Documentary examines a pioneer in gay rights

June is Gay and Lesbian Pride Month across America -- for many, a time of reflective celebration on how much has been achieved and a time to marshal the strength and resolve to meet the challenges that still lie ahead.

Yet there was a time in the not-so-distant past when pride was about the last thing gays were feeling. Activist John Gruber remembers the 1940s all too well.

“If you were a social deviant or a sexual deviant in any sense of the word, you were in trouble and you knew it,” he said. “And the problem was yours, not society’s.”

But colleague Harry Hay thought it was time for change, and his lifelong efforts to bring a sense of unity, community and joyous spirituality to gays in the U.S. and beyond make for remarkable viewing in the documentary “Hope Along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay” (10 p.m. on KCET).

Hay, who passed away last October at age 90, grew up in Southern California knowing he was gay, and that knowledge set him off on a tumultuous quest to find out for himself and others like him, “Who are we? Where did we come from? And why are we here?” The search for answers led him through an early marriage and fatherhood, an affair with the late actor Will Geer and a fascination with the Communist Party and labor movement.

But it was his work for 1948 presidential candidate Henry Wallace that resulted in Hay’s most significant achievement. A homosexual rights manifesto, written as a platform for the campaign, ended up being the foundation for the country’s first successful gay rights organization, the Mattachine Society.

Hay’s abrasive, self-absorbed tendencies are also revealed in brutally frank interviews with colleagues, but there’s an admiration right next to the irritation that’s impossible to ignore.