Bristol Lbian and Gay Swchboard: almost 40 years of LGBTQ+ muny

Contents:

• ABOUT THE CENTERSCE 1983 THE CENTER HAS BEEN SUPPORTG, FOSTERG AND CELEBRATG THE LGBT MUNY OF NEW YORK CY. FD MORE RMATN ON AND OUR WORK ABOUT THE CENTER. VIS ABOUT THE CENTEROUR MISSNCYBER CENTERCENTER HISTORYRACE EQUYMEDIA CENTERLEARSHIP & STAFFEMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNICORPORATE PARTNERSHIPSANNUAL REPORTS & FANCIAL INFORMATNCONTACT USHOURS & LOTNSEMAPSUPPORT THE CENTER
• BRISTOL LBIAN AND GAY SWCHBOARD: ALMOST 40 YEARS OF LGBTQ+ MUNY
• LONDON LBIAN & GAY SWCHBOARD
• BRISTOL LBIAN AND GAY SWCHBOARD
• LONDON LBIAN AND GAY SWCHBOARD
• 'WE'RE NOT HIDG': GAY AND LBIAN RSIANS SAY A CULTURAL SHIFT IS UNRWAY
• GAY & LBIAN SWCHBOARD OF NEW YORK

ABOUT THE CENTERSCE 1983 THE CENTER HAS BEEN SUPPORTG, FOSTERG AND CELEBRATG THE LGBT MUNY OF NEW YORK CY. FD MORE RMATN ON AND OUR WORK ABOUT THE CENTER. VIS ABOUT THE CENTEROUR MISSNCYBER CENTERCENTER HISTORYRACE EQUYMEDIA CENTERLEARSHIP & STAFFEMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNICORPORATE PARTNERSHIPSANNUAL REPORTS & FANCIAL INFORMATNCONTACT USHOURS & LOTNSEMAPSUPPORT THE CENTER

While attendg a Gay Women’s Group meetg at a lbian hoe Clifton, which also acmodated the Women’s Centre and the first Bristol refuge, the premis received nstant phone lls om gay men and lbians alike. “Gay people now have much more accs to rmatn; they have more eedom about where they live, work and socialise and, thanks to the many chang legislatn over the last few s, beg gay no longer has such a huge stigma attached to . Swchboard provis peer-driven support servic for lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and genr diverse, tersex, queer and asexual (LGBTIQA+) people, their fai, alli and muni.

BRISTOL LBIAN AND GAY SWCHBOARD: ALMOST 40 YEARS OF LGBTQ+ MUNY

Swchboard was a key source of advice for gay men who faced discrimatn all areas of life throughout the 1970s, as well as beg at the foreont of AIDS awarens mpaigns the January 1986 Swchboard volunteers voted to change the anisatn's name to 'London Lbian and Gay Swchboard' and ma ncerted attempts to attract more women to the anisatn. Photographs of Swchboard volunteers and events, releas, ternal and external newsletters, and histori of Swchboard, regardg partnerships and proposed partnerships between Swchboard and other anisatns, cuttgs regardg Swchboard the LGBT helple, of FROGS, Friends of Gay Swchboard, of Dudley Cave, a foundg member of Swchboard as well as the Lbian and Gay Bereavement Project, 1939-2010. To mark the 45th anniversary, people have been sharg memori of a chary that's helped lns across the Power ed to thk of herself as a supporter or ally of the gay muny, rather than a 1976 at a march Lanshire prottg agast an employee at a BHS partment store losg his job after g out as gay, Lisa "accintally" revealed herself as a loud and proud lbian.

" After that Lisa thought she "might as well" go along wh her new 's been a sharp-tongued LGBT activist ever source, SwchboardImage ptn, Lisa Power (left) says Swchboard tght her to be "a much better activist"Image source, Jon PountneyImage ptn, Sce leavg Swchboard 1994 Lisa has bee a renowned mpaigner for sexual health and LGBT rightsLisa joed Swchboard 1979, as the gay liberatn movement ma wav across the world. Although homosexualy was partly crimalised England and Wal 1967, Brish culture had not adapted fully to the ntued to face discrimatn at home, at work and a meetg a pub between several gay groups across London, Swchboard was set up to ter for the needs of people who need rmatn or an unrstandg, who now liv Cardiff, scrib the helple as beg "gay fishg school where you learned about everythg" ptn, Swchboard gaed tractn soon after lnchg 1974, and quickly beme a 24-hour serviceEach shift, volunteers answered lls varyg wildly subject matter and ller might want to know when certa gay club nights were maybe the ll had e om a gigglg group of teenagers, squished to a phone box, havg persuad each other a hoax ll would be a sometim, the ller would be on the brk of rponsibily Lisa had as a listener really h home while on holiday Greece wh her girliend.

"Media ptn, Mark Gatiss rells the first time he said 'I'm gay' to another person, on the phone to SwchboardHe cid to ll Swchboard after seeg a poster wh the number on the ITV s, hangg up on the volunteers several tim, he eventually said down the le: "Hello, I'm gay. "They often say you n probably unburn yourself more to a total stranger than to an old iend bee there's no eback, there's no judgement, " he source, LSE LibraryImage ptn, The 1970s marked the first official Gay Pri ralli the UKImage source, Robert WorkmanImage ptn, Volunteers say a certa "kudos" me wh beg a part of Swchboard the 1980s and 1990sIn the early days, Swchboard was a small anisatn, and volunteers had to adopt unrhand tactics to get the number out to as many people as of gay activists would sneak to librari across London and stick the Swchboard number "to any book they thought a young gay man or lbian might go to to read, " Lisa says - such as on to pag of the Bible exprsg anti-gay at the start of the 1980s, everythg changed. Scientists began to notice a sister rise aths prevly healthy, young gay HIV epimic had reared s ugly source, Welle CollectnImage ptn, More than 35 ln people have died om Aids-related illns sce the start of the epimic, acrdg to UNAIDSGovernment-issued rmatn leaflets sent to every hoehold the UK had Swchboard's number prted on them - and mand for the helple soared.

LONDON LBIAN & GAY SWCHBOARD

Lookg at a photo taken at a gay pub Islgton 1984, Lisa says: "It's very poignant as a shot of the brightt and bt of the London lbian and gay movement, as HIV was only jt begng to h . "Image source, Gregg BlachfordImage ptn, Several Swchboard volunteers this shot, taken to celebrate the helple's 10th anniversary, would go on to die of AidsDiana Jam scrib this era as beg "a heartbreakg but also fantastic time to be LGBT" 60-year-old, who liv Cornwall, beme Swchboard's first transgenr volunteer when she joed was the same year Margaret Thatcher's ernment troduced the hugely ntroversial policy, nicknamed Sectn 28, to stop the "promotn" of homosexualy.

Standg si a ty office above Homans bookshop Kg's Cross, om where she ed to s and answer phon, Diana remembers the homophobic prejudice she and her lleagu would face. "Image ptn, Diana Jam was the first transgenr person to jo SwchboardFor Diana, the prejudice didn't always e om straight that time the helple was lled London Lbian and Gay Swchboard (havg rebrand om Gay Swchboard 1986), and some volunteers felt hostile to the ia of bisexual or trans people answerg the phon - even though many llers intified as bisexual or trans Power had argued vigoroly for Diana's recment, and she was only accepted on to the team bee she was a lbian, not bee she was trans. And was also the kudos of beg a Swchboard volunteer - I really wanted to do , " she source, SwchboardImage ptn, The helple is still very much mand and tak about 15, 000 lls a yearHomophobic legislatn, right-wg thugs and fear of Aids might feel like ancient history to young LGBT people many of the issu of the 1970s and 80s are still Hng, a microspe technician at UCL, believ she helps other volunteers to unrstand that many LGBT people still stggle to e out to their ptn, Ki Hng's mother tried to "exorcise" her when she first spected she might be bisexual"Bee I'm bisexual and I grew up Malaysia, which is a very nservative, heteronormative untry, I assumed I was straight, " Ki explas.

ReimerImage ptn, Tash Walker has been studyg Swchboard's archiv at Bishopsgate Instute central LondonTash Walker, Swchboard's current -chair, has been studyg archived not about lls to the 's noticed people feelg isolated and unable to e out to their loved on has been a mon nversatn throughout Swchboard's 's therefore perhaps unsurprisg that one three LGBT teens England has a mental illns, while homophobic and transgenr hate crime have both risen the past few years. When that buildg unrwent renovatns October 1987, the Swchboard moved to the Lbian & Gay Communy Servic Center (now Lbian Gay Bisexual and Transgenr Communy Center) where remaed until the Swchboard closed December 1997.

BRISTOL LBIAN AND GAY SWCHBOARD

[1] Inial planng began wh 1971 meetgs to tablish the Gay Swchboard, led by eight dividuals om Gay Activists Alliance, Beyond, and the recently dissolved Gay Liberatn Front.

[2] The program lnched wh s first ll on 13 January 1972 received at the Liberatn Hoe Gay Collective (247 Wt 11th Street), and grew to field 400 lls per week (20, 000 per year) the 1970s. The object was to provi rmatn of tert to Gay people an unbiased, non-judgmental manner while allowg volunteers the optn of exprsg their own pot of view, and to unsel people to the bt of their abily. Rerds of phone lls field by volunteers, om March 1972 to July 1983, form most of the archiv of the anizatn, prerved at the New York Public Library as part of s llectn hered om the Internatnal Gay Informatn Center Archiv.

LONDON LBIAN AND GAY SWCHBOARD

In 1977, the anizatn joed wh like-md anizatns to create the jot Gay and Lbian Servic Center (110 East 23rd Street), while rporatg on s own as the Gay Swchboard of New York, Inc. Her discharge om the ary over her homosexualy had turned her to an Tob/The New York Public LibraryPublished July 19, 2023Updated July 23, 2023Lilli Vcenz, who beme a gay rights activist the hhed, reprsive era before the Stonewall rebelln of 1969, when such a ncept srcely existed, makg a mark as a newspaper edor, documentary filmmaker and psychotherapist voted to L.

She was ath, at a re facily, was nfirmed by a niece, Julia Bo, who did not specify a Vcenz’s journey to promence the nascent gay rights movement of the mid-1960s began after a personal llisn wh tolerance. In 1963, she was servg the Women’s Army Corps when a roommate outed her as gay, leadg to her discharge after only ne months took that rejectn as an opportuny to beg a fight agast jtice that would gui her for s. Vicenz beme, by most acunts, the first lbian to picket the Whe Hoe support of equal rights for gay people as a member of the Mattache Society of Washgton, an early gay rights prott — the first of s kd, acrdg to the Library of Congrs — and others that followed were small but brought visibily to a movement s fancy.

Vcenz beme the first out lbian to appear on the ver of a natnal gay magaze, The Ladr, a publitn produced by the untry’s first lbian-rights group, the Dghters of Bilis, acrdg to a retrospective on her life and reer by Lillian Farman, a historian of lbian and gay her scbbed, all-Amerin looks, Dr.

'WE'RE NOT HIDG': GAY AND LBIAN RSIANS SAY A CULTURAL SHIFT IS UNRWAY

Vcenz looked like “every mother’s dream dghter, ” as Barbara Gtgs, The Ladr’s edor, put Vcenz also ntributed to the e on the other si of a mera, makg two 16-limeter films that were later hailed as signifint artifacts of the early gay rights first, tled “The Send-Largt Mory, ” documents a Mattache Society prott ont of Inpennce Hall Philalphia on July 4, morn ey, the black-and-whe film, roughly seven mut, seems anythg but seismic. “The whole notn of gay people publicly exprsg their sentiments that fashn was beyond nceptualizatn until we started dog , ” the Mattache Society’s -founr, Frankl E. ”Her send film, “Gay and Proud, ” documented the Christopher Street Liberatn Day Para 1970, a memoratn of the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprisg Manhattan.

“Gay and Proud” shows a much larger, and shaggier, gatherg of protters takg a more ant stance the para, chantg fiantly and wavg plards wh msag like “I am a lbian and I am betiful.

J., Vcenz regnized her sexualy early on, she said a 2008 terview, and “ beme paful after a while to realize that I was gay and I didn’t know anyone else who was gay.

GAY & LBIAN SWCHBOARD OF NEW YORK

Farman’s putative hotbed, however, had a policy banng gay people om service, and she was thrown out while trag as a nropsychiatric technician at the Walter Reed ary hospal the 1970s, Dr. “I fd a privilege to work wh gay people who are, general, so much more urageo, novative and open to new ias than the average straight person, ” she told Gay Today. It was Washgton — not Bethda, Md., where is we handle rrectnsA versn of this article appears prt on, Sectn A, Page 20 of the New York edn wh the headle: Lilli Vcenz, a Trailblazer the Gay Rights Movement, Di at 85.