Fred Cherry

Fred Cherry (15 April 1926 – 30 July 2003) was an American activist for greater rights for janes and johns (clients of prostitutes). He gained some measure of fame as self-styled "elector of homophobia" in his fight against (in his own words) "the Organized Homosexual Conspiracy of America", who he said opposed his own fight to get his freedom to patronize prostitutes recognized as being a matter of civil rights. Cherry headed the New York group Johns and Call Girls United Against Repression.

Activism Cherry first began seeing sex workers in 1956 and started his campaign against New York State's anti-prostitution laws in 1962.

In the summer of 1964 he joined the New York City League for Sexual Freedom protesting against the anti-prostitution outside the New York Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village. After the publicity surrounding the protest, many members of the Mattachine Society (a gay rights organisation) joined the League for Sexual Freedom. Under their influence the policies changed, and the league became an anti-prostitution organisation. This development caused Cherry to become anti-gay. He is reported to have said "If those homosexuals had not taken over the League for Sexual Freedom, the League might have achieved the decriminalization of prostitution."

Cherry provided funding for the incorporation of the International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education (ISWFACE) and its daily running costs.

Mathematics Cherry helped make mathematical history when he published, in collaboration with such distinguished combinatorialists as E.T. Parker and Walter Wallis, a construction of orthogonal pairs of doubly diagonal Latin squares of order 10, thus completing the proof that such pairs exist for all orders other than 2,3 and 6. In his words: "this accomplishment gave me a tremendous boost in my self-esteem. Before I had done this, I used to think of myself as a rich bum. Now, I can truly call myself a mathematician, even though I only have a bachelor's degree in mathematics."