LGBT HISTORY ARCHIVES IG:@lgbt_history

202-456-1111
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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.
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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

Allison Hannan, member, United States Navy, 2016. Photo by Cassidy DuHon (@cassidyduhon), @theadvocatemag.
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Before the Obama Administration announced its intention to lift the ban on trans people serving openly in the military, there were an estimated 12,800 active-duty trans service members in the United States military. Since the announcement, that number likely has increased dramatically.
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Overall, trans people statistically are more likely to have served in the military than the rest of the population, with one study suggesting a rate of trans participation of 21% compared with 11% of the general population.
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On July 26, 2017, the current U.S. president announced that the military will “not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity.”
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The military, according to the statement, “must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
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Be angry. #FuckTrump

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.
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As Ian Millhiser said: “Thousands of lives can be saved if every ‘yes’ vote has the worst night of their life tonight.”
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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)

National Gay & Lesbian March, Paris, France, June 18, 1983. Photo © Jearld Moldenhauer. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist #BastilleDay (at Paris, France)

“SODOM TODAY, GOMORRAH THE WORLD,” Alan Bray (October 13, 1948 - November 25, 2001), Gay Pride Rally, London, United Kingdom, July 1979. Photo © Terry Waller. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist #LondonPride #Mood (at London, United Kingdom)

“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.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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We cannot celebrate Marsha in June unless we spend the rest of the year fighting for all those who are not free.
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Parades are not enough.
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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.
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It is our obligation to carry our Pride, and the fight, forward.
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“Cause,” like Marsha said, “you never completely have your rights…until you all have your rights.” #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist (at Madison, Wisconsin)

“Lawmakers in Germany,” the New York Times reports, “voted on Friday to allow same-sex marriage after a brisk but emotional debate in Parliament, setting the stage for the country to join more than a dozen European nations—including Ireland, France and Spain—in legalizing such unions.
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“The measure now goes to the upper house of Parliament for formal approval and then requires the signature of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, meaning Germany’s first-same sex marriages are on track to be celebrated in the early fall.”
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Photo: “SCHLUß MIT DER UNTERDRÜCKUNG DER 3 mio. HOMOSEXUELLEN! (Eng. transl.: STOP THE OPPRESSION OF 3 MILLION HOMOSEXUALS!),” Gay Parade, Hamburg, Germany, 1983. Photo © James Mitchell. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist (at Berlin, Germany)

“THOMAS GERARD DELDEO, FEBRUARY 4, 1963 – APRIL 18, 1994,” Barbara and Sal Deldeo carry a picture of their son during one of the Stonewall 25 parades, New York City, June 26, 1994. Photo © Constantine Manos.
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On June 26, 1994, twenty-three years ago today, an estimated 1.1 million people participated in the massive Stonewall 25 celebration in New York City, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
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As the New York Times explained, “they marched in not one but two parades – an officially sanctioned one on the East Side of Manhattan demanding that the United Nations protect the rights of homosexuals worldwide, and a smaller, unofficial one up Fifth Avenue from Greenwich Village, organized by several dissenting groups that broke ranks with the others to make the point that the most urgent problem facing gay people is AIDS.”
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Among those marching in the official parade were Barbara and Sal Deldeo of Wilmington, Delaware (pictured), who marched for their son, Thomas Gerald, who died months earlier at age thirty-one after a 10-month battle with AIDS. “Neither had ever marched before,” the Times said of the Deldeos, “not against the Vietnam War, nor in marches against nuclear weapons, not even on Memorial Day. They carried [the] picture of [Thomas Gerald] – a San Francisco actor and yoga instructor – on a placard, like so many others carrying photographs of the dead.
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“‘You just feel like you are sharing him with so many, like his death wasn’t in vain,’ Mrs. Deldeo said as they turned with the march onto 57th Street and deafening cheers rose from the predominantly gay crowd of onlookers. ‘You don’t get this kind of support in Wilmington.’
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“She grew teary telling of how her son came home to die, how he finally reached an understanding with his father, how he went peacefully one day, his clothes no longer fitting his gaunt frame. ‘He was my only one,’ she said. ‘Explain that karma.’” #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #Resist #NeverAgain #NeverForget #Pride2017 (at New York, New York)

“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.
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Picture: “LEGALLY GAY: 6-3,” Tyron Garner (foreground) and John Lawrence, Gay Pride Parade, Houston, Texas, June 2004. Photo c/o Houston LGBT History.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)