202-456-1111 . Call the White House and express, in no uncertain terms, your thoughts on the current president’s vile attack on the rights of your trans siblings: Trans People Are Not A Burden. . Picture: “WE’RE HERE, WE’RE QUEER, WE HATE THE FUCKING PRESIDENT!,” AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP), New York City, 1990. Photo by Dona Ann McAdams (@leicalola), c/o Bronx Documentary Center. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist
For those in the U.S.: Please call the Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask to speak to your state’s senators. Demand they save healthcare. And then call again. . As Ian Millhiser said: “Thousands of lives can be saved if every ‘yes’ vote has the worst night of their life tonight.” . Picture: “HEALTH CARE IS A RIGHT” – “LIVING WITH HIV,“ ACT UP member, Chicago, Illinois, June 1991. Photo by Genyphyr Novak, c/o Windy City Media. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist #ActUp #FightBack #FightTrump (at Chicago, Illinois)
“RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS – OUTBREAK OCCURS AMONG MEN IN NEW YORK AND CALIFORNIA—8 DIED INSIDE 2 YEARS,” by Lawrence K. Altman, The New York Times (@nytimes), July 3, 1981. . Just a month after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first published a report announcing that five gay men in Los Angeles had died of a rare form of pneumonia, a second CDC report confirmed that the disease—identified as the typically malignant Kaposi’s Sarcoma—was spreading among young gay men beyond California. . On July 3, 1981, thirty-six years ago today, in what is considered to be the first mainstream coverage of what ultimately became known as HIV/AIDS, the New York Times included a piece on this second CDC report. . “It said that all the guys had the same history of having had all these sexual diseases: amoebas, hepatitis A and B, mononucleosis, syphilis, and gonorrhea,” Larry Kramer later told Eric Marcus (@makinggayhistorypodcast). “The late 1970s were the years of the amoebas—we forget that. Just as everybody talks about AIDS now, you couldn’t go to a party in the late 1970s without everybody telling an amoeba story. When I saw that article in the Times I was scared because I had had all of those diseases. . “A few weeks later I had a conversation with Dr. Friedman-Kien from @nyuniversity, who told me in essence, ‘This is what’s happening. You’ve got to stop fucking.’ … As a result of that conversation, Dr. Larry Mass, who had been writing about this new health problem in a local gay paper even before the Times wrote about it, and two other guys—now both dead—and I, invited everyone we knew to come to a meeting here at my apartment.” That meeting resulted in the establishment of @gmhc, the world’s first AIDS service organization. . Significant mainstream media coverage of the AIDS epidemic did not begin for at least five—and, some would argue, ten—years after the July 1981 article. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist #NeverForget #NeverAgain
“PARADES ARE NOT ENOUGH – QUEER PRIDE—FLAUNT IT EVERY DAY – ACT-UP Madison – QUEER LIBERATION FRONT – PROGRESSIVE STUDENT NETWORK,” Madison, Wisconsin, c. June 1990. Photo c/o @uwmadlibraries. . As June ends and our community falls off the corporate and media radar, we all should remember the words of Marsha P. Johnson, who increasingly is recognized as the matron saint of the queer liberation movement: “I think that as long as people with AIDS and as long as gay people don’t have their rights…there’s no reason for celebration. That’s how come I walk every year. That’s how come I’ve been walking for gay rights all these years, instead of riding in cars and celebrating everything. Cause you never completely have your rights for one person until you all have your rights.” . Marsha P. Johnson was a trans woman of color afflicted by untreated mental health issues who often could be found in Sheridan Square asking strangers for money or a date. And Marsha, like too many trans women of color before and after her, was killed without any attention from police. . We cannot celebrate Marsha in June unless we spend the rest of the year fighting for all those who are not free. . Parades are not enough. . In the U.S., forty percent of homeless youth identify as queer. That will be true tomorrow. Black queer men are facing a staggering increase in HIV/AIDS cases. That will be true tomorrow. Trans and gender nonconforming students have been left to fend for themselves. We face employment discrimination, rampant misogyny, police brutality, anti-Semitism, patent racism from within and outside our community, and a government without regard for the law or those who need its protection most. All of this will be true tomorrow. Queer people in Uganda, Nigeria, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Chechnya will have to exist under brutal regimes tomorrow. The list goes on. . It is our obligation to carry our Pride, and the fight, forward. . “Cause,” like Marsha said, “you never completely have your rights…until you all have your rights.” #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist (at Madison, Wisconsin)
“When homosexual conduct is made criminal by the law of the State, that declaration…is an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres.” – Justice Anthony Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, June 26, 2003. . Picture: “LEGALLY GAY: 6-3,” Tyron Garner (foreground) and John Lawrence, Gay Pride Parade, Houston, Texas, June 2004. Photo c/o Houston LGBT History. . On September 17, 1998, John Lawrence hosted Tyron Garner and Robert Eubanks at his home in Houston, Texas; Lawrence and Garner were friends, and Garner and Eubanks had a longtime, but tempestuous, romantic relationship. Eubanks, drunk and furious at what he thought was Lawrence and Garner’s flirting, left and called the police, reporting “a black male going crazy with a gun” at Lawrence’s apartment; within minutes, four Harris County sheriff’s deputies arrived, entering the apartment with guns drawn. . Given the men’s friendship, most believe that Lawrence and Garner were not engaged in any sexual activity. Nonetheless, they were charged under Texas’ anti-sodomy law, prompting lawyers from Lambda Legal (@lambdalegal) to urge them to help mount a test case to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which upheld the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws. . On June 26, 2003, fourteen years ago today, the Supreme Court, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for the five-justice majority, struck down the Texas anti-sodomy law, invalidating similar laws in thirteen other states, and guaranteeing a right to privacy for same-sex sexual activity. Of the relatively-recent Bowers decision, Kennedy wrote, “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today…[it] should be and now is overruled.“ Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote a separate concurring opinion. . John Lawrence died of heart disease in 2011; he was sixty-eight. Tyron Garner died of meningitis in 2006 at age thirty-nine, and Robert Eubanks was beaten to death in 2000. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist #Pride2017 (at Houston, Texas)
“QUARTER MILLION HOMOSEXUAL FEDERAL EMPLOYEES PROTEST CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION POLICY,” members of the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) (including Craig Rodwell, far right, and Lilli Vincenz, left) picket the Civil Service Commission, Washington, D.C., June 26, 1965. Photo by Kay Tobin, c/o @nyplpicturecollection. . On June 26, 1965, fifty-two years ago today, members of the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) continued with their controversial new direct-action approach, holding a protest at the Civil Service Commission (CSC), the federal agency charged with implementing the government’s “merit-based hiring” scheme. . While the group previously had picketed the White House (twice, in fact, once on April 17, 1965, and again on May 29), the CSC protest was of particular importance to Frank Kameny, the president of Mattachine Society Washington (MSW), who lost his government job in 1957 pursuant to CSC regulations requiring the termination of known homosexuals. . The protest garnered enough press that CSC officials soon requested a meeting with MSW members; while it took another decade before the CSC officially changed its policy regarding homosexual employees, the meeting between gay activists and federal officials was a historic first. . In 2009, John Berry, the openly-gay Director of the Office of Personnel Management, the CSC’s successor agency, formally apologized to Frank Kameny on behalf of the federal government, saying “Please accept our apology for the consequences of the previous policy of the United States government, and please accept the gratitude and appreciation of the United States Office of Personnel Management for the work you have done to fight discrimination and protect the merit-based civil service system.” . “Apology accepted,” Kameny responded. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist #Pride2017 (at Washington, District of Columbia)
“A SECRET WORLD GROWS OPEN AND BOLDER. SOCIETY IS FORCED TO LOOK AT IT—AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT…HOMOSEXUALITY IN AMERICA,“ by Paul Welch, @life, June 26, 1964. . On June 26, 1964, fifty-three years ago today, @life offered a fourteen-page "report on homosexuality” that more accurately can be described as a report on America’s ignorance of, and distaste for, homosexuals. The subjects, according to the author, “are part of what they call the ‘gay world,’ which is actually a sad and often sordid world…This social disorder, which society tries to suppress…does present a problem–and parents are especially concerned.” . While the article was groundbreaking in that it featured now-familiar names (e.g., pioneer José Sarria), places (e.g., legendary leather bar The Toolbox (pictured)), and organizations (e.g., Mattachine Society and ONE), it also perpetuated stereotypes (listing, for example, “those professions favored by homosexuals” as “interior decorating, fashion design, hairstyling, dance and theater”), emphasized self-loathing among gay men (quoting a bar owner as saying, “This is a place for men, a place without all those screaming faggots, fuzzy sweaters, and sneakers”), and explored the tension between the equally harmful views of law enforcement (describing the “unrelenting crackdown on homosexuals” in Los Angeles) and certain religious organizations, which “[did] not condone homosexuality but [did] regard it as a psychological problem.” . Interestingly, the article noted a recent legal challenge to the Civil Service Commission’s regulations prohibiting homosexuals from working in the federal government; while not named in the article, Bruce C. Scott, a member of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., was behind that challenge. On June 26, 1965, a year after the LIFE article, Mattachine Washington and other groups made history by picketing the Civil Service Commission in support of Scott’s case. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist (at San Francisco, California)
“WE ARE YOUR CHILDREN,” Gay & Lesbian Freedom Day, San Francisco, June 25, 1978. Photo by William S. Tom, @onearchives. . In 1977 and 1978, as Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign worked to repeal equal rights ordinances on the premise that children needed protection from LGBTQs, activists across the country answered: “We are your children.” #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist #SFPride2017 #Pride2017 #FridayVibezzz (at San Francisco, California)