Proposition 6 was a 1978 California ballot initiative that tried to ban “homosexual” teachers from working in public schools. (Photo: Steve Savage)
Sally Miller Gearhart (1931 – 2021) was a professor of Speech, Theatre, and Women Studies; a fantasy writer; and a lesbian feminist activist who helped transform the world for women and queer people.
Sally was hired by San Francisco State University in the early 1970s, where she helped establish one of the first Women Studies programs in the country and became the first open lesbian to gain tenure. She was also an influential lesbian rights activist who appeared in the ground-breaking film WORD IS OUT, which normalized gay life, and who fought for LGBT+ rights side-by-side with Harvey Milk.
These facts, like Sally’s name, have been largely forgotten. Our film thus begins by righting the wrong of Sally’s erasure from history. Yet putting Sally on a pedestal next to Harvey both repeats that wrong and misses the point, that Sally the icon not only helped birth the 1970s feminist lesbian movement but was born of it. And so, SALLY! re-examines her story through the eyes of the collective, bringing more “hidden figures” to light while throwing the biggest spotlight of all on the movement itself.
The final act poses questions about Sally’s fate as a human being—through thought-provoking, funny, and vulnerable verite scenes from her precarious final years—and about her legacy. Does she have one? What is it? And how might it change us yet?
“Feminism has done more to save the lives of women in the last 20 years than Jesus Christ did in 2,000 years of Christianity.”
“The future — if there is one — is female.”
“I really, really tried, I just couldn’t get up the interest in the penis.”
– Sally Gearhart