Gay Rights
Activist, Teleidoscope Inventor John Burnside Dead at 91

John Burnside, noted gay rights activist, partner of the late gay rights pioneer Harry Hay, and the inventor of a kaleidoscope-like device called the teleidoscope, died Sunday at his home in San Francisco. He was 91.

Burnside has recently been diagnosed with spongioblastoma brain cancer, longtime friend Joey Cain told the Los Angeles Times. His life partner, Hay, died in 2002 at the age of 90.

In his early career Burnside worked as a staff scientist at Lockheed. His interest in optical engineering led him to invent the teleidoscope, a variation on the kaleidoscope that transforms whatever you're looking at into a colorful design without the use of colored glass chips.

That creation led Burnside to launch California Kalidoscopes, which became a successful design and manufacturing firm in Los Angeles.

But it is for his relationship with Hay that gays and lesbians will best remember Burnside. Hay had started the Mattachine Society, a pioneering gay rights organization in Los Angeles, in the 1950s. The couple was together for 39 years.

Burnside and Hay were a highly visible activist couple in Los Angeles throughout the '60s. Together they formed the Southern California Council on Religion and the Homophile in 1965. A year later they took part in one of the country's first gay rights demonstrations -- a 15-car motorcade through downtown L.A. protesting the barring of gay men from serving in the military.

"They were totally committed to peace-and-justice issues on a wide spectrum of social concerns, including Native American rights, women's and labor issues, fair employment and housing -- they were just good social activists," Mark Thompson, a well-known writer on gay history and longtime friend of Burnside's, told the Times.

Information on a memorial service for Burnside in San Francisco is forthcoming.

Donations in Burnside's memory to continue his and Hay's activist work may be made to the Harry Hay Fund, c/o Chas Nol, 174 1/2 Hartford St., San Francisco, CA 94114. (Ross von Metzke, The Advocate)