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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

Diversity Dispatch: October Is LGBT History Month


It’s a sign of the times. Equality Forum’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) History Month website includes biographies not only of long-ago LGBT figures such as Katharine Lee Bates, author of the poem that became the song “America the Beautiful,” but also of those prominent more recently, including Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook and current owner of The New Republic. While Bates lived with Katharine Coman in a 25-year “romantic friendship” during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Hughes legally married Sean Eldridge this year (https://www.lgbthistorymonth.com/sites/all/themes/lgbthm/images/2012-LGBTBios.pdf).

Rochester’s own rich legacy of LGBT history is being systematically recorded and organized by the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley’s Shoulder to Stand On project (https://www.shoulderstostandonblog.org/). The project’s most recent focus is the creation of a 90-minute documentary about the history of the Rochester LGBT community. The project also coordinated the digitization of 39 years’ worth of The Empty Closet, “New York State’s oldest gay newspaper” (https://www.gayalliance.org/directory/the-empty-closet.html), made these issues publicly available online via the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries (https://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=4800), and is preparing to donate a full run of the newspaper to the archives of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History at the archives’ request (https://womenwopinions.typepad.com/shoulders_to_stand_on/2012/07/ec-washington.html).

If you’d like to test your knowledge about LGBT history this month, take the weekly trivia challenge quizzes at https://www.lgbthistorymonth.com/quiz. For LGBT people, history is being made every day.

This is part of a monthly series of articles from the Diversity Council about topics related to diversity and multiculturalism.

Debbie Mohr
Diversity Council (ETS: Libraries)
10/16/2012