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49
October 27, 1989
Gay/Lesbian Studies Conference
The Dobbs Incident
On Friday evening, October 27, at 8:47 p.m., an associate law professor called the Yale police to report that a man, “a member of the gay-lesbian, uh, nonsense,” was putting up “obscene” posters on the second floor of the Yale Law School.
The man postering was William Dobbs, a New York lawyer and Act Up member. The incident took place at the start of the third annual Lesbian and Gay Studies conference, “Outside/Inside,” sponsored by Yale’s Lesbian and Gay Studies Center.
When, during the conference, two Yale police officers arrested Dobbs, a large group of conference participants challenged them.
The Yale Police called the New Haven Police and eight other conference participants were arrested.
Following the arrests, three hundred people marched in protest from the Yale campus to the New Haven Police Station.
The charges against Dobbs were eventually dropped. On November 29, after an investigation, two police officers were disciplined for using poor judgment in two arrests, and the police began sensitivity training in regard to gay men and lesbians.
The posters for which Dobbs was arrested were from a set of twenty produced by a San Francisco group called Boy with Arms Akimbo. The group was formed to combat the censorial intent of the amendment offered by Senator Jesse Helms to deny funding to any anti-AIDS educational materials that showed homosexuality in a “positive” light. The posters show images of naked human bodies with the words “Just Sex” or “Sex Is.” A month before the Yale conference the posters were exhibited in the city-sponsored San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, across from City Hall.
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