Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive

Frank Kameny lived by three rules: have absolute confidence in your beliefs; fight for what’s right; never, ever give up. Let them be a battle cry in these dark times.

Visit MGH’s webpage for the original 2016 episode featuring Frank Kameny for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as the episode’s transcript. 

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In 1983 Evan Wolfson wrote a law school thesis that asserted that gay people had a constitutional right to marry. Thirty-two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed as much. In this guest episode from But We Loved, get to know the man behind one of the biggest victories in the history of the LGBTQ civil rights movement. 

Learn more about Evan Wolfson and the Freedom to Marry campaign here.

Find more episodes of But We Loved, a production of iHeartPodcasts and the Outspoken Podcast Network, here or on your favorite podcast platform.

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Like so many other acts of LGBTQ resistance, the 1969 Stonewall riots could have become a footnote in history. But the protests and organizing that followed launched a new phase in the fight for LGBTQ rights. Hear how anger found its voice and how joy propelled the first Pride marches.

First aired June 20, 2019. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as the episode’s transcript. 

To hear more from Craig Rodwell, go here. And listen to Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen here as they discuss how homophile activists fared in the heady days of post-Stonewall organizing.

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The Stonewall uprising began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. Revisit that moment, and the hours and days that followed, with voices from the Making Gay History archive. Relive in vivid detail the dawning of a new chapter in the fight for LGBTQ rights. 

First aired June 13, 2019. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well the episode’s transcript. 

To hear more of Marsha P. Johnson and Randy Wicker’s conversation about Stonewall, go here. And listen to Morty Manford’s account of the riots here.

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Conflict has context. In this first episode of Making Gay History’s Stonewall season, we hear stories from the pre-Stonewall struggle for LGBTQ rights. We travel back in time to the turbulent 1960s and take you to the tinderbox that was Greenwich Village on the eve of an uprising.

First aired June 6, 2019. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as the episode’s transcript. 

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Can historical and emotional truth coexist? For the 55th anniversary of the uprising, Eric and fellow LGBTQ history expert Ken Lustbader talk to Stonewall National Monument visitors and let a few myths slip by to uncover Stonewall’s moving resonance as a symbol of LGBTQ liberation and joy.

This episode is a co-production of Making Gay History and the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, in partnership with the National Park Service.

Visit our episode webpage for a transcript of the episode.

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As a bookish lesbian growing up in working-class England, June Thomas developed an early love of bookstores. After moving to the U.S. in the 1980s, she found community in the feminist bookstores of the era, as she recounts in A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women's Culture.

Visit our episode webpage for a transcript of the episode. For exclusive Making Gay History bonus content, join our Patreon community.

Episode Art: The Old Wives’ Tales Collective, San Francisco, 1982: Carol Seajay, Pell, Sherry Thomas, Tiana Arruda, and Kit Quan. © 1982 JEB (Joan E. Biren). 

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Valerie Reyes-Jimenez called it “The Monster.” That’s how some people described HIV and AIDS in the 1980s. Valerie thinks as many as 75 people from her block on New York City’s Lower East Side died. They were succumbing to an illness that was not recognized as the same virus that was killing young, white, gay men just across town in the West Village.

At the same time, in Washington, D.C., Gil Gerald, a Black LGBTQ+ activist, saw his own friends and colleagues begin to disappear, dying out of sight and largely ignored by the wider world.

In this guest episode from WNYC Studios’ new Blindspot series, hear how HIV and AIDS was misunderstood from the start—and how this would shape the reactions of governments, the medical establishment, and numerous communities for years to come. 

Listen and subscribe to the rest of the series here.

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Eric is joined in conversation by Dr. Laura Erickson-Schroth and Dr. Ilan H. Meyer to delve into the past and present of mental health for LGBTQ people. 

They discuss historical stigma, the ramifications of the American Psychiatric Association’s declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder 50 years ago, and shifting psychiatric understandings of LGBTQ mental health in relation to societal pressures and prejudice. They also explore the continued pathologization of trans people, and the barriers that exist to finding accessible, safe, and informed care. 

The MGH episode about Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld mentioned in the episode can be found here.

Visit our episode webpage for additional resources and a transcript of the episode.

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A half-century ago, millions of homosexuals were cured with the stroke of a pen when the American Psychiatric Association decided to change its diagnostic manual and remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. 

In this episode, we journey through several milestones in the battle for gay liberation and acceptance as we focus on how the field of psychiatry defined, and distorted, what it meant to be homosexual. Homosexuality was officially classified as a mental disorder in the 1952 edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, but the narrative that equated being gay with being mentally ill had been emerging for decades. The nascent gay rights movement in the 1950s was caught between believing the sickness narrative and seeking treatment, and questioning the diagnosis and using their own voices to fight back. A groundbreaking 1956 study by psychologist Dr. Evelyn Hooker debunked the notion that gay men were, by default, mentally ill, and even though societal pressures dissuaded Dr. Hooker from extending her study to lesbians, her research gave activists a foundation to advance the discourse. The years that followed brought continued campaigning by gay activists, and with the help of enlightened psychiatrists who became allies and closeted gay psychiatrists who had the courage to speak out, 1973 brought victory. The APA overturned its classification, effectively “curing” millions of homosexuals overnight.

Visit our episode webpage for additional resources and a transcript of the episode.

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