#lgbtq history

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

Arnold Lobel, who wrote and illustrated the Frog and Toad series, was born in 1933 and raised in Schenectady, New York. During his career, he worked on dozens of children’s books, both as a writer and as an illustrator, and also, in some instances, in collaboration with his wife, Anita Kempler, whom he met while studying art and theatre as an undergraduate, at Pratt Institute. In his Frog and Toad books, published between 1970 and 1979, the pair of amphibians visit each other at home and explore their natural surroundings together, occasionally seeing other animals, like a snail who is the mailman, or birds who enjoy cookies that Frog and Toad throw out when they can’t stop eating them. His daughter Adrianne suspects that there’s another dimension to the series’s sustained popularity. Frog and Toad are “of the same sex, and they love each other,” she told. “It was quite ahead of its time in that respect.” In 1974, four years after the first book in the series was published, Lobel came out to his family as gay. “I think Frog and Toad really was the beginning of him coming out,” Adrianne told. Lobel never publicly discussed a connection between the series and his sexuality, but he did comment on the ways in which personal material made its way into his stories. In a 1977 interview with the children’s-book journal The Lion and the Unicorn, he said: “You know, if an adult has an unhappy love affair, he writes about it. He exorcises it out of himself, perhaps, by writing a novel about it. Well, if I have an unhappy love affair, I have to somehow use all that pain and suffering but turn it into a work for children.” Lobel died in 1987, an early victim of the AIDS crisis. “He was only fifty-four,” Adrianne told. “Think of all the stories we missed.” When reading children’s books as children, we get to experience an author’s fictional world removed from the very real one he or she inhabits. But knowing the strains of sadness in Lobel's life story gives his simple and elegant stories new poignancies. On the final page of the story “Alone,” Frog and Toad, having cleared up a misunderstanding, sit contently on the island looking into the distance, each with his arm around the other. Beneath the drawing, Lobel writes, “They were two close friends, sitting alone together.” (Full article)

[liberaljane]

🧵 THREAD: This #PrideMonth, don’t forget that the fight for queer liberation didn’t start or end with marriage equality.

💪✨ We need to keep fighting for our rights.

Here’s are a few examples:

💋 Before the 2003 Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, same-smex smexual activity was illegal in fourteen U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. military

👶 Before 2015, LGBTQ+ couples couldn’t adopt in all 50 states. Before the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, laws varied wildly by state.

🏳️‍🌈 Before 1973, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosmexuality as a ‘mental illness.’ In December 1973, a vote was successfully held to remove it.

🗳️ Before 1974, there were no openly gay elected officials. That changed with Kathy Kozachenko, who became the first openly gay American elected to public office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

🎖️ Before 2011, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” banned LGBTQ+ people from serving openly in the military.

💍 Before 2015, LGBTQ+ couples couldn’t get married in all 50 states. At the time, laws varied by state, and while many states allowed for civil unions for same-sex couples, it created a separate but equal standard.

💼 Before 2020, employers could legally discriminate against queer and trans employees. It wasn’t until the U.S. Supreme Court held that an employer who fires or otherwise discriminates against an individual simply for being gay or transgender is in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

[bisexual-history]

[National Biways, Oct/Nov 1994]

[squidhominid]

So the National Park Service removed any mention of trans people from the page on the Stonewall National Monument. And removed the word 'transgender' from the page on Sylvia Rivera.

Hell no. Trans women of color built the gay rights movement. Full stop.

Check my Mastodon for a version of this at 300 DPI printable resolution! Take copies to a Stonewall protest and hand them out, if you're going to one!

[elierlick]

A little lost piece from trans history: a 22-year-old trans woman won a 1967 Wyoming beauty contest. She entered the pageant just a year after she transitioned. Unfortunately, the judges disqualified her after she informed a competitor that she was trans.

(Found this in the depths of the Kinsey Institute archives)

[catrocketship]

Image: A drawing of hand-lettered words over a portrait of Leslie Feinberg: “My right to be me is tied with a thousand threads to your right to be you.”

Feinberg -- dyke, transgender, organizer -- used the pronouns ze and hir, and described zirself as an "anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist."

Ze didn’t just see the world differently -- ze could articulate it. That clarity shaped how I understand gender, queerness, and the long arc of queer resistance in this place. Feinberg’s writing cracked things open for me.

I think I drew this on November 15, the anniversary of Feinberg’s death in 2014. Sending it out next month, in July, as a belated Pride reward for Print Club. Because queer history is always relevant. Because Feinberg is forever.

[victusinveritas]

[alienbycomics]

Gender Nonconforming Jesus: A look at art history. CW: religion, transphobia, artistic nudity, depictions of open wounds (Long post)

Here’s a link to the original comic: Trans Jesus

[nerdygaymormon]

[lgbtqtext]

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

The lives of a gay couple who lived in a Dorset village for nearly six decades have been turned into an exhibition. Norman Notley (1890–1980) and David Brynley (1902–1981) moved to Corfe Castle in 1923 and lived openly as a couple, despite homosexuality being illegal at the time. The two men were successful musicians who sang together in Britain and the United States and they had many friends in the art world. Photographs and diaries on display at Dorset Museum reveal they lived peacefully with the local community for 57 years until their deaths.

In 1973, local people organised an event for the couple to celebrate their 50 years in the village. Museum director Claire Dixon said: "They were known as 'the boys' quite affectionately by the community. "They didn't throw the party, the community threw it for them. "When lots of people were having to hide the fact that they were gay, or think about their behaviour in public space, it seems that they were able to live quite a peaceful life in the village." The couple shared a passion for creating art as well as collecting and Notley bequeathed his collection of paintings to Dorset Museum. Despite being able to live authentically, the only image in the collection of them being affectionate to one another is a photo of Brynley kissing Notley on the cheek.

Notley died in 1980, aged 90, and Brynley a year later, aged 81. Maisie Ball, an archaeology student at Bournemouth University, began digitising the couple's photographs and transcribing their journals and letters as part of a work placement at the museum. She said: "Being able to share their story has been so important as there are not many collections like this that give a glimpse into the lives of LGBTQ+ people from this time period. "The photographs that have stuck with me the most are the ones with their many dogs and the rare few of Norman on his own, where you get to see a glimpse of his personality." The display, curated by Ms Ball, with advice from Prof Jana Funke of the University of Exeter, is on display throughout February to coincide with LGBT+ History Month. (Full article)

[prideallyeararound]

Can straight people be in the LGBT+ Community? Yes, let me explain...

Straight people can be asexual or aromantic, so therefore can be LGBT+, and there are also plenty of transgender people who are straight.

[bisexual-history]

Sydney Star Observer (June, 1993)

[jasondamien93]

Resist Fascism ✊🏻

[justdavina]

HOT!

[nerdykeppie]

Today, rather than talking about some washed-up former orange juice hawker who is currently hopefully getting pies to the face for eternity, let's instead remember Thomas Lawrence Higgins (June 17, 1950 – November 10, 1994).

Often credited as the man who coined the term "gay pride," Higgins was the first person in MN to be granted conscientious objector status from the Vietnam War in 1969. He lost his job at the State Radio Services for the Blind for his association with Fight Repression of Erotic Expression (FREE), a queer rights group which eventually became the Queer Student Cultural Center at the University of Minnesota.

In 1980, Higgins and his friend Bruce Brockaway founded the Positively Gay Cuban Refugee Task Force, which sponsored gay Cuban refugees for US residency as they fled persecution in Cuba for their queer identities. Without sponsorship, the refugees were confined in camps; PGCRTF's sponsorship allowed them to move out of the camps and resettle in the US.

Higgins died due to complications from AIDS in 1994 & is buried in Roseville, MN.

Oh, and in 1977, Higgins pushed a banana cream pie in the face of some woman who tried to keep herself relevant after her singing career ended by trading in homophobia at a press conference where she was announcing her very literal "conversion therapy" centers. This incident and her homophobia are largely credited with effectively ending her failing musical career.