In the footsteps of queer media lumari of the 60s and 70s, WNYC podst hosts Kathy Tu and Tob Low terview Gay Liberatn Front fou…
Contents:
- THE WHE HOE HAS APPOTED S FIRST BLACK WOMAN AND OPENLY GAY PERSON AS PRS SECRETARY. SO WHO IS KARE JEAN-PIERRE?
- BIN APPOTS FIRST OPENLY GAY PERSON AS PRS SECRETARY
- KARE JEAN-PIERRE WILL BEE THE FIRST BLACK AND FIRST OPENLY GAY WHE HOE PRS SECRETARY
- 'AN OUT GAY WOMAN': KARE JEAN-PIERRE HOP TO EMPOWER LGBTQ YOUTH AS WHE HOE PRS SECRETARY
- JAGS' MAXEN IS FIRST MALE AMERIN PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY
- JAGUARS ASSOCIATE STRENGTH ACH KEV MAXEN OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR US-BASED PRO LEAGU
THE WHE HOE HAS APPOTED S FIRST BLACK WOMAN AND OPENLY GAY PERSON AS PRS SECRETARY. SO WHO IS KARE JEAN-PIERRE?
* first gay press secretary *
The Gay Liberatn Front was an anizatn regnized for publishg the first gay liberatn newspaper the world, "Come Out!
So you probably know that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rts 1969, which is nsired one of the cg events of the Gay Rights Movement. Perry Brass and Karla Jay were active members a group lled Gay Liberatn Front, which was a big activism group New York at the time, and also published magaz like Come Out and Rat and many more.
Michael Bronski was active Boston and ran somethg lled Gay Sunshe Prs, which published a lot of material the 1970s. So for the sake of this panel I've been volved wh the Gay Prs om 1970, worked on Fag Rag Boston, Gay Communy News, and now I unexpectedly and weirdly teach at Harvard as a Profsor of Activism the Media and Women Genr Studi. >> I'm Perry Brass, I was a member of the Gay Liberatn Front for basilly three years, one of the most excg perds of my life.
BIN APPOTS FIRST OPENLY GAY PERSON AS PRS SECRETARY
US Print Joe Bin appots 44-year-old Kare Jean-Pierre as the next Whe Hoe prs secretary — the first black woman and openly gay person to serve the role. * first gay press secretary *
>> I'm Karla Jay, I was also a very early member of the Gay Liberatn Front, a member of Radil Lbians, which did the Lavenr Menace Actn. And I wrote for a number of early newspapers, cludg Rat, Subterranean News, Woman News, and I was the East Coast Corrponnt of The Lbian Ti, and I wrote for dozens of gay and lbian newspapers around this untry and abroad. Rob says, oh, e on and wre, and Rob kd of shoved me ont of a typewrer and I really owe her for that and I vered a lot of lbian and gay stori for papers like that.
And I thk the experience of lbians was really very different bee unlike later gay papers, which we'll talk about, we didn't have the fanc to have our dividual papers.
By the time I was 19 I'd pleted a novel that was blatantly homosexual and I was told that the only way uld be published would be if I changed the genr and have the characters to the oppose sex.
KARE JEAN-PIERRE WILL BEE THE FIRST BLACK AND FIRST OPENLY GAY WHE HOE PRS SECRETARY
It is the first time a black, or openly gay person has held the role. * first gay press secretary *
So my first actual publishg was synonymo basilly wh the gay movement, what we now ll the LGBT movement and that was Come Out. After that some of my wrgs started to appear other gay papers, and I was clud Ian Young's groundbreakg anthology, The Male Me, which was the first anthology of gay poetry, openly gay poetry the English language.
So durg this early perd of my life my wrg was very much a part of this I thk wonrful movement towards what we now ll LGBT liberatn, but those days we simply jt lled gay liberatn.
I sort of always wrote, I wrote high school, I wrote for the high school newspaper, I wrote for the town paper when I beme volved gay liberatn '69, when I moved to Boston 1971 and got volved wh gay men's liberatn, which was our versn of GLF, and immediately began workg on a magaze lled, or a newspaper lled Fag Rag, which was probably the first natnal non-news foced, bee Come Out was more news foced.
'AN OUT GAY WOMAN': KARE JEAN-PIERRE HOP TO EMPOWER LGBTQ YOUTH AS WHE HOE PRS SECRETARY
Last May, Jean-Pierre beme the first openly gay woman, and the send Black woman, to lead a briefg" emprop="scriptn * first gay press secretary *
>> And basilly I wrote for them and then I began wrg for Gay Communy News, which was the first natnal lbian and gay newspaper wh wi distributn which lasted for about 20 years. But for me a lot of this jt meant actually beg part of the muny, I mean Fag Rag was an anarchist llective, Gay Communy News was a ls anarchist llective but kd of anarchist. I was wrg somethg the other day for a magaze and I me up wh this le, right, that the purpose of the gay liberatn movement was to save liv, and the way that I uld save liv was actually by dog layout, dog typettg and wrg, right, and so was radil femism, so was black power movement, right?
JAGS' MAXEN IS FIRST MALE AMERIN PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY
The first Black and first openly gay prs secretary was raised an immigrant fay wh “so many secrets.” Now she occupi one of the most sctized jobs Amerin polics. * first gay press secretary *
>> Well, I thk before I talk about that I'd really like to jt talk about the qutn I get often is what did the Gay Liberatn Front acplish, bee this go to very much our publitns. And the answer to that is was everythg, was basilly the Gay Liberatn Front changed the whole narrative of what had been the homophile movement.
The send qutn that people often asked me is what was the Gay Liberatn Front about? We had this wonrful thg lled the Gay Flgs Packet that we sent out hundreds of pi of material, rmatn om our publitns all over the untry, so that people who had no accs to let's say our newspaper or to our meetgs they uld learn about . There was, we had splter groups that me out om also, one of them was are lled Third World Gay Revolutn that was like the first, I should jt say basilly gay group of people of lor, they did publitns.
JAGUARS ASSOCIATE STRENGTH ACH KEV MAXEN OUT AS GAY A FIRST FOR US-BASED PRO LEAGU
Jaguars assistant Kev Maxen has bee the first male ach major Amerin men's pro sports to publicly e out as gay, tellg he ma the cisn bee he didn't want to hi who he is any longer. * first gay press secretary *
>> We had a really big obstacle and the biggt obstacle that we faced as revolutnari 1969 as we me out of the ash of the Stonewall uprisg, figuratively, was that newspapers, mastream newspapers would not e the word gay. The word homosexual was ed as early as 1926, but as late as 1969 The New York Tim, The Village Voice, no newspaper. And we uldn't be listed those eher bee the word gay was nsired a dirty word.
>> And so that we uld not as gay liberatnists get word out that we even existed.
There were papers like Gay Power, and to have that on the ver was very powerful for people to see that, even though the paper, self, was kd of a mafia rag. All of the ads there were for bars, and there is some evince that the Genove crime fay wanted to ntrol this new burgeong gay prs so that we wouldn't say thgs that would shut their bars down, ala Stonewall. We said we have our own media, we're not gog to rely on the li that New York magaze would tell about , and at that pot New York magaze was very homophobic.