Pride - LGBTQ History

Denver is the Mile High City, the Queen City of the Plains, and the Gateway to the West. Today, the city attracts thousands of new residents each year, including the LGBTQ people from the rural West and digital nomads from around the nations seeking a welcoming community where they can thrive. In LGBTQ Denver, Phil Nash showcases how the city evolved from its pre-1970s history of rebuking gay people to a magnet for LGBTQ residents and the capital of the first state to elect and reelect the nation’s first openly gay governor.

How Long Beach caused the death of John A. Lamb.

 

Immediately after his 1914 election as mayor of Long Beach, Louis Napoleon Whealton fired the chief of police and raided the city treasury. To replenish the funds, Mayor Whealton concocted a scheme to collect fines from any male “who made advances toward other men.” Two special police officers entrapped and arrested thirty-one men, dragging them before a judge to pay up or risk a public trial. When one victim refused to play along, newspapers were quick to publish the names of everyone accused, including local pharmacist and popular churchman John A. Lamb. His suicide made headlines, but the city continued to target gay men well into this century.

Author and historian Gerrie Schipske uncovers the story of a tragic death with far-reaching consequences in Long Beach.

In 1974, one of San Francisco's most horrific unsolved serial murder cases began.

In less than two years, the man police called "The Doodler'? took at least five lives, terrorized the LGBTQ community, and left three survivors forever changed. Initial reports claimed the murderer didn't approach his victims with the knife he used to kill them, but that the suspect shared skilled drawings--sketches of faces and animals--before leaving several gay men to bleed out in the sands of Ocean Beach. Police investigations and activist efforts to uncover the killer led to several suspects, but no definitive identification of the artist of death.

Author Kate Zaliznock shines a light on this riveting cold case.

Famous and forgotten, they're all our fabulous ancestors.
From Charles Warren Stoddard, the first openly gay San Franciscan, to Felicia "Flames" Elizondo, the exuberant transgender rights advocate, the LGBT community is integrally woven into the fabric of the city's history. Household names like Queen Califia, Charley Parkhurst, Elsa Gidlow, Jose Sarria and Harvey Milk are celebrated worldwide, while Bert LaRose, Mabel Edison and Clarence Lockett are now largely forgotten. Whether '49ers, bohemians, beatniks, boomers, hippies, clones or conformists, their fascinating stories contributed to the development of a vibrant community, many simply by being themselves.
Join Dr. William Lipsky as he recounts their struggles and achievements in the City by the Bay.

Los Angeles has always been a city of possibilities and reinvention. A youthful and independent spirit permeates the culture and gives a sense of freedom found in few other places. This environment provided fertile ground for the growth of a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community that had a major influence on LGBT life in the United States. For most of American history, queer identities were only visible in forms of entertainment, with most of the culture existing underground and in fear. By the 1950s, however, a few brave gay people living in Los Angeles dared to challenge society's negative views on homosexuality. For the next two decades, L.A. produced the nation's first LGBT leaders, organizations, and publications, and gave birth to the national movement for LGBT equality.

In recent years, San Francisco has been synonymous with gay and lesbian pride, and the various achievements of the gay and lesbian community are personified in the city by the bay. The tumultuous and ongoing struggles for this community's civil rights from the 1950s to the present are well documented, but queer culture itself goes back much further than that, in fact all the way back to the California gold rush.

Salt Lake City, located along Utah's majestic Wasatch Mountains, has historically been a cradle of peculiar people. Before Western culture developed terms for lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) identities, diverse communities who recognized their differences from mainstream America made Salt Lake their home. By the early 1970s, a discernible "gay community" had emerged in Salt Lake City, laying the groundwork for future activism and institutions. In the 1970s, publications like Gayzette, the Salt Lick, and the Open Door documented the nascent movement. In the 1980s, amidst devastation from the HIV/AIDS epidemic, marginalized communities valiantly worked to fight the disease and support each other. By the 1990s, LGBT Utahns had gained traction legally and politically with the formation of the first gay straight alliance at East High School and the election of the first openly gay person to the Utah legislature in 1998. The transgender community became more visible in the new century, and by 2008, Utah began to play a prominent role in the battle over marriage equality.

Long Beach, California, founded in the 1880s by conservative, pro-temperance settlers, has been known as “American Colony,” “Queen of the Beaches,” “Iowa-By-The Sea,” “Home of the Pike,” and “Paradise for Pansies.” This book gives a glimpse of how Long Beach went from making national headlines in 1914 for entrapping 31 gay men as “social vagrants” to receiving a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s “Municipal Equality Index” for issues that contribute to a positive climate for LGBTQA+ people. Over time, Long Beach changed, becoming one of the most diverse cities in California. Voters elected a lesbian to city council in 2006 and a gay mayor in 2014 who they sent to Congress in 2022. Its new main library is named in honor of its hometown lesbian heroine, Billie Jean King. Today, Long Beach has the third largest “Pride Parade and Festival” in California.

Las Vegas is known around the world as a flashy, libertarian oasis where an individual's pursuit of happiness and profit is paramount. This was not true for the city's queer community. Being gay in Las Vegas until the 1990s was a felony with a hefty fine and long prison sentence. The Las Vegas LGBTQ community did not organize to fight for its rights until the late 1970s and by the early 1980s had made significant headway, before AIDS stopped their momentum. While the plague was devastating, it taught compassion, self-reliance, and political savvy. In 1993, the community persuaded the Nevada State Legislature to repeal the state's sodomy law, and throughout the 1990s and 2000s—even with some significant setbacks—Las Vegas rapidly caught up with more enlightened places in the United States. By 2017, Las Vegas was a city among the most welcoming of the nation's queer community.