However long it takes for a real victory to be certified—no matter what happens on Election Day, it will be too early to unfurl a "Mission Accomplished" banner—the once ragtag march of lovers has acquired an air of inevitability. Edith Eyde's prophecy is almost fulfilled: gays are more or less regular folk. All the same, many who came out during the Stonewall era are wondering what will be lost as the community sheds its pariah status. They are baffled by the latter-day cult of marriage and the military—emblems of Eisenhower's America that the Stonewall generation joyfully rejected. The gay world is confronting a question with which Jews, African-Americans, and other marginalized groups have long been familiar: the price of assimilation.
—
Love on the March by Alex Ross.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 7, 2012 -
60 comments
In 1971, "decades before any state had seriously considered legalizing gay marriage, long before anyone had thought of creating—never mind repealing—a policy called “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” before Reagan, before AIDS, before the American Psychiatric Association determined that homosexuality was not a mental illness, and before half the people currently living in America were even born, a man named John Singer stepped into the King County marriage license office in Seattle."
Meet Faygele ben Miriam, the radical activist who pioneered the fight for same-sex marriage in Washington State, 41 years ago. Via.
posted by zarq
on Jun 7, 2012 -
16 comments
Diseased Pariah News started in 1990 as "a patently offensive publication of, by, and for people with HIV disease (and their friends and loved ones). We are a forum for infected people to share their thoughts, feelings, art, writing and brownie recipes in an atmosphere free of teddy bears, magic rocks, and seronegative guilt." It ran for 11 issues over the next 9 years,
8 of which can be found here. (NSFW, irritating interface)
[more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust
on May 6, 2010 -
4 comments
1969: The Year of Gay Liberation is an online exhibit of the New York Public Library focusing on the radical gay rights movements of the late sixties and early seventies, focusing on the organizations The Mattachine Society of New York, Daughters of Bilitis, Gay News, Gay Liberation Front, Radicalesbians, Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries and the Gay Activists Alliance, and the events of the Stonewall Riot and Christopher Street Liberation Day. This is but one part of the NYPL's fine
LGBT collection, which includes, among other things,
resources for teens,
AIDS/HIV collections, and digital collections on
ACT UP,
Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen,
Bessie Bonehill,
Gertrude Stein,
Gran Fury,
Julian Eltinge,
Richard Wandel and
Walt Whitman.
posted by Kattullus
on Oct 1, 2009 -
14 comments
People with a History is "an online guide to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans history." Ranging from
the first stirrings of civilization to the modern day, People with a History gathers together original sources and academic articles dealing with queerness throughout history. To give you a feel for the wealth of material on the site, here are a few pages that caught my interest:
The Vikings and Homosexuality,
Coptic Spell: Spell for a Man to Obtain a Male Lover,
an acount of a gay marriage ceremony described by Michel de Montaigne,
But Among Our Own Selves (an 18th Century gay ballad),
a chapter from The Life of St. Theodore of Sykeon, a 7th Century Byzantine monk and bishop, which mentions
adelphopoiesis, or the
rite of brothermaking,
Wu Tsao, 19th Century Chinese lesbian poet, and finally
Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men.
posted by Kattullus
on Feb 2, 2008 -
15 comments
In 1955, at least twelve men in Boise, Idaho were arrested for
"infamous crimes against nature.". In the resulting dragnet, the vice president of the Idaho First National Bank was
sentenced to seven years in prison, while national magazines fomented a McCarthyite
Lavender Scare with headlines such as
Male Pervert Ring Seduces 1,000 Boys. This dark chapter in
Idaho gay history was documented in both John Gerassi's 1966 book,
The Boys of Boise and the recent film,
The Fall of '55, by documentarian
Seth Randal, but neither Gerassi nor Randal could identify
The Queen, a closeted but politically connected homosexual who allegedly used his massive clout to stop the witch hunt.
posted by jonp72
on Aug 28, 2007 -
45 comments
The Uses of Canaries--and what canaries need to do --
...Why go to all that trouble when we have reduced the homosexual, himself, to nothing more than a body part? Remove the homo -- he's just a diseased body part, after all -- and the problem is solved.
Of course there will always be those so pathologically sex-panicked that they have to rely on their Think Pieces to get their pornography fix. Not worth worrying about, generally. But when United States Senators start in with the Depravity Fillip, and the DF starts showing up in the campaign literature of various groups... well, you want to keep your eye on that sort of thing. You maybe want to start thinking about that famous canary in the mine-shaft. ...
posted by amberglow
on May 9, 2005 -
51 comments
Fifty years ago this month, then-19-year-old George Mansour was
arrested for having sex with a sailor at a private party -- his name was published in the paper and his acceptance to Boston University was revoked. This fascinating slice of recent history (don't miss the hilarious interview) coincides interestingly with current privacy-related news
at home and
abroad. [via
uffish]
posted by RJ Reynolds
on Mar 10, 2003 -
13 comments
