Gayskool
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🏳️🌈 Do Ask, Do Tell!
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) was the horribly misguided policy that allowed lesbian, gay, and bisexual people to serve in the U.S. military as long as they didn’t disclose their sexual orientation. President Bill Clinton introduced the policy as a sort of compromise between forces advocating for and against lesbian,…
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🏳️🌈 Meet Tammy
LGBTQ representation in government is getting better, and that’s thanks to trailblazers like Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). In 1998, Baldwin became the first openly lesbian woman elected to Congress. In 2012, she became the first openly LGBTQ person in the Senate. Baldwin has never hidden her sexual orientation. “I think that…
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🏳️🌈 LGBTQ People Have Class
GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) was created in 1990 to promote LGBT issues in kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high schools. It supports students and teachers. GLSEN is best known for helping schools form and sustain Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs. Some administrations and parents are so vehemently hateful…
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🏳️🌈 10 Percent
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male shocked the world when it was published in 1948 by Alfred Kinsey. It said 10% of the male population was gay and more than one third of men had had at least one gay sexual experience. The report also gave us the Kinsey Scale,…
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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…