Gay History 1971 - LIFE Magaze Publish: "Homosexuals Revolt" - 44 Years Later And We Are Still Fightg

HOW TIME’S REPORTG ON GAY LIFE AMERI SHAPED—AND SKEWED—A GENERATN’S ATTUS

ntued om yterday’s first stallment (Note: each and every stance of the word “gay” is highlighted the reproductns of the magaze pag, sce that is the word I searched by the Life archiv to fd this article. The pk highlightg of Life magaze’s often sensatnalistic… * homosexuality in america life magazine *

Over lunch one afternoon at our kchen table, wh the latt issue of TIME turned to an article about Ana Bryant’s succsful mpaign to repeal a gay-rights bill Da County, Fla., I raged over the jtice of both Bryant’s assertn that gay people were a danger to children and the wardly legislators who ved to prejudice and ignorance.

Unknowgly, my red-faced outrage offered another clue to my mother that there was more than a ltle self-tert at stake for me the fate of the gay civil-rights movement. It wasn’t until more than a later, when I began rearchg an oral-history book on what was then lled the gay and lbian civil-rights movement, that I realized that TIME magaze had also played a role shapg how my mother thought of homosexuals — and how she’d e to view her teenaged gay son.

In my rearch, as I stggled to ga an unrstandg of why people saw homosexuals as sick, sful and crimal, I stumbled on a 1966 say TIME that jt about burned the sk off my face as I read . Back then, homosexualy was still nsired a treatable mental illns, sexual relatns between two people of the same sex uld get you arrted almost every state, and thoands — perhaps tens of thoands — of gay men and lbians had been hound out of feral employment sce Print Eisenhower signed an executive orr 1953 banng them om ernment jobs.