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Historical figures in LGBTQ rights ( other than Milk)

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btthegreat

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If you ask people about the history of black civil rights in this country you'll get somewhere between 4 and 10 names. If you ask people about the history of Women's civil rights you'll get the same. But if you ask about gay rights or queer rights, you are lucky to get two. This thread is devoted to broadening that number. I hope this thread is worth my time. At least I will read and appreciate it.

Frank Kameny

1. A harvard trained astronomer, he was the first person in 1961 to file an appellate petition contesting his termination by the U.S. Army Map Service /US Civil Service Commission for homosexuality which reached SCOTUS. Of course it was ignored. .The Kameny Papers "
Yale Law Professor William Eskridge, an expert on the history of gay rights, said the Kameny papers show how the government's reasons for excluding gay rights shifted over time while Kameny's position was consistent. They are the work of the initial protester, strategist and leader of a major social movement, he said.

"Frank Kameny was the Rosa Parks and the Martin Luther King and the Thurgood Marshall of the gay rights movement," Eskridge said.

"That's why it's important that his papers are available because they're the innermost workings of this great strategist and leader — and they're, of course, archival records of the movement itself," he said.

2. He and Barbara Gittings were active in persuading the American Psychiatric Association to delist homosexuality as mental disorder in 1973.

3. He formed the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. , the first gay civil rights organization in Washington, D.C

 
Barbara Gittings an early activist and protester in the gay rights movement
1. Founding member of New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis in 1958
2. She and Kameny successfully lobbied the American Psychiatric Association to delist homosexuality as mental disorder in 1973.
3. Editor of The Ladder, a Lesbian Review
4. Founding member of the gay caucus of the Professional Librarian Assoc. The first such caucus in any professional organization. Its goal was the addition of more positive and non-stereotypic literary representations and less dated non-fictional information
 
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The two Arthurs: Referring to Arthur Bell and Arthur Evans.

Arthur Bell was a journalist and early member of the Gay Liberation Front .
1. Wrote his first piece for the Village Voice on Stonewall riots in 1969 and continued to write the Bell Tells column including a series on unsolved murders of gays.
2. Founding member of the Gay Activist Alliance
3. author of Dancing the Gay Lib Blues, a personal account of the struggles of the early gay rights movement

Arthur Evans early gay rights activist, philosopher and author.

1. Founding member of the Radical Faeries an anti-assimilationist/ counter cultural movement that rejected hetero- imitationism.
2. Founding member of the Gay Activists Alliance and proponent of 'zaps' ( a zap was a raucous public demonstration designed to embarrass a public figure or celebrity as a tactic which served to draw attention to discrimination)
3. Researched the historical roots of the counterculture , published in 1973
4. wrote seminal work on the influence of misogyny and homophobia on philosophy and logic It was published in 1997 as the Critique of Patriarchal Reason.
Start at 9 minutes
 
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I will give you one name, a man who has done more for the gay community than any other in the last 20 years.

Obama
 
Freddie Mercury springs immediately to mind.

Followed by Robert Maplethorp, and the brave museum curator who showed his work.
 
Thanks to the posters who mentioned names that I had never heard of before.


Most people do not know (and quite frankly do not care) about the persecution and prosecution of gay people (especially men) over the centuries in all countries. (Supposedly, lesbianism was never criminalized in England because Queen Victoria could not conceive of such conduct!)


Here in Los Angeles, the police department in the 1960s used to brag about stationing undercover cops on the street to entice and then to arrest thousands every year.

In New York City, the police proudly used to encourage landlords to evict gay tenants.
 
This is a great idea for a thread because I know little to nothing about the history of LGBTQ activism and the leaders of that movement. I will follow this thread with interest. Thank you to the OP and to all contributors who make positive contributions to this thread. Bravo to you all.

Cheers.
An ignorant Evilroddy.
 
Sylvia Rivera was self identified Drag Queen, and an early advocate for Transgender rights who concentrated her energies on those under the LGBTQ umbrella who were marginalized as the GAA turned toward mainstream activism including its drag queens, the homeless, the incarcerated, and its people of color and Latina members.


1. Patron of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village who protested police harassment of the gay and trans community in the first documented protest for Gay rights in America


2. Founder of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance. Co-founder alongside Marsha Johnson, of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens and trans women of color

3. Fought for the New York City Transgender Rights Bill and for a trans-inclusive New York State Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Act



4.Negotiated transgender inclusion in the political structure and agenda of the ESPA.


5. an active member of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, Rivera ministered through the Church's food pantry, which provides food to hungry people. and founded a MCC New York's queer youth shelter later renamed Sylvia's PLace
 
Rev. Troy Perry is the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, a Protestant denomination with a special affirming ministry with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities, in Los Angeles on October 6, 1968. He held a seat on the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations in 1973.

1. Perry worked to oppose Anita Bryant 's Save the Children campaign in 1977, that sought to overturn an anti-discrimination ordinance passed by the city of Miami.

2.He fought and beat the Briggs Initiative in California that was written to ensure gay and lesbian teachers would be fired or prohibited from working in California public schools.

3 Perry also planned the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979 with Robin Tyler.[15]

4. In 1970, Rev. Perry, with two friends, Mr. Morris Kight and Rev. Bob Humphries, founded Christopher Street West to hold the first and oldest annual Pride Parade. It is the oldest gay pride parade in the world.

5.Wrote Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage published by St. Martin's in 1992. He is a contributing editor for the book Is Gay Good?


6. He was honored by the American Civil Liberties Union Lesbian and Gay Rights Chapter with its Humanitarian Award. and became the first American citizen honored with Cuba's CENESEX award. He holds honorary doctorates from Episcopal Divinity School in Boston,[17] Samaritan College (Los Angeles), and Sierra University in Santa Monica, California for his work in civil rights, and was recently lauded by the Gay Press Association with its Humanitarian Award. Rev. Perry has been invited to the White House on five occasions:

 
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Phill Wilson founded the Black AIDS Institute in 1999 and served as its CEO and is a prominent African-American HIV/AIDS activist.

1. In 1983 worked as the Director of Policy and Planning for the AIDS Project in Los Angeles and as the AIDS Coordinator for Los Angeles

2.From 1990 to 1995, Wilson served as the co-chair of the Los Angeles HIV Health Commission, 1995, he became a member of the HRSA AIDS Advisory Committee.

3.1999, when he founded the Black AIDS Institute. In 2010, Wilson became appointed to President Obama's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, becoming the co-chair of the disparities subcommittee.

4. He lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide additional funding to African American groups resulting in a 5-year domestic 'Act Against AIDS' campaign that resulted in 14 Blacks organizations, including the National Newspaper Publishers Association, being awarded grants to hire an AIDS coordinator to expand their work.

5.Inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, winner of the Leadership for a Changing World award by the Ford Foundation, and GLAD Legal Advocates & Defenders’ Spirit of Justice Award.[8]

 
Marsha Johnson an American gay liberation[6][7] activist and self-identified drag queen(Johnson variably identified herself as gay and as a transvestite as well ( nowadays we would call her transgender or gender non-conforming but neither term was in use before she died) and one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969, she was later deemed unofficially 'the "mayor of Christopher Street'

1.founding member of the Gay Liberation Front.

2. After Drag Queens were banned from inclusion in the 1973 Gay Pride march By gay and lesbian committee, Johnson and several prominent Drag Queens, marched separately ahead, marking a turning point for Trans inclusion in gender non-comforming equality.

3. co-founded the gay and transvestite advocacy organization S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) providing food, shelter and clothing to homeless LBGTQ youth of New York.

4.Organizer and marshal with ACT UP.
 
Jeremy Bentham - English philosopher, social reformer and founder of utilitarianism. He was the first known legal advocate in the English Commonwealth for the decriminalization of homosexuality. In an essay written in the 1775 OFFENCES AGAINST ONE'S SELF: PAEDERASTY PART 1, Bentham categorizes the 'offenses of impurity' or sex crimes of the day, as 'irregularities of the venereal appetite', and dissects and refutes the arguments of the day for punishing homosexuality. The essay went unpublished for about 200 years. While the claim in the link I provide suggests this 1978 publication was the first, there are documented publications as early as 1931 and 1948 but these were not 'best sellers' .https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/...psredir=1&article=1057&context=englishfacpubs. Warning while this essay does in fact argue against homosexuality bans, it is very dense, very dry and very difficult for the modern reader to parse. Suffice it to say it is a LONG way from an endorsement of same and by our modern standard, more than a little offensive to sensibilities. To paraphrase this libertarian argument. Male homosexuality is repulsive, revolting and disgusting, but it does no harm to women as a class ( yes this was a worry back then), to society, or to government, so government should mind its own business.

Hard to quantify the impact of this long buried policy position paper on gay rights advocacy so much later, other than to provide obvious credibility and gravitas that only a great thinker and philosopher can provide to a cause. Its an interest read and it means somebody in the late 1700's was actually giving governmental treatment of gays, some thought.




 
Michael Schofield - British pioneer of social research into homosexuality in the 1950s and 1960s, and a campaigner for the Homosexual Law Reform Society at a time before the Sexual Offences Act 1967 partially decriminalized homosexual activity in the UK. An author of multiple research texts, he was amongst the first researchers to approach homosexuality outside of a medical or legal framework. His concern was to investigate homosexual life as it was lived by ordinary homosexuals in everyday life. (his earlier works were published under the pseudonym Gordon Westwood to avoid prosecution and persecution)

1. Society and the Homosexual ( 1952), an overview of the topic including early notes on the gay scene in England at that time.
2. A Minority ( 1960) an original survey study of 127 men, and was the first of its kind. He asked them about their backgrounds, early homosexual experiences, attempts to combat, the extent of their homosexual acts, work and leisure and community integration.
3. Sociological Aspects of Homosexuality (1965) a comparative study of heterosexuals and homosexuals along three dimensions: in prison, in treatment and others in the community.
4. The Sexual Behaviour of Young People (1965) one of the earliest surveys of sexual behaviour in the U.K. and looked at the behaviour of young people. Five years later the same people were re-interviewed for a follow up in The Sexual Behaviour of Young Adults (1971)


 
 
Its important to point out that the bulk of these endeavors was years before Stonewall, when crossdressing was a criminal offense, even serving alcohol to a 'known homosexual' was a citation. Her first pagaent was in 1959 outside the city limits, in the 'boonies' where such entertainment had hopes of staying out of vice squad interest.

In later years, Mother Flawless applied her influence as a mentor, maternal figure and ally to two generations of drag queens, gay youth and transgender , offering her support to both charitable and for profit ventures
 
A non practicing member as a Barrister, lobbyist, licensed counselor and author, In 1958, Antony Grey started as early advocate for reform of the British sodomy statutes consistent with the Wolfenden Report. Grey was a volunteer for the Homosexual Law Reform Society who helped lobby and push for the eventual adoption of the Sexual Offenses Act of1967, legalizing the private homosexual conduct among people 21 years or older and repealing two preexisting anti-gay statutes which had been used for decades to convict Oscar Wilde and Lord Montagu bisexual Conservative party member of the House of Lords among others.

In 1958 Grey founded the Albany Trust, a charitable trust designed to provide training and education to lawyers, social workers counselors, and psycho- therapists working with LBGTQ clients, challenge discriminatory or homophobic attitudes, and promote a better understanding of the community. It still exists and continues to do the same work with the same mission today.

"He worked with (and often served on the committees of) a number of voluntary organisations including the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty), the British Association for Counselling and Physiotherapy, the National Association of Voluntary Hostels, the Josephine Butler Society, and the Defence of Literature and the Arts Society. He obtained a diploma in counselling skills from the South West London College in 1981.

In 1998 he was awarded the Pink Paper Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2007 he was elected as Hero of the Year by Stonewall supporters.

He was included under "Unsung heroes" in the Independent on Sunday's Pink List 2008. The citation said:

"Antony Grey, former secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, which won a change in the law in 1967. He argued, unsuccessfully, for equalising the age of consent for gay people to 16, in line with heterosexuals, when the law was changed in 1994. The age of consent for gay men was eventually lowered to 16 in 2001. Now in his 80s, Mr Grey has never received an honour.
 
hunted by western marxists & koba´s spies for many years , Great Free Tatar , a Muscovite slave couldn´t do such jump

 
I have been negligent.

John Eastburn Boswell (March 20, 1947 – December 24, 1994) was an American historian, author and a full professor at Yale University. Many of Boswell's studies focused on the issue of religion and homosexuality, specifically Christianity and homosexuality. All of his work focused on the history of those at the margins of society.
Author of 1. :Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980) is a work which, offered a revolutionary interpretation of the Western tradition, arguing that the Roman Catholic Church had not condemned gay people throughout its history, but rather, at least until the twelfth century, had alternately evinced no special concern about homosexuality or actually celebrated love between men." The book won a National Book Award[3][a] and the Stonewall Book Award in 1981, but Boswell's thesis was criticized by Warren Johansson, Wayne R. Dynes, and John Lauritsen, who believed that he had attempted to whitewash the historic crimes of the Christian Church against gay men.[4]
2.The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe (New York: Villard, 1994) argues that the adelphopoiia liturgy was evidence that the attitude of the Christian church towards homosexuality has changed over time, and that early Christians did on occasion accept same-sex relationships.[5]
Rites of so-called "same-sex union" (Boswell's proposed translation) occur in ancient prayer-books of both the western and eastern churches. They are rites of adelphopoiesis, literally Greek for the making of brothers. Boswell stated that these should be regarded as sexual unions similar to marriages. Boswell made many detailed translations of these rites in Same-Sex Unions, and stated that one mass gay wedding occurred only a couple of centuries ago in the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, the cathedral seat of the Pope as Bishop of Rome. This is a highly controversial point of Boswell's text, as other scholars have dissenting views of this interpretation, and believe that they were instead rites of becoming adopted brothers, or "blood brothers.

Boswell's methodology and conclusions have been disputed by many historians but his scholarship in both history, theology and philosophy was undoubtedly a progenator of the modern gay and queer studies programs in American universities.
 
William Dorsey Swann (March 1860 – c. December 23, 1925) Swann is known as the first drag queen. As a black gay man, Swann paved the way for future drag queens and gay men of color. His legal efforts sparked a conversation about the LGBTQ+ community and may have even been one of the first instances of LGBTQ+ activism in the United States. There was little support at the time of his activism, and the ideas were not widespread. He helped lay the foundation for future activists such as Marsha P. Johnson and others who fought during the "modern LGBTQ rights movements", Swann was the first person in the United States to lead a queer resistance group and the first known person to self-identify as a "queen of drag".
During the 1880s and 1890s, Swann organized a series of drag balls in Washington, D.C. He called himself the "queen of drag". Most of the attendees of Swann's gatherings were men who were formerly enslaved who gathered to dance in their satin and silk dresses. This group, consisting of "former slaves and rebel drag queens", was known as the "House of Swann".[7] Because these events were secretive, invitations were often quietly made at places like the YMCA. Swann participated in dances such as the cakewalk, a dance performed by enslaved people in America, mimicking the mannerisms of plantation owners. The cakewalk's improvisational movements and subtle expressions of communication resemble voguing, the style popularized in Harlem's ball scene.

Swann was arrested in police raids numerous times, including in the first documented case of an arrest for female impersonation in the United States on April 12, 1888. This occurred at Swann's thirtieth birthday celebration. According to The Washington Post, he was "arrayed in a gorgeous dress of cream-colored satin". After police raided the birthday celebration, Swann was "bursting with rage", as he stood up to one of the arresting officers and declared, "You is no gentleman".
Swann's choice to resist that night "rather than to submit passively to his arrest marks one of the earliest-known instances of violent resistance in the name of gay rights".[4] Twelve other African-American men were arrested at the raid. As many as seventeen others escaped that night. The arrests made at Swann's parties were published in the local newspapers, so townsfolk risked their reputation by attending. However, "acts of public shaming like this one are the only reason we now know who Swann was. The identities and stories of the men who escaped capture have been lost to history."
 
Fred "Fritz" Klein (December 27, 1932 – May 24, 2006) was an Austrian-born American psychiatrist and sex researcher who studied bisexuals and their relationships. He was an author and editor, as well as the developer of the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, a scale that measures an individual's sexual orientation. Klein believed that sexual orientation could change over the course of a lifetime and that researchers underestimated the number of men that had sexual interactions with both sexes. Fritz Klein founded the American Institute of Bisexuality in 1998, which is continuing his work by sponsoring bisexual-inclusive sex research, educating the general public on sexuality, and promoting bisexual culture and community.
He devised the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, a multi-dimensional system for describing complex sexual orientation, similar to the "zero-to-six" scale Kinsey scale used by Alfred Kinsey, but measuring seven different vectors of sexual orientation and identity (sexual attractions, sexual behavior, sexual fantasies, emotional preference, social preference, lifestyle and self-identification) separately, as they relate person's past, present and ideal future.

Klein published The Bisexual Option: A Concept of One Hundred Percent Intimacy in 1978, based on his research. He also co-authored The Male, His Body, His Sex in 1978. Klein moved to San Diego in 1982. He published Bisexualities: Theory and Research in 1986. In 1998 he founded the American Institute of Bisexuality (AIB), also known as the Bisexual Foundation or the Bi Foundation, to encourage, support and assist research and education about bisexuality. Klein also founded the Journal of Bisexuality. He remained the Journal's principal editor until his death. He published Bisexual and Gay Husbands: Their Stories, Their Words in 2001. Klein published a novel, Life, Sex and the Pursuit of Happiness in 2005.
 
index so far.
Frank Kameny -Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C, fought discrimatory termination all the way to US Supreme Court. (they declined to hear)
Barbara Gittings - Founding member Daughters of Bilitis in 1958, lobbied APA to delist homosexuality as mental disorder in 1973
Arthur Evans - philosopher author of Critique of Patriarchal Reason.,member of the Radical Faeries
Arthur Bell - journalist, for the Village Voice covering Stonewall and unsolved murders of gays .
Sylvia Rivera - advocate for Transgender rights. Founder of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance
Rev. Troy Perry -founder the Metropolitan Community Church in LA, organized 1st gay pride parade in 1970 and National March on DC
Phill Wilson - founded Black AIDS Institute,'and Act Against AIDS' campaign that resulted in 14 Blacks organizations being funded
Marsha Johnson -founding member of the Gay Liberation Front & S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries)
Jeremy Bentham - English philosopher, founder of utilitarianism. 1st legal advocate in England for the decriminalization of homosexuality
Michael Schofield - British author, pioneer of social research into homosexuality in the 1950s and 1960. Pivotal reformer of sodomy laws
Stephen Whittle - a British legal scholar and activist with the transgender activist groups
Mother Flawless Sabrina -mentor for homeless transvestites, transexuals and queer and gay youth in New York. Drag show organizer.
Antony Grey - early advocate for reform of the British sodomy statutes consistent with the Wolfenden Report, Founder Albany Trust
(Litwin) Rudolph Nureyev - Russian Dancer
John Eastburn Boswell - Historian, author, Professor at Yale
William Swann -Original 'Queen of Drag' organized first Drag shows in DC . In 1888, first person arrested for impersonation, earliest example protest.
Fred'Fritz' Klein - Sex researcher, author
 
Del Martin & Phyliss Lyon - Lesbian couple who founded Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club,. co-founded Daughters of Bilitis in San Francisco in 1955, first political organization for lesbians in the United States and first editors of The Ladder first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States. Published from 1956 to 1972 (bimonthly in 1971 and 1972), The Ladder was the primary monthly publication and method of communication for the DOB. They were also founders of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, an organization devoted to lobbying churches to become affirming congregations. They were the first lesbian couple who became members of the NOW.

"Within five years of its origin, the Daughters of Bilitis had chapters around the country, including Chicago, New York, New Orleans, San Diego, Los Angeles, Detroit, Denver, Cleveland and Philadelphia. There were 500 subscribers to The Ladder but far more readers, as copies were circulated among women who were reluctant to put their names to a subscription list. For their pioneering work on The Ladder, Martin and Lyon were among the first inductees into the LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame, which was established in 2005 by the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association. Lyon and Martin remained involved in the DOB until the late 1960s".

They were married on February 12, 2004, in the first same sex wedding in San Franscisco after Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the city clerk to begin providing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. That marriage was voided by the California Supreme Court on August 12, 2004.

After the California Supreme Court's decision legalized same, the couple married again on June 16, 2008.
 
Charlotte Bunch - Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University and the Executive Director of the university's Center for Women's Global Leadership, which she founded in 1987, Bunch is an American feminist author and organizer in women's rights (founded The Feminist Quarterly) and human rights movements. Bunch graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with a degree in history and political science Bunch took part in founding The Furies Collective, a group that published its first newspaper, The Furies, in January 1972. The goal was to give a voice to lesbian separatism. While the collective only survived for about one year, the home of the Furies Collective later was named the first lesbian-related historic landmark in Washington D.C., and became the first lesbian site on the National Register of Historic Places.

Author of 'Building feminist theory : essays from Quest'; 'Passionate politics : essays, 1968-1986 : feminist theory in action'; Lesbianism and the Women's Movement.
 
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