimum of 50,000 gays marching down Pennsylvania Avenue this spring, the march will be a political disaster.
In short, Washington’s gay and lesbian community had a lot to lose, which prompted Maccubbin’s response: WAGC even published its own local guide to the gay community called “Just Us” and, at the time when the march was first proposed, was attempting to build a gay community services center. Maccubbin was the founder and leader of the Washington Area Gay Community Council, which was “a coalition of organizations, clubs, services, and businesses that gay DC.” The council, founded in April 1973, functioned to help these organizations work together and better understand what the gay community wanted and needed. “We do not want to receive any setbacks at this time due to a poorly conceived, hastily planned, and shabbily supported demonstration,” he replied. A poor turnout, he feared, could undermine the hard work that he and other local activists had done to advance LGBT rights in the nation’s capital. When organizers from the National Gay Mobilizing Committee approached him in 1973 about a gay rights march in Washington, Larry Maccubbin was skeptical. A button from the march, featuring a quote from Harvey Milk, one of the earliest openly gay politicians.
