The end of the Experience.(gay human-potential movement, Advocate Experience)

Publication: The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)

Publication Date: 10-APR-01

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COPYRIGHT 2001 Liberation Publications, Inc.

Faced with shrinking attendance and a deficit, the leaders of an influential consciousness-raising group decide to shut its doors

On a March weekend in 1978, about 100 people gathered at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco at the behest of then-Advocate publisher David Goodstein. Among those in the audience were such gay luminaries as Armistead Maupin and Randy Shilts, at the time an Advocate staff writer. The gathering marked the launch of the Advocate Experience, Goodstein's attempt to bring the human-potential movement to gays and lesbians. Over the next 23 years, some 50,000 of them went through Experience workshops. The Experience, as it became known, closed its doors in February, a victim of dwindling attendance and interest.

"We all know and love this work," says Honey Ward, president of the Experience. "This is about personal and spiritual revolution. To close up shop was a very difficult decision to make. But David and [cofounder] Rob Eichberg articulated a vision in 1978 that by the year 2000 it be absolutely OK to be lesbian and gay. The fundamental thing that these two guys articulated has in large measure been accomplished."

The end of the Experience marks...

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