At this point, things start to move into high gear. The young friend who had appeared shirtless in the Berkeley Barb was Gale Whittington, an employee of the States Steamship Company at their headquarters in San Francisco’s financial district. Whittington was fired from his job the week after his photo appeared in the Barb. Laurence and Whittington then decided to form a group to protest the firing by holding a daily picket line in front of the Steamship Company offices on California Street. They named their group the Committee for Homosexual Freedom (CHF). Here’s an article in the Berkeley Barb with a report of the protest. The article announced that, “The homosexual revolution of 1969 started this week in San Francisco as militant homosexuals made war on both gay and straight Establishments.” The article also reported that the Board of Directors of S.I.R. had dismissed Leo Laurence as editor of Vector, a post he had held for only two months.