Tag Archives: LGBT History

Pioneering Author Leslie Feinberg Dies

Via the Advocate: Leslie Feinberg, who identified as an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist, died on November 15. She succumbed to complications from multiple tick-borne co-infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica, after decades of illness. She died at home in Syracuse, NY, with her partner and spouse of 22 years, Minnie Bruce Pratt, …

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Edith Windsor On Mississippi

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Venerable Philly Bar Closes After 50 Years

Philadelphia’s Westbury bar, which was first advertised in gay guides back in the early 60s, has closed after last month’s fire in the hotel above it. From their Facebook page: With a very broken heart, I have to announce, the Westbury Bar and Restaurant will not be reopening. Our extensive efforts trying get an exception from the city have not …

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Jimmy Somerville – Travesty (Fan Video)

A Jimmy Somerville fan has compiled the below video to accompany his latest release. As a challenge to hardcore disco heads, let’s see who can name all of the artists that appear. Some of them are extremely well-known, but there are a few fairly obscure acts too. I think I count 21 in total. RELATED: The  single and 12″ are …

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GREECE: Archeologists Find Possible Remains Of Alexander The Great’s Lover

Via Discovery News: A skeleton has emerged from the Alexander the Great-era tomb in Amphipolis in northern Greece, according to a news announcement by the Greek Ministry of Culture on Wednesday. At least one archaeologist has suggested that the remains, if male, could belong to Hephaestion, a close friend and possible lover of Alexander the Great — or someone like …

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Alvin Ailey And Stephen Sondheim To Be Among 2014 Medal Of Freedom Honorees

Late dance legend Alvin Ailey and Broadway superstar Stephen Sondheim will be among this year’s Presidential Medal Of Freedom honorees. Among the honorees representing the arts world are Stevie Wonder, Stephen Sondheim, Meryl Streep, actress Marlo Thomas, Tom Brokaw, writer and activist Suzan Harjo, and author Isabel Allende. Streep and Sondheim are particularly timely honorees, considering the film adaptation of …

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Pedro Zamora Died 20 Years Ago Today

Pedro Zamora, the activist who put a face to AIDS for millions of young Americans via MTV’s The Real World, died 20 years ago today of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, the previously (and once again) rare brain disease that took the lives of so many. Zamora’s commitment ceremony with his boyfriend, Sean Sasser, was the first in television history. The couple …

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President Obama Marks Fifth Anniversary Of Signing The Matthew Shepard Act

Via White House press release: Five years ago, I was proud to sign the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act into law – a law that strengthened the protections against crimes based on the color of our skin, the love in our hearts, the faith we practice, or the place of our birth. This law gave …

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PHILADELPHIA: City To Celebrate 50th Anniversary Of Gay Rights Event

A group from the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus performed today at a press conference to announce the city’s plan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of an annual LGBT rights event that launched in 1965. Via press release: With Independence Hall as the backdrop, plans were unveiled at a press conference for the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the LGBT civil rights …

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Media Coverage: AIDS Vs Ebola

New York Times writer David Dunlap compares the US media’s reaction to ebola to what followed after his own paper’s Lawrence Altman made the first notable mention of AIDS in 1983: I can easily imagine the metro desk of 2015 jumping in to follow up on Altman’s account: “Find out who’s died. Call Larry [Kramer]. Reach out to the families. …

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David Mixner Reveals Having Helped Eight Friends With AIDS Commit Suicide

Noted activist and former Clinton White House aide David Mixner made a startling revelation during the premiere of his show here in New York City. Via the Daily Beast: It is the morning after. We are speaking about Mixner’s emotional on-stage confession—unelicited by anyone but himself—Monday night to the assisted suicides he oversaw of friends dying of AIDS in the …

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Sullivan Backs Matthew Shepard Truthers

“The question here is whether the crime was solely a function of the homophobic hatred of two strangers who beat up and brutally murdered someone merely because he was gay. That’s the official line of the Matthew Shepard Foundation and the Human Rights Campaign. Of course these motives could also have been involved. I’m arguing that meth can explain all …

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Celebrations In Arizona!

Grab a tissue, monkeys.

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San Francisco Bay Guardian Shuts Down

Slate has the obituary: Another alt-weekly is dead. But this one wasn’t just another alt-weekly. It was the San Francisco Bay Guardian, one of the most venerable, staunchly independent, and defiantly weird of America’s great alternative weekly newspapers. The paper, founded in 1966, is shutting down for “financial reasons,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Tuesday. The decision was made …

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Photo Of The Day

(Via The Randy Report)

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Matthew Shepard’s Parents Speak On The 16th Anniversary Of His Death

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Happy National Coming Out Day

Today is the 26th annual National Coming Out Day, which was launched in 1988 on the first anniversary of 1987 March On Washington. In the words of Dr. Seuss: “Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you-er than you.” Is there anyone important in your life that doesn’t know about you? …

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VIDEO: First Las Vegas Marriage License

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AFER’s Ted Olson: The SCOTUS Decision Was The Highlight Of My Life

“It does seem to suggest, if I was a federal judge, I would read today’s decision as saying that the opponents, if they still exist, on the Supreme Court of marriage equality have decided they don’t want to get into this and they sort of feel that the federal judges — one after the other, after the other, after the …

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WaPo Profiles Signorile & Griffin

The Washington Post today published a lengthy profile of SiriusXM radio host Michelangelo Signorile and Human Rights Campaign head Chad Griffin. Here’s a setup: In 2004, 38 percent of respondents supported same-sex marriage, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll. Ten years later: 59 percent. And today, only a decade after Massachusetts ushered in same-sex marriage, Freedom to Marry says that …

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