LGBTQ
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🏳️🌈 A Teevee Ad With Some Assembly Required
IKEA was the first company to depict a gay couple in a TV ad in the United States — in 1994! It showed the couple shopping for a table. The ad only appeared in a few markets and was shown late at night, not during prime time. Of course, bigots…
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🏳️🌈 Oy Gay!
Allen Bennett was the first openly gay rabbi in the United States. He came out in 1978 in California as one of many LGBTQ voices opposing the Briggs Initiative (which I might discuss in a future history lesson). In 1979, he was elected rabbi of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San…
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🏳️🌈 Death Becomes Us
Ever wonder why so many LGBTQ characters die in movies and on TV? It’s not a coincidence. For many years, written and unwritten censorship laws prohibited the depiction of LGBTQ characters unless they were punished for their orientation. (You can google “Hays Code” for more info about this.) This situation…
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🏳️🌈 Them’s Fightin’ Words
For a long time now, the word “homosexual” has been considered highly offensive. For decades, gay men have gay men have referred to themselves as gay while anti-gay forces continued to use the word “homosexual.” GLAAD (The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) explains: “Because of the clinical history of…
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🏳️🌈 Don’t Leave the T out of LGBTQ
There were times when lesbians, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer people did not stand united as one group. These will remembered as the darker moments in LGBTQ history. The most egregious example of this came in 2007. The LGBTQ community was having difficulty getting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (which would…
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🏳️🌈 Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!
LGBTQ people across the United States should credit their civil rights and social acceptance to one woman: Marsha P. Johnson. While the history of the Stonewall riots isn’t quite clear, it’s believed that Johnson — an African-American trans woman — is the first one to fight back by throwing “the…
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🏳️🌈 Raising the Bar
In 1966, three gay men in New York, inspired by the sit-ins in the South, protested anti-gay laws with a “sip-in” at a Manhattan bar. At the time, it was illegal for bartenders to serve LGBTQ people. Of course, this didn’t pose much of a problem, as you can’t conclusively…
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🏳️🌈 Karl-Maria Kertbeny Gives Gays a Name
The term “homosexual” was created in 1868 by journalist Karl-Maria Kertbeny. Before that, there wasn’t really a nonjudgmental word (at least in the Western world) that described gay people, which meant we couldn’t define ourselves or create communities. (Consider how hard it would be to identify or understand yourself if…
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🏳️🌈 Welcome to Gayskool
June is the most rainbow-tactic, glitteriffic, fabulous month of the year! It’s when we in the LGBTQ community celebrate Pride. Every year, I post daily LGBTQ History Lessons all month long on Facebook. This year, I’ll be doing it on the Daily Dave — it will take the place of…
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Fear ≠ Hate, so Let’s Replace the Word “Homophobia”
Let’s get rid of the word “homophobia.” The word “phobia” comes from the Greek word for “fear.” That’s why the fear of enclosed spaces is claustrophobia, the fear of spiders is arachnophobia, and the fear of the number 13 is triskaidekaphobia.1 Homophobia isn’t rooted in fear. It’s rooted in hate.…