Video of the Day for GLBT History Month

Make sure you check back everyday throughout the month of October for the GLBT History Month video of the day.

You can always find out more at the official GLBT History Month website.

Queer America: A GLBT History of the United States

As I wrote Queer America over the past few years my aim was to offer a thorough yet concise one-volume source for students, teachers, and anyone else seeking to learn something about the glbtq experience in the United States over the past one hundred years.

The need for the book grew out of my own teaching: some fifteen years earlier I had introduced the course “Gay American History” to the Alfred University curriculum and at first found it difficult to put together a reading list. Since then, as we know, the field of glbtq history has exploded, with hundreds of wonderful studies of individuals and movements, approaches and arguments, constantly causing me to reconsider the content and method of my course and my research.

However, two themes with which I began teaching remain the same and, if anything, have been magnified by writing the book: the sheer magnitude of our history–there is so much of it–and that the glbtq past, far from being “yet another history” is part and parcel of American history.

Read more at glbtq.com.

October is GLBT History Month

Equality Forum announces the following 31 Icons to be honored for GLBT History Month 2008 in October:

Georgina Beyer, first transgender member of a national Parliament
Mark Bingham, 9/11 hero
Margarethe Cammermeyer, military officer, GLBT service members advocate
Rachel Carson, environmental pioneer
Bertrand Delanoe, first openly gay Mayor of Paris
Melissa Etheridge, Grammy and Oscar Award-winning singer/songwriter
Harvey Fierstein, Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor, playwright and screenwriter
E.M. Forster, author of “A Room with a View,” “Howard’s End,” and “Maurice”
Allen Ginsberg, revolutionary poet and activist
Philip Johnson, innovative, internationally-renowned architect and designer
Bill T. Jones, Tony Award-winning dancer and choreographer
Cleve Jones, GLBT activist, founder of NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt
Sheila Kuehl, first openly gay elected to the California legislature
Tony Kushner, Tony, Emmy and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
Greg Louganis, Olympic Gold Medal diver
Robert Mapplethorpe, groundbreaking photographer
Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon, founders of nation’s first lesbian organization and first same-sex couple married in San Francisco
Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist and author
Michelangelo, Renaissance painter, sculptor and architect
Rosie O’Donnell, comedian, talk-show host, actress, winner of 11 Emmy Awards
Troy Perry, spiritual leader and founder of Metropolitan Community Churches
Gene Robinson, first openly gay Bishop in the Episcopal Church
Anthony Romero, ACLU Executive Director
Randy Shilts, New York Times best-selling author and groundbreaking AIDS journalist
Stephen Sondheim, theatrical lyricist/composer, multiple Tony Award winner
Gianni Versace, fashion designer and entrepreneur
Alice Walker, author and feminist, Pulitzer Prize winner for “The Color Purple”
Andy Warhol, American pop artist and avant-garde filmmaker
John Waters, filmmaker, actor, and author of “Hairspray”
Jann Wenner, co-founder and publisher of “Rolling Stone”
Tennessee Williams, prolific American playwright, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner

“From Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon on October 1st to Michelangelo on October 31st, the 31 Icons for 2008 combined, with the 62 Icons for GLBT History Month 2006 and 2007, are impressive,” stated Malcolm Lazin, Executive Director, Equality Forum. “For a community deprived of its history, GLBT History Month teaches our heritage, provides role models, builds community, and makes the civil rights statement of our extraordinary national and international contributions.”

GLBT History Month was conceived in the mid-1990’s by educators and embraced by major GLBT organizations. In 2006, Equality Forum took responsibility for this communal project and solicits Icon nominations from state, national and international executive directors and other community leaders. The criteria are persons living or deceased, who have distinguished themselves in their field of endeavor, are a national hero or have made a significant contribution to GLBT civil rights.

All 2008 nominations were reviewed by GLBT History Month Co-Chairs Professor Sharon Ullman, History Department, Bryn Mawr College, and Professor Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law, and were approved by the Equality Forum Board of Directors

Each day in October 2008, an Icon is featured with a video, biography, bibliography and other educational resources. The resources for GLBT History Month 2008 Icons will be available in October at www.glbtHistoryMonth.com. Educational resources for 2006 and 2007 Icons are archived on the site.

GLBT History Month Icon videos are expected to be broadcast on Logo and here! and streamed on major gay portals. The videos are offered without charge to educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, for profit companies and the public. More than 300 educational institutions, organizations and companies hosted GLBT History Month 2007 on their Web sites.

Equality Forum is a national and international GLBT civil rights organization with an educational focus. Equality Forum coordinates GLBT History Month, produces documentary films, undertakes high impact initiatives and presents annually the largest national and international GLBT civil rights forum.

www.equalityforum.com

Gay on the Range: An Archive of Gay Art

History is written by the victors. They choose what will be remembered, and what covered up. So it has been with male eros. Looking at any history textbook, one would think that never has a society praised love between men, never has a painter, a poet or a pope shared his bed and his heart with another male. Evidence of same-sex love has been either quietly suppressed, as with the Greeks and Romans, or quickly destroyed, as is still done with newly unearthed Inca and Mayan art. The result of this deception has been a needless polarization of society and untold suffering for those people who happen to fall in love with others of their own sex.

Uncensored, the historical record reveals an opposite reality: the male love instinct is a universal constant.  Only society’s attitude towards it has varied. All cultures have regulated male love, weaving varied tapestries of ritual around it. And a few have tried - to no avail - to regulate it out of existence.

Yes, and even here, in the U.S.A., and even back in the 50’s and 60’s when women still were considered best as housewives and people of color were segregated from the white, there was a collection of gay reading.  Small as it was, it was there…check out some of the covers here.

You can also read more of the above article at androphile.org