A pink triangle has been a symbol for various LGBTQ identities, initially intended as a badge of shame, but later reclaimed as a positive symbol of self-identity. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, it began as one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, distinguishing those imprisoned because they had been identified by authorities as homosexual men, a category that also included bisexual men and transgender women. In the 1970s, it was revived as a symbol of protest against homophobia, and has since been adopted by the larger LGBTQ community as a popular symbol of LGBTQ pride and the LGBTQ rights movement.
Technical Sergeant Leonard Philip Matlovich was an American Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays, and perhaps the best-known openly gay man in America in the 1970s next to Harvey Milk. His fight to stay in the United States Air Force after coming out of the closet became a cause célèbre around which the gay community rallied. His case resulted in articles in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, numerous television interviews, and a television movie on NBC. His photograph appeared on the cover of the September 8, 1975, issue of Time magazine, making him a symbol for thousands of gay and lesbian servicemembers and gay people generally. Matlovich was the first named openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. newsmagazine. According to author Randy Shilts, "It marked the first time the young gay movement had made the cover of a major newsweekly. To a movement still struggling for legitimacy, the event was a major turning point." In October 2006, Matlovich was honored by LGBT History Month as a leader in the history of the LGBT community.
The Houston Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (HGLFF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the media arts as a powerful tool for communication and cooperation among diverse communities by presenting films, videos, and programs by, about, or of interest to the LGBT community.
Cristina E. Martinez is a nationally recognized community activist, business owner and non-profit volunteer and the CEO of Mad Clik, Inc., a corporation in Texas. Openly lesbian, she is the owner and publisher of Gay & Lesbian Rainbow Pages, President of "MD Marketing & Advertising", and co-owner of Rainbow Graphics, a graphic design firm whose focus is to produce effective ad campaigns that cater to and target the LGBT community.
The GLBT Historical Society maintains an extensive collection of archival materials, artifacts and graphic arts relating to the history of LGBT people in the United States, with a focus on the LGBT communities of San Francisco and Northern California. The society also sponsors the GLBT Historical Society Museum, a stand-alone museum that has attracted international attention.
The Schwules Museum in Berlin, Germany is a museum and research centre with collections focusing on LGBTQ+ history and culture. It opened in 1985 and it was the first museum in the world dedicated to gay history.
Tony Carroll, LCSW, established a psychotherapy practice in the Neartown area of Houston, Texas in 1983, making it the oldest LGBT psychotherapy practice in the city. He served as the first openly gay president of the Texas Society for Clinical Social Work and conducted one of the first studies on the stability of gay couples, though his research was never published. He practiced psychotherapy in Neartown in the same building as his spouse, Bruce W. Smith, DDS.
Josef Kohout was an Austrian Nazi concentration camp survivor, imprisoned for his homosexuality. He is best known for the 1972 book Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel, which was written by his acquaintance Hans Neumann using the pen name Heinz Heger, which is often falsely attributed to Kohout. The book is one of very few first-hand accounts of the treatment of homosexuals in Nazi imprisonment. It has been translated into several languages, and a second edition published in 1994. It was the first testimony from a homosexual survivor of the concentration camps to be translated into English, and is regarded as the best known. Its publication helped to illuminate not just the suffering gay prisoners of the Nazi regime experienced, but the lack of recognition and compensation they received after the war's end.
The Houston GLBT Community Center was a community center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies in the Houston metropolitan area and southeast Texas. Its last location was in the Dow School building in the Sixth Ward of Houston.
JD Doyle is an American LGBT music and history archivist/historian and radio producer. He is a staff member of the weekly radio show Queer Voices and produces the monthly radio shows Queer Music Heritage and OutRadio. He now lives in Houston, Texas.
Sally Huffer is an American LGBT activist that resides in Houston.
The Houston GLBT Political Caucus is the South's oldest civil rights organization dedicated solely to the advancement of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. It was founded in 1975, and is the largest GLBT political organization in the city of Houston and Harris County. It is known locally simply as "The Caucus." The Caucus is nonpartisan and endorses candidates on the basis of their support for GLBT rights, regardless of political party or candidate's sexual orientation.
In the post-Stonewall era, the role of libraries in providing information and services to LGBTQ individuals has been a topic of discussion among library professionals. Libraries can often play an important role for LGBTQ individuals looking to find information about coming out, health, and family topics, as well as leisure reading. In the past 40 years, advocate organizations for LGBTQ content in libraries have emerged, and numerous theorists have discussed various aspects of LGBTQ library service including privacy concerns, programming, collection development considerations and librarian/staff education needs, as well as special services for juvenile and teen patrons.
Mary's, originally called Mary's, Naturally and sometimes referred to as Mary's Lounge, was an iconic gay bar located in the Montrose neighborhood in Houston, Texas, in the United States. The bar opened in 1968, and by the time of its permanent closing in November 2009, it was the oldest gay bar in Houston and one of the oldest in Texas. In 2011, OutSmart said that the bar "anchored" Houston's gay community in Montrose during its nearly forty-year history.
Houston has a large and diverse LGBT population and is home to the 4th largest gay pride parade in the nation. Houston has the largest LGBT population of any city in the state of Texas.
Berlin, the capital city of Germany, has an active LGBT community with a long history. Berlin has many gay districts, with the biggest of them, Schöneberg, also being the first in the world.
IHLIA LGBT Heritage, formerly known as International Homo/Lesbian Information center and Archive (IHLIA), is an international archive and documentation center on homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender. It collects, preserves and presents to the public all kinds of information in the field of LGBT. IHLIA curates the largest LGBT collection of Europe with over 100,000 titles on 1515 meters of shelf length – books, journals and magazines, films, documentaries, posters, photographs and objects such as T-shirts, buttons and condom packaging. IHLIA was founded in 1999 by merging the Homodok and the Lesbian Archives of Amsterdam and Leeuwarden. Since 2007, IHLIA is located in the Public Library Amsterdam. IHLIA and the George Mosse Fund organize the annual Mosse Lectures.
The Montrose Center, formerly known as the Montrose Counseling Center (MCC), is an organization that provides mental and behavioral health services for the LGBT community in Houston, Texas, in the United States. It is a member of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. It is in Neartown (Montrose).
OutSmart Magazine, or simply OutSmart, is a monthly publication serving Houston's LGBT community since 1994. Founded by Greg Jeu, the magazine's outreach has exceeded 200,000 and is distributed at over 350 locations in Houston and Galveston, as well as in Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso, and San Antonio. Upon its creation, it was the only local magazine to highlight the society, politics, and culture surrounding the LGBT community in Houston, rather than serving as an entertainment guide; most other publications at that time tended to feature sexually-explicit content and advertisements. OutSmart is also certified and verified by the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce as an LGBT Business Enterprise and is audited by Verified Audit Circulation.
In 1977, the Texas State Bar Association invited country singer Anita Bryant to perform at a meeting in Houston, Texas. In response to Bryant's outspoken anti-gay views and her Save Our Children campaign, thousands of members of the Houston LGBT community and their supporters marched through the city to the venue in protest on June 16, 1977. The protests have been called "Houston's Stonewall" and set into motion the major push for LGBT rights in Houston.
\n
