life:

On what would have been Harvey Milk’s 82nd birthday, LIFE.com offers a series of photographs by Grey Villet chronicling the early days of the modern gay rights movement in America.

Titled “Homosexuals in Revolt” and touted as “a major essay on America’s newest militants,” the piece elicited strong reactions from readers — many of whom, of course, were less than happy that their beloved LIFE would devote a dozen pages to people whom one letter writer characterized as “psychic cripples.” Other responses from peeved readers that were printed in the January 28, 1972, issue of LIFE included:

From Telford, Penn. — There was plenty to lament in your year-end issue, but the thing that struck me as most sad was the fact that LIFE felt compelled to devote 11 pages to “Homosexuals in Revolt.”

From Chicago — Essentially, it is absurd to accept as a mere “variant lifestyle” a practice which, if universal, would mean the end of the human race.

And, from Glendale, California, the standard (as well as reductionist and selective) biblical critique — “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22).

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