30 Facts About Marvin Liebman

Marvin Liebman 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.

Marvin Liebman's parents were Ashkenazim from Galicia, a region that at the time was part of Poland and is today part of Ukraine.

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

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

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

Overtime, Marvin Liebman worked 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.

In 1951, Marvin 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.

In January 1952, Marvin Liebman founded a group, Aide Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, which sought to allow the admission of 25,000 Chinese intellectual refugees languishing in refugee camps in British Hong Kong to the United States.

Soon, the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency were covertly funding the ACRI as Marvin 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.

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

The Committee of One Million, which took its name from a petition Marvin Liebman organized and was supposedly signed by one million Americans, became the premier organization of the "China Lobby".

Much of the literature produced by the Committee of One Million was more anti-Communist than pro-Kuomintang, as Marvin Liebman found it easier to denounce the People's Republic rather than glorify the Republic of China.

In May 1957, Marvin Liebman attended the third summit of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League in Saigon.

Marvin Liebman became active as an emissary hoping to bring the Committee of One Million, the League, the Bloc and the Confederation together to form a world-wide anti-Communist group.

In 1958, Marvin Liebman became general secretary of a steering committee announced in Mexico City to explore the possibility of combining the Asian People's Anti-Communist League with its own Latin American offshoot to form what eventually became the World Anti-Communist League.

At the time, Marvin Liebman stated that was the first time that "independent anticommunist organizations jointly approved and, indeed, sponsored a workable plan leading towards coordinated international action".

Marvin Liebman was shocked to learn that Stetsko as one of the OUN commanders had been involved in the Holocaust, organizing pogroms against Jews in Galicia in 1941.

Marvin Liebman learned that the other groups were only interested in using the Committee of One Million's connections to lobby American politicians and he lamented he "had lost control to a bunch of jerks".

Marvin Liebman was the founder of the American Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters, which announced its existence on 14 December 1961 with a full page ad in The New York Times declaring "Katanga is the Hungary of 1961".

Towards the end of the 1960s, Marvin Liebman became exhausted with his New York-based political activities, moved to London, and began a short career in theater production.

Together with the conservative publisher William Rusher and a former CIA officer, David Atlee Phillips, Marvin Liebman founded a pro-Rhodesian lobbying group in 1976 called the American-Rhodesian Association, which lobbied the US government to do more to support Rhodesia.

Marvin Liebman enjoyed a long-time friendship with William F Buckley, Jr.

Marvin Liebman was Consultant to the Office of Policy and Planning for Action from June through October 1981, consultant to the Office of Public Affairs for the US Department of Education from October 1981 to February 1982 and director of the Office of Public Affairs and director of special projects for the National Endowment of the Arts from February 1982 to July 1987.

Marvin Liebman later served as director of special projects and acting director for the Office of Public Affairs at the National Endowment for the Arts.

In July 1990, Liebman shed a lifetime of closeted living after writing a coming-out letter to William F Buckley, Jr.

Marvin Liebman believed that homophobia was becoming the new basis for organizing conservative groups in the US, now that anti-communist sentiments were becoming less relevant.

Marvin Liebman's autobiography, Coming Out Conservative, was published in 1992.

Marvin Liebman died of heart failure on March 31,1997.

Marvin Liebman's papers are held by the New York Public Library.