Marvin Liebman

Marvin Liebman (July 21, 1923 – March 31, 1997) was an American conservative activist and fundraiser, and later in his life, a gay rights advocate.

Liebman was raised in Brooklyn, New York, by his parents, Benjamin "Benny" Liebman and Rose Schorr.

His parents were Ashkenazim (Yiddish-speaking Jews) from Galicia, a region that at the time was part of Poland and is today part of Ukraine.

Liebman recalled his youth as growing amid "a polyglot collection of middle class families".

Because Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had converted to Methodism in 1927 to marry his third wife, Soong Mei-ling, evangelical Protestants were the firmest supporters of the "China Lobby", seeing Chiang as China's Christian savior who would one day convert all of China to evangelical Protestantism.

As a Protestant missionary in the 1930s, Judd had witnessed the Chinese civil war firsthand and had seen atrocities committed by the Chinese Communists, giving him an even more reasons to support the Kuomintang than other members of the "China Lobby".

With Judd, well known as an advocate of racial equality known to his Sinophilia as well as being an anti-communist, the ARCI soon attracted generous donations from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Soon, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were covertly funding the ACRI as Liebman found that they both wanted to "expand their intelligence network in Hong Kong", a city where many spies for Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and both Chinese regimes operated.

He was bar mitzvahed in September 1936.

Like many other young people who came of age in the Great Depression, Liebman believed the Depression proved the failure of capitalism, causing him to be interested in Communism as an alternative.

While in high school, he became interested in left wing politics and joined both the American Student Union and Young Communist League.

At the same time, Liebman discovered his homosexuality, which he felt deeply ashamed of, causing him to remain in "the closet".

At age 19, Liebman was drafted and served in Naples and Cairo during the final years of World War 2, serving in the Army Air Corps.

By his own admission, an incompetent soldier who failed in his duties as a cook, Liebman never saw action.

However, like many other gay Americans in World War II, his military service was a "national coming out" as he discovered other gay men for the first time, easing his feelings of shame and self-disgust.

In Italy, homosexuality was not illegal, through it was considered to be shameful, and Liebman enjoyed being part of the gay subculture in Naples, where he first had sex.

While in Cairo at an Air Corps base, his commanding officer discovered a series of love letters written by Liebman that revealed his homosexuality.

The officer subjected Liebman to repeated private and public humiliations, forcing him to appear before the other soldiers in his unit while his officer called him a "faggot" and a "cocksucker".

Liebman was finally given a blue discharge for homosexuality in 1944.

Due to his blue discharge, he was disqualified from collecting veterans' benefits.

After being sent home to New York City, Liebman met and quickly married a woman named "Patsy".

Their relationship, though, was never consummated and the marriage was annulled after less than six months in June 1945.

Liebman drifted through life, working a variety of odd jobs while being a member of New York's gay subculture, where unlike in Naples, he was in constant danger of being arrested in police raids.

Over the next several years, Liebman became increasingly involved in Zionism, working in various volunteer and paid positions for the American League for a Free Palestine, United Jewish Appeal, Aguduth Israel and the American Fund for Israel Institutions.

In 1947, he also worked with Irgun, a right-wing terrorist organization which was attempting to secure Israeli independence from Britain through a campaign of bombings aimed at the Arabs and British.

During this time, Liebman began developing more conservative political views, including a passionate hatred for the Soviet Union stemming from the communist country's reportedly harsh treatment of Jewish citizens.

After 1949, the Republic of China which only controlled Taiwan continued to hold China's seat at the United Nations, and many governments all over the world felt that China's UN seat should be given to the People's Republic of China.

In the early 1950s, he was a leader of the so-called "China Lobby", serving as secretary of the Committee of One Million Against the Admission of Red China to the United Nations.

In 1951, Liebman met Elinor Lipper, a Russian woman who had just published her memoir, 11 Years in Soviet Prison Camps, recounting her experiences in the Gulag camps of the Kolyma.

Lipper's revelation that much of the Soviet economy was based upon slave labor caused him to lose his faith in socialism as he recalled: "Her story overwhelmed me. I felt totally betrayed. What was worse, because I had believed in the Soviet Union, I felt personally responsible for what had happened to her. The change seemed quick, but it was really the culmination of five years of internal intellectual conflict that I had hidden from myself. This catharsis...was the turning point in my life".

In January 1952, Liebman founded a group, Aide Refugee Chinese Intellectuals (ARCI), which sought to allow the admission of 25, 000 Chinese intellectual refugees languishing in extreme poverty in refugee camps in the British crown colony of Hong Kong to the United States (at the time, American immigration law imposed strict quotes on the number of Asians allowed to in).

Ironically, given his conservative views, Liebman's plan to bring 25, 000 Chinese intellectuals to America brought him into conflict with the right-wing nativist politicians who objected to any immigration, especially to Asian immigration.

After founding ARCI, Liebman discovered a talent for political organizing, applying to the right principles that were based on his experience of his "knowledge of how the left organized".

The tactics that he deployed for the ARCI were subsequently used for all his political campaigns, under which he would enlist a number of prominent individuals to endorse his organization by serving as "advisory" board members; issue letterheads with the names of these individuals attached; have a wealthy businessman serve as a treasurer and corporate fundraiser; appoint someone famous as president; and finally form a committee to "really do the work or rubber-stamp what you are doing".

In this way, Liebman created organizations that were well funded with prestigious supporters that attracted attention while having a few dedicated activists being in charge.

To assist ARCI, Liebman enlisted Walter Judd, a Republican congressman who once served as a Protestant missionary in China as its president.

In February 1952, Liebman traveled to Hong Kong to open an office for the ACRI, which was soon besieged by thousands of refugee applications from Chinese scholars, doctors, lawyers, scientists and other intellectuals all living in the refugee camps.

As Liebman soon found that nativist members of Congress were opposed to his plans to bring 25, 000 Chinese refugees to the United States, arguing that America did not need Asian immigrants, in the summer of 1952, he switched the focus of ACRI to supporting the Kuomintang regime in Taiwan.

At the same time, Liebman began to associate with the Committee for a Free Asia, a CIA-sponsored front organization that was active in a long stretch of Asia from Japan to Pakistan.

Eager to work for the CIA, in 1952 he took a briefcase of cash worth $25, 000 dollars to Hong Kong to pay for anti-Communist pamphlets that were to be struggled over the border to the People's Republic of China.