In 1972, three years after the Stonewall Riots, Graves came out to his students at MIT, becoming the first openly gay professor at the university. In addition to his work with the Homophile Community Health Services Center, Graves became involved in Boston’s LesBiGay community, which included helping to found the Boston Center for Lesbians and Gay Men and the Gay Academic Union of New England. Graves was also an opera singer who sang in choirs in Provincetown, Fort Lauderdale, and Boston, including the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus. Graves was interviewed in 1994 for the book "Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America".