KNOWhomo

LBGTQ* Signs and Slogans

LGBTQ* ALLIES YOU SHOULD KNOW

EMMA GOLDMAN  (1869 – 1940)

“No daring is required to protest against a great injustice”

* Political Activist and Speech Writer

* Activist for Immigration Rights, Women’s Rights, Safety/Work Related Equality, Freedom of Speech, Atheism, Marriage, Free Love and Homosexuality

* Goldman was the FIRST woman to speak out for homosexual rights

From Goldman’s Writings:

During our walk in the Luxembourg I told the doctor of the indignation I had felt at the conviction of Oscar Wilde. I had pleaded his case against the miserable hypocrites who had sent him to his doom. “You!” the doctor exclaimed in astonishment, “why, you must have been a mere youngster then. How did you dare come out in public for Oscar Wilde in puritan America?” “Nonsense!” I replied; “no daring is required to protest against a great injustice.” The doctor smiled dubiously. “Injustice?” he repeated; “it wasn’t exactly that from the legal point of view, though it may have been from the psychological.” The rest of the afternoon we were engaged in a battle royal about inversion, perversion, and the question of sex variation. He had given much thought to the matter, but he was not free in his approach, and I suspected that he was somewhat scandalized that I, a young woman, should speak without reservations on such tabooed subjects.

LGBTQ* Comics, Graphic Novels and Illustrations

STUCK RUBBER BABY by Howard Cruse

(1995) Graphic Novel — In the 1960s American South, a young gas-station attendant named Toland Polk is rejected from the Army draft for admitting “homosexual tendencies,” and falls in with a close-knit group of young locals yearning to break from the conformity of their hometown through civil rights activism, folk music and upstart communality of race-mixing, gay-friendly nightclubs. Toland’s story is both deeply personal and epic in scope, as his search for identity plays out against the brutal fight over segregation, an unplanned pregnancy and small-town bigotry, aided by an unforgettable supporting cast. (from Amazon.com)

LGBTQ* People You Should Know

Bayard Rustin  (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) 

* Civil Rights and Activism Leader

* Practiced Nonviolence (Member of Fellowship for Reconciliation) 

* Organized the 1963 March on Washington (the LARGEST nonviolent protest in the United States)

* Strategist and Adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

* Worked to strengthen labor unions and promote equal working enviroments

* Rustin was arrested more times for being homosexual than for participating in civil rights protests as a man of color (in the 1960s, homosexuality was still criminalized)

* In the 1970s-1980s, Rustin worked with Freedom House.

— From Rustin’s Speech “The New Niggers Are Gays”

Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new “niggers” are gays… . It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change… . The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people.

Bayard Rustin’s life is briefly mentioned in the film BEFORE STONEWALL, discussed in COMING OUT OF THE PAST and featured in the documentary Brother Outsider.

**PLFAG MOM also posted about Bayard Rustin earlier today. Her blog includes a video of Rustin speaking. You should check it out for more information.

ho·mo·phile

   -noun 1. a homosexual.

  –adjective 2. advocating or supportive of the interests, civil rights, and welfare of homosexuals; gay: a homophile activist organization.

(from dictionary.com)