Donald R. Slater; Journalist Helped Lead Fight for Homosexual Rights
Donald R. Slater, leading journalist for homosexual rights, has died at the age of 78. He died Friday at the Veterans Hospital in Westwood.
Slater, who preferred the term “homosexual” to “gay” or “lesbian,” was editor of the magazine One from 1954 until it ceased publication in 1970. The Homosexual Information Center that he founded in 1968 continues to function.
Suing on behalf of One in the 1950s, Slater and others won a key Supreme Court opinion permitting information about homosexuals to be published and distributed through the mails.
Slater, who frequently contributed articles to The Times and other mainstream publications, staunchly opposed tenets of “gay pride” that he defined as subverting an individual’s interests to the interests of the entire homosexual community.
“Homosexuals can make strides in the courts, but only as human beings, not as ‘gays,’ ” he wrote for The Times in 1976. “It was as individual citizens that homosexuals won the right of association in the 1950s, the right to send information through the mails and the right to teach in public schools.”
Slater is survived by his longtime companion, Tony Reyes.
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