Velvet Mafia

The "Gay Mafia", "Velvet Mafia", gay lobby, etc. are pejorative terms for the alleged disproportional behind-the-scene influence of gay rights groups and the LGBT community in politics, media, culture, and everyday life.

An early use of the term was when the English critic Kenneth Tynan proposed an article to Playboy editor A.C. Spectorsky in late 1967 on the "Homosexual Mafia" in the arts. Spectorsky declined, although he admitted that "culture hounds were paying homage to faggotismo as they have never done before". Playboy would run a panel on gay issues in April 1971.

The term "Velvet Mafia" was first used in an article in the "Top of the Pop" column in the entertainment section of the Sunday New York Daily News in the 1970s by journalist Steven Gaines to describe the executives at the Robert Stigwood Organization, a British film and record company. The phrase was later used by the same writer in a roman à clef about Studio 54 called The Club in reference to the influential gay crowd that became the club's habitués. This "mafia" included Calvin Klein, Truman Capote, Halston, and Andy Warhol. The term was tongue-in-cheek, describing a powerful social clique, not some truly devious alliance ruling either an industry or politics.

"Gay Mafia" was widely used in the media in the 1980s and 1990s, and could be seen in the pages of the New York Post. The term was also used by the British newspaper The Sun in 1998 in response to what it claimed was an over-representation of gay people in the Labour Party Cabinet.

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