It Didn't All Start at Stonewall! Meet Two Pioneers of Queer Liberation Jan. 15 (tags)
Three months before the Stonewall Inn riots in New York city in June 1969 which are commonly — but wrongly — thought to be the start of the Gay liberation movement, a group of Gay activists in San Francisco started the nation’s first Gay Liberation Front. Two of those activists, Leo E. Laurence and Pat Brown, now live in San Diego and will be speaking Monday, January 15, 7 p.m. at the Joyce Beers Community Center in Hillcrest in an event sponsored by Activist San Diego.
In this pioneering article from the December 1968 issue of Vector, an early Queer publication, Zenger's Newsmagazine associate editor Leo E. Laurence, J.D. tells his coming-out story and advises other Queer people on how to come out. Four months after this article was published, Leo co-founded the Gay Liberation Front in San Francisco and led the first demonstration against a private employer for anti-Queer discrimination in U.S. history in March 1969, three months BEFORE Stonewall.
Yet Another Gay/Queer ?History? Book Perpetuates Old Myths (tags)
Yet another so-called ?Gay history? book, Michael Bronski?s ?A Queer History of the United States,? recycles the tired New York-centric myth that the Queer Liberation movement sprung full-blown from the Stonewall Inn riots in New York City. Leo E. Laurence, who was present at the REAL creation of Queer liberation in San Francisco in March 1969, three months BEFORE Stonewall, comments on Bronski?s book and offers Lambda Literary Award finalist Gale Whittington?s ?Beyond Normal? as an accurate source for the real birth of Gay Lib.
Gay Liberation DIDN’T Begin at Stonewall!!! (tags)
The commercial interests who have taken over the Queer rights movement have a vested interest in promoting the myth that it all started with the riots at the Stonewall Inn bar in New York City in June 1969. But a group of activists who were present at the REAL foundation of Gay Liberation in San Francisco in early 1969 are coming together in an organization called "Project History" to set the record straight. Leo Laurence, Gale Whittington and Pat Brown are active in a project that will, among other things, reclaim the Queer movement's radical history and its alignments with the Black Panther Party and other militant Left groups of the time.
One and One-Half Class Citizen (tags)
The California Supreme Court decision on May 26 upholding the validity of Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage voters approved in last November’s election, but also ruling that the estimated 18,000 same-sex marriages in California between June 15 and November 4, 2008 were still legal, left the same-sex couples who got married in time (including this author) in an anomalous position. We can’t really call ourselves second-class citizens because our marriages are still in force, but we can’t call ourselves first-class citizens either because other couples with love and mutual commitment equal to our own can no longer follow suit. In a sense, the voters and the courts have granted us “special rights” we neither wanted nor expected.
A Slippery Slope?
Queer Administrator at SDSU Attacked (tags)
When a student newspaper at San Diego State University published a letter attacking an openly Gay administrator, fraternity/sorority coordinator Doug Case, the Queer communities on campus and throughout San Diego responded and confronted the paper's staff members at a November 14 town-hall meeting on campus. They've scheduled a "Rally Against Hate" at SDSU December 3 to protest this and other hate incidents against Queer SDSU students.
Memorial Service for Ferd Eggan (tags)
Ferd Eggan, writer, activist, revolutionary, died 07/07/07 of liver cancer related to AIDS.
Stonewall: Reclaiming The Legacy (tags)
An article about pride and the legacy of stonewall