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LGBTQ history



  • The Pendulum of Queer History

    by Samuel Huneke

    As the Republican Party embraces aggressive transphobia as a political wedge issue, there is historical reason to believe that the strategy will provoke organizing, reform, or even revolution for queer liberation. 



  • The Dodgers Were Right to Honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

    by Lily Lucas Hodges

    Catholic groups charged that the LGBTQ group mocked their faith with their appropriation of nuns' dress. But the group more importantly defied Catholic teaching to promote life-saving health care and education about sexuality at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. 


  • Can the Left Take Back Identity Politics?

    by Umut Özkırımlı

    Recovering the liberatory potential of identity politics means going back to the term's source—the Combahee River Collective—and recognizing its radical roots and embrace of coalition-building and politics.



  • The Right to Dress However You Want

    by Kate Redburn

    New anti-transgender laws should prompt a legal response, but they also require a fundamental recognition: laws prescribing gendered dress codes infringe on everyone's freedom of expression. 


  • Dangerous Records: Why LGBTQ Americans Today Fear the Weaponization of Bureaucracy

    by Emily Hand

    Requests made by Texas's Attorney General for information about gender change requests on drivers' licenses and other documents alarmed transgender advocates because the data could support an official list of trans Texans at a moment when the group faces public vilification. History shows that innocent bureaucratic records can be used oppressively.



  • How to Fight Back Against the Right's "Parents' Rights" Moral Panic

    by Jennifer Berkshire

    Parents' fears about losing control over their children have been the raw material for potent politically-motivated moral panics for a century and more. But those panics aren't irresistible, because parents everywhere still value public schools as democratic community institutions.  



  • Indiana's Kinsey Institute will Have to Carry on Without State Funds

    The pioneering research institute for the study of human sexuality has been a victim of the "groomer" moral panic; the legislator introducing the funding restrictions has called the late Alfred Kinsey a pedophile and suggested the institute was "hiding child predators." 


  • Let Us Now Praise R. DeSantis

    by Marc Stein

    "I can’t believe it’s taken this long to have a political leader take a stand against gender and sexuality!"



  • Shameful Echoes of the 1950s Lavender Scare

    by David K. Johnson

    At the height of the McCarthy era, a bipartisan congressional committee concluded that gay and lesbian personnel should be purged from government service because of the alleged "weakness of their moral fiber." Teaching this history could make students more able to recognize political moral panics today. 



  • Jeanne Manford's Support for her Gay Son was Revolutionary

    At the time Manford began publicly supporting her own gay son and organizing a group for other parents of gay children, 49 states had laws criminalizing gay sex; the scope and bravery of her activism is difficult to appreciate today.